Fred Topel over at About.com had an entertaining sit-down with writer / producer / director / nutcase Joss Whedon, and together the pair chatted mainly about "Serenity," but digressed into bursts about "Veronica Mars" and "Wonder Woman," too.

Mr. Whedon on...

...movie marketing: "This is really a story movie as opposed to a concept movie. And I know that makes it difficult to sell, so the idea that everybody knows everything means that people get to get inside the process and find out the one thing that’s going to be able to sell this movie which is the fact that I think it’s good."

..."Star Wars" influences: "And the idea behind Serenity in the first place really did have to do with the idea of the Millennium Falcon as a real concept. What if you were that guy, forget the aliens and the robots and the force. What if you just had a crappy little spaceship and you had to make a living and you didn’t really care how? How hard would your life be? That to me, the reality of that fantasy is what makes it so fascinating and ultimately that’s the benchmark of everything I do. It’s finding the reality behind the fantasy no matter how absurd the fantasy may be."

...comparisons between "Serenity" and "Buffy the Vampire Slayer": "I have to think about them as totally separate because they have different sensibilities and they have different sets of rules. It’s very important that Serenity be grounded. I had to go into outer space to come back down to earth but Buffy was a fantasy, a metaphor for rites of passage of our lives and Serenity is something else."

Plus, over at Dark Horizons there's a bit more Whedon-droppings in regards to "Wonder Woman."

Regarding the "Whedon-esque" dialogue: ""Absolutely. Wonder Woman's perspective is very serious. But that's what's so funny about her. She doesn't understand the world...She's not a wisecracker. But at the same time, she's not going to miss an opportunity... Usually, people I write are very, very down to earth and she's the opposite. She's somebody who is supposed to be Wonder Woman and spend her life being Wonder Woman but then she's still as vulnerable and as new at it as anybody else, but she's the opposite of every character I've ever written"."

For a lot more from Wonder Whedon, be sure to check out the interviews over at About.com and DarkHorizons.net.