Five Things I Learnt About Joss from his Edinburgh Talk by SimonWho

SIMONWHO'S BLOG

SimonWho

Five Things I Learnt About Joss from his Edinburgh Talk
Thursday, August 25, 2005

1. Joss is an incredibly smart man. Leaving aside the patter (highlights of which included his Chandleresque reactions to "his" X-Men script, his days at high school and "3GTV"), he gave interesting, intelligent and actual responses to all the questions asked. A lot of the time he was prepared to state non-crowd pleasing things (such as, yes, he did intend for Buffy to be a cultural phenomenom and that Revenge of the Sith was the most political astute film of the year) plus make himself look bad occasionally for previous decisions.

2. Joss is very big on the chain of command. While all for collaboration and suggestions, when he is the boss (i.e. from Buffy onwards on TV and presumably Serenity onwards on film) it is his circus, he gets to decide the acts. He also sounded embarassed about the occasions when he broke the chain of command himself (e.g. his comments about X-Men).

3. Joss loves his work. He described writing as a joy, working with actors as an unexpected delight and the whole creative process as immensely fulfilling. He talked about little details like how he knew from the auditions of Nathan, Alexis, Amy and (perhaps surprisingly) Morena that they were going to be the one (subject to standard "crazy person" testing).

4. Joss went off the rails. He credited his wife with a lot of things (including predicting garbage trucks with robotic arms) but also knowing that when Fox stopped coming back to him with network notes about Firefly, that was a bad sign, not the relief Joss took it for. He said it clearly "Fox didn't want Firefly and I knew that" and yet he continued to sell it to them. Creatively, Firefly was an undoubted triumph but it certainly seemed that the behind-the-scenes management that Joss had once prided himself on had gone badly astray.

5. Joss is still a very confident man. You got the impression that once more his self-confidence was battered by the failure of Firefly, combined with the umpteen movie script farragoes and Angel's untimely demise. And yet when he talked about what was important there was no "I think that maybe ..." or "Perhaps I could have..." Joss knows what he thinks is great TV and what makes a great movie. If he fails, he's going to fail on his own terms and fail big, leaving a big Joss shaped hole in the wall.

God love him for that.

COMMENTS

Friday, August 26, 2005 7:05 AM

R1Z

"Joss knows what he thinks is great TV and what makes a great movie. If he fails, he's going to fail on his own terms and fail big, leaving a big Joss shaped hole in the wall."

I think Florence Foster Jenkins said it best when she said, "People may say I can't sing, but no one can ever say I didn't sing."

Of course, Joss has actual talent, and by all accounts, Florence had none . . .

Friday, August 26, 2005 5:43 AM

EMBERS

I love your remarks; I've gotten to see Joss speak and my impressions were very much the same, but I wouldn't have expressed it so well.

POST YOUR COMMENTS

You must log in to post comments.

YOUR OPTIONS

THIS MONTH'S ENTRIES

Apr

May 2024

Jun