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Joss Whedon [1964-0] American

Rank: 102
Writer, Screenwriter

Joseph Hill "Joss" Whedon is an American screenwriter, film and television director, film and television producer, comic book author, and composer.

Movies, Humor, Morning, Teacher, Anger, Cool, Dad, Death, Equality, Experience, Funny, God, Romantic, Trust

Quote	Tags	Rank
TV's like whitewater rafting: Without rocks, there wouldn't be rapids, and it wouldn't be as much fun.		101
I love fantasy. I love horror. I love musicals. Whatever doesn't really happen in life is what I'm interested in. As a way of commenting on everything that does happen in life, because ultimately the only thing I'm really interested in is people.		102
The thing about a hero, is even when it doesn't look like there's a light at the end of the tunnel, he's going to keep digging, he's going to keep trying to do right and make up for what's gone before, just because that's who he is.		103
You know, the thing that I do to waste time is think of things I want to make. That's how my mind is employed.		104
I was not popular in school, and I was definitely not a ladies' man. And I had a very painful adolescence, because it was all very strange to me. It wasn't like I got beat up, but the humiliation and isolation, and the existential 'God, I exist, and nobody cares' of being a teenager were extremely pronounced for me.	God	105
I don't tend to write straight dramas where real life just impinges. But because I don't, when I do, it is very interesting to slap people in the face with just an absolute of life.		106
My dad would go to work every day and write in a room full of funny people. He enjoyed it. I know great writers who find the process agonising but to me, writing has always been sheer joy.	Dad, Funny	107
I never give up on anything, because you come back around, and suddenly the thing you thought you'd never do is relevant.		108
I'm a very hard-line, angry atheist. Yet I am fascinated by the concept of devotion.		109
Always be yourself... unless you suck.		110
Remember to always be yourself.		111
When you're making a film, you have an obligation to fill the frame with life.		112
Absolutely eat dessert first. The thing that you want to do the most, do that.		113
Horror movies don't exist unless you go and see them, and people always will.	Movies	114
You know, I always was an early morning or late night writer. Early morning was my favorite; late night was because you had a deadline. And at four in the morning you make up some of your most absurd jokes.	Morning	115
Who is to say who is the villain and who is the hero? Probably the dictionary.		116
The way a musical can make us feel is unlike anything else, in song and particularly in dance. I think people fly through plate-glass windows when they get shot because movies don't have dance scenes any more. This is what we do instead.	Movies	117
I always was an early-morning or late-night writer. Early morning was my favorite; late night was because you had a deadline. And at four in the morning, you make up some of your most absurd jokes.	Morning	118
I go to movies expecting to have a whole experience. If I want a movie that doesn't end, I'll go to a French movie. That's a betrayal of trust to me. A movie has to be complete within itself; it can't just build off the first one or play variations.	Experience, Movies, Trust	119
What I do like is hiking. And that's what filmmaking is. It's a hike. It's challenging and exhausting, and you don't know what the terrain is going to be or necessarily even which direction you're going in... but it sure is beautiful.		120
Equality is like gravity. We need it to stand on this earth as men and women.	Equality	121
'The Dark Knight,' for me, has the same problem that every other 'Batman' movie has. It's not about Batman. I think Heath Ledger is just phenomenal and the character of the Joker is beautifully written. He has a particular philosophy that he carries throughout the movie. He has one of the best bad guy schemes.		122
Every vampire fiction reinvents vampires to its own needs. You take what you want.		123
Those of us who write spend our entire lives in an endless English class.		124
The secret to multitasking is that it isn't actually multitasking. It's just extreme focus and organization.		125
The misogyny that is in every culture is not a true part of the human condition. It is life out of balance, and that imbalance is sucking something out of the soul of every man and woman who's confronted with it.		126
I think it's not inaccurate to say that I had a perfectly happy childhood during which I was very unhappy.		201
I don't have a ton of enemies. I get along with people pretty well when I'm not annoying them to death.	Death	202
The master plan does not have a master plan. Television ultimately finds itself, and after it finds itself, it finds itself changing.		203
