WHEDON: The more schools become about tests – the A level sitting was different, because you literally spent two years studying texts, so the tests are very much about your grown-up understanding of what you’re doing. It’s a different test. It’s a real test.

PLUME: So it’s not just memorization…

WHEDON: Yeah. Testing – multiple-choice, memorization, standardization – is the death of American education.

PLUME: There’s a fascinating book about that that just came out, the Language Police, about the dumbing down of standardized testing and text books in the U.S.

WHEDON: I found the SATs to be a joke when I took them. I came home for vacation one summer and it was like, “Surprise, you have to go take the SATs” “What?”

PLUME: That’s quite a welcome.

WHEDON: So I just did, but I was like, “That’s what college is based on?”

PLUME: What U.S. students sweat over for two years…

WHEDON: That’s not an indication of an education.

PLUME: What factors started to lead to your choice of schools post-Winchester?

WHEDON: Well, Jesus, I wanted to get out of England. I love it, and it’s like a home to me, and I literally think about spending my twilight years there – but you know, I’d been there three years and wanted to get back to America. I had never really sort of gotten America. I went back and studied it, learned about it. I was excited. I was like, “I’m interested in being American now.” Then I visited a bunch of schools, and Wesleyan just kind of… we clicked. There was something about it. I am well aware, and was at the time, that it may have been the weather. It may just have been a nice day. So that’s the only school that I applied to.
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PLUME: That’s a better criteria than most kids apply to what schools they choose.

WHEDON: Yeah. No, I visited a few.

PLUME: Which ones did you turn down? Which aspects turned you off?

WHEDON: It’s not like anybody was begging for me. I was clearly a ne’er-do-well. And, in fact, when we got into Wesleyan, in our packet of information, I had no grades. I had a lot of reports that said, “He seems to be intelligent, but I wouldn’t say he applies himself terribly much.”

PLUME: So you had “artist” written all over you.

WHEDON: Oh god, from day one. I knew that I would never be man enough to have a real job. I literally would be, “Why am I thinking about this paper on the Crusades when I should be watching Manhattan,” at our tiny little local theater, “and learning about film?” Even when I was in high school – “That’s where I’m going. That’s what I need to know about.”

PLUME: Getting into Wesleyan, and what aspects appealed to you…

WHEDON: It was very artistic – and it’s a weird thing, but I had sort of spent part of my formative years there, because two of the professors there were old friends of my folks from college. So I had actually gone to their house in Middletown, pretty much on campus, since I was a tiny boy. I got to stay with them, and their daughter Katie is a good friend, and she showed me around the campus when I visited. I actually had a friend who was already in the school, from Riverdale, so I really got a sense of the campus. It just felt right. I didn’t even know who Jeanine Basinger was at the time. I didn’t even know who Richard Slotkin was. I didn’t know that they had the best film department.

PLUME: At that time, Wesleyan wasn’t really known for its film program.

WHEDON: Only among the initiated, after they wear the robe and get the tattoo …

PLUME: Like the Freemasons of film school.

WHEDON: Yeah, we were the Freemasons of film. I just got a good feeling. At that point, I didn’t know if I was going to concentrate on film or theater, but I was so blown away by the film department, it clearly took over my life.

PLUME: What would you say were the real strengths of the film department?

WHEDON: Again, people who understand theory in terms of filmmaking and film storytelling, and film mythos and film genre, better than anybody else does. Lectures that were so complete, so complex, so dense and so simple that I almost had trouble following them, and by the end would realize they were dealing with things that were already in me. They were already incorporated in the way I thought about story, because they are the American mythos. Just having that dissected and presented by people who understood the very basics from the brain of the film, to the Greek myth aspect of the story, to every single thing you could learn without actually making film yourself – when I say making the film, I mean coming to Hollywood and doing it – was there. I don’t have a thought about story that is not influenced by those teachers.

PLUME: Did it set you up well for actually making the transition to a professional career? I know you’ve mentioned in the past that it wasn’t a contact school.

WHEDON: It was, in a low-key way, and now it’s gotten bigger. I was hired as a research assistant by a grad, and that was set up by Jeanine. In my time here, I think I’ve hired at least five – some of whom who were hired by others who I didn’t know were Jeanine students, or Wesleyan students, until after they were here. We have, every year, the Wesleyan get together – and every year, an astonishing number of people who are working heavily in the film industry and bright new people coming up. A lot of the people who are ten years behind me are doing really well, and it grows.

PLUME: Is there a palpable vibe about Wesleyan students to you?

