Firefly on DVD

[RavishingRickRudo 0]

2 of the best episodes discussed by the 2 primary guys of Firefly! GOOD! From! http://64.5.52.62/%7ecfqcom/nuked/modules....article&sid=200

 

Firefly: The Firefly Episode Guide, Part 5

 

Episode by episode with Joss Whedon & Tim Minear, by Edward Gross

 

"OUT OF GAS"

Official DVD Summary: After an explosion leave Serenity crippled, Mal orders everyone to abandon ship while he stays behind in an attempt to make repairs - and reminisces how he found the ship and picked its crew.

 

JOSS WHEDON Q&A

 

JOSS WHEDON: My single favorite episode. I broke the story very specifically with Tim. I pitched all of the flashbacks, very specifically the structure and I'm blowing my horn about what I had to do with that episode, because I did not write it and I did not direct, and it really is our best. Tim just wrote an amazing script, David Solomon, who's been with me since the beginning of Buffy, shot it very beautifully. David Boyd, the D.P., brought in that insane reversal stock for the flashbacks that provided that incredible look. I don't think anything ever got to the heart of both what we wanted the show to be sort of what a show should be, what the show was and how it was than that one. Apart from the flashbacks, just the very ending, just seeing Serenity from across a crowded room and falling in love, it explains so much about our characters, and who they were and what they wanted. It was such a simple premise: this ship is going to break, we're all going to die because of something really, really mundane. I just think there was more emotion, surprising humor and a perfect kind of structure to that thing than anything else we did. To me, it was the most moving episode that we did.

 

CFQ: For me, an interesting aspect of the premise is that opposed to the Romulans firing disruptors at the Enterprise, you've got a ship in danger for a ridiculous reasons.

 

JOSS WHEDON: To me, the show was always about people who don't have health insurance; who are trying to get the next meal, the next job, and the thing is that when you don't get sick days, you can lose your job; you can lose your car. It's like a domino effect. It's very scary to live on the fringe there, and that's where these guys are. This was the best example of that we ever had.

 

TIM MINEAR Q&A

 

TIM MINEAR: That's probably my favorite episode and probably one my favorite things I've written in a long time. I think Joss and I both sort of did our best work on Firefly.

 

CFQ: But why? What was it about Firefly that touched the two of you so creatively?

 

TIM MINEAR: I haven't the slightest idea. There was some kind of alchemy going on where the cast was perfect, the crew was amazing, the department heads were really reaching to do something extraordinary and maybe it was because the network didn't love us. I don't know what it was, but it was something about the show…You know what? A lot of it had to do with Joss' belief in it. That was infectious. So for some strange reason we just bought into this universe hook, line and sinker. It was completely real for us, these people were completely three-dimensional to us and there was just something about it. I remember I was going to write the next episode and Joss had the idea that they run out of gas. I'm like, "That's great, but now I have to write 54 pages. What does that mean?" We looked at it this way, we looked at it that way. There's a tiny part of the story where this other crew comes aboard the ship, but that was originally going to be the story. They run out of gas and we get to see another scavenger ship with a crew not unlike the crew of Serenity, but they're bad guys. That was the idea, but it didn't thrill me. I remember Joss and I went out to dinner. We were eating our steak and Joss said, "Can the episode open with Mal being shot in the gut?" And I said, "Now you're talking." Somehow we got to this notion of he's bleeding to death and he's remembering how he put his core crew together. So then, once we had that, it seemed natural that if we were starting with him getting shot in the gut, then the story becomes how did he get shot in the gut? Which meant that I was probably going to have to jump back 24 or 48 hours before and tell that story up to him getting shot. In the meantime, I'm crosscutting with him dragging himself to the sickbay and then to the engine room with this part to try and get the power back on. So there are actually three timeframes going throughout that whole show: 48 hours before, what's happening now with him being shot and then years ago, and it's all going to end up with him laying his eyes on this ship for the first time. What you discover by the end of that episode is this whole episode has been a love story, and it's been a love story about Mal and this ship and what this ship means to him. So for some reason I got to tap into all kinds of interesting things in that story.

 

I remember we put it together, David Solomon directed and God bless him. David Solomon did for this episode what David Semel did for my episode of Angel, "Are You Now or Have you Ever Been?" They're similar in many ways. They're both flashback episodes and there's a kind of poetry about how they're shot. I didn't shoot either one of them. So we put it all together and we looked at it were all so proud. We sent it to the network and I get a call from the network and they're confused. They're confused because it all seems to be taking place out of order. They were asking me if I could put it in chronological order. I had to explain to them that here was no chronological order for this episode. If I put it in chronological order, it wouldn't make any sense because it's jumping around like a fever dream and that it has it's own kind of dream logic. I added that no one who has seen it has been confused in the slightest. But they just assume that people are too stupid to follow something like that, I guess. Basically my feeling was that if they insisted I put it in chronological order, I would just quit. There would be nothing I could do at that point. But, look, there were some people at the network saying that. For the most part, the executives who were covering this show loved this episode. They totally got it, completely protected it and it got to air as conceived.

 

CFQ: What I love about it is that you get a constant reinforcement of who these people are.

 

TIM MINEAR: A lot of people thought this would make a good pilot, but I disagreed. You need the weight of four or five episodes so you can appreciate who these people were several years earlier.

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"ARIEL"

Official DVD Summary: Simon offers the crew a proposition: if they help him sneak River into a hospital so he can run tests on her, he'll tell them where to find medical supplies that will fetch an enormous price on the black market.

