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Must Be Talking to an Angel? Even Better, It's Joss Whedon!
David Boreanaz in Angel courtesy 20th Century Fox
Awww, yeah. It’s finally here! Right in time for Halloween, one of TV’s best vampire series ever is sinking its fangs into the shelves with Angel: The Complete Collector’s Set. It’s like a David Boreanaz bender! And just like I promised, here’s some supernifty insight from series creator, executive producer and master of the Whedonverse, Joss Whedon, about our favorite soulful bloodsucker. (Yeah, I have the coolest job in the world. I know.)
Thanks so much for taking the time to talk. I know you have a lot going on.
Hey, it’s my pleasure.
So Angel the Complete Series…this is a big deal!
It is for me, just because I actually use my complete Buffy series all the time. [Laughs]
Yeah, right? I think a lot of people do! Is there anything new included with this collection that’s not in the individual-season sets?
Um, well there isn’t anything that I got to do with this set that I didn’t get to do with the series itself, because this is the series itself.
No extras or anything?
Nah. You know, when they did the Buffy set, they did this sort of round-table discussion… but they didn’t do that with the Angel set. I think they didn’t really come to it 'til so far down the line that everybody had scattered. They’d disappeared into Bones. [Laughs] So it really is just the series, but because so many people are just discovering Buffy now on DVD, this is a great thing to have. And the series gets so entwined in itself that it’s really nice to have it all in one place.
That’s a shame. I so enjoy useless deleted scenes.
[Laughs] I know we live in the age of extras, and there are extras that come with it, but there’s no spectacular skydiving sequences that weren’t there before.
Or musical episodes?
There could never be a musical episode of Angel. [Laughs] David is very large and I did not want him to beat on me.
I imagine this was a great excuse to watch your handiwork all over again.
Embarrassingly enough, I do anyway. Not all the time, but every now and then I go through phases. I’ll watch an episode and go, "Is this the cheesiest thing in the world, that I’m watching my own stuff?" There’s just stuff in here that I adore and honestly, a lot of it isn’t my stuff. A lot of it is Tim Minear’s or somebody else’s, so it can still sort of surprise me in a way that Buffy can’t, because I was overseeing Buffy much more strictly. It’s the show that I love because it kept evolving for five years.
It really did grow into something much deeper than just a spin-off.
You know, the idea was that it would be more than a spin-off. That’s why we didn’t do a spin-off until we had an idea that we thought was worth doing. But it took us a while to figure the best way to service that. We really did think it would be this stand-alone show, unlike Buffy. Then it evolved into the opposite of a stand-alone and became a mythological show. Which is very big now, but back then it was problematic… by the fifth year, they said "make it episodic again"! But by then we had enough characters that everything could come from them. And we had a great ensemble. The people we surrounded David with are the best actors and the best friends that I have.
Do you have a favorite episode or season?
The seasons are all fascinating to me. I did love Season 3 — I got to do my ballet episode. Season 4 is like one long episode, it’s like 24. It’s ridiculous how [serialized] the whole thing was, because we really weren’t doing that on purpose. It just kept happening. And then Season 5, of course, you know, they lowered the budget, we got Spike… all of those new elements caused it to be really fresh. I think for episodes, I do come back to "Darla," which is sort of the sequel to "Fool for Love" from Buffy. It has some of the best dialogue I have ever heard and some of the most perfectly twisted vampire logic.
Dru, Darla, Spike. They were hysterical in their thinking.
Well, there was always something behind it. It was never for an easy laugh… not that we were above a cheap laugh. But it was always an in-character cheap laugh. We always had tremendous fun with the logic of people who were dedicated to evil.
And those types of people are hard to find.
Yeah! The thing is, if you’re not living, you just have a different perspective [Laughs]
Are you still working on the comic-book follow-up, Angel: After the Fall?
The comic book is coming out based on some guidelines I gave them. Again, I’m not overseeing it the way I did the Buffy [comics], but yeah, there is a comic book coming out that I did sanction as sort of a "well, here’s what we would have done and here’s what you can do if you’re a comic book."
So what would you have done if you had another season? Or even just another episode?
Plummeted L.A. straight into Hell!
It’s not there already?
[Laughs] I knew that would be your response, but I like L.A. I’ve been an L.A. apologist for a long time. But yeah, the idea was that we were going to completely change everything without building a new set. We were just going to trash the one we had and make it postapocalyptic. So Brian Lynch, the writer of the comic, is taking that and putting it on serious steroids.
The apocalypse was really going to go down?
Oh yeah!
And who was coming out of that alleyway alive after the finale?
That I won’t say. But you can read the comic book.
Do you go to Comic-Con?
Every year.