WHEDON: You know, yes and no. There’s a lot of different kinds. I mean, Michael Bay and I both came out of the same year, or we were maybe a year apart. Michael Bay, John Turteltaub and me. I wouldn’t say that we’re all brothers under the skin, artistically. Actually, I’m a fan of Michael’s. Best eyes in the business.

PLUME: If only he could find the best scripts…

WHEDON: Yeah, we tell stories differently, have different priorities. But, you know, it’s not like everyone coming from Wesleyan is going to make the same kind of movie. There is a quirkiness to my generation that I think is very pleasing. The thing that is really important is it was not a school about connection. At some point, I thought it was going to become one. I was a little worried when I went back to visit – kids were like, “You know, I got the coverage on Die Hard III.” And I was like, “Why are you talking to me about coverage? You should be getting done watching Johnny Guitar at 4:00 in the morning, that’s what you should be doing. You should be seeing Day of the Outlaw – a bizarre, black and white, Andre de Toth Western that nobody can get hold of. You should not be reading about Hollywood yet.” I think that that was just a phase. Those kids seem to have gone away.

PLUME: I guess those were the kids who were doing second unit work on Pearl Harbor.

WHEDON: Maybe. I do think there is that very comprehensive, “Let’s not study the business, let’s study the movies.”

PLUME: So it’s more focused on the art than the commerce.

WHEDON: Yes.

PLUME: Did that make for a rough ride when you made your transition to Hollywood?

WHEDON: Yeah. It’s not like I got set up with, “Go be this producer’s assistant.” I never really figured it that way. When I came out here and realized I was trying to make my way as a writer, I started writing spec scripts, and I was working in a video store – like, you know, all directors. At one point, because I was staying with my father, that’s when my step-mother said, “Why don’t you get a job as a production assistant, to get on a set like that while you’re trying to break through?” My father said, “Don’t. Wait. You’re going to get a job as a writer.” Which was a huge vote of confidence – an extraordinary thing to say. So first job I ever had in the business was as a writer, and that’s the only thing I did until I directed Buffy, and I was a director, too, and producer.

PLUME: But it was in television.

WHEDON: Well, I’d been writing in television and movies and then producing.

PLUME: But it was in the thing you had avoided for so long …

WHEDON: I got over that the moment I started writing my first script, because I talked to a friend who said something very profound, I thought. Willie Garson went to Wesleyan as an actor. He’s really good. We’ve been friends since college, and he was on my father’s show, It’s a Living. I said, “I’m starting to realize there’s a lot of good, interesting work to be done on television.” He said, “Yeah, there is. There is a lot of really good, artistic work with integrity that can be done, which you’ll realize after your eight year on ‘That Nutty Moose’.” It’s been sort of the great fortune and pride of my career that I have never had to work on that “That Nutty Moose”. The first job I ever got was on a show I cared deeply about.

PLUME: That was, what, second season of Roseanne?

WHEDON: Yes.

PLUME: How many specs had you written before landing that job?

WHEDON: Five.

PLUME: For which shows were you writing specs for?

WHEDON: I wrote one for my father’s show, It’s a Living, just because I had seen it, and I had seen it being made, but I never showed that to an agent. There was a show called Just in Time that died before I finished my spec, but I had met the producer. He said, “Do you have anything to show me?” I said, “No, but if you give me the scripts to your show, I’ll write one of those.” I labored over that. I wrote a Wonder Years, that was its first year, and a Garry Shandling Show, the first one, and then a Roseanne. I got the Roseanne.

PLUME: I would love to see your Wonder Years script…

WHEDON: Yeah, it was interesting. About getting mugged, which is one thing I researched extensively … I had enormous love for it. Then, I got an offer to work on the show that I thought was one of the most important shows on TV.

PLUME: The specs that you’d written, had you shown any of these to your father?

WHEDON: Yes. I showed them all to him.

PLUME: What was the advice that you got back from him?

WHEDON: You know, he didn’t give me advice. He just loved them. I was shocked. I was really excited. That was a big thing, you know?

PLUME: Did that push the fear of the “Three-G TV” out of your mind?

WHEDON: Fear of “Three-G TV” was gone, because I had seen good TV, and I had seen the process, and I had begun to understand where my biases had come from.

PLUME: Did you view your father in a different light?

WHEDON: No, you know, I had always respected my father enormously, and seeing scripts of his that had never seen the light of day that were some of my favorite ones – I valued his approbation enormously. Didn’t expect it. That gave me the courage to go on. It didn’t make me go, “Oh, maybe TV’s okay” – that I had to figure out for myself.

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