Whedon returned to America to attend Wesleyan in Connecticut. Originally a Methodist college, Wesleyan is now a small, exclusive university on the Connecticut River with a student body of less than three thousand students.
“College rocked,” Joss says. “I mean, I was still miserable most of the time, but in a party way”—and Joss would draw on the experience for the later, post–high school seasons of Buffy. Whedon majored in film and when he graduated, he had a degree and a diploma but not much else. “I was broke and without a single job prospect,” he recalls.
Not that he was without options. Although it’s true he was unemployed, Joss knew what he wanted to do. “Writing is the thing I understand best,” he says unequivocally. As it turns out, he was simply joining the family business. His grandfather John wrote for Leave It to Beaver, The Donna Reed Show, and The Dick Van Dyke Show. And his dad Tom wrote for series such as Alice, Benson, and The Dick Cavett Show, and produced The Golden Girls. “Actually, my father didn’t want me to be a writer but after college he suggested I write a TV script so I could earn enough money to move out of the house,” Joss jokes.
So Joss got busy and started churning out spec scripts on his typewriter. “I wrote a sickening number of scripts, most of which were returned to me. The rejection notes usually said something like, ‘Very charming. I do not wish to have it.’ But the thing is, the only way to get a career is to do a lot of it. You have to do the hard work and create the spec scripts. You have to write as many as you can and send them around, even if it takes a large number.”
Joss’s dream was to get a job writing for The Simpsons or Twin Peaks. Instead he had to settle for one of the highest-rated sitcoms on television. When he was twenty-five, he was hired as a story editor on ABC’s Roseanne. “I literally went from working at a video store on a Friday to working on Roseanne on Monday,” says Joss, who vividly describes his experience with the mercurial performer:
“It was baptism by radioactive waste. She was like two different people. One was perfectly intelligent and good to be around. The other was very cranky and not so good to be around. You never knew which would show up. I was on staff for a year and then I quit.”
Instead of looking for another television series to work for, Joss turned his attention to feature films and hit a home run on his first at-bat when his Buffy the Vampire Slayer screenplay—which he had written while working on Roseanne—sold in 1988. “The first screenplay I ever wrote was in high school but I never finished that one, so my first real one was Buffy,” he says.
One of the biggest drawback to working in features, though, is the time it takes to go from “We love your script; we gotta have it,” to actually seeing the movie on film. So while waiting—and waiting—for the Buffy movie to be made, Joss worked for a brief stint in 1990 as a co-producer and writer on NBC’s Parenthood.
When Buffy the Vampire Slayer was finally released in 1992, Joss hated what he saw. But despite his disappointment and the mixed reaction to the Buffy film, Joss’s screenwriting career suffered no setbacks. Over the next two years, he sold two more on spec scripts—meaning he wrote the screenplay first, then sent it around hoping someone would by it, as opposed to being commissioned to write it for a specific producer or production company.
In June 1993, Largo Entertainment bought Whedon’s script Suspension for $750,000—against a $1 million total price. It was an action/suspense film that took place on the George Washington Bridge, which connects northern New Jersey with Manhattan. Industry insiders described it as “Die Hard on a bridge.” Largo announced it wanted to begin filming before the end of the year—but it didn’t. Perhaps the failure of Largo’s Judgment Night, which starred Emilio Estevez and Denis Leary, doomed Suspension, but for whatever reason, the movie was never made.
The first time Joss was hired to “doctor” a script, to add scenes or dialogue to punch it up, was for Speed—coincidentally, a movie that wags dubbed “Die Hard on a bus.” Then, in the summer of 1994, Whedon became part of the adventure known as Waterworld when he was hired by Kevin Costner to work on the script. Joss should have known that any $100 million–plus movie that begins production without a finished script is not going to be a dream job.
The film was also marred by a bitter falling-out between director Kevin Reynolds and Costner, and although the two men blamed each other, an anecdote from Joss gives a good idea what the problem was. “I was on location in Hawaii for seven weeks and nearly every single idea I wrote down was thrown into the garbage by Kevin Costner. I became the world’s highest-paid stenographer,” says Whedon, who was not given any screenwriter credit.
In September 1994 Columbia Pictures paid a reported $1.5 million against $2 million for another spec script from Whedon, called Afterlife. The movie was a science-fiction love story, in which a scientist’s mind is implanted into the body of a younger man so the scientist can continue his research project and get back with his loving wife. The catch is, the body belonged to a well-known serial killer. The studio announced it would immediately give the project a green light. And this time, they even had a star attached to it—Jean-Claude Van Damme. But a few months later, “the Muscles from Brussels” backed out of the project and the film was never made.
But Joss was still one of the more sought-after screenwriters in Hollywood and soon it seemed as if everyone was clamoring for his services.
Then came Toy Story, the animated movie that almost didn’t get made after Disney executives were shown the first story reels. First of all, Disney was wary about the kind of computer animation being used, which was so different from classic Disney. But the biggest problem was that the two lead toy characters were sarcastic, antagonistic, and generally unappealing—particular the cowboy doll, Woody.
