Thank You Joss Project

It literally happened in minutes. One minute I was a sceptic, a non-believer, ‘Buffy the Vampire Slayer’, what kind of a stupid programme is this?’ The next minute it was ‘Oh my god when is this on again!’ It was that simple. I was hooked. The episode was ‘Surprise’.

The next day I had the first season of Buffy on VHS and I devoured Jossy goodness wherever I could get it, TV, books, the Interweb and conventions. Although I was fortunate enough to get to meet many of my new favourite actors my hero, Joss, always managed to evade me.

What struck me most was the amazing community that had built up around Joss’ work. Whether on interweb forums or at conventions, everyone was made to feel welcome, no matter who or what they were. I made some lifelong friends just by sharing the love of a TV programme. And then came the most amazing community of all, the Browncoats.

I have never felt so at home amongst a group of strangers as I have when amongst Browncoats. Each and every one you meet, and this includes the actors, feel like friends from the moment you meet them. This is a wonderful and unique community and I wanted to share it.

So when the Edinburgh Film Festival announced they would be hosting the World Premiere of Serenity and that none other than the person that started all this, Joss Whedon, would be there I knew I had to go, and I knew I had to say thank you. What better way to say thank you than to let all my new friends do it for me. The Thank You Joss Project was born.

A web page was set up, pages were printed and the messages and artwork came rolling in from all over the world. Some signed the book at the Browncoat Events Fan Table and Shindig in Birmingham and others left messages via the internet.

Messages came from all over the world, some just a simple thank you, others a heart-warming tale of how the shows had helped and even changed people’s lives. One group in Israel, even took the time to collate all their messages and send them to me as a whole. My inbox was very soon groaning under the pressure.

The World Premiere loomed closer and the great day of printing was upon me. It took me two days straight to get everything printed out and prettied up ready to go in my folder, but finally it was ready and I suddenly realised that there was no guarantee of me actually getting it to Joss. I decided to ring UIP and see if they could arrange something for me. I was hoping for maybe 30 seconds to say hi and handover the book, what UIP came up with was beyond my wildest dreams.

On the day of the World Premiere I travelled up to Scotland and presented myself and my book at UIP’s makeshift offices in the Balmoral hotel. Here I met not only Joss, but the whole of the cast that were attending the Premiere. I got, not 30 seconds, but a good 5 minutes speaking with my hero. Of course, everything that I ever wanted to say went straight out of my head, and what came out of my mouth was stuttering, rambling, nonsense. But I did what I came to do and handed over the project full of thanks put in much better words than I could ever have said.

So I would like to thank everyone for leaving messages and artwork, UIP for making it possible for me to pass those messages on, and Joss for well, everything.

-- Cider 25/11/05

A sample of the messages and artwork will be availble shortly on this site, a PDF file of the whole project is available, however it is a very large file. If you would like a copy please email me at cider@whedonsworld.co.uk