PLUME: What was Roseanne like, going in at that time? They were on, what, the fourth or fifth set of producers by that point?

WHEDON: No, it was just the second set, and it was total chaos. I mean, it was like a studied chaos. Which was good, because it meant that I got to write a bunch of scripts.

PLUME: Whereas, on other shows, you would have been locked in the writer’s room as a junior writer…

WHEDON: You know, I remember one of my father’s friends saying, “Have they let you start to write a script yet?” I was like, “Yeah, I’m on my fourth.” Because they just… they had nobody. I ended up writing six scripts that year. Interestingly enough, the other staff writer I know who’s done that was Marti Noxon. She did it in the second year of Buffy.

PLUME: Because it was just complete chaos?

WHEDON: It wasn’t not chaos. It was slightly more controlled chaos, but it was really chaotic.

PLUME: How powerful was Roseanne becoming in the writer’s room at that time?

WHEDON: Well, she was grouchy as hell. I had a bad experience, because my stuff kept getting rewritten by the producers before it ever got to her. So, you know, I never felt like I was being heard, until I finally actually found a temporary champion in Tom Arnold, who had started at the same time. He snuck around my script. So she got to see the first draft. Then, I had lunch with her to talk about it, and it was quite extraordinary. The good Roseanne came to lunch. She got it and she was very excited about it, and it was a really fascinating time.

PLUME: How different from bad Roseanne did you find good Roseanne?

WHEDON: Well, literally the next day, I saw her walk by the office, look at me – and not only not recognize me, but not recognize that there was someone standing in front of her. I had never seen somebody like that before. I was like, “This is like the lady from Misery! Oh boy.” It’s so sad, because I went on that show because it had a feminist agenda, because it was real, and decent, and incredibly funny. And she brought a lot of that to the table – and she sort of took it away, because her unhappiness made her incredibly divisive and destructive, and that’s that. There was a lot of good there.
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PLUME: How would it affect the scripts that were being written?

WHEDON: A lot. She’d be like, “This is crap, I won’t do this.” She’d just chuck things out.

PLUME: Arbitrarily?

WHEDON: Yeah, and scripts didn’t get better from being written two and a half days at midnight by Danny Jacobson. But, at the end of the day, it was a good stepping stone, not a good experience. She’s not the reason I quit. Having been rewritten almost to death, I got shut out of the process – and I thought the producers were talented and good friends, but I couldn’t work for them anymore, because I don’t like getting paid to do nothing.

PLUME: Were there any second thoughts that, even though you were getting paid to do nothing, you were giving up a job – and it could have been the last job you had?

WHEDON: No, I never thought that.

PLUME: Was there a confidence in your abilities in that something else will come?

WHEDON: I didn’t really think of it as something else will come. I was working on the Buffy movie, and I’ve always felt like I could find work. I saved my first penny, the first dollar I ever made from TV I saved, so that I would never have to be in the position of working to keep up my life style, in order to make money.

PLUME: So you weren’t living hand to mouth…

WHEDON: I was doing fine, but it wasn’t like I went out and rented a big house and got a car that worked.

PLUME: So unlike a lot of writers, you were realistic.

WHEDON: I just wanted to be able to do work for one reason and one reason only, and that was because it was work worth doing. It is, I realized, through a great deal of luck and privilege that I’ve been able to hold to that. People always say, “Okay, you’ve just said that. Let’s talk about Waterworld.”

PLUME: You know, I’m not. I’m going to ask you what lessons you learned from Roseanne when it came to being a show runner yourself.

