It seems like Screenwriting Expo 4 suddenly got a couple hundred more attendees than it had an hour ago and I think it might have something to do with the young ladies waking around in the “I Belong to Joss” t-shirts. Yes people, it is time for the Joss to speak.
I’ll argue that the man has created the best that television has to offer but I just don’t have the groupie mentality needed to worship the man… so I didn’t bring my copy of the Once More With Feeling script to be signed. And unless Mutant Enemy is signing my checks I don’t belong to Joss. Okay, so if I could afford it I would pay to work with him… he still doesn’t own me. So I guess that means he can rent me or have free use of me… but he doesn’t own me.  I am no man’s buttmonkey.
That said, I really like that a writer is getting this kind of respect. Some people get it.
I don’t know how early they started camping in front of the doors but they were about fifty people deep by the time I show up. This means that I end up sitting about a hundred feet back from the stage. You combine the distance and the fact that they have dimmed the lights, and you get a complete lack of blurry pictures or grainy video that were the highlight of my report on the session with Tim Minear.
Oh stop your whining, isn’t it enough that you get my scintillating writing?
Don’t answer that.
No, seriously, don’t answer that.
Hey, Captain Tightpants came in with Joss… and he takes the stage. “I’m very glad to be here in front of you… potential employees.” Don’t worry Nathan, I figure you won’t be hurting for work. Despite what some people were expecting, I don’t think the school of Joss will turn out many Zierings. Even though MSN flags David Boreanaz with a three Ziering rating, ‘Bones’ is doing alright. I think that the “untalented” part is where they got it wrong.
Back to Nathan and it turns out that he is here to present Joss with the Science Fiction Writer of the Year award from Creative Screenwriting Magazine. If he is his own speech writer than Nathan is a funny man even when Joss isn’t putting words in there for him.
So Joss takes the stage to a standing ovation… except for one guy off to my left who defiantly stays in his seat. That is one brave man, to tempt the wrath of the Whedon Acolytes. I vow to come to his defense if he is attacked. Not that I agree with him or anything… just a matter of principal and defending the freedom of expression. I am a First Amendment absolutist after all… which you may find odd in a Canadian but it is a matter of principal and what is right, not what chunk of dirt I call home.
Joss thanks Nathan for the speech and then complains about Nathan being funny as well as pretty. It is okay for him to be good looking since that is expected of leading men, but Joss feels it isn’t fair that he is smart and funny as well.
Joss goes on to talk about getting into the television writing business and finding that it was “More fun than anything I’d ever done… and I’d done a lot of drugs.”
He reiterated that he didn’t study writing, he studied film. He dissected them, discussed them and immersed himself in them.
“Genre mixing has always been there, my work is genre salad.”
Joss talks about how he did a spec for Rosanne and got on Rosanne. He then tells of the man who told him “It never works to write a spec for the show you wanted to apply to… except it did work for me.” So let’s see, last night Tim Minear said how his X-Files script got him working on X-Files and tonight Joss says how he got on Rosanne with a Rosanne spec… and that they guy who told him not to do it got his start that way as well. That is a lot of exceptions to the rule. But maybe it only works with writers of the Tim and Joss caliber. I don’t think I’m quite there yet.
“Television is a question while film is an answer.”
“I knew they weren’t going to keep Firefly on the air… you have Fastlane, you don’t need me! I’ll never tire of making fun of Fastlane – I wake up at two in the morning and do it.” This gets a laugh and a round of clapping. “This is why I come to writers conferences, you get applause for bitterness.”
“Once you get something on the air, with your voice, make it matter… let it mean something.”
He wanted Angel to be stand alone episodes – “Touched by an Equalizer”. He couldn’t write that and “Went to a soap opera with monsters and vampires.” I personally have trouble seeing “soap opera” as anything but bad, the only thing that I associate with soap opera is a shooting schedule that doesn’t allow anyone to do a good job. The writers have to use the first draft of a rushed script, the actors don’t have time to do anything but regurgitate the words, the director has to accept the first take where the actors regurgitate without mistakes and the editors have to shove the episode out the door as soon as it is even marginally watchable. Soap opera doesn’t mean serialized or melodramatic to me, it means too rushed to be good. Its redeeming quality may be that it is a brutal training ground for everyone involved… if you can deliver five episodes a week, one episode a week would be luxurious.
“Nathan is at ease with his good looks and talent. Me… not so much. I hate that man… and yet still want him to hold me and comfort me.”
“David Greenwalt is more responsible for Buffy than anyone who isn’t say… me.”
On building a staff of writers. “The best writers were the best people… the most decent, caring people.” “What I look for in a writer is a personal connection. The script has to have an emotional core that they get.”
On connecting with writers – “Marti – click, Doug Petrie – click, anyone named Drew.” Hmmm, now I’m wondering on the hassle involved in legally changing my name? John Clinton Ralph Drew Johnson… as I always say, can never have to many aliases.
“Tim Minear was the best pitch but I didn’t hire him because he was so full of rage. But then I meet other writers from X-Files and understood.”
“Tim Minear’s episodes for Firefly were dark, dark, dark.”
On facing down the network. Network – “If Zoe and Wash aren’t married we’ll pick up the show.” Joss – “Okay, I’m fine with that, I’m not making Melrose Space.”
“The most difficult transition from the small screen to the big screen? Nathan’s nostrils… we had to CGI them smaller.”
“On the totem pole of film, the writer is the piece of the pole that they stick in the ground to hold the pole up. You will be treated to an unbelievable amount of shit.”
“Tearing my hair out during the shooting of Buffy because of certain Donald Sutherlands rewriting the script to make no sense whatsoever.”
“Faster would be better.” That was Nathan’s ad lib contribution to the Serenity script.
“I direct it while I write it. I want the writing of the script to be like watching the show.”
He hates jokey asides in the script and feels that it takes you right out of the show. You should write like an actor and mouth the dialog so that everything is something that can actually come out of a human mouth.
On Wonder Woman – “The invisible jet will be in my movie, I promise that.”
“My greatest dream is to do Hamlet.”
On Tim’s embarrassing story from last night. – “Let me make one thing perfectly clear… I made love to the couch. I made it breakfast afterwards.”
“Fall in love with the moments, not the moves.” He feels that shows are built around the moments that make you feel and that cool action moves often got in the way. Moments = situations that make you feel. Movement = how you get to those moments.
“I left Rosanne because they didn’t use any of my scripts. I wrote six episodes and they used nothing.”
“Shows are run by writers. There are shows run by their stars… stay away, stay away, stay away from them!”
“There’s nobody out there making these little indie genre shows.” Well, yes we are Joss… my pilot is exactly what you lament the lack of… but then I’m thinking that you also expect a certain level of quality as well. Picky bastard.
On his half hour presentation for Buffy – “I had a terribly crew. It was my first time and I was allowed to be awful, they were experienced.” Does that mean I was allowed to be awful on my first shoot? Sweet relief.
“Every episode has a unique meaning that isn’t in any other episode. They might be little things… the only reason may be to get Willow into an Eskimo outfit and have Oz fall in love with her.”
After the talk is over, I wanted to go up and tell him that there are people out here making those little genre shows but there were so many people crowding around and the organizers were trying to clear the room for the next event.
Joss gives good speech. While I’ve already read most of what he said, it was still interesting to hear it from the man himself. If you are so inclined, they have a DVD available and I figure it would be worth it. Hell, I was there and I’m putting an order in for the DVD.