He's not showbiz--no pinky rings, no tearful musical numbers at the Jerry Lewis Telethon, no tuxedoes. He still favors baggy shirts and khakis, though he's the executive producer of one of television's hottest shows. Walking down the street, you could easily stumble right past him with no sense of the power he holds over a small group of college sophomores and the millions of fans who follow their every move. He doesn't even drive a Humvee -- yet.

"I have a three minute commute, so you can't really show off your car," Whedon explains. "Besides, I learned long ago, the trick is to keep your old car, and everyone will think you have values. But power has gone to my head. Let's be very clear about this."

He may not favor the trappings of the Hollywood lifestyle, but you get Joss Whedon into the presence of several hundred Buffy fans, and he may as well be Elvis Presley. Flashbulbs flash. Young girls tremble. People wait in line upwards of two hours to snag his autograph or ask a question. He's a bona-fide celebrity.

"I love me, but it is very strange to me, because it doesn't seem to be the norm that I have gotten so much press and response out of this," Whedon says. "I'm wicked lucky; writers never get this kind of juice. Still, whenever you're around actors, you realize that you don't matter at all."

Whedon's right--it's not the norm that a television writer is embraced as enthusiastically as any television star, which means there must be something unique about the way Whedon approaches one of the sweetest jobs on the planet. Maybe it's his warm way with his fans, so evident in his frequent posts to online Buffy discussion forums. Maybe it's his ability to maintain that warmth while letting his admirers know that under no circumstances will he ever breathe a word about what will be happening to their favorite characters in the episodes to come. Maybe it's the combination of cool confidence and self-depreciating humor that allows one of Hollywood's mostly highly-regarded writers to pull of wearing a black t-shirt emblazoned with the word "Hack" -- a gift from Marc Blucas.

Fans simply point to the sheer brilliance of his show -- the unique combination of quirky humor, chilling horror and deep characterization that he shepherds onto TV screens every week. He's been doing that ever since March 1997, when a TV show based on a barely-seen cult film premiered on a fledgling network. Now Buffy is a phenomenon in its own right, having helped launch the WB into the popular consciousness and made movie stars out of several of its lead actors, all of whom understand just how much of their success has grown from the words Whedon has placed into their mouths.

"Joss has a pretty determined vision, and I think it's the right way to go," says Seth Green. "He's just a brilliant guy who writes great stuff and who's incredibly passionate about it. You can't ask for anything more than that."

"He's a dynamic personality who writes dynamic characters," Angel star David Boreanaz says of Whedon. "He loves to read Charles Dickens and Shakespeare, so it's good to be around a creator like that."

Whedon has parlayed his success into a second series and some high-profile script doctoring, and while his exec producing credit on Angel allows Whedon to explore darker themes and yet retain that Buffy feel, his film work only reminds him that his happiest creative home remains on the small screen.

"What I get from TV is everything a writer hopes to get; what I get out of movies is nothing," Whedon explains. "I had two movies this year on which I did page-one rewrites, and in both cases, they were completely erased and done differently that I would have. This has happened to me a lot. It makes me angry and bitter, and I don't like to be that guy. But in TV, it's a different world. My vision is out there, and the only person who is ruining it is me."

During a recent visit to Chicago, Whedon squeezed in a sit-down with the Buffy magazine editors. Once we'd ditched all pretenses of journalistic impartiality and snagged ourselves a few autographs, it was time for business. As the name that flashes at the end of every Buffy episode, he's Sunnydale's stern dictator. In person, Whedon is a gentle, soft-spoken and insanely funny man -- part fanboy, part genius, and part celebrity -- even if he still drives a Celica.

Buffy The Magazine: How did you first pitch Buffy the Vampire Slayer to the various networks?
Joss Whedon: People either get it or they don't, and come to think of it, nobody did. We called it "90210 meets The X-Files," and people understood that -- teen drama with horror and comedy. But the title threw everybody, and the WB, who has been so great in so many ways, tried to call it Slayer behind my back. That title sucks -- Christian rock on the WB. The next year, they just tried to call it Buffy. We were like, by year five, they're just gonna call it The. I kept trying to explain that you need the title. Yes, it may alienate Emmy voters, but the fact of the matter is, that's what the show is, and people who accept that and come to it are going to be very happy. It's a little sophomoric, and little melodramatic -- it's comedy, horror, and action, and Buffy the Vampire Slayer is those three things.

BTM: What emotions do you go through when you decide to kill off a character? Do you use that as a threat around the set?
JW: Glee would be the emotion. I use it as a joke; I've never gotten a laugh from any of the actors. I think it's funny; I'm the only one. It's when I stop joking about it that they have to worry. There's a bit of a threat; if people aren't getting it done and they don't come up to speed, it is possible to kill them. But I have such great actors and I love them so much that it's a pretty idle threat.

BTM: Is it tough for you to hand your vision over to other writers, and let them play with it?
JW: It's tough to let anybody do anything. If I could I would be sewing the costumes and busying the props. But if they're doing it right, I'm perfectly happy to let them do it, because I am so tired, and I have such great people. Besides which, they can surprise me; they elevate the work. It's not just like, "Oh, there's my vision." They're taking it further, the way the actors do in their performance. They enhance what's on the page in ways I didn't expect. In a way, the story is bigger than me. I can't tell it where to go; it has to tell me.

