Joss Whedon: The Genius Behind Buffy Read online

  “And sometimes, you know, we may get it wrong. But basically, the idea is whatever feels sort of natural and endemic is what works. But it has to ring true to us emotionally. And laser beams just were not there. And they take you to a science-fiction place that I feel has been covered too much,” says Whedon.

  In casting Firefly, Joss continued his tradition of taking risks on relative newcomers such as Brendon (Xander), Boreanaz (Angel), Acker (Fred), and Hallett (Lorne). None of the cast are big-name actors. Some, like Summer Glau, who plays River, have virtually no previous acting experience (Glau’s television debut was in Angel’s “Waiting in the Wings” episode, which Joss says was her screen test for Firefly). “I only hire incredibly talented people with no experience,” says Whedon, “so I don’t have to do a lot of work. Believe me, I’ve hired a lot of people with a ton of experience who couldn’t walk through a door ... I just love finding these people who’ve done nothing.”

  The makeup of the characters and the development of them are a huge priority to Joss and his coproducer Tim Minear. No one is superfluous, and the intention was to reveal their hidden depths over time. “We have nine very specific voices, nine very specific characters,” says Minear. “All of them have different points of view. I find this show much easier to write than Angel, because on that show all of the characters have the same agenda. Basically they are all trying to accomplish the same thing. We changed that a little bit by breaking off Wesley and starting to give other characters different points of view, but they still have the same vision.

  Believe me, I’ve hired a lot of people with a ton of experience who couldn’t walk through a door . . . I just love finding these people who’ve done nothing.—Joss

  “But when I was writing the big exposition scenes for this show, everyone had a point of view and everyone had an agenda. It was much easier to write. Instead of everyone saying, ‘We all have the same goal, how are we going to accomplish it,’ there was some argument about what the goal was and what they should be doing. All of that became a dialogue and it just made it easier.”

  Nathan Fillion plays Captain Malcom Reynolds, who took the role despite Joss having gone “Agent Smith on him.”

  The lead character is Captain Malcolm (Mal) Reynolds, played by Nathan Fillion. Mal is an angry guy who fought on the losing side in the civil war. He does whatever it takes to make a quick buck, but he operates from a moral code, albeit a unique one.

  For Fillion, taking on the role of Captain Reynolds was a terrific change from the bumbling oafs he had played in Saving Private Ryan and Dracula 2000. He wasn’t at all sure he could pull it off, but he was willing to give it a try. “After I finished my sitcom with 20th Century-Fox, Two Guys and a Girl, they had given me a deal; [they were] kind enough to keep me around and look for a job for me. They set me up with a meeting with Joss Whedon, the genius who brought us Buffy the Vampire Slayer, and I walk into this office, and I’m thinking, ‘Where’s Joss?’ And he’s this guy in the corner with the scraggly beard and this crazy hair, talking like this, ‘Oh it’s going to be a great show,’” laughs Fillion.

  “I did. I don’t know why,” laughs Joss about the strange voice he was doing during the meeting. “I went all Agent Smith on him.”

  I walk into this office, and I’m thinking, ‘Where’s Joss?’ And the scraggly beard and this crazy hair, talking like this it’s going to be a great show.’

  —Nathan Fillion

  “But we talked about this wonderful show,” says Fillion. “I’d only read a treatment for the script, like a play-by-play; basically, what’s going to happen. And I was in love with it. I said, I love this character. I love how dark he is. I love how he makes such hard decisions. I love what a tough-ass he is. I’m so NOT this guy,” he laughs. ”But he had me come in and audition anyway, and he gave me the part.”

  Captain Reynolds must make tough decisions on a consistent basis, without the luxury of having time to mull things over. He’s the leader of the hodge-podge crew, and if he has to shoot someone to protect his people, he’ll do it without hesitation.

  “That’s another thing that interests me about Mal,” says Whedon. “He’s is very much ‘I’m pure pragmatist,’ but at the same time he will lay down his life for his crew, for these people. They are his family. He takes care of them. He, you know, he has that hardness, but with that hardness he doesn’t really admit to himself how he feels about them most of the time.”

  Zoe (Gina Torres) served with Mal in the war and is also a mercenary, thief, and smuggler when necessary. She sticks with her friend through thick and thin and there’s a lot of friendly chemistry between the two characters. Romance is not a possibility, since she’s married to Wash (Alan Tudyk), who is the calm one in the bunch. And it’s a good thing, because he’s the pilot of the ship.

  I went all Agent Smith on him.

  —Joss

  Gina Torres plays Zoe, Mal’s second in command. Torres has also guest starred on Alias, and plays a role in the Matrix sequels.

  “I was thrilled that this was a woman who was clearly layered,” says Torres. “And it wasn’t just—she wasn’t just a badass. You know she has a relationship. She has a mission. She’s righteous. She’s great. And there’s a lot of—there’s a place to go with that. There are a lot of places to go with that.”

  Sean Maher plays Simon Tam, the Central Worlds doctor who sacrificed everything to save his sister.

