Joss Whedon: The Genius Behind Buffy Read online

  Table of Contents

  Title Page

  Dedication

  Introduction

  Chapter 1 - Growing Up

  Chapter 2 - Joss the Script Doctor

  Chapter 3 - Buffy: Round Two

  Chapter 4 - Secrets of Success

  Mixing up the Genres

  Continuity

  Carpe Diem

  Loving the Fans

  Keeping It Real

  Relentless Perfectionism

  Writing Comes First

  Chapter 5 - Seven Seasons of Buffy

  Season one

  Season two

  Season three

  Season four

  Season five

  The Move to UPN

  Season six

  Season seven

  Critics And Emmys

  What’s Next?

  Chapter 6 - Angel

  Chapter 7 - New Worlds

  Chapter 8 - Firefly

  Chapter 9 - Joss the Mentor

  Chapter 10 - The Real Joss

  Copyright Page

  To the people, Steve, Don, Peg and Helen,

  who believe in me no matter what.

  And to Glenn,

  who is the master of making dreams come true.

  Introduction

  “I wanted Buffy to be a cultural phenomenon, períod . . . that was always the plan.”

  —Joss Whedon

  In his scruffy jeans and baggy button-down camp shirt, Joss Whedon doesn’t look much like a Hollywood mogul. Joss is soft-spoken and funny. His lopsided grin makes you think more of the video-store clerk he once was than the man who created one of the most beloved television shows of all time.

  From its inauspicious beginnings as a midseason replacement on the fledgling WB network, Buffy the Vampire Slayer has become a phenomenon. Rolling Stone called it “the coolest show on TV” Entertainment Weekly proclaimed it “the best drama on television.” Buffy was ranked the number-one show in America by the Pittsburgh Post Gazette, number five by TV Guide, and one of the top ten by USA Today.

  In 2000, Joss garnered an Emmy nomination for the episode of Buffy titled “Hush,” and, in the same year, the series was honored with the Founder’s Award from Viewers for Quality Television. Joss has been nominated for countless awards (he recently won a Best Genre Network Series Saturn Award for Buffy) and has been listed as one of Entertainment Weekly’s top ten people in Hollywood.

  But, most important, in Buffy, Joss created a new icon. And it didn’t happen by accident. “I always intended for Buffy to be a cultural phenomenon,” Whedon confesses. “That’s how I wrote it. In the back of your mind, you’re picking up your Oscar and your Saturn and everyone is playing with their Buffy dolls.”

  Joss wins the Saturn!

  Joss Whedon has become one of Hollywood’s hottest properties. He is currently producing three television series on three different networks (Buffy on UPN, Angel on WB, and Firefly on Fox) with two more, Buffy the Animated Series and Ripper, in the planning stages. He wrote the popular Fray comic-book series, was nominated for an Oscar for the Toy Story screenplay, and has written or contributed to numerous films, including Speed, Alien Resurrection, and X-Men.

  Even in the rarified world of Hollywood producers, Joss stands out as an unusual individual. A brilliant writer, he is equally adept at drama, comedy, horror, and action. A producer with a self-proclaimed feminist agenda, Joss makes a point of defying convention and Hollywood norms.

  A shy, reclusive child, Joss has overcome his inherent introversion to achieve great success in a variety of leadership roles: as a head writer, producer, and director. Genuinely kind and easygoing, Joss is also a perfectionist and “control freak” who oversees most every aspect of his productions. And, when necessary, Joss can be ferocious in protecting his creations.

  So, who is Joss Whedon? What makes him tick? And, most important, how does he manage to create such magic?

  1

  Growing Up

  “Most people really don’t get along that well with their own famílíes.”

  —Joss Whedon

  As any fan of Buffy knows, Joss loves anguish. Each season the characters suffer from traumas of every kind, from impossible love to hopeless addiction. The majority of Whedon’s characters come from unhappy or broken homes. Buffy’s father left, not even returning at her mother’s death. Angel’s father was demeaning and cruel. Xander’s household was a drunken brawl while Willow’s mother was cool and aloof.

  So what was Joss’s childhood like? Was it terribly traumatic? Was he beaten and tortured? Did his parents lock him in his room where his lonely mind began to generate the fantasies that would some day make him famous?

  Joss, who grew up in Manhattan, swears he had a normal and quite boring childhood. Joss was born Joe Whedon on June 23, 1964, the youngest of three boys (he would later have two younger step-siblings). Joss was born into a television dynasty. His grandfather, John Whedon, was a writer on The Andy Griffith Show, The Dick Van Dyke Show, The Donna Reed Show, Room 222, and Kilroy.

  His father, Tom Whedon, was an Emmy-winning television producer and writer who worked with the shows Golden Girls, Alice, Electric Company, Captain Kangaroo, The Dick Cavett Show, and Benson. Earlier in his career, Tom Whedon wrote musicals, later one of Joss’s passions.

