Joss Whedon said this on the commentary to the pilot episode of Firefly.
And he was being facetiously snarky. It's what Whedon does. And if you think Whedon and Minear don't also make shit up as they go, you're deluding yourself. Their outlines for future seasons were just as nebulous as Lucas' were.
Trying to supplant Lucas with Whedon seems to be the new Fanboy Funtime Activity, and it's not sticking. And I say that as someone who thought Serenity was one of the best movies this year. The space battle in Serenity was BETTER than Revenge of the Sith's. But Whedon's got plenty of his own creative fuckups on his resume. Fuckups that he wouldn't listen to other people on. The difference between Whedon and Lucas is that Lucas actually takes ownership over those, acknowledges that people don't like them and says "Well, it's what I wanted to do."
Whedon, on the other hand, blames EVERYONE ELSE BUT HIMSELF instead. "Alien Resurrection" failed because of the director, they mangled his script (no they didn't.) Halle Berry's crap lines in X-Men weren't his fault, they were Halle Berry's for delivering them poorly (no, it was a crap line.) Firefly failed because Fox didn't know how to handle it (They knew the ratings were dropping every show and even at their best they were barely reaching a 3) Lucas' first work was THX 1138. Whedon's was assistant to the head writer on Roseanne. C'mon.
I love Firefly, I own it, and I can't wait to own Serenity, but trying to prop up Whedon as "The New Lucas" when Whedon's got just as many black marks against him (And nowhere NEAR as many successes--Angel is no Indiana Jones) is pretty thin, and the remark we're jumping from was a smartass half-joke in the first place. I don't think you're actually learning anything about the creative process, X1, I think you're just jumping from one writer/director to another to shower your fandom on, that's all. Nothing's actually changing. And the instant Whedon does something you don't like with Firefly/Serenity, you'll say the exact same things you just said about Lucas
And I've talked about it before, but the perception that McCallum was always this big yes-man seems to have been created, wholecloth, by the fans, and looking at the behind the scenes stuff--I don't see why that is. McCallum is a great promoter, but you see him behind the scenes on Episode I and he's worried a lot. you see him after that first cut and he's depressed as shit. You read the making of Episode III, all he's doing is GOING CRAZY trying to get George to focus and make the story better.