Joss Whedon: The Biography (53 page)

In May 1992, Neuwirth and Pillay were in London for the first organizing trip of Equality Now. When Neuwirth came home, there was a
message on her answering machine from Lee, “full of light and energy” and “keen to hear how the trip had gone.” It was followed by a grim-sounding message from another teacher at Riverdale, a close friend of Lee’s. “I knew something was wrong, and she told me the tragic news when I called her back,” Neuwirth remembers.

The news of Lee’s death was devastating, and as she continued her work with Equality Now, she realized how much of it she had done in Lee’s honor. Lee’s memory, she says, “is with me all of the time. She had a huge influence on me, which carried very much over into Equality Now. I learned human rights from Lee through Amnesty International, but Lee was also a great feminist, which only came to me much later in the course of the creation of Equality Now. I know that Lee would have had so much to contribute to the development of Equality Now, and I have really missed her, though I see so much of her thinking in Joss and his work.”

Joss quickly took up his mother’s support of the organization. “Joss has been involved with Equality Now for as long as I can remember,” Neuwirth says. “He immediately understood what we were trying to do and has always been helpful in many different ways.” His vocal support brought tremendous visibility to the organization and its work, and thousands of his fans were motivated to join the group and support it financially.

Firefly
fans in particular developed a special relationship with Equality Now. At San Diego Comic-Con 2005, they set up a table where they raised $12,000 for the charity, while producers of
Done the Impossible
, a documentary about
Firefly
and its fans, pledged a portion of their profits to the group. In January 2006, with the approval of Universal, fans began organizing
Serenity
screenings, all the proceeds of which would be donated to Equality Now. The Can’t Stop the Serenity screenings spread worldwide, and by 2013 they had raised over $800,000 for charity, with the majority donated directly to Neuwirth’s organization.

It isn’t just the financial and promotional support that Neuwirth is grateful to Joss for. “Indirectly, his work—such as
Buffy the Vampire Slayer
—has had a massive impact on our work, creating new role models of strong women and girls that have inspired so many young women and men to reach for a new paradigm of equality in everyday life. Joss makes gender equality seem like such a natural thing, something taken for granted, which is of course as it should be, but isn’t quite yet.”

At the Road to Equality event, Joss was introduced by Meryl Streep, who also paid tribute to Lee and her influence on him, his work, and Equality Now. In his own speech, Joss chose to address the one question that he’d been asked repeatedly at press junkets for years. He took on the role of reporter to ask himself, “Why do you always write these strong women characters?”

I think it’s because of my mother. She really was an extraordinary, inspirational, tough, cool, sexy, funny woman, and that’s the kind of woman I’ve always surrounded myself with. It’s my friends, particularly my wife, who is not only smarter and stronger than I am but occasionally taller too. But only sometimes, taller. And, I think it—it all goes back to my mother.

So, why do you write these strong women characters?

Because of my father. My father and my stepfather had a lot to do with it, because they prized wit and resolve in the women they were with above all things. And they were among the rare men who understood that recognizing somebody else’s power does not diminish your own. When I created Buffy, I wanted to create a female icon, but I also wanted to be very careful to surround her with men who not only had no problem with the idea of a female leader but were, in fact, engaged and even attracted to the idea. That came from my father and stepfather—the men who created this man, who created those men, if you can follow that….

So, why do you write these strong women 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 woman 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.

That speech struck a chord with fans, who would continue to quote it for years—although like most complex arguments, it would usually
be reduced to the punchy sound bite of the last exchange. His mention of Lee would sometimes be added to give context, but few would mention his salute to Tom and stepfather Stephen. Yet their influence, too, is clearly evident in Joss’s work. Though his series may lack a “world’s greatest dad” like Keith Mars, they’re filled with male role models who support and admire the strong women in their lives, from Xander and Giles in
Buffy
to Zoe’s commanding officer Mal and husband Wash in
Firefly
.

While on the East Coast for the event, Joss spent a day with Jeanine Basinger in Connecticut. It was a rare opportunity for Joss to step away from his work, given how much of his time it demands and how consumed he becomes with the stories he’s writing. The two had a most lovely day, walking around and discussing his script for
Wonder Woman
. Basinger was a huge fan of the character, and knowing that Wonder Woman’s next adventure was in the hands of her prized student made her proud. Joss was not as confident, confiding in his mentor that he felt that his story was stupid.

