The CulturePulp Q&A: Joss Whedon
As promised to readers of the Sunday, Sept. 25
Oregonian: Here's the nearly complete, 9,500-word transcript of my 67-minute
interview with "Buffy," "Angel," "Firefly" and "Serenity" creator Joss Whedon.
WARNING: If you want to go into "Serenity" totally spoiler-free, you may want to hold off on reading this until after you've seen the film. We refer (directly and indirectly) to specific scenes and events in the movie -- though nothing major is spoiled outright.
WARNING: If you want to go into "Serenity" totally spoiler-free, you may want to hold off on reading this until after you've seen the film. We refer (directly and indirectly) to specific scenes and events in the movie -- though nothing major is spoiled outright.
"Buffy the Vampire Slayer" creator
Joss
Whedon always wanted to write and direct
feature films -- but even he admits that
"Serenity"
was a strange choice for his big-screen
debut.
"A lot of people told me that -- repeatedly," he says, "because ['Serenity''s] a story and not a premise movie -- like 'Oh! He sees dead people!' or 'He's old and he looks like Tom Hanks now!'"
It's true: "Serenity," which opens Friday, Sept. 30, is hard to sum up in pithy sentences. But let's give it a shot:
In broad strokes, the film tells the story of space pirate Mal Reynolds (Nathan Fillion) -- a cynical, Han Solo-style mercenary whose thieving days are interrupted when the government sends an assassin (Chiwetel Ejiofor) to kill the psychic on his crew (Summer Glau) after she mentally eavesdrops on some alarming state secrets.
There are chases. There is banter. Things explode.
But try to describe "Serenity" in greater detail, and things get complicated in a hurry.
For starters, the movie's actually a sequel to a cancelled TV show called "Firefly" -- which Fox unceremoniously dumped in 2002, after airing 11 of 14 produced episodes out of order.
Whedon -- in a move that hasn't been seen since the Zuckers turned TV's "Police Squad!" into the "Naked Gun" franchise -- refused to take that cancellation lying down.
"I loved the characters," he says. "I loved the people who played them. And I just thought, 'Their story's not told yet.'" So he convinced Universal to take a risk on a relatively low-budget ($40 million) film after a small but rabid group of fans calling themselves "Browncoats" snapped up somewhere north of 200,000 copies of a DVD set collecting the series.
It's easy to see why "Firefly" became a cult fixation: Its universe is richly textured in a way you don't see much in mainstream sci-fi. Set 500 years hence -- in a new solar system mankind is colonizing, frontier-style -- the film juggles a large, diverse crew that includes Gina Torres, Alan Tudyk, Adam Baldwin and Ron Glass. And it mixes culture and language in some unexpected ways: Our heroes bicker in Old West cowboy-speak and curse in Chinese, and every set-piece and costume-scrap is a crazy mash-up of East/West motifs.
Whedon helps sell all this by shooting "Serenity" in a naturalistic, handheld style, with the considerable help of Clint Eastwood cinematographer Jack Green. (In the book "Serenity: The Official Visual Companion," Whedon describes the look of one fight scene as "Robert Altman's 'The Matrix'"; this is, incredibly, a fairly accurate assessment.)
We talked with Whedon for over an hour about "Serenity," "Firefly," rabid fans, the personal politics of his solar system, the "Serenity" mix tape, bizarro marketing strategies, the joys of studio non-interference and quality bootlegging, the dangers of becoming a cult icon, why touring a spaceship in a single take is a really good idea, and much, much, much more. A slightly edited transcript follows the jump.
Click here to check out the whole interview!
"A lot of people told me that -- repeatedly," he says, "because ['Serenity''s] a story and not a premise movie -- like 'Oh! He sees dead people!' or 'He's old and he looks like Tom Hanks now!'"
It's true: "Serenity," which opens Friday, Sept. 30, is hard to sum up in pithy sentences. But let's give it a shot:
In broad strokes, the film tells the story of space pirate Mal Reynolds (Nathan Fillion) -- a cynical, Han Solo-style mercenary whose thieving days are interrupted when the government sends an assassin (Chiwetel Ejiofor) to kill the psychic on his crew (Summer Glau) after she mentally eavesdrops on some alarming state secrets.
There are chases. There is banter. Things explode.
But try to describe "Serenity" in greater detail, and things get complicated in a hurry.
For starters, the movie's actually a sequel to a cancelled TV show called "Firefly" -- which Fox unceremoniously dumped in 2002, after airing 11 of 14 produced episodes out of order.
Whedon -- in a move that hasn't been seen since the Zuckers turned TV's "Police Squad!" into the "Naked Gun" franchise -- refused to take that cancellation lying down.
"I loved the characters," he says. "I loved the people who played them. And I just thought, 'Their story's not told yet.'" So he convinced Universal to take a risk on a relatively low-budget ($40 million) film after a small but rabid group of fans calling themselves "Browncoats" snapped up somewhere north of 200,000 copies of a DVD set collecting the series.
It's easy to see why "Firefly" became a cult fixation: Its universe is richly textured in a way you don't see much in mainstream sci-fi. Set 500 years hence -- in a new solar system mankind is colonizing, frontier-style -- the film juggles a large, diverse crew that includes Gina Torres, Alan Tudyk, Adam Baldwin and Ron Glass. And it mixes culture and language in some unexpected ways: Our heroes bicker in Old West cowboy-speak and curse in Chinese, and every set-piece and costume-scrap is a crazy mash-up of East/West motifs.
Whedon helps sell all this by shooting "Serenity" in a naturalistic, handheld style, with the considerable help of Clint Eastwood cinematographer Jack Green. (In the book "Serenity: The Official Visual Companion," Whedon describes the look of one fight scene as "Robert Altman's 'The Matrix'"; this is, incredibly, a fairly accurate assessment.)
We talked with Whedon for over an hour about "Serenity," "Firefly," rabid fans, the personal politics of his solar system, the "Serenity" mix tape, bizarro marketing strategies, the joys of studio non-interference and quality bootlegging, the dangers of becoming a cult icon, why touring a spaceship in a single take is a really good idea, and much, much, much more. A slightly edited transcript follows the jump.
Click here to check out the whole interview!
____________________
I. AN EXPLANATION FOR THE NEWBIES
M.E. RUSSELL: So if you were going to pitch "Firefly"'s basic premise in terms that a novice would understand, how would you put it? The popular take seems to be that it's Han Solo's story -- if Greedo still shot first.
JOSS WHEDON: Which I believe I, myself, said.
Q. Well, there you go.
A. Or if Han had come into the bar five minutes later and never met that old man. But you asked how I would pitch "Firefly," which is different from "Serenity." So which one am I pitching?
Q. I'm sorry -- "Serenity" is the one we'd want to talk about.
A. I mean, of course, some people are thinking of both…. But if I was going to pitch "Serenity," I'd say it's a space adventure that involves the lowliest of people in the most mundane of circumstances getting caught up in something giant and epic -- without lasers, aliens, or force-fields to protect them.
Q. It strikes me that any one "Firefly" character, taken alone, would be a premise character. But you have nine of them interacting.
A. Well, that's kind of the point. And that's part of what makes it difficult to sell and balance -- and what makes it worth doing.
What I started out with was these characters, because I had done the show "Firefly," and I loved these guys -- I loved the characters, I loved the people who played them, I loved the way they played them. And I just thought, "These people, their story's not told yet. They're ready for it to be told on a much grander scale than perhaps anybody had anticipated."
And that is a strange way to come at trying to build a film. It's not the way I usually do it. Usually it is about a premise, and I build a character from that. But I knew this universe was exciting and fresh and textured and very real to me, and I had these people -- and I knew that they were in a world of trouble, in terms of where I was going with the series.
I did know that I had something that was worthy of a movie. An easily told movie? Not necessarily. But a movie that would have more than just a premise. It would really get into their lives and tell the big, epic story -- with the big chases and the big trouble and the fights and all the glory that we go to the movies for. But at the same time, it would be about the people in it -- as opposed to the things you can accomplish with CGI.
Q. Speaking of which, I saw the film last
night [Sept. 1] in a screening that wasn't an all-Browncoat screening. And it
played very well. Which, as a big fan of the "Firefly" TV series, I was a bit
concerned about. And I have to salute the climactic space battle in its final
form: A lot of newbies -- people who'd never seen the show -- were saying that
it was thrilling in a way that certain "Star Wars" dogfights haven't been in a
long time.
A. That's very impressive, considering how beautifully done those dogfights are. So much money! The money! All that money!
I think our dogfight works because you get a sense of their situation, which is: They're really little and they have no guns!
Q. Well the way it's storyboarded and assembled to have a documentary feel is also fascinating -- there's a "shaky-cam" look to the effects that "Firefly" sort of pioneered.
A. Well, it looked like that for a reason. "Buffy" was made because there was a character I wanted to see that I wasn't seeing. And "Firefly" was made because I was missing something in televised science fiction, and also in the movies: a gritty realism that wasn't an "Alien" ripoff.
The template I was working from was "NYPD Blue" -- it was "you are there." It was, "We just happened to have a camera, and then this happened." Obviously, these were larger-than-life stories, and obviously [in "Serenity"] there was some arch and manipulative camera work, because much the way Mal realizes he's a hero, the movie realizes, "I'm a movie!" But we always tried to keep that presence: We're there, the cameraman might fall over, everyone might die, and none of us is safe.
A. That's very impressive, considering how beautifully done those dogfights are. So much money! The money! All that money!
I think our dogfight works because you get a sense of their situation, which is: They're really little and they have no guns!
Q. Well the way it's storyboarded and assembled to have a documentary feel is also fascinating -- there's a "shaky-cam" look to the effects that "Firefly" sort of pioneered.
A. Well, it looked like that for a reason. "Buffy" was made because there was a character I wanted to see that I wasn't seeing. And "Firefly" was made because I was missing something in televised science fiction, and also in the movies: a gritty realism that wasn't an "Alien" ripoff.
The template I was working from was "NYPD Blue" -- it was "you are there." It was, "We just happened to have a camera, and then this happened." Obviously, these were larger-than-life stories, and obviously [in "Serenity"] there was some arch and manipulative camera work, because much the way Mal realizes he's a hero, the movie realizes, "I'm a movie!" But we always tried to keep that presence: We're there, the cameraman might fall over, everyone might die, and none of us is safe.
