(CONTAINS SOME SERENITY MOVIE SPOILERS)

Joss Whedon, creator of Buffy The Vampire Slayer, and Angel, visited Melbourne recently to plug his new movie, Serenity, the superbly textured space Western/Eastern. Set 500 years in the future aboard the eponymous spaceship, Serenity derives from his prematurely cancelled television series, Firefly. I lassoed him as he galloped past during his hectic P.R. stampede.

ROB JAN: Ni Hao! Welcome aboard the Starship Zero-G, to the Triple R ranch and New Melbourne, I hope you enjoy our fish and our many fine fish related activities.

I tried to think of a way that wasn’t too geeky to say this, then I remembered that, heck, I’m a fan boy and that makes me mighty! Thank you for giving us ten years worth of challenging television that’s worth talking about. You are the Stephen Sondheim of television.

JOSS WHEDON: That's about the nicest thing I've ever heard, so I may cry a little bit but... I'll be fine! I think it's a praise I haven't earned but I'm taking it anyway and I'm telling all my friends.

R.J.: I'm half Chinese; why did you build so much Chinese language and culture into the Firefly universe?

J.W.: Well when I look at any Science Fiction as building history and history means melding cultures and China and America being the two greatest superpowers, I wondered what if they came up and didn't actually fight each other as so many people think they will inevitably do, but formed the Alliance which, in its inception was a benevolent idea and then the two cultures would kind of meld. Then the idea that your average white trash bank robber speaks Chinese offhand is kind of charming and I think helps the believability of a world of the future. My wife also lived in China for a year and a half and so I hear a lot of Chinese language and so it seemed like a natural thing.

R.J.: That's good because we (China) don't want to be the next Evil Empire, please!

J.W.: You're not the ones in danger of being that. I think the next Evil Empire is perhaps elsewhere.

R.J.: There are no major Chinese characters in Firefly....

J.W.: No there aren't. We auditioned most of the parts for pretty much every race and these are the people we ended up with. I've taken some flak for that but I love my cast so much that I wouldn't change anybody.

R.J.: At some stage in the future, whatever projects you're doing, could you give us a major Chinese character?

Maybe a Chinese Aussie?

J.W.: A Chinese Aussie? Are you pitching anybody in particular....?

R.J.: No! I figure the reason there's no major Chinese characters in Serenity is because mostly they meet thieves, killers and rogues and there just aren't any Chinese like that, so, we're golden.

J.W.: Well, the Chinese being a perfect people we could, of course, not cast any of them as anything evil. No, it just happened that way, although when we first did Firefly there was one Chinese reporter who was very angry at us having cast Simon Tam (Played by Sean Maher), a Caucasian, with a Chinese sister, because a lot of people thought River Tam (Played by Summer Glau) was Asiatic, or at least Eastern European. She has that kind of look. He was insistent on it even when I said, 'No, she's from Texas'. He was like, "No, why did you do it?" and I said, "Because. She's. From. Texas!" Actually, we had read some Asian guys to play Simon. Problem was, when Sean Maher came in the room… everybody else went away."

R.J.: Your first feature as a director is a Science Fiction/Western. Does it get any better than that?

J.W.: Not for me. A lot of people say you can't mix those two, it's going to be ridiculous, but to me they go hand in hand. Not just because Star Wars and things like that took from the Western genre to an extent, but also because I think the idea of the future as it is in Serenity is a frontier story and on the frontier there is always going to be the disenfranchised, the poor, the beleaguered, the oppressed. They're the people who made the frontier and who made those stories interesting and created those structures that we use to make our Western films and so, they're the people that I'm interested in, and the fact that they're still existing in the future, well that's kind of what Serenity is about.

Times may change, we won't.

R.J.: I haven't seen too many Science Fiction or indeed many straight Westerns on television for a while: Brisco County Junior, the new Deadwood... thinking back we’ve got some movies, Back To The Future 3, The Wild, Wild West, Unforgiven. From the hip, five favourite Westerns in terms of Serenity?

J.W.: You have to go first to the revisionist Westerns of the ’70s because again they dealt with the immigrant experience, getting into the minutia of the life, I’m talking about Heaven’s Gate, Ulzana’s Raid, and McCabe & Mrs Miller. Beyond that you have to put in The Searchers because it really also has elements of Horror, and a sort of brutal pragmatism that’s very much what Serenity comes from and finally, let’s go with Outland. It’s High Noon, so it counts.

R.J.: What was the coolest moment shooting Serenity?

J.W.: Ultimately, honestly the coolest moment was the first time we walked back on the ship and that was (a scene) to do with the storage locker stuff between Summer and Sean, which is some of the most beautiful stuff in the movie to me. What she was doing emotionally was killing us. But just being on that set again for the first time, even though we were a good way through the shoot, that’s when it really hit a lot of us.

R.J.: Serenity is really several great movies rolled into one, Science Fiction, Western, Political Thriller, Horror, Romance, Comedy... what, no Musical?

J.W.: I apologise for that. We do have Jayne playing his guitar but only for a few frames.

R.J.: We do eventually hear the Firefly main title theme, the Ballad Of Serenity.