Basinger had wooed him out with the promise of a surprise, and she took him to New Haven for a veterans association event at which she was speaking. The event honored 1940s film star Joan Leslie, who starred with Fred Astaire in
The Sky’s the Limit
, a favorite of Joss’s. “He’s very fond of the songs and dances in it,” Basinger says. She introduced Joss to Leslie, saying, “You know, Miss Leslie, this is one of my former students who’s now a TV writer. I’d like to introduce you to Joss Whedon.” Joss was thrilled. As Leslie responded graciously, the actress’s daughter was visibly shocked. She asked to speak to Basinger privately. “Is that the
Buffy the Vampire Slayer
guy?” she said, gasping. “I’m such a huge fan!”

Kai recalls a similar story involving Joss’s icon Stephen Sondheim. The couple attended a performance of Sondheim’s play
Company
in New York, with plans to meet the playwright afterward. Backstage, Sondheim mentioned to his cast that he was going to have dinner after the show with “Joss Whedon and his wife.” Sondheim had no idea that they knew who Joss was; to his surprise, it turned out that several cast members were avid
Buffy
fans. “The people who liked it crashed our dinner and were gushing over Joss,” Kai laughs. “Sondheim sitting here and they’re like, ‘Tell us another story, Joss.’”

A couple of months after his visit with Basinger, Joss turned in his second draft of
Wonder Woman
. Breaking the story had proven unusually difficult; he felt like he was pulling teeth to get the pieces to come together. “Plot-wise, I was like, ‘Uh … I don’t think I’ve cracked this,’” he recalls. “I went back and did an outline and said, ‘I’ve got it!’”

Unfortunately, while Joss was fairly happy with the draft he turned in, the producers didn’t seem to agree. “I wrote a script. I rewrote the story. And by the time I’d written the second script, they asked me … not to,” Joss said. “They didn’t tell me to leave, but they showed me the door and how pretty it was. ‘Would I like to touch the knob and maybe make it swing?’ I was dealing with them through Joel Silver, who couldn’t tell me what they wanted or anything else. I was completely in the dark. So I didn’t know what it was that I wasn’t giving them.”

While waiting on final word from Silver and executives at Warner Bros., he returned to rewrites on
Goners
. He was struggling to get it into the “perfect structure.” Universal had asked for script changes, and while he was hoping to just move forward with the project, he felt that he finally had a basic story that he loved and could work out the specifics instead. That was a relief compared to being in limbo for eighteen months with no constructive direction on the
Wonder Woman
project.

With
Wonder Woman
, Joss felt that he never got to tell the story that he wanted to. “I never wrote my definitive version of the
Wonder Woman
script,” he said. “I wrote one that had all the characters but the plot was super-lofty just structurally. So there is no sort of definitive
Wonder Woman
script that I would say, ‘This is how I would have done it.’ Although there are a lot of things in it that I wrote that I adore.”

On February 3, 2007, Joss took to Whedonesque to make an official announcement about withdrawing from the
Wonder Woman
film:

Joss will not be fighting for our rights after all.

You (hopefully) heard it here first: I’m no longer slated to make Wonder Woman. What? But how? My chest … so tight! Okay, stay calm and I’ll explain as best I can. It’s pretty complicated, so bear with me. I had a take on the film that, well, nobody liked. Hey, not that complicated.

Let me stress first that everybody at the studio and Silver Pictures were cool and professional. We just saw different movies, and at
the price range this kind of movie hangs in, that’s never gonna work….

The worst thing that can happen in this scenario is that the studio just keeps hammering out changes and the writer falls into a horrible limbo of development. These guys had the clarity and grace to skip that part. So I’m a free man….

But most importantly, I never have to answer THAT question again!!!! And you don’t have to link to every rumor site! Finally and forever: I never had an actress picked out, or even a consistent front-runner. I didn’t have time to waste on casting when I was so busy air-balling on the script. (No! Rim! There was rim!) That’s the greatest relief of all. I can do interviews again! …

ps All right, it was Cobie Smulders. Sorry, Cobes.

“I think that was more of a wink to me,”
How I Met Your Mother
star Smulders explains. She’d become friends with Joss through her costar Alyson Hannigan. “I never met with anyone involved in the project. I was never up for it. But because he was a friend of mine, I think he was just playing around. Joss is one of the most loyal—I want to say friend, but also most loyal coworker. If he likes you, and if he thinks you’re talented, he will fight for you.”

In the end, Joss felt that
Wonder Woman
had been a waste of his time, because he “was so ground down. Second-guessing
everything
, unable to focus,” he said. But he later added, “I would go back in a heartbeat if I believed that anybody believed in what I was doing. The lack of enthusiasm was overwhelming.”

Joss was “ground down,” but not completely hopeless. He was excited to finally be able to devote all his time to
Goners
. The year and a half he spent on
Wonder Woman
was emotionally exhausting, and for more reasons than just the stress of trying to deliver the perfect story in a vacuum.