___________________
II. BUILDING THE 'VERSE (and TALKING LIKE A MAN NAMED MARION)
II. BUILDING THE 'VERSE (and TALKING LIKE A MAN NAMED MARION)
Q. "Firefly" and "Serenity"'s political and
cultural underpinnings are unusually well thought-out. You've obviously
developed a whole system of planets, a Sino-American political system, a mix of
languages. How long did the concept fester in your head before you started
writing?
A. It festered for a while. It was probably two or three years after I came up with the idea that I made the TV show, a year-and-a-half doing that, and then a couple of years to write the movie. So it's had time to bake.
And people are always like, "They're fighting an evil empire!" And I'm like, "Well, it's not really an evil empire." The trick was always to create something that was complex enough that you could bring some debate to it -- that it wasn't black-and-white. It wasn't, "If we hit this porthole in the Death Star, everything will be fine!" It was messier than that, and the messiest thing is that the government is basically benign. It's the most advanced culturally….
Q. And [the government-sponsored assassin] The Operative has an honorable point of view -- in his way.
A. Oh, he totally does. Mal is somebody that I knew, as I created him, I would not get along with. I don't think we have the same politics. But that's sort of the point. I mean, if the movie's about anything, it's about the right to be wrong. It's about the messiness of people. And if you try to eradicate that, you eradicate them.
Q. And on a sheer love-of-language level, it's about the clash of dialects. Several of the characters speak in an old-timey-Western-paperback patois. Why did you choose to make the connections between the Old West and the future so overt?
A. Because that's where it came from. It came from my love of frontier stories -- in the movies and in actual, historical frontier stories. And also because if you are Han Solo -- if you are living hand-to-mouth -- you're dealing with a very classic frontier paradigm, which is that life is really hard out here. The law is, at best, obtuse and often useless -- and occasionally dangerous. And the lack of law is troublesome, too. And you learn to make your own, and work on your own terms, in order to survive.
Right now, we live in an age of extraordinary convenience -- where you can have an entire group of friends and social gatherings and all your food and all your movies without ever leaving the house. And so I'm more and more fascinated by the physical -- by people who "make their own fun," as it were. As David Mamet so perfectly put it, "Everybody makes their own fun. If you don't make it yourself, it ain't fun -- it's entertainment."
Q. Thank you. I still think "State and Main" is one of Mamet's best movies.
A. I really do…. I mean, you can look at the people in "Serenity" as people who are living in a Third-World country -- because other people with the best of intentions are trying to, uh, "help" them, but they’re kind of out of reach, or nobody knows how the system works well enough to do any good.
The frontier, to me, was fascinating because it is so extreme. And at some point, almost everyone is confronted with that kind of extremity. And it's extraordinary how it changes us. It's what makes disaster movies fascinating to me -- because they take people like us and say, "Whoa! Well! Who comes up to the mark? How do you change? Who's in charge? How does the system -- how does, you know, society -- dissolve when the walls are not existentially but literally broken down?"
And obviously, you don't want a disaster to happen to anybody. But this movie is about people … who are used to a certain level of peril and extremity in their lives that most people in this country aren't. Or weren't.
A. It festered for a while. It was probably two or three years after I came up with the idea that I made the TV show, a year-and-a-half doing that, and then a couple of years to write the movie. So it's had time to bake.
And people are always like, "They're fighting an evil empire!" And I'm like, "Well, it's not really an evil empire." The trick was always to create something that was complex enough that you could bring some debate to it -- that it wasn't black-and-white. It wasn't, "If we hit this porthole in the Death Star, everything will be fine!" It was messier than that, and the messiest thing is that the government is basically benign. It's the most advanced culturally….
Q. And [the government-sponsored assassin] The Operative has an honorable point of view -- in his way.
A. Oh, he totally does. Mal is somebody that I knew, as I created him, I would not get along with. I don't think we have the same politics. But that's sort of the point. I mean, if the movie's about anything, it's about the right to be wrong. It's about the messiness of people. And if you try to eradicate that, you eradicate them.
Q. And on a sheer love-of-language level, it's about the clash of dialects. Several of the characters speak in an old-timey-Western-paperback patois. Why did you choose to make the connections between the Old West and the future so overt?
A. Because that's where it came from. It came from my love of frontier stories -- in the movies and in actual, historical frontier stories. And also because if you are Han Solo -- if you are living hand-to-mouth -- you're dealing with a very classic frontier paradigm, which is that life is really hard out here. The law is, at best, obtuse and often useless -- and occasionally dangerous. And the lack of law is troublesome, too. And you learn to make your own, and work on your own terms, in order to survive.
Right now, we live in an age of extraordinary convenience -- where you can have an entire group of friends and social gatherings and all your food and all your movies without ever leaving the house. And so I'm more and more fascinated by the physical -- by people who "make their own fun," as it were. As David Mamet so perfectly put it, "Everybody makes their own fun. If you don't make it yourself, it ain't fun -- it's entertainment."
Q. Thank you. I still think "State and Main" is one of Mamet's best movies.
A. I really do…. I mean, you can look at the people in "Serenity" as people who are living in a Third-World country -- because other people with the best of intentions are trying to, uh, "help" them, but they’re kind of out of reach, or nobody knows how the system works well enough to do any good.
The frontier, to me, was fascinating because it is so extreme. And at some point, almost everyone is confronted with that kind of extremity. And it's extraordinary how it changes us. It's what makes disaster movies fascinating to me -- because they take people like us and say, "Whoa! Well! Who comes up to the mark? How do you change? Who's in charge? How does the system -- how does, you know, society -- dissolve when the walls are not existentially but literally broken down?"
And obviously, you don't want a disaster to happen to anybody. But this movie is about people … who are used to a certain level of peril and extremity in their lives that most people in this country aren't. Or weren't.
Q. Getting back to the question of language:
I was wondering how the hell you found actors who make all that old-timey
dialogue seem effortless. Because that's a hell of a
coup.
A. It is. And with Nathan, he got so completely comfortable with it that we actually had to have him talk slower, because he could rattle it off so fast, people couldn't understand a word he was saying.
Q. And when he posts to the message boards on the fan-sites, he kind of writes that way, too.
A. He gets a little Mal on…. The dialogue is built out of a number of things: my own desire to make up silly slang, because I love the liquidness of language…. It's largely Western. It's also Elizabethan. There's some Indian stuff. There's some turn-of-the-century Pennsylvania Dutch. Irish…. There's absolutely anything that fits. But I think [the cast] will all band together and kill me because of the Chinese.
And there's some John Wayne -- which is different than just "Western." Nobody talked like John Wayne; John had his own thing that was so lyrical. The way he talked and the way he moved were both way too graceful for a man who was supposed to be that tough.
Q. [laughs] I know.
A. Then again, his name was Marion.
Q. Hey, John Ford cast him in a movie where he went to Ireland.
A. Yeah. He had an extraordinary individualism. And that's in there, too.
See, with Nathan, I just got incredibly lucky, and for everyone else, it just works in different ways. When you start to work with actors, you start to write to their different strengths -- you start to know what's going to trip them up and what's going to play to their different strengths.
A. It is. And with Nathan, he got so completely comfortable with it that we actually had to have him talk slower, because he could rattle it off so fast, people couldn't understand a word he was saying.
Q. And when he posts to the message boards on the fan-sites, he kind of writes that way, too.
A. He gets a little Mal on…. The dialogue is built out of a number of things: my own desire to make up silly slang, because I love the liquidness of language…. It's largely Western. It's also Elizabethan. There's some Indian stuff. There's some turn-of-the-century Pennsylvania Dutch. Irish…. There's absolutely anything that fits. But I think [the cast] will all band together and kill me because of the Chinese.
And there's some John Wayne -- which is different than just "Western." Nobody talked like John Wayne; John had his own thing that was so lyrical. The way he talked and the way he moved were both way too graceful for a man who was supposed to be that tough.
Q. [laughs] I know.
A. Then again, his name was Marion.
Q. Hey, John Ford cast him in a movie where he went to Ireland.
A. Yeah. He had an extraordinary individualism. And that's in there, too.
See, with Nathan, I just got incredibly lucky, and for everyone else, it just works in different ways. When you start to work with actors, you start to write to their different strengths -- you start to know what's going to trip them up and what's going to play to their different strengths.
____________________
III. THE GENIUS OF JAYNE, and the DIFFERENCE BETWEEN POLITICS AND PARTISANSHIP
III. THE GENIUS OF JAYNE, and the DIFFERENCE BETWEEN POLITICS AND PARTISANSHIP
Q. I'd like to go out of my way to praise
Adam Baldwin's work in the film. I really expect him to get some more work out
of this; he knocked every single line out of the
park.
A. Adam is quite large to be a secret weapon. [laughs] He really is. It's great fun to take someone like Summer, who's never done a film -- except for a small bit -- and really get to show her to people. It's just as much fun with a guy who's been working for 20 years. Because he's so funny, and so vital. His love of that role, and what he brings to it…. Yeah, he does. He knocks every single line straight out of the park. Adam really is bigger than life.
Q. Now, I know his political views may not be your own. And one of the things that strikes me about the show is that, in terms of both gender and personal politics, "Firefly" and "Serenity" have one of the more diverse fan bases I've ever seen. The show's been written up in progressive and conservative journals….
A. Yeah. I would say about the movie that it is very political, but it's not partisan. And I think the curse, right now, of the politics of our nation is that a line has been drawn down the middle of our country -- and that's not actually how the human mind works.
Q. Well, the problems are hugely complicated infrastructural problems, and we're trying to solve them with bloodsport. David Foster Wallace said that.
A. Yeah. It's not useful. The political statement that "Serenity" makes is very blatant -- but it can be embraced by someone who's extremely conservative or someone who's extremely liberal. That's not the point. The point is: It's a personal statement.
What "Serenity" and "Firefly" were both about is how politics affect people personally. And the personal politics are the only politics that really interest me. I'm not going to make this big, didactic polemic -- I'm just going to say, "When there are shifts in a planet, those tiny little guys are the ones who are affected. So let's hang out with them -- not the Federation heads or the Jedi Council."
Q. [laughs] Right.
A. And with the show, the idea was to have as many points of view as possible. The reason I made the Alliance a generally benign, enlightened society was so that I could engage these people in a debate about it.