WHEDON: You know what I learned? And this was one of the most important things I’ve ever learned, one of the defining things about humanity. It was when she made a speech at the beginning of the season about how the tabloids were really giving her shit and how they were infiltrating the crew and stuff, people were feeding them stuff – “So you fucking writers better keep your mouths shut or I’ll have you all fired.” I realized, this was the perfect opportunity to make a speech that brought everybody closer together, that said, “It’s us against the world, and dammit, we’ve got good work to do here, let’s all get it done” – and instead she used it to attack. It made me realize, at that moment, that every time somebody opens their mouth they have an opportunity to do one of two things – connect or divide. Some people inherently divide, and some people inherently connect. Connecting is the most important thing, and actually an easy thing to do. I try to make a connection with someone every time I talk to them, even if I’m firing them. Because a connection can be made. People can be treated with respect. That is one of the most important things a show runner can do, is make everybody understand that we’re all involved, that we’re all on the same level, on some level. I’m shocked that there are so many people that live to divide. Whether it’s to divide people from each other, or from themselves – but it is a constant in everything. Trying to make a connection with somebody. It was Roseanne’s sort of divisive nature that made that show to be less and less meaningful. Even though it still kept on doing good things and she had a lot of good intent, and I think she changed the landscape of American television. She should be credited for having done it. Although I also think Matt Williams deserves a lot of credit. The fact is, you lose people when you do that. If you’re going to make television of any continued standard, or live in the world like a decent person, you can’t afford to do that. You know? You have to bring out the best in your people and see it when it’s there and nurture it and laud it, which is something I often forget to do. “Tell that guy he’s good!” “Well, I didn’t fire him, so he must know he’s good, right?” “No, Joss. It doesn’t work that way.” I definitely miss out that people are having emotions all around me some times. But, at the same time, I do understand that we are in this together. You know, when I have a grip come up to me and say, “I really love the script.” Or, “Oh, you know, I’m moving the camera, and this is the feeling that I get about how the story’s told.” That’s the best thing in the world. Also, I think, be meaner – but that I had to learn later on.

PLUME: How does it affect your mindset when you’re not in control, when you’re the one who’s being mistreated in a business where P.A.s have more respect than the writer?

WHEDON: You know, she went on Letterman, said, “I hate the writers. I’m going to fire them all.” And I was just devastated. I was like – from the movie Deep Rising, when the bad guy says, “I don’t like you.” The other guy says, “You don’t even know me.” I felt like, “How can you say that? You haven’t even met us.” Yes, I’m quoting a Stephen Sommers movie – my knowledge of film is that deep.

PLUME: I applaud the fact that you’re able to recall any of Deep Rising…

WHEDON: Hey! Deep Rising had some stuff… C’mon, man…

PLUME: It’s still the quality marker that a good writer friend of mine uses…

WHEDON: Quality, or lack…

PLUME: He considers it one of the finest films ever made…

WHEDON: Okay, now we’ve gone a little far – but I do think it is a charming and underrated movie. And, I think, Famke Janssen’s best work. And I’m not actually being facetious – I saw that movie and I thought, “My god, she’s Julia Roberts. She’s got it.”

PLUME: And then she lost it all with X-Men…

WHEDON: You know, I haven’t seen the new one…

PLUME: I haven’t either. I’m just going by the first one. What was the genesis for Buffy, as a film script?

WHEDON: Again, you’ve heard the “Dark Alley” story, I’m sure…

PLUME: Yes.

WHEDON: And that’s true. I did want to make a movie where a poor girl that kills would have to get her own back. Then, I started out with “Martha the Immortal Waitress”. The idea of somebody that nobody would take account of, who just had more power than was imaginable. Which is such a pathetically obvious metaphor for what I wanted my life to be. Like, “I’m the guy that nobody paid attention to. What they didn’t know was that I’m really important. I can save the world. So, you know, that’s pretty cool, too.” In the interview, you have to say, “He whined.” [Interviewer’s note: Joss whined] So, you know, when I hit on Buffy the Vampire Slayer, it was right around the time when Revenge of the Bimbos, or Attack of the Killer Bimbos or something – there were a lot of movies coming out that were proto-silly ’50s style titles. They were on the video store shelves. I worked at a video store. I would watch them, and I’d be like, “You know what? This is just another bimbo movie. These women aren’t empowered at all. They just made up a funny title.” I was like, “I would like to make a movie that was one of these crappy, low-budget movies, that like the Romero films, had a feminist agenda, had females in it who were people, and had all the fun, all the silliness. Night of the Comet was a big influence. That actually had a cheerleader in it. With a title that would actually make people take it off the video store shelves, because it has to sound silly and not boring.

