Gaiman and Whedon Discuss the Rise of the Geek 256
CABridges writes "In a lengthy Time Magazine interview, Neil Gaiman ("Sandman," "American Gods") and Joss Whedon ("Buffy the Vampire Slayer," "Firefly") talk about their audience.
Gaiman: "Mostly they're people. They're us. That's what they look like."
Whedon: "They're a lot more attractive than I am, actually, which kind of disturbs and upsets me."
Both men, known for their cult-favorite creations, have movies debuting this Friday. For Gaiman it's MirrorMask, for Whedon it's Serenity."
Gaiman, geeks, and this /. post (Score:5, Informative)
Similar piece at AVClub (Score:3, Informative)
AVClub is from the same guys who do The Onion [theonion.com]
This interview also features Dave McKean.
Ryan Fenton
One Page Print View (Score:3, Informative)
One Nice Single Page With No Ads [time.com]
Re:Gaiman, geeks, and this /. post (Score:4, Informative)
Re:Mmmmm... (Score:3, Informative)
She married Wesley (Alexis Duchanov?)
Firefly is not EQ/WoW/Buffy/Angel.
They are drifting into it at the end of the series a tiny bit- apparently Joss likes supergirls.
No idea about Serenity except that I am going to see it.
Re:This may be redundant, but. . . (Score:1, Informative)
Re:Mmmmm... (Score:3, Informative)
Mirrormask, not quite mainstream (Score:3, Informative)
The trailer looks like a sharp left turn from Labyrinth, although I may have been swayed by the Henson logo.
Inspiration & visuals by Dave McKean, written by Neil Gaiman, where have I seen that combination before? But it's the first feature-length movie for both of them. If they're even half as good at film as they were at comics, should be a surreal treat.
Re:Mmmmm... (Score:2, Informative)
Re:This may be redundant, but. . . (Score:3, Informative)
The reaver scenes are very quick cut away shots that are more to surprise and shock than anything else.
There are no scenes that in my memory that are physical gore. I don't want to spoil the movie, there are no flesh eating scenes or the like. But let me again point to the slow pans of dead corpses, I guess that could be considered gory.
Serenity is one of the best movies I have ever seen. I have read some posts that some don't like going to the theater. In truth you don't have to see Serenity on the big screen to enjoy it. But please plan on seeing Serenity at some point, it is a GREAT story. I took 8 people to the preview last night (Tuesday) and every one of them enjoyed the movie. Even after I raved about it non stop. One of my friends said "This was the first movie that has been hyped up (mainly by me) and lived up to the hype."
Slashdot the theaters for the Serenity release.
- Bruzer
Re:Rise of the Geek (Score:2, Informative)
Actually, Buffy was a successful movie before it was a TV show. The movie was basically a comedy, along the lines of Clueless, and was very different from the show.
While I did enjoy the movie when I was younger, it was critically panned and considered a box office failure so I'm not really sure how you consider it a success. That's why, in the early days of the television series, Whedon was having a lot of network opposition to reviving what they considered a 'dead horse'.
Re:Mmmmm... (Score:2, Informative)
But I watched an episode here and there, and I began to realize how good the writing really is. How good the stories get sometimes.
There's a lot of subtext in the Buffy scripts. Everything is a metaphor, especially the monster/vortex/curse/evilfishpeople of the week. So there's this one level on which the show is beautiful fluff - kick-ass chicks and scary blood-sucking monsters - and then there's this other level on which the single-minded, relentlessness of the monster is played as counterpoint to some other character's desire to get that boyfriend/that 'A'/that job at all costs, and hurt whoever they have to to get there.
And all that aside, it's _entertaining_. What makes something entertaining is hard to define, but, in my subjective viewpoint, this show had it in spades. The imagery, the dialogue, the whole look and feel and sound and experience of it - it ain't TV crack, but it ain't bad.
Re:Took a look at MirrorMask (Score:4, Informative)
So they went to him and said, "Can you come up with an idea for a movie in this style, that we could produce on a low budget, and could you put in a word with Dave McKean? And we know we can't affort you as the writer, but would you at least come up with the story?" At that point he said something like "If Dave's direting it, I'm writing it," they got the deal, the two of them went off to spend a week or two in the Hensons' vacation home developing the story, and launched into it from there.
So while it would be wonderful if it did well in theaters, the studio is really counting on it being part of their home video line for the next 20 years -- just like The Dark Crystal and Labyrinth.
Re:This may be redundant, but. . . (Score:3, Informative)
So they did everything in their power to kill the show.
Re:I used to be a geek... (Score:4, Informative)
Since you still don't get it, maybe this is an honest request for information, rather than an attempt at sarcasm or irony. So, here goes.
A geek was a carnival sideshow freak, whose act was doing disgusting things like eating a live rat or biting the head off a chicken or two (chickens were too big to eat whole, unlike a small rat). Tradition has it that they were usually alcoholics, made to perform by witholding booze until they got the shakes so bad they'd do anything for a drink. Like all end-stage alcoholics, they didn't usually eat much, unless they happened to swallow a rat or a chicken head. The booze was the pay, so they were cheap. They didn't usually live long, but you could always find another in any town big enough to have a town drunk. Every carnival had a geek, and he was the very lowest of the low: the one person that everyone, including the hermaphrodite and the crap-shoveler, could look down on.
That is why I never refer to myself as a geek.
Re:geek - the word has evolved... (Score:2, Informative)
Money is not the best part!
Geek sex! I've tested! I recommend it!
Re:I used to be a geek... (Score:2, Informative)
It could derive from the Dutch word "gek", which means madman as a noun, or mad/weird/crazy as an adjective.
(Legal notice: this does not imply that all Dutch nouns can be used as adjectives as well.)
Am I a geek? The blowjob test (Score:2, Informative)
Yes! He gets blowjobs and he does not have to ask for it !
He also gets porn occasionally, just to spice it up.
So... you see, if you have to ask for it (or pay for it), YOU are the one not doing it right!