Joss Whedon soundbites back

I adore movies. Big summer action movies in particular, back when they were good. I want to make movies that you need to see again and again, like I did when I was a kid. The weekend Star Wars came out, I saw it three times, and the next Monday at school, the Tarzan club was disbanded and the Star Wars club was born."

I was very successful as a script doctor," he says. "I had written some movies that were getting made. But when I told people that I wanted to direct, nobody would even consider me. I basically used Buffy as film school, so I could have enough experience under my belt so that the next time I said 'I mean to direct', nobody would laugh."

I wrote movies every week, that's what I did. It was about finding that moment that is so good, so romantic, so heroic, so exciting - and I literally had producers telling me, 'You have too much visual information.' Because most television is radio with faces. But I kept pushing against it, so the show resonated, and felt bigger than it was.

The idea behind the show [Firefly] was to take nine people and say, 'Nine people look out into the blackness of space, and see nine different things.' But science fiction opens you up to every element of history that you want, because the future is just the past in a blender. So I could take anything from the human experience I've read about or felt or seen. Like, what is it like after a war? It doesn't matter which war or which country - what is it like for the people who lost?"

It's a little more timely than I'd hoped. The thing is, I do believe that when you try and force happiness on people, you find out that their version of happiness may not be yours.

People keep calling the Alliance 'the evil empire', and I'm like, 'Actually, it's not an evil empire, it's the most enlightened society in the galaxy - but they're making the mistake any big power makes, which is to assume that their version of enlightenment should be spread everywhere, and that they can justly govern people who are beyond their reach, or living on their own terms, be they somewhat strange or archaic or even barbaric.