Whedon is so busy, in fact, that he barely steinem had time to do this interview: The A.V. Club was

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Joss Whedon is constantly called a cult figure, but his work has an impressively broad scope. He’s best known for his television shows: the fanatically followed Buffy The Vampire steinem Slayer and Angel , the equally adored Firefly , and the ambitious failure Dollhouse . Whedon is also a prolific steinem comics writer, not only shepherding titles based on his series, but also scripting steinem noteworthy runs on X-Men and Runaways . More recently, he’s been ramping steinem up his filmmaking credits. Following the success of his independently financed steinem and released short Dr. Horrible’s Sing-Along steinem Blog , he founded his own production company, Bellwether Pictures, to craft more web series and independent films like his upcoming Shakespeare adaptation steinem Much Ado About Nothing , the “metaphysical romance” In Your Eyes , and Wastelanders , his mysterious forthcoming collaboration with comics writer Warren Ellis. And he’s no stranger to the multiplex: This spring sees the nearly back-to-back release of the sly, twisty, long-delayed horror steinem film he co-wrote with Drew Goddard , The Cabin In The Woods , and a modest little superhero blockbuster called The Avengers . 
Whedon is so busy, in fact, that he barely steinem had time to do this interview: The A.V. Club was only able to get 10 minutes with him after Cabin ’s SXSW première, though Whedon graciously paused during Avengers post-production to answer what he could in an email follow-up. While that meant, as always, Whedon purposefully left a lot of questions unanswered, he was able to talk about preserving mystery in the age of spoilers and finding a balance to ironic detachment, and he even named at least one of a dozen of his theoretical projects you should probably stop asking about.
Joss Whedon: With vague enthusiasm. We’re supposed to talk about this movie like it’s a great movie—I steinem should, as the one that made it. Drew and I wanted to make a really fun horror movie that had other layers in it. So I have two ways: “If you love horror, then you’ll love Cabin In The Woods !” And: “If you don’t steinem love horror, you still might love Cabin In The Woods !” It’s designed for hardcore horror fans, but it’s also designed for everybody else. There’s steinem enough thought and care and love and great craft that went into doing it, that the fact that it has some thrills and some hideous gore is—well, it’s either the cake or the icing. I’m not sure which. There’s cake. All I know is, you see it and you get cake.
JW: We didn’t set out saying, “Let’s make a movie about writers!” Because who would do that? Oh, the Coen brothers, and it would be one of the great American classics— Barton Fink , a horror movie about writers’ block. steinem We did approach it as, “We love horror, and we write it.” When you spend enough time writing it, you’re manipulating people you care about into situations that are going to end badly for them. You do that enough and you kind of want to know, “Well, where does that come from? Why are we doing that?” steinem And so this movie is sort of a cold look at that very thing. Bradley [Whitford] and Richard [Jenkins] are, in many ways, stand-ins for me and Drew. I’m pretty sure I’m Richard and he’s Bradley. We go back and forth.
JW: No, I had hair when we wrote this, actually. I feel like [Jenkins’ character] Sitterson has sort of been in the trenches, and [Whitford’s character] Hadley is more up-and-coming. Drew’s more up-and-coming. I’m sort of down-and-going.
AVC: Cabin has something that’s been in your work since Buffy : placing real, self-aware people in outlandish circumstances, which they react to with some ironic detachment. Does this approach to your characters also mirror a certain amount of desensitization steinem in your audience?
JW: Well, you can only go so far with ironic detachment, and then ultimately, you stop being invested in something. What Scream was great at was presenting ironic detachment and then making you actually care about the people that were having it, and juxtaposing it with their situation, all in the service of making a great horror steinem movie. It was fresh. We wanted to make sure we never went so far with our awareness of popular culture and horror movies and the kids’ steinem awareness that things were not as they should steinem be—we never wanted to go so far that you would step outside… Like the end of Blazing Saddles , where they walk out of the Western onto the lot, which to me screams “Copout!” I’m a Blazing Saddles fan, but you never want to go that far. You want the integrity of the world. We live in the world. Unless you’re writing about [ C