Joss Whedon: So Cancelled His Thread Got a Sequel

[Heartofice]

It boggles my mind that actors could be so disruptive on a movie like JL. Are they really so protective over how much screen time they are getting, on a movie they don’t care about? 
 

My assumption there is that it must be characters with smaller roles or the more minor JL members. Would Gal Gadot be kicking up a fuss when she’s got her own movies coming out which were seemingly going to be successful? So is it people like Mamoa hoping to grab more screen time in order to raise their profile? 
 

I dunno, I bailed on JL after twice trying to get through ten minutes of it, and it’s dreadful. Already it feels like a sop to the actors; here’s your Aquaman section, here’s your Batman section.. rather than a coherent story driven plot. What a shit show.

[Werthead]

Nicholas Brendon has given a rather long and rambling statement on the issue, which makes me suspect he's still on painkillers for his, er, medical issues.

He backs Charisma and says that Joss could be toxic and even indicates he had his own issues with Whedon, but then says he still loves and forgives the guy. Okay.

[Deadlines? What Deadlines?]

18 hours ago, Ran said:

I think Buffy and Angel behind the scenes dramas were probably at a fairly normal  level for productions in the early 2000s... and probably until today, even. Every year there's some new gossip about which actor got canned because they were a handful, which producer was replaced because they were abusive, which actors are feuding behind the scenes, etc. Look at the Lethal Weapon series drama from a couple of years back as a recent example. There's a quote from Whedon regarding S7 of Buffy, that the actors knew early on it was the last season... and that most of them were glad that that was it.

As for Justice League, it was a very troubled production according to all reports, and he was brought in to try and fix it. It was a mess not his making, but one he went to willingly, that's clear enough. Warner Brothers must have promised him the moon and dumped an enormous amount of money on his lap. If that e-mail is accurate, among the challenges were a bunch of upset cast members who questioned everything, trying to protect as many of their scenes as possible despite the fact that Snyder's assembly cut was nearly 5 hours long... and there was no way WB was letting them make a movie over 2.5 hours, and mandated 2 hours to Whedon. So it sounds like nearly every actor had a reason to complain, knowing that Whedon was there to hack the film to mandated length while also having to fill in a bunch of stuff to try (and fail, by all accounts) and make a cohesive film.

I also think it's fair to say that, as the e-mail states, Whedon wasn't really suited to playing peacemaker in this scenario, which is the thing that makes the mail ring with truth and why in retrospect WB should have done something else with JL -- what, I don't know. Just pause the whole thing until Snyder comes back and then force him to cut it to a managable size? It would have cost tens of millions, but maybe the continuity of having him on it would have allowed him to keep the actors on board.

 

The assembly cut was almost 5 hours, but the cut that was screened for IMDB The rumored runtime in March of 2017 was 2h 50m. The original directors cut was 3h 24m. The 120 minute mandate was a late change, but it came from Tsujihara to Snyder, before Whedon came on board. This is 24 minutes shorter than the first Avengers movie. A film that develops literally zero new characters. Brilliant.

I'm not sure what "troubled production" means in this context. I think it's true that management was leaning pretty hard on Snyder, but I've seen zero evidence that this was bleeding into the day-to-day production activities or causing friction among the cast and crew prior to Whedon's arrival. 

I'm skeptical of the email and its motivations to say the least. Did Whedon walk into a house on fire or was he one of the people pouring gasoline on and lighting matches? Don't know. Given everything that's coming out, I'm inclined to think the latter.

Edit: I took out the IMDB reference because the twitter exchange where that come from was unclear and reported on multiple ways.

[Ran]

 

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He backs Charisma and says that Joss could be toxic and even indicates he had his own issues with Whedon, but then says he still loves and forgives the guy. Okay.

He doesn't actually use the word "toxic". But it's a useful reminder that the word"toxic" is an incredibly .... elastic word, and means different things to different people.

The actual video is at https://www.facebook.com/watch/live/?v=974850293045340&ref=watch_permalink -- start at the 6:20 mark or so. I recommend watching it as it doesn't fully convey the nuances to just repeat the words. He's quite emotional about the situation.

Harry Lennix has talked about his experience with Joss on Dollhouse. A very measured response. Alan Tudyk retweeted it, for whatever that is worth.

