Whedon on Dollhouse and sex appeal
Joss Whedon held a conference call with reporters Friday to talk about Dollhouse. Here are a few of the highlights from that news conference, and at the bottom we link to Pinkraygun.com, a science fiction website kind enough to type out the full transcript from that conference call.
And on to the highlights from the call…
Joshua Maloni with Niagara Frontier: What do you like about Eliza? Why was she the right actress to build this around?
Joss Whedon: She’s overcome her homely shyness over these years. Eliza is, apart from being, in my opinion, as great a star as I have ever known, she has a genuinely powerful electric and luminous quality that I’ve rarely seen. She’s also a really solid person. She’s a good friend. She’s a feminist. She’s an activist. She’s interested in the people around her. She has a lot of different things going on, and I’ve watched her over the years, as a friend, try to take control of her career, and try to get the roles that weren’t available to her, and protect the ethos and the message of what it was that she was doing, and I respect that enormously. Being part of that progression is, for me, one of the greatest benefits of this show.
Julia Diddy with Fancast.com: Given the pressures and drawbacks of being a creative person working within television, what keeps you going? What inspires you?
Whedon: You know, the thing that keeps me going, chardonnay. I shouldn’t have said that. Honestly though, actually that kind of slows me down. Ultimately, it’s two things. It’s the story and it’s the people I’m working with. I’ve gotten pretty good at putting together a group of people, both in the writing and in the acting fields who are not just really gifted and delightful to learn from and to watch, but are just good people to be around. And creating an environment that is fun and safe and creative is difficult and enormously important, and a lot of shows obviously don’t feel the same way, and a lot of stars don’t feel the same way.
Perhaps the most interesting question of the hour-long conference call came from the reporter at Pinkraygun.com. Joss seemed genuinly interested in this question and didn’t give the response you’ve seen in a million other interviews he’s done since Dollhouse first materialized.
Lisa Fary with Pinkraygun.com: The Fox promo site called the Echo chamber, it features Eliza Dushku, she’s nude, looking very sexually available in the tagline get to know Echo intimately. Our readers at Pinkraygun are interested to know if this is a standard hot babe come-on, or a sexual objectification show being set up for subversion. Do you fully support this type of promo, and could you explain a little either way?
Whedon: Nice. Finally something that’s slightly more awful than me saying wake up and smell the “Acker”. I absolutely think that the question is valid and my answer is a little bit vague. I do support it. I saw the photo shoot, and I mostly support it because Eliza was very comfortable with it and very pleased with the photos. She’s very comfortable with her body.
The premise of the show involves these men and women being hired and obviously, some of that has to do with sex. This is something that was in the premise from the start. It came from my conversation with Eliza. We wanted to talk about it, she mentioned herself, wanted to talk about sexuality in whatever show she was doing, not just by virtue of her being all hot, but by really examining human sexuality and how it drives us and why it’s important to us.
The idea is to get the audience to look at their own desire, and to figure out what of it is acceptable, and what of it is kind of creepy. In order to do that, we go to a creepy place sometimes, and I will be very interested to see if people find it empowering or the other things. I may have crossed the line. Let’s find out.
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There is plenty more to read from Joss Whedon’s conference call with reporters. For more from the transcript, visit our friends at Pinkraygun.com.
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