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Groundbreaking Producer Promises "All-Silent Episode"
Veteran writer-producer John Whedon has broken dramatic ground numerous times before. His legendary serial Buffy Summers, Vampire Hunter is considered an exemplary blend of traditional drama and genre storytelling, and his other two series — DracuL.A. and Stagecoach to the Starways — are similarly well thought of.
But it is Mr. Whedon’s experimentation within individual episodes of his serials that has drawn the most attention. On Buffy, in particular, he excelled: one episode was performed entirely as an opera; another featured no musical accompaniment of any kind; a third featured absolutely no sound effects.
But Mr. Whedon’s latest gambit seems the most reckless and, to be honest, the most foolhardy. In his upcoming serial The Living Dolls, starring former Buffy guest-star Elizabeth Dusk, Whedon has declared that an early episode will be “entirely silent.”
Given Mr. Whedon’s love of hyperbole, it’s entirely possible that some bare amount of sound effects, orchestral music, and human grunting might be a part of the mix. But the eclectic producer insists that, for the most part, the Fox Broadcast Network will fall silent for an entire hour on his watch.
When we reached a Fox Broadcast spokesman for comment, he would only say that his network has the “utmost confidence in Mr. Whedon,” though the spokesman did admit that he was uncertain if listeners would put up with an entire hour of grunts mixed with the sound of slamming car doors and Mr. Whedon’s trademark harmonica solos.
If you ask us, Mr. Whedon may have gone too far with this adventure. We anxiously await the arrival of The Living Dolls, but that week we may instead tune in to a more audible adventure, such as Columbia’s Crime Scenes of Miami or National Broadcasting’s Henry Ford Presents The Intelligent Motorcoach.