 

JOSS WHEDON Q&A

 

JOSS WHEDON: Another show that blew me away and a lot of the credit goes to Allan Kroeker, who shot it. He really used our hand-held aesthetic in a dynamic way. There was just a lot of really gorgeous footage and a lot of energy. I remember actually pulling into the Fox lot behind Tim, getting out of the car and going, "I know what the next one is…" When you have the sword over your head the entire time of production, when you think you might be cancelled at any moment, the one great thing is you're not allowed to go, "Here's an interesting idea that we can doodle with. You have to go straight to the primal place. What is the most painful, the most important, the most riveting, the most telling - what will keep them in the seats, what will get them to come back? You have to go to the primal place every time out. To me, after "Out of Gas," what I needed to see was Simon and River and their world and what they had, what they lost and really see Simon sort of taking charge, which he pretty much did. I also wanted to see Jayne betray them, because you can be irascible so long before you're just lovable. A lot of the thriller stuff in the episodes, which I'm actually quite bad at because heists are confusing, came from the writers, though it turned out to be something that was very crucial to the show. The jobs can be really riveting and exciting if they're well done. So it turned out to be an extraordinary episode, and of course it ended with what we call the Jesus Corleone speech where Mal says, "You do it to any one of my people, you do it to me," while he's about to kill Jayne. That, to me, was one of the most powerful things that we did. It was Nathan who thought of using the little hand-held coms so we didn't have to have two guys standing at a window for an entire scene. That worked out great, because then he could move around.

 

CFQ: While it may be true to the characters, some people may think it's kind of bold to take Jayne in the direction he went in in this episode.

 

JOSS WHEDON: It is, though we buy it back a bit when he clearly has regret and then he has a redeeming moment where he doesn't want people to know that's what he did, which is enough. But you want that tension there from the start when Mal says, "When are you going to betray me?" and he basically says, "We'll see." Which I love, because he has that in him, no matter how lovable he might be.

 

TIM MINEAR: The thing that attracted me to Allan Kroeker's work was that unlike a lot of TV directors, he got in there with the camera; he got into people's points of view, he moved the camera through space and he shot like it was a movie. So we brought him in and I remember we were working on the script right until the last minute, which is often the case. He didn't have a script for prep, he had an outline, and I was constantly changing it as he was shooting, and he kept up very nicely, thank you.

 

This is one of my favorite episodes. The scene between Mal and Jayne at the end is maybe the best in the show, where he locks Jayne into the airlock and threatens to blow him out. The acting is so good in that episode; everybody is brilliant. Our crew created all sorts of amazing things that we simply couldn't believe. The script was written by Jose Molina, who was Howard Gordon's assistant when he was on Angel, and then Jose went off and became a writer in his own right. He worked on Dark Angel, we brought him over to Firefly and he just kicked ass on "Ariel." He came up with a lot of the fundamental plot for that story. I had a team of people who could really break stories on that show, and that was pretty exciting.

 

CFQ's Firefly Episode Guide will continue tomorrow.

[RavishingRickRudo 0]

One of my favourite episodes is talked about and Joss talks about compromise. Excellent stuff.

 

From http://64.5.52.62/~cfqcom/nuked/modules.ph...article&sid=212

 

Firefly: The Firefly Episode Guide, Part 6

 

Behind the scenes with Joss Whedon & Tim Minear, by Edward Gross

 

 

 

“WAR STORIES”

Official DVD Summary: Wash regrets insisting he be allowed to accompany Mal on a mission after the two men are captured by Adelai Niska - the client who previously hired Mal to steal the medicine bound for Paradiso.

 

JOSS WHEDON: There was that run of the last bunch where it felt like we were firing on all cylinders. I loved the Zoe-Wash relationship. You know, that was the sticking point at the very end of picking-up process. The studio said, “They can’t be married,” and that’s when I said, “I don’t want you to pick up the show.”

 

CFQ: Are you serious?

 

JOSS WHEDON: Yeah. They said, “We’re thinking of picking up the show because we read “The Train Job” and we see the potential, but we don’t want the characters married, it interferes with romantic entanglements.” It was just a nightmare experience. I said, “I’m not making Melrose Space. I want to see a marriage. I’ve got a preacher on board, I’ve got a young girl who’s a schizophrenic - I’ve got aspects of life. That’s there for a reason and marriage is one of them.” And what was great in “War Stories” was being able to play the conflict of the marriage without making it whiney and insufferable. They’re both incredibly charming and funny during that, and then to play that out during a torture scene… really examine the issues as a way of trying to deal with being tortured…well, juxtaposition is pretty much the benchmark of my career and it doesn’t get any bigger than that.

 

CFQ: You were really prepared to walk with the show over the marriage situation?

 

JOSS WHEDON: Oh yeah. Here’s the thing with a show. You have to understand that you are collaborating with somebody and they have a right to the kind of show that’s right for their network. You also have to understand that you must run that show, not them. And that it must be your show. You cannot make a show to please the network, and if you start taking a show and changing it to please a network until it loses all meaning, you’re not going to please a network. Ultimately the show that works is the show that has a vision. That doesn’t mean that everything I do works. I’m sure there are shows that were built by committee and everybody talks about Casablanca and how they didn’t know what they were doing, but look at what they did. The fact of the matter is that for a show really to work, you have to run it. Every time the network gave me a note like, “Make Mal more likable,” I could do that. Have more action? I can do that. Those don’t destroy the germ of what it is I’m trying to do. Make them not married, now you’re telling me you don’t want to make the show I want to make. That’s when you walk away. If you’re desperate to get something on the air, you shouldn’t be trying to. It’s just not a way to live. I’m very fortunate in that I can walk away, but I would have walked away from Buffy at the same time if they’d tried to mutate it into something I didn’t believe in. You have to know where to draw the line, where to pick your battles, because you want to collaborate. But you don’t want to be bullied into making a show that’s not your own, because ultimately you’ll hate it. Fox is very aware of that.