Joss explains, “Let’s face it, Woody was a thundering asshole. So it was my job to make him somewhat likable.” For his efforts, Whedon and the six other credited writers were nominated for an Oscar in the “Best Screenplay Written Directly for the Screen” category. The Toy Story group lost out to Christopher McQuarrie who wrote The Usual Suspects.
But the nomination had cemented Joss’s reputation and put him in the upper echelon of script doctors who can command $100,000 a week for their services. That’s what Whedon reportedly received for punching up the script for Twister, the 1996 film that starred Helen Hunt, Bill Paxton, and a lot of windblown animals, cars, and houses.
After executives at 20th Century Fox decided to revive one of their most successful film franchises, Joss got a call and the result was Alien: Resurrection, which took the original concept and turned it on its ear by combining the Ripley character (played by Sigourney Weaver) with the alien. Literally. In the process of resurrecting Ripley from some tissue and blood samples, her DNA mixes with the DNA of the alien creature she had been carrying inside her. The result is an incredibly strong Ripley who can spit acid. Audiences and critics were unimpressed, however, and the film is widely considered the least popular of the four.
After an executive from Sandollar, which co-produced the movie Buffy the Vampire Slayer, came to Joss with the idea of turning the film into a series, Whedon realized it was his chance to finally get his words right; he would finally get the chance to see his vision on film, which is the reason he started writing in the first place as a teenager. Perhaps that’s why he named his production company Mutant Enemy. “Mutant Enemy was the name I gave to my very first typewriter,” he explains. “I named it after a song by the group Yes, and that’s why the company is called that.”
Although Joss, who is now married to interior designer Kai Cole, who gave birth to their first child in January of 2003, says the workload of Buffy is more than he ever imagined it would be, he swears he has never been more satisfied in his professional life.
Buffy’s success has guaranteed Joss the chance to tell even more stories. His Fox series Firefly was a sci-fi western hybrid adventure series set five hundred years in the future, after Earth has been destroyed and those who s
urvived have colonized space. Despite his penchant for strange creatures, there were not any aliens in the series. “I believe we are the only sentient beings in the universe, and five hundred years from now we will still be the only sentient beings around. This show is about people. It’s just about life when it’s hard. When I pitched the show, I said, ‘This is about nine people looking into the blackness of space and seeing nine different things,’” Whedon explains. “What I’m looking for is people to go, ‘These guys are me. I feel that.’ They’re going through the same struggle we are. They’re trying to pay the rent, they’re trying to buy gas, they’re trying to get these things at the same time as, you know, with the gunfighting and all the stuff.”
The series was much more Gunsmoke than Star Trek. Instead of laser guns, the Firefly characters carried six-shooters and rode horses when exploring planets. Whedon says he was inspired after reading Michael Shaara’s Civil War book The Killer Angels, which recounts the Battle of Gettysburg. “I got obsessed with the minutiae of life way back then when things were not as convenient as they are now,” says Whedon. “We wanted to do a show in the future that had a sense of history, that we don’t solve all our problems and have impeccably clean spaceships.”
Although Firefly was canceled after just a few episodes, Whedon’s TV legacy is assured thanks to Buffy and the strong reaction it still elicits from fans. “It’s really sweet when people react like that, and I love the praise, but to me, what they’re getting emotional about is the show. And that’s the best feeling in the world. There’s nothing creepy about it. I feel like there’s a religion in narrative, and I feel the same way they do. I feel like we’re both paying homage to something else; they’re not paying homage to me. I designed the show to create that strong reaction. I designed Buffy to be an icon, to be an emotional experience, to be loved in a way that other shows can’t be loved.”
.2.
THE CHARACTERS
Since her first days in Sunnydale, Buffy’s core support group has remained unchanged. Willow and Xander, charter members of the Scooby Gang, and Giles, her Watcher, are the Slayer’s comrades-in-arms and emotional touchstones. But in addition to that inner circle, many others have moved in and out of the gang and Buffy’s life, all of whom have left indelible impressions, whether good or bad.
The Slayer
Buffy Summers (Sarah Michelle Gellar)
When we first met Buffy Summers, she was your typical sixteen-year-old girl-next-door—who just happened to be the latest in a long line of female Slayers fated to protect their generation from the powers of evil. During her high school years, she was an average student constantly under fire for not living up to her potential. But carrying out her Slayer responsibilities meant spending evenings using her superhuman strength battling vampires and other monsters, which left very little time for homework. Her strange behavior kept Buffy out of the “in” crowd she had been part of at her previous school. Instead she bonded with two fellow outsiders, Xander and Willow, who became her most loyal allies in the fight against the terrors of the Hellmouth.
Once she became an adult, Buffy still yearned for normalcy but accepted her fate and did her best to play the hand life dealt her—including having been brought back from the dead, and eternal peace in Heaven, to the Slayer hell that is Earth. Resuming her Slayer responsibilities forced Buffy to confront some personal demons of her own, in an often-dark journey of self-discovery that include a complicated affair with her onetime archnemesis, vampire Spike.
