North with Whedon and Firefly

Notes from a Serenity press conference with Joss Whedon and most of the principal cast of Firefly.

At Gettysburg, they say, the Confederacy lost the US Civil War. In a distant future a similar battle was waged and lost at Serenity Valley. A little nearer to the present and the point, a loyal band of television watchers witnessed a show called Firefly crash and burn into cancellation barely a half season after its debut. And that should have been that but it wasn’t. Somebody bought the DVD of Firefly and so did their friends. And their friends’ friends. Firefly now has a successor, a film called Serenity. For Firefly you see Joss Whedon won his Gettysburg.

Edinburgh might seem at first an odd place for the World Premiere of Serenity but as Joss Whedon, the Firefly creator and the man responsible for Buffy the Vampire Slayer and Angel, puts it at the press conference ‘I choose the word fans over the word Scottish. If they don’t like it we’re in huge trouble!’ He then goes on to add ‘There’s a lot of people in LA going “What! It’s against all the laws of nature!”’. For Whedon however ‘It feels very right’. I for one am supremely happy about this decision. Judging from the frenzy to buy tickets for Serenity screenings at the Edinburgh International Film Festival it would seem the sentiment is shared.

Whedon then revealed his key inspiration for Serenity: ‘Japanese animated porn’. Hentai aside he continued: ‘Needless to say Westerns had a great influence, but not just Western movies particularly but stories of American Frontier life fascinate me very much. I was reading an account of the battle of Gettysburg that was very detailed and just the minutiae of how people lived in an age before everything was completely convenient and could be delivered or beamed to your house fascinated me, so I thought that I should do something on a spaceship because one should always do something on a spaceship if one can. And so I just imagined what life would be like on some spaceship if things were just really hard and really unstructured and what kind of civilisation people would make. That was the inspiration for the show, and the film was about taking these tiny people in this tiny space who meant nothing and who were really not a part of history and putting them in the most epic situation I could and seeing if they folded’.

Carrying the baton onwards Serenity’s Executive Producer Christopher Buchanan had the prickly dilemma of explaining just why the series was cancelled and then revived without bloodying any noses ‘That’s a great question...I think Fox the network had a different show in mind. They really thought they wanted something that Firefly was not. And then we didn’t really bend to that they said okay we’ll put Fastlane in its place. Because that’s what America wants to see’. Bravo Chris but Whedon retorted ‘I remember a certain amount of ending’. The actors themselves describe their feelings when back on set from ‘the kitchen was all wrong’ to ‘it was all kind of the same except that certain steps weren’t where they should be - I kept tripping over them’. Adam Baldwin (who plays hired hand Jayne) put it best though ‘I keep going back to the word redemption. Walk on the set – we are redeemed’. Gina Torres (who plays Zoe, the ship’s second in command) meanwhile captured the sheer joy of resurrecting the show ‘I did a lot of dancing between takes’.

When pressed about the differences between making episodic television and a single movie Whedon spills the beans ‘You’re opening the greatest can of worms in the history of this film which was structuring that story without making an extended episode, because I’ve seen films of TV shows which were extended episodes and they left me unsatisfied even if I was a fan of the show. The whole point of the movie was to make it so somebody who hadn’t seen the show could appreciate it, which meant that I had nine characters who had already met. So structuring it was very difficult. I did get to use a storyline I had planned for the series, which was the mystery behind the Alliance and River but I did have to jettison a great number of things obviously, When you have two years, god willing seven, to investigate something is very different from when you have two hours. Not just in terms of subplots but even in terms of, again props and things that people used and touched and what an audience saw in the movie you’d have to assume they were seeing it for the first time’. Indeed many of the opening criticisms of Serenity have been lazy broadsides comparing the film to an extended televised episode. Part of making a feature film from a television series meant that the stakes had to be high ‘On the series there is a comfort factor that I couldn’t allow people to have in a film especially as it was a siege. And in a situation like that it’s impossible that everybody gets away Scott-free without any harm, except in Zulu. None of the major characters in Zulu get hurt and it’s still really exciting. I don’t know why’. So Zulu, the perfect siege movie…

The act of resurrecting a half-dead television show requires something special, perhaps indicated by the film’s last line. Something about keeping ships afloat with love or some-such and as Whedon puts it ‘I’ve written a speech about love – that’s odd’. As he goes on to explain a certain special something was required to keep Firefly burning within him for so long from the show’s conception through having it cancelled and then on to bringing it back to the big screen ‘I’m a writer, I have rage but it’s indigestible and ultimately it’s not a very efficient fuel’.

Other questions from the floor about CGI and stunt co-ordination bore me. This kind of approach always alienates me from a film. Do the askers want to watch the film or make it themselves? Gigantic space battles and balletic kung-fu are somewhat prevalent these days at the movies and whilst comparing Summer Glau (who plays River, the film’s plot alternator) to Daryl Hannah in Blade Runner is gratifying, the real unasked question is perhaps about the stylistic similarities between Serenity and Blade Runner, the prevalence of the Eastern influences in both films.

Not that the special effects and the kung-fu aren’t good in Serenity but Joss Whedon writes great characters and that’s why I’m watching. It’s most likely why everybody will be watching and probably buying the DVD subsequently. Or as Nathan Fillion (who plays Malcolm Reynolds, the Captain of Serenity) puts it ‘I would say that it wasn’t easy but once I focused and realised that all I had to do was exactly what Joss told me to, I’d come out looking great and take all the credit. And I’ve said it before that what I do is not so much homage to Harrison Ford as it is copying him exactly’. This is picked up upon in a question about Whedon’s strong female characters to which Gina Torres succinctly replied ‘It’s that little girl that lives inside him. It says write something for me’. Cue Joss Whedon ‘I wish that weren’t true’. Jewel Staite (who plays Kaylee, the ship’s mechanic) then added her ten cents ‘He gives great hugs’.

About Whedon’s next film project the man himself had to say: ‘She’ll be doing chores and baking. Obviously the reason I love Yentl is because she bakes. But what attracted me to the character are the feminist elements. She’s strong and she’s beautiful and she’s fascinating and she’s flawed and she’s bigger than life and that applies to everyone I’ve written down. Hopefully she’ll feel the same about me’. Roll on Wonderwoman.

So it’s simple. If you want more Joss Whedon, if you want more Firefly you start campaigning now to get everybody you know and everybody they know and pretty much everybody else to turn out on that opening weekend of Serenity. Then everyone has to buy it on DVD. Then we’ll set up Kino-Trains and tour the country on an indoctrination tour with the eventual aim of petitioning the US Senate. Or something along those lines.

To arms, and lets ride North with Whedon and Firefly.