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octoberdad's review
5.0
Being a fan of Joss Whedon, it's no surprise that I liked this book. Pascale does a great job of describing the situations, development and impact of Joss Whedon's work — not just the stuff he has become famous for, like Buffy the Vampire Slayer and The Avengers, but also things that are little known, such as his 1990s script doctoring work, or things that never came fully to fruition, such as his film Goners. Perhaps the most successful aspect of the way Pascale weaves Whedon's story is in showing how engaged and prolific he is. Although the chapters are split into somewhat discrete project-based units presented in chronological order, there is still a great sense of overlap, and messiness, to the order in which Joss took on those projects. For example, I never realized before that Nathan Fillion's appearance on Buffy and Gina Torres' and Adam Baldwin's appearances on Angel all occurred after Firefly was canceled.
If there's one significant criticism I have, it's that I wish there were more information about Whedon's movie In Your Eyes, which was released released in April this year as a digital-only rental. There are four references to the film throughout the book, which give minimal information about the film as it was produced by Bellwether Pictures (Joss and Kai Cole's production company, which also produced Much Ado About Nothing) and released online. Joss has stated that the film came "from an old script" he wrote, and the film's female lead, Zoe Kazan, has dated that script in or around 1992—the same year that the Buffy the Vampire Slayer movie came out. I can understand why Pascale wouldn't be able to write about the movie's impact (or lack thereof) upon its release, but even a sentence or two about the initial writing of the script in the early '90s would have been a nice bit of detail, and certainly such detail would be germane given the references to a number of other scripts which never were produced.
All in all, however, this biography will definitely appeal to anyone who has enjoyed Whedon's work, and likely to many who have not enjoyed his work, but who are interested in artistic process.
A more in-depth review is available here.
If there's one significant criticism I have, it's that I wish there were more information about Whedon's movie In Your Eyes, which was released released in April this year as a digital-only rental. There are four references to the film throughout the book, which give minimal information about the film as it was produced by Bellwether Pictures (Joss and Kai Cole's production company, which also produced Much Ado About Nothing) and released online. Joss has stated that the film came "from an old script" he wrote, and the film's female lead, Zoe Kazan, has dated that script in or around 1992—the same year that the Buffy the Vampire Slayer movie came out. I can understand why Pascale wouldn't be able to write about the movie's impact (or lack thereof) upon its release, but even a sentence or two about the initial writing of the script in the early '90s would have been a nice bit of detail, and certainly such detail would be germane given the references to a number of other scripts which never were produced.
All in all, however, this biography will definitely appeal to anyone who has enjoyed Whedon's work, and likely to many who have not enjoyed his work, but who are interested in artistic process.
A more in-depth review is available here.
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