  Simon Tam (Sean Maher) is a wealthy doctor from the center of civilization. “Simon and his sister, River, are on the run from the Alliance because she was being experimented on and he discovered it,” Minear says. “He rescued her from her torture and now they are on the run on this ship. I think Simon is a guy who came from a privileged background and who probably supported the unification of the planets. He was on the side of the government during this war, and now finds himself on this ship with these rebels. He couldn’t have imagined himself here before, but he’s got nowhere else to go.”

  Summer Glau plays psychic River Tam, Simon’s sister. River is a genius of sorts, but she also suffers from government experiments gone array. She usually says the wrong thing at the wrong time and has a way of creating chaos at inopportune times.

  Adam Baldwin (not one of the brothers) portrays Jayne. “Jayne is sort of mercenary who signs on to make a living and this is just what he does,” says Minear. “This guy is a straight-on mercenary and it’s sometimes hard to figure just how far he will go to make some money. He’s big and mean and loves to fight. If someone needs to be killed, Jayne is the go-to guy. Yet he does have a soft spot for Kaylee.”

  Jewel Staite plays Kaylee, the ship’s mechanic. “She’s a cheery, upbeat engine-room professional, she’s the Scotty of the show,” laughs Minear. “She’s a happy girl who loves life and can fix just about anything. While her cheerful personality sometimes wears on the crew’s nerves, there isn’t a one of them who wouldn’t lay their life on the line for her.”

  Inara (Morena Baccarin) is the “companion” on the ship, or, as Joss delicately put it, “She’s the whore.” She helps smooth relationships with any onboard guests and entertains them. She’s dubbed “The Ambassador” for her easygoing ways, but she isn’t to be taken lightly.

  “Inara is very classy, you know she isn’t what you think of when you think of a whore,” says Baccarin. “Joss has written this wonderful, beautiful character, who brings the class and nurturing in the spaceship, which is really great. I get to do all of these super things, like know how to play instruments in bands and wear pretty dresses and be classical. It’s wonderful.”

  Ron Glass plays Book the Shepherd. He’s a traveling man who is out to see the universe and spread the good word. He’s a nice guy, but isn’t afraid to get his hands dirty if necessary.

  “He’s clearly a man of letters, and a man of the Word, so to say, and he has a big heart,” says Glass of the Shepherd. “He’s really interested in people’s humanity and people’s advancement and their conscien
ces and that kind of thing. At the same time I think he lived a lot of life before he became that person, and he has a lot to offer these other characters Joss has created.

  Alan Tudyk plays Wash, Serenity’s pilot, and Zoe’s husband.

  Joss is like a present, he’s like a gift as far as I’m concerned.

  —Ron Glass

  “He’s done an amazing job of pulling all of these different people together,” says Glass. “Joss is like a present, he’s like a gift as far as I’m concerned. He’s so bright, creative, and inspiring, and he creates this ideal situation for actors to come in and do their thing. I’d never seen his other shows, but I consider it sheer luck that I ended up here. I had no idea what a blessing it would be.”

  The idea had come to Joss several years earlier, but when Fox called, he had to pull it all together incredibly fast.

  The show itself met several challenges before and after the pilot was shot. After the advertisers met in May 2002, Fox wanted Joss to reshoot the pilot episode. They wanted more humor and action. There were also a few cast changes.

  Adam Baldwin plays Jayne, who serves as both the muscle and the source of much of the humor in Firefly.

  “Sometimes you do things on the business side that’s not the best thing for the creative side,” says Fox Entertainment president Gail Berman, “and when Joss came in and pitched his one-hour idea for a pilot, it was a very big show, and it would prove to be an expensive one. And we felt, corporately, that we might do better with it as a two-hour, be able to launch it as a feature internationally.

  “So we asked him to expand to a two-hour and it went into a lot of back story, and when we saw the two-hour, as good as we thought it was, we felt there was a better way to launch this, with a more action-packed one-hour. And so we sat down with Joss and discussed it with him, and he too felt at that point that starting this thing in a more aggressive way would probably be a better way to start the series. And so we decided to push the two-hour to a special event in season, and then launch [with] the one-hour.”

  Whedon took the comments from the network in stride. “Like anything you do, there are always things you work out as you go along,” says Whedon. “Your initial vision is always there but you have to make it work within the context of what you are doing, and within a budget. There are always going to be changes in the beginning and as you go through the process. It never stops.”

  Summer Glau plays disturbed psychic River Tam. Glau won the role after impressing Whedon in Angel’s ballet episode, “Waiting in the Wings.”

  Jewel Staite plays Kaylee, the ship’s mechanic and resident sweetheart.

  “I’ve worked with a lot of very creative people in my time,” says Berman, “and I think Joss is as close to a genius as I know one to be. He has an incredibly keen understanding of storytelling in a way that I’ve rarely seen displayed elsewhere. He’s so funny and smart, and I’ve worked with him as a colleague and producer, and I’m working with him now at the network. He’s one of the great pleasures of my career.”

  “When I first read the script, I knew that he had something wonderful with Firefly, if they let him have the freedom to make it the way he wants too,” says Professor Basinger. “See, that’s where you run into trouble, is when the network wants to make this change or that. If they let Joss make his show, and trust him as the WB did with Buffy, then it is fantastic.

