Whedon-mania comes to Toronto

Film Journal's spring interview with Avengers director Joss Whedon discussed his rabid fan base, stemming largely from the cult adoration of his TV series “Buffy the Vampire Slayer,” “Angel,” “Firefly” and “Dollhouse.” This writer got to witness Whedon-mania up close at the Toronto International Film
Festival premiere of his low-budget, black-and-white modern updating of Shakespeare’s Much Ado About Nothing. To say the audience at this screening was predisposed to like the film is a vast understatement.

Shooting in a mere 12 days at his own Santa Monica home (nice house!), Whedon cast primarily actors with whom he had previously worked on his TV series. Of the cast, the only ones familiar to me were Clark Gregg (who had a featured role in The Avengers), Reed Diamond (better known to me from “24”), Nathan Fillion (star of both “Firefly” and the non-Whedon “Castle”) and Fran Kranz from Whedon’s recent horror sendup The Cabin in the Woods. But aficionados in the audience could tell you that Amy Acker and Alexis Denisof, in the lead roles of bickering lovers-to-be Beatrice and Benedick, are veterans of “Angel,” “Dollhouse” and “Buffy.” For them, this Much Ado was like seeing the Whedon stock company do summer theatre.

Though the Shakespearean language and L.A. contemporary milieu of the movie can make an odd mix, the actors are all adept, and Whedon adds plenty of slapstick and small sight gags (not at all inappropriate in a classic farce) to make the medicine go down easy for the uninitiated. And Fillion, one of the most adored of the Whedon players, got explosive laughs as the malaprop-prone cop Dogberry. How well this homemade art-house project will go down with an audience who can’t tell Joss Whedon from J.J. Abrams is another question altogether, but Whedon deserves a few bouquets for taking such a left turn from Blockbuster World and preserving his private Shakespeare party on film.

The entire main cast paraded onto the stage to delirious cheers and applause after the screening, and each got to share one reflection on the making of the movie. (The most terrifying aspect for some was having to nail that Shakespeare dialogue in one or two takes.)

As for the black-and-white, Whedon said he always saw more darkness in the material than Kenneth Branagh did in his early ’90s version; for him, Much Ado is more like “romantic noir.” Budget limitations of costume and production design were also abetted by the lack of color. As Whedon noted, “Everything is elegant in black-and-white.”