The problematic Joss Whedon

[Paulando]

I mean yeah, Ray Fisher seems a bit of a cunt tbf, but let’s not take away from the fact that Whedon truly is the supreme cunt overlord.

[RubberJohnny]

The "on MLK day!" thing is the most reaching complaint I've ever seen, surely? The interview would have been weeks and months ago, the interview subject has no control over when it's run.

 

6 hours ago, Festoon said:

You're not thinking of the power differential here. Insane a director would criticise a young actor like that in order to damage his career. I would never hire Whedon if that was his behaviour - no actor would ever trust him again.

 

Except that's not what happened, Fisher criticised the guy endlessly for like six months, he's asked about it here and you immediately say his defense is "hitting out at a young actor to damage his career". How are you ever supposed to meaningfully respond to things then? It feels like exactly the sort of trap we see with spurious anti-semitism accusations in the UK where defense is treated as further proof.

[Festoon]

53 minutes ago, Bazjam said:

I guess my definition of a good performance differs massively from everyone else. Thought he was poor in both cuts.

 

Really? I can't agree with that. Either way, the fucking director shouldn't be speaking of actors in this way. He seems to only attack women mostly too.

[Unofficial Who]

44 minutes ago, RubberJohnny said:

The "on MLK day!" thing is the most reaching complaint I've ever seen, surely? The interview would have been weeks and months ago, the interview subject has no control over when it's run.

 

Yeah, I noted that in my post (although I put it in a spoiler. I mean the timing might be a cynical stitch up but meh.)

 

45 minutes ago, RubberJohnny said:

Except that's not what happened, Fisher criticised the guy endlessly for like six months, he's asked about it here and you immediately say his defense is "hitting out at a young actor to damage his career". How are you ever supposed to meaningfully respond to things then? It feels like exactly the sort of trap we see with spurious anti-semitism accusations in the UK where defense is treated as further proof.

 

How should he have responded? Not like he did in that interview.

 

I dearly wish I could find anything to defend Joss Whedon but there's been multiple stories now. And that comment about Gal Gadot not understanding English.

 

His response to Fisher could have been "we had creative differences." It could have been "no comment." Sometimes you're put in a shitty situation and you have no choice but to cop the slings and arrows. But unless that interview was edited to be misleading it looks like he made all the worst comments.

 

 

[RubberJohnny]

26 minutes ago, Unofficial Who said:

How should he have responded? Not like he did in that interview.

 

His response to Fisher could have been "we had creative differences." It could have been "no comment." Sometimes you're put in a shitty situation and you have no choice but to cop the slings and arrows. But unless that interview was edited to be misleading it looks like he made all the worst comments.

 

Ah, it's the "stand on one leg and denounce it!" approach. Good to see I was right.

[Exidor]

1 hour ago, RubberJohnny said:

 

Ah, it's the "stand on one leg and denounce it!" approach. Good to see I was right.

 

As opposed to the stand on both legs and denounce it and then also throw in an ad hominem about him being shit at his job so maybe it was justified after all approach.

[Phelan]

Josh is a dickhead and should probably step back from the camera. He is a fun writer but maybe best he stays away from the limelight.

 

Fisher was boring in both versions and Cyborg should never have been the lead in a JL movie.

[Unofficial Who]

6 hours ago, Phelan said:

Joss is a dickhead and should probably step back from the camera. He is a fun writer but maybe best he stays away from the limelight.

 

 

My partner and I were talking about this last night and saying much the same thing. The best thing for his career now would be to stick to writing (maybe under a pseudonym) and never ever step foot on a set again.

[Festoon]

16 hours ago, Unofficial Who said:

 

My partner and I were talking about this last night and saying much the same thing. The best thing for his career now would be to stick to writing (maybe under a pseudonym) and never ever step foot on a set again.

 

He's too vain to use a pseudonym.

 

He's such a prick. Trying to redeem himself in terms of Gadot, Carpenter and Fisher he can't resist slagging them off in what he thinks is a clever way to damage their perception or careers.

 

Gadot: We got on great but she no speakee the English good.

Carpenter: We got on great but she sometimes struggled with her lines.

Fisher: Bad actor in both senses.