PLUME: Where did the name Buffy come from?

WHEDON: It was the name that I could think of that I took the least seriously. There is no way you could hear the name Buffy and think, “This is an important person.” To juxtapose that with Vampire Slayer, just felt like that kind of thing – a B movie. But a B movie that had something more going on. That was my dream. The network begged me to change the title. I was like, “You don’t understand. It has to be this. This is what it is.” To this day, everyone says, “Oh, the title kept it from being taken seriously.” I’m like, “Well, fuck them. It’s a B movie, and if you don’t love B movies, then I won’t let you play in my clubhouse.” Now, I’m not an exclusionary person, I don’t like to drive people away, but honestly, if people have trouble with that title …

PLUME: Well, they don’t forget it.

WHEDON: You know, you’re not wrong.

PLUME: That’s, what, three-quarters of the work a title’s supposed to do?

WHEDON: Yeah. The other one-quarter is it’s supposed to make you want to watch it. But, hey, at least I got three-quarters.

PLUME: You’re still in the majority. Everybody wins. Now, I’ve always been interested in the butchering of the film script in execution. Looking back in hindsight, with the skills you have now, was there anything you could have said, could have maneuvered, that would have had an impact on how the script was realized?

WHEDON: Yes and no. The fact of the matter is, I remember having a conversation with Kristy Swanson. She was like, “Please, tell me how to do this. Tell me what you want.” I literally said, “I can’t.” Because I have always treated film and television like the army, and I’m very strict about it. It was not my place. It was the director’s movie. At that point I was there to try and help the director realize her vision, and that’s all. Even though it was my script and all this stuff, the director… who had also financed, gotten the film off the ground. Fran Kuzui came in when nobody else wanted the film, said “We’re going to put this together”… And they did. Howard Rosenman and Sandollar and all of that. Without them, there would be no film – and possibly not this phone conversation. So I didn’t agree with the way the movie was going, but I also kept my mouth shut because you respect the director. You do that. You respect the person above you, and you make suggestions and you do your best. You know? But you don’t ever disrupt the chain of command. You have to have faith in the person who’s running it or things will fall apart. I believe that part of the problem was that the director was unable to control the big, fat, wannabe movie star who came – you know, the old guy…

PLUME: Initials D.S.?

WHEDON: Donald. They were changing their lines and running roughshod over her and everybody else, and I’m sorry. You can’t have that. You have to have faith in the leader, and in that situation the leader has to be the director. In TV, it has to be the producer.

PLUME: So it was a lesson you learned from Roseanne?

WHEDON: It was just something I’ve always believed. I thought they were fucking up and I thought they should have filmed some of the things I wrote. I thought that they should have let me into the process. Sometimes I know that I haven’t spoken out when I should have, and I’ve been too timid – because I’m basically terrified of confrontation. Or there’s times when I think, “Ahh, if only I’d taken over and done something Machiavellian to get control of this or that.” But I’ve always believed you have to respect the person who’s doing it, no matter what. If you’re John Wayne in Fort Apache, you follow Henry Fonda – even though he’s going to get everybody killed. That’s what you do.

PLUME: You’ll get them back four pictures later when you’ve had a promotion.

WHEDON: I’m not interested in getting anybody back or getting at anybody. All I’m interested in is when it’s my turn to lead, that I can lead. That people afford me the same respect that I did. Because now that I’m actually in charge, I do things the same way. I’m open to suggestion, I’m interested in what people have to say – my word is final. I will not brook anybody basically coming down against it, once it’s been said. That’s just how it works.

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