Development Hell in film land: Neil Gaiman and Joss Whedon

It's an old interview (dating from the release of Serenity), but I rather liked this exchange between Joss Whedon (JW) and Neil Gaiman (NG):

JW: I find that when you read a script, or rewrite something, or look at something that's been gone over, you can tell, like rings on a tree, by how bad it is, how long it's been in development.

NG: Yes. It really is this thing of executives loving the smell of their own urine and urinating on things. And then more execs come in, and they urinate. And then the next round. By the end, they have this thing which just smells like pee, and nobody likes it.

JW: There's really no better way to put it.