Malene Arpe's bit on Joss Whedon (Toronto Star, 24 September 2005) presents him in a more intriguing light than the usual, screwed-by-the-major-studios portrait. Beginning with the note that he prefers the title "nerd llama", Arpe elicits a humorous, warm, and optimistic Whedon-- one that squares nicely with the creator of Firefly, Buffy the Vampire Slayer, and Serenity.
"I'm not trying to make a polemic and it's definitely not a partisan film in the sense that Mal is, if not a Republican, certainly a libertarian, he's certainly a less-government kinda guy. He's the opposite of me in many ways," Whedon says. "But at the same time, when a great superpower, however benevolent they may be, meddles in the affairs of a world they don't really understand — and sometimes they end up helping — but they destroy a lot of things in the process and sometimes they end up not helping at all and the fact that that's what's currently happening ... Let's put it this way: When I wrote it, it was topical and I hoped by the time I filmed it, it wouldn't be."
Arpe doesn't stop there. In fact, she does't stop until Whedon admits that he thinks of himself as "an angry jealous god". And for a friend of mine who was traumatized by the loss of two "family members" on the Firefly team, Whedon provides the perfect response:
"If everybody gets too happy, you got yourself nothing. Someone once said, `Drama is conflict.' They didn't say, `Drama is everybody getting along having no problems.'"
The fact that Whedon shares a love for one of the members of my pantheon only raises the temperature. When asked if he is a genius, Whedon replies, "the only living genius I know of is Stephen Sondheim". Amen brother Whedon. Maybe that sci-fi opera extravaganze doesn't seem so far-fetched anymore...
