Joss Whedon Interview

Courtesy of  DarkHorse.com

Practically anyone who pays attention to goings-on in pop culture will know that Joss Whedon is a busily employed film and television writer and the creator of Buffy the Vampire Slayer -- both the under-loved film version and the hit TV show that no-one can get enough of. Now, Whedon may well be the only comic-book creator who has been nominated for an Oscar. 

In June, Dark Horse Comics will premiere Whedon's first-ever comic-book project -- an eight-issue miniseries that has little to do with his Buffy work, except that the story stars a young, tough female and her world is a continuation of the mythos Whedon created for Buffy. Fray is replete with demons, supernatural weirdness, vampires, and, yes, vampire Slayers. This time around -- make that a few hundred years from the world of Buffy as we know it -- a streetwise thug of a girl living a difficult but satisfying life in a hard future inherits the mantel of Slayer centuries after the last vampires were believed to walk the planet. When the forces of darkness come calling in the world where Melaka Fray lives, this street urchin will be transformed from a blemish on the world's skin to being society's only savior. 

Given Whedon's outstanding reputation and his undeniable skills at telling a story, it's no wonder people are looking forward to the first issue of Fray. Karl Moline's art is the other element of the project people will soon be cooing over. Moline's pencils are strong, dynamic, fluid, and full of the life-giving energy that makes Whedon's fantastic comic-book characters every bit as strong and obsess-able as the ones he's created for television.

Reading this, you'll realize that Whedon literally oozes friendly, and he's got a bit of a loony personality. We couldn't think of any way to accurately express the number of different voices he assumed while talking -- the high-pitched sissy voice; the deep, "important Hollywood" voices; the malevolent superfoe persona...Whedon is like a personality hydra, but it all works to illustrate how many ideas must be racing through his head at any given moment. It's also a neat indication of how he is so readily able to write realistic depictions of so many different characters. You'll probably be able to determine where the funny voices come in while you're reading this, so have fun getting to know the many people -- including his newest young heroine, Melaka Fray -- who live in Joss Whedon's head.

Shawna Ervin-Gore: Joss, before we get started talking about your comic-book writing career, please explain how you got into writing for television.

Joss Whedon: My father worked in TV, so I thought if I wrote a couple of TV specs, I could make a little money. I ended up getting a job on Roseanne as my first.

SE-G: You're a young guy, so how old were you then?

JW: I was 24 when I got my first staff job. 

SE-G: Did you go to film school or take film studies?

JW: I studied film as an undergraduate, but I didn't study writing, actually. We never studied writing, we just studied film. And the two are incredibly connected, of course, but I didn't, like, take writing courses or anything like that.

SE-G: What about English classes -- you weren't an English major? 

JW: No, actually, I took a great deal of English, but not writing, not creative writing. I never wrote for a class. I only wrote for my own fun. But I had great film teachers, and they helped me understand more than just filmmaking. 

SE-G: That reminds me -- we were talking earlier and you mentioned a woman that you are still in touch with, and she has some really cool job where she occasionally gets access to a theater she can use privately.

JW: That's Jeanine Basinger. She gets access to all these old movies -- the great lost silent films. 

SE-G: Is this in Los Angeles?

JW: No, New York. I actually go with my wife to New York, if I can, once a year. We meet up with Janine, so we can watch those damned films. It's good. It's a very good thing to do.

SE-G: Sounds like it. Okay, let's outline the evolution of your career so far: you're now a big-time comics writer, but you started writing for Hollywood...

JW: I like the way you tell it! 

SE-G: I make it sound good, don't I? (laughs) Writing for TV, writing for movies -- this is all pretty nice, but it seems your career underwent some sort of event when you created Buffy the Vampire Slayer, when that first movie hit.

JW: Yeah, I think so.

SE-G: So it was 1991 when the movie came out. Once that came out and subsequently sort of died out, did Buffy feel like "the one that got away?"

JW: Yeah, but, you know -- I didn't know at the time that it would all get away from me. But it did. That character had been brewing in me for many years. I finally sat down and had written it and somebody had made it into a movie, and I felt like -- well, that's not quite her. It's a start, but it's not quite the girl. I even drew her at one point, long before I ever finished writing it. Somewhere I probably still have that. My original idea was a lot less silly. It had funny, but it was a much more serious action horror movie with the funny. Actually it was pretty gross, too. It wasn't just straight on comedy, but that's how the film came off. 

SE-G: So then, the movie sort of went away...

