INT: Joss Whedon
When his sci-fi/western hybrid "Firefly" crashed and burned on the small screen (it lasted a mere 11 episodes before Fox cancelled it), Joss Whedon didnt waste any time wallowing in self-pity. Buoyed by a small, boisterous group of fans known as Browncoats, Whedon went to studios to pitch a feature film based on the failed series. Universal eventually took that bait and SERENITY was born. Will the film share the same fate as "Firefly"? Not if those pesky Browncoats have anything to say about it.
Joss
stopped by the Four Seasons in
Joss
Whedon
So how nervous are you about this movie?
Starting with the hard stuff huh? (laughs) How nervous am I? Im actually pretty calm. I am being medicated right now to keep me that way. I got really nervous when I realized ultimately I have absolutely no idea how this movie is gonna do. I believe that if people see it, they will like it, and that is sort of my first job, and I feel like that was more or less accomplished. But I have no idea if they actually will see it, and if they dont see it, how can they like it? So I panicked, and I freaked out publicly Im proud of that and then I sort of realized its out of my hands. I will do everything in my power to try and get people to see it, but theres only so much within my power. And if they dont, or if they gee, how can I put this hate it, then thats just whats gonna happen. Theres nothing I can really do about it. I believe in the film. I loved making it, I love what we came up with, and Im really proud of all my actors, so thats gonna have to sustain me.
What is it that makes the Firefly/Serenity dialogue snap like it does?
Well, part of it was just getting to invent the language, which came from a lot of influences because the movie has that sort of genre-mix feeling, and era mix. And once I had, it reads like kind of poetry to me. It makes it very easy to write. It kind of rolls off the tongue in a way that nothing Ive ever written before does. But in terms of advice, or my dark secrets, the most important thing to me is finding everybodys voice very specifically, and I build shows and movies on what I refer to as The Golden Girls Model, which is very simply everybodys gotta come from a different place, so that everybodys reaction to something is different and equally valid and equally fun. And never having anybody say anything that isnt their point of view, that isnt their perspective, thats where the humor comes from.
Jimmys perspective on the situation is gonna be very different than anybody elses, and when he speaks, thats what makes it funny, but at the same time, thats what makes it valid. If a line is just a set-up for somebody else to be funny, its disingenuous to the character and to the actor portraying him. Thats the biggest thing for me is that everybody and that includes second thug from left has perspective that they bring with them to the piece. And they all dont have to be eloquent about it, in a sort of obnoxious, proto-Tarantino way of everybody-speaks-volumes kind of thing. I think hes done that very well, but Ive seen the bad version.
But just respecting everybody, and knowing that the whole point of the thing, the whole point of any dialogue, is that its two people with completely different points of view trying to find a space in the middle. Thats where the conflict comes from, thats where the humor comes from, thats where the humanity comes from. Thats the biggest thing for me when Im writing, and I think its also what makes people respond to all the characters, is that theyre all very present all the time.
What was the challenge for you to fit everybody into this two-hour movie?
Obviously, the TV show, you need a bunch of peeps if you want to create internal conflict and its not just a problem of the week kind of show. And then, when I was given the opportunity to make a movie of this, all of a sudden I had nine characters, and thats a lot of people to put in a movie. But ultimately what it gave me was the chance to have kind of a Platoon feeling, sort of the band as this great, big group of people that you can focus on who you want to. Obviously, on a show, youre gonna give everybody equal time to an extent. And youre gonna make sure that everybodys sort of in a film, you have to say, Well, okay, Mal is really the hero. Hes the guy we have to be watching. We come to him through River; shes kind of his proxy. And its kind of about how she affects him, and how they help each other. That doesnt mean however that anybody is expendable.
You make sure that everybodys perspective brings something different to the movie, and everybodys physicality, and their actions, and what theyre useful for. You know, a lot of movies I think center around one character, and then theres maybe two others that are defined, and then everybody else kind of fades into the distance, and for some films, thats pretty useful. But because I wanted this sort of chaotic, everything-is-happening-at-once feeling of being on that ship and being in this world, having a large cast was useful, because they all bring so much texture to it. You think hopefully it isnt confusing, but it means its very lively and its very lived-in.
Have you sketched out ideas for sequels?
You know, its very sweet to mention the word sequel. (laughs) Obviously, thats the way my brain works; it continues to tell stories. Ive written sequels in my head for movies that other people made, all the time. I had a great idea for The Fly 2, before they made The Fly 2, and I never told anybody about it, but it was really cool! So its inevitable with me that I do that, and of course I love this universe, and I love these people, and I would jump at the chance to do it again. But I couldnt think about that while I was making it, because ultimately you have to make everyone kept saying, So, you making a trilogy? And Im like, No, its a film. Theres no trilogy? Im like, Just the one.
And, you know, its a trilogy if you make two that are so good theres a third, and that was how I feel I had to think about it. I had to sort of not think about where it came from, the series, and not think about where it may go, a franchise, and just say, Make this one thing an experience worth having, and the rest will either fall into place or it wont. But if you focus on that, youre a dead man. Now that Ive finished this, I think about it all the time, but I dont tell anybody that except right now.
Can you talk about Chiwetel Ejiofors performance as The Operative?