 

Which is exactly the kind of gaslighting, mean spirited, adolescent behaviour he's being accused of. He's literally doing the thing in his interview about how he doesn't do the thing.

 

Edit: That last line of mine is very Whedonesque. Luckily I'm not a bald, yet somehow still ginger, cunt.

[Captain Novaforce]

Aye disappointing reading up about him, he comes across as snidey and almost highschoolish. He created a lot of work that I really loved and showed a lot of insight, you really would have thought he'd be a bit more aware of his impact on others. 

[Sexton Hardcastle]

Maybe they could all be a bunch of unlikeable assholes?

[Festoon]

Fisher seems to suffer the fate of whistleblowers, no matter how righteous the cause, people hate 'narcs'.

[drmick]

I'm not sure what benefit there is for Fisher at this point, to keep beating this drum.

 

He seems like a guy that could get an entire production shut down in a racism controversy if he heard a caterer use language that is now considered racist, but was not felt to be racist 20 years ago.

 

First thing I ever saw Whedon in was that director roundtable discussion on Marvel movies on Disney+. Even on that alongside other strong people in the field he came across as slightly aggressive and dissocial.

[SaintAnselm]

29 minutes ago, drmick said:

I'm not sure what benefit there is for Fisher at this point, to keep beating this drum.

 

He seems like a guy that could get an entire production shut down in a racism controversy if he heard a caterer use language that is now considered racist, but was not felt to be racist 20 years ago.

 

First thing I ever saw Whedon in was that director roundtable discussion on Marvel movies on Disney+. Even on that alongside other strong people in the field he came across as slightly aggressive and dissocial.

The Synder cultists fucking love going on about it, but then they are one of the weirdest groups on the internet outside of fans of midget porn.

[Festoon]

1 hour ago, drmick said:

He seems like a guy that could get an entire production shut down in a racism controversy if he heard a caterer use language that is now considered racist, but was not felt to be racist 20 years ago.

 

Hmm. That's quite a leap.

[drmick]

2 hours ago, Festoon said:

 

Hmm. That's quite a leap.

 

Of course- but the point I'm trying to make is one of fiscal risk from the point of view of producers or a studio.

[Grobbelboy]

20 hours ago, SaintAnselm said:

The Synder cultists fucking love going on about it, but then they are one of the weirdest groups on the internet outside of fans of midget porn.

 

Leave it to rllmuk to somehow turn even this around towards collective enemy “the Snyder cultists”. Those guys are definitely the weirdos here! 

[Festoon]

53 minutes ago, drmick said:

 

Of course- but the point I'm trying to make is one of fiscal risk from the point of view of producers or a studio.

 

I see, what's a shame is that may happen (and is of course evidence of the sort of racism Fisher is talking about) but Whedon will be given chance after chance after chance until he dies of old age.

[Festoon]

I love to interview Whedon, I'd keep referring to him as "Josh" the whole time.*

 

I'd also go on about the innovation of snappy, witty dialogue in tv series about groups of characters and then exclusively talk about Amy Sherman Palladino and Aaron Sorkin  the whole time.

 

 

 

*If he objected I'd tell him I was just joshing.

[drmick]

2 hours ago, Festoon said:

 

I see, what's a shame is that may happen (and is of course evidence of the sort of racism Fisher is talking about) but Whedon will be given chance after chance after chance until he dies of old age.

 

His career is finished too, is it not? The bad press around him is even more fiscally dangerous.

[Festoon]

4 hours ago, drmick said:

 

His career is finished too, is it not? 

 

I'm pretty uncomfortable with this, to be honest. You might be aiming for humour in the second sentence but it's heading in a direction I don't like.

[drmick]

1 hour ago, Festoon said:

 

I'm pretty uncomfortable with this, to be honest. You might be aiming for humour in the second sentence but it's heading in a direction I don't like.

 

Grand so- I have edited it out.

[JPL]

On 21/01/2022 at 08:39, Festoon said:

 

He's too vain to use a pseudonym.

 

He's such a prick. Trying to redeem himself in terms of Gadot, Carpenter and Fisher he can't resist slagging them off in what he thinks is a clever way to damage their perception or careers.

 

Gadot: We got on great but she no speakee the English good.

