Joss on Angel

[sombrefan]

From the highly readable Dr Horrible's Sing-along Blog book (out in shops soon)

"The villain thing just felt so right to me because I think villains are super poignant, and I don't trust heroes, which is why I had trouble making Angel for five years. Tall, handsome people who do good bother me."

Comments

[moscow-watcher.livejournal.com]

Finally we know why Buffy is a shorty. :)

[boot-the-grime.livejournal.com]

It's because Joss was (in his own words) a tiny blonde boy who was often mistaken for a girl at school. :)

I don't understand the having trouble making Angel part. Angel is not exactly your typical hero, he's a very messed-up, dark and sometimes very morally ambiguous hero who occasionally turns into either an anti-hero or a villain.

[moscow-watcher.livejournal.com]

It's because Joss was (in his own words) a tiny blonde boy who was often mistaken for a girl at school. :)

Oh. I didn't know about it. Are you sure that he wasn't joking?

Angel is not exactly your typical hero, he's a very messed-up, dark and sometimes very morally ambiguous hero who occasionally turns into either an anti-hero or a villain.

I wonder how much of it he owes to Joss...

[boot-the-grime.livejournal.com]

It comes from this article - it doesn't seem like he was joking, if the author reproduced his comments accurately (since it's not an interview but an article written from notes):


http://pmnewton.blogspot.com/2010/08/joss-whedon-and-writing-from-dark-place.html


Whedon decided he needed to think somewhat more deeply about what he wrote – young adolescent girls with superpowers – and work out – why?

This took him back to his childhood which, he has to confess was boringly normal, a father he feared disappointing, elder brothers who teased him, certainly no grist for the horror memoir mill. But nevertheless he was physically a small child, curly haired and often mistaken for a little girl, who felt afraid and helpless.

So perhaps it was no coincidence that the characters he ended up writing were, on the surface, similarly small and helpless. He says he grew up feeling scared and alone, not scared and lonely, but scared and alone. Not all bad, he points out, as writers who wish to write should probably love being alone.

So, he asked, “Why is my avatar a female? Am I a literary transvestite? Why do I identify with these girls?”

The revelation, when it came, surprised him. For the 7 years he wrote Buffy, The Vampire Slayer, he identified with Xander, funny, clueless and never getting laid. Then when he was writing an extended piece of prose about a Buffy-type character, a first person narrative, it struck him that he was bucketing therapy on to the page. Only then did he finally see it – “Buffy was me.”

Writers often talk about creating a loveable character, someone for the reader/audience to relate to. But Whedon describes writing characters that he wants to love him. And in a transmogrification they become him.

His avatar. “She will save my life. I’m tiny, terrified and in need of saving and this girl is going to save my life”.

This then was “the dark place” Whedon draws his characters from.

It’s a fascinating and generous admission and one that most writers would respond to, knowing as we do, that stories, characters, ideas, come tumbling out of dark places that not all of us are willing to even look at – let alone share with a vast audience on a sunny afternoon in Sydney. Whedon admits he was always helpless. He describes getting mugged regularly in New York, the first time was when he was going to the comic store. He attempted to defend himself from future attacks by taping coins to the inside of his coat so that they wouldn’t jangle. The adult version of helpless was clueless, he tells the audience.

Returning to talking about character he insists that it’s vital that he respect all his characters. Good guys and bad guys and, when you respect your characters – the greatest act of disrespect is killing one of them. “I want them to overcome danger,” he says.

[moscow-watcher.livejournal.com]

Thank you for the heads-up - somehow I missed that article and now I'm feasting on it. What a great piece!