“Hey, remedial class!
Stop having fun!”
Mark Ruffalo scooped up one of the action figures scattered around the room.
“Hey, did you do these?”
“No, I had nothing to do with them,” Whedon said.
“Hulk Smash!”
Ruffalo declared, making his bright green mini-me pulverize the an Iron Man doll.
Enter: Robert Downey Jr. in real life, Tony Snark.
“Where is Chris Evans?
Getting his face replaced?”
The Iron Man actor says as he picked up a Captain America mask and pulled it over his face.
Evans had grown a beard for another role, and he couldn’t shave it.
So Team Marvel had to cover his lower face with a rubber prosthetic.
The end result was …nightmare inducing.
(That’s why Captain America is eating while resting his hand over his cheek.
“Hey, Chris why the long face?”
Downey said, taking off the Cap mask.
“Hey Chris, why the WRONG face?”
Ruffalo could only sympathize.
“Oh no … no …” the Bruce Banner actor said, trying not to laugh.
“I felt sobadfor him!”
“Hey guys, I am not an animal!”
Pah!An Iron Man wrist launcher toy fired a missile fired a missile that ricocheted toward Downey.
“What the f did you just do?”
Ruffalo lowered the Iron Man toy.
“I shot myself.”
Whedon stared daggers at Downey.
The leak about the post-credit scene had been his doing.
“Thank you for having every reporter ask me what we were shooting today,” the director said.
“You’re welcome,” Downey answered, unapologetic.
That’s whereEntertainment Weeklybegan asking questions.
Last night, I wanted to check that the excitement was there.
WHEDON:[Imitating reporters] “I hear you’re shooting a scene?”
[He purses his lips in a fake smile.]
“I’m … sure I don’t know what you mean!”
DOWNEY:[To EW] You never heardanyof this.
MARK RUFFALO:This is like The Last Supper!
DOWNEY:[Taking a seat] I’m sorry … last question?
[The table goes quiet.]
RUFFALO:“What’s it like to work with Sam Jackson.”
CHRIS HEMSWORTH:“So who has the biggest biceps?”
[Rolls eyes] Shoot me.
JEREMY RENNER:Or “What was Scarlett wearing under her catsuit?”
RUFFALO:Oh, come on!
SCARLETT JOHANSSON:Ugh.
I got that question so many times.
“What kind of underpants were you wearing?”
I’m like, what kind of underpants areyouwearing!
Robert, what doyouwear inside the metal suit?DOWNEY:[Brightening…]Cash!
WHEDON:Niiiiice!!
RUFFALO:[Rehearsing] Joss,Joss….
WHEDON:Mark Ra-FUEL-oe is one of my favorite actors.
DOWNEY:Every time Mark runs out of gas, he Ra-FUEL-oes!
RUFFALO:Oh, no.
WHEDON:You Ruffalized my name!
CHRIS EVANS:[Enters] Hello, sir.
DOWNEY:Not without my beard!
DOWNEY:[Abruptly stops laughing, turns to EW] Seriously, last fing question.
RENNER:I sprained my neck.
I sprained my own neck.
JOHANSSON:Taking his socks off, basically.
I’m thinking of a really funny sequence based on this.
[Screams as he lurches forward]
JOHANSSON:And faceplant.
I was a figurehead.
I slept through it.
I’m not sure who most of these people are.
You’re The Defenders, right?
JACKSON:I had an awful rash from my costume because the neck was too high.
JOHANSSON:Ooh, here we go …
WHEDON:Oh my GOD!!
JACKSON:Hey, I filed workman’s comp for that.
[High fives Ruffalo] I’m still getting paid.
Um, the eyepatch thing is crazy, right?
Because it’s really troublesome to obscure half of your vision for that many hours a day.
JACKSON:Actually, it’s leather see-through.
[Smiles slightly]
JOHANSSON:It is?
DOWNEY:You cansee through it?
WHEDON:Wait a minute …
I heard, like, first day, “The eyepatch is really throwing him.”
That’s what I kept hearing.
But you could see through it?
JACKSON:No, I can’t see through it.
That’s what kept fing me up.
I didn’t figure it out until halfway through the day.
I had to go, take the sides, cover my eye, and relearn the lines.
RUFFALO:Come on … You have a photographic memory?
WHEDON:[Laughs] That’s awesome!
JOHANSSON:Was it like, you didn’t know what your face was doing?
It was fed up.
And you’re like, “Yeah, next time cover your left eye and do that!”
RUFFALO:[Laughs] Hey, that cut together!
I’d flown from Toronto to L.A. at that point.
I had two hours of sleep.
It was my first day at work and I had all these scientific words to say
JACKSON:Gobbledeygook.
RUFFALO:And it was [playing opposite] Sam Jackson.
Whedon:Who neglected to mention, he couldn’t remember a damn thing on his first day.
RUFFALO:He did though!
I ran over and hugged him and said, Sam, I love you, man.
I’m having a hard time doing my lines in front of you.
And he was like, “Motherfer, you should have seen me yesterday!”
JACKSON:I owned up!
RUFFALO:He did.
And after that, it was almost there.