My absolute favorite part of Comic-Con is seeing, like, a 'Mass Effect' guy hanging out with a 'Sailor Moon,' and they're just having a great time.		204
Wonder Woman isn't Spider-man or Batman. She doesn't have a town, she has a world. That was more interesting to me than a kind of contained, rote superhero franchise.		205
Loneliness is about the scariest thing out there.		206
That title, is one of the things I fought for. A lot of people said 'But it's stupid, and it's the title of a comedy movie, and people won't take it seriously,' and I'm sure there are some people who still don't. But for the most part, people do see that we really have a quality show.		207
I hate it when people talk about Buffy as being campy... I hate camp, I don't enjoy dumb TV. I believe Aaron Spelling has single-handedly lowered SAT scores.		208
I've been to two festivals in my life, and I've never been to Toronto. I haven't really been making festival movies. This is new territory for me.	Movies	209
Every time you work on a project, it's a little vacation from the project you're working on the other 23 hours. That's the thing - it replenishes you to do something else.		210
I think it's always important for academics to study popular culture, even if the thing they are studying is idiotic. If it's successful or made a dent in culture, then it is worthy of study to find out why.		211
I designed 'Buffy' to be an icon, to be an emotional experience, to be loved in a way that other shows can't be loved. Because it's about adolescence, which is the most important thing people go through in their development, becoming an adult.		212
It's only recently women got to be action heroes on TV. Progress is slow, and often non-existent. There's plenty of cool comics with female characters... But all it takes is one Catwoman to set the cause back a decade.	Cool	213
I spent a ton of time alone. I was raised by a feminist; I had a terrifying father and oppressively scary and mean brothers. We had a farm. The rule was between breakfast and lunch you weren't allowed to make a sound.		214
I would like to have as much going on as other people do, but my problem is I get so attached to things, and there's my kids, and I need my sleep, and then there's being married - gotta check in on that, too.		215
Remember to always be yourself. Unless you suck.		216
I am a great believer in found families and I'm not a great believer in blood.		217
I think everyone who makes movies should be forced to do television. Because you have to finish. You have to get it done, and there are a lot of decisions made just for the sake of making decisions. You do something because it's efficient and because it gets the story told and it connects to the audience.	Movies	218
I always watch what I say. I am what I say.		219
I would love to give you a more in-depth coherent explanation of my view of the soul, and if I had one I would. The soul and my concept of it are as ephemeral as anybody's, and possibly more so.		220
I'm a very gentle man, not unlike Gandhi.		221
If somebody is in a story, they need to be there for a reason, and not just to set up somebody else's story.		222
I've had so much success. I had something to say, I got to say it, people heard it, and they agreed. That's every artist's dream. That's the brass ring.		223
Personally, the NSA collecting data on me freaks me out. It totally freaks me out. And yet I'm from the generation that wants to put a GPS in their kids so I always know where they are.		224
You learn something every time you make a mistake.		225
I always enjoy conversation more if there is some substance to it - which is a just incredibly hilarious thing for me to say because for many, many years I was the guy whose only contribution to any conversation was, 'There was a funny 'Simpson's' joke about that.'		226
Writers are completely out of touch with reality. Writers are a crazy person. We create conflict - for a living. We do this all the time, sometimes on a weekly basis; we create horrible, incredible circumstances and then figure a way out of them. That's what we do.		301
I've been in this business for a long while, but it's not like I've been waiting tables. Since I started writing, I've only worked on things that I love. I've had a lot of heartbreak, but you don't become an artist and not expect that.		302
I like to think that I'm a populist entertainer, but I'm a little bit idiosyncratic, and sometimes the networks wouldn't really roll with that.		303
The only way to real mature love is to get past the tropes of what we consider 'romance.'		304
Everybody who labels themselves a 'nerd' isn't some giant person locked in a cubbyhole who's never seen the opposite sex. Especially with the way the Internet is now, I think that definition is getting a little more diffuse.		305
I never tire of the heroes that I knew growing up.		306
