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Gaiman and Whedon Discuss the Rise of the Geek
CABridges writes "In a lengthy Time Magazine interview, Neil Gaiman ("Sandman," "American Gods") and Joss Whedon ("Buffy the Vampire Slayer," "Firefly") talk about their audience.
Gaiman: "Mostly they're people. They're us. That's what they look like."
Whedon: "They're a lot more attractive than I am, actually, which kind of disturbs and upsets me."
Both men, known for their cult-favorite creations, have movies debuting this Friday. For Gaiman it's MirrorMask, for Whedon it's Serenity."
Here's what I had to say on my little bio site about myself: geek - while it used to be a four letter word, it is now a (somewhat?) coveted title. Either that or people just have short memories. Regardless, knowing about technology and having a desire to constantly improve it is now almost as accepted as jaywalking.
fak3r.com
I got to see Serenity three weeks ago and it was GREAT!! Seriously, go tell everyone you know to see it because the movie business requires a great opening weekend or else they quickly disappear. And if it disappears, no sequels.
One of my acquaintances also saw the special preview and he went out and bought the DVD's of the series.
Quick question, I heard that there are eight different versions of the movie that they were previewing, and that they were going to gauge audience reaction before the final release. Is that true?
Don't go, maybe they'll make the movie going experience not suck.
I hate going to the movies, I'd much rather rent/buy them.
Atlanta has a showing of mirrormask for 1 week only. The artist of mirrormask also does the sandman covers.
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Movie Times: http://www.atlantamovietimes.com/movies/4798910.p
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http://www.cgisecurity.com/
Believe me, if I started murdering people, there would be none of you left.
What's awesome about these two movies is that the talents behind them (and I include Dave McKean here) had complete control of the movies. The scripts, the direction, the marketing - everything. And guess what, it works. They follow through on their vision, no compromise for execs who don't get it, and produce something faithful to what they want.
/. isn't going to make anyone pay 5 bucks for a movie ticket, but if Mirrormask is on near you, go see it.
:)
And they produce excellent movies. Thought-provoking, entertaining, well directed, beautifully shot movies (without any 6 figure salaries).
I was luck to see both Mirrormask and Serenity at the Edinburgh Film Festival this year and both were amazing films for completely different reasons. I realise some random comment on
If you haven't seen Firefly, and Serenity is playing near you, go see it.
This is the new age of the auteur
That's the beauty of Whedon's work, he's the quintessential geek and he manages to showcase the self-deprecating humour so inherent in people with interests outside the mainstream.
Reading an outline for Buffy 10 years ago, you would have instantly assumed it was destined for a short-lived run and eventual shunting to a 2am timeslot before dissapearing into obscurity. Instead it became a cult hit, ran for seven seasons and spawned a massive franchise, including one of the few successful spin-off television shows.
Firefly, with it's mesh of sci-fi and old west, would have seemed likely to suffer the same fate. However after it's network axing, fan support (to which Whedon has paid tribute) has seen a movie release.
Both of these shows have succeeded, in part, due to Whedon's offbeat writing and his affinity for geek references. They've been elevated to cult status and after all, you can't beat a geek for obsessing about a television show.
I think one of the things that really propelled Joss Whedon to the front stage as a "great writer" is that the shows he did, a la Buffy, Angel, and Firefly, where competing against things like Suddenly Susan and Friends. His shows, and Buffy especially, had a wicked attitude, a beautiful fantasy/character driven show, and for most of us that started watching Buffy back in '97 it was a take on your every day high school, replete with jocks, cliques, bullies, and a-hole teachers. I think as it progressed, there was a certain age group that followed the series into through high school and into college, while they themselves were making the same transitions. And I'll definitely be seeing Serenity. Sci-fi just had a Firefly marathon so I'm ultra stoked.
suck my ping!
Joss Whedon has done some remarkable things. Probably none of these are original, but he's combined them consistently, into packages which are only less precious (like some entire series of Buffy) because of the sheer volume.
- He mixes long story lines with short ones so you can enjoy both individual episodes and entire series.
- He has unconditionally excellent camera work, with many long shots, excellent lighting, and hand-held effects that seem cheesy but actually work well.
- He makes great use of music.
