Joss Whedon (a third-generation screenwriter) spent three, presumably formative, years, attending (the super-posh) Winchester College in Hampshire, England where he took his ‘A’ levels. He received his degree in film studies from Wesleyan University, before moving to Los Angeles and getting a job as a staff writer on Roseanne (his first proper writing job). He began writing the script for the Buffy the Vampire Slayer movie during that time since, having written five scripts in the first half of the year he worked on the show, he found himself in a position where he was asked to write only one in the final six months. As a result he had a lot of free time on his hands and was able to devote much of his time to the Buffy screenplay.
After quitting Roseanne as a result of being underused he got a job on Parenthood (a spin-off from the movie of the same name) which ran for about 13 episodes. After the disappointment of the way the 1992 movie version of his Buffy script panned out, Whedon worked in various capacities on the scripts of Speed (1994), Waterworld (1995), and Toy Story (1995), before finally getting round to bringing the Buffster to the small screen. Joss’s shortlived TV show Firefly has been made into a movie called Serenity, which is due to be released in April 2005. He has written for the comic X-Men, of which he was a huge fan.
Whedon’s wit is, of course, well known and loved by fans of the show but his refreshing candour (refreshing for someone who works in L.A.) emerges in many of the interviews he has given. In an interview with The Onion AV Club for instance, he describes Donald Sutherland as ‘a prick’, claims the experience of working on Alien Resurrection (1997) was so frustrating that at one stage he “went and dented the bathroom stall with [his] puddy little fist”, and generally argues that as far as movies go he’s “had almost nothing but bad experiences”. In fact, in answer to the oft-asked question, “What’s the worst job you ever had?” Whedon claims he gives the answer, “I once was a writer in Hollywood”.
Joss is married to Kai Cole and has one son.