 

CFQ: Not to go off on too much of a tangent, but wasn’t Angel largely reshaped into more of a standalone show largely to please the WB?

 

JOSS WHEDON: Not so much. They did halt production in the second episode of year one and said, “Look, we don’t feel the second episode fulfills your mission statement as you described it to us.” We looked at it and said, “Okay, we get that.” And this year, it was not retooled in a way that I felt was damaging to the show. They said they wanted more standalone episodes so people don’t get confused, because we got so wrapped up in our mythology last year, that it was like one giant episode. That’s the truth. I respected that. So that was our new challenge, but it doesn’t change my worldview, my characters, my intent with the show. It’s all doable, otherwise I wouldn’t be doing it. It’s a very difficult thing to know: when is it over? When is it wrong? When is it too much? When does it cross that line? A lot of people are like, “You want to change Bob’s name to Rob? You have crossed the line!” There’s just that sort of instinct, because you take so much abuse as a writer from executives and you hear so many stupid things. You can never come into an arrangement like that. They’re paying for this thing and you have to respect that. You just have to find the right battles.

 

TIM MINEAR: We brought back Niska from “The Train Job.” This was another late script that we had to sort of pitch in on at the end of the day. I remember Joss wrote the teaser and the first act and it was a really long teaser. I remember looking at the cut and saying, “The teaser’s kind of boring with all of these people talking. What if we move this into the teaser and made this the first scene of act one and dropped this all together?” He totally went for it. And in the interrogation scene where Mal and Wash are being tortured, I took a pass at that and was trying to write Wash as sort of Woody Allen. We talked about the idea that they’re being tortured, but they should totally be having a conversation about Zoe and about this unmentioned jealousy that Wash might have because Zoe is so close to Mal. What I liked about that scene is that instead of just making that a gag, it was a way for Mal to keep Wash from dying; he made him so angry that he couldn’t pay attention to the torture. Once again, giant production values and nothing is cooler than Gina Torres taking Nathan Fillon’s ear and putting it in her shirt.

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“TRASH”

Official DVD Summary: Mal is shocked to discover his old friend’s new bride is Saffron who, although furious after Mal blows her cover, offers o cut Mal in on what she calls the perfect big-time scam.

 

JOSS WHEDON: Who among us didn’t want to see more of Saffron? She was delightful. Between her and Mal’s BUTT, we knew that this was landmark television. It was another sort of heist episode and was fun with a lot of things to play. It really was probably the lightest episode we did. The scene between Mal and Inara at the beginning is just hilarious. Really an opportunity to play around with everybody more than anything else. Obviously we always like to hit a few issues and I was interested in Saffron’s psychosis and I liked breaking it down like that and seeing what was behind it. It doesn’t mean you catch her, it doesn’t mean you win, but her interplay with Mal speaks a lot about both of them. It just came out fun.

 

TIM MINEAR: Ben Edlund again. The return of Saffron and another hilarious heist. That was tricky, because Ben got to sit down and write this character that Joss had created that was very beloved on the “Our Mrs. Reynolds” episode and I thought he did a great job. One of the fun things about this episode was Serenity coming up under this trash bin in this floating city. It’s kind of sad that the episode didn’t actually air on television, because that floating city over the ocean was just not something you see on TV every day.

[RavishingRickRudo 0]

ONE MORE TIME! GOOD GOD that's a lot of C/P.

 

http://64.5.52.62/~cfqcom/nuked/modules.ph...article&sid=218

 

Firefly: The Firefly Episode Guide, Part 7

 

Behind the Scenes with Joss Whedon & Tim Minear, by Edward Gross

 

 

 

“THE MESSAGE”

Official DVD Summary: While Jayne opens a mail package from his mother that contains a wool cap with ear flaps and a pom-pom, Mal and Zoe open their package to discover the body of their owl war buddy, Tracey.

 

JOSS WHEDON: The episode we were shooting when I got to tell everybody that we were cancelled. I love that episode because it dealt with war, Mal’s morality and a dead body, which is always fun. It bears an enormous sadness considering it’s all about death and betrayal and honor and sadness – it all worked out fine considering things. It bore that because everybody knew that it was over. Except me, who still refuses to admit it. It’s part of my charm, really. Tim and I wrote it together and I wrote the flashback. I was waiting for word and Peter Chernin had a call in to me and I didn’t know what was happening, so I wrote a joke flashback that was basically me and Tim in the trenches, waiting. The privates were all executives that kept coming in and putting us on hold. I gave it to Tim and it was actually an incredibly emotional joke, because it basically ended with the two of us waiting together to hear word; listening to Mulan Rouge on hold in the trenches. It was really Mal and Zoe, but Tim and I knew who it was, though neither of us will say which one of us is Zoe, because we both want to be her.

 

On that day, I actually went and pitched Batman, because they were doing the movie, they were looking for pitches and I was, like, “Oh, what the hell, I’ve got an idea.

 

CFQ: There had been no indication that you had pitched to them.

 

JOSS WHEDON: I didn’t intend to. Everybody was like, “Dude, it’s Batman,” and then I came up with an idea I really loved about doing an origin story. I pitched it and they kind of looked at me like, “There’s a video fishbowl.” Just nothing. I kind of came out of that and was like, “How many more lessons do I need that the machine doesn’t care about the creative process?” I got back to the office and found out we were cancelled and realized that maybe there was one more lesson to be had. Gail Berman called me and the only thing I had to say was, “Will you allow me to try and take this somewhere else?” She said yes, I thanked her and that was it. Then I went to the set and made the announcement.

