There's a moment on Green Day's new DVD, "Bullet in a Bible," when bassist Mike Dirnt recalls performing "Longview" on their latest tour and for the first time noticing fans unfamiliar with the 1994 smash.

"That was the point where I knew we'd gotten out of the shadow of Dookie," he says in the black-and-white clip that precedes the song. "We're in a whole other place."

Three months later, in a ritzy hotel in Beverly Hills, California, Dirnt finds himself expanding on that thought as frontman Billie Joe Armstrong and drummer Tre Cool nod along.

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"That record was so huge that it definitely cast a shadow, and at the very least we can stand side-by-side with it now," Dirnt says, his wide smile nearly reaching his signature sideburns. "With [the 2001 compilation] International Superhits! we really put our flag in the ground and as a band said, 'Let's start our career right now and go forth as musicians and men and really enjoy this crazy world we're in.' "

There are risks involved anytime an artist takes a creative leap, but not only did Green Day pull it off, it may have been the smartest move the band ever made. Aside from meeting the massive challenge of living up to the landmark Dookie, the punk opera American Idiot reignited and reinvented Green Day.

The fictional tale of Jesus of Suburbia and the smash hits that tell it ("American Idiot," "Holiday," "Boulevard of Broken Dreams," "Wake Me up When September Ends," etc.) marked a new chapter for the band — one that few saw coming. And while moving on from such fantastic success must be hard, Green Day are making it a little easier for themselves by ending on a high note, with a video for the epic "Jesus of Suburbia" on the horizon and "Bullet in a Bible" hitting stores November 15.

The DVD, which captures arguably the biggest punk show to date, came to life much the same way as American Idiot: There were new ideas to be tried, there were some doubts, and ultimately there was triumph.

"I remember when they first asked us about doing Milton Keynes," Armstrong recalls of the historic, 65,000-capacity venue where the DVD was filmed. "We'd played arenas in England before, but never like that. They were talking about Milton Keynes and it's where Queen played and U2 played. We're like, 'I don't know, we might be getting in over our head a little bit. It would suck if we like ended up not selling out or something like that, or just not selling at all.' So there was a risk there ... but with American Idiot and how far we pushed our own boundaries with making the record, it just seemed like we should just go for it."

Preparation began some six months before the June 18 and 19 shows, with esteemed video director Samuel Bayer at the helm. During the planning stages, Bayer watched all the classic concert films and then some, not to replicate, but instead to make sure he was doing something different.

"If you see most concert films, you'll see dolly tracks, cameras in the front, the operators," says Bayer, who looks more like a surfer than a color-theory-obsessed ex-painter, with his tan skin and shoulder-length bleached hair. "When we first met with the people staging the show, we started pulling cameras off the stage. That [DVD] was done with 15 hand-held cameras. It was a really dangerous way to cover the show, but it made it much more exciting."

The result is a concert film with enough up-close action to make you feel sorry for people who merely had front-row seats. The entire thing was shot on film, sometimes using experimental stock. And remarkably, you never spot another camera.

In between the concert footage, all of which was taken from the second night, are a variety of vignettes capturing the different sides of Green Day. The highlight is their private trip to the Imperial War Museum, which is partially set to the chilling sound of Billie Joe tapping on a hollow shell of an atomic bomb.

"It was worse than any haunted house that you could ever imagine," explains Tre, dressed up for the interview in a silver tie. "Like, these giant Nazi missiles that were designed to blow London up and all these artifacts and real machines that these people were cowering in and getting shot at and died in them and stuff. It was really creepy."

It was at the museum where the DVD got its title.

"[The curator] was talking about her collection and she's like, 'I've got a bullet that's stuck in a Bible, which either saved someone's life or just went right through 'em, you have no idea,' " recalls Billie Joe, with a sideways beret shadowing his eyes, thickly lined with black pencil. "I guess maybe just the irony of it, or I don't know, it was just pretty heavy the way she talked about it and it just kind of seemed fitting."

"Bullet in a Bible" not only marks the end of an astonishing chapter for Green Day, but Bayer as well. In a rare move, the director, who had helmed only a couple of clips over the past few years (Good Charlotte's "Hold On" in 2003, Papa Roach's "Time and Time Again" in 2002), was hired for all five of American Idiot's videos (the fifth being the upcoming "Jesus of Suburbia"). "Boulevard of Broken Dreams" swept the MTV Video Music Awards, and "Wake Me up When September Ends" may go down next to "Thriller" as far as epic masterpieces are concerned.