Now, in the film, obviously, there's more chasing and guns than debating --
Q. Plus explosions --
A. You know, people don't love a great debate flick.
Q. And when people try and make them, and critics praise them as great "message movies," no one goes to see them.
A. Yeah. Including myself. But if you let the points of view exist, then it does the work for you. In the show, that was always the idea: Nine different people see the same thing and have nine different reactions to it, based on who they are and where they've been. And that's what made for the drama. And, uh, most of the comedy.
Q. I'm a vague acquaintance of your colleague Brian Michael Bendis, who lives here in town -- and one thing that strikes me about his work and yours is that you're guys who aren't ashamed about coding up all your messages in a genre structure.
A. Well, I have always been a fan of his. I love genre. I love fantasy. I love science fiction. I love horror. I love musicals. I love finding a different way to express what I want to say. And I think, ultimately, it works best for me -- because otherwise, it would be boring and didactic and I wouldn't know what the hell I was doing. Genre helps me with structure, and structure helps me get through the day.
A. Adam is quite large to be a secret weapon. [laughs] He really is. It's great fun to take someone like Summer, who's never done a film -- except for a small bit -- and really get to show her to people. It's just as much fun with a guy who's been working for 20 years. Because he's so funny, and so vital. His love of that role, and what he brings to it…. Yeah, he does. He knocks every single line straight out of the park. Adam really is bigger than life.
Q. Now, I know his political views may not be your own. And one of the things that strikes me about the show is that, in terms of both gender and personal politics, "Firefly" and "Serenity" have one of the more diverse fan bases I've ever seen. The show's been written up in progressive and conservative journals….
A. Yeah. I would say about the movie that it is very political, but it's not partisan. And I think the curse, right now, of the politics of our nation is that a line has been drawn down the middle of our country -- and that's not actually how the human mind works.
Q. Well, the problems are hugely complicated infrastructural problems, and we're trying to solve them with bloodsport. David Foster Wallace said that.
A. Yeah. It's not useful. The political statement that "Serenity" makes is very blatant -- but it can be embraced by someone who's extremely conservative or someone who's extremely liberal. That's not the point. The point is: It's a personal statement.
What "Serenity" and "Firefly" were both about is how politics affect people personally. And the personal politics are the only politics that really interest me. I'm not going to make this big, didactic polemic -- I'm just going to say, "When there are shifts in a planet, those tiny little guys are the ones who are affected. So let's hang out with them -- not the Federation heads or the Jedi Council."
Q. [laughs] Right.
A. And with the show, the idea was to have as many points of view as possible. The reason I made the Alliance a generally benign, enlightened society was so that I could engage these people in a debate about it.
Now, in the film, obviously, there's more chasing and guns than debating --
Q. Plus explosions --
A. You know, people don't love a great debate flick.
Q. And when people try and make them, and critics praise them as great "message movies," no one goes to see them.
A. Yeah. Including myself. But if you let the points of view exist, then it does the work for you. In the show, that was always the idea: Nine different people see the same thing and have nine different reactions to it, based on who they are and where they've been. And that's what made for the drama. And, uh, most of the comedy.
Q. I'm a vague acquaintance of your colleague Brian Michael Bendis, who lives here in town -- and one thing that strikes me about his work and yours is that you're guys who aren't ashamed about coding up all your messages in a genre structure.
A. Well, I have always been a fan of his. I love genre. I love fantasy. I love science fiction. I love horror. I love musicals. I love finding a different way to express what I want to say. And I think, ultimately, it works best for me -- because otherwise, it would be boring and didactic and I wouldn't know what the hell I was doing. Genre helps me with structure, and structure helps me get through the day.
____________________
IV. THE PROBLEM WITH NICELY CARPETED SPACESHIPS and the MAD SKILLZ OF JACK GREEN
IV. THE PROBLEM WITH NICELY CARPETED SPACESHIPS and the MAD SKILLZ OF JACK GREEN
Q. The show and film are also fascinating in
that they have no aliens, or dorks in jumpsuits with prosthetics on their
nose-ridges. Nor does the spaceship in any way resemble a flying Sheraton
Hotel.
A. [laughs] The thing I love about science fiction -- future stuff, particularly -- is the sense of being there. It's very important. And I'd seen a lot of shows with ships where they all tend to look like that --
Q. Nicely carpeted spaceships.
A. Exactly. That's why there's a toilet [on Serenity]. That's why there are ladders. That’s why I'm obsessed with vertical space. I'm obsessed with the messiness of it.
As much as "Star Wars" and "Star Trek" are old, weird uncles of this movie -- and one of them may be the father, but we haven't gotten back the DNA test yet -- "Alien," particularly the first one, also has significance. Because it gave a real sense of, "We live here. And this is where we eat, and this is where we sleep, and we climb up from here to here, and the vents run here."
And that sense of the physical is another reason why I was doing the camerawork the way I did it -- so you were not in that remove of, "AND NOW WE WILL ENACT THE DRAMA THAT EXISTS IN MY BIG JAR OF DRA-MA." It was, you know, "Everything here is beat-up and real and crappy, and you go up and you go down." Apart from the artificial gravity that one must inevitably have -- because one doesn't want to make a floaty movie -- the textured reality is there. I want to be on that ship, and I never felt like I was on those other ships. They were big, giant Sheratons.
A. [laughs] The thing I love about science fiction -- future stuff, particularly -- is the sense of being there. It's very important. And I'd seen a lot of shows with ships where they all tend to look like that --
Q. Nicely carpeted spaceships.
A. Exactly. That's why there's a toilet [on Serenity]. That's why there are ladders. That’s why I'm obsessed with vertical space. I'm obsessed with the messiness of it.
As much as "Star Wars" and "Star Trek" are old, weird uncles of this movie -- and one of them may be the father, but we haven't gotten back the DNA test yet -- "Alien," particularly the first one, also has significance. Because it gave a real sense of, "We live here. And this is where we eat, and this is where we sleep, and we climb up from here to here, and the vents run here."
And that sense of the physical is another reason why I was doing the camerawork the way I did it -- so you were not in that remove of, "AND NOW WE WILL ENACT THE DRAMA THAT EXISTS IN MY BIG JAR OF DRA-MA." It was, you know, "Everything here is beat-up and real and crappy, and you go up and you go down." Apart from the artificial gravity that one must inevitably have -- because one doesn't want to make a floaty movie -- the textured reality is there. I want to be on that ship, and I never felt like I was on those other ships. They were big, giant Sheratons.
Q. And you don't see a lot of
science-fiction films lit by Clint Eastwood's
cinematographer.
A. You know, how cool is Jack Green?
Q. How did you explain this to him?
A. I didn't really have to. He read the script; he got it; we talked; he got it. He knew there was a Western thing going on, but he also knew I wasn't looking to ape the Western -- I was just looking for something that felt real and cobbled together with a lot of different palates.
And the thing about Jack is: He can actually do any damned thing. You ask Jack for a certain thing, and he's got it in his repertoire. His druthers is to stay out of the way.
Q. He's probably the secret weapon that allows Eastwood to deliver all his movies on-time and under-budget.
A. Certainly. He's the reason we got to make a movie that looks -- I think -- a good deal more expensive than it was. He moves so fast, and he makes frames that I think are just as gorgeous as anything. But he doesn't announce, "JACK GREEN IN THE HOUSE!" -- either on set or on film. He stays out of the way, and then he gives you stuff like that Shepherd Book/Mal scene -- which, with three lights, is one of the prettiest things I've ever seen. He's not afraid of blacks, and neither am I, and that's a really important thing to me. He's not afraid of losing things, of keeping it a little sloppy. At the same time, he's very precise. And he moves faster than a lot of guys who are in TV. I can't say enough about Jack.
And he's perfect for this because he's got a Western background, but he's done everything -- and he's not turning this into a big-hat pastiche. Because when you say "space Western," a lot of people are gonna go, "RUN!!! JUST RUNNN!!!" To me, it is that to an extent, but it's more just a space adventure.
I remember my father being very angry when people said that "Star Wars" was a Western. He'd say, "It's not a Western! It's a WWII flying-ace movie!"
Q. Mm-hm. It's "The Dambusters."
A. And of course it’s a hundred different things -- as is anything that feels new. But to me, it's perfectly logical, because you're out there in what is termed "the final frontier," and you're in the same situation that people were in when the final frontier was California: "We've got exactly this much cured meat, we've got exactly this many bullets, and we have no idea where we're heading." So it's not so much a question of genre, it's a question of the reality of the thing -- and the fact that the Western was always an immigrant story, and you get to mish-mash all those cultures together. That's how we made this country, and that's how we're going to make every country from now on.
So Jack is perfect for all of that, because he understands it all -- he makes it all real. You still get your sci-fi jollies, but none of it feels like, you know, like there's a Theremin playing.
A. You know, how cool is Jack Green?
Q. How did you explain this to him?
A. I didn't really have to. He read the script; he got it; we talked; he got it. He knew there was a Western thing going on, but he also knew I wasn't looking to ape the Western -- I was just looking for something that felt real and cobbled together with a lot of different palates.
And the thing about Jack is: He can actually do any damned thing. You ask Jack for a certain thing, and he's got it in his repertoire. His druthers is to stay out of the way.
Q. He's probably the secret weapon that allows Eastwood to deliver all his movies on-time and under-budget.
A. Certainly. He's the reason we got to make a movie that looks -- I think -- a good deal more expensive than it was. He moves so fast, and he makes frames that I think are just as gorgeous as anything. But he doesn't announce, "JACK GREEN IN THE HOUSE!" -- either on set or on film. He stays out of the way, and then he gives you stuff like that Shepherd Book/Mal scene -- which, with three lights, is one of the prettiest things I've ever seen. He's not afraid of blacks, and neither am I, and that's a really important thing to me. He's not afraid of losing things, of keeping it a little sloppy. At the same time, he's very precise. And he moves faster than a lot of guys who are in TV. I can't say enough about Jack.
And he's perfect for this because he's got a Western background, but he's done everything -- and he's not turning this into a big-hat pastiche. Because when you say "space Western," a lot of people are gonna go, "RUN!!! JUST RUNNN!!!" To me, it is that to an extent, but it's more just a space adventure.
I remember my father being very angry when people said that "Star Wars" was a Western. He'd say, "It's not a Western! It's a WWII flying-ace movie!"