 

TIM MINEAR: Great effects in that episode. There was a pretty exciting chase in a snow canyon between two spaceships. Which is amazing now that I’m working on another show where we can’t afford to have a room. Now it’s like, “Can I have a room with a table?” “No, it’s too expensive.” Joss and I wrote this episode and we were sort of writing it while I was directing. The scene that I remember the most is when I was shooting a certain scene on the bridge, Joss showed up on the set, pulled me aside and said, “They’ve cancelled the show. Do you want to tell people now or do you want to keep shooting?” I said we should tell them. We gathered everybody around and Joss said they pulled the plug on the show, they’re not going to order anymore and he vowed to fight for the show in any way that he could, which he has been doing ever since. So everybody went off and got drunk, I guess, and then we came back. This was a Friday night and I stopped in the middle of shooting a scene. We came back on a Monday and the first scene back I had to shoot – when people look at the DVD, they should look at the scene where it’s Mal and Inara and Zoe sitting around the dining room table, laughing their asses off as Mal is recounting a funny story about his dead privates [soldiers]. So the first thing we had to shoot with these people after telling them they were cancelled was a scene where they had to laugh hysterically. That was good acting. The thing is, it never became depressing in a way. We still had fun shooting the rest of that episode and I remember that the last thing I shot was the flashback to the battle scene, which is one of the things I’m proud of because it looks really cool and Joss wrote that scene.

 

“HEART OF GOLD” Official DVD Summary: The crew comes to the aid of a bordello when its madam, an old acquaintance of Inara’s, asks for help after a gunslinger claims a prostitute’s baby is his and he’s taking it because his wife is barren.

 

Note: Both “Heart of Gold” and “Objects in Space,” for the most part, were shot prior to “The Message.”

 

JOSS WHEDON: Another one that we did a lot of reshooting and tinkering with after the fact. I think it came together really well, but when we looked at the first cut it left something to be desired. It was just one of those things with a lot of missteps. Also we had been getting notes from the network and we had done this early enough in the process where we looked at it and we were, like, “Nobody but us seems to have gotten the message to tone down the Western thing, so everything looked so Western that we were, like, “The network is going to kill us. This is like we’re spitting in their face.” So we did a few reshoots and changed a couple of lines to sort of hit the idea of why it was the way it was. We did a lot of tweaking. Our guest star, Belinda Clarke, I loved and I loved Inara’s reaction to them sleeping together. There are a lot of things in that episode that are key, but there was much work done in the editing room because we were scratching our heads saying, “It looks like Bonanza, what do we do?”

 

CFQ: And the network was really afraid of the Western aspect of the show?

 

JOSS WHEDON: They really were. That’s why they loved “Ariel” all to pieces, because it didn’t have Western elements much at all.

 

CFQ: Did they not know what show they were buying?

 

JOSS WHEDON: You know, that’s a question that I’ve asked. Basically shows do go through development stages. What happened with me is I came in and said, “Here’s exactly what I want to do,” and they were, like, “We want a show from you, so do that.” It wasn’t like, “Does it have to be a Western?” It was a little too late for that. They let me make the pilot and then they were, like, “Oh. Right. A Western with the horsies and sidearms?” They just didn’t think that people would respond to it, although when they saw the credits and saw the shot of the spaceship scattering those horses, that they liked. It was a stretch.

 

“Heart of Gold” is one of the unaired episodes and it had one of the most important moments, which is Inara telling Mal she’s leaving the ship. Which we referenced in “Objects in Space,” and then had to reshoot the scene because we weren’t going to air “Heart of Gold” before “Objects in Space.” So we had a little scene between Mal and Inara which we had to do a reshoot in which they didn’t reference that. Now with the DVD, where they’re in the correct order, we put it back in and it does.

 

TIM MINEAR: This one is also known as “Shower of Gold” or “Heart of Pooh.” It’s not our favorite episode. This one kind of fell through the cracks. We never quite got the story broken properly. There were just things about it we didn’t love. But as far as I’m concerned, any episode of Firefly is good; it’s always fun to see those people. This episode, though, is a little generic. I will say that the last things that I shot for the series were some inserts for that episode; pick-up shots for a montage and that sort of thing. I remember the A.D. sending each actor into the room as I was shooting and they would get wrapped out of the series after I’d get them. That was weird, because you wrap out guest characters, you don’t wrap out your regular actors, except we were cancelled. So they would come into this room, do a shot or two, and then the A.D. would say, “Ron Glass. That’s a Firefly wrap for Ron Glass,” and then Ron would make a speech to the crew and everyone would cry and then each person came in. Everyone hung around until the last person was finished, because they wanted to be there for it. So that was kind of odd. Then the last shot I did of all of them together – there’s a shot where the entire crew of Serenity is walking up to a brothel. That was actually shot on a soundstage and it’s everyone walking up to this brothel and it was the last time they were all together on a stage to shoot a moment in Firefly.

 

After this really depressing day of everyone crying and making beautiful speeches, I packed up my bag and went home that night and it was all finished. I turned on the TV and that was the night they were airing the pilot finally, so that was the great irony.

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“OBJECTS IN SPACE” Official DVD Summary: The crew is caught off-guard when a bounty hunter eager to claim the enormous reward on River’s head, sneaks aboard Serenity and methodically begins taking the crew prisoner one by one.

