Joss Whedon: The Biography (2 page)

That’s the story I have come back to time and time again while writing Joss Whedon’s biography. It’s the story that came to mind nearly a year later, when I found myself on a bus, sitting next to a man who, twenty years earlier, had broken into my house. I’d woken up to find him sitting at the end of the couch where I was sleeping, and his actions had haunted me for the two decades that followed. I sat there on the bus, overwhelmed and cycling through a flurry of emotions as I tried to decide what I should do—get up and walk away and try not to break down, or confront him and finally let it go. Even though I had friends a few seats away, I alone had to make a decision that would help define me for the next two decades.

I thought about the girl Joss had watched get stronger on her own, and I realized that this was that kind of moment for me. Then I thought about all the characters Joss had created, ones I had loved since I started watching
Buffy the Vampire Slayer
in 1998. I flashed to a moment that so
clearly defined his most iconic hero: in the episode “Becoming, Part 2,” Buffy battles with Angel, her vampire ex-boyfriend, who is determined to literally send the world into hell, while reveling in every moment in which he can rip the Slayer into emotional shreds in the process. He knocks the sword from her hand, towering over her on the ground, and taunts her, telling her that she has nothing left in her arsenal to win this fight—no weapons, no friends, and no hope. “Take all that away,” he asks, “and what’s left?” As he lunges his sword at her head, the final physical betrayal by the man she loved, Buffy grabs it between her hands and answers, simply, “Me.”

Joss’s stories are often centered on moments just like this. He shares a conversation that he had with Stephen Sondheim, in which they were discussing the stories each of them tells. Joss said he was always going to write about adolescent girls with superpowers. Sondheim replied, “And I will always write about yearning.” “Goddammit, his answer was so much cooler than mine!” Joss says—but Sondheim’s answer pushed him to break down his own tales and figure out what his driving impetus was, what he was really writing about.

“
Helplessness
was what I realized was sort of the basic thing,” Joss explains. “All of these empowerment stories come from my fear and hatred of the idea of somebody who is really helpless, who is a non-being.”

Joss felt helpless as a boy, a small, slight child and the youngest of three brothers. He felt helpless and invisible in his first solo trip away from his mother’s comforting home and into a British boarding school, where he was the only new kid and the only American. He felt helpless in his first job at the groundbreaking feminist television series
Roseanne
, because he never felt like his voice was being heard. And so, inspired by the comic books he’d loved since he was a child, filled with superheroes both spectacular and flawed, he created a superhero of his own: Buffy Summers, the blonde girl who walks into an alley alone like the helpless victim of countless horror movies—only to walk out victorious against the monsters that tried to kill her.

But the feelings of powerlessness continued when the original film version of
Buffy the Vampire Slayer
was released. Buffy’s tale was not told the way Joss had planned, and she did not become the inspiration that he had hoped. Fortunately, four years later Joss was given the chance to revive his girl hero in a new medium—television—in which he would have full control over the story. He gave the character one thing that had
eluded her in the film: a group of friends who supported her emotionally and in battle. With new characters as well-drawn and well-developed as the hero,
Buffy
found success, just as its hero succeeded again and again in saving the world.

All of Joss’s heroes create a family out of friends, whether it’s the titular character of the
Buffy
spin-off
Angel
, whose struggle for redemption hinges on allowing others in to help after years of wallowing in self-hatred, or Captain Mal Reynolds of
Firefly
, whose ragtag crew of mercenaries choose to stay together and support one another. To Joss, this is a bond stronger than blood.

It’s how he himself has thrived through those continued moments of helplessness—the swift cancellation of
Firefly
, a Writers Guild strike that shut down Hollywood. He surrounds himself with a community of creative collaborators, people he has worked with before and trusts the most to help him through every project. Their support allows him to shrug off his defeats within “the system,” and embrace a sort of naïveté wherein he readily admits that he doesn’t know what he’s doing but does it anyway, in a way that makes him happy.

This community—this chosen family—consists not just of writers and actors but of fans as well. Especially fans. They’re the ones who kept
Buffy
on the air and gave him a space to engage in smart and passionate discussions about his stories, who raised money for charity while celebrating their love for
Firefly
. The conversation started more than sixteen years ago on a bare-bones website for a low-rated cult series on a baby network, and Joss has continued it to this day, allowing his fans to share in his heartbreaks as well as his triumphs, just as they share in his characters’ victories and failures, their pain and their joy. Through Joss’s stories, and his own story, his fans find the inspiration to make it through their own life struggles.

Today at any comic convention, black T-shirts that proudly declare J
OSS
W
HEDON
I
S
M
Y
M
ASTER
N
OW
dot the crowds. Even more fans of all ages, races, and genders are clad in costumes from the Whedonverse: Dr. Horrible. Captain Reynolds, Jayne, and Kaylee from
Firefly
. Spike and Illyria from
Angel
. For Joss’s fans, it’s not enough to simply declare their love; they need to wear their adoration like a neon badge for the world to see. They also don these costumes for strength—the personal strength that comes from connecting so intensely with a character that the fans also feel more comfortable in their own skin.