Q. Mm-hm. It's "The Dambusters."
A. And of course it’s a hundred different things -- as is anything that feels new. But to me, it's perfectly logical, because you're out there in what is termed "the final frontier," and you're in the same situation that people were in when the final frontier was California: "We've got exactly this much cured meat, we've got exactly this many bullets, and we have no idea where we're heading." So it's not so much a question of genre, it's a question of the reality of the thing -- and the fact that the Western was always an immigrant story, and you get to mish-mash all those cultures together. That's how we made this country, and that's how we're going to make every country from now on.
So Jack is perfect for all of that, because he understands it all -- he makes it all real. You still get your sci-fi jollies, but none of it feels like, you know, like there's a Theremin playing.
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V. BETA-TESTING A MARKETING PLAN (and STICKING A PEN IN YOUR NECK)
V. BETA-TESTING A MARKETING PLAN (and STICKING A PEN IN YOUR NECK)
Q. Now, Marc Schmuger and his Universal
marketing team have really been using your film to beta-test a new way of
marketing movies. Obviously, they can afford to do these sorts of experiments on
your film. I'd love to hear your take on the specifics of
that.
A. To me, the whole thing is fairly impressive. On the one hand, it's really nice, because I realized that they were saying, "The best thing we have to advertise your film is your film." And I thought, "Well, that's better than, 'We have to hide it until it opens and then run like bunnies.'"
But at the beginning, when they first talked about showing it to the fans in a number of preview screenings that was, you know, pretty big --
Q. I think it was 65, wasn't it?
A. And that's not including the festivals. I think it'll end up having been shown about 75 times before it opens. I and a lot of people were a little scared: "What if we ring the dinner bell and the fans are all full?"
Q. Well, that and the movie heaps these Kobayashi Maru levels of abuse on the characters. I mean, fans are gonna go binary on that.
A. Some people might go, "Hey! Wait a minute! He took the sky! Where's my sky?" But, at the end of the day, what they [Universal] were trying to do…. They felt the fans -- based on their experience of seeing them see the movie -- weren't going to go, "Yawn! Well, we got our jollies and we're going to move on." They wanted to build the momentum with the idea that, "Oh, this is really something. And the noise that you guys are making could be heard elsewhere." And that was the thing.
The fan base has been very loyal -- and, I think, unprecedentedly involved. But it was really about the people who have no idea what "Serenity" is -- or who could give a rat's ass -- hearing these waves in the distance sort of heading towards them and going, "What is that?" And that was thinking two steps ahead of where I was thinking.
And it seems to have worked. We've gotten some coverage in a lot of places that would not have given us the time of day. But it's still hard. I mean, the job that they were given -- to sell a movie with a title that sounds vaguely Buddhist; that doesn't have an easily sellable premise; that doesn’t have a single bankable star, unless you're a huge Alan Tudyk or Adam Baldwin fan like I am [laughs] -- it was a hell of a thing for them to take on. And so they just said, "Well, we love it. They love it. Let's work with 'love.'"
Q. [laughs] What a novel idea for a marketing department.
A. Oh, yeah. I tell you, I've been pretty impressed. And they were always looking for things to do that were different. You know, the little Internet River bits.
Q. Yes! How did you enjoy gurgling with a pen in your neck?
A. You know? Uh, good times. And I'll be able to explain it all more when it's done. But that came not from Universal saying, "We have a marketing idea"; that came from Universal going, "What's weird? What’s fresh? What's fun?" And me going, "I have a silly notion…."
It was a chance to say, "We're gonna throw everything up there. We're just gonna keep coming at people from different angles." Because that's kind of what the movie does, and that's kind of what makes it interesting. So we're just gonna keep spreading out the mythos that this thing is built upon, so that even if somebody has no idea who anybody is, they know there's some body there -- not something they missed, hopefully, but something that they can rely on -- something that's been thought out, something with some weight.
A. To me, the whole thing is fairly impressive. On the one hand, it's really nice, because I realized that they were saying, "The best thing we have to advertise your film is your film." And I thought, "Well, that's better than, 'We have to hide it until it opens and then run like bunnies.'"
But at the beginning, when they first talked about showing it to the fans in a number of preview screenings that was, you know, pretty big --
Q. I think it was 65, wasn't it?
A. And that's not including the festivals. I think it'll end up having been shown about 75 times before it opens. I and a lot of people were a little scared: "What if we ring the dinner bell and the fans are all full?"
Q. Well, that and the movie heaps these Kobayashi Maru levels of abuse on the characters. I mean, fans are gonna go binary on that.
A. Some people might go, "Hey! Wait a minute! He took the sky! Where's my sky?" But, at the end of the day, what they [Universal] were trying to do…. They felt the fans -- based on their experience of seeing them see the movie -- weren't going to go, "Yawn! Well, we got our jollies and we're going to move on." They wanted to build the momentum with the idea that, "Oh, this is really something. And the noise that you guys are making could be heard elsewhere." And that was the thing.
The fan base has been very loyal -- and, I think, unprecedentedly involved. But it was really about the people who have no idea what "Serenity" is -- or who could give a rat's ass -- hearing these waves in the distance sort of heading towards them and going, "What is that?" And that was thinking two steps ahead of where I was thinking.
And it seems to have worked. We've gotten some coverage in a lot of places that would not have given us the time of day. But it's still hard. I mean, the job that they were given -- to sell a movie with a title that sounds vaguely Buddhist; that doesn't have an easily sellable premise; that doesn’t have a single bankable star, unless you're a huge Alan Tudyk or Adam Baldwin fan like I am [laughs] -- it was a hell of a thing for them to take on. And so they just said, "Well, we love it. They love it. Let's work with 'love.'"
Q. [laughs] What a novel idea for a marketing department.
A. Oh, yeah. I tell you, I've been pretty impressed. And they were always looking for things to do that were different. You know, the little Internet River bits.
Q. Yes! How did you enjoy gurgling with a pen in your neck?
A. You know? Uh, good times. And I'll be able to explain it all more when it's done. But that came not from Universal saying, "We have a marketing idea"; that came from Universal going, "What's weird? What’s fresh? What's fun?" And me going, "I have a silly notion…."
It was a chance to say, "We're gonna throw everything up there. We're just gonna keep coming at people from different angles." Because that's kind of what the movie does, and that's kind of what makes it interesting. So we're just gonna keep spreading out the mythos that this thing is built upon, so that even if somebody has no idea who anybody is, they know there's some body there -- not something they missed, hopefully, but something that they can rely on -- something that's been thought out, something with some weight.
____________________
VI. FLASHBACKS and 'ONE-ERS'
VI. FLASHBACKS and 'ONE-ERS'
A. You
said you've seen it with --
Q. I've seen it with the fans and the non-fans now.
A. You know, we spent a long time with this movie, in editing, getting it to a place where non-fans would be able to enjoy it. It was the hardest thing about it.
Q. I actually wanted to ask you about that. In the first 10 minutes of "Serenity," you manage to explain the entire premise of the show in three folding flashbacks and a long, single take that takes us on a tour of the entire ship and introduces all the characters. I just want to say: That must have been murderously hard to write.
A. Actually, not the hardest part. It was hard to structure. I sat down and said, "Now: I have to tell a story that I haven't told before, and explain it to people and not contradict stuff." Yeah, the task that I put before myself is one I hope never to put before myself again. [laughs] But once I figured out what I wanted to do, it made such incredibly perfect logical sense to do a narration that turns out to be a lecture that turns out to be a dream that turns out to be a holographic flashback, you know?
Q. Possibly the first time we've seen that many things fold into themselves in a movie in a while.
A. It was a lot. But it was twofold: It was a way to include a great deal of exposition without becoming the most boring film ever. My other idea was to have Anthony Hopkins talk for 25 minutes at the beginning…. But Oliver Stone stole it from me. But the other thing is, it worked because what I'm basically doing is a story about Mal as told by River. So where we start is in River's mind -- and River's mind is completely fractured. So to tell something that is constantly re-adjusting -- that is constantly pulling the rug out from under you -- is to basically experience the world the way she's experiencing it.
When we go to Serenity, it's very deliberate that it's an endlessly long take. For one thing, you get to see all the characters, the whole ship and the way they interact -- and to do it in a one-er feels very fluid. But it's also to stop that disassociative River mind, and to put you in Mal's and Serenity's space -- which is, no matter how much you protest about being a villain, a completely safe and understandable space. So it was a deliberate contrast to what had come before, to do that long take. And it made perfect sense to me, because I already knew what that ship looked like and where everybody in the ship would be and how they worked and how they'd interact. It actually came very quickly.
Q. Well, and there's that wonderful handoff moment where Mal says, "Do you know your part in this?" and River replies, "Do you?"
A. You know, that was the only re-shoot we did. There is that bunch of crates in the back of the cargo bay -- and I remembered that bunch of crates in the back of the cargo bay when I said, "I need half a day; I know what's missing from the movie. Um, besides excitement and coherence." And it's the handoff. I was like, "I thought the one-er would be the handoff, but it's not." I thought people would know to identify with Mal -- but there are so many people and so much going on, that nobody understands. This is something we were getting showing it to audiences who hadn't seen ["Firefly"]: Nobody understands that this is the guy they're supposed to watch, and by the time they figure it out, we're too far into the movie. So I said, "Give me those crates." And they literally piled them -- Jack Green was shooting "40-Year-Old Virgin," so this is basically Jack's year --
Q. Yeah, no kidding.
A. -- so we basically brought the crates onto the set of "40-Year-Old Virgin" on a Sunday, piled them all up, and we shot that and a couple of little inserts and things.
And "Do you know your purpose?" "Do you?" was basically my way of telling the audience, "River is watching this guy -- so you should, too." And it completely changed the way people felt about everything that went after: They had their eye on Mal. And it made things flow a lot better.
Q. I've seen it with the fans and the non-fans now.
A. You know, we spent a long time with this movie, in editing, getting it to a place where non-fans would be able to enjoy it. It was the hardest thing about it.
Q. I actually wanted to ask you about that. In the first 10 minutes of "Serenity," you manage to explain the entire premise of the show in three folding flashbacks and a long, single take that takes us on a tour of the entire ship and introduces all the characters. I just want to say: That must have been murderously hard to write.
A. Actually, not the hardest part. It was hard to structure. I sat down and said, "Now: I have to tell a story that I haven't told before, and explain it to people and not contradict stuff." Yeah, the task that I put before myself is one I hope never to put before myself again. [laughs] But once I figured out what I wanted to do, it made such incredibly perfect logical sense to do a narration that turns out to be a lecture that turns out to be a dream that turns out to be a holographic flashback, you know?
