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LOS ANGELES – Joss Whedon is hoarse. Mobbed by
TV critics on the set of his cult classic Buffy the
Vampire Slayer, one of the busiest creators in television
strains to answer questions only cultists would ask:
"What did it mean in the third episode of the fifth
season when...?"
Before "press tour" is over, the critics
will also quiz the cast of Buffy spinoff Angel and visit
the location of the 38-year-old, third-generation TV
writer's newest baby, a space Western for Fox called
Firefly.
Come fall, he'll have all three shows on the air –
each on a different network – a feat previously
accomplished only by David E. Kelley, who briefly juggled
Chicago Hope (CBS), Ally McBeal (Fox) and The Practice
(ABC) in the late '90s.
Firefly Premieres 7 p.m. Sept. 20, Fox (Channel 4)
Buffy the Vampire Slayer Season premiere 7 p.m. Sept.
24, UPN (Channel 21)
Angel Season premiere 8 p.m. Oct. 6, The WB (Channel
33)
"He's a brilliant maniac," says J. August
Richards, who plays the sidekick Charles Gunn on Angel.
"Not only does he do the things you know about,
he does 10 things you don't."
Those things include writing comic books, holding regular
Shakespeare readings at his home and planning two more
Buffy spinoffs: an animated series and another set in
England, based on Anthony Stewart Head's "watcher"
character Rupert Giles.
Even before adding Firefly to his load, Mr. Whedon
was aware of his workaholic tendencies, joking that
he'd heard he had a cute wife at home. Asked more recently
in a phone interview whether this time he has bitten
off more than he can chew, he responds, "I've bitten
off more than I can bite. ... This is definitely going
to be the trickiest year of my life.
Buffy and Angel creator Joss Whedon begins another
series this year with Firefly. "It's Sunday, and
I'm at work. But you find the time. You figure out what
matters. And when you have this much that matters to
you, you absolutely don't have time to dawdle."
There hasn't been much time to dawdle since college,
where he admits he made a film so pretentious he burned
the negative. After graduating from Wesleyan University
in Connecticut, the Manhattan native began submitting
spec scripts to see whether he could get hired on a
show.
"As soon as I started writing, I said, 'Oh, there
you are.' I had always written things, but I had never
thought of myself as a writer."
Maybe he took it for granted because it was the family
business. His father, Tom, had written scripts for Benson,
Alice and The Dick Cavett Show. And his grandfather
wrote for Leave It to Beaver and The Donna Reed Show.
His first job was on Roseanne. Four years later, the
science-fiction geek created a new vampire mythology
with the 1992 film Buffy the Vampire Slayer. It was
a flop. But he began getting work on blockbuster films,
most notably as one of the many Oscar-nominated writers
of Toy Story.
Gina Torres, Nathan Fillion and Adam Baldwin star in
Firefly. He also wrote screenplays for Alien: Resurrection
and Titan: A.E. and became in-demand as a "punch-up"
specialist on such films as Speed. But it was the Buffy
series' March 1997 debut that put him – and The
WB – on the map, marking the beginning of the network's
teen wave that included Dawson's Creek and Felicity.
Three years ago, Buffy love interest Angel (David Boreanaz)
was spun off into an L.A.-detective series. Then in
2001, a dispute between Mr. Whedon and WB founder Jamie
Kellner caused 20th Century Fox to move Buffy to UPN.
This year, Fox Television decided it also wanted a
piece of the prolific writer-producer. A self-described
"genre guy," he had always longed to create
a sci-fi series. Inspired by a book he read about Gettysburg,
he came up with Firefly.
The result is a character-driven show about a ragtag
crew of thieves operating in defiance of the "Alliance,"
the side that won a war to unite the planets. Unlike
Star Trek's "Federation," the organization
is not purely benevolent, though not evil, either.
"I was wanting to feel that simple, difficult
life, as opposed to the pre-fab world we have now,"
Mr. Whedon says. "So much of our life is, 'Here's
your pop star. Here's your pizza.' "
He says he feels he has no choice but to work at this
pace. "I love to create. It's always the thing
I've defined myself by, and I would do more if I could.
I mean, what else would anybody do if they could do
this? I just want to tell stories. And when people say
you can, I do. ... But I'm definitely pushing the envelope."
In fact, pushing the envelope is one of Mr. Whedon's
trademarks. A man with a dark sense of humor as well
as a dark view of the world, he has taken Buffy into
areas that TV has tended to shy away from.
The series' existential despair reached a new pitch
last season, its sixth, as Buffy returned from the dead,
plucked from heaven by her friends. She also added to
her burdens – while trying to relieve them –
by having a literally destructive affair with her nemesis,
Spike. Buildings would come down around them in some
of the most intense sex scenes ever featured on the
small screen.
"Joss is fearless," says David Simkins, the
new executive producer of Angel. "We were breaking
a story the other day, going to a rather dark place,
and I was asking, 'So right at the last moment, do we
pull this person back from this dark place because we
don't want to sully their soul?' And his response was,
'No, let's sully their soul.' I think it's why the shows
are ultimately so revered. Because he deals with honest
emotions in very fantastical settings and makes those
fantastical settings secondary to what's really going
on with the people."
For true-blue Buffy fans, there's never been anything
like it. What began as a metaphor for the horrors of
adolescence has become a series about the wider human
struggle to connect – with, of course, a wink and
a nod. While we may be drawn in by the pop-culture references
and the fantasy, they are a cover for what the show
is really about: trying to live amid life's horrors.
"I'm a scary, depressive fellow," Mr. Whedon
says. "There's no meaning to life. That's kind
of depressing. There's no God. That's a bummer, too.
You fill your days with creating worlds that have meaning
and order because ours doesn't. And so, yeah, I'd say
the fact that I'm a pretty depressive fellow also has
to do with my ambition, staving off the inevitable."
At one point last year, Buffy (Sarah Michelle Gellar)
began to believe she was actually a crazy person who
had dreamed up the whole vampire slaying thing. It was
a way for Mr. Whedon and his writing staff to comment
on the creative process.
"Emotionally, it dealt with stuff that Buffy was
going through," he says. "But what I liked
about her laughing at the implausibility of the life
she's created is that it's really talking about the
TV show, and about the idea of fictions and why we create
them. And so, yeah, there was a wink in there."
Some viewers were put off by how dark the show got,
and Mr. Whedon has said it will lighten up this year.
But don't count on it. "We want something to feel
real in a way that it hasn't before. Making people uncomfortable,
generally speaking, interests me."
But has he bitten off too much?
Fox had problems with the two-hour Firefly pilot –
not enough action, a main character who wasn't likable
enough, according to Mr. Whedon – and has decided
not to show it as the Sept. 20 debut. Instead, he and
executive producer Tim Minear have written an episode,
"The Train Job," to put the audience right
in the middle of the action from the start.
"For a long time during all this, I began to doubt.
'Did I blow it? Is it terrible?' But, no, I think the
actors really jelled, the stuff looks good, and I think
it's a story that works."
The pilot, which Fox plans to air later in the season
as an "origins special," starts slowly, but
by the end the characters are well-defined and compelling.
Mr. Whedon has successfully created yet another new
world filled with mythology, heroism and humor.
"In a very dark world, where everything is meaningless,
the bonds that people form while they're on Earth are
really the only things that matter," he says. "And
the fact that people continue to struggle, continue
to care, continue to do what's right and to look out
for each other is what makes a hero. That applies to
all my shows."
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