Joss Whedon

[PlanktonSideburns]

no. Shelley Duvall was already a very good actor, abuse and bullying are not going to make someone work better. there's no justification for it.

This idea that you can abuse someone into acting is bollocks. If it was true RADA would just be a room where people learn to increase their resistance to cattle prod shocks

[PlanktonSideburns]

Nigel, that was a GREAT performance, really moving. I feel like you've it in you to give us even more, I'm just going to shove you in that cupboard and lob it down a staircase, threaten your mum in a car park, and then send a load of incendiary emails round about you, then let's give it one more go

[Kankurette]

Wut?

I'm sorry, what I mean is, that's the first I've ever heard of that being a 'thing' about anyone, ever, let alone Whedon. Maybe you could help me out with examples of the genre.

It's an anime thing really, someone falls over and lands face first into the gazongas of an oncoming woman. Naruto did it.

[Zetetic]

Spoiler alert

https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/FunbagAirbag

[close]

[Noodle Lizard]

This idea that you can abuse someone into acting is bollocks. If it was true RADA would just be a room where people learn to increase their resistance to cattle prod shocks

This sort of thing is absolutely (or at least tacitly) taught in film and acting schools, though. A lot of emphasis is put on the kind of techniques Hitchcock or Kubrick would use to torment their actors into a "genuine performance". That's "being an autuer". I imagine those in acting classes are not only taught to respect that, but also to torment themselves for their roles - at least if they want to match the grueling method acting of yer Robert DeNiros or Christian Bales. "If you're going to play a character who's drowning in one scene, you must actually drown yourself in preparation."

I'm sure the attitudes might have changed somewhat in the past ten years or so (or at least I hope they have), but when I was involved in those circles you couldn't move for people romanticising the unnecessary torture of filmmaking. A bit like the trend of aspiring musicians feeling the need to portray themselves as depressives or addicts of some sort. How else is good music written?!

In a way, it's difficult for me to focus on Whedon as an especially bad apple. The kind of shite he was pulling was exactly what was expected, "required" of a star creator. I expect there are a couple of thousand directors, producers or showrunners tugging violently at their collars right about now.

RE: Shelley Duvall in The Shining; the fact that (like most films) it wasn't shot in chronological order means that Duvall seems tired and frantic even in early scenes before anything at all has happened. Same for Jack Nicholson, really. I love the film, and I think the weird acting adds to the overall atmosphere, but I'm not sure it was 100% intentional.

[Sebastian Cobb]

I don't reckon that Shin and Choi would've made those films for Kim Jong Il had he not abducted them in fairness.

[Video Game Fan 2000]

Can't say the movie was worth everything they put King Kong through but at least he wasn't pretending

[MojoJojo]

?!
In a way, it's difficult for me to focus on Whedon as an especially bad apple. The kind of shite he was pulling was exactly what was expected, "required" of a star creator. I expect there are a couple of thousand directors, producers or showrunners tugging violently at their collars right about now.

Thank you for expressing what I was struggling to put into words. There is the difficult problem of the sexual side of his behaviour that is alluded too but left vague. It is completely reasonable that the women he had affairs with aren't named, but it makes it hard to judge him without that detail. And then there is Michelle Trachtenberg's tweet which implies much worse sexual misconduct but could just be about his bullying behaviour.

I dunno, it's probably wrong to focus on the sexual side when he is clearly an arse hole anyway. But I guess it comes down to the sexual misconduct being unacceptable, while the bullying behaviour is, wrongly, seen as acceptable by directors for some reason.

[Jack Shaftoe]

The Ray Fisher is explained a bit more by that interview - sounds like Snyder was (despite what you'd expect from his movies) collaborative and interested in what the actors thought and Whedon... not so much. Which I think is fine, tbh, nothing wrong with 'not taking notes' from actors as long as everyone knows that's how it works. But Fisher was being listened to attentively by Snyder then quite rudely dismissed by Whedon, so decided to make a big thing out of it, despite not having much more to go on than his ego being bruised.

I like how Whedon started off his career explaining that he wrote really well for women because his mum was a strong feminist and now the reason he's been treating women so badly in real life is because... his mum was a strong feminist.

[dissolute ocelot]

It's hard to know how much of this goes on but I wouldn't be surprised if it was fairly common. Big egos, high pressure, people with no experience at managing people suddenly given enormous power...

A Firefly writer remembered him belittling a colleague for writing a script that wasn't up to par. Instead of giving her notes privately, he called a meeting with the entire writing staff. "It was basically 90 minutes of vicious mockery," the writer said. "Joss pretended to have a slide projector, and he read her dialogue out loud and pretended he was giving a lecture on terrible writing as he went through the 'slides' and made funny voices — funny for him. The guys were looking down at their pages, and this woman was fighting tears the entire time. I've had my share of shitty showrunners, but the intent to hurt — that's the thing that stands out for me now."

[Jack Shaftoe]

Yeah, that bit was *horrible*, heard of more dramatic stuff (Sorkin driving in to work up off his face on whatever and turning his car upside down in the writers room carpark was a good one), but the petty cruelty of this is pretty shocking. And doing it to a female writer when you can be fairly sure Whedon wouldn't have done it to a dude.

[Mr Trumpet]

There are only two female writers who are credited with working on Firefly. One of them never appears to have worked in the industry again.

[Jerzy Bondov]

That's a really good article isn't it, very thorough and even-handed but nevertheless makes him look like a massive bell end

[Famous Mortimer]

It really is an interesting article. Like Jack Shaftoe said, the stuff about Fisher was interesting - Snyder saw someone he wanted to base the movie around, Whedon saw a storyline and actor that weren't very good. Some of the things he said are just being a brusque boss, and I'm fairly certain most people reading this thread will have had worse things said to them in the workplace.

He was a bell-end, definitely, but I'm not sure he's all that much worse a bell-end than most showrunners, directors, and executives in the industry.

[Ron Maels Moustache]

That's a really good article isn't it, very thorough and even-handed but nevertheless makes him look like a massive bell end

Yes, very well played in giving him just enough rope.

He just can't stop digging himself in deeper, can he. It's like the writer left a spade on the table and left the room, then came back to find Whedon had dug his way to the the Earth's molten core.

Throughout the interview he has the demeanour of being a victim of circumstances, he's all "Why is this happening to me? What did I do to deserve all this?" but there's no sense of accountability, of needing to apologise or even accepting he might've been in the wrong. He really doesn't get how badly he's coming out of it. Downright sociopathic at times in the way he's behaved with his former partners.

And that story about the boy drowning, Jesus. if something like that had happened to me as a kid, I think I'd be awake every night in cold sweat horror wondering if it had been my fault. But he seems to pretty much brush it off as being a health & safety issue!

[chveik]

i would love it if that cunt sorkin gets cancelled.

[Poirots BigGarlickyCorpse]

Whedon acknowledged he was not as "civilized" back then. "I was young," he said.

you were in your thirties you clown