SCIFI.COM Interviews Joss Whedon by NewsAdmin

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SCIFI.COM Interviews Joss Whedon

POSTED BY: NEWSADMIN
UPDATED: Wednesday, August 7, 2002 12:39
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Wednesday, August 7, 2002 11:15 AM

SCIFI.COM posted a rather lengthy and insightful interview with Joss Whedon, which will appear in their magazine's October issue. Here is an excerpt:

SCIFI.COM: What was the inspiration for Firefly?

Joss Whedon: It was The Killer Angels. It's a book. I think it won the Pulitzer. It's a very detailed account of the Battle of Gettysburg that I read in London when I was on one of my vacations where I didn't write anything, but I did come up with Firefly and a couple other shows. I read The Killer Angels. The minutia of the Battle of Gettysburg and the lives of the people in it really made Firefly just pop out of my head. I want to get into people's lives this intimately. I want to do it in the future and show that the future is the past. So I built the structure of the world and the look of the show on the Reconstruction Era.

And you know, so there has been a war to unite the planets. Our captain was fighting for, shall we say, the South. Not for slavery, but because he didn't want to be ruled by one central planetary government. Lost big time. So he's a fairly bitter guy. Bitter but funny. Likeably bitter — like me, only he's likeable — and, you know, everything is very low-tech. We based a lot of things on the Civil War and sort of the 1880s stylistically. We mixed it up with a lot of different cultures. There're a lot of Chinese in their outfits and their culture and their language. Every working-class sort of American-seeming person speaks Chinese as well, because these are the two big powers. "The idea is [that] they are the Alliance — the powerful government that our hero fought against. They're not the bad guys. They're just representative of the big government who sometimes comes in and makes things better, and sometimes they come in and [mess] everything up. Just like real big governments do. I love my county. You know sometimes they're America and sometimes they are America and Vietnam. Like, hey guys, you don't understand the situation and you're not helping. So on the one side, he has those people to deal with. Again, I never want to make it black and white. It's not like, let's fight the battle druids. You know, it's complicated.

On the other side he has mindless savages called Reavers, which are a lot less complicated. You see them and you run. They're not monsters. What they are, are people who went out into space, saw the extraordinary nothingness and went completely out of their heads. They've become cannibalistic marauding savages. They're kind of like the Comanche in the old movies except without playing it as a racial thing at all, or even a cultural thing. It's a very personal thing. These are men who just gave up on the concept of humanity and are the scariest, worst, most awful serial-killing pirates who ever sailed around in burnt out ships in space. Everybody is terrified of them — Yeah, they're really fun [laughs].

To read the entire interview, you can go here:

http://www.scifi.com/scifimag/october2002/transcripts/index.html

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Wednesday, August 7, 2002 12:39 PM

NOVAGRASS

The thing that makes me most excited about this interview is what Whedon describes about the way Firefly will be filmed. I know he has said that there would be a lot of handheld camera techniques, but the interview really ellaborates on the style. I didn't realize that *most* of it is going to be sloppy and handheld, the idea of which I love. I love the feeling of hand-held... it's so much more emotionally impacting and hardhitting, and I am practically jumping out of my chair with excitement! Seriously, I read it and started screaming with excitement.

Before this article, I was taking my like for Firefly on faith in Joss and faith in Mutant Enemy... I really had no idea what to expect. Sure, they kept saying things, but the things they were saying didn't really mean anything. Yeah, it takes place in the future, yeah it's a western, yes there's a whore... but now, we have substance. Before, I was excited to see Whedon doing a new series, but now, I'm excited for the series itself. Beyond belief. Ecstatic.

--Dylan Palmer, aka NoVaGrAsS--

The Ultimate Buffy-Angel Quote Generator™
Buffybot: That'll put marzipan in your pie plate, Bingo!

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