Audio available now. Just started listening but wanted to say that that's a great photo of Joss; hadn't seen it before.

karosurly | February 12, 20:32 CET

Thanks for the link, both NPR interviews with Joss have been amazing listens, it's good to hear from Joss himself about the show (and about Dr. Horrible).

AnotherFireflyfan | February 12, 20:49 CET

And a heads-up that a full half of the interview is non-Dollhouse related: Dr. Horrible, fandom, Sondheim, etc.

[ edited by karosurly on 2009-02-12 20:58 ]

karosurly | February 12, 20:49 CET

Good interview. Does anyone know where Joss's Buffy/Faith lesbian subtext revelation occurred? I must say my reaction to that was like the interviewer's: "you're kidding me, right?"

BYOsubtext. Absolutely.

Joss r smrt. I wonder if anybody else has ever noticed that?

snot monster from outer space | February 12, 21:08 CET

"Fresh Air" is one of the remaining highly intelligent shows on NPR. I look forward to listening to this, after I've seen the first episode.

barboo | February 12, 21:15 CET

I agree about the lesbian subtext, I had the same reaction. Even Doug Petrie in one of his audio commentaries (probably on Bad Girls) acknowledged the subtext was pretty darn obvious -- I think the context was Petrie praising Eliza for the way she ramped it up. But I suppose that just because Petrie knew it was there didn't mean Joss did. Funny.

chickenbird | February 12, 21:20 CET

barboo, I'd say there are no Dollhouse spoilers, only Commentary! The Musical spoilers. Speaking of which, I was glad to hear Joss talk about his Commentary! song, because I'd wondered how semi-serious its sentiments might be...

miri47 | February 12, 21:26 CET

I wouldn't say no spoilers. He does play a clip from the pilot. But nothing is revealed in it beyond general-premise stuff that you almost certainly already know.

snot monster from outer space | February 12, 22:07 CET

How does he find the time to do all the interviews I barely find the time to read/watch/listen to?

ETA And glad he pointed out that Jed, musically and metaphorically, rocks.

[ edited by Pointy on 2009-02-12 22:20 ]

Pointy | February 12, 22:16 CET

snot monster Ummm...what?

Sorry, I'm on dial-up, so it'd be torture trying to listen to nearly a half-hour in fits and starts.

Care to elucidate? Was there or wasn't there implications of some kind of attraction between Buffy & Faith? If so, where/when? If not, why did people think there was? If so, did Joss not realize it? Or was he just kidding?

Ta!

ShadowQuest | February 12, 22:17 CET

chickenbird said:



Joss' realization was right while S3 aired, I think, December 98 or so. I never read the analysis, but from the timeframe I figure they only went on stuff between "Faith, Hope & Trick" and "Revelations". Quite amazing.

The Petrie-commentary was recorded much later (I think during work on S5...), so they could have talked it out back in the day. Hell, since "Bad Girls" was pretty late in the season, maybe the revelation influenced the way they played that out.

wiesengrund | February 12, 22:17 CET

I can't wait to download this sucker from iTunes podcasts when it appears, so I may play it at my leisure. Sounds most promising. I always got a kick out of the Buffy-Faith BYO subtext. I didn't really pick up on it myself but now that it's been mentioned, I can see it. Fun stuff.

Say, is it just my web connection at fault, or is this site very, very slow right now? Mayhap a lot of Whedonites coming out of the cracks in honor of the impending Dollhouse premiere?

phlebotinin | February 12, 22:19 CET

barboo, I disagree with your assertion that there are no (or few) other intelligent shows on NPR. I think much of the programming is great. 'This American Life'. 'Face the Nation'. 'Studio 360'. 'Here and Now'. And of course 'Wait Wait... Don't Tell Me'.

But I'll grant that 'Fresh Air' is a high watermark, particularly for pop culture topics.

Haunt | February 12, 22:21 CET

Amen, Haunt. Tons of NPR shows (still) rule. But is it "Face the Nation" or "Talk of the Nation?" :) Or both? I also sometimes find good stuff on "On Point" and "Lopate."

phlebotinin | February 12, 22:24 CET

@ShadowQuest

I can't quite remember how the discussion started, but Joss told a story of how he first came to meet with Stephen Sondheim (the living writer he obviously holds in the highest esteem) because he'd made a comment about Sunday's in the Park with George that he, Joss, had thought self-evident but which Sondheim said had never struck him before: that the first act is about the burdens of genius and the second act is about the burdens of not being a genius.

That lead the interviewer to ask Joss if anyone had ever pointed out something that he'd not seen in his own work before and Joss said that in the early days of Internet fandom, when he used to check the fan comments pretty thoroughly (sidebar: I knew it!) he'd come across the claim that there was a lesbian subtext to the Faith/Buffy relationship. He claimed to have responded angrily to this saying that "you guys see lesbian subtexts everywhere!" Then, apparently, the person who'd made the claim invited Joss to go look at their website where they'd laid the case for this subtext out in detail, and he came back to the original site to apologize--because it was obvious that they were right.

He went on from there to say that this taught him that the great thing about good fiction was that it was "BYOSubtext"--that different people got very different things from it because they write their own experience into the stories that they see.

My followup question would have been "so was this before or after Bad Girls had been written?" Because the lesbian subtext there pretty much becomes text...

[ edited by snot monster from outer space on 2009-02-12 22:27 ]

snot monster from outer space | February 12, 22:25 CET

I think this is the most explicit Joss has been that the reaction at Equality Now was "mixed".

The One True b!X | February 12, 22:30 CET

I was thinking it doesn't have to be in the script, actually. Making that window-scene could have been a decision made on the set. I'm pretty sure by December they had "Bad Girls" already written.

ETA @ b!x: Didn't he say somewhere that they looked at him like "Do it wrong, and we'll kill you."? No idea where, but I'm pretty sure I read that sentence somewhere...

[ edited by wiesengrund on 2009-02-12 22:36 ]

wiesengrund | February 12, 22:34 CET

I think he expressed that sentiment re: Equality Now, but I don't personally remember him specifically stating that reaction was mixed and ranged from "I see the discussion" to "that looks like exploitation" (or however it was he put it in this interview).

That doesn't mean he didn't. I just don't remember seeing it before.

The One True b!X | February 12, 22:39 CET

The Equality Now "Do it right or we'll kill you" Joss-quote came from Buffyfest's coverage of the recent Joss/Eliza Dollhouse appearance at the Soho Apple Store, but the mention of EN's range of responses seemed new to me.

QuoterGal | February 13, 00:41 CET

Excellent interview. I love listening to his voice.

Enough waiting. Dollhouse needs to start now.

korkster | February 13, 03:10 CET