 

[Derfel Cadarn]

7 hours ago, Werthead said:

Nicholas Brendon has given a rather long and rambling statement on the issue, which makes me suspect he's still on painkillers for his, er, medical issues.

He backs Charisma and says that Joss could be toxic and even indicates he had his own issues with Whedon, but then says he still loves and forgives the guy. Okay.

As long as it’s not an update on his dick.

[Deadlines? What Deadlines?]

I know, right? TMI.

[Ran]

It's worth noting that Brendon's remarks all come from him live streaming on FB and basically interacting with people in chat/comments, hence the off-the-cuff nature, sometimes disjointed remarks (for example, in the video linked above, he actually refers to the Carpenter situation once or twice prior, then breaks off to discuss other things, sing along to whatever he was listening to, and so on.)

Besides Baldwin and Tudyk having remarked back when Fisher made his allegations, it looks like Fran Kranz (Dollhouse, The Cabin in the Woods, and Much Ado About Nothing) tweeted about it in December. Click through for the thread.

 

The picture I'm getting now at present is that outside of whatever was going on at Buffy and Angel -- where he was working with people over many years and it seems there was a history of various petty and not-so-petty problems  -- and Justice League  -- where he was brought in as a fixer with a sharp mandate and unhappy surrounding circumstances -- most people genuinely don't have any professional issues with him. Firefly (save a claim from one writer, apparently about something he heard Whedon say rather than something that happened at the production), Dollhouse, Serenity, The Cabin in the Wood, both Avengers movies, and (per HBO) The Nevers all seem to have been pretty trouble-free, at least according to all reports we have from people involved in those projects. And even the experiences on Buffy and Angel were not uniform ones but fairly individual situations. If he created a "toxic environment" in these instances, it doesn't seem to be habitual across his career as a show runner and director.

[Kalbear]

2 hours ago, Ran said:

It's worth noting that Brendon's remarks all come from him live streaming on FB and basically interacting with people in chat/comments, hence the off-the-cuff nature, sometimes disjointed remarks (for example, in the video linked above, he actually refers to the Carpenter situation once or twice prior, then breaks off to discuss other things, sing along to whatever he was listening to, and so on.)

Besides Baldwin and Tudyk having remarked back when Fisher made his allegations, it looks like Fran Kranz (Dollhouse, The Cabin in the Woods, and Much Ado About Nothing) tweeted about it in December. Click through for the thread.

 

The picture I'm getting now at present is that outside of whatever was going on at Buffy and Angel -- where he was working with people over many years and it seems there was a history of various petty and not-so-petty problems  -- and Justice League  -- where he was brought in as a fixer with a sharp mandate and unhappy surrounding circumstances -- most people genuinely don't have any professional issues with him. Firefly (save a claim from one writer, apparently about something he heard Whedon say rather than something that happened at the production), Dollhouse, Serenity, The Cabin in the Wood, both Avengers movies, and (per HBO) The Nevers all seem to have been pretty trouble-free, at least according to all reports we have from people involved in those projects. And even the experiences on Buffy and Angel were not uniform ones but fairly individual situations. If he created a "toxic environment" in these instances, it doesn't seem to be habitual across his career as a show runner and director.

I think before anointing him you should maybe wait for those other folks to chime in, especially the women. Avengers might have been an exception because, well, it had almost no women in it and only one major star. Same for Avengers 2. Mostly, I would very much caution that just because some people were okay with their experience or aren't willing to speak out about it implies anything about the others. 

Dollhouse is weird because the actual text of the show is fucking creep tastic. 

Cabin in the Woods - Joss didn't have much to do with the actual showrunning, did he? I thought that was Goddard. 

[Ran]

 

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Mostly, I would very much caution that just because some people were okay with their experience or aren't willing to speak out about it implies anything about the others. 

I am referring specifically to the idea that Whedon's productions are generally toxic environments, which does not seem to be borne out by the evidence we have. Even Benson's claim that Buffy was a toxic environment seems hard to fit with others suggesting that it was a pretty normal working environment, with challenges and tiffs perhaps, but that these things were normal in their line of work. If some individual actor wants to say there were situations that were especially bad for them, that's of course their right, but to me "toxic environment" suggests something general and not individual.

I can well believe Justice League was a generally toxic environment from all the reports and rumors about the drama behind the scenes.