You know, Chiwetel is extraordinary, and I gave him a really tough job, because The Operative is hes actually self-proclaimed as very specifically undefined because he refuses to let himself be defined, and he doesnt consider himself a person. He considers himself less than that. And I wanted to create a villain who was more of an antagonist than just a villain, because then if you dont believe the perspective of a person, then they become just a plot device. And the idea of having somebody completely idealistic and dedicated to decency and nobility as my villain, and somebody whos self-involved and cut-off and a criminal as my hero, then its basically what the film is about: if only our messy, repulsive humanity can save us from this deadly notion of perfection.
Chiwetel came in, and the reason particularly that I hired him was them big ol eyes. Hes just so soulful. He brings such a sense of decent disappointment at having to look out in the world and the people around him. And he doesnt play anything arch at all. Hes all about he understood completely what this guy was, and that he was a decent man who was actually a serial killer and doesnt really understand himself that well.
How do you make the film accessible to people who havent seen Firefly?
Well, ultimately thats certainly the hardest job I ever had. Its a question of opening it up and then closing it down. Opening it up in the sense of we need a giant, epic story that is not the kind of thing these people usually get involved in on the TV series. Its more mundane. We need a reason for this to be a movie and to be a big, for me anyway, budget movie, and a Universal film in particular. It had to be an action movie that has to work on a certain scale. And at the same time, thats the opening. The closing comes in making sure that is accessible to everybody, that you explain everybody as much as you need to, that you explain the world as much as you need to, that you begin and you end, that you have an arc for the character as well as a plot that has a question and then an answer.
I actually said when pressed that the difference between TV and movies is that TV shows are a question and movies are an answer. And so in this, we had to have a definitive statement about freedom and humanity, and what we need, and what we should be allowed to have as people, which is all our flaws. And then I answer that. I put a period of hopefulnessan exclamation pointon that, as opposed to just sort of pursuing the question for years, which is the way a TV show would do it.
Firefly has been a TV show, a movie, a comic book. Do you have a preference?
They definitely all have different strengths. Firefly and Serenity are really two different animals, and thats very deliberate on my part, because if they werent, Im making a glorified episode of television and Id have no business wasting Universals money. I spent the bulk of the writing and the bulk of the editing just trying to make it work for people who dont know the series. But the movies give you a chance to do something thats extraordinary, they can realize whatever insane vision you might have, and turn a ballerina into a martial arts star, which is always a good thing to do with your free time, if you can.
TV gives you the opportunity to explore things on a smaller level, which was very gratifying. Its a different thing. I miss it. I miss Firefly because Serenity is not Firefly, which was deliberate. But the great thing was the TV show was deliberately small in the scope of the people within it, and then the movie is deliberately an epic filled with small people. And thats the kind of story I like to tell, is the story of when people who have no business being in an epic get caught up in one. How do they react? Do they fold, or what do they do?
Were the answers provided in the movie about the Reavers, Rivers powers, etc. the answers we were going to get to if the series had gone on, or did you change things around?
Those had all been changed for the movie. Obviously, things were dropped, and obviously and most importantly, things were distilled into a fine, two-hour liquer instead of a watered-down, longer version. Yes, that was where I was going with the idea of River, and her secret, and the Reavers, and theirs, and how it all connected. I had planned to get there in a couple of years instead of a couple of hours, but not being able to fiddle with all these subplots with all these different people, that is exactly where I was going with it. That was a huge part of structuring it, and pitching it was, This is where the series was building to. And I think if you pitched it as a separate story, it is an epic story and it has a great deal of meaning for today.
Do you ever take any suggestions from fans for character development or dialogue?
Legally speaking, no. (laughs) They seldom will actually pitch things at me. I use them as a barometer of what it is they respond to, who it is theyre responding to. And then I will find with this character, lets find out whats inside this character and makes them tick, and really open them up and see what they do. Stuff like that. Generally speaking, also because the series is not ongoing, people arent like, Well, you can do this, you can do that. Theres a movie. If they havent seen it, theyre not gonna tell me what to do, and if they have seen it, some of them may criticize some of the things I did. But generally speaking, theyre just going to have fun.
What does Serenity have to say about spirituality?
I think we all have different takes on it, and we all have things to say about spirituality. I think their films use more deliberate religious iconography because theyre coming from that mythic place in a way that I would say Buffy did, but Firefly/Serenity dont. Again, to come back to the idea of the question and the answer: in Firefly, there was a conflict between Mal and the Shepherd that was deliberate, which was that Mal is an atheist and he is beyond that kind of faith. He doesnt trust people, he doesnt really think of anything as a greater good. Even though he has a moral code himself, he really cant admit or understand it. Shepherd Book is really clear on his faith, and there was a conflict between the two of them that was supposed to be ongoing throughout the series.
Obviously, the movie would be more about answers. I had one definitive statement to make, which was simply the power of belief, the power of something greater than yourself does not necessarily have to mean religion. And Shepherd Book himself says that. He doesnt say, Find God. He says, Find your way. Shepherd Book obviously believes in God. He believes that God is a part of whats going on. Mal doesnt, but Shepherd isnt judging him for that. Hes saying, The point is not whether or not you believe what I believe. The point is that you dont believe anything, and its killing you, and its tearing your crew apart, and its making you do stupid things. And the word belief comes into the film a lot for that reason. Its the simple act of subsuming yourself to the idea of something that is believing there is something worth structuring your life around that will direct your moral decisions and sometimes make you make the harder decision. But is it important what that belief is? No.
Questions? Comments? Manifestos? Send them to me at [email protected].
Source: | JoBlo.com |
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