I had older brothers, and I don't think there's anything worse than an older brother. They pretty much told me the end of everything they got to see before I did.		307
'The Sixth Sense' is fine the second time around, but honestly, the first time around, it's dazzling.		308
I don't write just to be clever. But sometimes I do. And if you don't have an understanding of the language, then the way in which it's bent doesn't actually register. It's the old you-gotta-paint-like-them-before-you-can-paint-like-you thing.		309
I don't know a lot of show runners. I mean I met a lot of them in picket lines. I'm not part of a, like, secret society or pickup basketball game. As far as I'm concerned, pick-up basketball games are secret societies. They confuse me. I've never been a networker or I've never been very social.		310
We are, all of us, incoherent text, and just knowing that - knowing that no matter how much you say, 'I am this' and part of you is not that - means that you can say it.		311
Everything I write tends to turn into a superhero team, even if I didn't mean for it to. I always start off wanting to be solitary, because a) it's simpler, and b) that isolation is something that I relate to as a storyteller. And then no matter what, I always end up with a team.		312
I don't understand why or how anyone ever pulled off the whole idea of 'women are inferior.'		313
I love a straightforward character. I am the guy who loves Cyclops on the 'X-Men', because he is square.		314
I think to an extent every human being needs to be redeemed somewhat or at least needs to look at themselves and say, 'I've made mistakes, I'm off course, I need to change.' Which is probably the hardest thing for a human being to do, and maybe that's why it interests me so.		315
You can't be a storyteller and a speechwriter at the same time.		316
It's not any huge secret that I'm an atheist.		317
I eat 'The Walking Dead' like its made of brains. Can't even watch the show, I love the book so much.		318
There was a time before I felt I was a real writer, when I was a yarn spinner and I just wanted to tell story until it was over. But then there came a time where I was like, 'No, I want to understand something through writing this that I might have not understood before. I want people to come away with something to think about.'		319
Ultimately what I end up writing about is helplessness and the flipside of that, empowerment.		320
What I love most about icons is finding out what's behind them, exploring the price of their power.		321
There are two things that I cannot resist: one is musicals and the other is a spaceship in trouble. But I am smart enough not to combine the two things.		322
Limitations are something that I latch onto - like working in genre, or if you're writing TV, there are act breaks, there's a length of time it's supposed to be. The restrictions of budget and sets can be really useful. When you can have everything, it's very hard to make things feel real and lived in.		323
I'm not big on regret; I don't spend a lot of time on it.		324
Science fiction is like a blender - you can put in any historical experience and take influences from everything you see, read or experience.		325
I don't think I'm a celebrity. Maybe I'm a cult figure?		326
A writer is supposed to have anonymity.		401
I am a fan of sequels even though they are inevitably awful.		402
I was raised by a hardcore feminist.		403
Casting is storytelling.		404
You don't buy a Picasso because you love the frame.		405
I always believe in just have as much fun as you can so that when you're in the part that you hate, there's a light at the end of the tunnel, that you're close to finished.		406
The people who feel the most strongly about something will turn on you the most vociferously if they feel you've let them down.		407
I don't like uncertainty. I don't play poker. I don't like bluffing.		408
I loved working with 'The Avengers' cast and we had a great time, but it was a job, and they had other commitments during that job, so they would go off and do other things.		409
Shakespeare's language does not require a British accent. It requires a facility with language, and that's all.		410
I usually write things in my head before I ever write them down. When I write it out, usually I've already figured out what it is I'm trying to do.		411
The musicals that I love on stage are generally meant for the stage.		412
Something like 'Much Ado' happens, and even 'Avengers' happens because of the years of building connections and doing the work and proving yourself.		413
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.		414
I don't want the giant ego. I don't want to become Kevin Costner, singing on the soundtrack to The Postman.		415
As far as I am concerned, the first episode of Buffy was the beginning of my career. It was the first time I told a story from start to finish the way I wanted.		416