 

JOSS WHEDON: About as big a labor of love that I’ve ever done and definitely one of the two or three episodes that I’m proudest of that I’ve made of any show. But not unstrange. It’s an odd little episode in some ways. It was very much an existential statement on the meaning of objects in space and how they contain meanings within themselves; how we approach that and about two people that see them in a way that every day people don’t, and what the essential difference is, which is that one of them, the bounty hunter, is innately bringing evil with him and one of them, River, is innately bringing love. That was sort of what I wanted to say with it; what I wanted to get into. It comes with probably the most pretentious, repetitive, and probably incoherent commentary that I have ever done. I really tried to explain exactly what it was I was trying to do and some of it defies explanation, because the ecstasy of meaninglessness is something that you can’t really convey very well in a boring commentary. But I think the episode itself does it beautifully. I love the way it plays with space and the way it plays with her as a sort of a formal device. She just flaws me in this episode; you see so much of the dancer in her in this episode. The way she moves around the ship, the way that touching every wall affects her, is truly beautiful. And the whole sequence in the beginning where she’s seeing into people’s thoughts was just such a delight to shoot; so ethereal. That’s where my wife looked at me and said, “You son of a bitch, you shot your ballet.”

 

And then we had Richard Brooks, who just flawed me. He so embraced what I was trying to do and was hilarious and menacing. He was everything he needed to be. I loved writing that character. The episode was very hard to write. I had written “Our Mrs. Reynolds” and was, like, “Oh, I just type and they talk,” but then halfway through I was, like, “I have no structure, what am I doing? I was a fool.” But eventually it came together. Part of that process was me going on the ship, climbing up in the rafters, standing on a railing – doing all the things they were going to do physically. That’s the great thing about TV, being able to be there physically be there, I could just walk through the ship, experience it the way I thought they would and then go back and write it down. His voice, his bizarre sort of existential questioning of everything, was just so much fun to write. Every moment of it he nailed. I also think the exchange between Mal and River on top of the ship is the heart of the show incarnate. I love that.

 

TIM MINEAR: Joss wrote and directed. I remember he had a lot of trouble writing that episode. He called me and said, “I’m not sure what this is about, I can’t figure this out.” He knew he wanted to do something with River. I said, “Well, can’t it just be Bobba Fett?” He made fun of me for a long time because of the way I pronounced the name, but he did say, “Okay, now I know what it is,” and he went off and wrote it. And there’s such beautiful filmmaking in this episode.

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CFQ: The real question of course is how serious talks of a movie version of Firefly are.

 

JOSS WHEDON: Like I said, the first question out of my mouth was whether I could take this someplace else, and as I sit here with you, I am sitting next to a computer screen that represents the fact that I have been trying to do that every single day since we were cancelled. If I lose the fight, it will be because the fight was unwinnable. Because I love what we did with those shows, and what we could have done and what we were going to do and what we should have done and what we still can do, so much and those characters and not those actors, as people, I refuse to say it’s over. Even a movie doesn’t get made, the fact that the DVDs will be out there forever is very important to me. It’s some of the most important work that I might ever do. Not the most popular necessarily, but it’s catching on.

 

CFQ: If you do a movie, do you expect it to stay very much in the vein of the show?

 

JOSS WHEDON: Obviously it’s bigger in scope. Not just a bigger budget. It has to be bigger in scope, it has to be a movie and I’ll tell you that coming up with an idea and seeing it through to a screenplay has been the hardest thing I’ve ever tried to do, because it was designed as a show. The movie needs to be true to that while being completely separated from that. You don’t make a movie just because you have a bunch of charismatic people. You need a story that is bigger than life in this situation. What’s great is that the show was always about the fact that these guys are actual size, not bigger than life. To take them and put them in a situation that is so dire as the one in the movie is, is kind of where the fun and tension is. The fate of the world is in the hands of schlemiels, and that’s always exciting.

 

CFQ: I guess on your shows the fate of the world has always been in the hands of the schlemiels.

 

JOSS WHEDON: Yes, it’s true. Ironically, much like the shows themselves.

[Hank Kingsley 0]

Awesome Q&A, RRR. Anyway, I came upon this while browsing buffy.nu

 

http://www.buffy.nu/article.php3?id_article=2492

 

That's just AWESOME~

[Guest TonyJaymzV1]

RRR is my god.

 

First, he gets me on MMA

 

Now, Firefly

 

Praise Rudo...Praise him, damn you!

[HollywoodSpikeJenkins 0]

Jewel Staite is hot.

 

 

 

 

Yeah, that's all I'm contributing.

[The Ghost of bps21 0]

I watched all the eps for a second run through...

 

and I can honestly say that Firefly is my favorite show ever. I love Buffy...but Joss had something even more special in Firefly. Fuck Fox.

[Guest TonyJaymzV1]

The series preimiere of Firefly was the best premiere ever, bar none. They didn't just introduce the characters, they introduced every character, fleshed each character out, and told a great story all in one ep. In 45 minutes we learned about the crew, the ship, the reavers(who now scare the fuck outa me) etc.

 

Fuck Fox

 

Oh and did anyone

Spoiler (Highlight to Read):

almost shit thereselves thinking Kaylee had died? I liked her from the beginning and I was scared Joss was gonna try and kill off someone the first time. You know he put that whole "Kaylee is Dead" joke in for fans like us

 

So, with this show getting a cult audience like it is, you think it might get Family Guyed? Say, on SciFi channel, or as a movie? That first ep. coulda easily passed as a movie IMO. More nudity though. Of jayne. wait...*whisperJayneisaguy Tony!whisper Aw fuck...

[Guest TonyJaymzV1]

EDIT: Sorry double post...um...Yeah BPS, I'm totally stealing your sig

[The Ghost of bps21 0]

I was looking around at Firefly stuff...

