Joss Whedon: The Genius Behind Buffy

by Havens, Candace

  HAVENS: Have you met him and what was that like?

  HIRSH: I’ve met Joss twice. Both times, it was exhilarating. I found myself giggling afterwards. Joss made me feel at ease, even amidst my fangirl excitement. It’s so easy to converse with him. His conversation is quick-paced and witty, but not pretentious. He is considerate of his fans. And most importantly, he is real. He is a very real human, with both good points and flaws.

  HAVENS: Would you consider Joss to be as talented as someone like Steven Spielberg?

  HIRSH: I think Joss is a better storyteller than Spielberg. While his visuals aren’t as striking, this may be because Spielberg usually has a significantly larger budget than Joss does. Where Spielberg typically strives for a happy ending, Joss never fears leaving his audience with an unsettling thought or image. Joss’s work seems to have a deeper intertextuality to it, calling on ancient mythology and modern pop culture, all while telling a story about realistic people encountering situations which may seem fantastical but always are rooted in some emotional reality.

  HAVENS: What is it that you think makes Joss, well, Joss?

  HIRSH: What makes Joss Joss? Hmmm. Again, I can’t emphasize his unique use of language enough. His understanding of human emotion. His awareness of the fact that his fans aren’t rabid freaks, but rather people who truly admire his work.

  The perfectionist side of Joss is something his former professor understands. “I see it as a good thing,” Professor Basinger says of Joss’s excessive need to make things right. “I never thought of him as an obsessive personality, though. Joss is in many ways both very tense and very laid back. He was not someone at my door banging on it and screaming, ‘What am I going to do next week?’ But at the same time he wanted everything to be right. He wanted it to be the best he could make it. He didn’t make his desire for the project to be the best it could be someone else’s problem, ever. I think that is what bad perfectionists do. They punish all the rest of us. But Joss has never been like that.

  “There’s a story I tell that [exemplifies] that. Frank Capra, who was a good friend of mine, was here at Wesleyan to visit my comedy class. He was about eighty-three. I showed Mr. Smith Goes to Washington, and it was a beautiful day, and he strolled out on the campus while the film was running. When it got near the end, he came into the booth where I was to just see how it was going. He stood looking and was watching the big breakdown scene with Jimmy Stewart. By anybody’s standards it is one of the greatest scenes in movie history. It’s beautifully shot and cut. It’s beautifully performed and written. All of a sudden, he gets upset and he runs outside, fuming. I ran after him and asked what was wrong. He said, ‘I shouldn’t have done it that way. It could have been better.’

  “We are dealing with a rare breed when we are dealing with these guys. They are happy but there is always the sense that maybe I could have done it better. That’s what makes them great. Yes, he’ll be happy but not 100 percent.”

  Writing Comes First

  The final, most important element to Buffy’s success is great writing. Much of this is generated by Joss himself, who, despite his many talents, still finds his greatest pleasure in sitting down and writing. One of Joss’s most impressive assets is his ability to write quickly and well.

  “We have so much to do that it doesn’t really give you time for writer’s block,” says Whedon. “There are times when I sit and stare at a blank piece of paper for a few minutes but it doesn’t last long. Most of the time I’m looking at things in arcs and I’m looking for what will move the story along and make the characters as interesting as possible.”

  “He is one of the busiest people I know,” says Buffy executive producer Marti Noxon, “and he loves it. His brain just doesn’t work like the rest of us mortals. He can write something in a few minutes that would take someone else a week to do, and it will be fantastic. We’ll sit down for an hour meeting and you would be amazed by how much he can do during that time.”

  It’s clear that Joss is a brilliant writer, but no writer, however talented, can write twenty-two episodes a year. First and foremost, Joss had to attract and develop a team of talented writers. While he does a great deal on his own, Whedon is the first to admit that the shows are a collaborative effort. “I don’t want it to sound like I don’t listen to suggestions from the other writers, because I do. We have a great staff of creative people here who come up with some incredible ideas and they know these characters like their own family-probably better than their own families. We sit and talk about things during the hiatus and we work things out. When you are filming the shows, it’s always too busy to take the time you need to really work out the details, so we do it in the spring and summer.”

  When he has the time, he powwows with the writers to better flesh out the stories for the upcoming year. Before the season begins, the main villains are set and the story arcs are decided. As the series progresses, the stories are written and Joss continues to keep his hand in every episode.

  Whedon also knows the strengths of his writing and directing staff, which writer is best for a particular story and who should direct. There are certain writers who have the voice of a certain character down to a science. If that character is featured in a specific episode, then Joss tries to match them up to the best of his ability.

  Joss has learned to leverage himself while inspiring his team. “When I get together with my writing team, I ask them, What is your favorite horror movie? What is the most embarrassing thing that ever happened to you? Now, how can we combine the two?”

  His brain just doesn’t work like the rest of us mortals.