  Joss’s mother, Lee Stearns, was a high-school teacher, aspiring novelist, and, in Joss’s words, “whupass personified.” “She was very smart, uncompromising, cool as hell,” Joss relates. “You had to prove yourself—not that she wouldn’t come through if you didn’t, but she expected you to hold your own.”

  “My mom is a very bright woman, who believed in education,” said Joss. “You don’t always appreciate that when you are a kid, but I do now.” Joss’s mother was much like the female characters Whedon likes to create. Like Tom Whedon, she also had her musical side, acting and singing in summer-stock productions. Whedon’s musical talents clearly came from both sides of the family.

  Joss’s parents divorced when he was nine. He lived with his mother and spent his summers in New York with his mother and stepfather at a sort of informal “artists’ commune.”

  Joss was a shy, imaginative, and easily frightened child. “I was afraid of the dark and everything, and I had a vivid imagination. People think I’m joking when I say that I was a strange, unlovable child. But it is true. I think the thing that I was most afraid of was my big brother. If you see big brothers being eviscerated on the show you’ll know where that came from.”People think I’m joking when I say that I was a strange, unlovable child. But it is true.

  —Joss

  As a child Joss spent many hours alone making up stories and games with his toys. Each toy had certain role to play in Joss’s imagination and every day was a new story. When he was eleven or twelve, for example, he invented a story featuring hero Harry Egg, itinerant space traveler, and his androgynous demigod sidekick, Mouseflesh. Whedon discovered early on that he could escape from the rest of the world by slipping into one of his imaginary stories.

  “I was the sad, unlovable child, who had a perfectly normal childhood,” says Whedon of his early years. “I never felt like anything was right in life and I didn’t understand why it seemed so easy for everyone else. There are people who feel a little odd all of their lives; I think I was destined to be one of those people,” Whedon laughs.

  Whedon doesn’t like to talk about his family. He wants to respect their privacy as much as possible, but he does say he comes from loving parents. “I’m not sure my parents ever understood me, and I’m certain they thought I was a little strange. But they loved me. No, they didn’t lock me in closets or beat me. I was
just born this way.”

  If he wasn’t making up imaginary games with his toys he was reading books, in particular comic books and science fiction. Hours were spent in his room as Joss read and reread the new issues of Dracula, Spider-Man, and Fantastic Four. It wasn’t long before he was reading every science-fiction book he could get his hands on. Frederick Pohl and Frank Herbert were among his favorite authors.

  “In a lot of ways those worlds made a lot more sense to me than the one I lived in,” Joss says. “Every opportunity I had to lose myself in those stories I took and I’m sure they influenced me in some ways even I don’t know.”

  Joss was pretty much a loner and he spent much his time in front of the television. Watching television became another form of escape and one he admits he used “way too often.” But all those hours in front of the TV ultimately paid off.

  “As a very young child I watched a lot of cartoons, but not really things in prime time. As I grew older I didn’t watch a lot of American television ... I was beyond that. I watched Masterpiece Theatre and Monty Python . It’s sad, I know, but I wanted to be British. I had this fascination with England that’s almost absurd when I look back on it now.”

  His fascination with film also began at an early age. Some of his earliest memories were of watching films, and he has studied them his whole life. Early on he had a penchant for scary movies—“the cheesier the better,” he says. “Even a bad horror film can scare you, and my mind was so gullible when I was a kid. I could make everything seem so real to myself.” To this day he still enjoys horror films, good or bad.

  His mind never stopped going into overdrive. From an early age he would tell his mother the strange stories he made up and, while she encouraged his creativity, “I’m sure more than once there were times when she questioned my sanity. I would have,” laughs Whedon.

  As he grew older, his imaginary worlds became filled with crazy characters who lived in ultracool universes and had all kinds of special powers. There were times when he would create such frightening stories that he would actually scare himself.

  At some point the shy young Joss discovered something magical. When he was about eleven years old, he realized he could make people laugh. During an interview, he was asked where his sense of humor came from. “There were times when I didn’t feel as though I was getting attention I deserved, and I learned that if you said something funny, people would stop and listen,” says Whedon. “At least for a little while.”

  Joss the Femíníst

  “I was an androgynous little thing. I had masses of curly red hair and old ladies would always come up and say, ‘Oh, I love her hair.’”

  —Joss Whedon

  Whedon is a writer with a self-declared “feminist agenda,” and Buffy was designed from the onset as an unabashedly feminist show. While one can quibble with the feminist credentials of a show featuring so many attractive women in sexy outfits, Joss takes Buffy’s feminist credentials very seriously. He considers Buffy one of a handful of genuinely tough female characters that ever made it to the screen.

  “There was that thing in the ’80s where every woman in a film had to have a pointless karate scene—for no reason,” Joss complains. “Like Wayne’s World! They had to do karate to show they were tough and then go back to being meaningless in the narrative. Or helpless. People were attempting something good, but the only person who was putting actual tough women out there was [James] Cameron. He was just kicking ass. He gave us the two great prototypes—Ripley and Sarah Connor.

