Joss Whedon: The Biography Read online

  When Joss joined Roseanne in 1989, he’d missed by a year being caught up in a contentious strike by the Writers Guild of America. The 1988 WGA strike had focused on expanding writers’ creative rights in television and, more important, providing them with enhanced residuals when an hour-long program aired in syndication. Networks, studios, and production companies, represented by the Alliance of Motion Picture and Television Producers (AMPTP), wanted to put the writers on a sliding scale for residuals, citing lower ratings for syndicated repeats. The WGA pushed back, angling for a larger percentage when a series’ foreign rights were sold. This was a new arena in 1988—no one knew exactly how American series would fare abroad—but writers didn’t want to be cut out of valuable royalties if the emerging market started to soar.

  The 1988 strike was the longest in the guild’s history. Starting March 7 and running through August 7, it revved up just as production on the 1987–88 television season was coming to an end. While it didn’t affect that season greatly, it delayed the start of the fall 1988–89 season by about six weeks, at a time when networks were chained to the cycle of show premieres and viewers had little option other than to view episodes live if they wanted to see them. The broadcast networks filled their WGA-writer-less slates with more newsmagazines in the style of CBS’s 60 Minutes and ABC’s 20/20. The lack of scripted series ushered in the beginnings of today’s reality programming boom, as NBC upgraded Unsolved Mysteries from an occasional special to a weekly series, and Fox premiered its unscripted, voyeuristic Cops series. The more immediate result, however, was that ABC, CBS, and NBC saw their prime-time ratings drop 4.6 percent that fall.

  After five months, both sides came to an agreement and the WGA won a better percentage on foreign sales, while the AMPTP convinced the writers to accept its sliding residual scale. That was the last Hollywood strike for almost twenty years.

  In July 2007, regular negotiations between the WGA and AMPTP had already begun. On the table was the three-year Minimum Basic Agreement (MBA)—the contract that covers writers’ “salaries, benefits, pensions, working conditions, residual payments, and creative rights” in television, film, and new media. Advances in digital technology had only recently made it practical for viewers to download or stream TV episodes online, and the practice was still in its infancy. But the networks were already using new media as a way to grow their broadcast audiences, requesting supplemental video content from their series’ writers to distribute as online exclusives. And as with foreign rights in the 1988 strike, the WGA knew that online access was an outlet with the potential to become quite profitable as soon as networks and studios developed deals to monetize viewing directly.

  In the negotiations, the AMPTP acknowledged that online viewing was increasing, but insisted that it was too early to judge how profitable it would be. As it stood, writers were only paid when a show was streamed, with their compensation being 1.2 percent of the sales revenue. If someone downloaded an episode from iTunes with an exact price point, they received nothing from that sale. For three months, negotiations were at an impasse over the issue.

  When the WGA’s contracts expired at the end of October 2007, the negotiating committee formally recommended that the writers go on strike. Committee chairman John Bowman told the members that “the Internet has to be one of our most important issues. That’s our future.” On November 5, picketing WGA members focused on fourteen Los Angeles studios and several locations in New York (including NBC’s headquarters, Rockefeller Center), and many SAG members and Teamsters refused to cross the picket lines in solidarity with the striking writers.

  Just days earlier, on November 1, it was announced that Joss would soon be returning to television, with a face quite familiar to Whedon fans. Dollhouse, a series about a group of “dolls”—young people who exist as bland, blank slates in a spa-like laboratory until they are “imprinted with personality packages” and sent out on all kinds of morally ambiguous missions—would star former Buffyverse guest star Eliza Dushku as Echo, a doll who begins to see beyond her programming. “We call it a suspense-drama-mythology-comedy-action-horror musical,” Joss joked. “The main thrust is the thruline of Echo as a sort of newly born character who goes, ‘Wait a minute—I exist. Wow. So who would I be? And how dangerous is it for me to let anybody know that I know that I exist?’ Not unlike the Frankenstein myth, it’s, ‘Who made me, who am I, and why am I?’”

