Did you miss Joss Whedon at the Melbourne Writer’s Festival? The wonderful Melinda Dean from OMG Squee! has been slaving away over these past few weeks to give you a special treat. She has provided a detailed transcription of the event, for your reading pleasure!

Joss Whedon’s Keynote, 27/08/2010, 9:30pm

[Out come Sue Turnbull (leading the interview) and Joss Whedon and the audience goes wild.]

Sue: Well isn’t this cosy. How intimate can you get. Whoo. Um. About a month ago, a friend of mine emailed me and said, Did you know, God, is coming to Melbourne? To which I replied, yeap, and what I actually should have said was, and I’m the angel Gabriel or something like that. Um, Joss, how does it feel to be God?

Joss: Well, when I made the mountains, I thought…they’re good, but, um, they’re uh, I don’t believe in me.

[much applause and laughter]

Joss: Which is actually awkward.

Sue: Lack of belief in yourself, God, is a bit of a problem. However, you know, there are god-like qualities that you have obviously aspired to. Indeed becoming a screenwriter some people might argue was a bid for god-dom?

Joss: Um, I think it was a bid for obscurity and pain. A successful one.

Continue reading…

You should also check out Sci-Fi Channel Australia’s interview with Joss, which includes this little relevation…

Firefly Season Two – you want to know what would have happened – we all do. Joss answered this point blank with “Serenity pretty much covered it” (Firefly Season 2). “Finding the truth about Miranda, the origins of River, that was all going to be told over Season Two.” He was quick to point out that Firefly was about ‘moments’. The richly textured worlds of the ‘verse were a backdrop to small human moments that revealed character. John Ford storytelling, as he put it. This of course makes sense to fans of the show who know that Firefly was a little more episodic than serialised.

Keep an eye out on Sci-Fi TV for the full interview.

Buffy’s creator turns a new page at Melbourne Writers Festival
The Australian, 28 August 2010

Michael Bodey geeks with Joss Whedon out at the Melbourne Writers Festival.

Joss Whedon is a modern master of film and television, as big a geek hero as Batman or his own creation, Buffy the Vampire Slayer.

So what’s the American film-maker doing headlining the Melbourne Writers Festival beside authors of tactile, bound pages of literature including D.B.C. Pierre, Alex Miller and Cate Kennedy?

“I feel very distinguished, and intend to wear elbow patches and smoke a pipe now,” he jokes.

“I will first and foremost always be a writer. I love directing and everything I do, but writing is what really defines me.”

Read the rest of the article here

Bloody good show as Buffy creator slays ‘em in the aisles
The Australian, 4 September 2010

Emma Tom talks Joss Whedon’s appearances at the Melbourne Town Hall and the Sydney Opera House for The Australian.

If television is a religion, then Joss Whedon is its god. Not a particularly physically imposing god (the American creator of Buffy the Vampire Slayer, Angel and Firefly is a small and imperfectly formed ranga). But a deity nonetheless.

Whedon creates worlds and fills them with extraordinary, flawed beings.

He leaves trails of holy texts, sacred languages and exotic fetish objects.

And yea verily do his devotees prostrate themselves at his feet crying: “We are not worthy” and sometimes also: “But must thou smite quite so many of our favourite characters?”

Whedon, whose earthly miracles include an unholy blurring of the lines between high and low culture, has just made a pilgrimage to Australia to sermonise from the mounts of the Melbourne Writers Festival and the Sydney Opera House concert hall.

Both gatherings were sold out and prompted rapturous nerdgasms from his devoted disciples. “How does it feel to be god?” media academic Sue Turnbull asked him in Melbourne.

“Awkward,” Whedon replied, “because I don’t believe in me.”

Read the rest of the article here

If you missed seeing Joss last weekend or you just want to relive it, here’s a 15 minute video recap with some of the highlights. Enjoy!
Continue reading »

If you missed seeing Joss in Melbourne or Sydney, here’s a teaser of what you missed.

Joss Whedon is better than you are, and he’s here to explain exactly how much better in person.

The Wonderful Whedon of Oz (Video – 04:44)

This just in from the Melbourne Writers Festival e-bulletin! MWF are giving away two tickets to the sold out Joss Whedon keynote address tonight!

The Melbourne Writers Festival have two double passes to giveaway to tonight’s, otherwise sold out, second Keynote Address An Evening with Joss Whedon: From Buffy to Dr Horrible, Infinity & Beyond.

Email admin@mwf.com.au with Joss in the subject line and your name and phone number in the body by 4 pm today (Friday 27 August 2010) to go into the running. Only the winner will be notified and the tickets will be available at the Melbourne Town Hall box office for pick up before the event.

Not so shiny: Plenty of drama for Buffy creator Joss Whedon (Sydney Morning Herald, 25 August 2010)

Bernard Zuel of the Sydney Morning Herald spoke to Joss this week about his wide ranging career in the lead up to his sold out speaking engagements in Melbourne and Sydney this weekend.

On Firefly:

The cancelled Firefly (“still the greatest grief I have about my career”) begat his first film as director, the Firefly “sequel” Serenity. It didn’t do Batman business but as a space-western with wit and social consciousness it made money and, along the way, gave him another young female character who – literally and metaphorically – kicked arse.

And on it’s cancellation…

The problem can come when you butt your head against a wall and it doesn’t break but you do. He’s often laughed about the pain of scripts in limbo, of films derailed, of utterly ridiculous decisions, such as a network deciding not to screen the opening episodes of a series until after the rest of the show had screened. More seriously, he says that the cancellation of Firefly not only made him “the sourest man alive” but had an unexpected and potentially devastating side effect.

“I stopped having ideas, which for me is an extremely rare experience,” Whedon says. “It was something much more subtle [than losing hope], it took away my ability to think in terms of episodic television. For years.”

Read the full article here


Did you miss out on tickets to the Joss Whedon’s sold out appearance at the Melbourne Town Hall on 27 August 2010?

Melbourne Writers Festival (MWF) have a limited number of tickets for this year’s second Keynote Address, An Evening with Joss Whedon.

The remaining tickets for the Joss Whedon event will be released on the MWF website at 11am, Tuesday 24 August 2010

Joss Whedon will be appearing at the Melbourne Writers Festival at the keynote speaker on 27 August 2010.

In this keynote event, Joss will talk about his ongoing love affair with the popular, and his fascination with outsider heroes, strong women, and the uses and abuses of power. He will also discuss the creative ways he’s worked across a variety of media forms – in films from Toy Story to the forthcoming Avengers film, in TV series’ from Buffy through Firefly and Glee, and across a vast range of comics.

He will be speaking at the Melbourne Town Hall and tickets are just $55 (available through www.mwf.com.au. Pre-sales are available now and tickets will go on sale to the general public on Friday 16 July at 11am.

Don’t miss out on this rare opportunity to see Joss Whedon live in Melbourne!

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