  —Marti Noxon

  Crucial to this organization is Joss’s Buffy “Bible,” which outlines the season. In season one, for example, Whedon had set the story arcs for the series and plotted the path for the main characters. At that point, he opened the creative process to other writers. The writing team, including Dana Reston, David Greenwalt, Rob Des Hotel, Dean Batali, Matt Kiene, and Joss Reinkemyer, had a plethora of stories to share. Joss soon knew they were all headed in the right direction. Whedon wrote the first two episodes of the season and then worked with this group of writers on the remaining ten.

  “We all had ideas that seemed really scary,” says Whedon, “but they wouldn’t work until we could find the heart of the story. That part of my life was straight out of Dickens, who is one of my favorite writers. It was the best of times and it was the worst of times.”

  Balance between the various themes of the show can be difficult at times. “When you are working through that creative process, you can easily fall too heavy one way or another. It’s a constant battle between the dark and the light,” says Whedon. “We work hard to find a balance between the comedy, action, and horror of the show. And action and horror are actually more antithetical than comedy and horror, really, because horror is so much about not being in control of your environment. And in a way, comedy can be the same thing.

  “Whereas with action–Buffy is a hero, she’s somebody who really takes control of her environment. It’s difficult to maintain that balance. But when it works, they really do mesh. Blood is kept to a minimum. The vampires disappear when you stake them and most of the monsters melt into the ground. It’s a very environmentally conscious show,” laughs the producer.

  From the beginning, he wanted the audience to trust the core characters and that meant making sure each had a rich history from which to draw. “And what’s fun about the show is, we never know from scene to scene which way it is going to go,” Whedon tells. “A scene that starts out very dramatically could end up quite funny, or something truly horrible could happen in it. So it’s not sort of, oh, here’s the funny part, here’s the scary part; we really never know what’s going to be highlighted.”

  Whedon was more surprised than anyone that the WB let him get away with his style of storytelling. From the beginning, the network let Joss do what he felt was needed. There were a few arguments with Standards and Practices abo
ut certain jokes and some of the sexuality, but for the most part he was able to get away with, well, murder.

  “We have had a long and good relationship with the network,” says Whedon, “and they believed in what we were trying to do. We really couldn’t have asked for more support in the beginning. This was a tough show to support and there really wasn’t anything like it. Fox was doing the scary thing with The X-Files, but our show is more of a reach in a lot of ways. It wasn’t easy to promote or market . . . It’s an edgy show and unconventional.

  “It’s strange how all the pieces fall together for some shows and not others. I can’t explain why, but sometimes it just works.”

  It certainly does work, and Whedon and his team have managed to integrate these seven elements to create a fan base whose size and enthusiasm haven’t been matched since the early days of Star Trek.

  5

  Seven Seasons of Buffy

  “My girlfriend’s been dead for like six episodes and she keeps coming back. I dont think dying means a whole lot on this show. Maybe on ER.”

  —Adam Busch

  For seven seasons, Buffy the Vampire Slayer has enthralled, delighted and infuriated fans. For all the variety of Joss Whedon’s projects, the seven seasons of Buffy remain Joss’ most influential and important body of work to date. This chapter explores, season by season, the process by which Joss developed his masterwork over the years. Focus is on the overall story arcs developed by Whedon and on the specific episodes that he wrote and directed.

  Season one

  As a midseason replacement show, Buffy was given the go ahead to create twelve episodes in the first season (as opposed to the usual 22 for a full season). Its renewal far from assured, Joss created a self-contained story arc twelve episodes long, beginning with Buffy’s arrival in a new school and concluding with Buffy’s final confrontation with the Master in episode twelve.

  The opening two-parter, Welcome to the Hellmouth and The Harvest, was written by Whedon, who painstakingly oversaw every aspect of its production. Combined, these episodes make up almost ninety minutes of television and were an opportunity, in a sense, to remake the Buffy movie and do it right. Whedon, who had become accustomed to writing for big-budget movies, had to adjust to the limitations of his budget. On the Buffy season one DVD, Whedon talks the listener through the making of these first two episodes. What comes across most powerfully is Joss’s continual realization that his big budget ideas would have to give way to the reality of his limited means.

  But he didn’t chafe under these restrictions; he almost seemed to welcome them. He quickly found that a small budget he could control was far better than an enormous budget that he couldn’t. And Joss’s focus on story and character made the budget limitations less important. He made the best of it, even declaring the small budget to be an asset to the show. “There’s this thing called a budget you have to work and I think it makes you much more creative when you have a small one to work with. It forces you to concentrate on the story. I say this all the time but usually one or two vampires will work just as well as 100 if the story is good.”

  These two episodes embody almost everything Whedon was trying to accomplish with Buffy. These episodes succeed at what he calls his “genre-busting mission,” successfully integrating horror, comedy, drama and action. He was determined to continually undermine convention and surprise the viewer. He began the series with the classic scene of a vampire luring an innocent blond to her doom, only to have the viewer realize that the blond (Darla) is the vampire!

  The core of the show was built around the four main characters. While Buffy is the main character, the three other leads in season one are strong, nuanced characters. Giles, the stuffy watcher, is brave, loving and with a mysterious past of his own. Willow is her geeky best friend who grows increasingly less geeky and more powerful over the course of the series. Xander (Nicholas Brendan) is equally complex, equal parts brave and buffoonish, wise and foolish.