When I created Buffy, I wanted to create a female icon, but I also wanted to be very careful to surround her with men that not only have no problem with the idea of a female leader, but were in fact engaged and even attracted to the idea.		417
The two things that matter the most to me: emotional resonance and rocket launchers. Party of Five, a brilliant show, and often made me cry uncontrollably, suffered ultimately from a lack of rocket launchers.		418
I also don't trust Caribou anymore. They're out there, on the tundra, waiting... Something's going down. I'm right about this.		419
Writers are completely out of touch with reality.		420
There are two things that interest me - and they're both power, ultimately. One is not having it and one is abusing it.		421
There's a reason Tony Stark makes fun of 'Thor,' and mentions 'Shakespeare' in the park in 'The Avengers.' It's great to play high drama and comedy alongside a modern story.		422
I used to write chronologically when I started, from beginning to end. Eventually I went, 'That's absurd; my heart is in this one scene, therefore I must follow it.'		423
I think there's a possibility that comic book movies are getting a tiny bit better on the one hand because they're no longer made by executives, who are, you know, ninety-year-old bald tailors with cigars, going, 'The kids love this!'		424
We need narrative; it feeds us in a particular way, and deconstructing it completely before you've actually experienced it, I think it leaves us unfed.		425
People always say I write a lot of pop culture references. Can somebody please count the pop culture references in 'Firefly?' Because I don't know how to put this to you, but there was one. I referenced The Beatles in the pilot.		426
I do listen to music. Movie scores, exclusively, because it's all about mood and nonspecificity. I love the way modern movie scoring is all about nonspecificity. You know, if I shuffled the tracks from 'Inception,' I challenge you to tell me which is which.		501
I get recognized just often enough to keep my ego bouncing along, but not so much that I can't go places.		502
Making 'The Avengers' was very important to me, but it was also extremely arduous. I missed my friends and I missed my home, so I decided to throw them all on camera, which is the only way I seem to know to relate to people.		503
I did my English A level in England, and we studied Shakespeare. I had great, great high school teachers, and we parsed the text within an inch of its life.		504
My life has included a study of Shakespeare and to me it's very natural, but I know that it's not always accessible to other people.		505
I've seen plenty of films where the projector broke. The problems that we have in the digital age are exactly the same as we had. Instead of, 'There's a hair in the gate,' it's, 'The computer ate the footage.' There will always be things like that going on. Nothing is perfect.		506
People used to laugh that academics would study Disney movies. There's nothing more important for academics to study, because they shape the minds of our children possibly more than any single thing.		507
I've never met a well-adjusted person. It's weird.		508
An audience who watches my shows knows who I am, knows that right when they think I'm going to make a joke, I'm going to blow something up, or during the worst peril, I'm going to have someone give someone a kiss - it's just going to happen.		509
TV does a thing that film can never do. It takes you to a place that no novel written after the late 19th century can. You can just go through people's lives; it's like a marriage.		510
My favorite part of Comic-Con? The groupies.		511
I am not a fan of referencing your own work when it's in a different universe than what you're doing. That, to me, is a wink at the audience, and winking isn't actually cool when you're not, like, 10.		512
The networks have a particular agenda, a particular model and structure. It doesn't have anything to do with content. This is not a dis on them - they are a business model, run by business people.		513
Actors wait tables, directors work at video stores.		514
When people say to me, 'Why are you so good at writing at women?' I say, 'Why isn't everybody?'		515
I tend to tell stories that have a lot of momentum; it's not like 'and then months later...' I like things where the momentum of one action rolls into the next one so everything is the sum of that.		516
Never sit at a table you can't walk away from.		517
Why anybody gets my sense of humor I never know, but I do know that when they do, I keep them as close as I possibly can.	Humor	518
I never write anything without humor, just because I like humor, but at the same time, it is a way for anything fantastical to become relatable.	Humor	519
I have a pathological fear of confrontation. I'm working on that.		520
