All language subtitles for Dollhouse S01EX3 Making Dollhouse_EN

JOSS WHEDON: Now,
I'm looking at the camera.

I'm pretending
you didn't ask the question, right?

Okay. Hi, I'm Joss Whedon.
It's day one.

This is the very... The very beginning
of shooting of Dollhouse.

They're just lighting for the first shot.
We've rehearsed it with the actors.

We're way behind,
and I have no idea what I'm doing.

Completely out of control.
So, I think that's a good start.

What am I most excited about?

Just seeing the chemistry
between everybody for the first time.

It's gonna be fun.

And getting to work with
what is largely a whole new bunch for me,

and seeing how
they bounce off each other.

PAUL: I'm sorry.
Do you want a drink or something?

I got a white wine in the fridge.

PENIKETT: Was it right when I said,
"I got a white wine in the fridge"?

I think it was, right?

"I've got a white wine in the fridge."

- You go again.
- All right.

WHEDON: Mentally, I was pretty depressed.

I was working on movies and kind of
trying to get stuff off the ground,

and Eliza made her Fox deal to do a show,

and bribed me with lunch
to come out and talk.

In the course of explaining to her

what kind of show
I thought she should do,

I figured out exactly what show I thought
she should do and what it was called.

MAN 1: Rolling now. Rolling.

MAN 2: And action.

Where did you hear about Wallhouse?

MAN 1: Cut.
MAN 2: Cut.

(PENIKETT SPEAKING)

ELIZA DUSHKU: It's evolved for sure,
but that was sort of the basis.

A woman being pulled
in all these different directions,

being forced to be
all these different people every day,

but her self-awareness and her realizing,
"This is actually who I am."

It also came out of stuff that
I had been thinking about beforehand,

about the way we use avatars,

the way we imprint our ideas on people,

and the way we sort of
form our own identities

and manipulate our idea of
how we interact with the world online.

A week later, I pitched it to Fox,
and they said "Well, let's just order it."

And the whole thing happened
in under two weeks.

And then the writers' strike
happened three days later,

so that was a little bit of a hiccup.

There have been a couple of hiccups
since then.

TIM MINEAR: (READING) "Dollhouse.

"Underwater, a woman's body cuts
into the water from above,

"the camera moving along with her
as she takes a lap.

"This is Echo.

"She is beautiful and completely focused.

"Her face betrays nothing but calm
as she gracefully pulls herself along."

WHEDON: The casting process
was remarkably easy,

and it went easily
because everybody agreed.

Joss has like a sixth sense.
And he has great instincts, and so...

When it came to casting,
I was really pleased.

I mean, beyond pleased.

WHEDON: You know,
obviously we already had Eliza.

Do you trust me?

WHEDON: Harry was probably
the last person we cast,

and we put up a lot of good actors
against Eliza,

but she's got so much power.
The thing about Harry is,

he's so steady, he's like a black hole.
She's all energy and he just sucks it up.

What I do know about Boyd Langton
is that

at one point he was a police officer.

There is an affinity with Echo.
He, who was supposed to take care of her,

winds up needing her help.

- ECHO: We have to stop.
- No.

You got shot with a freaking arrow.

WHEDON: Once we got Olivia,
which was a huge coup.

Joss has a reputation for
and a huge interest in using good actors,

and that makes my job a lot easier,

'cause I can bounce off
other people's talent.

WHEDON: You know, I've had
casting processes that were just agony,

and you do listen to a lot of people
read your words and go,

"I can't write. This won't work.
This show is bad."

And then Fran Kranz comes in,
and you're like, "No, wait, I'm good."

Okay, we're shooting
the episode "Echoes."

Topher and Adelle,
who seem to be the only people

who are completely isolated from it,

we think they're safe back here,
but because they have a sample of it,

they become infected.

This is really just an opportunity
for us to have

a lot of fun with two actors,
who usually have to do one thing,

getting to do something very else.

Particularly Adelle, who doesn't usually
get to bounce on a trampoline.

It's sort of out of character.

But anyone else who comes in contact
with the drug is susceptible.

Say hi for me.

WHEDON: Tahmoh was the only guy that
I really wanted to play Paul Ballard.

So in the next scene,
I'm gonna be disarmed,

and she's gonna proceed to break my arm

and then kick the crap out of me
on the ground.

You know, I've been a fan
since the first episode of Battlestar.

And I just felt like he is this rock solid guy.

(GRUNTS)

(LAUGHING)

And I can take that guy and pick him apart.

Ah, you know you're a little sweet on me.

(GROANING)

Ridiculous, yes.

WHEDON: Reed Diamond
was a tremendous find.

He is really versatile and really fun
and is great to be around,

and that character became very necessary

because the thriller aspects of the show
got hyped up.