WHEDON:You’re very close to getting it, by the way.
RUFFALO:I’ve been working on it.
We’ll have to doAvengers 2, just so I can get those lines right.
I don’t see why they would want to do that.
I thought they were going to fire me right now.
It’s about time.
I hate to break it to you.WHEDON:Well, we voted, and here’s your torch.
Tony Stark unifies the group in a way, even though he comes in and agitates them.
He almost unifies them by annoying them.
Do you … serve that role in real life?
DOWNEY:In the industry?
[Laughter] I guess so.
It came together really nicely.
We went home, like, Phew …!
Otherwise, [lunges toward Whedon] I’d be gunning for you motherfer.
DOWNEY:How would you rate my version?
JACKSON:[Nodding] You’re there…
DOWNEY:YES!
Well, they all come from you.DOWNEY:Hawkeye.
RUFFALO:It’s got to be Hawkeye.
[To Renner] You think?RENNER:Oh, I couldn’t tell you.
The trauma is buried so deep!
But Hawkeye’s origin story is horrible.
It’s nothing but trauma.
JOHANSSON:Yeah, we all have a little bit of trauma.
RUFFALO:You’ve got “a little red on your ledger.”
JOHANSSON:Way to call it back, Mark!
DOWNEY:How was it going from a lapdance to set every morning?
I couldn’t say I had the most.
But, you know …
He might be the most disillusioned, but that doesn’t mean he has the most baggage.
Three weeks ago it was World War II [for him].
That’s one of the most appalling things men have ever been through.
People assume he’s very naive.
I don’t know if I belong here."
But he is extremely badass, and very dark in his place.
He’s still in that war.
WHEDON:Because he brought that with him.
In the ice he was holding stockings and chocolate.
RUFFALO:[Imitating Cap] “This is gonna be great when I wake up!”
These movies connect more if there’s something going on below the surface of the action .
WHEDON:I actually want to field that.
Part of an idea.
That’s gone away.
The thing aboutThe Avengersfor me is about bringing that back.
We’re all isolated, we’re all dealing with our own problems.
I don’t mean the actors although, I mean …
I could tell you stories.
In the end, nothing gets done.
Eventually, these guys get past that and fight a common cause.
RUFFALO:I just wanted to wake you up.
JACKSON:[Feigning confusion] What?
Yes, I believe that!
They end up destroying things, and each other.
Finally, they get along.
Any community or family, can’t be defined by an individual.
It’s by the actions of the group.
So, it’s a communist message, is what you’re saying.WHEDON:[Joking] Absolutely!
DOWNEY:[Twangy Southern accent] Dang, limousine liberals!
Most of you have played these characters in previous movies.
I think Mark is the one exception.
On this film, we already saw eye to eye.
When we met prior to filming, I didn’t want to get in the way.
I just was like, Listen, I trust you.
You’re the fanbase.
You’re who I’m worried about offending, so whatever you are happy with I’m happy with.
I just tried to follow suit and not f s up.
JOHANSSON:For me, most of the challenge was really physical, learning all that wushu nonsense.
WHEDON:That nonsense saved your life!
JOHANSSON:[Laughs] That was most of the work I had to do.
When Joss and I first met, we talked.
JOHANSSON:Divide and conquer!
It was very endearing, actually.
That skillset she has assembled was forced upon her, and he actually got kind of misty eyed.
I was so
WHEDON:It was allergies.
JOHANSSON:I found it to be so endearing actually.
It was very charming.
She was a mercenary.
JOHANSSON:That’s what Wikipedia is for.
[Laughter] I just did that in the car ride before the meeting.
The first comics I read wereThe Avengers; not even individual Thor stuff.
That was my introduction to it.
HEMSWORTH:I was auditioning then.
You called [Thordirector] Ken Branagh.
WHEDON:Yeah, I did.
HEMSWORTH:You said, ‘Give him the fing job.’
WHEDON:It was, “Just to get him off our set!'
Put the toys down!
HEMSWORTH:[Points at toy] That was my research, as a matter of fact!
WHEDON:[Fake whispering] He can’t carry the big one.
HEMSWORTH:Yeah, it’s CGI!
Jeremy, did you feel obliged to study Hawkeye’s comic history?RENNER:I did.
I have to serve the story.
I have to do it as authentically as I possibly can.
I was kind of hamstrung from the get-go because no matter what I did, it didn’t matter.
Something happens in the movie where all that goes away.
We’ll just say “He’s not himself for a part of the movie.”
RENNER:It’s tricky, really tricky to find any route or reason.
Yeah, he’s not himself.
I had very little time to connect to anything real.
I understand sniper mentality, and that came very easily.
He’s not part of the team, as far as I was concerned.
Most important is his history with her [Black Widow].
That’s all I could grab onto.
But that was enough for me.
It’s very meticulous and kind of terrifying the way they think.
That’s what makes him an interesting character.
He’s sort of inward.
JACKSON:What’d you say?
RENNER:[Confused] Inward, yeah.
I was like, “Jesus, what the hell?N-word?”
WHEDON:[Hawkeye] also has extraordinary patience.
WHEDON:[To Downey] Patience, not so much with you.
