Joss Whedon - Geek King of the Universe (book)

[Taake]

So, I noted that one of my online services had Amy Pascale's book Joss Whedon - Geek King of the Universe, one of those unauthorized biographies I guess. But I started reading it and thought it'd fun to post some Buffyverse related points to talk about.

Trivia:

• Joan Chen of Twin Peaks was supposed to play Amilyn in the Buffy movie. Queen! I can't believe this didn't happen. She apparently left the project over a financial dispute. She was replaced with Paul Reubens because he needed a new movie to eh, somewhat redeem his public image I guess after exposing himself in an adult movie theater... well, well. (p.49)
  
  Do you guys think that Joan Chen would have been good in that role?
  
  
• Fox passed on Buffy because the concept was "too close in tone to Party of Five". (p.80)
  Do you agree? I feel like PoF was a very somber show, but it has been an age since I saw it.
  
  
• According to Joss, "TV is a question, movies are an answer" (movies tell a brief story beginning to end, TV needs to stretch it out and perhaps sustain the premise indefinitely) (p.82). A fair assessment I'd say.
  
  
• In Joss' notes for casting Giles he wrote that the character could be "British, Scottis, or West Indian, with a preference toward a 'loud, abusive Scot'" (p.84)
  They all fell head over heel for Tony Head, but hadn't he worked out, what say the crowd to the idea of a loud, abusive Scot as Buffy's watcher?

The book has a forward by Nathan Fillion where he writes:
"I described Joss to a friend as we were on our way over to his house for a party. And she's heard me tell stories over the years about this fellow. We went to his house, we had a great time, and on the way home she said, 'You know, I got to say, from your description of the kind of guy this guy is, and from all the stories you've told me - ( - insert handsome Fabio guy description - ) the guy', she said, 'when you describe him, is so heroic."
And yeah, he is. He's heroic like that."


Here is something I found interesting, in light of recent discussions of the Buffy set, Pascale quotes Joss speaking of the movie and how his vision and the Kuzuis' vision clashed, which eventually led to his more or less departure from it.

'Joss said, "Without (the Kuzuis), there would be no film... I didn't agree with the way the movie was going, but also kept my mouth shut because you respect the director... You respect the person above you, and you make suggestions and you do your best... But you don't even disrupt the chain of command."' (p.50)

also

"I have always treated film and television like the army, and I'm very strict about that." (p.50)

I just thought these quotes were interesting when one compares them to talks about Buffy being a toxic set and how SMG felt about e.g. season 6.
If one contrasts this two Fillion's rather glowing review of the guy in the foreword it got me thinking:

Were some of the Buffy-sets problems that Joss was originally working with young adult actors who followed his lead but then grew up to ask questions/make demands/basically disrespect the chain of command because it wasn't how they viewed a set should work? When it comes to Firefly, e.g., he was working with adult actors. He also had more sway himself. Is it possible that he then picked actors who understood or agreed with his mindset about how a set should work, i.e. 'you respect the person above you' and don't make too much noise?


If I continue reading there may be more to come.

 

[Buffy Summers]

I absolutely think Joan Chen would have been a great choice - but it would have changed the tone of the character I'm sure. I feel like she might have been more in line with Joss' original vision for the movie than what was made. I love Paul Reubens in it though.

Not similar in tone to Party of Five. I'm not sure I can explain why not, but it just isn't. lol

Loud abusive Scot is too cliché for my taste, but the right person could have done it, I guess. It would have made the "touching moments" have impact though, similar to how Giles' "stuffy Brit" thing breaking down was impactful.

Is it possible that he then picked actors who understood or agreed with his mindset about how a set should work, i.e. 'you respect the person above you' and don't make too much noise?

I think it's a young actors vs more established actors thing. Young actors often have an overinflated sense of their own importance, and are more difficult to work with than people who have been around and know how things work.

 

[AlphaFoxtrot]

My guess is, with Party of Five, was that Fox was only willing to devote so much airtime to teen dramas, and given the popularity of 90210 and Melrose Place, was drowning in pilots on the subject. But networks can be weird.

Firefly was one season, and nobody was forced into having an eating disorder. I'm also guessing working for Fox was a lot less grueling than working for the WB, and probably better paid as well.

 

[thrasherpix]

On a side note, this is yet another time I've come across that producers and such did not want the same formula over and over as it would get stale. Whereas today it's like pulling teeth to get it to deviate from the formula, even of a successful franchise that worked despite the formula now being, ahem, "rebooted."

