Joss Whedon: The Genius Behind Buffy Read online

  “I was always wanting something that I couldn’t have when it came to relationships in high school. Then I had the chance to go to Winchester, which is a boarding school in England.... The rejection wasn’t so bad there because it was all boys,” Whedon laughs. “I jumped at the chance because of course the idea of being British was extremely appealing.”

  [At Riverdale] I learned more about rejection than I ever cared to.—Joss

  Despite Joss’s initial enthusiasm, he soon found that alienation and loneliness followed him to Winchester. While he loved all things British, he soon discovered that the Brits were not equally fond of Americans, and it was difficult to fit in. It was a rude awakening when Whedon, who had spent many years watching British television series, discovered that people in England weren’t quite like the actors he had seen in the Monty Python skits.

  Joss spent a good deal of his time sneaking away from school on the weekends to go into town and watch whatever films might be available. It was his chance to once again lose himself in his own magical world.

  And he desperately needed the escape. In the boarding houses where Whedon lived, thirteen boys, called Commoners, shared a single room. The house was ruled by a housemaster and discipline was strongly emphasized. He found relationships with his instructors difficult, although there were a few that he appreciated. “Like anywhere, you have good and bad instructors,” Joss says. “The idea for Mr. Giles came from Winchester, so it wasn’t all bad.”

  “You know, I don’t think my experience in high school was any worse than anyone else’s, to be honest,” Whedon admits. “I just know that it was a horrible experience for me. Girls didn’t know I existed, and quite honestly even if they did I wouldn’t have known what to do with them. I tried once to get a girl to notice me in high school, but it didn’t work. Of course it never helped that I went to an all-boys school. I don’t think you learn the things you need to know about the opposite sex, when you spend so much time with your own.”

  A keen observer, Joss studied his classmates. He could understand what made some kids popular and others not, but he couldn’t make the formula work for himself. Like many high school students, Joss had a difficult time adjusting. He was in a new country, with people he hardly knew. The boarding school was nothing like his home in Manhattan, and his family, his mother in particular, was thousands of miles away.

  the idea of being British was extremely appealing.—Joss

  I tried once to get a girl to notice me in high school, but it didn’t work.—Joss

  Joss’s difficult high school experiences powered the angst and power of Buffy, particularly in its beginning years. Many of the early plots came directly from his high school experiences. Whedon, for example, tells of drawing a self-portrait in high school with his hand disappearing. He felt that he was invisible, unimportant, and unappreciated. In “Out of Sight, Out of Mind,” a first-season Buffy episode, Whedon developed a story about a high school girl who was so ignored she literally disappeared.

  “I was nowhere close to being a popular kid in high school, I just sort of went and hoped for the best every day. There were days when I wondered if anyone else in the world knew I existed. You’ll see that plot a lot in the early days of Buffy, because that sense of isolation is in almost all of us. Really, there are few people who get away from high school without going through some kind of trauma. Most of us dealt with it on a daily basis. I wish my high school years could have been different. I wish that I was Mr. Popular, but then I would be writing very different shows.”

  After graduating from Winchester, Joss Whedon attended the elite Wesleyan University in Wesleyan, Connecticut. College was a different experience from high school, and Whedon soon learned he could be more creative and that his opinion was valued. While far from the big man on campus, Joss made friends and began to have a life. He played Dungeons and Dragons and threw himself into his film studies. “College rocked,” Whedon tells. “I was miserable most of the time, but in a party way.”Joss had found an environment where his imagination could flourish. And, most important, he could be himself and feel accepted.

  The very funny, realistic guy I knew shuffling around in sneakers here at Wesleyan is the exact same guy you meet when you step into his office at Mutant Enemy. —Jeanine Basinger

  I wish that I was Mr. Popular, but then I would be writing very different shows.—Joss

  Most of his instructors remember him fondly, not because he is famous now, but because even in those early days he was the self-effacing, creative guy he is today. Whedon’s former professor Basinger says, “The very funny, realistic guy I knew shuffling around in sneakers here at Wesleyan is the exact same guy you meet when you step into his office at Mutant Enemy.” Basinger is the chair of the film studies program and the Corwin-Fuller professor of film studies and American studies at Wesleyan. “Joss was one of the all-time best film majors I ever had,” Basinger continues. “He was born with the narrative instincts and the intelligence that makes him who he is. We gave him a place to grow.” To this day she regularly chats with Whedon on the phone.

  The respect was mutual. “I walked out with unbelievably essential knowledge,” says Whedon. “I happened to study under the people that I believe are the best film teachers ever. Film hasn’t existed that long, so I say that with a certain amount of confidence. The teachers at Wesleyan were brilliant, the most brilliant people I’ve been around, and there is not a story that I tell that does not reflect something I . . . [learned]... from my professors. They left me with some incredible insights into film, and the encouragement to think I might be able to make something of myself.”

  Joss with his favorite professor, Dr. Jeanine Basinger.

  Interview with Jeanine Basinger, Corwin-Fuller professor of film studies and American studies at Wesleyan University

  HAVENS: What kind of student was Joss?