DOWNEY:[Blinks at him]
WHEDON:Tony, I mean.
DOWNEY:[Sits up, turns to Renner] Are you fing done?
[Laughter] I thought the story should revolve around me from beginning to the end.
WHEDON:This is going to turn into a therapy session.
So much more of it makes sense to me than doesn’t.
RUFFALO:So true!
HEMSWORTH:It was cool.
RUFFALO:And a damn good one, by the way.
JACKSON:From Mississippi.
WHEDON:They call him “David” on the TV show.
WHEDON:No, their bad.
RUFFALO:Their bad.
I’m like, that’s it!
Stop hitting your sister!”
DOWNEY:“Get your hand off your doniker!”
RUFFALO:[Points at Downey] Did he just say that?
[Laughs] Sam?
JACKSON:I watched David Hasselhoff and decided I was not going to doanyof that.
RUFFALO:He did?
JACKSON:David Hasselhoff was Nick Fury, he was!
WHEDON:He wasn’t available, so we got Sam.
JACKSON:I called up John Shaft to show me where I could find one of those leather coats.
I got the coat and I was good to go.
I would have called Odin, because I really liked that eyepatch he had.
HEMSWORTH:Golden kind of thing.
Bolted onto his face?WHEDON:Stan Lee and eyeballs, man.
HEMSWORTH:Yeah, it was just stuck on there.
He had no strap to that.
JACKSON:But it was nice, though.
But I couldn’t afford it.
I’m not a playa like that.
would not spring for the platinum patch.
HEMSWORTH:It doesn’t really work that way.
RUFFALO:Can Hulk smash fracking?
Or Hulk smash fossil fuels?
It’s hard to smash your way out of stuff on the way to a positive outcome.
What’s really out there is a whole lot scarier than that alien army.
Let’s face it that [alien] army is kind of dumb anyway.
They come on their jet skis and with their sticks…
HEMSWORTH:They have muskets!
WHEDON:And they think they’re gonna win?
JACKSON:To New York of all places!
They shoulda gone to New Orleans, at least get some drinks and music.
HEMSWORTH:Yes, there are too few of us.
That’s a good point.
There are a lot of female superheroes in comics, but why are there not more on film?
AfterThe Hunger Gamesthey might stop telling you that a little bit.
Whatever you think of the movie, it’s done a great service.
And afterThe Avengers, I think it’s changing.
JOHANSSON:A lot of the female superhero movies just suck really badly.
WHEDON:The suck factor is not small.
JOHANSSON:They are really not well made, and already you’re fighting against the tide.
There are a couple that have worked-ish, don’t you think?
HEMSWORTH:Angelina Jolie tends to do it pretty well, as the dominant female.
JACKSON:They got to getThe Proto the screen!
WHEDON:See, that is the problem.
Sam is the problem!
JACKSON:I love that book!
WHEDON:[Reluctantly]The Prois hilarious.
JACKSON:The Pro’shilarious.
[To the others] You ever see or hear of it?
JOHANSSON:No, what’sThe Pro?
JACKSON:It’s about a hooker who gets super powers!
JOHANSSON:[Pauses] That is exactly the problem right there.
WHEDON:That’s why I wasn’t going to bring upThe Pro!
JACKSON:It’s a totally dope book, though.
JOHANSSON:I’d have to wear pasties to greenlight any of these movies.
JACKSON:They also want to know where you get that no-bruise make-up.
JOHANSSON:And then Sam Jackson talks more about the g-string!
I’m in one of the best woman-action-movies ever fing made.The Long Kiss Goodnight.
DOWNEY:Damn right.
JACKSON:Geena Davis fing kicks ass in that.
She is totally dope in that one.
JOHANSSON:There are good ones.
And Geena Davis is the perfect woman to be that.
JACKSON:They just had no idea how to market that fing movie, at that time.
JOHANSSON:But I do thinksuperheroinemovies are normally really corny and bad.
HEMSWORTH:[Meekly] There are a few [women] inX-Men.
JOHANSSON:[Smiles at him] We’ll get more.
I want to be in control.
WHEDON:[Ruefully] You don’t want to be me.
RENNER:You’d have to think of the costume you’d have to wear.
HEMSWORTH:Yeah, I’d switch to Mark’s character because you don’t have to wear armor.
JOHANSSON:He wears pajamas!
HEMSWORTH:Every time there’s a fight, you disappear and it’s done digitally.
WHEDON:You want the tiara made of balls?
HEMSWORTH:I’ll take it!
You want the suit made of rubber?
RUFFALO:[To Downey] I fancied your suit the whole time.
DOWNEY:[Angrily] You want to be wearing Capezios in 90 degree weather, sir?
JOHANSSON:Yeah, the man had his little dance pants on [inside the armor].
RUFFALO:You’re right, I thought you looked good.
DOWNEY:Can you believe all this merch?
This is what it’s all leading to.
“Wash my back?”
HEMSWORTH:At least that’s your voice.
Mine is an American!
EVANS:You know who that is?
That’s my younger brother!
He’s an actor and he sounds like me."
Evans:[Proudly] That’s my fing brother.
