Joss Whedon

It’s not always a thrill a minute being Joss Whedon. Some days you get to be the show runner of a television series like “Buffy the Vampire Slayer” or the director and screenwriter of a superhero summer movie like “The Avengers.” And then there are the days you spend working on a show like “Firefly,” which gets canceled; or on “Dollhouse,” which gets turned into something you didn’t want and then canceled; or you make a movie like “The Cabin in the Woods” (which Mr. Whedon wrote with its director, Drew Goddard) and it spends years on a shelf when the studio files for bankruptcy.

And yet, these experiences have all contributed to shaping Mr. Whedon, who is the subject of a profile in this weekend’s Arts & Leisure section. In these final interview excerpts, he talks about some of his not-so-creatively fulfilling experiences and his post-”Avengers” plans.

Q. As a son and grandson of television writers, was it always a given you’d go into the industry, too?

A. It was kind of a given that I didn’t realize was a given. I didn’t study writing in school. I wanted to make films but didn’t really think about writing them — I just assumed I would. The surprise to me was that I never intended to work in television. I thought, well, that’s a lower form. And then I started to write it and realized I loved it desperately. Movies were always the goal, but I had a lot of goals. Twelve-year-old me wanted to do everything: act and sing and paint and dance.

Q. Even when the online response was relentless and you were being skewered for killing off Tara, for example, was “Buffy” still a satisfying experience?

A. It was more instant gratification than any writer ever had, to read about the episode while it’s going on. I was really lucky in that respect. I still want to connect with people the way I did with “Buffy.” I don’t know that people will ever connect with my characters on that level. The only thing I do know is that if I approach a story with that as my goal, I will not come up with a story. I will come up with a retread, I will come up with a commercial for storytelling.

Q. You’ve had a few instances, also, with TV and film projects where control was taken from you or the plug was pulled. What do you feel in these moments after a string of these experiences?

A. I feel nothing, because I just lock that away. For me, the act of telling the story and showing it to somebody is almost gravy. Every show I’ve done has either made midseason or given some kind of trouble before it happened. Every movie has been delayed. I expect problems. Only after the cancellation of “Firefly” was I unable to compartmentalize any of it. I went nuts.

Q. Why in that particular case?

A. I knew in my heart that it was great. And that that cast was unparalleled. I also felt like I’d made a promise to them, and I felt like I had failed them. And I couldn’t live with it.

Q. When you say that you went nuts, what happened?

A. I was like, I will not rest until we get this on its feet again. I took all the people that I had working with me – my lawyer, my agent, the president of my then-production company. And I was like, O.K., we’re going to find somebody who can do this as a series or a series of mini-series or a movie. And one of them was like, “These people are going to say no.” And I remember, because I’m very meek and I’m very afraid of conflict, I remember just saying to them, I don’t want to hear that. I want to hear what you’re going to say to convince them.

Q. But you’ve had other works that didn’t turn out how you wanted, your script for “Alien: Resurrection.”

A. “Alien: Resurrection” had broken my heart, but your heart gets broken. If you’re a writer, forget about it. Even during the “Buffy” movie, somebody said, “Well, can’t you just get over it?” Well, no, actually, because you can’t wake up in the morning, go to your computer and go, I wonder what they’ll throw out of this. You have to think that everything is going to succeed. On some level with “Cabin,” I just felt like, it’s going to happen. It’ll take a while but it’s going to get out there.

Q. Has the online content model you helped establish with “Dr. Horrible’s Sing-Along Blog” reaped dividends for you?

A. It hasn’t yet, but I plan for it to. With “Dr. Horrible,” it was not only unprecedented but also objected to. We put it up for free – they were like, “Don’t do that.” We’re like, This is why we’re doing it. One: we believe that we can create a televised event like we used to have, where people would go at a certain time and experience it all at the same time. And two: Because we want it to happen before the end of July so we can be rock stars at Comic-Con. We were able to utilize this new structure, but it’s changing all the time. People are like, “Would you sell something to Netflix?” I don’t know. But do I want to make the first straight-to-phone movie? I kind of do.