- He develops stable groups of characters, bringing interesting social dynamics to the plots, and letting us identify with different characters. I'd like to be Spike, but I know I'm really Xander.
- He stays semi-real, semi-fantasy, allowing him to explore dark subjects (death and loss) in different ways.
- He brings big-screen production quality to every episode, so the DVDs are really worth having.
- His dialogues are usually so good that in the few cases where the characters become formulaic stand out.
On the downside, his work tends to be very politically neutral, which makes it safe, but bland. Serenity was cancelled because it was slyly political, Robin Hood and the Sheriff of Nottingham style. The shocker is that it managed to get aired at all, on Fox TV, which is basically a mouthpiece for the Sheriff.
The unfinished Serenity first series, by the way, was fantastic. A wonderful cast, and every single aspect of the production deliberate and perfect, as far as I could tell. I don't normally make an effort to see specific films but I'm eagerly waiting to see Serenity.
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I find tons of people into what have been labeled as "geek" passtimes from the entire d&d thing to the sci-fi fanatics but it seems that the more these people are into these "geek" activities the less they seem "geek" to me.
Am I expectiong too much out of the geek label? Or do I have the wrong definition? I always seemed to think of a geek as someone with a high technical/mathmatical/scientific proficency. It just seems the more "hardcore" fans of geek entertainment seem to be less into the logistical/technical aspects of life and more into simply the fantasy world that real geeks (by my standards only) often get lumped in with.
Dedicated Cthulhu Cultist since 4523 BC.
I remember ST:VI was completely different in the theater then it is on the home release, they re-cut the entire movie. Valeris was part Romulan and guy in the Klingon mask at the end was actually Klingon. They added all the stuff about the Fed military brass wanting to preemptively attack the Klingons. Plus a bunch of little dialogue changes were made.
They never really explained why or even noted that it had been re-cut (to my knowledge). In the theatre the whole thing was a Klingon-Romulan plot, where as at home it was a Klingon-Federation plot. The home version was really much more true to the Star Trek ideals of breaking down the barriers of racism and old rivalries (which is I suppose why it was re-cut); but I do wish I could see the theatrical version again, just for the sake of not paving over SciFi history.
Cool art gallery, if you're into that sort of thing.
Yes, you read correctly. I married a cheerleader. I'm a geek. Her dad is a geek, so I had an advantage. I rented the Serenity DVDs from NetFlix. She refused to watch. I tried to cash in my "But I watched XXX with you, in the theater, no less..." to no avail.
Ads for Serenity film came out. She left the room. Finally, they showed one during "Desperate Housewives", and she said "Gee, that looks like fun. Isn't that the one you wanted to see? We'll have to see that."
Marketroids get a point for that.
Here's hoping for a great opening weekend...
That's certainly true, and I can't speak for the gentleman you are replying to-- but one of the big reasons I *liked* Firefly was that it didn't suffer from the "perfect futurism" that too many sci-fi shows do. It's part of what made the original Star Wars so unique among movies... dirty desert huts and subsistence farming mixed in with dingy used robots and patchwork spaceships. *Much* more likely than the shiny-clean all-pervasive techno-future of Star Trek. Hell, we can't even manage to get everbody basic sanitation, let alone internet access.
A thousand years from now, someone will still be growing rice the hard way for a pittance.
Heee. Shit like the parent reminds me of a conversation I had awhile back - a mistake on my part, attempting to divulge some information about the cyberpunk world I've been developing. Started talking about the communications hardware being essentially exactly what the cops have now and the geek in question threw a fit - got red in the face and started insisting they cops would be using quantum encryption and all sorts of fifty cent words and flavor-of-the-month TLAs he'd obviously pulled out of a recent issue of Wired.
:P We have functional beam canon, but the military is still using howitzers. Why? Beam canon are expensive and part of the point of the howitzer is that nice big crater the shell leaves. Why would alt-future cops be using super expensive high-maintenance technology (in a desert environment) when CB radio is not only cheap but rugged?
Like Gibson said - the future is here, it just isn't widely distributed yet.
Bleh. People either read/watch sci-fi for the science or the fiction - Personally, I like the fiction. I find the people that are too fixated on the science to be even more removed from reality than cosplayers and DnD geeks.
I'd like to be Spike, but I know I'm really Xander
I'm stealing your line.