JW: It went away.

SE-G: ...And you went on to other things. You know, I can't imagine maintaining that resolve for so long -- to say "I made up this great thing and some other people took it and made it into something I didn't want it to be. Now I want to go back and fix it...bring her back."

JW: Well, I never intended to. Gail Berman, who is now running the Fox Network, was an executive at Sand Dollar, who had produced the movie and sort of had a share in the rights to the movie. Since before the movie came out, Gail had been saying, "This is a series. This is a series." And everybody said "Ha Ha Ha. You are a fool!" And then about four years after the movie came out, she got some people interested in developing it. Somebody eventually said, "you are not a fool!" Then, when they came to me, they had been offered to do it like a Power-Ranger type show. It was supposed to be half-hour, you know, afternoon show.

SE-G: Sorta chop-socky daytime action?

JW: Yeah. Like that. I thought it would be really fun to do one that was sort of tongue-in-cheek and deconstructed itself. So I sort of got into that idea. And as I developed it more, it turned into a rather serious drama, and I realized, "I don't want to make fun. I want this to be real."

SE-G: And those guys were OK with that?

JW: Yeah, there was some struggle about whether we could pitch it as an hour drama, but we went to the WB and they were like "Yes, please." That was sort of like somebody came along and kissed Sleeping Beauty Joss and said, "You can have your dream back now."

The classic thing is that I wanted it dark. I mean, Luke Perry even wanted it dark. When we first met, we had the same idea -- "This is so cool! This is going to be so cool!" We were both in it with the same idea in mind, I think, and as it became clear what kind of movie was being made, we were both going "Oh, man! This isn't Near Dark enough at all." 

But, my wife, at the premiere, was sort of like "Well, you know honey, maybe in a few years, you could make it again, the way you wanted to." (laughs) I went ," Oh, ha ha, honey, that doesn't happen in Hollywood! You're so naive!" Well...it really doesn't.

SE-G: I think that's why that's probably why a million interviewers have asked you the same question. What happens with that? One-hit-wonder movies --

JW: No-hit-wonders would be more like it.

SE-G: Yeah. Forgettable movies or movies that people would consider to be forgettable don't typically resurface and become the big, cult thing. So that's pretty incredible

JW: It's fun.

SE-G: Now there's another thing. You're not really Mr. Comics yet, but you are writing comics now. You are not giving up Hollywood for the glamorous world of comics are you?

JW: It would be fun, but no, I am still just dipping my toe in the pool. I am quite afraid that I am going to drown. It's a lot of work. 

SE-G: Do you feel yourself enjoying greater freedom in Hollywood now that you are sort of established?

JW: Well, I just do my shows. And when I work on movies, I still get pissed basically the same way I always do when things don't turn out right. So, in terms of movies, no, I don't feel like I have a lot of freedom. In terms of the shows, yeah, I think I do.

I think I've always been given, well -- they let me do whatever the hell I wanted. With some caveats, I've been able to do what I want. It's just been like this for five years. I've just been doing this thing where we can be insanely creative and kind of off-the-wall, and they just let us. They're cool with it. 

SE-G: Are you just sort of digging into the whole Buffy and Angel worlds right now, or are you setting your sights elsewhere?

JW: I'm starting to think about making a movie and making a movie myself this time.

SE-G: A Buffy movie?

JW: That's not what I'm thinking about. Although that possibility is attractive. I think. I'd love to put my kids up on the screen.

SE-G: I would assume that you get a lot of requests to do Buffy again with your current cast.

JW:Yeah. And I love this cast. It would be fun. But, you know, while we are doing the show, I am not going to do the show in a mediocre way or put it on hiatus to fit a feature in there. If I make a movie with Buffy, I want it to be as good as it can be. And meanwhile, I want the show to be everything it can be. So the Buffy movie I am making is the one you see every week.

SE-G: Buffy is now also a comic-book series. It has been for almost two years now. Why did you want Buffy to become a comic?

JW: I always wanted the character to be an icon. I wanted her to be a hero that existed in people's minds the way Wonder Woman or Spider-Man does, you know? I wanted her to be a doll or an action figure. I wanted Barbie with Kung Fu grip! I wanted her to enter the mass consciousness and the imaginations of growing kids because I think she's a cool character, and that was always the plan. I wanted Buffy to be a cultural phenomenon, period.

SE-G: That's interesting to me, because I work in the comic-book industry, and most of the time it doesn't seem like many people in our society would associate that sort of recognition and importance with comics.