Q. Are there storytelling lessons you can take from your smaller-scale projects or even the micro-budget stuff that can be applied to something as massive as “The Avengers”?

A. I’ve never really articulated this, so don’t count on me to do it now. But you have to be two people – sort of like you’re the general and the scout. You learn something during a read-through, which of course we didn’t have on “The Avengers” because I didn’t actually have the actors in the same room until about halfway through the movie. You learn something every time you make a mistake. As long as you always have an eye on why you’re telling the story – as long as you have the general – then you have a responsibility to be the scout – to go, “I thought this was a good way to go but it’s filled with mines. We’re going to go around here.” You compromise at all turns.

But you do have to keep a hard line. I’ve never had a bad relationship until “Firefly,” and I didn’t walk out of the deal to show Fox not to mess with me. I walked out of the deal because I had been rendered incapable of thinking about television for a while.

Q. Was Fox resistant to the overall concept, or did they have point-by-point problems with it?

A. They’re always going to go micro on you. What happened with “Firefly” was, it was exactly what I was trying to make, with a couple compromises. And they didn’t want it. What happened with “Dollhouse” was, they very subtly started pulling what I wanted to make out from under me and I kept thinking, Well, no, I’ve still got my eyes on the prize. And then I turned around and went, Oh, no, actually, they’ve eviscerated enough of the show that I’m not sure how to get to that horizon.

Q. What did they not want?

A. Sex. They want things to be sexy, but for God’s sake, they don’t want them to be sexual. And one of the things that Eliza [Dushku] and I first talked about was sex. This was going to be about human need and when I talk about perversion, perversion for me is something to be celebrated. As long as nobody’s getting hurt. Because obsession is the thing in us that makes us not everybody else.

Q. Was there a particularly deviant episode they didn’t like?

A. Absolutely. It would have been deviant-tastic. The episode worked on two tracks: one with this nice old man, and something has gone horribly wrong. And then the denouement was that the old man wanted to hear his daughter say that she didn’t kill herself because he molested her. He wanted to be forgiven for something that he shouldn’t be forgiven for. And the other was this creepy reclusive billionaire with real dolls, who’s completely incapable of human relationships but was trying to take a tiny step toward them by getting rid of these dolls. Even though he was very twisted, what he was trying to do was beautiful. That episode would never be made. They were like, “No sex, just shoot at people.”

Q. Have there been any discussions with Marvel about your making another “Avengers” movie?

A. They’ve mentioned it. I’ve told them, never in a million years because I’m so tired. [laughs] They’ve talked about it enough to make me feel wanted, but not so much that they’ve signed themselves away, in case this thing bombs.

Q. You’ve shown an affinity for musicals in your work. What about doing a Broadway show?

A. Hells yeah. I’m dying to do a musical. That’s enormously difficult. But I think about it a lot. It’s maddening to see with what skill and seeming ease Trey Parker and Matt Stone were just like, “Oh, let us perfect another art form. Anything else you guys want done around here?” [growls angrily]

Q. Do you know what your first post-“Avengers” project will be?

A. I want to take the summer off and stare at my kids. But I’m hoping to do this Internet mini-series with Warren Ellis, “Wastelanders.” It’s a drama about people who save the world and how unbelievably unhappy they are. It ain’t for everybody. It’s very dark. On one level I must never lose touch with my audience. But I must, at some point, stop trying to get everybody to like me, and be true to the thing I think I need to say. In this case, I need to say it with a lot of cursing. I refer to the piece as “Glengarry Timecop.” But it’s the next thing that I want to say, so I can’t worry about, well, where’s the empowerment narrative that people love? That will always be the story of my life. Not, sadly, of my life, but of my writing. If it had happened to me I wouldn’t have to write about it so much.