  PROFESSOR BASINGER: Joss was a superior student. I teach at a very elite university and in a program that draws the top students. But he was the top of the top, the crème de le crème. There are four or five people I’ve had that were just beyond belief, and he was one of them.

  I don’t know if you are familiar with our university or all of the alumni we have who are enormously successful in the film business. People like David Kohan who did Will and Grace. Jennifer Crittenden (Everybody Loves Raymond) who wrote for Seinfeld and the Drew Carey Show. Jeffery Lane (Bette) who did Mad About You. There was Michael Bay (director, Pearl Harbor, Armageddon, The Rock), Miguel Arteta (director, The Good Girl, Six Feet Under, Chuck & Buck) and Akiva Goldsman (writer, A Beautiful Mind, Practical Magic, The Recruit).

  Out of all of this Joss still stood out. He’s incredibly smart. He is deeply, widely read. He’s not one of those people who falls into show business because he taps the popular culture and nothing else. He has read the classics. He knows history. His mother was a great schoolteacher. He was raised by a wonderful teacher, and he reflects that. He is a joyous student. He loves to learn. All of that stuff that you see in Buffy, all that greatness, is a product of someone who has had a superior liberal arts education, coupled with a superior mind and imagination.

  HAVENS: Could you see the creativity and potential when he was a student?

  PROFESSOR BASINGER: I saw it in the first papers he wrote for me. He always pushed. He’s a really good film historian. He continues to grow and learn. He likes to come East and I set up private screenings for he and I and his wife Kai at the Museum of Modern Art. I pick out rare things. Silent films, Woman of the World, or a good color print of Some Came Running or Bonjour Tristesse. He continues to study and grow and learn. I think that’s something that does set genius apart. Most people have an idea that a genius is someone who never studies, or works hard. It’s quite the opposite.

  HAVENS: He says he’s always wanted to make films. What were his student films like?

  PROFESSOR BASINGER: His senior student film, which he would be happy if I didn’t mention, is a Buffy prototy
pe. It’s a girl whose prom date turns out to be a vampire. But he doesn’t want [you] to hear about this. In our program students study film . . . history and theory. They know how to break a film down and see how it works and they work hands on and make films. On the other hand, it’s an undergraduate program and liberal arts school. We are not a filmmaking factory. [Students] take literature, learn a language, play an instrument. He did all that and it prepared him for the thinking process more than the technical filmmaking process. Even though he had written, produced, directed, and edited his own film, it isn’t the same as doing an undergraduate film program at USC or NYU or something like that.

  HAVENS: Do you know who some of his early influences were in the film world?

  PROFESSOR BASINGER: He loves the work of Otto Preminger (Anatomy of a Murder, Porgy and Bess, The Human Factor), Nicholas Ray (Johnny Guitar, Flying Leathernecks), Vincente Minnelli (Gigi, On a Clear Day You Can See Forever), Anthony Mann (The Man From Laramie, God’s Little Acre), John Ford (The Grapes of Wrath, The Long Voyage Home), Ernst Lubitsch (Ninotchka), all of the great filmmakers. Billy Wilder (Sabrina, Some Like It Hot, The Front Page) is another. He studied and appreciates all of their work.

  HAVENS: You guys share this love of film; do you feel like you too had some influence?

  PROFESSOR BASINGER: Oh, I don’t know about that but we do share a love for film. He took a lot of classes with me. He was my teaching assistant. He worked for me on the film series helping me select the films. He is hugely committed to film here and very involved. I will always have extra screenings for students, who are interested in seeing certain types of films. People come and they are very devoted. But when it gets to be beautiful weather . . . in the spring everybody’s out on the hill drinking beer. I’d open the door and there would be Joss, sitting in there by himself looking at Johnny Guitar.

  HAVENS: What do you think of the work he is doing now?

  PROFESSOR BASINGER: His work is a wonderful mixture of the greatest literature, music, ideas, movies, and works of art of all time. It’s all mixed into his own mind and then he stirs it and adds his own original ideas that are then funneled out into this amazing work that is uniquely his.

  He worries and frets over things. I admire him. I have to be careful about getting sentimental because he would hate that. The thing is he cares about what he does. He cares about being a good person. He’s very private. I would never want to violate his privacy. He’s a young man. What lies ahead as he grows and deepens . . . I can’t even begin to think of what he is going to produce and how great it is going to be.

  Thing is, Joss has a depth to his mythology and storytelling. We are watching a TV show initially on the WB, heaven help us. It is called Buffy the Vampire Slayer and I’m in my sixties and I’m crying when I’m watching it. What is that? It is one of the great mythic storytellers. It’s more than just being a really successful, skilled, articulate filmmaker. There’s something more to this. He’s still so young and the thing is, he brings us pain in these stories as well as humor. In Buffy and Angel how you ricochet from laughing to being terrified to feeling like crying is astonishing. I think that’s why you are writing a book about him, even though he’s only in his mid-thirties. We all recognize there is something more here.