Q. Possibly the first time we've seen that many things fold into themselves in a movie in a while.
A. It was a lot. But it was twofold: It was a way to include a great deal of exposition without becoming the most boring film ever. My other idea was to have Anthony Hopkins talk for 25 minutes at the beginning…. But Oliver Stone stole it from me. But the other thing is, it worked because what I'm basically doing is a story about Mal as told by River. So where we start is in River's mind -- and River's mind is completely fractured. So to tell something that is constantly re-adjusting -- that is constantly pulling the rug out from under you -- is to basically experience the world the way she's experiencing it.
When we go to Serenity, it's very deliberate that it's an endlessly long take. For one thing, you get to see all the characters, the whole ship and the way they interact -- and to do it in a one-er feels very fluid. But it's also to stop that disassociative River mind, and to put you in Mal's and Serenity's space -- which is, no matter how much you protest about being a villain, a completely safe and understandable space. So it was a deliberate contrast to what had come before, to do that long take. And it made perfect sense to me, because I already knew what that ship looked like and where everybody in the ship would be and how they worked and how they'd interact. It actually came very quickly.
Q. Well, and there's that wonderful handoff moment where Mal says, "Do you know your part in this?" and River replies, "Do you?"
A. You know, that was the only re-shoot we did. There is that bunch of crates in the back of the cargo bay -- and I remembered that bunch of crates in the back of the cargo bay when I said, "I need half a day; I know what's missing from the movie. Um, besides excitement and coherence." And it's the handoff. I was like, "I thought the one-er would be the handoff, but it's not." I thought people would know to identify with Mal -- but there are so many people and so much going on, that nobody understands. This is something we were getting showing it to audiences who hadn't seen ["Firefly"]: Nobody understands that this is the guy they're supposed to watch, and by the time they figure it out, we're too far into the movie. So I said, "Give me those crates." And they literally piled them -- Jack Green was shooting "40-Year-Old Virgin," so this is basically Jack's year --
Q. Yeah, no kidding.
A. -- so we basically brought the crates onto the set of "40-Year-Old Virgin" on a Sunday, piled them all up, and we shot that and a couple of little inserts and things.
And "Do you know your purpose?" "Do you?" was basically my way of telling the audience, "River is watching this guy -- so you should, too." And it completely changed the way people felt about everything that went after: They had their eye on Mal. And it made things flow a lot better.
Q. There are other little handoffs like that
in the movie that I think only fans of the TV show might get. One of the ones
I've seen discussed online, which I love, is the handoff
of the Blue Sun liquor bottle from Jayne to Simon.
A. Mm-hm.
Q. Given their relationship, it's a big moment.
A. That was a scene where, you know, Mal gives his St. Crispian's Day speech, God bless 'im -- and I originally wrote a scene where everyone chimes in and says, "I'm in." And I just thought, "If Jayne says he's in, there's no way nobody else isn't in."
Q. Right. If he's in, everybody is.
A. But then, when I was shooting it, I was like, "Because he and Simon…" And that's more in the series than it is in the film that the two of them combat, but they're still total opposites: Simon is the total idealist and Jayne is the total pragmatist and completely selfish. If there were an angel and a devil sitting on Mal's shoulders, that's what they'd look like. It's maybe the hoariest thing in the movie, but by God, it says what needs to be said: You pass the bottle to Simon, and they're a team.
Q. It's no hoarier than having Dean Martin and Ricky Nelson singin' a song together in "Rio Bravo" --
A. -- with Walter Brennan --
Q. With Walter Brennan. You know, and that worked.
A. Some dulcet pipes in that number.
A. Mm-hm.
Q. Given their relationship, it's a big moment.
A. That was a scene where, you know, Mal gives his St. Crispian's Day speech, God bless 'im -- and I originally wrote a scene where everyone chimes in and says, "I'm in." And I just thought, "If Jayne says he's in, there's no way nobody else isn't in."
Q. Right. If he's in, everybody is.
A. But then, when I was shooting it, I was like, "Because he and Simon…" And that's more in the series than it is in the film that the two of them combat, but they're still total opposites: Simon is the total idealist and Jayne is the total pragmatist and completely selfish. If there were an angel and a devil sitting on Mal's shoulders, that's what they'd look like. It's maybe the hoariest thing in the movie, but by God, it says what needs to be said: You pass the bottle to Simon, and they're a team.
Q. It's no hoarier than having Dean Martin and Ricky Nelson singin' a song together in "Rio Bravo" --
A. -- with Walter Brennan --
Q. With Walter Brennan. You know, and that worked.
A. Some dulcet pipes in that number.
____________________
VII. DEADHEADS and BROWNCOATS
VII. DEADHEADS and BROWNCOATS
Q. You've also done an absolutely smashing
job of ignoring the massive amounts of bootleg "Firefly" fan merchandise. I'm
thinking specifically of BlueSunShirts.com….
A. I'm a Deadhead, and where I come from, bootlegging's a good thing.
Q. If the movie's a hit, and more official merchandise starts coming out, do you think there's going to be a crackdown?
A. I have no idea. I never have a piece of merchandising; I haven't reached a place in the Hollywood DNA chain where I can actually ask for that. So it's not like I'm losing money.
But even if I was? You know, I'm doin' fine. I have a job. I'm doing just fine. And the fact that people are making this stuff? You can call it "bootlegging" or you can call it "free advertising."
Q. Let's hope they keep calling it the latter.
A. You can also call it "the fact that people are taking it to their hearts." It's no different than fan fiction or any of these online communities. It's important to them and they wear it -- and that makes me proud. And I don't give a good goddamn who's makin' money off it.
Q. Now, do you have a favorite piece of fan -- I'm sorry, "free advertising"?
A. [laughs] A favorite…. You know, I have to admit, when I first saw the Blue Sun t-shirts, I thought they were pretty cool -- because it didn't announce itself, and I think it had a really good logo. And I hope if I ever get to make another one of these, I get to pay off some Blue Sun action, because that was one of the things in the movie that I was sad to drop.
But a favorite? Um … hard to say. The best thing I've ever seen a little off that beaten track was at a Browncoat booth -- it was their raffle-drawing postcard for Equality Now. And it had a big picture of River -- it was beautifully done -- and it had pictures of Buffy and Zoe and Kitty Pryde, and even Wonder Woman and Fray, and all of these heroines I'd created. And I looked at it, and I swear to God, I got all misty: I was like, "Oh my God! It's almost like my work means something!" And seeing that, and knowing that these people were raising money for Equality Now, which is really important to me, was gi-normous. I had the biggest rush imaginable when I saw that. And I picked up, like, 40 of those postcards.
A. I'm a Deadhead, and where I come from, bootlegging's a good thing.
Q. If the movie's a hit, and more official merchandise starts coming out, do you think there's going to be a crackdown?
A. I have no idea. I never have a piece of merchandising; I haven't reached a place in the Hollywood DNA chain where I can actually ask for that. So it's not like I'm losing money.
But even if I was? You know, I'm doin' fine. I have a job. I'm doing just fine. And the fact that people are making this stuff? You can call it "bootlegging" or you can call it "free advertising."
Q. Let's hope they keep calling it the latter.
A. You can also call it "the fact that people are taking it to their hearts." It's no different than fan fiction or any of these online communities. It's important to them and they wear it -- and that makes me proud. And I don't give a good goddamn who's makin' money off it.
Q. Now, do you have a favorite piece of fan -- I'm sorry, "free advertising"?
A. [laughs] A favorite…. You know, I have to admit, when I first saw the Blue Sun t-shirts, I thought they were pretty cool -- because it didn't announce itself, and I think it had a really good logo. And I hope if I ever get to make another one of these, I get to pay off some Blue Sun action, because that was one of the things in the movie that I was sad to drop.
But a favorite? Um … hard to say. The best thing I've ever seen a little off that beaten track was at a Browncoat booth -- it was their raffle-drawing postcard for Equality Now. And it had a big picture of River -- it was beautifully done -- and it had pictures of Buffy and Zoe and Kitty Pryde, and even Wonder Woman and Fray, and all of these heroines I'd created. And I looked at it, and I swear to God, I got all misty: I was like, "Oh my God! It's almost like my work means something!" And seeing that, and knowing that these people were raising money for Equality Now, which is really important to me, was gi-normous. I had the biggest rush imaginable when I saw that. And I picked up, like, 40 of those postcards.
____________________
VIII. JOSS's 'SERENITY' MIX TAPE (Part 1)
VIII. JOSS's 'SERENITY' MIX TAPE (Part 1)
Q. I have a friend who's a big film-score geek, and I told
him I was interviewing you. He told me you wax philosophic and rhapsodic about
the score to this film for like three pages in the
new companion book that just came out --
A. It's actually five pages.
Q. Oh. Sorry.
A. No, I mean it was five pages when I typed it. That was written before we'd hired a composer. All those memos [in "Serenity: The Official Visual Companion"] were [written] before we made the movie; they were pre-production memos. I gave David Newman that memo; I also gave him a mix tape with everything on my iPod that might be useful.
Q. And this is actually what my score-geek friend wanted to know: What were those songs?
A. There were a couple of songs from Nickel Creek, whom I adore -- I love them with a fiery vengeance. There was some movie stuff: "Angela's Ashes," Elmer Bernstein's theme from "Far from Heaven" -- not because they were necessarily the right idiom, but because the themes were so incredibly indelible within the first 20 seconds, which is about as much time as I usually gave David. [laughs] They had to become indelible before there was too much going on for anybody to hear anything.
I'm gonna forget a bunch of stuff. Definitely important was "For the Turnstiles" by Neil Young, off "Decade" -- because it has this very sort of dampened banjo in it. And I played this for him particularly when we were going over it, just to say, "Look at how he's taking all the reverb off of this, and making just as sort of personal as possible." And I referred to this -- in a phrase that sort of came back to me over and over again in my discussions of scores -- as follows: What Neil Young was saying in that song was, "Fuck all y'all -- I'm on my back porch." You know, in the '70s, when a lot of stuff was getting really symphonic … he was going, "Fuck all y'all -- I'm on my back porch."
Q. That actually sums up the sensibilities of a few "Firefly" characters.
A. Yeah. It really does. And that was definitely the big one. I'm actually looking for the CD itself…. I might have it in one sec…. I'll see if I happen on it or if it's too late…. [rummaging noises] Okay … last chance … everybody in the pool.… Bupkis. Oh, well. No joy.
