és a rendező
2005.01.06. 15:18
Joss Whedon
"And we're wacky people! We'll do anything. We'll kill a regular. We'll bring in new people. We like to keep us all jumping and guessing and not be married to some great five-year plan of what's coming next. It was painful to kill a regular, but it was also tremendous...because it was a great, tragic, unexpected death...and it keeps the fans on their toes. We like doing that." - David Greenwalt on writers
Vital Stats
- Birthday: June 23, 1964
- Status: proud papa
Joss Bio
Son of TV-writer Tom Whedon (The Dick Cavett Show, Alice, Benson) and grandson of TV-writer John Whedon (The Donna Reed Show, Leave It to Beaver), it was no surprise that Joss would take on the family tradition and become Hollywood's most talented (and arguably first-ever third generation) television writer. Years didn't deceive the mondial population, for Joss was awarded the SFX Millenium Readers Award for creator of the 'Best Show Of All Time'. He was quoted to have said that he concieved the idea of a girl named Buffy, a vampire slayer, to be an "alternative feminist icon". Although BtVS stands as his most famous creation (the episode Hush earning him an Emmy nomination), it wasn't his first try in TV department.
Graduated from Wesleyan University in Film Studies, Joss first worked on the show Roseanne as a script editor before taking on the NBC sitcom Parenthood as a producer. In 1997, the movie Buffy the Vampire Slayer became an instant cult-classic. From Buffy, Angel:The Series was spun off and also became known as one of his achievements. The short-lived sci-fi western Firefly (2002) would have been his third television hit. His big screen writing credits include Toy Story, Alien Resurrection, X-Men, Waterworld, and Twister to name a few. Already a legend behind the camera, Joss' hilarious dancing on the set landed him his first-even on screen role in the ANGEL episode Through the Looking Glass as Numfar of the Deathwok Clan. "Numfar! Do the dance of joy!"
Joss currently resides in Los Angeles with his wife Kai Cole and their son Arden (born in 2002).
Quotes
- on the B/A argument in Sanctuary: "That was a really important scene to me, because we all assumed they would just resolve it. They get into an argument about Faith, and at the end of the episode they resolve it and everything would be nice and pretty. I was working on the scene and I kept asking myself, "Why can’t I write this scene?" I finally realized that it’s because they can’t make up; he has to fucking cut loose at her, and as soon as I started to write it, I realized that it was the defining moment where he basically said, 'I have a show; it’s not just an offspring of your show; it’s something different.' And at that moment, the training wheels came off."
- on redemption: "Redemption is difficult and it takes a long time and there isn't always a goal in sight," says Whedon. "If you make it easy, if you find the golden key, that's kind of a false hope. The thing about a hero is that even when it doesn't look like there's light at the end of the tunnel, he's going to keep digging, just because that's who he is."
- on the series:
- "A work of art takes on a life beyond its creator, and when that happens, it’s the most gratifying thing in the world. It’s like raising a child who becomes a grown-up and is suddenly talking to you. Angel has started to do that. Angel is talking to me now. It could have been just a nice solid formula show, and I think it’s going to be something more than that."
- "David Boreanaz appeals to every woman that I've ever met. Angel will be leaving Buffy and Sunnydale and moving to Los Angeles, that other notorious hell mouth," Whedon jokes. While some Buffy characters will cross over, the new series "will reach for an older demographic," Whedon says. "Buffy is about the pain of being a teenager, and Angel is about the pain of adulthood."
- "We started talking about Angel as kind of a recovering alcoholic. Somebody who had drunk blood, was into it, was trying to regain his humanity...and I said, 'OK, now that's actually about something besides just, 'He's cute! He wears a long coat!'"
- "I see Angel as the second half of Buffy, but it won't be a high school humiliation alienation kind of thing. We deal a lot with addiction as a metaphor, because that's Angel. He's sort of a reformed drunk [so to speak], fighting his way back to something resembling humanity and helping others do the same. We can go anywhere and be more like an anthology with stand-alone stories and less of a soap opera."
- "The idea of the show was redemption, and what it takes to win back a life when you’ve misused yours terribly. It’s gone through a lot of different permutations. A lot of characters. A lot of different styles. But ultimately that has never left. Angel, to me, is so important, because it’s about how an adult faces what they’ve done with their life, goes forward with it, overcomes it. These are things that have a great deal of meaning to me. Plus, awesome fights. And, you know, if I have any message for Americans, [it’s that] you can solve problems through fisticuffs."
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