Our trouble ends here.

Miracle was another one of those
situations where we went from going,

"We will never find this character" to, "Oh!"

It was made very clear to me,
when I was hired for this show,

that I was hired for who I am.

He was very straight with me,
and said that you're beautiful

and sexy and I think a lot of men
like women looking the way that you look

and there aren't enough of you
on television and that's why you're here.

So easy. I feel like I just got here.

WHEDON: Dichen was
the most convincingly tough,

upper class,
like, who could do the accents.

What up, Los Angeles?

I went in to test, and then I got the call,
and I think I just screamed

very loudly into the phone.

No. No.

- Hi.
- I'm a fan of him.

WHEDON: And we had Enver.
The thing that got Enver the part was

him as an Active, the innocence,
those big old eyes.

MAN: Guys, ready, and kicking,
and a little scream.

(SCREAMING)

MAN: Something like that.

This is what happens when you're sleeping

and two very large men
fall on you through glass.

Wow!

Dr. Saunders was a character I created
after I had already sold the show.

I'm compiling a report.

WHEDON: Amy Acker was not
the first person that I was thinking of,

but she just tucked the part under her arm
and walked away.

Joss ultimately is master of the universe,

but it's fun because
you're there at the beginning.

Everyone is involved in making the show.

WHEDON: Liz and Sarah
were the first people

that I wanted to run the show with me.

Tim was wrapping something else up,
Tim Minear.

(WHOOPING)

It was just like, the next thing you do
should be this.

Steve DeKnight and Jane Espenson,
two of my biggest brains,

and Steve's a shooter, too,
which is exciting.

But then we got to the baby writers,
and Andrew Chambliss

came off of, I guess, Bionic Woman,

and Tracy Bellomo had been
a writer's assistant on Angel,

and Jed and Maurissa... It's family.

So, we had two meetings.
The first was the family meeting,

where we said, "Let's really look at this."

MAURISSA TANCHAROEN:
I mean, we were terrified and nervous

when we submitted our samples and...

Met with Liz and Sarah,

- who were terrifying.
- It was very official.

It was very official.

What if I have to fire you?

It's day 97.

Most of us are dead,
or frozen solid, or possessed by aliens.

The only time I panicked was...

Every morning during production.

We were supposed to shoot the imprint
room with the fancy moving chair.

The chair ain't moving so fancy,
so we're moving on to a different scene.

The chair. God, God, help me.

WHEDON: The chair we had, it was
fairly silly-Iooking and didn't work.

The actors would be ready, but the chair
needed 15 minutes to warm up.

Hello, Echo, how are you feeling?

So that it could go like this.

Down here, you see, we have some...
We have the beginning of the Actives.

These are rudely referred to as dolls,
but we call them Actives.

A lot of the terminology
you struggle to come to.

Engagements, Actives, you know,
the imprinting technology and the wedge.

But then we found out that
that's a fairly dangerous term,

when somebody said,
"Well, was he wiped clean

"or was there
something stuck in his wedge?"

Welcome to total incompetence theater.

Okay, so what we're dealing with today
is that we have a mini-crisis.

The hospital scene between
Danica and Echo

kind of confounded the network a little bit.

"Why are we starting in a hospital?
It's kind of a talky scene.

"We're talking about it.
We're not seeing it. "

Suddenly occurred to me,
"I made a horrible mistake."

WHEDON: The original pilot opened with
a montage of Echo being different people.

Coaching somebody
who was at a crossroads in her life.

- You don't know me.
- I am you, dumb ass.

WHEDON: In one version,
she was in a hospital.

- He'll kill me.
- Not if you kill you first.

And I was like, "No, they don't like that."

We shoot another version
where she's with this guy

who's about to pimp her out.

You don't think I look good anymore?
I think I look good.

Then it became a wealthy socialite girl
who was partying too much.

- I'm Hayden.
- I'm Max.

WHEDON: By the time
I had put that one together,

it was clear to me
what the network wanted.

What if I'm not worth saving?

When I pitched it, the idea was that
it could be various relationship-oriented

and go on these engagements
that were very mellow and strange,

and sort of contemplative.

Now, obviously, Fox,
slightly different vision.

"Raise the stakes, raise the stakes,
raise the stakes."

Here we go. Effects go hot.

Rolling now.

WHEDON: Rather than try
and re-cut the entire thing,

I just decided to make another one,
so to make a prequel.

Take a step back.

MAN: Action.

Give me my daughter!

(GUN FIRES)

What people don't understand
about killing the first pilot is that,

since the time of the Aztecs,
the first pilot has always been killed.

The heart ripped out of it,
and it gets thrown into a volcano.

Welcome, everybody, to our very first
episode read-through, ever.

(ALL LAUGHING)

My memory's wiped.