JW: Well, look at how many people want to make movies of comic books right now. And what a groundswell of people who are coming out and saying, "Yeah, I used to read that stuff."

SE-G: That's true. X-Men was big last year. I know you're historically a big X-Men fan, so what was that like for you?

JW: Well, I've got a tortured history with that movie. I had written an entire draft of it that was thrown out.

SE-G: Yeah -- you couldn't exactly kick back and enjoy it after looking at it that closely.

JW: There were things that I liked and things that I didn't, and I thought it looked better than comic-book movies usually do. But ultimately I didn't like it. I mean, what the hell is that thing on Magneto's head?? 

It was like when Tom Cruise does that little "Afternoon of a Faun" dance move in MI:2. That's the moment you think to yourself, "Oh, I see. I'm not laughing with this." 

You know, I wanted the world to see X-Men. I'm this way every time. Every time a movie like this comes up, I see it with my heart full of hope, and I've never seen one like this I could stand.

SE-G: Would you ever want the chance to make another comic-book movie?

JW: I think I would. Not right now, though. I talked briefly to some people at Marvel about some of their stuff, but I won't do it now. I really wanted Ironman.

SE-G: He's a cool character.

JW: I love Ironman. It would be a great story to tell, because it's a story about weakness -- and strength, after that. It would be fascinating. But my forays into the film world have been pretty dismal. They've always served to remind me that should that happen -- me making a comic-book movie -- not only will I have an entire studio telling me what to do, but I will have an entire comic-book company telling me what to do...none of who are actually filmmakers. 

If I am established at some point, I'd love to do it. It would be cool to make a Batman movie, or a James Bond movie, or a DareDevil or a Thing.

SE-G: I think you've mentioned liking Jack Kirby -- how about a Silver Surfer movie?

JW: (laughs) You know, he's riding that big, God-damned surfboard, and I think he'd look stupid.

SE-G: (laughs) Some things don't transfer from the medium as well.

JW: (laughs) He looks good when John Buscema draws him, but I don't want to see Mark Wahlberg with his head shaved on a big, stupid surfboard, flying through the cosmos. I just think it would be a mistake!

What I would like to do is make a movie of a comic book that doesn't really exist, though. It would be a genre movie, like Buffy -- action/adventure with a female hero that plays the same template of a comic movie but without having it based on someone else's work.

SE-G: What's your thing with girls?

JW: They're awesome! And they don't like me...(sigh)...

SE-G: (laughs) "Maybe if I make one up she'll talk to me!"

JW: The imaginary ones always talk to me, dance with me. We get dressed up... sorry, I'm back.

SE-G: The pattern in your interests is showing. You like girls. What do you find so interesting about female characters?

JW: 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. There was that thing in the '80s where every woman in a film had to have a pointless karate scene -- for no reason! 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 Cameron. He was just kicking ass. He gave us the two great prototypes -- Ripley and Sarah Connor. 

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.

I've always felt comfortable with women as people, and I was surprised when I realized how few people -- writers and filmmakers -- actually think of them as people.

SE-G: A lot of manga (Japanese comics -- ed.) features cool women characters that I think you would dig.

JW: On the one hand it seems diggable, but I'm a big fan of puberty and people who've been through it. 

SE-G: There's that perception about manga, but a lot of manga heroines are actually teenagers. I think the Japanese culture or media just isn't as puritan about showing a 17 year-old undressed. Younger ages are considered adult in other countries. Sometimes manga can seem overrun with that, but I don't believe many mainstream American comics are better.

JW: 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!"

The other thing is that, inevitably, something that is fringe culturally will probably yield the most exploitative and the most feminist stuff. The most radically political stuff gets mixed in that way, like the '70s horror movies. I Spit on Your Grave is like that.

SE-G: That's pretty much a genre of its own -- exploited women coming into their own and taking their anger out on the people who hurt them.

JW: Yeah. They show this woman being raped, and they keep raping her, but then she gets this incredible revenge. A lot of the Romero movies were the same way, with incredible feminist icons that nobody really noticed. It's amazing to me that there isn't more of it in our culture.

SE-G: I also think that's one of the elements of comics that society tends to have a problem with. They're being presented with all of these visuals, and on the one hand the comic-book industry wants things to be taken relatively seriously, and on the other hand there's all this titillation and improbable things being shown.

