By
Holly Pyne
published
He's the father of Buffy. He's the genius behind Firefly. He's crafted the finest superhero ensembles to date.
We'll admit, our adoration of the creative brilliance of Joss Whedon has reached dangerous levels of fanboy obsession - helped by the writer/director/creator's recent reveal that he'd happily pen a script for Doctor Who, but with one important caveat.
For more on that, and 15 other examples of his supreme quotable brilliance, have a scroll through this nerdilicious gallery...
On writing for Doctor Who
"Check back with me when the Doctor is a she..."
YouTube
On staying true to yourself
"Remember to always be yourself. Unless you suck."
On writing strong female characters
"Because equality is not a concept. It’s not something we should be striving for. It’s a necessity. Equality is like gravity, we need it to stand on this earth as men and women, and the misogyny that is in every culture is not a true part of the human condition. It is life out of balance and that imbalance is sucking something out of the soul of every man and women who’s confronted with it. We need equality, kinda now."‘So, why do you write these strong female characters?’
Because you’re still asking me that question."
Because you’re still asking me that question."
On Humour
"Humour keeps us alive. Humour and food. Don't forget food. You can go a week without laughing."
On his use of the English language
"The English Language is my bitch. Or I don't speak it very well. Whatever."
On politics and the mainstream
CommentI am Joss Whedon - AMA.
On encouraging fan fiction
CommentI am Joss Whedon - AMA.
On changing the world
"So here’s the thing about changing the world. It turns out that’s not even the question, because you don’t have a choice. You are going to change the world, because that is actually what the world is. You do not pass through this life, it passes through you. You experience it, you interpret it, you act, and then it is different. That happens constantly. You are changing the world. You always have been, and now, it becomes real on a level that it hasn’t been before."
On his vision of the future
"My visions of the future are always pretty much standard issue. The rich get richer, the poor get poorer... and there are flying cars."
On the importance of horror
"I think there's a lot of people out there who say we must not have horror in any form, we must not say scary things to children because it will make them evil and disturbed... That offends me deeply, because the world is a scary and horrifying place, and everyone's going to get old and die, if they're that lucky. To set children up to think that everything is sunshine and roses is doing them a great disservice. Children need horror because there are things they don't understand. It helps them to codify it if it is mythologised, if it's put into the context of a story, whether the story has a happy ending or not."
On religion
"I believe the only reality is how we treat each other. The morality comes from the absence of any grander scheme, not from the presence of any grander scheme."
On why we all love Buffy
"I designed Buffy to be an icon, to be an emotional experience, to be loved in a way that other shows can't be loved. Because it's about adolescence, which is the most important thing people go through in their development, becoming an adult. And it mythologizes it in such a way, such a romantic way—it basically says, 'Everybody who made it through adolescence is a hero.'"
On staying creative
"If you have a good idea, get it out there. For every idea I’ve realized, I have ten I sat on for a decade till someone else did it first. Write it. Shoot it. Publish it. Crochet it, sauté it, whatever. MAKE."
On the importance of passion
"I would describe Avengers 2 as a passion project. I don’t take any project for which I have no passion. Why would you do that?"
On his fondness for heroines
"I was raised by a hardcore feminist. I was also much smaller than my brothers and bullied a lot, so I identify with the feeling of helplessness."
On sticking to the rules
"You’re always working within rules. Even filming Shakespeare you know you have to interpret the script and you can’t change anything. You can put a scene in a different place, or take little liberties but, by and large, you can’t change the words. With Avengers, Marvel was extremely clear about what it wanted – this structure, this attitude. I said, ‘Well, those are all good for me, so let me fill in the blanks.’"