Q. That's okay. I think the fan base is going to have a lot to chew on just from what you told me.
A. Well, there was a lot of different stuff. I think there was the third movement of the Mendelssohn concerto that Sarah Chang played? It was either Mendelssohn or Sibelius -- I'm don't know which one I used. Because, you know, I love me some violins. Although, at the end of the day, it all became about cellos. The whole movie is CelloFest 2005. Be there!
If I remember another, I'll shout it out.
Q. Yeah, just shout it out randomly, while we're talking about other stuff.
A. It happens every now and then. My brain works that way. I stop thinking about something and I remember.
Q. Musical Tourette's. It will be good. Now, the plot --
A. Oh. I know one. It was "Poems" from "Pacific Overtures" by Stephen Sondheim.
Q. Oh, Sondheim. Of course.
A. Just because of the Asian thing and the simplicity of this entire song written in haiku.
Q. Mm-hm. Yeah, I'm a Sondheim fan myself.
A. Yeah. He's my guy.
Q. I'm still dying to see someone make the great film of "Sweeney Todd" that needs to be made.
A. You know, they're talking about it. But I don't get to make it, so….
A. It's actually five pages.
Q. Oh. Sorry.
A. No, I mean it was five pages when I typed it. That was written before we'd hired a composer. All those memos [in "Serenity: The Official Visual Companion"] were [written] before we made the movie; they were pre-production memos. I gave David Newman that memo; I also gave him a mix tape with everything on my iPod that might be useful.
Q. And this is actually what my score-geek friend wanted to know: What were those songs?
A. There were a couple of songs from Nickel Creek, whom I adore -- I love them with a fiery vengeance. There was some movie stuff: "Angela's Ashes," Elmer Bernstein's theme from "Far from Heaven" -- not because they were necessarily the right idiom, but because the themes were so incredibly indelible within the first 20 seconds, which is about as much time as I usually gave David. [laughs] They had to become indelible before there was too much going on for anybody to hear anything.
I'm gonna forget a bunch of stuff. Definitely important was "For the Turnstiles" by Neil Young, off "Decade" -- because it has this very sort of dampened banjo in it. And I played this for him particularly when we were going over it, just to say, "Look at how he's taking all the reverb off of this, and making just as sort of personal as possible." And I referred to this -- in a phrase that sort of came back to me over and over again in my discussions of scores -- as follows: What Neil Young was saying in that song was, "Fuck all y'all -- I'm on my back porch." You know, in the '70s, when a lot of stuff was getting really symphonic … he was going, "Fuck all y'all -- I'm on my back porch."
Q. That actually sums up the sensibilities of a few "Firefly" characters.
A. Yeah. It really does. And that was definitely the big one. I'm actually looking for the CD itself…. I might have it in one sec…. I'll see if I happen on it or if it's too late…. [rummaging noises] Okay … last chance … everybody in the pool.… Bupkis. Oh, well. No joy.
Q. That's okay. I think the fan base is going to have a lot to chew on just from what you told me.
A. Well, there was a lot of different stuff. I think there was the third movement of the Mendelssohn concerto that Sarah Chang played? It was either Mendelssohn or Sibelius -- I'm don't know which one I used. Because, you know, I love me some violins. Although, at the end of the day, it all became about cellos. The whole movie is CelloFest 2005. Be there!
If I remember another, I'll shout it out.
Q. Yeah, just shout it out randomly, while we're talking about other stuff.
A. It happens every now and then. My brain works that way. I stop thinking about something and I remember.
Q. Musical Tourette's. It will be good. Now, the plot --
A. Oh. I know one. It was "Poems" from "Pacific Overtures" by Stephen Sondheim.
Q. Oh, Sondheim. Of course.
A. Just because of the Asian thing and the simplicity of this entire song written in haiku.
Q. Mm-hm. Yeah, I'm a Sondheim fan myself.
A. Yeah. He's my guy.
Q. I'm still dying to see someone make the great film of "Sweeney Todd" that needs to be made.
A. You know, they're talking about it. But I don't get to make it, so….
____________________
IX. MR. UNIVERSE, THE 'ANGEL' TV MOVIE, and JOSS's 'SERENITY' MIX TAPE (Part 2)
IX. MR. UNIVERSE, THE 'ANGEL' TV MOVIE, and JOSS's 'SERENITY' MIX TAPE (Part 2)
Q. Now, I've written about this elsewhere, and I wanted to ask you about it: The
film's plot feels more than a little like an overt metaphor for the story of the
"Firefly" series itself: The crew has to get a message out, and they need the
help of a guy -- Mr. Universe, whom I'd argue is a stand in for the fans -- who
lives alone with his bank of computers. Was that in any way a conscious
decision?
A. It absolutely was not.
Q. Really.
A. But I read it, and I think I read it in your article -- and I was like, "God damn! You're right!"
Q. And that was a totally unconscious thing.
A. It was totally unconscious. I created Mr. Universe because I needed a place for the final battle -- and getting the message out was a way to have a final victory that wasn't, you know, "Hey, we blew up the bad guys! Yub-yub!"
Q. "Yub-yub!" [cackles]
A. Oh, believe me -- we spoke much of "the Yub" in editing. But no -- I wasn't thinking of that at all.
It's funny, because recently I was talking about the last season of "Angel," and the non-cliffhanger that people gave me so much flak for. And I'd always said, "The whole point of the thing was that the fight wasn't over yet." And then it occurred to me that you could do the same thing there [with "Angel"] and say, "Well, the circumstance of the thing was also a way of saying, 'The show isn't over yet, fucker!'" But I never thought of that at the time. But it really lays itself out that way -- as to say, "We're not finished. We've got a lot to say. So we're not going to finish saying it."
Q. Well, now, Tim Minear's doing a Spike TV-movie, right?
A. That's the hope. I haven't put anything together yet; I'm just trying to line people up.
Q. I think Buffyverse fans are waiting with baited breath to find out exactly how that battle in "Angel"'s finale went. Will the TV movie tell us?
A. Uh, if there's -- I believe yes. You will finally find out what happened -- who lived, who died, who lost one arm or two legs, who was supposed to be the Chosen One but went over to the Dark Side. All that stuff.
Q. Fantastic.
A. And I actually did find the CD. So let's see what else is on here's that’s of interest: Jill Sobule, some Hans Zimmer, Ian Ritchie, Tracy Chapman, some Indigo Girls -- oh, and "God's Song" by Randy Newman. And then it ends with "Black Peter" by the Grateful Dead.
And so you're thinking, "Hm, that's some '70s vibe there."
Q. [laughs] There is a strong '70s vibe.
A. The early '70s, too. And a lot of earthy girl-rock, because I'm me. But it is a very kind of homey and huge '70s-Western influence. And to take a few really dense orchestral pieces and take something sort of down-homey -- "I'm on my back porch!" -- and put the two of them together was really sort of the mission statement for David. Which I think he accomplished in kind of an amazing way.
Q. Yeah, Newman pulled it off really well.
A. He really did. He can make with the pretty and with the eerie -- and he can be as specific as the old school. I mean, so many of the new school [produce] that sort of Zimmer "wall of sound" -- which is great for writing, because you just put it on and you emote for the entire track; it's not a specific emotion, it's just all very portentous. And David can write stuff that is as specific to the moment as the stuff that John Williams does, or some of the old-school composers -- but without calling attention to himself.
Q. And he rolled in a lot of Eastern flavors without it sounding like yet another "Fifth Element" pastiche.
A. Exactly. And it’s tough. You've got to do the East without the tourist's bazaar we've all visited.
Q. Right. Without the Putumayo vibe.
A. And you've got to do the West without sounding like "Sons of the Pioneers" or some dreadful pastiche. And there's not a lot of precedent for mixing the two that fluidly -- like, without just announcing it. The closest we came when looking for temp scores? "Shanghai Noon." And that was making a point of "This is the West! This is the East! This is the West! This is the East!" -- where we were trying to say, "This is all just happening." But, because I'm obsessed with the frontier thing, all the instruments being the ones they can carry. That's why I want to keep the mandolins and the guitar and the cello and the more sort of spare, old-fashioned instruments without falling into goofy-hood.
A. It absolutely was not.
Q. Really.
A. But I read it, and I think I read it in your article -- and I was like, "God damn! You're right!"
Q. And that was a totally unconscious thing.
A. It was totally unconscious. I created Mr. Universe because I needed a place for the final battle -- and getting the message out was a way to have a final victory that wasn't, you know, "Hey, we blew up the bad guys! Yub-yub!"
Q. "Yub-yub!" [cackles]
A. Oh, believe me -- we spoke much of "the Yub" in editing. But no -- I wasn't thinking of that at all.
It's funny, because recently I was talking about the last season of "Angel," and the non-cliffhanger that people gave me so much flak for. And I'd always said, "The whole point of the thing was that the fight wasn't over yet." And then it occurred to me that you could do the same thing there [with "Angel"] and say, "Well, the circumstance of the thing was also a way of saying, 'The show isn't over yet, fucker!'" But I never thought of that at the time. But it really lays itself out that way -- as to say, "We're not finished. We've got a lot to say. So we're not going to finish saying it."
Q. Well, now, Tim Minear's doing a Spike TV-movie, right?
A. That's the hope. I haven't put anything together yet; I'm just trying to line people up.
Q. I think Buffyverse fans are waiting with baited breath to find out exactly how that battle in "Angel"'s finale went. Will the TV movie tell us?
A. Uh, if there's -- I believe yes. You will finally find out what happened -- who lived, who died, who lost one arm or two legs, who was supposed to be the Chosen One but went over to the Dark Side. All that stuff.
Q. Fantastic.
A. And I actually did find the CD. So let's see what else is on here's that’s of interest: Jill Sobule, some Hans Zimmer, Ian Ritchie, Tracy Chapman, some Indigo Girls -- oh, and "God's Song" by Randy Newman. And then it ends with "Black Peter" by the Grateful Dead.
And so you're thinking, "Hm, that's some '70s vibe there."
Q. [laughs] There is a strong '70s vibe.
A. The early '70s, too. And a lot of earthy girl-rock, because I'm me. But it is a very kind of homey and huge '70s-Western influence. And to take a few really dense orchestral pieces and take something sort of down-homey -- "I'm on my back porch!" -- and put the two of them together was really sort of the mission statement for David. Which I think he accomplished in kind of an amazing way.
