Interview with Joss from UK newspaper The Guardian (Weds)
POSTED BY: NicolaClarke
UPDATED: Friday, October 7, 2005 13:49
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Nothing much new, but huzzah for more high-profile press coverage of our BDM! Online at:
[url] http://www.guardian.co.uk/arts/features/story/0,,1585052,00.html
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Guardian Unlimited Film
'Everyone thought I was out of my mind'
Buffy creator Joss Whedon tells Gareth McLean about his plan to shake-up Hollywood
Wednesday October 5, 2005
The Guardian
Joss Whedon is big on personal responsibility. It was one of the major themes of Buffy the Vampire Slayer - standing up for what you believe in, fighting your demons and accepting that nothing comes for free. It's there again in Serenity, the writer-director-producer's big screen adaptation of Firefly, a western-in-space series that was cancelled after half a season in the US.
Serenity's universe is a dark place. Under the captaincy of Mal Reynolds, a motley crew travel through space eking out a living wherever, and however, they can. While they smuggle, cheat and steal to survive, these are noble thieves, existing under the rule of an apparently benign galactic government which reveals itself as less than lovely. There are no wrinkly-browed aliens to intervene with magical technologies, no polished spaceships or pristine uniforms, no quick fixes in a brutal sky.
"Aliens inevitably distance you from what I really wanted to do," says Whedon. "I wanted to come back down to earth in space, show that no matter how much advanced technology we create, we're still going to be us - flawed, conflicted people with the same problems we've always had. And although that sounds depressing, it's what makes us human. And what happens when you try to do that? Well, there's a clear statement in the film about what happens."
After taking on two fugitives, Reynolds's crew find themselves the focus of the government's attentions, at the centre of a sinister universe-wide conspiracy, and the prey of the diabolical Reavers who will "rape us to death, eat our flesh and sew our skin to their clothes. And if we're very, very lucky, they'll do it in that order."
Serenity might share the dubious honour of being a film born of a cancelled TV show, but Star Trek it ain't. "I love this idea of the future because it's one in which you have to make everything you have," says Whedon. "You make your family, your choices, your ethics. It's a hard life. It's not in any way a passive life. It's pioneering."
The appellation of genius is issued too often, but, as creator of Buffy, Oscar-nominated screenwriter of Toy Story, comic-book scribe, musician and lyricist, Whedon is, by any standard, at the very least brilliant. The third generation of TV writer in his family (his father Tom wrote for Benson and The Golden Girls, his grandfather John for The Dick Van Dyke Show, The Donna Reed Show and Leave It to Beaver), he started his career writing on Roseanne. As well as credits for Toy Story, Alien Resurrection (a script he reportedly said had been ruined by the director) and Titan AE, he also worked on Speed, Waterworld, Twister and X-Men, though how much of his work remains in the finished films is disputed. Apparently, only two of his lines remain in X-Men while much of Speed's dialogue is his. Whedon is familiar with the machinations of Hollywood and was prepared for a slog in getting Serenity made. In fact, it was "unexpectedly easy".
"At first, everyone looked at me like I was out of my mind," he says. "I wanted to make a movie out of a show that had just been cancelled with a cast of unknowns. But then Universal stepped in and said they'd pay the rent."
This ease perhaps has something to do with the much-discussed death of the blockbuster, the failure of the likes of Stealth and The Island to deliver returns on their mega-budgets. Serenity cost $40m to make, which is not an insubstantial sum, but it's a world away from The Island's $120m budget. "We'd like to shake up the Hollywood paradigm of first weekend, big name, get-'em-in-quick, shock-and-awe marketing and go back to the era of making a smaller movie where you believe in the story. There have been some decen
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