Dr. Horrible’s Sing-Along Blog

Michael Boretz, with David M. Burns, is one of the producers of DR. HORRIBLE’S SING-ALONG BLOG. In case you missed mention of the subject (in which case, welcome back to the Web), DR. HORRIBLE is the new Internet musical directed by Joss Whedon, co-written by him and brothers Jed Whedon and Zack Whedon and Maurissa Tancharoen, starring Neil Patrick Harris, Nathan Fillion and Felicia Day. It premieres for free Tues. July 15 at www.drhorrible.com, with the second act up Thurs. July 17, the third act up Sat. July 19 and the whole thing vanishing at midnight Sun. July 20, but with plans to show up on DVD – with fabulous special features – soon thereafter.

Two important things to know about Boretz: first, he was Whedon’s assistant for about five years, and second, Boretz wrote, produced and directed his own short film SPLITTING HAIRS.

“[Whedon] saw my short film and was impressed,” Boretz explains. “He and I were talking back when I was still his assistant, about me producing an idea he had for a short film. When that didn’t happen, he chose to do DR. HORRIBLE’S SING-ALONG BLOG, and he asked me to help him produce that. He basically described the thing in two words – ‘Internet musical.’ He was working on it with his brothers and – his brother Jed and his [Jed’s] fiancée Maurissa [Tancharoen – other writer is Zack Whedon]. After the strike, they came up with the idea and it just took a little while to get it all in place.”

Like everybody else who knows anything about it, Boretz has been sworn to secrecy on the details of DR. HORRIBLE. Here’s what he can tell us.

“The basic plotline is that it’s about this wannabe mad scientist character [Harris], and he’s really just a lovable guy who is in love with the Penny [Day] character, and it’s about him wanting to do more and be more and change the world, but of course, you get Joss’ great spin on things, where he’s actually trying to get into this Evil League and then there’s a hero [Fillion] who everyone loves who ...” Boretz hesitates on the description. “He always reminds me of Gaston from BEAUTY AND THE BEAST.”

Describing his duties on DR. HORRIBLE, Boretz says he helped find many of the key positions from art director to the director of photography.

“Then [Whedon] hired David M. Burns, who had worked on ANGEL for a number of years, to produce as well and handle more of the line producing and get the equipment and the rest of the crew and all that fun stuff,” adds Boretz. “Along with Jed [Whedon], I set up all the post-production and have been running it and getting it completed and getting everything ready for the Internet. What was cool for me was, I started working for Joss after [the BUFFY THE VAMPIRE SLAYER musical episode] ‘Once More, With Feeling’ was already done and everybody loved it and I heard all these stories about how fun it was. I got to witness this [DR. HORRIBLE], which pretty much [stars] some of Joss’ closest friends, Nathan Fillion and Neil Patrick Harris, who are totally, amazingly gifted, and also with Felicia Day, and Joss and his brothers and the environment’s so fun and then the lyrics are so hilarious and great.”

Working with Whedon proved to be a dream come true for Boretz who always wanted to be involved in filmmaking, but when he was a kid, his family and friends actually thought he might go into special effects makeup.

“As a kid, I spent a lot of time on my own,” he explains. “I went to see a lot of movies and I had a vivid imagination, so I always had an interest in creature effects and FANGORIA magazine, stuff like that. I used to really be into the gore and the blood, and my father’s a dentist, so I would have access to lots of wax. He’d give me sheets of wax, and dentures, and I would make vampire fangs, and they looked pretty real. I had a home video camera and I would make little pieces.”

Coming out to Hollywood from New York, Boretz worked as a production assistant on the horror thriller IDENTITY before becoming Whedon’s assistant.

“After working for Joss for a year or two, I started to have a little bit of time,” he says. “I wanted to do something creative, and I just got so sick of wanting and talking about it and not doing it that I did.”

After a few writing projects didn’t pan out, Boretz came to the conclusion, “I don’t really want to be doing this, I want to direct something. So then I had to choose a story [to film]. I started writing it while Joss was working on SERENITY, so 2003-2004. I didn’t shoot it until May 2005, so it took a good year or so to get it going.”

SPLITTING HAIRS, which has now appeared in a number of film festivals and won several awards, could perhaps be described as horror comedy, about a balding man who takes drastic steps to get a full head of hair. Boretz keeps his blond hair cropped, so it’s hard to tell, but he says the premise came from personal experience.

“It bothered me that I was losing my hair,” says Boretz. “I started losing it pretty early. And then when I was looking for something to write about, I had a couple of stories in mind, but what I wanted to do as a first directing thing was really to try to do everything. So the original script had twelve to fifteen locations, it had visual effects, it had a fight, it had gore in it and it had comedy. It had all that and I was like, ‘That’s what I want to do. If I’m only going to basically get one shot with my money, I want to really try to direct everything.’”

It also had some once and future Whedon colleagues, including leading lady Day (Potential Slayer Vi on BUFFY), makeup effects supervisor Rob Hall and his company Almost Human (the last two seasons of BUFFY, three seasons of ANGEL, FIREFLY and SERENITY) and costume designer Shawna Trpcic (FIREFLY and ANGEL). Whedon also contributed some valuable narrative advice according to Boretz.

“He had a great note [suggestion] about how when [the character] doesn’t have hair, he’s one way, and when he gets the hair, he has to be a new guy,” says Boretz. “You can’t have him have the hair and then slowly try to figure it out and build the confidence. Originally in the script, he gets hair and he’s walking on the street and he’s still insecure, he’s still wearing his baggy clothes, and he’s looking down and he’s nervous and then girls start looking at him and he slowly starts to see and by the end, it turns into a swaggering walk and there’s a whole transformation, but it took too much time. [In the final version, per Whedon’s comments], as soon as he had the hair, he was happy-go-lucky on the street. Joss’ exact analogy was Batman. ‘When Bruce Wayne is in the costume, he’s Batman. So that was a great note.’”