Prodigeek Interview: Joss Whedon on Dr. Horrible's Sing-A-Long Blog part 1
July 7th, 2008
To kick off Geek Musical Week, Prodigeek speaks to Joss Whedon about his upcoming internet, musical, superhero series, Dr Horrible's Sing-A-Long Blog coming to a website near you next week. The creator of Buffy and the Buffy musical episode, "Once More, With Feeling," Whedon already has a classic Geek Musical under his belt as he tackles the world of new media and internet distribution, something you surely need superpowers to tame. Check out part 2 of our Whedon interview here.
Prodigeek - Tell me about Dr. Horrible.
Joss Whedon - Well, I can tell you it's the story of Dr. Horible, a low-rent super-villain trying to make his own way in the world, being evil, defeat his nemesis, Captain Hammer, who beats him up on a weekly basis, and work up the courage to talk to the prettiest girl walking around. It basically follows his tavails. It's about 40 minutes, in three acts, and was designed to be just your typical internet, superhero musical.
Prodigeek - What defines the typical internet, superhero musical?
Whedon - I don't know, I've never seen one. It's supposed to define the typical superhero musical by being the first one. We're getting it out before Spider-Man on Broadway. By the way, they are doing Spider-Man on Broadway, you know that, right?
Prodigeek - Yeah, with Julie Taymor and U2. Were there any discussion with them to bring Dr. Horrible to Broadway?
Whedon - There's been discussion amongst the writers, which are me, my brother Zak, my brother Jed, and Jed's fiancee, [Maurissa Tancharoen], because that's what we all want to do, all the time. But first we have to actually make it. That was hard enough, that was pretty daunting.
Prodigeek - Doing Dr. Horrible, you mean?
Whedon - It was completely independent. It was financed by me. So I'm the studio, very exciting. Really, it took a lot of love and a lot of favors so we could actually accomplish it. It was very ambitious, but it was wicked love. Luckily, people like Neil Patrick Harris and Nathan Fillion are extremely fun and game and don't mind the fact that we had no idea what we were doing and only had six days to do it in.
Prodigeek - How much footage did you end up filming?
Whedon - Not much more than we used, because we didn't have much time and I tend to know what I want. Shot it on DV and we had Ryan Green, Jack Green's son, lighting it [Editor's not: Both Jack and Ryan worked on Serenity with Whedon], so it looks a lot like film and it has a pretty traditional look. We tried to make it look professional and show people what you can do for a small amount of money, while, at the same time, always keeping in mind, when the chips were down, and we didn't have enough footage, this is an internet musical, and we just live with it. I can't recall every time where I forgot something, just something obvious.
Prodigeek - You were talking about wanting to write songs. You've obviously done the Buffy musical, contributed to Anythong Stewart Head's album, wrote the Firefly theme song. Where did this musical interest and this need to write songs come from?
Whedon - Well, I've always been a musical fanatic, in terms of loving musical soundtracks. But I never learned how to play an instrument or learned how to sing. But it's always been... my father wrote lyrics for musicals and so did his father, before becoming television writers. Our whole family grew up on a diet of Sondheim and 70's rock. So that's sort of what you'll hear as a template. Jed actually fronted a couple of bands. He can actually play many instruments and he scored some independent movies and video games, so he has the whole orchestrating thing. He'd write some of the songs, I'd write some of the songs, and he'd make them sound like they were all one piece. But yeah, writing a song is a glorious feeling because then somebody can sing it, which is the prettiest thing in the world. But it's also so compact. You can have a whole journey and you don't have to write 120 pages and wait for a studio to sign off in it, develop it, and ruin it. It's like letting off steam.
Prodigeek - Your work's always been geared towards fantasy and sci-fi. Is that a coincidence or is that where you wanted to be?
Whedon - It's never "This will work with this!" I love what I love. They seem to go together. Dr. Horrible seems like a no-brainer for me because superheros are already one step removed from people. So it's easier for people to watch a superhero movie, epsecially if they're singing, that it is for them to watch people singing and accept that it's going on.
People love musicals. All people love musicals. Most of them don't know it or can't admit it. The trick on Buffy was nobody on Buffy wanted to be in a musical. They were forced to sing. Once you had that, the audience could accept it. The audicence had the same feeling, "Why is Buffy singing? Oh wait, that's pretty." And they were bigger than life. It is a bigger than life world, and there are superpowers and heroes and villains.
Prodigeek - How would you describe the musical tone of the series?
Whedon - When I said a combination of Sondheim and 70's rock, I actually wasn't totally kidding. The influences would probably be Sondheim and Neil Young. Jed is enormously talented and probably has a slightly wider pallet than I do. His stuff is very beautiful and poppy and he made mine sound similar. We went for a sound that was modern, engaging, and poppy, not so poppy that it sounded cheesy, but at the same time, when Captain Hammer sings, it sounds cheesy. We didn't want to do a pastiche, where every song was a different kind of genre, the way Buffy was. We wanted songs that sounded nice, that were melodic, a little challenging, but easy to get into with lyrics that worked like a musical. We wanted them to progress. The thing about pop is that it's about repetition. So if you take the sound of one and the lyrical structure of the other, you basically get what we got.
Progigeek - You were talking about Sondheim and Neil Young, what big musicals have really shaped your ideas?