 

SciFi channel passed on the show because it cost too much to make an episode...which is what I figured.

 

What I can't figure is why Fox wouldn't just put it on FX since they like putting original programming on their...and the loyal fans would follow it.

[Guest TonyJaymzV1]

They really should, Put it on tuesdays before the Shield, and it will get ratings.

 

Or what about the WB? Angel pulls in pretty good ratings, they could give Firefly a try.

[The Ghost of bps21 0]

Some of the cast has moved on to other things when it became clear that Firefly wasn't heading to another network.

 

Inara is going to be on former Buffy writer/producer Marti Noxon's new show Still Life

 

Zoe is going to be recurring on 24 this year (but if it's just this season that wouldn't matter)

 

Jayne is trying to get a spot on the upcoming Stargate spinoff show

 

And even the Captain has signed a six figure deal with NBC to star in some kind of show eventually.

 

In summation:

 

Fuck Fox

[RavishingRickRudo 0]

The Reavers scare me, but the Blue Hand Guys scare me more.

 

Why?

 

THEY INVADED MY SLEEP!!!

 

Yes, I dreamed (dreamt?) that the Blue Hand guys were trying to kill me with their brain blower-upper. I woke up before they could. *Whew*

 

Jewel Stait is hot. And Annoying. And cute. And Canadian (thumbs up). And really Annoying. It's a love/hate relationship we have... or I have, with her...

 

THEY INVADED MY SLEEP!

 

Spoiler (Highlight to Read):

I legit thought she was going to die the first time I saw the show, simply because of the Doyle-factor.

 

The lil looks/faces she makes really add to the show, IMO.

 

Yeah, I too am putting Firefly on the top of the list - in the past week I've seen some episodes 3 or 4 times (counting commentary) and I never get sick of it.

[Guest TonyJaymzV1]

I concur: Fuck Fox

 

I wish Jayne would go otno Angel, even just for one ep. as a hoodlum.

 

"What? Payne is scary"

 

god I love that.

 

Oh, and is the guy who plays Walsh on the Kevin Sorbo series? Andromeda or whatever?

[Guest TonyJaymzV1]

Okay guys are dream may be true.

 

I was trying to find out if Wash was the guy from the Sorbo show on IMDB, and on his filmography it has Firefly the series in 2002, and a different Firefly, movie, In-Production for 2004. Take this as a grain of salt, but that would be great if it is going to be a movie. Just thought Id pass that along

Edited January 6, 2004 by TonyJaymzV1

[Hank Kingsley 0]

If you love Jayne (who doesn't?!) go to Disc 4 special features and highlight "Joss sings the Firefly theme" and press left, and then enter. You'll get a very special easter egg involving Jayne~

[RavishingRickRudo 0]

The (5) people who should be huge are:

 

Nathan Fillion is my lord and saviour. Seriously, my favourite actor right now and I can't imagine him out-performing Captain Tightpants any time soon. Listening to him speak (or reading) on the subject, it seems he has a real passion for Firefly - they all do, but him especially. Plus he's Canadian (thumbs up).

 

Adam Baldwin is Jesus. I can't really say anything more than that... "It was the best day ever".

 

Summer Glau is... words cannot describe. Hell, I'll try... Summer Glau is Amazing. Fantastic. Glorious. A Revelation. They need to make a new word to effectively describe how fucking good she is. She's not a "hottie" like say, Morina and Jewel are, her beauty is much more reserved and subtle. I find myself entranced every time she is on-screen. This is not like a school boy crush (hell, I've had those with SMG back when Buffy first started), I just think the world of her. Such grace. Her reaction to Book in Jaynestown is priceless. "... waiting". She deserves to be a huge star; hell, they all do.

 

Alan Tudyk as Wash is one of my favourite characters ever. Ever. I'll put him up with The Comic Book Store Guy, Baby Stewie, and Kramer any day of the week... and he's not even animated!

 

Sean Maher is too good for television. His expression and delivery are superb. The way he moves his eyes around, he just absorbs the scenery.

[RavishingRickRudo 0]

Oh yeah...

 

Fuck Fox.

 

...BUT...

 

We all know it's a bad thing that they cancelled Firefly. Joss' track record shows he can at least go 5 seasons and maintain quality (or improve) and that Firefly was pretty open-ended in terms of storylines. BUT, since Fox cut them off we never got to see them grow AND we never got to see them fall. So is it a blessing in disguise that this series never got "ruined" and therefore our thoughts of it are not tainted by bad episodes or poor decisions (besides "hey, let's not pick up Firefly" and "hey, let's not show the original 2 hour pilot as the first episode)??

 

Think about it.

[The Ghost of bps21 0]

I'd take four more great years of television if it meant they fell off for a year.

 

I think you would too.

[RavishingRickRudo 0]

Yeah, they just had way too much stuff to elaborate on - Book's past, the Blue Sun Corporation, the guys with the Blue Hands (and their relationship to the BSC), River's recovery (hopefully they wouldn't pull a Fred with her), the Reavers, Mal and Inara - their past AND future (if there ever was one), Jayne and Kaylee, Kaylee and Simon, River and Book, Zoe and Wash... shit, there's SO MUCH STUFF they could have capitalized on and developed and expanded and FUCK FOX!!!

[Hank Kingsley 0]

Spoiler (Highlight to Read):

WHAT THE HELL IS UP WITH INARA LEAVING?!??! GAH! The one relationship I really wanted to see happen was Mal/Inara. Or, at least have it grow a little bit. I guess Mal can't really hold a relationship with his life, but still, damn it.