Q. Yeah, Newman pulled it off really well.
A. He really did. He can make with the pretty and with the eerie -- and he can be as specific as the old school. I mean, so many of the new school [produce] that sort of Zimmer "wall of sound" -- which is great for writing, because you just put it on and you emote for the entire track; it's not a specific emotion, it's just all very portentous. And David can write stuff that is as specific to the moment as the stuff that John Williams does, or some of the old-school composers -- but without calling attention to himself.
Q. And he rolled in a lot of Eastern flavors without it sounding like yet another "Fifth Element" pastiche.
A. Exactly. And it’s tough. You've got to do the East without the tourist's bazaar we've all visited.
Q. Right. Without the Putumayo vibe.
A. And you've got to do the West without sounding like "Sons of the Pioneers" or some dreadful pastiche. And there's not a lot of precedent for mixing the two that fluidly -- like, without just announcing it. The closest we came when looking for temp scores? "Shanghai Noon." And that was making a point of "This is the West! This is the East! This is the West! This is the East!" -- where we were trying to say, "This is all just happening." But, because I'm obsessed with the frontier thing, all the instruments being the ones they can carry. That's why I want to keep the mandolins and the guitar and the cello and the more sort of spare, old-fashioned instruments without falling into goofy-hood.
____________________
X. 'SERENITY''s FUTURE and JOSS's COMMANDMENTS
Q. Now, let's suppose that "Serenity" finds
its audience and there's a chance to make another film or, God forbid, return to
television. Would it be a prequel, as I heard Chris Buchanan hint at one of the
fan screenings, or would it continue the story from where we left
off?
A. I would tend to continue from where I left off. That doesn't mean…. I think what Chris Buchanan was probably saying was that, you know, we would get everybody -- and I obviously don't want to get all spoiler-y --
Q. Right. I know.
A. But things that seemed irrevocable, uh, well, are -- but the movie itself already has a bit of a flashback structure, and the show had it, as well. And I think there's ways to weave in important character pieces without ruining the momentum of a sequel that would, in fact, pick up from where this left off.
I'm not a prequel buff. I don't want to see "Mal and Zoe: The Early Years" with William Katt and Tom Berenger. I mean, I do. But I'm more interested in the consequences of what has come. Because the audience has experienced it. And for me, the audience experience is the other experience -- if the people in the movie aren't going through what the audience is going through, then I'm doing something wrong. And the audience -- assuming you have a sequel -- has seen the first one. So they've lived through it. And if the characters haven't, there's a disassociation that I don't think you can ever buy back.
Q. Absolutely. Now, I'm sure you've seen that shirt that says "Joss Whedon Is My Master Now" in a Star Wars font. So let's say you are their master. What are your marching orders?
A. I'm thinking that I'd like them to sit … and possibly roll over. This shirt's just hilarious. My marching orders do not exist. If I start pretending that I am in charge of anybody, then madness will surely follow -- or, perhaps I should say, make itself more visible.
I would love to say, "Everybody run and tell everybody about the movie!" -- but I think they get that I want them to do that. That's already done. And I don't want to say it ad nauseam, because I don't think I am actually anybody's "master." I am the fan that gets to have the most fun. I get to walk the set every day. I totally get to be there when the story's broken. I get to do all of the fun bits. Every day is fan day for me. That's who I am. I'm the fan that got the closest. And I don't think about a master relationship.
Q. Well, and the danger with genre creators, particularly because they tend to develop very rabid fans, is that you get so into managing your fiefdom -- and I'm certainly not talking about John Byrne at all -- that you lose touch with whatever made what you were working on special to begin with.
A. Yeah. I mean, it's the finest line you ever have to walk -- because you spend your entire artistic life trying to get to a place where you have absolute control over your work and can say exactly what you're trying to say the way you want to say it. And in order to do that, you have to get through so much oppression and nonsense and pain. But once you do it, you're instantly in danger of becoming hermetically sealed and cut off from anyone around you. And so you have to walk this incredibly fine line where you get as much control as you possibly can and then always know that while you have it, you have to be in the world, listening to the people around you and learning from the experiences you're having -- and not just sort of swimming around in your power.
And it's hard. I mean, you see a lot of great artists who finally realize their dream and…. You know, I think it's no coincidence that very often, when a person makes their most personal film -- you know, the one they got in movies to make -- it's their worst. It's like you have to serve a master of your own -- and that's the audience.
And the way I work is through connection with the audience. The way I work is through the audience going, "That's me! I'm doing that! I feel that!" And so if I lose that, then I'm useless.
And I think at some point I may become useless, anyway: The things I have to say will no longer be things that people need to hear -- either because I've accomplished what I set out to accomplish and created a new genre paradigm with characters -- where people go, "Okay -- now we accept the strong women, and the morals click, and you're just sort of doing this over and over again." I might become the old guy. But I hope that if I do, I become the old guy who … realizes it. [laughs]
Q. Well, you have a couple of different media you can retreat into if that happens. I mean, you may be the first director to have the latest issue of his comic book come out the same week as his feature-film debut.
A. It's pretty cool. It's pretty cool. I ain't lyin'.
A. I would tend to continue from where I left off. That doesn't mean…. I think what Chris Buchanan was probably saying was that, you know, we would get everybody -- and I obviously don't want to get all spoiler-y --
Q. Right. I know.
A. But things that seemed irrevocable, uh, well, are -- but the movie itself already has a bit of a flashback structure, and the show had it, as well. And I think there's ways to weave in important character pieces without ruining the momentum of a sequel that would, in fact, pick up from where this left off.
I'm not a prequel buff. I don't want to see "Mal and Zoe: The Early Years" with William Katt and Tom Berenger. I mean, I do. But I'm more interested in the consequences of what has come. Because the audience has experienced it. And for me, the audience experience is the other experience -- if the people in the movie aren't going through what the audience is going through, then I'm doing something wrong. And the audience -- assuming you have a sequel -- has seen the first one. So they've lived through it. And if the characters haven't, there's a disassociation that I don't think you can ever buy back.
Q. Absolutely. Now, I'm sure you've seen that shirt that says "Joss Whedon Is My Master Now" in a Star Wars font. So let's say you are their master. What are your marching orders?
A. I'm thinking that I'd like them to sit … and possibly roll over. This shirt's just hilarious. My marching orders do not exist. If I start pretending that I am in charge of anybody, then madness will surely follow -- or, perhaps I should say, make itself more visible.
I would love to say, "Everybody run and tell everybody about the movie!" -- but I think they get that I want them to do that. That's already done. And I don't want to say it ad nauseam, because I don't think I am actually anybody's "master." I am the fan that gets to have the most fun. I get to walk the set every day. I totally get to be there when the story's broken. I get to do all of the fun bits. Every day is fan day for me. That's who I am. I'm the fan that got the closest. And I don't think about a master relationship.
Q. Well, and the danger with genre creators, particularly because they tend to develop very rabid fans, is that you get so into managing your fiefdom -- and I'm certainly not talking about John Byrne at all -- that you lose touch with whatever made what you were working on special to begin with.
A. Yeah. I mean, it's the finest line you ever have to walk -- because you spend your entire artistic life trying to get to a place where you have absolute control over your work and can say exactly what you're trying to say the way you want to say it. And in order to do that, you have to get through so much oppression and nonsense and pain. But once you do it, you're instantly in danger of becoming hermetically sealed and cut off from anyone around you. And so you have to walk this incredibly fine line where you get as much control as you possibly can and then always know that while you have it, you have to be in the world, listening to the people around you and learning from the experiences you're having -- and not just sort of swimming around in your power.
And it's hard. I mean, you see a lot of great artists who finally realize their dream and…. You know, I think it's no coincidence that very often, when a person makes their most personal film -- you know, the one they got in movies to make -- it's their worst. It's like you have to serve a master of your own -- and that's the audience.
And the way I work is through connection with the audience. The way I work is through the audience going, "That's me! I'm doing that! I feel that!" And so if I lose that, then I'm useless.
And I think at some point I may become useless, anyway: The things I have to say will no longer be things that people need to hear -- either because I've accomplished what I set out to accomplish and created a new genre paradigm with characters -- where people go, "Okay -- now we accept the strong women, and the morals click, and you're just sort of doing this over and over again." I might become the old guy. But I hope that if I do, I become the old guy who … realizes it. [laughs]
Q. Well, you have a couple of different media you can retreat into if that happens. I mean, you may be the first director to have the latest issue of his comic book come out the same week as his feature-film debut.
A. It's pretty cool. It's pretty cool. I ain't lyin'.
____________________
XI. 'EXCLUSION BOTHERS ME'
Q. You did something very gutsy with
"Serenity" -- you actually tried to make, without apology, a movie that will
satisfy fans
and
newbies. Most filmmakers in your situation will either dilute their film
shamelessly or proudly (and sort of suicidally) declare that they don't care
about pleasing anyone but their core
audience.
A. Well, if I didn't care about pleasing anyone but their core audience…. First of all, Universal would have run like bunnies. [laughs] And wisely.
I mean, the trick, the difficulty of the thing, was pleasing and honoring the fans. That was very important to me. But at the end of the day, if I'm not making a movie for everybody, then I don't get it. I don't like clubs with exclusive rooms, okay? They bother me. Exclusion bothers me on a very, very primal level. And if I'm making a movie that deliberately isn't talking to anybody who walks into it, then "I've lost the mission, bro," as we used to say.
So inevitably, what I'm trying to do is please and excite and delight people, and possibly make them think -- but not so much that their heads hurt. I slip in something that makes them go, "Because I understand this experience, and I enjoyed it, and I identified with it, here are the things I'm trying to say or I'm interested in. Something more than a ride happened here. I felt like I went through something." That's really important. But it's gotta be for everybody, or it really just….
It's like jazz. Jazz is really fun when it's live. But I will never listen to jazz on my iPod or anything. Because jazz is really for musicians. I'm enough of a wannabe that I can go to a jazz club and listen to it and have a great time -- but it's music about music. It was the thing that I hated about the '80s -- when everything became movies about movies. In the '70s and '80s, movies were using, as their point of reference, movies. It's one of the reasons that I was so in love with Peter Weir back in the day, because his movies evoked something very natural -- they could evoke just this overwhelming sense of being lost inside of nature and water and wheat and whatever that he seemed to have a command of that nobody else had. And he was using film to do it. And everybody else -- even Scorsese, whom I worship -- seemed to be using film to talk about film. And that led to things like "New York, New York," which is one of my favorite movies -- but it also led to a lot of self-referential bullshit, and a lot of loss of reality and humanity.