I wonder about that change...and if it's elsewhere. A surprising group of people have shared how their doctors didn't even examine them (and most who do are ones reaching, or eligible, for retirement), just ask them questions which is put into the computer, and let the computer do the diagnosis based on that, even when it doesn't make sense (never mind that this makes the doctor a glorified nurse...given that nurses still take your vitals, they become closer to an actual doctor in this case!).

I was only able to get a certain library book (after it had been stolen, but not long enough for the system to list it as such) "off the books" because the computer wouldn't let them. Since the computer said they had it, and wouldn't classify it as stolen for months (despite that it clearly was), it wouldn't allow for other options "because we have it." Technically, a librarian broke the rules to get a new copy ("for a different branch") and loaned it to me before it was actually filed into the system (as that takes time as well).

People worry that computers will take over. I'm really starting to think that ship has sailed, on auto-pilot, even as we worry that they will do to us what we do to each other "when they take over" (which they pretty much already have, at least set up so the transition will be a smooth one, maybe even a perverse improvement).

 

[Plasma]

On a side note, this is yet another time I've come across that producers and such did not want the same formula over and over as it would get stale. Whereas today it's like pulling teeth to get it to deviate from the formula, even of a successful franchise that worked despite the formula now being, ahem, "rebooted."

Because there’s a lot more money involved than there used to be.

As of the writing of this, there is an estimated 200 million dollar film (Ant Man and the Wasp: Quantumania) that is part of an (at least) 37 entry-long franchise due out tomorrow. It will make hundreds of millions of dollars, if not a billion, in its theatrical run. This will be followed by two films that will have similar budgets and returns on investment that drop in May and July of this year.

For reference, Jurassic Park, the highest grossing movie of all time until Titanic came along, cost $63 million to make and made $914 million in its original theatrical run, and that was the exception to the rule. Keep in mind, that was with one of the biggest directors imaginable (Spielberg) who had proved himself a hit maker with ET & Jaws. They put all their eggs in one basket to make this work and let Spielberg and Crichton take risks, especially when it came to the CGI technology. Nowadays this sort of return on investment is commonplace, regardless of who is making the movie or what the movie even is.

The reason all of this matters is because it is WAY higher stakes now. Executives are extremely concerned about taking chances if they suspect even a mild drop in revenue. Properties are designed to be safe and not be too challenging. It’s why every Marvel movie is “good guys fight bad guy or henchmen, then need to regroup, then they beat the bad guy, hooray”. The formula exists to maximize profits and prevent losses.

As far as Buffy is concerned, the movie wasn’t really a hit. On a budget of $7 million, it only made $16 million back. They gave Joss the keys because why not, maybe he can make this work on television and if he can’t then we’ll just cancel it. (TV production costs are typically far lower than movie production costs) It was incredibly low-risk because the potential losses were negligible. They spent very little money on it…(per WhatCulture.com)

“The show…was produced by FOX for the WB. The WB had great enthusiasm for the kind of show we wanted to make, and no money of any kind whatsoever. So we were very much on a tight budget.”

The high-school scenes were particularly problematic. Throughout Season 1, Buffy and the gang often stroll through Sunnydale High, but due to the budgetary constraints, the production team only made one corridor, so the actors had to walk through the same part of the school again and again for twelve episodes.

…and could’ve easily taken the hit if it failed. Not really an option nowadays with how expensive everything is.

 

[Taake]

Funnily, in the book Pascale mentions that it wasn’t Joss who first came up with the idea to pitch Buffy the series, but the Sandollar producer Gail Berman (?). She wanted it to be a 30minute Mighty Morphin Power Rangers kind of a show, but had to check with the Kuzui’s and Whedon before proceeding, as they had first dibs on the rights.

Whedon jumped on it though (against expectations) and changed that 30-minute show to the high school is hell drama. It wasn’t until he could show how different tv-Buffy would be from movie-Buffy that Berman and networks were even remotely interested.

Understandable. I like the movie, but I can see why it was a hard sell.

 

[Stake fodder]

They all fell head over heel for Tony Head, but hadn't he worked out, what say the crowd to the idea of a loud, abusive Scot as Buffy's watcher?

This is making me think of Scotty from Star Trek as Watcher: "Buffay, ye canna change the laws of physics!"

 

[Kendar]

As far as Buffy is concerned, the movie wasn’t really a hit. On a budget of $7 million, it only made $16 million back. They gave Joss the keys because why not, maybe he can make this work on television and if he can’t then we’ll just cancel it. (TV production costs are typically far lower than movie production costs) It was incredibly low-risk because the potential losses were negligible. They spent very little money on it…(per WhatCulture.com)




…and could’ve easily taken the hit if it failed. Not really an option nowadays with how expensive everything is.

