Joss Whedon

We’ve all heard the stories about what a cutthroat world Hollywood is. It’s a vicious, dog-eat-dog environment where no good deed goes unpunished and no one trusts anyone, not even family. The few who can climb to the top of this greased pole are egotists who only look out for number one while dumping number two on everybody else.

But if there is one exception to this rule, it must be Joss Whedon, who may be the person in Hollywood that the adjective “genius” is most frequently associated with, at least in terms of television. That Whedon is a brilliant writer who has evolved into an excellent director is of course well-known. However, one important and rare factor to his rise has been that nobody has anything bad to say about the man, and everyone he has ever worked with would crawl over broken glass to do so again.

Possibly the brightest spot on Whedon’s curriculum vitae is the musical episode of Buffy the Vampire Slayer, "Once More With Feeling." The show was an outgrowth of the frequent get togethers at Whedon’s home, where cast members would perform for each other. After seeing the wealth of musical talent in the cast, Whedon conceived of "Once More With Feeling," again - arguably the most brilliant hour of television ever produced (hyperbole? I don’t think so; the fact that it wasn’t nominated for an Emmy for Best Writing is incredible, but its failure to receive a single nomination in the usually weak Best Song category is a sign of the coming Apocalypse).

Whedon has always developed a close relationship with his actors, and not just the stars. Andy Hallett, who played a karaoke bar owning demon on the Buffy spinoff, Angel, has often told how Whedon contacted him near the end of that show’s fourth season to tell him he was adding Hallett to the regular cast, after over 40 “guest appearances," because being listed as a regular would look better on Hallett’s resume. And there’s the fact Hallett wasn’t an actor to begin with, but was discovered by Joss and given the opportunity to shine. So, while Joss Whedon was working frantically to stave off cancellation for the series, a battle he lost after the subsequent season, he was also sitting around worrying about Hallett’s resume. Man, that’s being thoughtful.

Adam Baldwin, who was memorable as Jayne in Whedon’s ill-fated but highly entertaining space cowboy series Firefly, has said that in 2004 he was having trouble finding work, so he called up Joss. As a result, Baldwin was cast as the debonair but evil Marcus Hamilton for the final 5 episodes of the Angel series. The role was an excellent showcase for Baldwin’s talents as his new character was decidedly less scruffy than Jayne, but was still bad-ass enough to give the title character a good fight at the end.

One result of all this good karma that Whedon puts out into the universe is that it gives him the relative freedom to create projects such as last year’s Dr. Horrible’s Sing Along Blog. The (what do I call it, an episode? A series? A very short movie?) project was conceived by Whedon as something to do during the 2004 writer’s strike; writers were forbidden from writing for TV or movies, but could write for internet projects. Working with his brothers and one brother’s fiancée, the script was completed.

Finding actors might have been tricky, funding was limited because it was conceived as a low-budget production that would be given away for free over the Internet. But here’s where Whedon’s karma came in handy. When he called Nathan Fillion about the role of Captain Hammer, Fillion said he saw Whedon’s name on the caller ID and picked up the phone saying, “Yes!” without even knowing what to. Appearing in Dr. Horrible gave Fillion the trifecta, having worked with Whedon previously on Firefly, and after that on the final season of Buffy (it’s a quad-fecta if you count the theatrical spin-off of Firefly, Serenity, as a separate project).

So Whedon was able to get Fillion, Emmy nominee Neil Patrick Harris, and former Buffy regular Felicia Day to star in the show, this odd little project. It was produced for something like $200,000, with many participants deferring salary in exchange for a promise of a cut of any future revenues. In a town where accounting practices are notorious, who else could have elicited such trust from hardened veterans?

Dr. Horrible has been a huge success, spending 5 weeks atop the iTunes TV chart. Despite the fact that it never actually aired on TV, Time Magazine named it the 4th best TV show of the year. And it won the prestigious People’s Choice Award for Favorite Internet Sensation (Hah! I bet someone I could write a sentence containing both “prestigious” and “People’s Choice Award.” They didn’t count on sarcasm).

In one of the “Making of” featurettes for Dr. Horrible, co-writer Maurissa Tancharoen expresses the hope that the production of Dr. Horrible will be a model for future endeavors. But, as I’ve said, who else but Whedon could develop this sort of thing? Who else would have the genius to conceive of such an event and the contacts that would trust him enough to accept deferred compensation? Fillion has called his half-page the sweetest he ever signed; who else could get away with contracts that have no mumbo-jumbo? Joss Whedon is rare indeed, loyal to people he has worked with, and the people he has worked with are loyal to him. Sarah Michelle Gellar even showed up for the filming of Dr. Horrible, heavily disguised in a black wig and sunglasses - at least, they claim it was her in the commentary. I can’t think of anyone else in Hollywood with such a reputation. For a guy who’s created some of the scariest television ever made, he’s apparently just a big ol’ cuddly teddy bear.

And Joss, if I may be so familiar - if I ever see your number on my caller ID, no question I’ll answer, "Yes!"