JW: It's a fine line, but I walk that, too. There's a phrase about "incoherent text," and it refers to having two different things working at the same time. You need to be able to say, "I'm pulling both ways, here. I'm saying she's a little hottie, but I'm also saying she's a powerful person who has levels of being that you can't see." You can work both of those things at the same time to get a strong response.

SE-G: And real people are like that, too. Buffy is definitely about that. You can't say that Buffy and Faith aren't hotties.

JW: Good God, man!

SE-G: Is that a contradiction? You mentioned Ironman earlier, and his whole deal with weakness and strength. Does contradiction work for you?

JW: I wouldn't say it's contradiction. It's just very basic human stuff, I think -- stuff that's hard to deal with: bravery and cowardice. The things in life that make you make these extremely defining choices. To me, that's interesting. 

I sort of went off on a tangent, but one of the reasons I've always been attracted to female heroines is that I have always been interested in the people nobody takes seriously, having been one the greater part of my life.

SE-G: Not a girl...

JW: (laughs) No, not a girl. Although occasionally, in certain outfits...Um, anyway...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."

A lot of people thought I was a girl, but I was cool with it. I was the youngest, and quite tiny, and was just the guy that nobody took into account much. And that one, the person you might look at and dismiss, is going to be the person who saves the world.

SE-G: That was just the lead-in I was looking for to start talking about Fray.

JW: Ooh. Sly.

SE-G: It's established that you like comics. Did you just see what was going on here at Dark Horse with the Buffy projects and decide to take advantage of this connection...

JW: Yes, I abused my power. That's right.

SE-G: You're taking advantage of us, aren't you?

JW: Ho, ha! I will crush Scott Allie (Whedon's editor -- ed) with this power you say I have. I mean, yes, I always wanted to write comics. I've enjoyed the relationship with Dark Horse, and the Buffy comics are great, and as we started putting writers from the show on the comic projects, I noticed they were having all the fun. So I said, "Well, what about me? I want to have fun, too!"

I didn't want to write a Buffy comic, because, well, that's my day job, but at the same time, I wasn't comfortable with launching some completely new thing and start something that I wasn't sure where it would go. So when I was talking to Scott, I explained that I wanted to do something based on the mythology of the Slayer. That way I would have some grounding for the story, and I wouldn't be driven insane by looking at a page and drawing a complete blank.

I also knew the kind of rhythm of the story I would tell because of that connection, but setting the story so far in the future helped make it a separate thing.

SE-G: How far in the future is Fray set?

JW: Actually, I'm leaving that a little vague. I'm keeping it at "a couple hundred years in the future" because I honestly didn't have the impetus to re-imagine the entire world. And, you know, everything is going to be completely unrecognizable in about 12 minutes, so I don't want to be responsible for saying what the 26th century is going to look like.

All I know is that I wanted something vaguely futuristic, and I really wanted there to be flying cars. 

SE-G: Yeah. Realistically, at that point in the future, we'll probably have cellular transport or something insane like that. You didn't want to get into that whole thing?

JW: No. My way around all that was to use flying cars. Also, I needed flying cars in the story because I wanted them there because -- and I can't say this enough -- THEY ARE SO COOL!

Also, the flying cars helped introduce, I guess, the economy of the story. The rich people have flying cars. The main character of Fray, Melaka Fray, is poor. She lives in the slums. She doesn't get a flying car. The rich are probably all genetically perfect, but the poor people are mutating, thank you very much!

SE-G: I noticed you used the implications of "our changing world" in the story a lot, talking about how the poor people -- or those with no resources -- have been affected by radiation and crap like that. Did you ever read those old issues of Creepy and Eerie magazines from the early '70s that dealt with the poor mutant kids with missing limbs from radiation poisoning?

JW: No, I didn't read those, but that stuff would always terrify me. I'm sort of using radiation like I'm using the flying cars. I wanted cool things to be in the story, so I have mutating children!

SE-G: Like fish with three eyes? 

JW: Yes.

SE-G: So Fray is a girl, she is the slayer.

JW: Melaka Fray is the slayer and a professional thief -- a bagman for a local sort of pseudo-mobster who is a fish.

SE-G: So she is sort of a hood among hoods. Let's describe her world a little bit. It's not just fish people and radiation and flying cars. The ever-present vampires -- or Lurks -- as you call them are there. Why is horror such a strong storytelling vehicle for you? 

JW: I don't believe in vampires and spirits and God and all those funny stories people tell. I do have a fascination with fantasy, a fascination where I love being in other worlds and creating them. I think those elements have always spoken to me in every thing I do. 

