Joss Whedon
Joss Whedon
Joseph Hill "Joss" Whedonis an American screenwriter, film and television director, film and television producer, comic book author, and composer. He is the founder of Mutant Enemy Productions and co-founder of Bellwether Pictures, and is best known as the creator of the television series Buffy the Vampire Slayer, Angel, Firefly, Dollhouseand Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D....
NationalityAmerican
ProfessionDirector
Date of Birth23 June 1964
CityNew York City, NY
CountryUnited States of America
I've often said there's no such thing as a track record in TV. I seen people who created things much more successful than mine treated like dirt.
Especially, I think, living in any fantasy or science fiction world means really understanding what you're seeing and reading really densely on a level that a lot of people don't bother to read.
I was never a games night guy, but at some point, social interaction starts to freak me out. So when there's a point, it's easier for me to see the people I love and hang out and try to have fun.
I would like to have as much going on as other people do, but my problem is I get so attached to things, and there's my kids, and I need my sleep, and then there's being married - gotta check in on that, too.
I always want to make sure I'm telling a story about people that I care about.
I don't have a ton of enemies. I get along with people pretty well when I'm not annoying them to death.
People would say, 'You're going to need this and that,' and I'd be like, 'Not so much.' If I only needed three walls, we only built three, and if someone asked, 'Well, what if you want to do this other shot?' I said, 'Well, we just won't.'
My first gig ever was writing looplines for a movie that had already been made. You know, writing lines over somebody's back to explain something, to help make a connection, to add a joke, or to just add babble because the people are in frame and should be saying something.
I don't tend to write straight dramas where real life just impinges. But because I don't, when I do, it is very interesting to slap people in the face with just an absolute of life.
I've had so much success. I had something to say, I got to say it, people heard it, and they agreed. That's every artist's dream. That's the brass ring.
It's a question of opening it up, and it's a question of closing it down, ... You know, 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 in a TV series, which is more mundane. You need a reason for this to be a movie. The closing comes in making sure that it 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.
The fact is some people really love my work, some people not so much, but at the end of the day, I don't want anybody coming out of the movie thinking about me.
A lot of people who saw 'The Avengers' didn't read comic books, don't like comic book movies, and enjoyed it. That was huge for me.
The more you can create a structure by which people live in a fantastical situation and by which they will act, and the more you lay that out for the audience, the more they will feel at home in it.