MAN: That's the story
and we're sticking to it.

So, is the stuff that we shot
in the other pilot, it doesn't exist?

Is that going to be used or usable?
Is that...

Most of it is going bye-bye.

WILLIAMS: We had a shaky few weeks,
and I won't tell you that personally

and professionally, that's terrifying.

Having a three-week hiatus,
when you don't really know

what the word "hiatus" means
in a TV context, it was scary.

We didn't know what was gonna happen,

and people don't tend to
tell actors the bad news.

Joss seemed very much
in the driver's seat on the whole thing.

He got us all together and he's like,
"This is definitely my decision.

"This is something I wanna do."
Joss knows what's going on.

JED: I think that initially
Joss had much more of a sense

that it was gonna be...
This week it's an action engagement,

this is a heartfelt thing,
this is a comedy bit.

WHEDON: The first episode that I wrote
really introduced the world,

but not the structure of the show

in terms of every week,
she's somebody different,

then they go on an engagement
to perform a certain duty.

So he'll come at you, 'cause then he's like,

"Oh, you're the best. What happened
to you?" And he's gonna be grilling you.

He's gonna be up in your grill. Grilling.
'Cause he'll be...

- Grill... Yeah.
- Grillich. Grillorama.

ANDREW CHAMBLISS: The approach
on the second pilot was much more

just a typical engagement for Echo.

So, it's kind of holding back on
a lot of the mythology.

With the original pilot,
that was Paul meeting Caroline.

So, there's something cool to
holding off on that,

because then when Paul does meet Echo,
there's much more anticipation for that.

(GRUNTS)

I'm counting on it.

It's a blessing and a curse
when you're given the green light

to just go ahead with something.

That means that what they're saying is,
you don't have to worry about

the normal hoops that you would have
to jump through for development.

You're just gonna go
straight into production.

But the truth is, those hoops are gonna
exist, just further down the road.

DUSHKU: There have been some hurdles,
either crash through them,

or hopped over them,
or just got around them.

MAN: Background!

Ready and... Camera.

WHEDON: Episode six, "Man on the Street,"
was the first time

where we really took license
to do an episode about the Dollhouse,

as opposed to
just a straight-up engagement.

It feels like this really is the show,

where we've got a paradigm
that really pleases us,

really pleases the network,
and takes everything about the Dollhouse

kind of to another level.

WHEDON: It was the first one I felt,
I understood how I could make the show

in the manner the network liked,

and also in the manner that I liked.

And I wrote it faster than
anything I've ever written.

I would just wander out and there's
a new script and it's phenomenal.

And I get to do amazing stuff.
I get home and tear these scripts open.

You have a book.

I enjoy looking at it. Would you like to see?

We started turning on some stuff
that was more Dollhouse-centric.

(BUZZER)

MAN: Cameras. Action, please.

Ignorance, in this case, truly is bliss.

I don't think they are as ignorant
as they're supposed to be.

I know. We're working on it.

It confirmed the things that
we all kind of suspected would be

the stuff that we loved the most.

CRAFT: And the relationships
between Dr. Saunders and Adelle

and Boyd and Dominic and Topher,

like the behind the scenes
of the Dollhouse.

WHEDON: This has been
a different experience

than I've ever had on a first-year show.

Sometimes it was grueling, because
we were trying to redefine the show,

while we were trying to shoot it,

and we managed not to
shoot a single episode in order.

I think Tahmoh kind of got the worst of it.

So where I'm like, "Loomis, I got a name
for you," in the bar when I see Lubov?

Oh, that's still in,
but we didn't see her then.

- Cool.
- But we did see her in episode two,

now she's out.

'Cause it was slowing things down,
so now she's back in five.

So, the one we're shooting next,
which comes before this,

so you will actually...

- Got it.
- It's a little bit... Yeah, I know, we're like...

Considering we shot
so many things out of order,

it took a while for me to actually lose...

The way I had it sorted out in my head
in terms of when I met people,

those relationships, and it was
hard for me to get it straight.

- MAN: Action.
- He's got a gun!

You have to go now. He'll live.
You'll be blamed.

But the engagement is complete.
They'll never know I spoke to you.

The original pilot, he was shot.

And then he wasn't shot,
and then we did shoot him,

because we had some footage
of him that we really liked.

Some of the stuff that they salvaged
from the original pilot,

I mean, they were using in
the fourth or fifth episode.

WHEDON: The one thing that
we hadn't counted on, at first,

was how much we were going
to compromise Tahmoh's character.

MAN: A-mark.

His relationship with Mellie, you know,
just got uglier and weirder and cooler.

The Dollhouse is way bigger
than I ever thought it was.

- I think it's underground.
- Didn't we know that?

WHEDON: We had always
intended for him to end up

in this devil's bargain
by the end of the season.