 

This show is just golden, bottom line. I watched "Objects in Space" today and felt sad. I mean, it was a great episode, but shouldn't have been how they went out. "Out of Gas" is still the best, though.

 

Jayne in whorehouse = gold.

[RavishingRickRudo 0]

I love Out of Gas...

 

... but I love War Stories a lil bit more (Best commentary too!)

 

Ariel is also fucking awesome.

 

HEY, disc 3 rules!

 

I watched "Objects Floating in Space" ... actually, I watched it twice in a row (dying to hear Joss' commentary)... and BPS you couldn't be any more right, that is one awesome performance by Early (jesus christ I can't believe I remember all these characters names! Unprecidented!) - for a brief moment,

Spoiler (Highlight to Read):

I actually thought River was the ship (too much Star Trek!).

That's a top 5'er for sure. Infact, here's my Top 5...

 

1. War Stories

2. Out of Gas

3. Ariel

4. Objects Floating in Space

5. Serenity (1&2)

 

Episode List:

 

Serenity

The Trainjob

Bushwhacked

Shindig

Safe

Our Mrs. Reynolds

Jaynestown

Out of Gas

Ariel

War Stories

Heart of Gold

Trash

The Message

 

... I'll throw out some reasons/thoughts after other people make their lists (hint, hint!).. maybe I'll finish that Serenity review *puts on list*

[Guest TonyJaymzV1]

"hey, let's not pick up Firefly" and "hey, let's not show the original 2 hour pilot as the first episode)??

BTW, how the hell did that work? How do you not show the pilot first?

 

Fuck Fox

[RavishingRickRudo 0]

Not enough action, supposedly.

[The Ghost of bps21 0]

"Don't go visiting my intentions. Don't ever."

 

Early was an amazing character.

 

...

 

I thought she was the ship too. That's good sci-fi.

 

 

1. Out of Gas (It's just...so...perfect. The music that plays as Mal closes all the doors behind him chokes me up). "Everybody dies alone"

 

2. Ariel (creepy ass bad guys, Jayne doing what I thought main characters don't do...and a brilliant ending that works so perfectly for their characters after "Jaynestown") "Oh but you did. You turn on any of my crew, you turn on me."

 

3. Objects in Space (Just brilliant) "Yep. Here I am"

 

4. The Message (I loved how the episode played out...and it has my favorite guest actor...Holden the Vampire!) "What are we now?"

 

5. Jaynestown (Hilarious episode with a heart...like may great eps in the Whedonverse) "This must be what going mad feels like"

 

 

As I look through the eps...the only thing I know for sure is that I rate Heart of Gold last. Everything else can pretty much change on a moments notice.

[Mole 0]

I am in the middle of "Our Mrs. Reyonlds" when I realized that I didn't watch "Safe" because I am an idiot.

 

Oh well.

[RavishingRickRudo 0]

Dammit BPS, you listed before I could post this!!!!

 

*Mal shows Zoe his newly bought Firefly DVD*

 

Zoe: "You paid money for this, sir? On purpose?"

 

Mal: "What? Come on, seriously, Zoe. Whaddya think?"

 

Zoe: "Honestly, sir? I think you got robbed."

 

Mal: "Robbed? What? No. What do you mean?"

 

Zoe: "It's a piece of fei-oo."

 

Mal: "Fei-oo? Okay, she won't be winning any beauty contests anytime soon. But she's solid. DVD like this, be with ya 'til the day you die."

 

Zoe: "Cause it's a deathtrap."

 

And so BEGINS the First Annual Firefly Listing of Favourites ("FAFLOF" for short) where YOU, yes YOU, get to discuss your favourite EVERYTHING on and about the show "Firefly". Even if you just got the DVD and finished watching it a week after I initially posted THIS post right here, respond anyways! And since I am Canadian, and therefore proper, "Favourite" is spelled with a U... as in U MUST LIST YOUR FAVOURITES! Cause I wanna know... seriously, I do. This isn't some list where I just get to chime off about what I love about Firefly and don't give a fei-oo about what you think; No, No, I care. So GIT TO IT! This isn't a "Best", so there will be no debating; you don't have to feel pressure about picking the "right" episode, or character, or falling in-line with the groupthink. Though I would like for a short description as to your feelings on each of your responses ... we all grow that way... sharing our feelings... *wipes tear from eye* *extends arms* Now, give me a hug ... a hug IN THE FORM A LIST! Let's GOOOOO!

 

The Show

 

Favourite Episode:

 

What's your favourite episode? Is it something hilarious like War Stories? Is it something very well written like War Stories? Does it contain rich character development like War Stories? Does it have show-altering moments that changes the way you look at the show like War Stories?? Inquiring minds...

 

1.

2.

3.

 

Favourite Moment:

 

It can be funny, heart-breaking, brilliant, simple, whatever. If it's pretty important moments, like the shooting and the dying, better spoiler that sucka up!

 

1.

2.

3.

 

Favourite Line/Lines:

 

HEY! I made a big list of em over on Page 1, go there if you need help

 

1.

2.

3.

 

Favourite Surprise/Twist:

 

HEY! You remember when that thing happened? Yeah, that thing! It was great. Real Great. Some people haven't, so Spoiler your response please.

 

1.

2.

3.

 

Favourite "Shot":

 

Something that really makes Firefly stand out is the camera work. There are plenty of memorable images this show gives us; be it the first shot of River in "Serenity" or Book's head popping out of his room when his hair is undone. However, this is not just limited to visuals; you can also list your favourite GUN shot as well.

 

1.

2.

3.

