Joss Whedon: So Cancelled His Thread Got a Sequel

[Heartofice]

The article cites an ‘improper verbal exchange’ between Whedon and Trachtenberg, which again is quite vague as to what that even means. Most likely it just sounds like an aggressive slanging match ans Whedon being a bully, but it still leaves in the hint that there was something more sexually inappropriate there. You’d think they would make more effort to try and clear that one up 

[Ran]

1 minute ago, Heartofice said:

The article cites an ‘improper verbal exchange’ between Whedon and Trachtenberg, which again is quite vague as to what that even means. Most likely it just sounds like an aggressive slanging match ans Whedon being a bully, but it still leaves in the hint that there was something more sexually inappropriate there. You’d think they would make more effort to try and clear that one up 

I see what you mean, but even "sexually inappropriate" in context of the whole article and how people responded (or didn't respond -- again, no one production-side even knew about this apparent agreement among cast) seems like "crass joke in frat house atmosphere" rather than "making a pass at her" or whatever.

 

 

[Heartofice]

1 minute ago, Ran said:

I see what you mean, but even "sexually inappropriate" in context of the whole article and how people responded (or didn't respond -- again, no one production-side even knew about this apparent agreement among cast) seems like "crass joke in frat house atmosphere" rather than "making a pass at her" or whatever.

 

 

Yeah true, but knowing how the internet works you’d think there would be a big push to clarify those statements so that things don’t get out of hand 

[Mr. Chatywin et al.]

Comments like that from a PR perspective are intentionally vague. 

I haven't followed this topic too closely, but I'm surprised it has had this much life. Guess I underestimated the fandom from his earlier T.V. shows.

[Ran]

7 minutes ago, Tywin et al. said:

Comments like that from a PR perspective are intentionally vague. 

I haven't followed this topic too closely, but I'm surprised it has had this much life. Guess I underestimated the fandom from his earlier T.V. shows.

Oh, it's pretty huge, though I suppose it has become tattered and frayed over time. Between Buffy, Angel, Firefly, and The Avengers -- plus stuff like a well-regarded X-Men comics run -- he has enormous geek-culture cred, and the fact that he's an explicitly feminist creator earned a lot of plaudits.

[Mr. Chatywin et al.]

42 minutes ago, Ran said:

Oh, it's pretty huge, though I suppose it has become tattered and frayed over time. Between Buffy, Angel, Firefly, and The Avengers -- plus stuff like a well-regarded X-Men comics run -- he has enormous geek-culture cred, and the fact that he's an explicitly feminist creator earned a lot of plaudits.

Explains why I don't have a lot to say about him. I've seen episodes of Buffy and Angel in the sense that they were on TV somehow when I woke up, but I never sought them out (I did kind of like the movie though, but not enough to care). Never seen Firefly. The Avengers stuff is largely good, but I'm not a die hard fan and haven't seen all of them. And I'm literally reading my first comic, excuse me, graphic novel, Watchmen, which I must admit, is fucking awesome. I may be a potential convert on that front.

[Ran]

41 minutes ago, Tywin et al. said:

And I'm literally reading my first comic, excuse me, graphic novel, Watchmen, which I must admit, is fucking awesome. I may be a potential convert on that front.

Ah, what a treat! Moore is one of the few genuine literary geniuses to work with the superhero genre.

[polishgenius]

1 hour ago, Tywin et al. said:

And I'm literally reading my first comic, excuse me, graphic novel, Watchmen, which I must admit, is fucking awesome. I may be a potential convert on that front.

Next read Bone by Jeff Smith. It's absolutely nothing like Watchmen, it's just joy in ink and paper.


 

 

3 hours ago, Ran said:

4) I do not know what to make of the thing about Gellar having a " severed relationship" with Whedon "early" in the run. I have no idea how that show could continue 4-5 years if there was so much animosity. I feel like the word is badly chosen (perhaps they meant strained), because to me it implies something really broken that doesn't make sense given what happened.  My read is that the anecdote of not wanting to hear his name was some occasional, blowing-off-steam thing and not actually how things were day-in and day-out for the rest of the series because... like, how was that even possible? That said, everyone has always called Gellar a real professional, and a lot of the actors have said that she made clear she left work at work and didn't really mingle very much with them outside of the set. If anything, she seems to have been above whatever drama there was among the other actors (and it sure seems there was drama between actors caused by the environment Whedon created, reading between the lines, just no one is talking about it)

The article says Whedon wasn't there for the day-to-day running of the show after the early seasons, so I suppose it's possible they could get on without coming into any long contact.