Not even that much. Typically the studio only gets about 50% of the domestic box office and about 15% of the foreign box office. Buffy's $16 mil was all domestic, so the studio would have gotten about $8 mil back, or only $1 mil in profit. And production budget does NOT include advertising. So in the black, but only barely.

 

[RonWesley]

Why the heck would anyone want to replace Anthony Head as Giles ?

About a rude watcher, that wouldnt end well. For the watcher.

 

[Taake]

More from the book:

• The network programmers who received the first pilot presentation were a bit underwhelmed, Garth Ancier said "it was not great" and that they had gotten better pilots that year, while Susanne DAniels said that "Sarah Michelle Gellar shined in his pilot presentation as Buffy, and was endearing and fascinating and someone I wanted to go on a ride with, and see what was going to happen with the character and how" but also that she found the world building "messy". (89)

Essentially Gail Berman had to be a bit of a nag for them to eventually go, all right, yeah, let's give it a try.

• Includes a cute quote from SMG where she says that "I'm no more Buffy than I am Cordelia than I am Willow than I am Xander, I'm parts of all of them" (90)

• It also includes a quote from her where she says that Joss is "more of a girl's guy than a guy's guy, and he understands women, there's not a lot of male writers that have the respect for women that he does when writing them. this is still a man's world and most of the writers are men, and the characters sometimes feel stiff, one-dimensional. That's where his strenght really lies - increating these female characters because he respects them" (90)

And this is where I started to wish for a more detailed reference apparatus. I don't doubt the quote, it's just, when a book is made up mostly of quotes, you want to know where they come from.

 

[AlphaFoxtrot]

I suppose “Anna Karenina” was written by a man. And to my knowledge, Joss never forced Kai to read his diary on all the girls he fornicated with. So, okay, it sounds cringe, but it may have truth to it.

 

[Taake]

I mean. I like his female characters, so I won’t argue against it, I just want to know where it (and some other stuff in the book) is from. Just reading quote after quote gets tiresome when you don’t know their context

 

[burrunjor]

It's funny reading all of these things lining up to kiss his ass from 2012 and thinking that within 5 years he'd be persona non grata. Again though he has no one but himself to blame.

Were some of the Buffy-sets problems that Joss was originally working with young adult actors who followed his lead but then grew up to ask questions/make demands/basically disrespect the chain of command because it wasn't how they viewed a set should work? When it comes to Firefly, e.g., he was working with adult actors. He also had more sway himself. Is it possible that he then picked actors who understood or agreed with his mindset about how a set should work, i.e. 'you respect the person above you' and don't make too much noise?

I think it was more a case of Joss was young, fresh faced, and more laid back in the beginning. Not saying that he wasn't as passionate about it in the beginning, but he was maybe more willing to take ideas from others, less tyrannical?

As time went on however and the cult worship from fans went to his head, and he was praised as a genius he demanded that everything go his way and became an absolute nightmare to anyone who might disagree.

There are similar stories from producers of other shows. John Nathan Turner, the man who producer Doctor Who in the 80s was kind of the same as Joss Whedon, just on a smaller scale.

He took over the show in the early 80s. To begin with he was humble, a nice guy to work with and got on with his cast. However as time went on the success of his DW went to his head, fans adored him, like Joss Whedon he also went to conventions where he was treated like the Beatles etc, and he became a tyrant on set.

(What's even more interesting is that he abused his power in pretty much all of the same ways as Joss. He got people he'd had petty falling outs with fired and blacklisted from the show, like Joss did, he picked favourites among the cast who had back to his house, he bullied and terrorised actors who he felt were lippy, like Sophie Aldred asking him not to smoke, and he even shagged his way through the fandom! In JNT's case they were male fans as he was gay, but it was the same thing. There is even a similar story of Joss Whedon shagging a female fan in the middle of a meeting with a writer, and JNT shagging a fanboy whilst giving a phone interview to the press LOL.)

Much like Joss, eventually the fans turned on JNT and he was left a mere shell of his former self, broken, and bitter at his legacy.

Both cases should serve as a reminder how toxic fandoms can be the way that they can build people up, enable their awful behaviour and then cast them aside. In many ways JNT and Whedon lived like rockstars in the worst way possible, with groupies. You wouldn't think that could happen in just a sci fi/fantasy series fandom, but sadly it does.