That relationship simply reinforced the sad fact that Buffy’s love life has proven to be a minefield of pain and missed opportunities. Her first love was Angel, a vampire with a soul courtesy of an old Gypsy curse. Their star-crossed love affair eventually led Angel to leave Sunnydale so Buffy could move forward with her life. But finding someone who can both accept who she is and offer her the emotional release and support she needs, has so far been a painful and fruitless quest for the Slayer.
With her mother dead and her teenage years far behind her, Buffy must now balance the responsibilities of adulthood, such as earning a living and caring for her younger sister, with her Slaying duties. Looking back, the rigors of high school seem pale by comparison. However, life has a way of coming full circle, and Buffy finds herself reliving her high school years through her sister Dawn, now attending the rebuilt Sunnydale High, which still sits atop the Hellmouth.
The Watcher
Rupert Giles (Anthony Stewart Head)
There is a Watcher responsible for looking after every Slayer and Buffy’s is Giles, who left a position at the British Museum to work as the Sunnydale High School librarian in order to look after his charge. Giles himself came from a long line of Watchers—both his father and his father’s mother were Watchers—and it is his job to help Buffy defeat whatever the Hellmouth spits out at her by interpreting otherworldly signs and prophecies, as well as guiding her through the realities of being both a Slayer and young woman.
Although he is educated and can speak five languages, Giles is not a didactic know-it-all and is often just as unsure and without answers as Buffy. He also follows his heart. While most Watchers would have refused to allow others into the Slayer’s inner circle, Giles accepted Willow, Xander, and others without much fuss because his number one commitment is always to keep Buffy alive and he realized there was strength in numbers. So if that meant bending—or completely ignoring—the Slayer code of absolute secrecy, he was more than willing to do that.
Another reason Giles proved more flexible than Watchers of the past was because he related to the conflicts Buffy was going through as a young Slayer—if given the option, Giles would have been a pilot or a grocer or anything other than a Watcher. In fact, he was so resistant to his fate that during his college days he rebelled by falling in with a group who practiced black magic—a decision that has come back to haunt him on more than one occasion. But having had that alter ego, named Ripper, also gave Giles a unique perspective on the thin line between darkness and light.
While Giles’s willingness to ignore the letter of the Watchers’ Council law might have greatly extended Buffy’s life expectancy, it hasn’t been without personal cost, such as when he was temporarily replaced with a more by-the-book Watcher. But his affection for and loyalty to Buffy was unaffected because his relationship with her now goes far beyond mentor and father figure. As she has matured from teenager into young woman, they are now peers and confidants—which is not to say he still isn’t her teacher as well. When he realized that Buffy needed to stand more on her own and not rely on him so much, Giles returned to England, forcing her to go through a painful but necessary period of personal growth. And while he may no longer involve himself in her day-to-day Slayer responsibilities, Giles remains a steadying force in Buffy’s life and always shows up when he is most needed.
Current Main Characters
Alexander “Xander” Harris (Nicholas Brendon)
Too sensitive and sardonic to hang out with the jocks, and too cool to be a nerd, Xander is the kind of guy who got along better with the girls in high school than he did with the guys. He comes from a family of blue-collar workers, such as his uncle, who was a janitor at a local computer company that went belly-up. Like Willow and Buffy, he is an only child, and in many ways, the Scooby Gang has become his surrogate family and emotional foundation.
Although quick-witted and blessed with street smarts, Xander had neither the grades nor the funds to attend college. Instead, after a period of aimlessness and feeling alienated from his college-going friends, Xander has become a gainfully employed carpenter, although his true life’s work remains helping Buffy save the world from the forces of the Hellmouth, a vocation both noble and bittersweet.
From the moment he first set eyes on her, Xander loved Buffy. Although Xander has had several relationships, first with high school princess Cordelia Chase, and then with the demon-turned-girl Anya, whom he almost married before bailing on the ceremony, a part of his heart will n
ot-so-secretly always belong to Buffy. But he accepted early on that she would never love him with an equal passion, so rather than cut her out of his life in a snit of bruised ego, Xander became her most doggedly loyal friend and protector who willingly—and often recklessly—puts himself at risk to fight by her side.
Willow Rosenberg (Alyson Hannigan)
When Buffy first met her Willow was a shy computer whiz-kid; a gentle soul always willing to give others the benefit of the doubt even when reason screamed against it. Although wonderfully ironic in her observations of others, she was never mean-spirited and never went out of her way to insult or offend anyone even when reason screamed for it.
As Willow’s academic prowess and hacking abilities became invaluable tools for the Scooby Gang, her self-confidence grew, and the once unassuming schoolgirl proved herself quite capable of taking charge, speaking her mind, and calling people on the carpet if the situation demanded it. Although confident in her intellectual abilities, for a long time Willow was stunted in the self-image area, in large part because of her unrequited pining for Xander, her best friend since childhood.
Willow eventually blossomed and experienced two meaningful relationships. The first was with Oz, a thoughtful, taciturn guitar-playing genius who also happened to be a werewolf. The other was with Tara, a soulful Wicca who opened an unexpected door to Willow’s sexual passion. Openly declaring her love for Tara forced the rest of the Scooby Gang to reevaluate their own preconceived notions about Willow. After a few awkward moments, they accepted who she was and whom she loved.
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