After fighting back from the brink of hopelessness and saving the world in the aforementioned “Becoming, Part 2,” Buffy runs away to Los Angeles, hoping to escape both her responsibilities and her grief over the loss of her beloved Angel. She wants to disappear into the masses, but ends up trapped in a demon dimension with other lost souls. The captives are beaten down by demon slave drivers until they answer the question “Who are you?” with “I’m no one.”

When it’s her turn to answer, she again finds the inner strength she had doubted: “I’m Buffy, the Vampire Slayer. And you are?” It’s a funny moment, and Sarah Michelle Gellar plays the comedy of it perfectly. Yet the humor masks the inspirational power of that scene. In a world that wants to make you invisible, there is such strength in declaring who you are and that you are worthy of the identity you choose. Buffy owns her destiny, with all the responsibilities and challenges that she knows will come with it. She announces that she is not only the Slayer but, even more consequentially, “
Buffy
, the Vampire Slayer.” It is not just her title the world needs to know; it’s the person that she is.

It may seem like a small win, especially compared to heading off multiple apocalypses, but it is just as important as every battle she fights over
Buffy
’s seven seasons. And while Joss’s fans might not be able to take on a giant demon snake on their graduation day like Buffy Summers, they can demand to be seen and make their own statement about who they are. Like the ten-year-old girl in Joss’s story, they can find unknown strength within themselves to conquer their fears. Like Joss and all his characters, they can find friends and build a community to create something better in the world.

It’s why so many people are drawn to Joss’s work. Because being special is not about being a Chosen One. All of his characters, whether they’re super smart or super strong or just “ordinary” people, are both troubled and capable of great heroism—as are we all. In 2014, an American television show interviewed Russians about their country’s oppressive laws against the LGBT community. To explain what had inspired her decision to protest these laws, one woman quoted a line from
Angel:
“If nothing we do matters, then all that matters is what we do.”

In Joss’s hands,
The Avengers
, too, became a tale of restored hope and chosen family. The film’s superhero team, he said, are people who “should not even be in the same room, let alone on the same team. And that, to me, is the very definition of family.” Joss took the reins of one of the highest-profile blockbusters of the year and turned it into an intimate personal story. And he was rewarded with the highest box office grosses of 2012—over $1.5 billion worldwide. Joss will revisit this dysfunctional family in a 2015 sequel, and as he prepares for the film, he’ll simultaneously oversee its TV spin-off
Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D
, Marvel’s first US network series since
The Incredible Hulk
went off the air in 1982.

And while fans will no doubt be heartbroken if the series fails to find an audience, they can take solace in the fact that Joss Whedon’s career is a testament to defeat. The defeated, like Buffy and Mal Reynolds, face every challenge and celebrate every victory along the way, even if the final battle doesn’t go their way. The defeated do not fail, because they keep on fighting.

For much of his life, Joss Whedon has been struck down by defeat far more often than he climbed the winner’s podium. Before he was known for creating a feminist icon or directing the third most successful blockbuster film of all time, Joss was a lonely kid who thought that if he could just crack the code, people would understand what an awesome person he was and love him for it. As
Buffy
executive producer and
Angel
cocreator David Greenwalt said, “If Joss Whedon had had one good day in high school, we wouldn’t be here.”

And if he hadn’t landed in Los Angeles after college, broke and jobless and living with his father, he wouldn’t have found a champion in the elder Whedon, who encouraged him to bypass the traditional path to Hollywood success. If he hadn’t been let down by his first job, on
Roseanne
, he wouldn’t have learned how the choices producers make can either unite or divide a set, or that it can be good to walk away from what you thought was your dream job. If
Buffy
the film had been a hit, there would most likely not have been
Buffy
the television series—nor Joss Whedon the director, a role he honed on the
Buffy
series after an initial terrible experience with a crew who didn’t like him. If the Writers Guild strike hadn’t shut down Joss’s work on his Fox series
Dollhouse
, he wouldn’t have had the time to discuss web series ideas with his younger brother and his fiancée, which led to
Dr. Horrible’s Sing-Along Blog
and a new model for launching original creative content online.

And if all of these failures had been avoided, the world would be bereft of Joss’s characters. And without them, many people might not have found touchstones of strength and guidance to help them through hard times. Without Joss and Buffy, I, personally, would not have found the fortitude and bravery to confront the man next to me on the bus—to tell him what he had done, so that I could leave that twenty-year burden with him and finally move on.

Even with an impressive résumé that includes the highest-grossing blockbuster of 2012, two beloved cult series, and significant contributions to several pop culture phenomena, Joss still loses more than he wins. But like his heroes, Joss Whedon not only counts his victories, no matter how small, but shows how his defeats can be counted as wins too.

Much has been made of Joss Whedon’s ability to reinvent modern storytelling. First, he upended the “blonde girl trapped in an alley” horror trope with the 1992 film
Buffy the Vampire Slayer
. Five years later, his “high school is hell” approach to the
Buffy
TV series reignited both teenage dramas and sci-fi/fantasy television. Most recently, he assembled a bunch of outsiders into
The Avengers
, or as it’s been called, “the perfect comic-book movie.” But he wasn’t the first in his family to find success in Hollywood. He wasn’t even the second.