  Joss’s return to television had come about unexpectedly, thanks to a lunch meeting a few months earlier between him and Dushku. Joss thought it would be just another one of their check-in meetings; they had met to talk about her career path a few times over the years, ever since Joss reached out to her after her run of “crappy horror movies” in the early 2000s. He’d asked to meet for tea and then started in with the mentoring: “I said, ‘I love you. I think you have something that no other actor that I’ve worked with has. What the f**k are you making these movies for? Why are you doing this to me? You’re killing me. I just think you’re better than this.’” At the time, Dushku had been in a state of self-examination, trying to figure out what she wanted and where she wanted to go in her career. It was soon thereafter that she scored the lead in Fox’s Tru Calling, and when it ended after two seasons in 2005, she took a role in an off-Broadway play. They would reconnect from time to time, including one night after a performance. The two sat up until 2 AM discussing a new opportunity that she had.

  Now, however, as Joss and Dushku met to discuss what her next career steps should be, especially in light of a development deal she had with Fox, he was suddenly struck with an idea for a new show. “It was a mistake!” Joss told Variety. “I sat down with her to talk about her options, and acted all sage, saying things backwards like Yoda and laying out what I thought she should do. But in the course of doing it, I accidentally made one up. I told it to her, and she said, ‘That’s exactly what I want to do.’” Inspired by Dushku’s life as an actress, Joss came up with the premise of people who were hired out to be someone else’s fantasy. He described the show to her over their four-hour lunch and delivered her an outline two weeks later.

  “He had my back,” Dushku says. “We pitched it to Fox, and it was a complicated, controversial, and deep project. Through all of the press, criticism, and acclaim, he was my partner.” The network gave them a seven-episode order without even seeing a pilot.

  But Joss’s latest exploration into the questions that propel humanity would have to wait. The strike imposed a pencils-and-laptops-down mandate on WGA members, and he had to stop all work on Dollhouse. Instead of using it as an opportunity to take a break and relax, Joss poured his energy into a collaborative project of another sort: becoming a voice for the striking WGA writers.

  The first day of the strike, Joss was ready to spend the day on the picket line. His body, however, had other plans. “I came out and I was lying down on the grass with my picket sign,” Joss recalls. “Aly [Hannigan] and Alexis [Denisof] were like, ‘You have to go back home.’” The next day, he was too ill to leave the house, and two days after that, he could barely get out of bed.

  He and Kai both were sick and getting sicker, and their symptoms could not be written off as the inevitable result of having two kids in preschool. Eventually they learned that they were having a reaction to mold in their home, which was concentrated in their bedroom. Until Joss could recover and show his support on the picket line, he took to Whedonesque.com to share his favorite strike movies (Matewan, Newsies, Norma Rae, Day of the Dead, Billy Elliot) and otherwise “vent his spleen for the cause”:

  November 7, 2007

  … The easiest tactic is for people to paint writers as namby pamby arty scarfy posers, because it’s what most people think even when we’re not striking. Writing is largely not considered work. Art in general is not considered work. Work is a thing you physically labor at, or at the very least, hate. Art is fun. (And Hollywood writers are overpaid, scarf-wearing dainties.) It’s an easy argument to make. And a hard on
e to dispute….

  And as work? Well, in the first place, it IS fun. When it’s going well, it’s the most fun I can imagine having…. Writing is enjoyable and ephemeral. And it’s hard work.

  It’s always hard … the ACT of writing is hard. When Buffy was flowing at its flowingest, David Greenwalt used to turn to me at some point during every torturous story-breaking session and say “Why is it still hard? When do we just get to be good at it?” I’ll only bore you with one theory: because every good story needs to be completely personal (so there are no guidelines) and completely universal (so it’s all been done). It’s just never simple….

