JOSS WHEDON wasn't looking to make a political statement. He just wanted to make a movie. In Los Angeles. Because he lives in Los Angeles.
But by filming his sci-fi feature film debut, "Serenity," in town, he found himself something of a local hero, one of a growing number of people who are fighting to keep Hollywood in Hollywood. Essentially it required deconstructing every part of the process -- casting, crew, locations, lighting, wardrobe, props, production design, technology, special effects -- to find efficiencies that would make a $39-million movie look and feel like $100 million.
Two years ago, the writer-director of "Buffy the Vampire Slayer" and its successful spinoff "Angel" watched his newest show, a futuristic western called "Firefly," get pulled from Fox midseason. A silent howl of protest went up from cyberspace, followed by the clatter of online petitioning. Although it wasn't enough to revive the show, it did convince Whedon that the feature-length movie he had been writing as an accompaniment to the series still had an audience.
It just didn't have a green light.
Universal Pictures had acquired the rights, but while executives liked the premise and loved Whedon, they were not so fond of the numbers. Set in space and on planets colonized in a wide variety of ways, "Serenity" had all the trappings of a $100-million-plus project. That, they told Whedon, was just too much.
Whedon pushed back. If Universal let him have his way, he promised he could shoot the film -- which just opened to great reviews and good business -- for less than half that. And not by running off to Toronto or Bulgaria.
"Joss was adamant from the very start," says James Brubaker, president of physical production for Universal. "He was so eager to show that you could make a movie in L.A., we never thought of going anywhere else."
"My reasons were completely personal," Whedon says. "My wife is an architect; I have two kids under 3. There may be a time when I am willing to uproot them, but this is not it."
Whedon put together a cast and crew equally driven to buck conventional wisdom, which says it is no longer possible to make a decent-size film in Los Angeles, in part because of the cost of local talent. Producers and studios often bemoan the price of unionized workers.
"It takes an act of Congress to get a film of any size made in Los Angeles," said veteran cinematographer Jack Green ("Unforgiven," "Girl, Interrupted"). "Studios think they save so much money going abroad. Which I don't think they do, but that's just my opinion."