J.W.: Yeah, I did stick an instrumental version over the end credits, for the Faithful, because let’s face it they’re the only people who are going to sit through that many credits.

R.J.: Now you’re embarrassing me ’cos I did exactly that! Was it hard meeting the unwritten contract you have with Firefly fans to pay off the series as well as keeping the film broadly accessible to a general audience?

J.W.: Literally the hardest thing I’ve ever done in my life and continued to be hard not only through the scriptwriting process but through the editing. Obviously I not only wanted to honour the fans by not contradicting or repeating anything I’d done but I do it for myself. I’m not interested in telling a story I’ve already told but then ultimately I had to make this movie for everybody and that means 90% of people who’ve never heard of Serenity/Firefly or who’ve even heard of me. So it was really difficult to gauge how people were going to react to certain things because no matter how hard I tried I couldn’t just take them out of my mind, I couldn’t pretend I didn’t already know who Malcolm Reynolds was. When I started to write the screenplay the process of introducing him was very complicated and that went out throughout the whole movie. I hope in my life that I never have to work that hard again.

R.J.: Origins are always the hardest thing. In superhero movies, for example, it’s the bane of that movie genre, so I imagine you’ll have to go through this again with the Wonder Woman movie that you’re writing and directing?

J.W.: I think origins are actually the easy part. The problem with Serenity was that the origin had already happened, I had nine people who had already met and so to create an origin story, a structure that felt natural and in fact inevitable when I had already told the part where they meet, that’s what made it complex. I think origins make things fun and easy, everybody wants to see the moment where Bruce Wayne says, “I think I’ll be a Bat”, where Spider-Man learns to swing from building to building, where Wonder Woman leaves Paradise Island and finds out just how much we’ve ruined our world.

R.J.: As long as W.W.’s origin doesn’t involve Patrick Swayze, Demi Moore and a potter’s wheel with clay I’ll be happy.

J.W.: What on Earth are you talking about? I realise you’re talking about Ghost but is there some correlation-?

R.J.: Yes, Wonder Woman was made from clay....

J.W.: Thank you very much, you have out obscured me and the Nerd Trophy does in fact go to you today. No, she will not be made out of clay in my movie, she will be made out of person.

R.J.: There’s one slick opening sequence in Serenity where you give us all the characters in one tight shot, that’s the third time you’ve introduced them including the Firefly pilot episode and the second ‘pilot’, “The Train Job”. How do you keep it fresh?

J.W.: Again, it’s very difficult, but the good thing is that was part of figuring out the structure. Instead of “There’s a buncha people we meet and they meet this girl on the run” instead we have the girl on the run (River) and we see her origin, we see how they’re messing up her head in the lab, and everything is very disjointed. You’re constantly reassessing and the whole prologue is done that way on purpose not just so we can get through a lot of exposition without being bored but so you’re in River’s mind, you never know it’s a dream. No it’s a class, no, it’s a hologram... it keeps recalibrating. So when we get to Serenity (the ship)... it’s not just one sequence it is in fact one shot through the entire ship.... you see every single character and it goes from the bridge all the way to the back and down to the front of the cargo bay. So that we feel the layout of the thing, we meet everybody, we get a sense of this family and with River there we get a sense of what she’s become a part of. But also so we go from something very fractured and disjointed to something very, very grounded. To say no matter how pissy Mal may be to Simon this is home, you know where you are, we’re not going to shift on you suddenly, we’re going to be very responsible about it.

Ultimately it’s fresh simply because every time these guys open their mouths they define themselves. Every time Kaylee talks she’s sweet, she knows what she’s doing and she doesn’t care when Mal yells at her. When Jayne talks you know he likes to shoot guns. When Wash talks y’know he’s going to make jokes but he’s really good at his job. Everybody defines themselves and that’s where their humour comes from so it feels fresh because they’re not saying the same things they said last time and it’s a different situation, in this case, the ship is probably going to crash.

R.J.: I remember each vignette in the shot... Jayne standing their with a ridiculous amount of weaponry... a wonderful way of reintroducing them and as a fan I’m going “yes!”

It’s lovely seeing crossover actors from Buffy and Angel in Firefly and vice versa. Nathan Fillion is superb, anyone who can play Mal Reynolds and Preacher Caleb (in Buffy’s 7th season)... wow!

J.W.: Nathan has the ability to do almost anything. A lot of people in Australia didn’t realise that we shot Firefly before these actors came on Buffy and Angel, they assumed that’s where I met them, in fact they were not working because their show (Firefly) had been cancelled. I needed some good actors so that’s how they got onto Buffy and Angel. The thing about Nathan is I knew he’d be great for Caleb because he has so much darkness... not as a person he’s the most happy-go-lucky fellow... but he could draw so much out of Mal I knew he could go to a really dark place. At the same time I knew he could do the silliest and most romantic comedy and he’s completely self deprecating. He has every aspect of Mal in him and what I look for in actors is only one thing and it’s everything.

R.J.: Who do we have to thank at Universal Studios for having the ‘sand’ to see what the ‘blue handed’ Suits at Fox didn’t.

