In the course of about a month, director Joss Whedon went from spending quality time with Hollywood power players such as Captain America, The Hulk and Iron Man to hanging with that superhero of sonnets, William Shakespeare.<\/p>\n
Earlier this year, he was still riding high on the triumph of his most commercially successful film, 2012\u2019s The Avengers, a blockbuster superhero movie that became the No. 3 box-office draw of all time with a take of more than $1.5 billion worldwide.<\/p>\n
His follow-up? That would be the just-opened, modern retelling of the Bard\u2019s classic comedy Much Ado About Nothing, shot in black and white on a relative shoestring budget at his home in Santa Monica, Calif.<\/p>\n
If you know Whedon, though, the 180-degree change makes total sense.<\/p>\n
Look at his r\u00e9sum\u00e9, and it\u2019s the definition of eclectic, with a hint of schizophrenia. Shakespeare himself liked to mix up genres \u2014 Much Ado alone has elements of comedy, tragedy, deceit and mystery \u2014 and Whedon has taken a similar approach to his projects over the past 24 years. As a result, the 48-year-old writer\/director\/producer\/composer has become a god to geek culture and a household name in the mainstream.<\/p>\n
Any story is as good as you make it, he says, and a restless guy sometimes has to help nourish that tireless zeal. While his actors pumped weights to build heroic bods for The Avengers, the director recalls having his own strict protein diet to get himself in mental and physical shape.<\/p>\n
\u201cI can\u2019t ever be sleepy. I\u2019ve got to be on my toes 24\/7,\u201d Whedon says while relaxing in the library of Manhattan\u2019s Trump Soho Hotel.<\/p>\n
The passion for variety and doing the unexpected were revealed in the title of his breakthrough TV series, Buffy the Vampire Slayer. Launched in 1997 for the WB Network, it sounded like a B-movie that he would have devoured when growing up in the 1970s and \u201980s. It was built around themes of horror, vampires, female empowerment and coming of age, and ran for seven seasons.David Boreanaz, star of Bones and a member of the Buffy cast, recalls bonding with Whedon over the Grateful Dead in Buffy\u2019s early days. \u201cI just remember him with a red pen making lots of notes. He was very quiet and kind and very sincere. There was this overall sense of understanding that we both had. It was a new frontier for so much that was going on at that particular moment.\u201d<\/p>\n
That frontier spirit continued in 2002 with Whedon\u2019s short-lived cult-hit TV series Firefly, for Fox. It showed obvious sci-fi and Western leanings but still imparted some deep lessons while kicking up space dust.<\/p>\n
Even The Avengers explored the idea of a bunch of disparate people working together to make a difference in the world \u2014 or at least stave off an alien invasion and a trickster god from another dimension.
\nLoved by studios and stars<\/p>\n
Sometimes his mashups go too far, though \u2014 like the combination of strep throat, bronchitis and a horrendous cough he is battling during an interview on this sunny May morning. (He blames the sickness on traveling, a lack of sleep and the double shot of nerves that comes with appearing on Late Night With Jimmy Fallon and making a commencement address at his alma mater, Wesleyan University in Middletown, Conn., within a matter of a few days.)<\/p>\n
He may be nursing a horrendous hack, but he\u2019s far from actually being one. Instead, Whedon\u2019s the kind of writer and director to whom A-list studios hand over superhero franchises and the kind of witty, self-deprecating guy who sparks fierce loyalty among those who have worked with and for him.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt\u2019s a wonderful quality to have a man as creative and gifted and successful as Joss Whedon is, and still have a man who\u2019s humble,\u201d says Nathan Fillion, star of the ABC series Castle, who played Capt. Mal Reynolds on Firefly and is also in Much Ado. \u201cHe doesn\u2019t do what he does for any other reason than he loves doing what he does.\u201d<\/p>\n
Shakespeare is partly responsible for Whedon\u2019s mind-set. Nearly 400 years after the Bard\u2019s death, he still has a lot of storytelling knowledge to impart on Whedon and the rest of us \u2014 verily so, according to the contemporary filmmaker.\u201cHe speaks to you very personally. He says take the things you understand \u2014 the stories, the tropes, the characters \u2014 and look further,\u201d Whedon says. \u201cLook within them, give them life, let them breathe.\u201d<\/p>\n
Whedon can\u2019t remember his first dose of Shakespeare, but he does recall a childhood chockablock full of Masterpiece Theatre, Monty Python\u2019s Flying Circus and other upper-crust TV fare. \u201cI was a BBC snob,\u201d he says. \u201cI looked down on American TV.\u201d<\/p>\n
But that\u2019s where he first made his mark professionally, and it\u2019s also where previous generations of Whedons found their calling. His grand\u00adfather John Whedon worked on The Donna Reed Show in the 1950s, and his father, Tom, was an original writer on Captain Kangaroo and head writer for The Electric Company.<\/p>\n
But his dad\u2019s work didn\u2019t inspire young Joss. \u201cI always thought he was more interesting than the shows he was working on.\u201d<\/p>\n
When Whedon left film school in 1987, he had no intention of working in TV. \u201cNo, no. TV\u2019s not \u2018ahhhrt.\u2019 That\u2019s \u2018art\u2019 with three h\u2019s,\u201d he says, laughing. \u201cAnd then I discovered that I was wrong. TV\u2019s a lovely thing.\u201d<\/p>\n