Carpenter: We got on great but she sometimes struggled with her lines.

Fisher: Bad actor in both senses.

 

Which is exactly the kind of gaslighting, mean spirited, adolescent behaviour he's being accused of. He's literally doing the thing in his interview about how he doesn't do the thing.

 

Edit: That last line of mine is very Whedonesque. Luckily I'm not a bald, yet somehow still ginger, cunt.

I don’t know anything about Joss Whedon, but if these things about him are true then he deserves everything he gets. But what has him being ginger got to do with anything? Why use that as a derogatory term as though that’s had some significance in the way he’s behaved?

[Nick R]

Zack Snyder to Make 4-Hour, 1.33.1 Aspect Ratio Version of Joss Whedon’s Vulture Interview

 

Excellent last line, Hard Drive.

 

[Festoon]

20 hours ago, JPL said:

I don’t know anything about Joss Whedon, but if these things about him are true then he deserves everything he gets. But what has him being ginger got to do with anything? Why use that as a derogatory term as though that’s had some significance in the way he’s behaved?

 

Nothing, in fairness, but neither does the fact of being bald.

[Jimmyzilla]

10 hours ago, Nick R said:

Zack Snyder to Make 4-Hour, 1.33.1 Aspect Ratio Version of Joss Whedon’s Vulture Interview

 

Excellent last line, Hard Drive.

 

That brings up the main thing that stuck out of the vulture interview for me but no one has mentioned here. He said he "had" to have affairs with all these women, both people working for him and fans. The quote sounds so bizarre where he starts off okay saying how bad it was and then just going off more like he's actually proud of it... 

 

On our second day of interviews, I asked Whedon about his affairs on the set of Buffy. He looked worse than he had the day before. His eyes were faintly bloodshot. He hadn’t slept well. “I feel fucking terrible about them,” he said. When I pressed him on why, he noted “it messes up the power dynamic,” but he didn’t expand on that thought. Instead, he quickly added that he had felt he “had” to sleep with them, that he was “powerless” to resist. I laughed. “I’m not actually joking,” he said. He had been surrounded by beautiful young women — the sort of women who had ignored him when he was younger — and he feared if he didn’t have sex with them, he would “always regret it.” Looking back, he feels shame and “horror,” he said. I thought of something he had told me earlier. A vampire, he’d said, is the “exalted outsider,” a creature that feels like “less than everybody else and also kind of more than everybody else. There’s this insecurity and arrogance. They do a little dance.”

[Festoon]

7 minutes ago, Jimmyzilla said:

That brings up the main thing that stuck out of the vulture interview for me but no one has mentioned here. He said he "had" to have affairs with all these women, both people working for him and fans. The quote sounds so bizarre where he starts off okay saying how bad it was and then just going off more like he's actually proud of it... 

 

On our second day of interviews, I asked Whedon about his affairs on the set of Buffy. He looked worse than he had the day before. His eyes were faintly bloodshot. He hadn’t slept well. “I feel fucking terrible about them,” he said. When I pressed him on why, he noted “it messes up the power dynamic,” but he didn’t expand on that thought. Instead, he quickly added that he had felt he “had” to sleep with them, that he was “powerless” to resist. I laughed. “I’m not actually joking,” he said. He had been surrounded by beautiful young women — the sort of women who had ignored him when he was younger — and he feared if he didn’t have sex with them, he would “always regret it.” Looking back, he feels shame and “horror,” he said. I thought of something he had told me earlier. A vampire, he’d said, is the “exalted outsider,” a creature that feels like “less than everybody else and also kind of more than everybody else. There’s this insecurity and arrogance. They do a little dance.”

 

Yeah, creepy as fuck. 

 

"Had to" is not far from "compelled to" - i.e. "I had no agency"

 

i. fucking. e. "The Devil made me do it"

 

Fuck that and fuck him.

[Darren]

"I had to do it because I if I didn't I'd regret it later" is quite the logical fallacy (specifically it's an appeal to consequences).

[Festoon]

JossECunt: Gotta Fuck 'Em All

[Unofficial Who]

The weird thing is that interview comes across as the sort of thing one of the mid season bad guys Buffy would dispatch would say. It's so sad and pathetic.