I have to admit, I only got into Buffy et al recently, because continuing storylines in TV series, while I love them, are impossible without a regular schedule. I'm a full-blooded geek, I do the comics thing, I do the Star Wars thing, I write my own Atari 2600 utilities... but I never "got" Buffy, for the above reason mostly, but also because it really seemed to be a "chick" show. A show about a girl(s), for girls. With a few attractive supporting male charcters. Gilmore Girls with vampires. When Angel debuted, it seemed even MORE targetted squarely at 16 year old girls. This is how I viewed Buffy, and the occasional epidose I saw didn't draw me in enough, because it just seemed to be Sweet Valley High with vampires.
A couple of years ago I started getting the DVDs on the recommendation of a friend, and after the first season, I was hooked. I realized that the show was far more than some easily stereotyped genre film. Moved on to Angel, and actually got Firefly without even realizing it was Whedon's work. Been loving them all, even though it's damn near a thousand bucks spent at this point. I've tried explaining the attraction to non-fans, and most of them share my earlier opinion: it's a show for teenage girls.
Anyway, you've summed up exactly what it is about Whedon's work that draws me in: I'd like to be Spike, but I know I'm really Xander. Every show has its archetypes: the jock, the nerd, the cheerleader, the psycho (yes, I watched the Breakfast Club far too many times). Usually, I'd see the jock, wish I could be him, realize I'm the nerd, and get all irritated. With Buffy and the rest, that sort of realization makes me feel GOOD about myself.
Maybe it's just that the characters are not one-dimensional. The show presents the typical, simplistic view (cool tough guy vs. useless weak sidekick), but by the end you realize just who the real hero is of the two. And in a far more believable way than something like Spider-Man. The scene with Xander and Tara talking about what it's like to be "ordinary" people was something I've never seen done properly in fiction before. Amazing stuff.
Endless arguments over trivial contradictions in books written by ignorant savages to explain thunder in the dark.
I am probably going to get modded down on this greatly as a troll or the like, but I have to say it so I will...
Everyone keeps talking about Firefly and Serentity as being wonderful and great programs. While I'll accept these as wonderfully fine opinions, it is important that some of you remember that this isn't what the majority of people are going to think, and don't be too surprised if the numbers for the movies are poor.
Just some thoughts on Whedon's 'great' shows: only one of them ever made it to a major network, Firefly, and we all know it didn't last long. Now it can easily be argued that this is because it was sci-fi or people can start the....the masses just don't understand...speeches, but in reality it might truly be a show that was never meant for network, or at least not the big four. We have all seen FOX makes some dumb decisions on shows (i.e. cancelling Family Guy) and making some dumb decisions on picking up shows. The truth of the matter is that FOX gambled on the show based on success of Buffy and/or Angel on their 2nd tier networks, and they lost.
I am not going to openly say that the show sucks, because some of what I watched of it I did enjoy, while other parts I trulty loathed, though that can possibly be said for other shows as well. It should also be noted that the movies launch date is post-Labor Day. With the exception of LotR in recent years, the movie industry makes its money during the summer run. So it might be possible for this to eke out a first or second place simply on your typical low fall movie turnout.
In the end I would like to see what more people say after seeing it, instead of just the people who went to the preview, most of whom have problem had the day circled on calendars for months. I also am tempted to see what the major movie critics say, because their opinions often influence the decisions of the masses. So there it is said, you can mod me up or down as you see fit...
"Some days you just can't get rid of a bomb."
'Anachronism eh? SO. Since you feel that in the Future we will all have equal access to all technology, how do you explain the fact that we are chatting to each other via a global information network while many thousands of people still live in subsistance communities?'
My wife spent six weeks in Uganda this summer in a village there. They recently got electricity for the first time ever, their houses have dirt floors, and they have to carry water half a mile from the well whenever they need it, since they don't have plumbing.
They also have cellphones and a few laptops, and they drive into Mbale to send and receive email. There are services in the city that will charge your electronic gear for a fee; you leave your phone or whatever with them and pick it up a few hours later.
It's quite possible to live in (nearly) subsistence communities and also 'chat via a global information network'... I don't think things are so clearly partitioned. The farmers in Mongolia may need global communications in order for them to sell their crops abroad.