Whedon worked on the sitcom Roseanne beginning in 1989, then moved to the big screen as a script doctor on movies. His break came as a co-writer on Pixar\u2019s Toy Story (1995), which earned him an Oscar nomination for best screenplay.<\/p>\n
Two projects in 1997, the Buffy pilot and the movie Alien: Resurrection (\u201cone of which went well, the other not so much,\u201d he quips) contained the seeds of his maturation as a storyteller.<\/p>\n
When Whedon scripted the 1992 horror-comedy film Buffy the Vampire Slayer, five years before he turned it into a TV show, \u201cit was designed to be better than other movies in its oeuvre,\u201d he explains. \u201cThis was back when Revenge of the Bimbos and those sort of funny-titled but underwhelming movies were out there. If you make one of those, it\u2019s sitting on a shelf, somebody takes it home and it\u2019s actually good, you\u2019re the best.\u201dBuffy the movie was a bust, but Buffy the show was a boon for the fledgling filmmaker, and it launched him into the pop-culture spotlight. He looks at a panel for the show at the 1997 Comic-Con in San Diego, during the summer following the show\u2019s midseason debut, as a turning point.<\/p>\n
\u201cThey were hanging on every word,\u201d Whedon recalls. \u201cAnd then I went downstairs on the convention floor and was like a junkie. I\u2019d scratch my arm going, \u2018Somebody recognize me! I need another hit of fame! I\u2019m good for it \u2014 I\u2019ll pay you next week!\u2019 That\u2019s exactly how I felt, and I knew. Oh! Note to self: \u2018This is a drug. Be very, very careful.\u2019 \u2019\u2019<\/p>\n
Whedon figures he has the best kind of fame: \u201cquasi-fame.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cI get recognized just often enough to keep my ego bouncing along, but not so much that I can\u2019t go places,\u201d he says. \u201cIt\u2019s very easy to fall into the trap of \u2018well, I must be awesome.\u2019 But the Internet is also a great leveler. Not even a troll, but someone sweet as can be says, \u2018Really love what you do, but I don\u2019t understand why you would do this so badly \u2026\u2019 \u201d<\/p>\n
He jokes about ego, but in reality, he\u2019s a man who has no pride and is an open book. And he hates it when people compare him to an English literary giant such as Shakespeare, says Amy Acker, who stars as Beatrice in Much Ado. Her first TV job was as a series regular on Angel,and she later starred on Dollhouse, both of which were Whedon creations.<\/p>\n
\u201cYou can definitely see his admiration for Shakespeare in his writing and directing and how he makes movies,\u201d she says. \u201cHe writes characters and lets them take these amazing journeys, but you never know from one page to the next what your character might do.\u201d<\/p>\n
Fillion agrees: \u201cIn the same way you don\u2019t paraphrase Shakespeare, you don\u2019t paraphrase Whedon. Look how carefully crafted (the dialogue is) in Buffy. Everything people say is poetry in Firefly. And it\u2019s loaded with meaning. He loves metaphor and he loves a greater message.\u201dEntertaining people of all kinds is the Whedon family business. In addition to his father and grandfather, his brothers Jed and Zack are both screenwriters, and Joss\u2019 children \u2014 son Arden, 10, and daughter Squire, 8 \u2014 are starting to be interested in entertainment, too, as they get the sense of what Dad does.<\/p>\n
He shares a recent conversation with Squire: \u201cShe said, \u2018My teacher asked me who my favorite director was, and I said it was my daddy and Hayao Miyazaki.\u2019 I was like, \u2018I\u2019m happy to be in his company.\u2019 \u201c<\/p>\n
With a tentative February start date for The Avengers 2 looming, Whedon is also expanding his own creative empire.<\/p>\n
In addition to his company Mutant Enemy Productions, he and his wife, Kai Cole, founded Bellwether Pictures to create smaller movies like Much Ado and the quirky paranormal romance In Your Eyes. The company will also produce Internet projects akin to his 2008 Web series, Dr. Horrible\u2019s Sing-Along Blog. (He also yearns to do a legit musical one day \u2014 he composed the score for Much Ado because \u201cI\u2019m the only person I can afford.\u201d)<\/p>\n
He continues to learn from Shakespeare, but Whedon\u2019s also still figuring out his own idiosyncrasies. In May, he told Wesleyan\u2019s class of 2013, \u201cDon\u2019t just be yourself, be all of your selves.\u201d<\/p>\n
It ties into his discovering that, over the past 20 years, \u201cevery part of me that I had never explored, I had had a character say and do very explicitly,\u201d Whedon says. \u201cWhile I have this great outlet for expressing, because I\u2019m writing 17 different characters, you are 17 different characters.\u201d<\/p>\n
He looks back at a key episode of Buffy\u2018s second season, in which Angel turns into a soulless monster after a night of passion with Buffy, sending her emotionally reeling after the loss of her virginity.<\/p>\n
\u201cI was like, \u2018I didn\u2019t know I could write this guy! I\u2019m a terrible person! This is great!\u2019 I was so excited by accessing something like that,\u201d Whedon says. \u201cBut every so often, I\u2019ll do that and have no idea what I was doing and then later on go, \u2018Ohhh.\u2019<\/p>\n
\u201cWe are all of us incoherent text,\u201d he continues, \u201cand just knowing that \u2014 knowing that no matter how much you say, \u2018I am this\u2019 and part of you is not that \u2014 means that you can say it.\u201d<\/p>\n
Whedon motions to his chest. \u201cIt\u2019s a democracy in here. It\u2019s not a dictatorship.\u201d