Whedon - I can't choose one. They are the books of the bible for me. I grew up memorizing them one by one as they came out. They all had an enormous influence on me. The influence is so pervasive. I'm never gonna come close to what [Sondheim] does, nor do I try, but I really just try to structure things - the way he structures things influences me.
Prodigeek - Any songs from Dr. Horrible that you think will be breakaway pop hits?
Whedon - I didn't really think about it. What's lovely is that when people watch it, everybody responds to a different number. They're all written to further the story, which doesn't really help a breakaway pop hit. If I had to choose one, I might choose "Penny's Song". She has a ballad that's so pretty. I think that might work.
Prodigeek - What are your favorite lyrics for the show so far?
Whedon - Oh, I don't want to give them away. They're mainly my favorite lyrics that I've ever written. They come in a Captain Hammer song. I wrote one verse that came together, very beautifully. It's so much better to hear Nathan say it than me, so I'm just gonna have you watch for Captain Hammer's inspirational song in Act 3
Prodigeek - You say you can't sing, what part do you sing, if you ever try?
Whedon - I sing them all, and my wife is very kind about that.
Prodigeek Interview: Joss Whedon on Dr. Horrible's Sing-A-Long Blog part 2
July 8th, 2008
Now the second of Geek Musical Week on Prodigeek, I continue my interview with Buffy creator Joss Whedon and his upcoming internet, musical, superhero series, Dr Horrible's Sing-A-Long Blog, appearing next week beginning on July 15th on their official site.
Prodigeek - How did you kind of come to this idea of an internet musical about a superhero?
Whedon - I had come up with the concept and the title originally as an audio podcast. I wanted to write a song. I was tired of not writing songs and I wanted a structure to write from. And I thought this guy would have a blog and sing about what's going on with him. It would be a fun thing to do. Then, during the strike, when everyone was looking to create internet content, I thought of it as a limited series. Then when I decided to do it myself, I thought of it as an even more limited series. It played itself out pretty simply. I brought writers in; we knew from the start exactly what we wanted to do. I had written the songs for it a while ago. The first song was called "My Freeze Ray". I played that for the other writers. We got sort of an idea of sound, and then we started breaking a story. We broke it into three acts, a mini-series event, and then hopefully to make it a downloadable commodity. In addition to creating something out of love of musicals and love of the fans, I also wanted to create somethong where we could make money doing our own thing, outside the system. I also want to, in a perfect dream world, pay my crew.
Prodigeek - You were talking before about distribution and web video. How are you handling the business side?
Whedon - Luckily I do have an agent, who is much smarter than I am. And taller. So we're basically going to people, talking about different methods of distribution, and getting their responses. We were always prepared to lose everything on this because we really did it out of love. But at the same time, the response has been very positive, so we figured that we might end up partnering with some company that can do internet distribution. We're gonna have a DVD, with the most extras, the best extras, ever on a DVD. So we're looking at different venues. But making the thing was so exhausting, trying to distribute it is a little exhilerating. I can't really say more, we're still working it out.
Prodigeek - What challenges have you found in trying to make an internet series?
Whedon - Every challenge that you find when you try and produce something. I'm very lucky because I've worked for a while and I've got a lot of people that I can turn to and say "are you interested in this?" Everything from props, to sound, to producers. And if I didn't know people, Zak, Jed, and Maurissa knew people. We all had people we could go to and say "this is a labor of love, please come labor with us." So many supremely talented people said yes, we kind of got intimidated. We said, "wait, now it has to be good, we're freaking out!" But even with all that good will, it's really really complicated. But a lot of people in the industry, when they aren't busy with paying jobs, are making student films. They just want to do work because they love work. That's just part of the ethos of this town that a lot of people probably don't know about. But yeah, I'm a very very very old, so I've worked with a lot of people.
Prodigeek - You were kind of alluding to this, was the writers' strike, internet issues and funding, did those influence how you were going to distribute Dr. Horrible?
Whedon - It was a ig influence in how I wanted to pursue this and how I wanted to roll it out, showing it act by act over a course of a week. But as far as distribution beyond that, we have been looking at some possibilities that include some big companies. We want as many people as possible to be able to find it.
The strike was definitely a big influence. It left me with some free time, not as much as I'd hoped, and in fact by the time we got this ready to go, the strike ended. I was suddenly preparing "Dollhouse", Neil was suddenly back on "How I Met Your Mother", Nathan was back on "Desperate Housewives", everybody was working. But we still managed to find a window to film it in.
Another influence, the other writers, they had been doing internet shorts, which I really admired. That's what made me think "we should get together, really work together." We thought "let's try this, it'll be fun. Or it'll destroy our family." It actually turned out to be the former. And the The Guild, it's [a web series] about an online roleplaying group, that was a big influence in knowing that it can be done.
Prodigeek - You were talking about working with your brothers. What's next?
Whedon - Jed and Maurissa are on Dollhouse, Zak is working on Fringe.
Prodigeek - Did that sort of spin out of this project?
Whedon - It absolutely came out of Dr. Horrible. Zak's always been the kind of guy that wants to make his own way, but Jed and Maurissa, I didn't even realize they were writing as a team until we did Dr. Horrible and I really really liked the experience. They still had to come in and pitch for Dollhouse, because it's very different. But Dr. Horrible caused a lot of good fallout.
Prodigeek - So it kept the family together. That's good!
Whedon - Yeah, and we were about to go to war, brother against brother, blue against gray.