Did you ever think, as a 10-year-old kid, that you would grow up to be someone who was so sought-out? That people would want your autograph?
Is there any 10-year-old who hasn’t? [Laughs]
That’s true. But your fans are so rabid.
Well, they’ve had their shots now. [Laughs] No, you always hope that, if you want to be an artist, that you’re going to touch people and they’re going to love you for it and it will be all sunshine and roses. But yeah, it has been different than I expected. A lot of that has to do with timing… the timing of having DVDs and the Internet and the idea of the writer actually entering the public consciousness. I fell into that at just the right time. The way I fell into an emerging network at the right time and then left just as they were going down. I’ve been lucky that way.
Yet you keep it pretty real.
The key is to not get all up in yourself. That’s why I stopped doing interviews for a while. I didn’t have anything new to say and I didn’t want to be the guy who has to hear his own voice. If I don’t have anything to say… you know, it can be a trap, let’s just put it that way. And you can go onto the Internet and read three people discussing you endlessly and think "Oh my god, I have the biggest fan base in the world!" [Laughs] And then your movie opens and you find out what’s really going on. [Laughs]
Speaking of movies, how is Goners going?
Um, it’s going. It’s not going as quickly as I hoped, but then again, it’s movies and that’s part of how they’re different from TV. The script has been done. And I have rewritten it…and have rewritten it again. It’s the kind of the world we live in.
The nature of the beast.
Yes. And I think the operative word there is "beast"!
So there’s no casting in line yet?
Not really. I mean we’ve discussed it, but until the studio signs off on a script, that’s pretty much it.
Any chance there would be a role for Sarah Michelle Gellar in it?
Um [pause] I don’t know. Huh. I don’t think so. And that’s not exactly how it works. Obviously Sarah is a star… but I don’t know if it’s the sort of thing she would do or not — again, we haven’t gotten that far in the process. But you know, she sort of backed off from Buffy because she wanted to make her bones as other characters. Not that she wasn’t proud of what she’d done, and she should be, but you know, you want to sort of make your own way. So it would probably be the wrong idea. Although I love what Sarah can do. I think she has an amazing talent and we worked really well together for a lot of years, I have the same sort of thing: I want to prove that I can do this on my own and not make everything I do just a chance to have a reunion with my friends. That’s not to say I won’t have a reunion with my friends from time to time — I hope to. But the key is to keep an eye on the past, but at the same time, explore new territories.
Ironically, the new territories you explored are now all over the TV landscape. So many shows bear the Whedon stamp. Supernatural, Reaper...
I actually have a stamp, by the way.
You just walk around Hollywood slapping it on scripts?
Yeah. [Laughs]
Do you even watch these shows that would never have made it to air if it hadn’t been for your stuff?
I missed Reaper, which I wanted to see because everyone said it was cool. So now I have to go find a tape of it. I try to watch the new stuff… I watched Bionic Woman and I loved the Buffy-Faith fight at the end of the premiere.
Right?!
I think they even used the same roof. [Laughs] I’m being catty and silly, of course. That show is totally its own and it's much more Battlestar than Buffy, but yeah, you look for traces. There are times that people compare things to Buffy and you go, "Yeah, but… what’s the point?" Then there are times when they compare things to Buffy, like Veronica Mars, and you’re really proud to even be mentioned because their work was so tight. The only real downside to the Buffyverse is the extreme overuse of the term "The Chosen One," which I would love to never hear again. [Laughs] It has shown up everywhere. I think there’s going to be one on My Name Is Earl.
How fitting. You created a monster!
I appreciate that people are doing these shows because they’re fun, they’re what I love. But it’s more the way female characters are treated in the shows, in the way they can headline or take charge in a show that’s not necessarily a drama. That they’re taken a little bit more seriously in genre terms than they used to be. I don’t in any way take all the credit for that, but I like to think I was part of it. Every woman doesn’t have to be the damsel in distress. That’s more important to me than if it’s high school or has a supernatural element.
But you have to admit that you’re the best thing to happen to TV demons since Trilogy of Terror.
[Laughs] Dude, Trilogy of Terror rocked!
Seriously, though. Even Ghost Whisperer is going there. It’s going to turn out that the town is over some sort of Hellmouth.
Yeah, but it’ll be more of a Hellnostril to keep things fresh. Seriously, everything that I have done, someone did before me. It’s really how you mix it to make it your own and how much you look after it once it’s moving. How much you care about every episode. It’s not like I invented the wheel, I was just on it while it was turning.
NEXT WEEK: Thanksgiving month gets me thinking about what I'm grateful for (like all you DVD fans coming back for more!)
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Oct 30, 2007 11:49 AM
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I want some real answers!! Who lives? Who dies? Who wins?
As mentioned, well ALL know LA goes to hell!!