"Sam said something to me that the other directors didn't say, which was really important to us 'cause it was kind of like the way we made our record," Billie Joe recalls of their first meeting. "He said, 'I want to make the greatest video of all time.' ... I mean, a lot of our videos in the past have been animated and funny, and this was the first time where it was this more serious side of us, which we've been trying to portray for a long time, and he was the one that got it right."

Samuel Bayer's career in many ways has mirrored Green Day's, getting off to an incredible start (he was alt-rock's go-to guy in the mid-'90s, working with Nirvana, Smashing Pumpkins, Garbage, Blind Melon, Hole, Toad the Wet Sprocket, Collective Soul, the Cranberries, etc.) and then regaining that glory in 2005 (with all of American Idiot's videos). Here he talks about a few of his best:

"If I'm not connected with the artist, I can't do it. I'm proud of who I've worked with, and I started my career in a strong way. I [also] started my career off doing the anti-celebrity ugly music video."

"I heard amazing stuff from people what they thought the video meant, [but truthfully] I wanted to make the most colorful video of all time, and it was a little bit like 'The Wizard of Oz,' 'cause everybody thought my work was really dark. And now the bee girl is like 35 years old, smoking cigarettes and watching that video, going, 'I remember that.' "

"If you take a political stance, you can get really crucified for it. I always dug what Manson was about. He was subversive. He was pushing buttons on people."

"It's a performance video. Nothing happens, really, but I love the way that it's open to interpretation. Why is the flag green? Does it mean money? When we drain it of color, are we saying something? What is the liquid saying? I think it's a really abstract video."

"He also kept talking about the whole record," Dirnt adds. "He wouldn't just focus on one song ... which kind of showed us he was emotionally invested in the record."

Since the end of the mid-'90s, when he was the hottest rock director in town, Bayer had felt his passion for music fizzle. That changed the first time he heard American Idiot.

"I was pretty blown away," remembers Bayer. "It was courageous. Here's a band that's reinventing themselves not because it's the popular thing to do, but because they're artists."

Bayer also felt he instantly got the message of the album.

"This is what I wrote in some of the treatments," he explains. "There are kids that need to hear music and see images that don't celebrate a lifestyle and level of celebrity they will never reach. To me, American Idiot is written for kids in suburbia, for kids going off to the war, kids working in bad jobs. It's their anthem, the soundtrack to their lives."

As much as he understood the story of Jesus of Suburbia, Bayer chose not to tell it in his videos.

"I think videos can spoil songs and I hope these don't," he says. "None of them were literal interpretations. I wanted stuff to get [viewers] excited, but let them buy the record and figure it out for themselves."

Bayer describes his relationship with Green Day as the best he's had with a band and doesn't expect to ever have that sort of experience again, so he's shifting his focus to directing his first film and says he might not ever return to music videos.

As for Green Day, they feel similarly fulfilled by American Idiot, the accompanying videos and "Bullet in a Bible."

"We can walk away from our career, if we were ever to, knowing that it wasn't just about success and wasn't just about the bling or about fancy cars or having lots of money, but ... walk away going, 'Wow, I really said something and I really felt it,' " Armstrong explains. "I think that's why we still have so much energy for this record ... 'cause we really stand proud for the music and the things that we say."

Fortunately for fans, the band plans to return to the studio in early 2006, taking a bit of time off to "reflect on what the hell just happened," but not too much, as Billie Joe says, because for so many bands "the victory lap usually is the downward spiral.

"I think it's exciting, whatever we come up with next, 'cause we know it's gonna go into our career, it's gonna be another chapter," he continues. "We're gonna take our time and just reenergize and refocus and then come up with a new concept for what we want to do after American Idiot, 'cause there's definitely a lot more in the tank for us."

If all else fails, Green Day have tossed around the idea of continuing Jesus of Suburbia's story.

"Sometimes I could see something like that," Billie Joe says.

"We've joked around it might be kind of fun to do American Genius," Dirnt adds. "It's gonna be like 'Star Wars.' "