  December 6, 2007

  … Marti Noxon has tried to HIJACK this entire site for some “cause.” She forwarded this letter she wanted me to print:

  “We think it would be unbelievably amazing if Joss were able to tell whomever might be reading his blog for info on the Friday picket that … the WGA is doing a Holiday Harvest Food drive for local food banks (that have reached an all-time low in donations, recently) and we’re asking everyone who can to bring jars of peanut butter, cans of tuna, and tons of powdered milk. In this way, besides just making a statement in solidarity and support of the WGA strike, we can also be re-stocking the shelves of the local food banks and feeding the poor and hungry of our community.”

  Like I’d print something so depressing! This event is about one thing: my famousnessness. First everyone’s all about “the strike,” now it’s “helping people” … let’s not lose sight of the point, people! You can’t spell M.E. without, well, me.

  Like screenwriting itself, championing the writers’ strike was a role Joss was born and bred to play. “I was a ’70s Upper West Side, protosocialist radical lefty, so it was kind of nice to be able to flex that again,” Joss says. “My dad said that I was named for Joe Hill [labor activist and songwriter]—I don’t know if it’s true—but I did have a real feeling about that stuff. So it’s nice to be able to fight the good fight on any level.” Joss even penned a Hill-esque protest song for Whedonesque:

  CBS and Fox they think they got us,

  Do they got us? NO!

  Even though we all wear scarves and glasses,

  We’re a union, just by sayin’ so …

  Joss was back on the picket lines in time for Mutant Enemy Day, held on Friday, December 7, at the picket on the 20th Century Fox lot. It kicked off with a delivery of one thousand donuts from Sarah Michelle Gellar to the Whedon writers, actors, and fans—some had flown in for support—who had come out. The actors that came spanned the entire Mutant Enemy oeuvre: Nicholas Brendon, Eliza Dushku, Juliet Landau, and Harry Groener from Buffy; J. August Richards and Amy Acker from Angel; Nathan Fillion, Morena Baccarin, Summer Glau, and Alan Tudyk from Firefly. And of course the writers, to whom the strike meant the most: Tim Minear, Marti Noxon, Jane Espenson, David Fury, Drew Goddard, and several others.

  Joss announced later that he’d brought four Sharpies, prepared to sign autographs for the fans who came out to support them. But he never had to take a single marker from his pocket—fans were certainly happy to see and talk with the writers and stars, but they had no time for autographs. They were focused on marching, waving at motorists, and encouraging drivers to honk in solidarity.

  “The fans from day one have understood what this is about,” Joss enthused. “There’s never been any ‘Where’s our shows? Why are you guys doing this?’ They understand that we’re reacting to an impossible situation. They also understand that making a show or a film is collaboration between the artists and the fans. They come out and support not just with us but with each other and the whole concept of an artistic community.”

  Whedon fan support was not limited to special Mutant Enemy strike days. Fans came by to support the writers at other times, and even delivered pizzas to Jane Espenson’s group at Universal. The pizza drive was organized by Whedonesque (Kai later told Joss that “these people are going to be running the world”), and it surprised strikers who didn’t quite understand what was going on. “The writers … were very appreciative. They were kind of confused though,” one of the organizers reported. “ ‘Joss Whedon sent us pizza?’ ‘No, his fans.’ I don’t think most of them were familiar with the idea of TV and film writers having fans.”

  The strike went into the new year, and Joss kept penning missives. Some of the pieces he wrote were so angry that the Writers Guild didn’t use them—yet when the strike looked like it was coming to a sudden close, the group suddenly wanted to get his words in the press. On February 6, 2008, a day after the WGA leadership scheduled a meeting with active members to get feedback on a proposed contract, a letter from Joss was sent to guild members:

  Dear Writers,

  I have good news. I have lots of good news. In fact, I have way too much good news.

  The strike is almost over…. The Oscars seem to be the point of focus for a lot of this speculation. That either they must be preserved, or that the studios feel they must be preserved, and therefore this terrible struggle will end. There is an argument to be made for wanting the show to go on: it showcases the artists with whom we are bonded (there’s no award for Best Hiding of Net Profits), and it provides employment and revenue for thousands in the community that has been hit so hard by this action. Having said that, it’s a f%$#ing awards show. It’s a vanity fair. It’s a blip. We’re fighting (fighting, remember?) for the future of our union, our profession, our art. If that fight carries us through the Holy Night when Oscar was born, that’s just too bad….