BTM: How far in advance do you plan the plots? There's a moment in season four's "This Year's Girl," where Faith mention to Buffy in a dream to get ready for "Little Sis." Did you have season five already in mind?
JW: Actually, she mentions her in "Graduation Day" in that dream as well. First, it was "Little Miss Muffet." I've had season five ready since before season four. I knew exactly what I wanted to do with the two of them; I knew how different they were going to be, which is really fun, because I'm finally getting to pay it off. I'm not J.K. Rowling; I haven't got everything perfectly mapped out. But to throw in one or two things that register is really fun.

BTM: Do you have an ending for the show?
JW: That's interesting. The answer's pretty much "no," but I like to tell everybody it's "yes," so I sound cooler. I have an end for this season, and in a way, I make the end for the season the end for the show in my mind every time, because you never know what could happen and I hate shows that end without resolving everything. I think of it as the end, and yet I'm already thinking of season six ideas. In terms of a final ending, no, I really don't, because I don't see one. I see Star Trek; I see doing a show and then doing movies for ten years. I think every single one of my actors could be a movie star, which cannot be said for the entire cast of all the Star Trek series.

BTM: So is there going to be a season six or is it year-by-year now?
JW: Contracts run beyond season five, and plus, I don't think anybody's going anywhere. But I'm always ready to be thrown a curve. If it got cancelled, I'd be so relieved. I'm exhausted. But at the same time, there's so many more stories. If there wasn't a burnout quotient, the show could run for fifteen years.

BTM: It seems like you probably don't get to take very many vacations. How do you find time to unwind?
JW: I find little times. I take little pockets of a few days here and there. But I don't get much, just a couple weeks a year. I look forward to a time when there will be a little more leisure in my life. But for now, you've got to just keep powering it through.

BTM: Do you feel more comfortable now leaving the show in the hands of your writers?
JW: I only feel comfortable if the script I get is ready to be shot, and more and more, it is. I'm nervous with every script, but my writers are doing such excellent work, and I know that I can give them pieces of a rewrite and then just come in for a final polish. I'm still nervous all the time, because even my best writers can come in just wrong and then you're scrambling. But I have a bunch of people I can count on.

BTM: Do you protect egos when something like that happens, when they get it wrong?
JW: I always try to make people feel as good as they can, and I know if any of my writers read that, they'll laugh and laugh and then attack me with spoons. I try to put a positive spin on things. At the same time, these are good enough writers for me to say, "Here's what you did wrong, and don't do it again," and they'll learn from it. They're pros. A lot of the time, when a script doesn't work, it's because we did something wrong when we were breaking it. The story didn't work in a way that we didn't get. As often as not, it's nobody's fault. Or partially mine, which I like to call "nobody's."

BTM: Have there been any story arcs that you thought you'd do at one point, but you ended up scrapping them?
JW: We've had ideas that we thought were cool, one or two. Then they got subsumed by something else. But not a lot. When something sticks, it tends to stick.

BTM: What's the environment like in the writers' meetings? It sounds like it must be a blast.
JW: Again, the writers are reading this and guffawing. They're really funny people, and they're really sweet people. I really like hanging out with them. Occasionally, we get work done, too. It can be very frustrating when we're not moving forward and we're all sitting there. But when we're starting to cook, it's hilarious. And when we're out of ideas, it's even more hilarious, because we'll just start making obscene jokes for twelve hours.

BTM: Are there any other television writers that you look up to?
JW: Part of the problem has been that I didn't know who they were. I watched the shows, but I didn't know who write them. Right now, I have to say that I pretty much want to kill Aaron Sorkin and eat his brains and gain his knowledge, because I love The West Wing so much. I think his stuff is just amazing, every week. He's a big guy for me.

BTM: If you could write one episode for any show in history, past or present, what would the show be, and what would the plot be?
JW: I could not tell you. If I even start to answer this, I'll obsess about it all day, and I won't get anything done. But if I could write for any show, it would probably be The Simpsons or Twin Peaks. As much as you could say that Buffy is a cross between 90210 and The X-Files, you could also say it's The Simpsons meets Twin Peaks. And no, that's not why I put the red curtain in the dream sequence.

BTM: What's been you favorite rumor you've heard about the show?
JW: I don't really love rumors. The one recently that I liked is that Sarah [Michelle Gellar] and I had a huge fight, and that I had to go to Hawaii to cool off. I heard about this for the first time in England. I was doing some press the week after we finished, and this guy was like, "So what about this big fight between you and Sarah, where you had to go to Hawaii?" I was like, you guys are British. You don't know what the hell's going on. Actually, I discounted a rumor a couple of years ago that Britney Spears was gonna be on the show. Someone had posted about it, and I wrote something like, Britney Spears isn't gonna be on the show, but the part of Anya will be played by *NSync.

BTM: So are the Britney rumors true this time?
JW: We are open to the idea. I have no idea if it will take place or not, but I do have an episode in mind that I would love her for. Some people thing it's cool, and some people are like, "No, that's totally wrong for the show." You gotta trust me. There's a place for Britney in our world, in a big way.

BTM: Which character did you most identify with when the show was in high school, and has it changed at all since they went to college?
JW: In high school, it was Xander. Obviously that's changed, because now he's getting laid. Sometimes it's Giles, because I'm so appalled by everything around me. I would say Buffy and Willow would be the ones I identify with the most. They've both found the most in college that they haven't seen before, and they got a little bit lost, but found mostly good stuff in there. Plus, I was wicked gay.

BTM: You went to high school in England. Did you have a guy like Giles around to keep you in line?
JW: I was surrounded by guys sorta like Giles. He's actually named after our house-matron, Barbara Giles. Mostly I had people like the Watchers Council. There were some harsh old men teaching us there.