 

The Cast

 

Favourite Character:

 

Limited to the 9 main characters on the show: Mal, Zoe, Jayne, Kaylee, Wash, Inara, Book, Simon, and River. And no, you can't get fancy and list "Serenity" as a character, you arty bastard.

 

1.

2.

3.

 

Favourite "Guest" Character:

 

Anyone else other than the 9. Badger? Mr. Tam? The Dude Who Played The Basketball Playing Cop on OZ? Yeah, the guy who got his Achilles cut right before his try-out with an NBA team. He then cut Morales' out of revenge. Man, that was cold. Poor Morales. Then the other cop turned on him and told the warden and the other guards all got mad at him... crazy show.

 

1.

2.

3.

 

Favourite Villain:

 

The Blue Hand Men? Patience? Badger? Ath? Early? Saffron? YOU CAN'T PICK JAYNE!

 

1.

2.

3.

 

Favourite Hottie (aka: The Jenny Calendar Memorial Award for Achievement in The Field of "That Funny Feelin Down In My Pants"):

 

Ah yes, the LAAAADIES. A fine crop to pick from. Mainly for the guys, but you chicks can pick yours as well. You can base it on looks, or acting, or whatever gets you off... *thinks about River's feet* OoooOOOOOoooOOOOOH YEEEeeeeeeaaaaahh *puts cigarette in mouth*

 

1.

2.

3.

 

Favourite "Hat Trick" / "in-joke"

 

This is related to the Buffy/Angel fans. The "Hat Trick" refers to actors who have appeared on all 3 shows... since there's about only 3 actors, you can also pick your favourite "in-joke"; something that Joss threw in (intentional or not) for his fans. This is also a place where you can say "Didja notice"?

 

1.

2.

3.

 

Favourite Relationship:

 

It can be romantic, it can be friendly, it can be adversarial, it can be all three... and it can be with an inanimate object ("I call her 'Vera'").

 

1.

2.

3.

 

The DVD

 

Favourite Disk

 

Ok, it's Disk 3, but battling it out for 2nd is JUST as important...

 

1.

2.

3.

 

Favourite Featurette (Disk 4):

 

Joss signing the Firefly theme? Joss touring the set? Joss talking about the concept of the show? Joss talking about the ship? Joss talking about Joss?

 

1.

2.

3.

 

Favourite Commentary:

 

Almost as good as the episodes themselves, the commentary for Firefly is an enriching and rewarding experience... it also has multiple cracks about Mr. Tightpants.

 

1.

2.

3.

 

Favourite "Never Aired" Episode

 

Well, there are only 3... how convenient!

 

1.

2.

3.

 

Favourite Cover-art

 

Ok, it's a lame topic... BUT, you see it every time you take the DVD out of it's case so it's pretty damned important if you ask me; Do you like Book looking ominous? Jayne looking angry? Mal looking stoic? Zoe looking...like Zoe???

 

1.

2.

3.

 

So, Tell us what your favourites are so I can shoot you.

 

Mal: Point of interest? Offering to shoot us might not work so well as an incentive as you might imagine.

[The Ghost of bps21 0]

I'll redo it.

[Mole 0]

Damn....what a list...I'll be there by Friday.

 

And I love the Promo Poster in bps' sig.

 

"From the critcally acclaimed creater of Buffy the Vampire Slayer"

 

It seems the critics love all of Joss' shows, except for the fans.

[Hank Kingsley 0]

I'm too lazy to put explanations in now...maybe I'll do it later.

 

Favourite Episode:

 

1. Out of Gas

2. War Stories

3. Ariel

 

Favourite Moment:

Spoiler (Highlight to Read):

1. The steadycam shot at the end of "Objects in Space", showing that everyone is together as one. Great way to end the show. 2. Mal seeing Serenity for the first time in the "Out of Gas" flashback. 3. Mal sitting in the desert naked in "Trash". Golden.

 

Favourite Line/Lines:

 

 

1. "...I'll be in my bunk." - Jayne

2. "You turn on my crew, you turn on me." - Mal

3. The "Hero of Canton" song is brilliant, too~

 

Favourite Surprise/Twist:

 

Spoiler (Highlight to Read):

1. Jayne attempting to turn in River and Simon 2. Inara telling Mal that she's leaving 3. River blindly killing three Alliance guards

 

Favourite "Shot":

 

1. The very last steadycam shot in "Objects in Space"

2. Mal shooting the Fed in the pilot

3. River's shooting skills in "War Stories"

 

The Cast

 

Favourite Character:

 

 

1. Mal

2. River

3. Jayne

 

Favourite "Guest" Character:

 

1. Tracey ("The Message")

2. Badger

3. I...really can't think of a third.

 

Favourite Villain:

 

1. Early

2. Adelai Niska

3. Yosaffbridge

 

Favourite Hottie (aka: The Jenny Calendar Memorial Award for Achievement in The Field of "That Funny Feelin Down In My Pants"):

 

1. Inara

2. Yosaffbridge

3. River

 

Favourite "Hat Trick" / "in-joke"

 

uhh...can't really think of any.

 

Favourite Relationship:

 

1. Simon/River

2. Mal/Inara

3. Kaylee/Simon

 

The DVD

 

Favourite Disk

 

1. 3

2. 4

3. 2

 

Favourite Featurette (Disk 4):

 

1. Jayne singing "Hero of Canton" (easter egg)

2. Gag reel

3. Set tour

 

Favourite Commentary:

 

1. War Stories

2. Serenity

3. Objects in Space

 

Favourite "Never Aired" Episode

 

1. The Message

2. Trash

3. Heart of Gold

 

Favourite Cover-art

 

1. Mal

2. Jayne

3. Book