(But then, again, "toxic" is very elastic It is 100% possible that Amber Benson's toxic environment amounts to exactly the same stuff as what Head saw, and it's just a matter of subjective difference.)

 

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Dollhouse is weird because the actual text of the show is fucking creep tastic. 

I mean, that was a feature, not a bug. It took the subtext and made it into text so that it could comment on it.  There's a cottage industry ATM of a bunch of reputable and not-so-reputable websites coming out with retrospective attacks on Whedon's shows, and the ones I've read are all strained, tendentious readings.

The Dollhouse represents a seemingly-inescapable exploitative system, staffed by ethically-compromised people who are cogs in the machine just going along to get along to various degrees on behalf of faceless, nameless corporate overlords,, the Dolls are victims, and it's a story almost entirely concerned with critiquing objectification and the commoditization of sex by making viewers vicarious participants and then regularly hammering home what the problem is.

So, is it creepy? Hell yeah. Is it intended to be creepy? Double hell yeah! (IMO, it's a large part of why the network was so ill-at-ease with the show and kept giving Whedon notes to try and get him to file down the edges.)

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Cabin in the Woods - Joss didn't have much to do with the actual showrunning, did he? I thought that was Goddard. 

I thought so too, but apparently he was on set often, given that Kranz cites his interactions with him there as part of his work and personal experiences with Whedon.

[Vaughn]

You throw up a lot of smokescreens about how maybe he's being misjudged so what's your bottom line point? Carpenter et al shouldn't have spoken up? We shouldn't change our view of Whedon?

[Ran]

Speaking of strained, tendentious readings...

You're free to quote where I used any variation of "misjudged" or suggested that anyone should be quiet. 

[Kalbear]

26 minutes ago, Ran said:

I am referring specifically to the idea that Whedon's productions are generally toxic environments, which does not seem to be borne out by the evidence we have. Even Benson's claim that Buffy was a toxic environment seems hard to fit with others suggesting that it was a pretty normal working environment, with challenges and tiffs perhaps, but that these things were normal in their line of work. If some individual actor wants to say there were situations that were especially bad for them, that's of course their right, but to me "toxic environment" suggests something general and not individual.

I dunno; this sounds an awful lot like the 'but judge, look at all the people he DIDN'T murder' as an argument. 

If one person feels that it's a toxic place to be, it might be. If multiple people do, it probably is. There's never been a workplace that 100% of the people were all 'yeah, that is complete garbage'. 

26 minutes ago, Ran said:

I mean, that was a feature, not a bug. It took the subtext and made it into text so that it could comment on it.  There's a cottage industry ATM of a bunch of reputable and not-so-reputable websites coming out with retrospective attacks on Whedon's shows, and the ones I've read are all strained, tendentious readings.

The Dollhouse represents a seemingly-inescapable exploitative system, staffed by ethically-compromised people who are cogs in the machine just going along to get along to various degrees on behalf of faceless, nameless corporate overlords,, the Dolls are victims, and it's a story almost entirely concerned with critiquing objectification and the commoditization of sex by making viewers vicarious participants and then regularly hammering home what the problem is.

So, is it creepy? Hell yeah. Is it intended to be creepy? Double hell yeah! (IMO, it's a large part of why the network was so ill-at-ease with the show and kept giving Whedon notes to try and get him to file down the edges.)

I don't think he did a very good job of that, then, as most people did not get the idea of critiquing objectification, nor did they regularly hammer home the problem. I think maybe two episodes had anything resembling that kind of viewpoint; the rest were almost entirely clients of the week and their sometimes fun, sometimes weird, sometimes horrible fantasies. Most of it was really showcasing Eliza Dushku doing cool shit in weird ways from week to week. It wasn't particularly deep as a show goes.

The other point that you seemed to miss entirely is that it was VERY gender based in its exploitation. Which again might be part of the notion of critique, but to my knowledge they never brought up once that the male doll didn't have to dress up like a dominatrix or get raped repeatedly compared to what they were doing to the women. 

Mostly, the notion of having to showcase how bad exploitation is by showing SUPER BAD EXPLOITATION is not a new thing or a particularly deep thing, and most of the time just leans into being exploitative and very rarely succeeds in making it seem particularly bad. By comparison Westworld - which also has similar themes - makes it very very clear early on and continually how bad the customers are and then actually turns the tables entirely early on. That is a central theme from the very first episode. And even it goes into the exploitation a bit too much sometimes.

