Feature: Joss Whedon

Three Handed Game

With three series, Buffy, Angel and Firefly, on the air, Joss Whedon is a busy man…

Pick up that dictionary and look up the word ‘busy’. The chances are that it’ll say ‘1] Overburdened; 2] Xposé proofreader; 3] Joss Whedon.’ With three series on the air this fall, Whedon will probably move up to pole position in the next edition. He certainly gives new meaning to the phrase ‘multi-tasking’.

Firstly, Whedon is dealing with his latest baby, the Science Fiction adventure Firefly, which got off to a bumpy start when leading actress Rebecca Gayheart departed just days into production. Then Fox proved less than keen on the Whedon-directed two-hour pilot, but were won over when he wrote a replacement episode overnight, and decided to launch the series in the fall, rather than as a mid-season replacement.

Beyond the new series, both Buffy The Vampire Slayer and Angel are taking their share of Whedon’s time. Whedon leaves most of the day-to-day show-running chores on Buffy to Marti Noxon, but Angel’s another story entirely. David Greenwalt was meant to run the show, but left on good terms to head up ABC’s freshman show, Miracles. Whedon brought in Freaky Links veteran David Simkins to take charge, but Simkins departed over ‘creative differences’ barely three months into his stint as executive producer. So now Whedon is overseeing Angel himself, in collaboration with long-time producers Jeffrey Bell and Tim Minear. And, as if all that weren’t enough, Whedon continues to write his comic book series Fray, and to push forward the long-gestating Ripper, a mini-series based on the Buffy character Giles (Anthony Stewart Head), and the proposed animated Buffy series. It’s a wonder he’s got time to deal with journalists at all, but he can’t wait to explain what Firefly’s got in store for us.

“You’ll see a bunch of pretty adventuresome stories,” Whedon comments. “The stories will be about this group going into the world and finding different cultures and dealing with different dilemmas and solving conflicts amongst themselves. They’re basically just doing what they can to scrape by and find some meaning in this pathetic existence… er, I mean this cool universe!”

by Ian Spelling

More from Joss Whedon, including the future of these three fantastic series, in:
Xposé Special #21

© Fox
Feature © Visual Imagination 2002. Not for reproduction

Taken from

Xposé Special #21
Special 2002
ships from Sep 26 2002
News-stand Price
UK £4.99 / US $9.99

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