Times UK Article on Joss
POSTED BY: LeeH
UPDATED: Monday, January 12, 2004 14:58
VIEWED: 939
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In case no one saw this, it was published in today's (1/11/04) Times U.K. online; I'm pasting it in because the site is paid/subscriber, but somehow their server spazzed out and let me get this:
January 11, 2004
The Sunday Times
Throw off your anoraks and rejoice
Angel and Spike are back from the dead — again. And it’s all thanks to the weird science of Joss Whedon. By John Harlow
The letter, pinned to a notice board, is well typed and politely phrased, but barking mad. “Did you notice,” asks the writer, “an intruder materialise in your office the other night? I was practising my teleporting skills at home in Folkestone, and I think I may have ended up in your office in Los Angeles by accident. Sorry.” Welcome to the off-kilter world of Joss Whedon, master of the Californian twilight zone.
For the past decade, Whedon — creator of the slyly humane satire that was Buffy the Vampire Slayer and its spin-off, Angel, about Buffy’s vampiric ex-boyfriend, who has a soul of gold and a dodgy Galway accent — has been the unchallenged monarch of television’s bloodsucking hordes (or, in Hollywood PC terms, undead Americans). Questions of super-natural nomenclature are taken seriously in Los Angeles, and not just by teenage goths. The Fuller Theological Seminary in Pasadena, where fundamentalist scholars regard mental illness as satanic possession, is drawing up a map of demonic activity in LA — and Fox Studios, where Whedon has his office, is splat in the middle. Maybe they are on to something? The 39-year-old writer looks too young and innocent to be true. As he steps into the shady domain of his production company, Mutant Enemy, and taps a 6ft plaster demon on its knobbly head, you cannot but think: what if Auberon Waugh and Renée Zellweger had had an auburn-haired surfer love child? He would have looked uncannily like Mr Whedon.
Dressed in cargo pants and a T-shirt emblazoned with an image of the 1940s starlet Joan Leslie — big bonus points for obscurity there, Joss — the press-shy writer is taken aback by my materialisation in his sanctum. He has not sat down with a reporter for a year. The trap has been set by his cor- porate pals, because, frankly, since Buffy dusted her final “big, bad” last summer, the scene has not been rockin’ in the Jossiverse.
Buffy has gone, largely because Sarah Michelle Gellar, known on set as “the Duchess”, wanted to spread her artistic wings — and ended up filming Scooby-Doo 2. A cartoon Buffy has failed to get off the drawing board: “Too expensive, allegedly,” Whedon says tightly. His next venture, Firefly, a futuristic space saga, was sucked into a black hole after 13 episodes, criticised as dull. It may come back as a feature film with the original cast. “
That is a non-negotiable,” he says firmly. “Firefly was the best experience I ever had in television, and it was killed before it could walk.” Even Angel faced deep scrutiny in the mass audience shrinkage that has unnerved the TV suits over the past year.
Whedon, son and grandson of influential scriptwriters, whose chipper days (a shared Oscar nomination for writing Toy Story) have far outnumbered the lame (Alien: Resurrection, anybody?), was suddenly facing membership of the Hollywood hellfire club, where writers such as The X Files’ Chris Carter and Ally McBeal’s David E Kelley are paired up with monkeys typing Shakespeare until they create another hit.
So, Whedon is a little on edge. As he talks, he is stabbing himself with a retractable Buffy stake and his knee is bobbing. Finally, unable to sit still, he picks up my minidisc recorder and weaves around the furniture. It works — at home, later, the machine spits out a few words, groans and melts down. Luckily, old-fashioned shorthand is less vulnerable to demonic influence.
Whedon’s battle to save Angel, which starts its fifth series on British television this week, has left its bruises. Last spring, studio bosses told him to cut costs or shut up shop. “I had too many stories left to tell. The series was not the pot of gold everyone might think: at least,
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Thanks for posting that Leeh. It is always good to see Joss in print, and even better when Firefly gets a mention.
From the article:
Quote:
Firefly, a futuristic space saga, was sucked into a black hole after 13 episodes, criticised as dull. It may come back as a feature film with the original cast.
"That is a non-negotiable,” he says firmly. “Firefly was the best experience I ever had in television, and it was killed before it could walk.” Even Angel faced deep scrutiny in the mass audience shrinkage that has unnerved the TV suits over the past year.
It is encouraging to hear Joss is still so attached to the show, and dedicated to the cast.
"May have been the losing side. Still not convinced it was the wrong one."
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