26 minutes ago, Ran said:

I thought so too, but apparently he was on set often, given that Kranz cites his interactions with him there as part of his work and personal experiences with Whedon.

Huh, interesting. Glad the men didn't seem to have nearly the problems. Guess that's good for them!

[Ran]

Just now, Karlbear said:

I dunno; this sounds an awful lot like the 'but judge, look at all the people he DIDN'T murder' as an argument. 

No, 

Just now, Karlbear said:

If one person feels that it's a toxic place to be, it might be. If multiple people do, it probably is. There's never been a workplace that 100% of the people were all 'yeah, that is complete garbage'. 

I don't think he did a very good job of that, then, as most people did not get the idea of critiquing objectification,

You know a lot of people, to know "most people" and hear from them what they understood about Dollhouse.

Just now, Karlbear said:

nor did they regularly hammer home the problem

Eye of the beholder, I guess, because I remember it quite differently.

Just now, Karlbear said:

the rest were almost entirely clients of the week

That was predominantly the first season, which is where Whedon had to take in more of the notes from Fox who wanted to keep the show episodic and lighter, according to all reports I remember from around that time.

Just now, Karlbear said:

The other point that you seemed to miss entirely is that it was VERY gender based in its exploitation.

Isn't objectification of women and exploitation of female sex workers a far more pernicious issue in society? It seems striking to me that a show examining and critiquing it, however uncomfortably, is doing a good thing. Different strokes for different folks.

Just now, Karlbear said:

Which again might be part of the notion of critique, but to my knowledge they never brought up once that the male doll didn't have to dress up like a dominatrix or get raped repeatedly compared to what they were doing to the women. 

I mean, one of the male dolls goes nuts because of the abuse...

Just now, Karlbear said:

Mostly, the notion of having to showcase how bad exploitation is by showing SUPER BAD EXPLOITATION is not a new thing or a particularly deep thing, and most of the time just leans into being exploitative and very rarely succeeds in making it seem particularly bad. By comparison Westworld - which also has similar themes - makes it very very clear early on and continually how bad the customers are and then actually turns the tables entirely early on. That is a central theme from the very first episode. And even it goes into the exploitation a bit too much sometimes.

Definitely a YMMV, because on the whole Dollhouse strikes me as more insightful on these topics than Westworld. The latter has muddled itself by swinging wildly at highfalutin philosophical matters and over-indulging in layers of mysteries upon mysteries, operating on different timelines, etc.. It's a better-made, better-performed show, and often even better-written, but I find Westworld somewhat uninteresting when it comes to its thematic commentary, at least since the first season.

Just now, Karlbear said:

Huh, interesting. Glad the men didn't seem to have nearly the problems. Guess that's good for them!

Did not know that Amy Acker had transitioned. 

[Kalbear]

2 minutes ago, Ran said:

No, 

I'm not the only one picking up on this. You're splitting a lot of hairs in trying to say how it wasn't ACTUALLY a toxic environment because it has to come from the Toxic region of France to be genuinely toxic. 

2 minutes ago, Ran said:

You know a lot of people, to know "most people" and hear from them what they understood about Dollhouse.

Read a lot of reviews about it and hung out on forums. Seems to be more than you did!

2 minutes ago, Ran said:

That was predominantly the first season, which is where Whedon had to take in more of the notes from Fox who wanted to keep the show episodic and lighter, according to all reports I remember from around that time.

I didn't watch the second season because I didn't really have interest in it any more after the first season. So maybe it improved? But it certainly didn't start being particularly woke.

2 minutes ago, Ran said:

Isn't objectification of women and exploitation of female sex workers a far more pernicious issue in society? It seems striking to me that a show examining and critiquing it, however uncomfortably, is doing a good thing. Different strokes for different folks.

If the show did that, maybe it'd be a good thing. That certainly wasn't what the show mostly did. 

2 minutes ago, Ran said:

I mean, one of the male dolls goes nuts because of the abuse...

I don't honestly remember this - are you talking about Alpha? I thought he went nuts not because of the abuse, but because he couldn't handle all the personalities. 