Even "Star Wars" -- the other day, I was talking about this -- really was the first movie that I can think of where it was based entirely on existing movie structures. It was one step removed. It was a story about stories. And obviously, they all are, to an extent. But I feel like, to me, that's kind of distancing; that's not what I want to be doing. What I want to be doing is just using the medium to communicate.
Q. Well, you see that happening all the time in writing now. Tom Wolfe has gone off on the fact that he thinks people should leave their Graduate Writing Programs and do some reporting when they write their novels.
A. That makes sense. It's tough. And it's tough for me, too, because I'm known as Mr. Pop Culture Reference; at the same time, that's the last person I want to be. It's one reason that I created "Firefly" -- so I no longer would be able to make any.
Q. [laughs] Right. You have to invent Fruity Oaty Bars.
A. Exactly. Which is probably the closest thing I have to a contemporary concept in the movie. And everybody does it. Shakespeare did it; there's plenty of references we're not getting. But the other stuff seems to outweigh that in his work, I've noticed. [laughs]
A. Well, if I didn't care about pleasing anyone but their core audience…. First of all, Universal would have run like bunnies. [laughs] And wisely.
I mean, the trick, the difficulty of the thing, was pleasing and honoring the fans. That was very important to me. But at the end of the day, if I'm not making a movie for everybody, then I don't get it. I don't like clubs with exclusive rooms, okay? They bother me. Exclusion bothers me on a very, very primal level. And if I'm making a movie that deliberately isn't talking to anybody who walks into it, then "I've lost the mission, bro," as we used to say.
So inevitably, what I'm trying to do is please and excite and delight people, and possibly make them think -- but not so much that their heads hurt. I slip in something that makes them go, "Because I understand this experience, and I enjoyed it, and I identified with it, here are the things I'm trying to say or I'm interested in. Something more than a ride happened here. I felt like I went through something." That's really important. But it's gotta be for everybody, or it really just….
It's like jazz. Jazz is really fun when it's live. But I will never listen to jazz on my iPod or anything. Because jazz is really for musicians. I'm enough of a wannabe that I can go to a jazz club and listen to it and have a great time -- but it's music about music. It was the thing that I hated about the '80s -- when everything became movies about movies. In the '70s and '80s, movies were using, as their point of reference, movies. It's one of the reasons that I was so in love with Peter Weir back in the day, because his movies evoked something very natural -- they could evoke just this overwhelming sense of being lost inside of nature and water and wheat and whatever that he seemed to have a command of that nobody else had. And he was using film to do it. And everybody else -- even Scorsese, whom I worship -- seemed to be using film to talk about film. And that led to things like "New York, New York," which is one of my favorite movies -- but it also led to a lot of self-referential bullshit, and a lot of loss of reality and humanity.
Even "Star Wars" -- the other day, I was talking about this -- really was the first movie that I can think of where it was based entirely on existing movie structures. It was one step removed. It was a story about stories. And obviously, they all are, to an extent. But I feel like, to me, that's kind of distancing; that's not what I want to be doing. What I want to be doing is just using the medium to communicate.
Q. Well, you see that happening all the time in writing now. Tom Wolfe has gone off on the fact that he thinks people should leave their Graduate Writing Programs and do some reporting when they write their novels.
A. That makes sense. It's tough. And it's tough for me, too, because I'm known as Mr. Pop Culture Reference; at the same time, that's the last person I want to be. It's one reason that I created "Firefly" -- so I no longer would be able to make any.
Q. [laughs] Right. You have to invent Fruity Oaty Bars.
A. Exactly. Which is probably the closest thing I have to a contemporary concept in the movie. And everybody does it. Shakespeare did it; there's plenty of references we're not getting. But the other stuff seems to outweigh that in his work, I've noticed. [laughs]
____________________
XII. THE COMIC BOOK and the RELAXED STUDIO
XII. THE COMIC BOOK and the RELAXED STUDIO
Q. Now, you've said you had at least 100
stories to tell with these characters. And I know you've said the film
compressed two or three years of a "Firefly" story arc. But what are a couple of
the cool side stories we never got to
see?
A. I'm not gonna tell you! Because God willin' and the creek don't rise, I might get a chance to tell some of them…. I have plenty of ideas as to which ones they might be. Some of them will never be told, because it's too painful that I could never tell them, because they really belonged to the series. Some of them may find themselves being told in a sequel. So mum's the word from me. You'll have to take my word for it.
Q. Well, the "Serenity" comic resurrected what I presume was an idea for the TV series -- where you brought back Agent Dobson from the pilot episode, and he's got one eye and he's psychotic.
A. Yeah. I would have done that on the series. I love Carlos [Jacott, who played Dobson in the TV episode].
Q. He's always got this great look of wounded dignity to him.
A. He's one of the guys I can always count on -- and just about the funniest man on the planet.
Q. Now, that comic has been a surprise blockbuster.
A. It's done well.
Q. I know it's on its third order at my local comic-book shop.
A. I felt like it was kind of an event, and I worked really hard on the story, we got really good people working on it, and we got all the best artists in the business to do all these covers. I wanted it to be more than a comic -- I wanted it to be a collector's item. But then people were really happy about the story and the contents as well.
Dark Horse told me they underestimated the first printing -- but now, here we are with a third? That's pretty sweet. If you think of the number of fans of the DVD, comic-book numbers are smaller. They work on a different scale. So I don't think it's totally shocking that we managed to make a splash -- it's very gratifying -- but at the end of the day, comic books are a smaller pond. So we have become, if not a whale, then a shark.
Q. When Chris Buchanan was here for a "Serenity" preview screening, he seemed pretty gee-whiz about the whole production experience. In fact, he told a story about your stage being right next to the executive offices, and executives just walking by and saying, "Hey! Let us know if you need anything!"
A. Yeah.
Q. Did you ever feel like you were getting away with murder?
A. No. It felt like we were getting away with a movie -- which, in this town….
You know, I've murdered lots of people, and really? Nobody cares. But trying to actually make a movie? People really get upset, and they want to get involved, and they want to mess it up. And not only did [Universal] not mess it up, but they were incredibly helpful. Like, when we were in the testing process, they had level heads, they had good ideas, they understood where the audience was not getting what we needed. And yes -- when we were shooting, they were like, "We love your dailies. You’re making your days." They literally came by and said, "We're just resting on our way to another movie." And I think they stopped by twice.
As a youth, what I wanted to do with my life was make summer movies for a studio. In this case, I'm near my goal -- I'm making early-fall movies for a studio. I want to make movies that please people, that are exciting, that are meaningful and visceral, and that studios can be proud of. I didn't want to make highbrow think pieces. So all I've ever asked is that [the studios] let me do for them what I wanted -- what I think will be best for them.
So many times, I've run up against people who are like, "Well, we've got another agenda." And I'm like, "My agenda will make you richer! I want to reach more people with this thing that will be better!" And I don't mean to sound like I'm all that, but I've dealt with some pretty amazingly stupid situations. And so for a studio to just go, "Yeah, we believe in your story, and you're doing it for the budget; godspeed!" -- shouldn't be an amazing experience. But it sure was.
A. I'm not gonna tell you! Because God willin' and the creek don't rise, I might get a chance to tell some of them…. I have plenty of ideas as to which ones they might be. Some of them will never be told, because it's too painful that I could never tell them, because they really belonged to the series. Some of them may find themselves being told in a sequel. So mum's the word from me. You'll have to take my word for it.
Q. Well, the "Serenity" comic resurrected what I presume was an idea for the TV series -- where you brought back Agent Dobson from the pilot episode, and he's got one eye and he's psychotic.
A. Yeah. I would have done that on the series. I love Carlos [Jacott, who played Dobson in the TV episode].
Q. He's always got this great look of wounded dignity to him.
A. He's one of the guys I can always count on -- and just about the funniest man on the planet.
Q. Now, that comic has been a surprise blockbuster.
A. It's done well.
Q. I know it's on its third order at my local comic-book shop.
A. I felt like it was kind of an event, and I worked really hard on the story, we got really good people working on it, and we got all the best artists in the business to do all these covers. I wanted it to be more than a comic -- I wanted it to be a collector's item. But then people were really happy about the story and the contents as well.
Dark Horse told me they underestimated the first printing -- but now, here we are with a third? That's pretty sweet. If you think of the number of fans of the DVD, comic-book numbers are smaller. They work on a different scale. So I don't think it's totally shocking that we managed to make a splash -- it's very gratifying -- but at the end of the day, comic books are a smaller pond. So we have become, if not a whale, then a shark.
Q. When Chris Buchanan was here for a "Serenity" preview screening, he seemed pretty gee-whiz about the whole production experience. In fact, he told a story about your stage being right next to the executive offices, and executives just walking by and saying, "Hey! Let us know if you need anything!"
A. Yeah.
Q. Did you ever feel like you were getting away with murder?
A. No. It felt like we were getting away with a movie -- which, in this town….
You know, I've murdered lots of people, and really? Nobody cares. But trying to actually make a movie? People really get upset, and they want to get involved, and they want to mess it up. And not only did [Universal] not mess it up, but they were incredibly helpful. Like, when we were in the testing process, they had level heads, they had good ideas, they understood where the audience was not getting what we needed. And yes -- when we were shooting, they were like, "We love your dailies. You’re making your days." They literally came by and said, "We're just resting on our way to another movie." And I think they stopped by twice.
As a youth, what I wanted to do with my life was make summer movies for a studio. In this case, I'm near my goal -- I'm making early-fall movies for a studio. I want to make movies that please people, that are exciting, that are meaningful and visceral, and that studios can be proud of. I didn't want to make highbrow think pieces. So all I've ever asked is that [the studios] let me do for them what I wanted -- what I think will be best for them.
So many times, I've run up against people who are like, "Well, we've got another agenda." And I'm like, "My agenda will make you richer! I want to reach more people with this thing that will be better!" And I don't mean to sound like I'm all that, but I've dealt with some pretty amazingly stupid situations. And so for a studio to just go, "Yeah, we believe in your story, and you're doing it for the budget; godspeed!" -- shouldn't be an amazing experience. But it sure was.
Posted: Sat - September 24, 2005 at 12:22 PM
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