  Jesse, Xander’s best friend, is introduced as one of the original gang. When the vampires attack, Jesse is captured and held hostage as bait for the others. This is the normal convention in television action shows. The main characters can’t die, so the villains find some excuse not to kill them (this sort of thing drives Joss crazy; “kill them already” he cries). But Joss was just pretending; the vampires have killed Jesse (they’ve made him into a vampire) and ultimately Xander will have to stake, if accidentally, his best friend. Joss wanted to include Jesse in the opening credits to increase the shock factor, but he didn’t have the budget to produce two opening scenes.

  The season one Buffy cast, from the days when all they had to worry about were vampires and bug ladies.

  The next nine episodes, while continuing the story arc launched in the two-parter, were designed as self-contained episodes. Each presented a stand-alone plot, complete with its own villain and tidy resolution at the conclusion. Buffy fought and defeated witches, demon robots, bug ladies, hyena spirits and invisible girls. The first season, while not always holding to the quality level of the pilot episodes, was strong and began to build enthusiasm among both critics and fans.

  Joss didn’t direct any of these first eleven episodes. He probably would have liked to but his miserable experience creating the pilot convinced him he still had a lot to learn. And he was determined to learn it, despite the fact that Hollywood doesn’t particularly support writers who aspire to direct. “Part of the reason I made the TV show Buffy is because as a writer—even a successful one—in Hollywood, when you say you want to direct movies, they’re appalled. They look like, ‘Do you kill babies?’ I mean, they’re just shocked. ‘What? You want to what?’ ‘I’m a storyteller. I want to tell stories. I want to direct.’ ‘Uh, I don’t get it. You want to what?’ And people actually said to me, ‘Well, if you’d directed a video.’ I’m like, just once, somebody please say to a video director, ‘Well, if you’d written a script. If you just knew how to tell a story’ Not that all writers can direct, or should, or want to. I’m sure a lot of writers want to direct because they’re bitter, which is not a reason to direct. I want to speak visually, and writing is just a way of communicating visually. That’s what it’s all about. But nobody would even consider me to direct. So I said, ‘I’ll create a television show, and I’ll use it as a film school, and I’ll teach myself to direct on TV.’”

  By episode twelve Joss was ready and he wrote and directed Prophecy Girl, the season one finale. From this point on Joss would direct every episode he wrote (excepting a few episodes he co-wrote with David Greenwalt). Prophecy Girl was an important episode for the new program. The first eleven episodes were, as a whole, excellent television. But Prophecy Girl was a masterpiece, wonderfully written and tightly constructed. It’s easy to forget how much Whedon packed into this 40-odd minutes of television: the resolution of Xander’s season long infatuation with Buffy, the elevating of Willow to a new level of pathos after she discovers the student corpses, the shifting of Cordelia from bitch-goddess to semi-Scooby, and, of course, Buffy’s death and the defeat of the Master.

  But Prophecy Girl is most notable for the emotional intensity of the script and of Sarah Michelle Gellar’s Buffy. After eleven episodes of heroism, defeating witches and bug ladies, demon robots and invisible girls, Joss took Buffy to a new place. He created a situation in which Buffy, genuinely courageous, is overwhelmed with fear. This is a place few action writers have gone. Can you imagine Batman hysterical with fear? But Whedon did this quite deliberately, because he wanted the audience to remember that Buffy is a sixteen-year-old girl who happens to have superpowers, not a superhero that happens to reside in a sixteen-year-old girl. We admire Superman and enjoy the action, but our hearts don’t break over him, and we can’t relate to him.

  when you say you want to direct movies, they’re appalled. They look like, ‘Do you kill babies?’—Joss

  The critical scene is Buffy’s confrontation with Giles and Angel after she discovers that the prop
hecy guarantees her death in the confrontation with the Master:BUFFY: So that’s it, huh? I remember the drill. One Slayer dies, next one’s called! Wonder who she is. (to Giles) Will you train her? Or will they send someone else?

  GILES: Buffy, I . . .

  BUFFY: They say how he’s gonna kill me? Do you think it’ll hurt? Tears are flowing freely from her eyes. Angel tries to hug her, but she puts up her hands and quickly steps away.

  BUFFY: Don’t touch me! (to Giles) Were you even gonna tell me?

  GILES: I was hoping that I wouldn’t have to. That there was ... some way around it. I ...

  BUFFY: I’ve got a way around it. I quit!

  ANGEL: It’s not that simple.

  BUFFY: I’m making it that simple! I quit! I resign, I’m fired, you can find someone else to stop the Master from taking over!

  GILES: I’m not sure that anyone else can. All the signs indicate . . .

  BUFFY: The signs? (throws a book at him) Read me the signs! (throws another one) Tell me my fortune! You’re so useful sitting here with all your books. You’re really a lotta help!

  GILES: No, I don’t suppose I am.

  ANGEL: I know this is hard.

  BUFFY: What do you know about this? You’re never gonna die!

  ANGEL: You think I want anything to happen to you? Do you think I could stand it? We just gotta figure out a way...