For those truly dedicated Joss Whedon fans, the Dark Horse panel with him Friday night was a really great example of why we love him as much as we do. Chatting about everything from Buffy to SHIELD, the informal chat with the pop culture powerhouse was nothing but charming.
For anyone that is a fan of Joss Whedon and his projects (new or old), last night’s panel was a dream come true. He waltzed into Ballroom 20 with a cup of coffee and his glasses on his head, giving off the air of a long day already at 6pm.
He starts the discussion with a few witty Joss quips, including, “Apparently I have a problem with taking too many jobs,” and when he started talking about he may just fall asleep before the panel was up, told the audience, “No spooning.” As if we didn’t love him enough already.
Then he passed the microphone to the fans and spent the next hour or so answering any and all of the fan questions he could, and about a variety of his different projects and his writing process.
In answer to the fan asking about his favorite death scene to write, he responded with one word, “Fred.” Buffy and Angel fans know exactly what he means by this, and it doesn’t take a genius to figure out why. This is not the last mention of Fred during the panel, as when asked later about the on-screen moment that when looking back gives him the warm and fuzzies, he again reiterated Fred’s death, particularly the bit with the reading from A Little Princess.
A particularly gifted fan sung her question to Joss, asking about the various mediums he uses to express his art, asking: Do you think you’ll conquer Broadway anytime soon? The answer was a unfortunate no, as he just simply has too many projects on his hands to try and juggle a Broadway show on top of it all, but he didn’t rule it out for the future, as he said, “But, duh, I wear the hands of jazz.”
When asked about Much Ado About Nothing Joss shared that directing a script being written by “that guy” was actually quite relaxing, because there weren’t any changes to make, allowing him to work with the actors and interpretation more.
When asked to describe the Avengers sequel movie in one word, he jokingly says, “Movie,” followed by “Flipbook,” and then finally “Red.” The red referring to Dr. Horrible’s red coat at the end of the web series, indicating that someone may just be making a trip to the dark side, which leaves with more questions than answers.
We also found out that Joss has a consulting deal with Marvel, and has had a hand in writing any and all of their movie scripts in order to make sure that they worlds mesh well with his vision.
He also explained that while he loves all of his characters, occasionally he has to kill one off in order to create the desired effect. He then went on to talk about why Wash’s death was necessary to the Firefly finale, and that killing off a character brings reality to a story, which allows the stakes to rise naturally, increasing the tension.
There was also a question about how he got The Avengers to work and he explained that the beauty of that property is that it doesn’t work. Characters like Tony Stark and Thor should not exist in the same universe, but since in the Marvel world they not only exist, but cooperate, no one expects it to work, therefore it does. Best of all, Joss always knew it would work, and he believed that he just needed to convince us that it would work.