SE-G: And horror seems to work pretty well for getting stories across.

JW: Well Fray is more of an adventure story than a horror story, I think, in the way that it is told and the way it pencils in a few horror elements along with the excitement and the action and the genuinely creepy stuff that I so love.

SE-G: The beginning is definitely creepy to me. 

JW: Well, good!

SE-G: The opening was just freaky! These monster things are digging a whole in the dirt to get to this door, and just the fact that you put a door under the dirt where monsters have to dig in the dirt to get to the door was creepy to me. 

JW: Well good. It was suppose to be. I guess maybe I take that part for granted a little bit, but I'm glad it worked.

SE-G: It also didn't seem like you were trying way to hard to make it scary. That is part of the reason it works. Also, I'm impressed with your script given that you've never written a comic before. I think that there are a lot of people who assume that comics are easy to write.

JW: They're no easier than anything else. They are different. It was very weird and fun, liberating and scary to actually sit down and write a comic script the first time. At the same time, a lot of how I can write movies comes from what I have seen written in comics. You know, in a good sense. If you always take that as "Oh, you mean everything is on the surface and popping out stupid," that's not right. I mean there is something about rhythm, and something about moments captured that you get from comic books that you can try totranslate into movies, but it doesn't always work. Movies and comics are very different mediums, but they each have their strengths.

SE-G: I read comic-book scripts all the time and there are a lot of people who do it for a living who don't get things like how action moves from panel to panel. It's like they are so wrapped up in the idea of telling their story or getting their narrative across that they forget there is a flow of actions and actual visual storytelling to concentrate on, as well.

JW: I think it works for me because I always write visually. If it doesn't make sense to me visually I can't imagine it, and I can't finish it. So hopefully it works out, but with comics it's a totally different discipline. Do I show her, you know, in the middle of the action, or has she already landed and is recovering? Which is it? How is it done? Which gives the moment the best impact? It's kind of neat because I don't really know what I'm doing (laughs).

SE-G: I want to get into the story of a little more, so this is where I should start letting you talk a lot. Fray is a vampire Slayer. How does she discover that?

JW: It's probably important to understand the world she live in: there has been no magic -- no demons or vampires or magical creatures -- on the earth for a few hundred years. The implication being that something happened in the 21st century that sort of made them all go away and no more is ever said about that. But, though no Slayer has actually been called , the watchers counsel is still around and it has become a bunch of insane, drooling idiots, and a bit of vampirism has sort of resurfaced, but nobody knows what it is. Nobody even knows they ever existed or has heard stories of vampires -- that eradication really did `em in. So, Fray basically someone who has always had this power in her, but she was never trained and never "called." She's never had an outlet for her power.

SE-G: She's just been subsisting by being a thug for a hood.

JW: Yeah. She is basically sort of an anarchist, you know -- a wild girl who likes to live one the edge. She has one sister, an older sister who is a cop, and they get along not at all, needless to say.

SE-G: In the comic you refer to vampires as lurks, so despite the fact that there have been no "vampires" people are sort of aware that these "lurks" are out there. 

JW: Yes. It is considered to be like a sort of disease, a social disease, maybe. Nobody knows much, but they know you don't go in the shadows.

SE-G: A disease is a neat way to look at vampirism. 

JW: That's also pretty much how they are dealt with. And nobody thinks of them as demons -- nobody even knows what a demon is. And life is strange enough that they don't even think twice, really. They've got mutations to deal with, and that's weirder than anything, almost. But Melaka has a sort of primal terror of Lurks that she can never admit to herself and, she is also kind of self-destructive. 

And because I don't want to give away all the best parts of the story -- which of course relates to these traits in Melaka -- I will just say that her personal demons are all a result of a greater purpose she will eventually be called to serve. She's just had no idea for her whole life that anything like what she is going to experience could exist.

SE-G: So in a sense, Fray is a Slayer without any "Slayer sense," or any sense of what that might even be. 

JW: Yeah, she has the strength, she has the power, but she doesn't have the same sort of connection to all of it that Buffy and other Slayers have had. And that definitely adds to all of the crap she's going to end up going through before the series is over.

Joss Whedon's Fray is an eight-issue miniseries, written by Whedon and featuring art by stellar newcomer Karl Moline with inking help from Andy Owens and coloring by Dave Stewart. The first 22-page issue of Fray will be available starting June 6 for $2.99.

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