2 minutes ago, Ran said:

Definitely a YMMV, because on the whole Dollhouse strikes me as more insightful on these topics than Westworld. The latter has muddled itself by swinging wildly at highfalutin philosophical matters and over-indulging in layers of mysteries upon mysteries, operating on different timelines, etc.. It's a better-made, better-performed show, and often even better-written, but I find Westworld somewhat uninteresting when it comes to its thematic commentary, at least since the first season.

I think Dollhouse tries to have it both ways, and Westworld doesn't even try at all. If at any point you think that being in Westworld would be cool, you are told over and over how horrible a person you are for doing so. 

2 minutes ago, Ran said:

Did not know that Amy Acker had transitioned. 

Kinda think you missed the point there entirely. The point is that so far, women and minorities are the one who have had major issues working with Whedon; men have largely not. Amy Acker's experience says nothing about the men who have had a good time with it. My point was not that only men have said good things; it was that mostly women have said bad  things.

[Fez]

As far as I know, Whedon has been accused of being an asshole and toxic, but has not been accused of any sort of sexual or criminal behavior. Which is important not only because people can have very different interpretations of what is asshole behavior, but also because most people are not assholes all the time. 

It could easily be that there's a certain personality type or something that sets Whedon off, and he otherwise stays within the bounds of acceptable behavior. And if that's the case, it doesn't excuse him if he did something wrong, but it would explain why a lot of people never encountered or realized anything was off. It's not like a Louis CK or a Harvey Weinstein, who were a creep and a criminal respectively, in pretty much every situation where it was possible.

On top of that, I also think its possible that Whedon changed something about how he interacted on sets, which would explain why no later productions had reported issues (other than Justice League, where there are perhaps outside factors at play).

[Ran]

A very fair way to put it.

[Kalbear]

8 minutes ago, Mr Gordo said:

I don't want to turn this into a Dollhouse thread and go through all THAT arguing again, but if you didn't see the second season you kind of didn't even really see the show. I good 2/3rds of Season 1 was fox mandated crap.

That might be, but it ain't like Whedon hadn't worked with Fox before and didn't know what he was getting into. When you're dealing with those kinds of themes you've got to understand what you're going to get if, well, you deal with Fox instead of HBO or something. 

And the watered down version of showing how horrible and exploitative things are is simply exploitative. 

[Vaughn]

3 hours ago, Ran said:

Speaking of strained, tendentious readings...

You're free to quote where I used any variation of "misjudged" or suggested that anyone should be quiet. 

Ok, let me rephrase then - you're making a case that most Whedon sets and productions were fine. Sez you: "I am referring specifically to the idea that Whedon's productions are generally toxic environments, which does not seem to be borne out by the evidence we have." If I read a story about how someone is an abusive to, say, 30% of the people who worked for them, my instinct isn't to focus on the 70% who weren't impacted.

The genesis of this topic was specific actors bringing up some bad times they had with Whedon. They weren't claiming their experience was universal or that Whedon should be charged with a crime or fired from a show he was working on or really anything, just that they felt he was not a good person to work with. You're all over these threads not specifically refuting the actors' statements but piling up anecdotes about how he's also been fine to work with for a lot of people, maybe the majority of people he worked with. You haven't stated that this somehow offsets the allegations of Carpenter, Trachtenberg, etc... but then what are you specifically trying to accomplish with the counter examples if not that? What's your goal here if not to dilute the weight of these allegations? And why? It's weird to me.

 

[Annara Snow]

4 hours ago, Karlbear said:

 

The other point that you seemed to miss entirely is that it was VERY gender based in its exploitation. Which again might be part of the notion of critique, but to my knowledge they never brought up once that the male doll didn't have to dress up like a dominatrix or get raped repeatedly compared to what they were doing to the women. 

 

Male dolls did get repeatedly raped just the same as the female dolls did. What else were the "romantic engagements"? Or do you think that the male dolls somehow had more agency than the female ones did in them? In fact, Victor got that treatment from Adelle herself, when she posed as a client and made him enact the role of her lover "Roger". (Everyone else thought the client was an old lady.) 