  “With Firefly we talked about it being this group of people flying through space as a kind of a metaphor for plowing across the prairie. I was raised on the prairie and he asked me questions about what that was like. I told him about being surrounded by wide-open spaces. He [is] always thinking and questioning. It isn’t just ‘well, we will have guys with big foreheads on a spaceship.’ It’s not going to be like that. It’s going to be something different.”

  He has an incredibly keen understanding of storytelling in a way that I’ve rarely seen displayed elsewhere. —Gail Berman

  Whedon is as much a fan of westerns as he is science fiction. He uses many of those early influences in his work and blends them together seamlessly. “I’m a huge John Ford fan. I’m a huge westerns’ fan. Anthony Mann, particularly. The ‘70s westerns, Altman, you know they were a huge influence. The ’70s, because they really stopped using the iconography that had become ossified and said ‘What was it really like?’ a bit more, and you really got that sense of life in things like McCabe and Mrs. Miller, Ulzana’s Raid, and, actually, I’ll probably get in huge trouble for mentioning this, Heaven’s Gate,” he laughs.

  “Life is hard out there,” says Whedon of the world he has created in space. “I wanted to see that world I miss. You know, a world without the Internet and Pink Dot. A world where, you know, things have to be made from scratch, including decisions, ethics.

  “You create a civilization when you go into space. You bring it with you. And how you do that is a really personal process, and to me, a fascinating one. And the harder things are, the more times your ethics and your moral structure are going to be tested. Plus, more adventure.

  “And to me, you know, when I pitched the show, I said, ‘This is about nine people looking into the blackness of space and seeing nine different things,’” says Whedon. “And that’s really what I’m fascinated by, is how they all react to this.

  “I think it’s just more interesting than, you know, ‘Because he’s our client, dammit!’ But that’s me. I mean, a lot of people do that well. I can’t do that well. ‘I’ll allow it, but you’d better be going somewhere with this,’” he laughs again. “I just feel like there’s a group of people that aren’t represented, in a way, the people who really are just living hand-to-mouth... that’s what fascinates me.”

  Ron Glass plays Book the Shepherd, a spiritual man with a decidely worldly past.

  Because Firefly is so different from Buffy in tone, not every Buffy fan has appreciated the series. But the quality of the series is strong, and, although there was some negative buzz surrounding the network maneuvering on the pilot, criticism has been fairly positive. In particular, critics have noted that in a field of very similar programs, Firefly is truly unique. TV Guide says “Bucking the timidity of a TV season lacking in originality, Fox’s funky Firefly may be guilty of overcompensating. You don’t get more offbeat that this ... But once you get used to it, Firefly is very entertaining. The characters are cleverly conceived and the crisp writing balances action, tension and humor nicely.”

  Morena Baccarin plays the companion Inara, the most respectable member of the crew.

  Like Buffy, Firefly integrates multiple genres. Bushwacked, in which we first encounter the Reavers (or, at least, their handiwork) is genuinely scary, but with moments of great humor. While Our Mrs Reynolds, written and directed by Joss, is an almost pure comedy, hysterical, but with moments of great action.

  From the beginning, Firefly’s ratings have been mediocre and its future in doubt. Despite the enthusiasm of fans and the encouragement of critics (TV Guide said “let’s hope Fox exercises some patience. Cult followings aren’t born overnight”), the show was given a fairly short time period to find its audience. Despite some encouraging sign, including the ordering of new episodes by Fox, by mid-December of 2002 it was clear that Firefly, technically on “hiatus,” would not return. Joss acknowledged as much in his December posting:Four AM. Can’t sleep. Who’d have thought?

  There’s a couple of things I’d like to say. And a few things I really can’t. First of all, I’m prouder of this show and the people I worked with on it than I can express in words, monkey noises, or hieroglyphics. I believe this has been some fairly great TV And the experience of making it... I’ve had crew members who’ve been working for 20 years say they’ve never worked around such excitement, support and love. You walk on that set, you’re transported. The cast: 9 count ‘em 9 incredibly talented actors who are all decent, wonderful people. This phenomenon cannot be explained by science.

  Second of all, don’t think for a second that I have giv
en up on this show I think it has been mistreated shamefully, but the Fox network has indicated that they would not stand in the way (which they can) of my finding a new home for the show. That’s no easy prospect. But I will do everything in my power, as always, to keep this bird in the air. Of course I’ll post if there’s any news.

  But even if the show goes back up elsewhere, I’m going to lose a good portion of my crew. Production will halt, they’ll need to find new jobs. You can’t imagine how that feels. How much they brought to the table, how hard and well they worked. And their Christmas bonus is this. As much as the cast, the staff, and my not so secret lover Minear, I honor those guys, and hope to get them back on board.

  So for now, I proudly take my place beside Profit, The Ben Stiller Show, the Tick, and Action. But I won’t rest until I’ve found safe harbour (no, not the Gregory Harrison show) for this vessel.

  I’ve got the time.