Joss Whedon stakes his Career on Vampire Tales

By Jefferson Graham
USA TODAY
LOS ANGELES- Joss Whedon is in the vampire business full time. The creator of WB's popular Buffy The Vampire Slayer is developing a slew of project around the undead, including a recently announced Dracula musical for 20th Century Fox's animation division but to hear him tell it, "I don't run around wearing a cape."
Four of his six active projects are vampire-related, but it's a matter of being a kid in a "candy store," and all the goodies are free. Studios and networks are running to Whedon wanting Buffy offshoots, and he has a hard time saying no. "The kid in the candy store eventually gets a tummyache" he says. "And that may happen to me. I've always had so many ideas , so now when people call and I mention something, the stories end up getting developed. I going to have to learn to keep my mouth shut."
Besides Buffy and Dracula, for which he's also writing song lyrics, Whedon, 33, is developing a Buffy spinoff called Angel, built around Buffy's sometimes beau. At the end of the new season, the character will move to Los Angeles, where he'll "fight the inner demons inside of everyone," says David Boreanez who plays Angel. Whedon's Mutant Enemy production company is producing Alienated, a feature film about an alien abduction. For Fox, Whedon is producing a pilot called Cheap Shots, a sitcom about a group of low budget horror filmakers. For 20th Century Fox, he's co-writing Grampire, a feature about a grandfather who turns out to be a vampire.
The latter was a joking idea bandied around the Buffy office "that nagged in my brain" Whedon says. "It sounded like a great idea for a kids' movie." Buffy staffers will hole up in a hotel room to write it together, he says. Whedons own grandfather, John, wrote for the The Donna Reed Show and Dick Van Dyke, and his dad, Tom, wrote for The Golden Girls, Alice andCaptain Kangaroo. Both advised him to stay out of TV "because its too painful" having work rewritten or rejected.
Broke when he graduated from college , Whedon tried TV in desperation. He wrote a sapmle script that got him hired on Roseannne, then moved on to Parenthood. When that show was canceled, he wrote the film script for Buffy the Vampire Slayer, a frothy comedy about a valley girl who could kick vampire butt. The 1992 film, which starred Kristy Swanson as Buffy, was a flop, although it did well on video, and generated more movie work for Whedon.
A Fox Executive asked him to do an uncredited rewrite on Speed, and that led to work on Twister and Waterworld and scripts in his name for Toy Story and Alien Resurrection. But even with those hits Whedon considers his movie career a failure. "My best work has been in TV. No film I've worked on has come out the way I wanted."
So when the production company that owned the rights to Buffy pitched a TV version, he was enthused about the control he'd have as an executive producer. "This is a story I've always wanted to tell," Whedon says. "High school is really scary. Thats what the show is about - the problems of being a teen-ager, blown up to demonic proportions." The TV Buffy (with Sarah Michelle Gellar as the slayer) doesn't rank high in the Nielsen ratings, but for an emerging network like the WB, it's akin to a Seinfeld: The show attracts the young viewers coveted by advertisers and appeals to critics, many of whom placed it on the seasons top 10 lists.
Howard Gordan, formerly an executive producer on X-Files and a consultant on Buffy, says Whedon "really has a sense of truth." "What amazes me is that in any given script, he could be quoting Shakespeare as well as an obscure issue of a Spider Man comic. He has an interesting fusion of sensibilities and an original vision." Whedon says he connected with the Buffy concept because he shares vampires' sense of isolation.
"They're in the world, but not of it," says Whedon, whose real name is Joe, but who took on Joss (Chinese for "luck") in college. "That's how I felt most of my life. Even when I had friends I still felt removed." He empathizes with his TV teens' feelings about growing up. "The kids need attention," he says. "But they also can kick you a--. That's a good empowerment fantasy for anyone."