The recent press conference for The Avengers (opening May 4) was noteworthy for some of the following comments:

Mark Ruffalo on being The Hulk:

I met with Joss Whedon, and he said he really liked The Incredible Hulk TV show and what Bill Bixby did with him. So I rented those with my 10-year-old son. And after the third episode, he turned to me and said, “Papa, he’s so misunderstood.” And I basically based my character entirely on my 10-year-old boy, who has all of the force of nature, like, screaming out of his body while at the same time having everyone around him telling him to fucking control himself.

Robert Downey Jr. on where Iron Man fits in with the group:

Um, well, that he didn’t really set out to do anything noble, but, uh, so he’s kind of in transition. And so there’s something kind of a little more Han Solo than, uh, than Luke. And also the fact that he can pull off wearing a Black Sabbath T-shirt for the better part of the film.

Samuel L. Jackson on the importance of The Avengers:

I just like the fact that Nick Fury believes that these unique individuals deserve the love and admiration of the world, who, uh, we pretty much owe everything to because there are things out there greater than us.

Joss Whedon on tracking information that’s important:

You want some things to be inferred.  It’s fun to see a movie that has texture beyond what you understand necessarily that you know. Like, when I watched Wall Street, I didn’t know what they were talking about, but I was very compelled by it. It clearly mattered a lot. Or if I watch any film about sports, I feel the same way.  [If] you feel that there’s a life outside the frame, then, you know, you feel good about it, so you don’t necessarily have to lay everything out, but organizing that was the most exhausting part of the film because the stuff between the character, that’s just candy. That’s just booze and candy all day.

Joss Whedon on the Harry Dean Stanton cameo (SPOILER ALERT):

Seamus [McGarvey], our DP, was actually shooting a documentary about Harry Dean and spending a lot of time with him, and I sort of got him stuck in my head and I was like who is more accepting than Harry Dean Stanton?  And, so I got to write this weird little scene, which when I wrote it was not little, it was about 12 pages long, and I was like, oh, this is great. Bruce Banner falls into a Coen brothers movie, and the fact that they even let me keep that concept and that we actually landed Harry Dean to play it was very exciting. But the idea was to put him in a slightly surreal situation with somebody who clearly had no problem with what he was, just to make that little transition without milking it too much. And, besides, you know, to work with Harry Dean and to quiz him about Alien and The Missouri Breaks, what a privilege.