J.W.: Well, first of all we have to mention Mary Parent who was the Vice President and the person to whom I took the project. She absolutely saw the (Firefly) DVDs and said, “This is a movie, it’s a no-brainer, people are ready, you’re ready to make it, I love this world, I want to walk in it, go and do it.” The other person I’d have to mention is Stacey Snider, the President of Universal, the person who actually has to hit that green light button. Mary’s passion is extraordinary and persuasive and she was in it day to day, Stacey is by necessity somewhat removed and she was also incredibly supportive and really ‘got it’ and not being in the thick of it would still come into it and understand the process and what I was trying to do and help me out. As a company Universal was so supportive and uninterfering yet guiding, I felt like I was in a Tibetan Monastery instead of a studio. I’ve never had an experience like that, I don’t expect to again, it was really tremendous.

R.J.: Did you have the Firefly sets in storage? Had you broken them down after the series finished?

J.W.: I kept them up as long as I could but they were gone baby, gone by the time we started filming (Serenity) and ultimately because it’s film you have to rebuild them anyway because you have to use different materials because on a movie screen you’re going to see things. Y’know we got away with an enormous amount, the show didn’t really cost that much and that’s because of Carey Myer, the Firefly Production Designer and David Boyd, the Director Of Photography. They worked on the show and they could turn a piece of plywood into a planet between the two of them but on a movie screen you don’t have that luxury, you have to get two pieces of plywood.

R.J.: I thought it was very cool, the serial number C57-D... written prominently on the side of the Research & Rescue Shuttle....

J.W.: Uh, yeah, me too, why?

R.J.: Okay. It’s the designation of the United Planets Cruiser in the film Forbidden Planet.

J.W.: They do these things without telling me, I’m not actually on top of everything.

R.J.: Was the film shot on digital?

J.W.: No, no, we shot it Super 35mm. I’m not really ready to shoot digital, I don’t really know how it works yet. Star Wars looks great but a little airless for me and 28 Days Late looks like a television show on a movie screen. I was also working with Jack Green who is a most extraordinary Cinematographer and he understands film in a way that nobody else I have ever seen does. He doesn’t use a buncha lights, he doesn’t look at things through a lens ever, he looks with his eye and knows what light is going to be picked up and how and so I would never have said, “Let’s try digital, do your first digital movie!” He’s a master of film and I wanted that old feeling, I didn’t want it to feel like that antiseptic, hermetically sealed future that digital can be in danger of giving. Quite frankly, I couldn’t afford enough digital effects to have that problem! I really wanted a lived in feeling and part of that was shooting on film.

R.J.: You fold, spindle and mutilate your characters so well! I did not see the character Wash’s death coming. Zoe, what a gal, she takes the death of her husband and keeps on fighting. That line she has later in the film about the ship being torn up plenty but she’ll still fly true... whoah!

J.W.: Y’know, I was talking to Gina Torres (playing Zoe) about that during the rehearsal process and Nathan is extremely tuned into the characters and really understands everything and has paragraphs next to everything and really thinks through in a beautiful way. I was talking to Gina and she was like, “Now this scene, where we’re talking about the ship and we’re obviously talking about me... do we wanna...” and Nathan looks up and says, “What? Really? Hold on... (looks at script)... Omigod! I totally didn’t get that at all!”

R.J.: Those bloody Reavers, I thought we’d seen some bad buggers in Buffy but, brrr! Thinking back to the Firefly pilot episode where the Reavers fly by Mal’s ship, and we see Serenity’s crew making their peace with God, getting ready to fight and die, or just plain trembling in their boots. But the character Inara, she goes to her cabin and opens up a case containing a syringe with some kind of drug in it... the obvious conclusion is that it’s a suicide needle. But in light of the movie, I’m wondering if it was some kind of antidote to the PAX virus?

J.W.: Nobody knew about PAX then. Even River, if you really do your homework you’ll find has mentioned it once, didn’t know about it. What the contents of that syringe was I am not going to tell you because one day I still hope I might get to tell that story too.

R.J.: Will we ever find out why Shepherd Book was so tight with the Alliance?

J.W.: Again, that would be the hope, it’s extraordinarily presumptuous to talk about sequels, but since everybody else is I will… yeah, I would love to do that! I feel like he’s a part of what they need to go through if they go through anymore whether he likes it or not.

R.J.: Well now, we’re plumb outtatime! Thank you Joss for the interview, and for raising the TV and cinematic bar. Xie xie nin gei wo men de ning jung, which is Chinese for “Thank you for giving us Serenity.”

J.W.: Thank you.

R.J.: Ta also to Mary-Jane Fenech from Triple R, Marianne Collopy from UIP, and Patrick Goldsworthy, fellow Sinophile.

This interview was broadcast on Zero-G: Science Fiction, Fantasy & Historical Radio on 3RRR FM, Melbourne, Australia on 102.7mhz in October, 2005. The audio version is archived at rrr.org.au and is available on demand using Real Audio Player. You can live audio stream Zero-G between 1 and 2 pm AEST every Monday at rrr.org.au. For further information refer to the Zero-G section of the Triple R website. Rob Jan can be contacted at This e-mail address is being protected from spam bots, you need JavaScript enabled to view it