I don't know where it's gonna end.

NOVEMBER: When you find the Dollhouse,
we shut it down.

But we hadn't realized that
the way we were gonna do that

was by breaking him down
from the inside.

Too much?

Too fast? Do I smell that bad?

I have a message for you
from inside the Dollhouse.

- That's not funny.
- My name is November.

Don't do this.

It's heart-wrenching and it's so sincere
and it's so genuine and it's so sweet,

and you're just rooting for them, and
as soon as you find out she's a doll,

it's just so devastating.

The inevitable conflict is between
the standalone and the mythology.

I don't like a show that's just up
in its mythology so that you're just like,

"What's around this corner?
What's around that corner?

"What's in this hatch? What's going on?"
Like, "Let's make it up as we go."

But at the same time,
I do know that ultimately

the people we're gonna be
most invested in

are the people we see every week.

That was so cool.

MINEAR: Once we started
getting into the relationships,

started getting into
the mythology of the series,

that's when it became, you know,
not only interesting for us,

but I think for the fans.

I could, if this guy wasn't a paranoid freak.

There's like a thrillion layers of passwords
on here. This isn't company stuff.

This is his own personal minefield.

- I need a new computer.
- Let's go.

WHEDON: The first person
I really conceived after Echo was Alpha.

I'm not kidding. No. I'm not fooling.

- He's not kidding.
- He's not kidding.

We're not bluffing. I'm bluffing,

- but the rest of us mean business.
- Yeah.

I knew I wanted to have somebody
who was just out there,

who represented the total chaos
that was possible

with what they were doing.

It's gonna be great!

WHEDON: As soon as I knew that
I wanted the character of Alpha,

somebody who had been imprinted
with several personalities,

I knew that I wanted Alan to play him.

Told me about the show,
and it was this great show,

and I was like, "Cool, cool, cool,"

and then there's this one role
and then he described the role to me,

and it was just so mind-blowing.
I was like, "Who's playing that?"

I mean, really suckered me in.
I'm like, "Who's playing that?"

WHEDON: I knew I could pull the switch
on the audience by introducing him

just as "funny sidekick guy."

Which he does beautifully,
and then turning it around.

TUD YK: Great thing about Alpha is,
is that he's many people in one,

and ultimately insane because of it.

I'm not fooling. He's not kidding. We're...

- Line.
- WOMAN: Not bluffing.

We're not bluffing.

(LAUGHING) I'm bluffing.

But the rest of us! We mean business.

WHEDON: If he goes south on you, you
know it's gonna be fascinating to watch.

MAN: Three, two, one... Slash!

Alpha's more of an idea.
Alpha's an idea of what happens

when you start to manipulate the human
personality and the human heart.

- How far to the new hole?
- Where's Laura?

- Butcher.
- She got torn?

She got printed. Almost took a bite
out of Iris before we noticed.

We had jumped an episode,
which is not uncommon with pilots,

but it's not looked for, so here's the studio,
and they need 13 episodes.

I was like, "You know what I can do,
is I can shoot you an episode

"for half what it costs."I'll shoot it on vid,

with a run-and-gun crew,
and it'll be a post-apocalyptic future...

(EX CLAIMS) I'm insane!

Where they discover the Dollhouse,
only it's kind of dusty and under-lit,

and we'll show hints of
what's gonna happen in the future.

And if the show dies the death,
then it's kind of a nice capper,

and if the show doesn't,
then it's a swell tease.

I believe I had them at
half the cost of a regular episode,

and they didn't hear the rest of it.

- This is Griff. Go, Mag.
- Northeast of Spring and Fifth.

Green room is open,
but the party is crashed.

FELICIA DA Y: It's a really cool part
because I'm in a post-apocalyptic,

sort of, society, and I'm dirty,
so, that's the fun part.

That's all there is to it, really.
It's about fake dirt.

I mean, not only does Joss Whedon create

believable worlds that are not
familiar to us, but are relatable,

he's able to use comedy and drama

in a way that I don't think
anybody else does.

I mean, when you see
something by Joss Whedon,

you know it's by Joss Whedon.

My hopes for the show, obviously, I'd like
to come back, I'd like to come back hard,

and figure out a lot more ways to engage.

I think the standalones could be
taken to another level.

There are things that we hinted at
that I don't know if we really examined.

I feel like we found some beautiful stuff.
I would love to just

come back and just keep
hitting and hitting and hitting.

Or at least swinging.

I look forward to next season,
but I also look back on this one

with a sense of completion.

And that's deliberate.
'Cause that's how I used to work.

And then, once, I didn't work that way,
and it made me go crazy.

And I decided not to go crazy anymore.

WHEDON: Fair enough?
INTERVIEWER: Yeah, thanks.

WHEDON: All right.