I was never a games night guy, but at some point, social interaction starts to freak me out. So when there's a point, it's easier for me to see the people I love and hang out and try to have fun.		521
I just love language. I mean, I love it. I love stage directions. Any opportunity to write. I hadn't written in so long, I get very crazy and miserable. I - it's like not seeing my kids: I can't do it for very long.		522
My first gig ever was writing looplines for a movie that had already been made. You know, writing lines over somebody's back to explain something, to help make a connection, to add a joke, or to just add babble because the people are in frame and should be saying something.		523
I've often said there's no such thing as a track record in TV. I seen people who created things much more successful than mine treated like dirt.		524
The problem for me is that 'Watchmen,' one of the great comics of all time, is a look at superheroes that has gone beyond the concept of or necessity for superheroes.		525
The fact is some people really love my work, some people not so much, but at the end of the day, I don't want anybody coming out of the movie thinking about me.		526
My mom and dad were divorced, and although they got along very well, my mom thought American television was reprehensible, so I was raised on the BBC. I kind of agreed with her. We watched American news, though.		601
The thing with the comics is that you have license to go down every alley your brain can think of.		602
'Buffy' is about growing up. 'Angel' is really about already having grown up, dealing with what you've done, and redemption.		603
Especially, I think, living in any fantasy or science fiction world means really understanding what you're seeing and reading really densely on a level that a lot of people don't bother to read.		604
I never tire of the heroes that I knew growing up. The fun is not that much different from doing a television show: You're stuck with a certain set of rules, and then, rather than trying to break them, it's just trying to peel away and see what's underneath them. That to me is really fun.		605
I'll always protect what I'm working on. Which is why more and more of it is stuff only I can ruin.		606
I'm very much more interested in the created family than I am in actual families.		607
I love TV in a way that I don't love any other medium.		608
Soon, I will be 'King of all Hollywoodland.'		609
I do have screenplays I've written that never saw the light of day, but I don't usually go back to them. When I've told a story, I want to tell another story.		610
That's the great thing about 'The West Wing:' you really felt like you were in the thick of it.		611
The more you can create a structure by which people live in a fantastical situation and by which they will act, and the more you lay that out for the audience, the more they will feel at home in it.		612
I was a little bit ashamed of American TV because I thought, 'None of the shows my father works on are as funny as my father.'		613
My mom is a teacher, my dad was a writer for television, his dad was a writer for television, and combining those two has been sort of the goal of my life.	Teacher	614
A lot of people who saw 'The Avengers' didn't read comic books, don't like comic book movies, and enjoyed it. That was huge for me.		615
I loved teaching and I did a lot of work as a teacher's assistant in college, and my favorite experience was basically getting a laugh from a bunch of people because they had just understood something.	Teacher	616
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.		617
The Internet community started forming right when 'Buffy' started airing, and the notion of a show creator being anything other than a name people recognize on the screen was completely new.		618
What 'Scream' was great at was presenting ironic detachment and then making you actually care about the people that were having it, and juxtaposing it with their situation, all in the service of making a great horror movie. It was fresh.		619
There's a lot of anger in the Twitter-verse, as I've discovered. But there's a lot of love.	Anger	620
Most of the dialogue in 'Speed' is mine, and a bunch of the characters. That was actually pretty much a good experience. I have quibbles. I also have the only poster left with my name still on it. Getting arbitrated off the credits was un-fun.		621
I love to write. I love it. I mean there's nothin in the world I like better, and that includes sex, probably because I'm so very bad at it.		622
Buffy loves Angel. He loves her. And I love Ho Hos.		623
If somebody comes up to me, it's because they're moved by something I'm moved by. I've never taken a job I didn't love... So when somebody's coming up to me, or they're writing, they're in the same space I am in.		624
I can do web, comic books, macrame, art.		625
Every writer loves the idea of being able to go in and fix a problem and then leave without obligation. It's fun!		626