  HAVENS: Has success gone to his head in any way?

  PROFESSOR BASINGER: Having this huge success has not changed him at all except he has matured even more and deepened as a person. He’s more thoughtful and caring. He’s the same guy. The work is everything to him. Not the fame. It’s all about doing the work. The guy is amazing. He can write five things at a time. It’s astonishing what he does.

  2

  Joss the Script Doctor

  “. . . the final crappy humiliation of my crappy film career.”

  —Joss Whedon

  Joss graduated from Wesleyan in 1987 determined to build a career in the movies. “I was sure I was too good for television,” laughs Joss. “That’s what my family did and I couldn’t be bothered. I was a total snob. I never watched American TV, I only watched, like, Masterpiece Theatre. I was going to be a great independent filmmaker. The problem was, after school I had no idea how I was going to make it happen.”

  Joss set off for Los Angeles. He changed his name from Joe to Joss, the Chinese word for “luck.” He lived with his father and worked on various experimental projects, such as a musical parody of the Oliver North hearings. He supported himself through work at the local video store and as a researcher at the Film Institute.

  An aspiring filmmaker with waist-length bright red hair and eccentric points of view, Joss had some disastrous pitch meetings. Despite his trepidations and at his father’s suggestion, he decided to try television. As Joss relates, “When I was just starting out, and I had no idea how I was going to become the brilliant independent filmmaker that I imagined myself to be, I thought, ‘Well, I’ll try my hand at a spec.’ By selling a TV script, I could make enough money to sort of keep myself afloat. That was the first time I ever sat down and tried to write. I had never studied writing, or thought of myself as a writer exactly. I always assumed I would write whatever I made, but I never really gave it much thought. Then I sat down and really tried to write a script and found the great happiness of my life.”

  Then I sat down and really tried to write a script and found the great happiness of my life.—Joss

  Writing turned out to be his true passion. It was like an addictive drug for Whedon. He poured everything he was and wanted to be into those early scripts. All the stories that had been rolling around in his brain for the first twenty years of his life were actually something he could put on paper. He began writing scripts at an amazing rate.

  He began sending scripts to everyone he knew in Hollywood, including some of his father’s friends. The quality of his writing attracted notice from the beginning. Producer Howard Adler saw some of these early spec scripts. “It was his sense of humor I remember most,” Adler says. “You don’t forget something like that. By the time I tried to call and get him to come and work for me he was already working somewhere else. But he was definitely someone I really wanted on my staff.”

  Joss wound up taking a job as staff writer on the popular ABC television series Roseanne. The Roseanne work environment was famously difficult. Roseanne ran the show with an iron but erratic fist. She was notoriously challenging to work with and she changed producers and writers with alarming frequency. Conflict with management was continual, and the politics were fierce. Even she has admitted that she wasn’t the easiest person to work with.

  Roseanne Barr, a funny lady but a tough boss.

  “You know I did a lot of crazy things back then, but I’m not going to apologize for it,” said Roseanne after a press conference with television critics. “It was my show and I wanted to make it my way. I worked with some great people, but there were a lot of them that had no business being in television. It’s tough, and if you can’t take it, well that’s too damn bad.”

  But the chaos worked for Joss, at least at first. He was too junior to bear the brunt of Roseanne’s difficult personality, and, most important, he got to write. In the first six months on the show he wrote five scripts, unheard of for a lowly staff writer. The frenetic pace suited his writing style and he was one of the few people there who liked having the pressure to churn out script after script. But the politics shifted and in the second half of the year he was shut out by the producers and had little to do.

  It was around this time that Joss married Kai Cole, an interior designer. He describes her as “the funniest woman I’ve ever met” and jokes that he married her despite the fact that she was happy and popular in high school. Kai Cole would become an important part of Joss’s life, influencing his life and work. A number of scenes in Buffy came from Kai’s experiences. “[One example] in particular is the scene where they bring home Dawn when she was a baby. My wife was eight when they brought home her sister Dawn and it was on her birthday, which everyone forg
ot. So she was all cranky about it. They put Dawn in her arms, and she told me about this. She said she just felt like, ‘I have to take care of this.’ And so that whole scene was based on that story that she told me. I have a stepsister but I don’t have a younger sister and I don’t have the same kind of relationship with my family or siblings that she does. She has been very instrumental. There have been a lot of other things, but that in particular was just one thing I entirely stole.”

  But Joss didn’t let his romance interfere with his work. He was using his free time at Roseanne to work on his script for the film that would later become Buffy the Vampire Slayer. He even worked on it during his honeymoon.

  It was great to have the time to work on his script but Whedon, ever the workaholic, couldn’t stand being on the payroll without being able to make a significant contribution. He left Roseanne after a year.

  “I know people want me to say bad things about working there, but the truth is they gave me a shot when no one else would,” Whedon says of working on the television show. “It was a strange place to work, but I had a chance to write scripts. Do you know how many writers are out there who never have a chance to do something like that? A lot of my stuff was rewritten, but it didn’t matter. It was great experience for me.”