Joss Whedon: The Genius Behind Buffy (3 page)

the idea of being British was extremely appealing.—Joss

I tried once to get a girl to notice me in high school, but it didn’t work.—Joss

The very funny, realistic guy I knew shuffling around in sneakers here at Wesleyan is the exact same guy you meet when you step into his office at Mutant Enemy. —Jeanine Basinger

I wish that I was Mr. Popular, but then I would be writing very different shows.—Joss

Interview with Jeanine Basinger, Corwin-Fuller professor of film studies and American studies at Wesleyan University

 

HAVENS:
What kind of student was Joss?

 

 

PROFESSOR BASINGER: Joss was a superior student. I teach at a very elite university and in a program that draws the top students. But he was the top of the top, the crème de le crème. There are four or five people I’ve had that were just beyond belief, and he was one of them.

I don’t know if you are familiar with our university or all of the alumni we have who are enormously successful in the film business. People like David Kohan who did
Will and Grace.
Jennifer Crittenden (
Everybody Loves Raymond
) who wrote for
Seinfeld
and the
Drew Carey Show.
Jeffery Lane (
Bette
) who did
Mad About You.
There was Michael Bay (director,
Pearl Harbor, Armageddon, The Rock
), Miguel Arteta (director,
The Good Girl, Six Feet Under, Chuck & Buck
) and Akiva Goldsman (writer,
A Beautiful Mind
,
Practical Magic, The Recruit
).

Out of all of this Joss still stood out. He’s incredibly smart. He is deeply, widely read. He’s not one of those people who falls into show business because he taps the popular culture and nothing else. He has read the classics. He knows history. His mother was a great schoolteacher. He was raised by a wonderful teacher, and he reflects that. He is a joyous student. He loves to learn. All of that stuff that you see in
Buffy
, all that greatness, is a product of someone who has had a superior liberal arts education, coupled with a superior mind and imagination.

 

HAVENS:
Could you see the creativity and potential when he was a student?

 

PROFESSOR BASINGER: I saw it in the first papers he wrote for me. He always pushed. He’s a really good film historian. He continues to grow and learn. He likes to come East and I set up private screenings for he and I and his wife Kai at the Museum of Modern Art. I pick out rare things. Silent films,
Woman of the World
, or a good color print of
Some Came Running or Bonjour Tristesse
. He continues to study and grow and learn. I think that’s something that does set genius apart. Most people have an idea that a genius is someone who never studies, or works hard. It’s quite the opposite.

HAVENS:
He says he’s always wanted to make films. What were his student films like?

 

PROFESSOR BASINGER: His senior student film, which he would be happy if I didn’t mention, is a
Buffy
prototype. It’s a girl whose prom date turns out to be a vampire. But he doesn’t want [you] to hear about this. In our program students study film . . . history and theory. They know how to break a film down and see how it works and they work hands on and make films. On the other hand, it’s an undergraduate program and liberal arts school. We are not a filmmaking factory. [Students] take literature, learn a language, play an instrument. He did all that and it prepared him for the thinking process more than the technical filmmaking process. Even though he had written, produced, directed, and edited his own film, it isn’t the same as doing an undergraduate film program at USC or NYU or something like that.

 

HAVENS:
Do you know who some of his early influences were in the film world?

 

PROFESSOR BASINGER: He loves the work of Otto Preminger (
Anatomy of a Murder, Porgy and Bess, The Human Factor
), Nicholas Ray (
Johnny Guitar, Flying Leathernecks
), Vincente Minnelli (
Gigi, On a Clear Da
y
You Can See Forever
), Anthony Mann (
The Man From Laramie, God’s Little Acre
), John Ford (
The Grapes of Wrath, The Long Voyage
Home), Ernst Lubitsch (
Ninotchka
), all of the great filmmakers. Billy Wilder (
Sabrina, Some Like It Hot, The Front Page
) is another. He studied and appreciates all of their work.

HAVENS:
You guys share this love of film; do you feel like you too had some influence?

 

PROFESSOR BASINGER: Oh, I don’t know about that but we do share a love for film. He took a lot of classes with me. He was my teaching assistant. He worked for me on the film series helping me select the films. He is hugely committed to film here and very involved. I will always have extra screenings for students, who are interested in seeing certain types of films. People come and they are very devoted. But when it gets to be beautiful weather . . . in the spring everybody’s out on the hill drinking beer. I’d open the door and there would be Joss, sitting in there by himself looking at
Johnny Guitar.

HAVENS:
What do you think of the work he is doing now?

PROFESSOR BASINGER: His work is a wonderful mixture of the greatest literature, music, ideas, movies, and works of art of all time. It’s all mixed into his own mind and then he stirs it and adds his own original ideas that are then funneled out into this amazing work that is uniquely his.

He worries and frets over things. I admire him. I have to be careful about getting sentimental because he would hate that. The thing is he cares about what he does. He cares about being a good person. He’s very private. I would never want to violate his privacy. He’s a young man. What lies ahead as he grows and deepens . . . I can’t even begin to think of what he is going to produce and how great it is going to be.

Thing is, Joss has a depth to his mythology and storytelling. We are watching a TV show initially on the WB, heaven help us. It is called
Buffy the Vampire Slayer
and I’m in my sixties and I’m crying when I’m watching it. What is that? It is one of the great mythic storytellers. It’s more than just being a really successful, skilled, articulate filmmaker. There’s something more to this. He’s still so young and the thing is, he brings us pain in these stories as well as humor. In
Buffy
and
Angel
how you ricochet from laughing to being terrified to feeling like crying is astonishing. I think that’s why you are writing a book about him, even though he’s only in his mid-thirties. We all recognize there is something more here.

 

HAVENS:
Has success gone to his head in any way
?

PROFESSOR BASINGER: Having this huge success has not changed him at all except he has matured even more and deepened as a person. He’s more thoughtful and caring. He’s the same guy. The work is everything to him. Not the fame. It’s all about doing the work. The guy is amazing. He can write five things at a time. It’s astonishing what he does.

 

“. . .
the final crappy humiliation of my crappy film career.”

—Joss Whedon