  I ask you all to remember: the studios caused an industry-wide shutdown. They made a childishly amateurish show of pretending to negotiate, then retreated into their lairs (yes, they have lairs) to starve us out. They emerged just before Christmas to raise our hopes, then left in a premeditated huff….

  This is not over. Nor is it close. Until the moment it is over, it can never be close. Because if we see the finish line we will flag and they are absolutely counting on us to do that. In the room, reason. On the streets, on the net, I say reason is for the “moderates.” Remember what they’ve done. Remember what they’re trying to take from us. FIGHT. FIGHT. FIGHT.

  I have been mugged an embarrassing number of times, even for a New Yorker. I’ve been yelled at and chased, beaten down and kicked, threatened with a gun and the only mugger who still hurts my gut is the one who made me shake his hand. Until there is a deal—the right deal … let’s keep our hands in our pockets or on our signs. Let’s not be victims. Let’s never.

  In solidarity,

  Joss Whedon

  It had been six years since Malcolm Reynolds left the small screen, but Joss was still revving up his inner Browncoat. “That’s the reason I write that guy,” he explains. “Because I write about helplessness, and in the face of a massive corporation or Rupert Murdoch, what else could you ever feel … but helpless. In general, the strike was depressing because there is a systematic destruction of the middle class in this country that is intentional and successful. It’s a constant thing—it is corporate greed and calumny, those things stick. Bullies are bullies—they must not be tolerated.”

  On February 9, the WGA and the AMPTP reached a tentative deal. Three days later, WGA president Patric Verrone announced that the guild membership had voted to end the strike, and on February 26, a new three-year contract was overwhelmingly approved. The 2008 Minimum Basic Agreement gave the WGA new rights for creating new-media content. Writers would also receive better residuals for “the reuse of movies and television programs on the Internet and in new media.”

  Joss was not thrilled with the final deal; “He thought it was a bad idea,” Kai says. He felt that the WGA had been beaten down and had given in without adequately considering the artists’ livelihood. He wanted to find a new way of doing things completely outside the system represented by the AMPTP. It was time for Joss Whedon to rewrite the rules yet again.

  29

  DR. HORRIBLE, I PRESUME

  Without the writers�
�� strike, Joss Whedon’s next groundbreaking project might never have come to pass, at least not in the same ambitious form. He’d been thinking prior to the strike of self-producing an audio podcast, but he’d only gotten as far as coming up with a title and a basic concept: Dr. Horrible’s Sing-Along Blog, a musical about a would-be supervillain who details his exploits on his blog and tries to win over the girl of his dreams. “I wanted to write songs,” Joss said. “I really liked and related to this character and thought, I could just put up some songs as a fun side project.”

  Then the WGA went on strike, and with Joss’s studio work on hold, his side project became a major focus of his attention. He decided to expand it from a podcast to a visual web series, and to bring in other people who would act and sing different parts. Still, he wanted to keep it low-budget, something he could produce himself without any involvement from the studio system he and the WGA were currently battling on the picket lines. With Dr. Horrible, he would be the “studio”—he would make the decisions instead of waiting for the green light from someone else. “Freedom is glorious,” Joss said. “The fact is, I’ve had very good relationships with studios, and I’ve worked with a lot of smart executives. But there is a difference when you can just go ahead and do something.”

  The first thing he did was to enlist some producing partners. Joss had seen a YouTube video in support of the writers’ strike that was written and produced by his brothers Zack and Jed Whedon and Jed’s fiancée, Maurissa Tancharoen. WGA vs. AMPTP was a witty, tongue-in-cheek piece that illustrated the huge divide between the two camps. Joss loved it, and on December 20, 2007, he promoted the video on Whedonesque—ending his post with a vague promise that he was “scheming schemes” to make new stories and asking his fans to stay tuned. It’s easy to surmise that the scheme in question was Dr. Horrible. He asked the trio behind the video to join him on his new project.