PS Trilogy of Terror DOES rock!!!!!
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Oct 30, 2007 12:56 PM
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Honestly, I only need Season 5.
For Spike.
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Oct 30, 2007 12:59 PM
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sigh
I miss hearing/seeing the work and voice of JW on a weekly basis. His comment about Ghostwhisperer almost made water come out of my "hellnostril"
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Oct 30, 2007 1:02 PM
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Great interview! I love Joss and you asked him some really interesting questions. The comment about the Faith-Buffy fight in Bionic Woman was too damn funny in it's truth!!
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Oct 30, 2007 1:17 PM
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Taking time off from doing interviews was a good idea, apparently, because this really sounds like a different Joss. I'm a big fan (check out my username), but I'm surprised to find I enjoyed this interview so much. I liked OG Joss, but I think I like the older, wiser, humbler Joss even better.
The first five years of Buffy and the first four of Angel were sheer genius and, in my opinion, some of the best television ever made. I didn't like the short-lived Firefly and, as Joss points out, Serenity tanked, so obviously I was in the majority opinion on that project, but they can't all be winners and I eagerly await everything he has yet to do.
Joss's stuff has made my life and the lives of so many others that much more enjoyable, and how many people can say they've done that? Thanks, Joss!
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Oct 30, 2007 1:17 PM
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Okay, I want to start off by saying that I'm a huge Buffy fan (not so much the mess that was Angel). It did change a lot in terms of how TV shows can be done. Not just the female heroes, but it was also a major player in bringing well thought out serialized shows into mainstream pop culture. Props for that.
That said... Supernatural really doesn't take much (if anything) from Buffy. The only similarity is that there are supernatural elements and as Joss said, it's not like he invented the wheel there. Their take on the supernatural is entirely different. Their take on storytelling is completely different (more based in actual lore as opposed to metaphor). The feel of the show is much more X-Files than it is Buffy (only with good, understandable arcs unlike the X-Files). It could be compared to The Night Stalker, as well as others.
I'm not bashing Buffy here. As I said, I'm a huge Buffy fan and think that it was a brilliant series for most of its run, but it's a little bit of a stretch to say that every supernatural series from this point on has its roots in Buffy.
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Oct 30, 2007 1:32 PM
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How I wish the TV industry was blessed with more geniuses like Joss Whedon. This is a man who clearly had a vision, then took the time to give his characters backgrounds, explain plots and I can't recall his ever leaving a storyline without an ending, whether one agreed with the conclusion or not. What I really mean is that Mr. Whedon never wrote 'Angel' or 'Buffy' as he went along. I used to love the flashbacks on 'Angel' as well. When that show went off the air, I sensed it was going to be an end of sorts, to any real creativity seen on television. So far I've been right.
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Oct 30, 2007 1:41 PM
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Great Interview! Thanks.
How can anyone not like firefly and serenity?! They are both awesome and I love them both more than angel.
That scene at the end of serenity with river standing over all the reavers is pretty awesome.
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Oct 30, 2007 1:46 PM
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diablorobotico, I just want to point out that while Serenity didn't do well in the box office, it has done very, very well on DVD (where Firefly became a success as well). So I wouldn't say the movie tanked overall, just in theaters. It's still selling pretty well as a matter of fact.
(I had to say something positive after my last post)
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Oct 30, 2007 1:56 PM
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I'm so excited to hear Angel will now have full series on DVD! It'll be on my Christmas list for sure this year! I actually just started watching it in the mornings on TNT when I'm getting ready for work. It now airs 6-8 am. So think of how quick you can go thru a full season! I'm just sorry I never caught it when it was on the air in primetime. Of course I'm a big Bones fan now. Even caught Amy Acker in a Law & Order episode the other night! Can't wait to get the set. It truly was a great series. I SO cried when "Fred" died and then when Wesley died. Thanks again for a great series.
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Oct 30, 2007 2:01 PM
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Lynch has done good things with his "Spike" comics so I have hopes that the "Angel:After the Fall" comics may be more interesting than the Buffy comics turned out to be. I loved the whole Spike/Angel dynamic and look forward to more of it.
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Oct 30, 2007 2:15 PM
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I wish the interview had included one other question. 'Would Joss like to direct one of the Heroes: Origins episodes.
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Oct 30, 2007 2:39 PM
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Best Buy has had the Angel box set available for a couple weeks already. I went and got mine the first day and it is totally worth it. Having Buffy and Angel side by side on my DVD shelf is just fabulous.
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Oct 30, 2007 3:17 PM
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I'm so glad you did this interview, it's been a lonely entertainment world without Joss's voice in it. I can't wait until Goners is out there.
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Oct 30, 2007 3:18 PM
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