I find that when you read a script, or rewrite something, or look at something that's been gone over, you can tell, like rings on a tree, by how bad it is, how long it's been in development.		701
There's not going to be a 'Buffy' season nine on television.		702
If you try to multitask in the classic sense of doing two things at once, what you end up doing is quasi-tasking. It's like being with children. You have to give it your full attention for however much time you have, and then you have to give something else your full attention.		703
I think 'Batman Begins' is certainly my favorite Batman movie I've seen.		704
I respect the rules of TV, the rules of keeping things commercial and interesting and pop-y and fun.		705
I don't have a particular ambition in any medium. I just want to keep telling stories. If somebody pays me, also good.		706
I have an obligation to do press, but I don't have an obligation to stay out dancing until 3 A.M.		707
Kristen Stewart is kind of captivating; she can just stare at stuff and it works because I still want to watch it.		708
I don't believe in creating exclusionary art.		709
There are many films and TV shows I make where people find themselves in fantastical situations; as often as possible, their reactions to it are very normal.		710
When I was a kid, maybe 11, I remember saying, 'When I grow up I wanna have enough money to buy a really cool car, because I won't.'		711
I'm never interested in movies where you don't care about the people you're watching, and that's my biggest quibble about horror, that kids have gotten stupider and stupider.		712
A great scientist is more open to a new idea than almost anybody.		713
In TV, there's so much compromise, it does start to grate a bit. But if you're a writer or an actor, it really is the place to be.		714
Oddly enough, I never studied writing. I studied almost everything except writing.		715
Part of making TV is the process - you just have to churn it out.		716
I'm a science fiction geek from birth - that's just who I am.		717
Sarah Michelle Gellar's made some really good choices. She's had some bad breaks. She goes with the independent, interesting young filmmakers and then they get slammed, like 'Southland Tales.' I'm proud of what she's trying to do. It's hard.		718
I love all genres. The only thing I get stymied by is the Family Drama. I don't necessarily know how to approach that.		719
I didn't watch a lot of American television growing up. I just liked to read a lot and watch movies - movies, movies, and more movies. My family used to make fun of me because I'd like every movie I saw.		720
I never wanted to take a job because I needed money, and I never have.		721
Every kid who hated grownups becomes a grownup. Well, except the ones who died.		722
Twelve-year-old me wanted to do everything: act and sing and paint and dance.		723
I still believe that even though 'The Empire Strikes Back' is better in innumerable ways than 'Star Wars,' 'Star Wars' wins.		724
I didn't study writing. I didn't write anything substantial until I got to California.		725
I have abused language. I love it, and I abuse it... I don't write just to be clever. But sometimes I do. And if you don't have an understanding of the language, then the way in which it's bent doesn't actually register.		726
I like horror; I like comedy; I like drama; I like action; I like female heroes.		801
Running a TV show is always running a TV show; it's never not running a TV show.		802
I like Victorian children's novels extremely a lot. If I would say I collect anything, that's what I'll hunt for now and again at old book stores.		803
I always want to make sure I'm telling a story about people that I care about.		804
I was very proud of my father, and I admired him, but I always thought he was more interesting than the shows he was working on.		805
I always tend to think just left of center, to remove myself from the world by one step. It is very freeing, and it's a particular way of coming at stories and looking at them that I find the most beautiful stuff that I know comes from, ultimately.		806
I respect television in a way that some people who came out of film might not.		807
I've been doing Shakespeare readings with my friends for years.		808
I love a good romantic comedy.	Romantic	809
I kept telling my mom that reading comic books would pay off.		810
My deal with Marvel is I have a consulting deal with them as well as a contract to make 'Avengers.' That means I'll read all the scripts, I'll look at cuts.		811
For me, the act of telling the story and showing it to somebody is almost gravy.		812
All of the most important lessons about writing I learned from my father. He never set out to teach me anything, it would just be something he said casually in conversation.		813

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