[Werthead]

It sounds like Joss Whedon started very hands-on but during Season 3 (when Angel was in pre-production) he moved to more of an oversight position like Rick Berman on Star Trek: he was juggling three shows simultaneously but he had sub-showrunners below him, like Berman had Michael Pillar, Ira Steven Behr and Jeri Taylor running shows under his watch. Whedon was more involved than that, as he did step in to directly write and direct episodes on each show, but he was split between them, and probably went weeks or longer without being on-set for each of the shows, which made it easier for the people who didn't like him to avoid him.

One guess with the Michelle Trachtenberg thing is that, based on the "funny song" Marsters wrote about her (possibly egged on by Whedon), there was some "when is she legal?" kind of humour (reminiscent of The Sun tabloid in the UK having a countdown to whenever a young actress is about to turn 16) going on there.

Sarah Michelle Gellar's attitude I think is well-known, and was actually pretty well-known at the time. She didn't do much publicity for the show when it was on the air, and I remember dozens of big articles in various magazines and on websites where virtually the whole cast was there but SMG wasn't, and the few times it was raised it was said because she was usually in way more scenes than everyone else and also did a lot of physical training when not filming, she was exhausted most of the time and didn't have time for PR activities. Interestingly, once the show ended she does seem to have actually made friends with some of the other castmembers and done a few more joint appearances (and, not once, has she done an appearance with Whedon; the 20th anniversary reunion stuff in 2017 had Whedon being interviewed separately from the castmembers) than she did when they were actually making it.

I have seen some suggesting the article is apologising for Whedon (the author is a known friend of Whedon's, which makes him a questionable choice to write the article), but the article doesn't hold back on saying that Whedon's behaviour was inappropriate and he was an arsehole, and the "mitigating circumstances" were simply the stresses any ongoing network TV show had to deal with, most of which didn't have bullying or toxic drama.

[Ran]

I don't think most network shows scheduled so many night shoots, or had actors in for 20+ hours. This was due to Buffy and Angel having the whole vampire thing, plus the action and effects side of it added yet more time due to setups.

10-12 hour shooting days are definitely normal in the industry. The 14+ hours people discuss as pretty regular is definitely on the long side, but there were other shows in the same wheelhouse (I recall an account of a DS9 guest actress who had to come in at some ungodly hours for hair and makeup, and combined with long shoots she claimed she ended up having some of her hair fall out from the lack of sleep and subsequent stress.) 

Was it B5 where JMS boasted that they basically never ran over time and never shot on weekends? I've a vague memory of this.

ETA: Almost never ran into overtime, it looks like. Apparently the boast is that between the show and the TV movies, there were only 18 days of overtime. I never quite understood how he managed that given the makeup requirements, but I guess reusing actors so they had masks ready to go was a part of it.

[Mr. Chatywin et al.]

2 hours ago, Ran said:

Ah, what a treat! Moore is one of the few genuine literary geniuses to work with the superhero genre.

 

2 hours ago, polishgenius said:

Next read Bone by Jeff Smith. It's absolutely nothing like Watchmen, it's just joy in ink and paper.

Leaning towards V for Vendetta due to my love of the movie, but it would still fall back behind a few books I need to read. Anyways, this is off topic so I'll leave it at there here.

[Werthead]

3 hours ago, Ran said:

I don't think most network shows scheduled so many night shoots, or had actors in for 20+ hours. This was due to Buffy and Angel having the whole vampire thing, plus the action and effects side of it added yet more time due to setups.

The flipside of having lots of night shoots is that you don't have as much day shoots, so the actors should be around for the same amount of time. It's like working shifts. Buffy had advantages as well in that they put a lot of their locations near the studios (the entrance to the Bronze was literally the exterior of the soundstage) so I'm not sure why their shoots were so insane. The makeup requirements were nowhere near as onerous as they were for Trek or Babylon 5 (and Optic Nerve already had tons of experience with the latter) apart from the odd very heavy episode (like Hush with the Gentlemen, or scenes with the Master or Giles-as-a-Demon) and the costumes were almost all off the shelf.

