There's an interview with Joss in this mpnth's Maxim about Dollhouse where he says "it was my idea to reshoot the pilot and reorder things", so at least that's on record.

That's what he always says when Fox is fucking him over. And after it's canceled he'll vent spleen.

there's no way I will believe it was his idea. If nothing else, the pilot just did not feel Joss-like. (don't ask me to explain how.)

Fox isn't fucking him over, though.

Well, he's vented spleen in a few of the Dollhouse interviews already - the Rolling Stone one is particularly brutal of FOX. It's not online, but a few choice quotes:

"It went well at first, then it went not so well. And the not-so-well is about them going 'You know, we don't really have room for these kinder, more contemplative stories'."

Regarding 'Ghost', he says "I knew Kevin Reilly would look at it and go 'You have to be fucking kidding me'".

Rolling Stone then say "Fed up the interface, Whedon shut down production of the show in September" and that "Fox didn't care about the feminist sub-text - it just wanted to crank up the volume". He told the network "I no longer know what you're going for".

But, yeah, I agree David.

Fox isn't fucking him over, though.

Totally. They're just trying to make it as accessible as possible.

Fox isn't fucking him over, though.

In the sense that he made a deal and they have the power and they can make him reshoot the pilot and they can schedule it on a crap night where it has no chance of finding an audience - that's true.

So I don't think it's a special case of fucking over so much as Fox's fucked up fuckery at work.

Some of FOX's antics have been hilarious from my point of view. When I put the upfronts trailer online for them, they didn't get music clearance, so I got stuck in the middle of a copyright war. They have spelt Joss's name wrong on official publicity material, they had to pull the music video they released for Dollhouse as they spelt the artists name wrong, they [20th] screened the wrong episode of Dollhouse accidentally to the international network buyers (Gray Hour, which nobody likes - none of the international networks picked up the show), they accidentally sent out the wrong episode (Gray Hour...) to some of the critics yadadadada.

Here's a scan of the Rolling Stone interview: [link]

Do we need super seekrit clearance.

I mentioned this article in Natter last week. It made me feel the foreboding even before I watched the show.

Well, how on tone the article is, questionable. It's certainly got a spin to it. And they say fan protests led to Fox greenlighting Serenity, so, ya know. But, yeah, it's not like Joss hasn't said anything negative about the experience pre-air.

There's another bit of publicity which slipped under the radar which is well worth reading - Joss answering Whedonesque's QuoterGal about the nature of both the Dollhouse publicity and the porn tone of the show: [link]