  “I’ve always felt comfortable with women as people,” Joss adds, “and I was surprised when I realized how few people—writers and filmmakers—actually think of them as people.”

  Joss’s feminism seems to have started early. A lonely child, intimidated by his father and older brothers, Joss formed a close attachment to his mother. “It starts with my mother. It always starts with my mother. She was an extraordinarily strong, independent, tough, uncompromising, cool, funny person. She taught me most of what I know about everything.”

  James Cameron gave us the two great prototypes—Ripley and Sarah Connor.—Joss

  Director James Cameron and Linda Hamilton, who plays the eerily tough Sarah Connor in the Terminator series.

  Joss credits two other strong women with influencing his life. One is Jeanine Basinger, his film professor from Wesleyan, who remains a close friend to the present day. “My professor Jeanine Basinger is an extraordinary person. She is extremely simple in her ethics and her presentation and in her loyalties, but her lectures are so dense I can’t follow them. She is truly brilliant. A lot of people who have met both her and my mother remarked on the similarities.”

  Joss and his wife Kai Cole.

  The other is Joss’s wife, Kai Cole, whom he credits with having a significant effect on him. “When you asked about the women who influenced me, she would be the third. My wife is enormously strong . . . [she] is a complete self-starter. She is a constant inspiration to me.”

  It’s clear that Joss finds strong women both inspiring and, well, sexy. “Oh, you know—I like strong women. I was raised by one. I don’t see many of them and I see a lot of bullshit pretending . . . also, those women just attract me. It’s embarrassing, almost. A lot of it is inherent and studied and strongly felt feminism, and a lot of it is just that chicks are cool.”

  While happy to portray tough, sexy women on Buffy, Whedon is careful not to go over the line into exploitation. As a fan of comics, and creator of one of his own, he’s clearly embarrassed by the increasingly sexual trend of manga (Japanese comics). “I’m a big fan of puberty and people who’ve been through it,” he insists.

  those women just attract me. It’s embarrassing, almost.—Joss

  Whedon goes on to say: “There’s a comics artist I won’t name who I’ve talked to. His creation is really popular, I guess, but there’s this weird thing, where I guess she was molested, and that’s part of the story. But you know, she’s a young girl who looks like a Playboy model in her undies. I wanted to molest her, too, you know? The message that sends is weird, and I don’t go for it.

  “Because of stuff like that I went away from comics for a long time. Everything seemed to be soft-core and all of it was disguised as empowerment. ‘I have the power to have my shirt ripped, and now you can see my nipples! Ah-ha!’”

  Whatever Joss’s feminist credentials, there is no escaping his insights into the female psyche. “Ask him who the role models are,” says Professor Basinger. “Joss has a wonderful, strong mother. He appreciates women who are strong. His wife is a strong woman and I like her enormously. He knows women better than even he would ever admit.”

  “He definitely has that ability to get in their heads,” agrees David Greenwalt (former executive producer of Angel), “better than anyone I’ve ever known. I’d say I’m in touch with my feminine side to a certain degree, but nothing like Joss.”

  “I know this is going to sound weird, but I always wondered if maybe there was a little bit of Willow in Joss,” laughs Alyson Hannigan (Willow). “I don’t mean he’s girly or anything. He’s definitely a manly man. But there’s this sensitivity to him where women are concerned. He gets girls. He understands how we think. He’s also incredibly easy to talk to and fun at the same time. I’ve always wondered how he knew so much about women, without actually being one. He gets in our head way too easy.

  “Oh, great, I know that quote is going to get me in trouble, somehow, someway. But you know what I mean. He just gets us.”

  I have the power to have my shirt ripped, and now you can see my nipples! Ah-ha!—Joss

  I always wondered if maybe there was a little bit of Willow, in Joss.

  —Alyson Hannigan

  Joss often made home movies, enrolling his family as the cast. He would make sure that everyone understood what they were supposed to do and he created cute little films that still make his family laugh today.

  There were times when I didn’t feel as though I was getting
attention I deserved, and I learned that if you said something funny, people would stop and listen. —Joss

  That sense of humor came in handy when Joss faced the greatest trial of his young life—high school! Joss was sent to an exclusive private high school, the Riverdale High School in Upstate New York. It was the worst time of his life. “ [At Riverdale] I learned more about rejection than I ever cared to,” says Whedon.

  When his mother went on sabbatical to England, Joss jumped at the chance to go with her. “[My mother] was a teacher and she didn’t believe there were schools in Los Angeles where my father lived. She didn’t believe such a thing could exist. She was a terrible snob. By some weird happenstance I got into the best [high] school in the country [Winchester College]. I really shouldn’t have and I can’t stress that enough. It was a fluke. And so I went over for half a year and when my family went back, I stayed.”

  A longtime Anglophile, Joss was thrilled at the prospect of living in England and studying at a famous British institution. Boasting the longest unbroken history of any school in England, Winchester College was founded by Bishop William of Wykeham in 1382. Winchester has an ancient, medieval feel about it, and at first Joss was truly delighted to be there.