They also did cheat for some of the filming. A lot of interior night scenes (in the library or Buffy's house) were filmed during the day and filtered and lit for night. In fact, they even did that for some exterior shooting (the woeful HD version of the show failed to replicate some of the filters, so you occasionally have shots of Angel sitting in Buffy's bedroom in what is clearly daylight for no apparent reason, leaving the house and suddenly it's night).

The only thing I can think of is that the show as badly organised. Whedon noted that in an interview, saying there was a lot of dicking around on set which he didn't clamp down on as should have (and from this new report it sounds like he may have encouraged it).

Quote

 

Was it B5 where JMS boasted that they basically never ran over time and never shot on weekends? I've a vague memory of this.

ETA: Almost never ran into overtime, it looks like. Apparently the boast is that between the show and the TV movies, there were only 18 days of overtime. I never quite understood how he managed that given the makeup requirements, but I guess reusing actors so they had masks ready to go was a part of it.

 

The main thing was pre-planning. On B5 they had scripts finished and ready to go 4-5 weeks ahead of time, so they knew exactly what was going on, and sometimes were building set-pieces for 3 episodes down the road, ready to be assembled the second shooting on the current set space ended. It helped that 90% of the show took place on the station, so new set pieces weren't really needed, and they only did two location shoots on the entire series (for Londo watching the Shadow ships flying overhead), both filmed in the studio car park.

Most network shows had scripts sometimes being written whilst the episode was being filmed, certainly rarely fully ready a less than a week before shooting, and that meant sometimes having to scramble to fulfil casting, set and location requirements.

They also literally shut the studio down at closing time, so if stuff wasn't filmed, tough, although that only got them into trouble once I think (when Nu-Kosh's encounter suit refused to explode and no-one wanted to touch it to find out why, causing an argument, so they did it - badly - in CG instead).

[Ran]

I distinctly recall reading stories of Gellar and other performers showing up early, doing both day shoots and then fight choreography to prep for the night shoots which would feature the action scenes in the cemetary. So I'm not sure it's true that they didn't go from day to night in a single shoot. Though this may be a first season thing, and after that the cemetary fights were on sets.

Were there two shots of Londo out of doors watching the Shadows? I definitely remember one. Hmm...

[Werthead]

2 hours ago, Ran said:

Were there two shots of Londo out of doors watching the Shadows? I definitely remember one. Hmm...

In The Coming of Shadows and they they restaged the shot for The Hour of the Wolf, though they did use some of the same shots from the former.

[Derfel Cadarn]

In the DVD commentary for the season 6 opener, M Trachtenberg’s increasing age is referenced in that they mention they decided it was no longer appropriate for her to be hanging around Spike/Marsden so closely, wearing short skirts. I had the commentary on subtitles but I think it was Whedon commenting.

In the Once more with Feeling commentary, he mentions he finds being rejected/told to go away a big turn on, hence Spike constantly telling Buffy to beat it in his songs, really trying to grt her back.

[SpaceChampion]

On 2/27/2021 at 4:10 PM, Werthead said:

In The Coming of Shadows and they they restaged the shot for The Hour of the Wolf, though they did use some of the same shots from the former.

Yes, and they even dug out his old costume from the earlier seasons so it would be consistent.

[Lord Varys]

The Whedon (apology) show continues, if anyone is so inclined:

https://www.msn.com/en-us/movies/news/gal-gadot-clashed-with-joss-whedon-on-justice-league-as-he-allegedly-threatened-her-career-report/ar-BB1fmIfD?ocid=msedgntp

[Soylent Brown]

Gadot had issues with her character being more aggressive in Justice League than in the Wonder Woman film? Doesn't she splurge a bunch of baddies into toothpaste and unnccessarily destroy a building in the Snyder cut?

[Raja]

There was a much bigger piece in the hollywood reporter with Ray Fisher ( the actor who played Cyborg in Justice League) and his experience with Justice League, Wheadon and the execs at WB

Reading that and everything else recently makes working for Whedon sound thoroughly unpleasant

[Soylent Brown]

2 minutes ago, Raja said:

There was a much bigger piece on the hollywood reporter with Ray Fisher ( the actor who played Cyborg in Justice League) and his experience with Justice League and Wheadon.

Reading that and everything else recently makes working for Wheadon sound thoroughly unpleasant

Fisher was the guy who had his part cut the most in the film, so he was never going to be happy. (And the problem there was trying to shoehorn an origin story into an already busy ensemble movie, rather than Whedon specifically. I expect that informed his experience hugely. That tensions arose is hardly surprising.