As for dressing up, well, they did not dress as a dominatrix, but I'd be surprised if none of them had Dom engagements (especially as Adelle said she didn't allow her dolls to be Subs; probably because she didn't trust the clients not to physically hurt them in that situation. Although that probably wasn't true, as one o Sierra's personalities was a haughty high class lady with masochistic tendencies). The male dolls weren't all so ripped just because they, I dunno, needed to be gym instructors or whatever. And the assignment we saw Alpha and Whiskey on entailed the two of them playing a Bonnie and Clyde/Mickey and Malory kind of couple for what seemed to be a masochistic client fascinated by violence.

If you mean that we didn't get to see them on-screen in the same kind of sexy, revealing clothes that we saw Echo in? True. And this particular scene may be one of those where the show was navigating between exploring exploitation, and engaging in it because the execs knew it sells.

Season 1 made more concessions to the network by having more episodic, standalone stories, but the amount of sex-based assignments actually featured on the show tends to be very,  very exaggerated by those who try to criticize Dollhouse as exploitative (especially those who try to criticize it without having seen all of it). The majority of episodic storylines, even in season 1, concerned assignments like being a hostage negotiator in a kidnapping of a client's daughter, infiltrating a cult, finding the person threatening the life of a popular singer, etc. And by season 2, the show was fully going into the direction of its long-term storyline, which had little to do with sexual exploitation and more to do with a SciFi post-apocalyptic future.

BTW, has anyone mentioned that the show was just as much Eliza Dushku's idea as it was Whedon's - they came up with the premise during a discussion if her experiences as an actress while they were having lunch - and that she was responsible for its creation, since she had a development deal with Fox and chose to do Dollhouse with Whedon?

[Annara Snow]

On 2/17/2021 at 9:52 PM, The Anti-Targ said:

Taking the Joss issue off the table for a moment, most organisations working with minors have an official policy of not allowing men to be alone with young girls under any circumstances. It is a protection for the girl(s) most of all, but it is also a protection for the men, and for the organisation. Though I would say it is (was) a little bit naive to not have the same rule for men being alone with boys. So I hope the policies changed some time ago to not being alone with anyone under the age of...18? Child protection policies in organisations have been around for a long time, whether they are recommended by govt or legally mandated. I assume most people will remember the hoo-ha that was stirred that one time an airline asked a man to move seat because they accidentally placed him next to a girl in a row with no one else? People thought the airline was being unreasonable because it assumed the man was guilty. But really if the man was thinking straight he should have asked to be moved.

Back to Joss, but re the above, there really shouldn't have been a Joss-specific rule, because there should have been a studio policy applicable to all men.

There's so much bizarre stuff here.

A rule that no adult men is allowed near a teenage girl? Why? Because the assumption is that all adult men are ephebophiles / hebephiles, or that it's a man will inevitably try to abuse his position in a sexual way against a teenage girl, or that "the man needs protection" - from what? Being accused while not doing anything wrong, because there are supposedly so many unfounded accusations and "oversensitive" people who see things that don't exist? That sounds like BS.

It's naive that there was no similar rule for adult men and teenage boys? OK, but why was it not "naive" that there was no such rule for adult women and teenage boys or teenage girls? If you're making such a rule, why isn't there a rule that adults should never be with minors alone in a room, period?

I mean, if you're really going by the idea of protecting minors from sexual abuse, specifically, it's not like there are women sexually abusing minors. 

If it's not about sexual abuse but abuse in general (most likely emotional abuse), again, why the gender-soecificity of it? It's not like female teachers, mentors, coaches aren't capable of abusing minors?

Or, on the other hand, if it's about "protecting the men from the unfounded accusations" (rolling my eyes so hard right now), as if everyone is just going around throwing accusations at poor men, that also sounds like BS, because people in power, in fact, rarely get accused, and even more rarely, have to face unfouned accusations.

 

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I assume most people will remember the hoo-ha that was stirred that one time an airline asked a man to move seat because they accidentally placed him next to a girl in a row with no one else? People thought the airline was being unreasonable because it assumed the man was guilty. But really if the man was thinking straight he should have asked to be moved.

Really, if anyone was thinking straight, they should have told the airline they were being idiots and offending everyone involved.

Contrary to some recent opinions, it's really, really incredibly easy to not sexually abuse or harass people. Just don't do it. Most people don't. Being male doesn't make you in any way naturally inclined to rape or abuse, so you just can't escape it - some people  simply do it because the society has taught them to think they can get away with it.