Joss Whedon: The Genius Behind Buffy

by Havens, Candace

  Head was a series regular on the short-lived Fox series VR.5, and made several guest appearances on Highlander: The Series, NYPD Blue, and Spenser for Hire.

  When the role of Rupert Giles came along, he wasn’t sure what to think. Like many of his younger costars, Head was as surprised as anyone when Buffy took off. “I’ve worked for many years, and it is difficult to know in advance what will be a success,” says Head. “I knew we were working with a superb script and had a talented cast, but it is very much up to the audience to decide what will be a success.”

  Over the years, Head’s stalwart Giles stood by his slayer and helped her through the more difficult times. He’s been punched, kicked, and whacked unconscious countless times, but he says it’s all a part of the job.

  “In no way has my role on the show been as physical as Sarah’s, but there have been moments. There were times when I had to do certain things that meant being in good shape, but I’ve survived,” says Head.

  Fans were heartbroken when Giles left Buffy behind to return home to England. Head is still a recurring character, but he felt he had to step down and go back and live with his family in England.

  “The man has been away from home for more than six years and it was time for him to go back,” says Whedon. “Changes get made. The show evolves. It is a big hole. Anthony will be on the show on a recurring basis. We’ll be bringing him back a lot, because we love him. He left us when the kids were entering the grownup world. And, of course, they handle it just as badly as possible. But they don’t really need or don’t really know how to relate to a mentor figure. He was the grownup on the show. They’re now sort of becoming grownups.

  “At first I didn’t want him to step down, I didn’t want that void. But in a way it sort of works for the show. Buffy doesn’t need somebody to tell her what to do now. She needs to figure it out on her own. So now I want to feel that lack, because they’re going to feel it. They’re constantly going to be going ‘If Giles were here somebody else could explain this,’ or ‘we’d have a grown-up who knew what to do and we’re still new at this.’ And I want the audience to feel the same way the characters do; that’s always the mandate on the show. So no, we won’t be bringing in another watcher.”

  Originally he left to spend more time with his family and to do the Buffy spin-off, Ripper. Unfortunately, Joss’s busy schedule with his new series, Firefly, has put Ripper on hold temporarily. Instead, Head has been busy working on a new series, Manchild.

  A dapper-looking Anthony Head.

  “It’s something that we definitely want to do and there’s great interest in the story,” says Whedon of Ripper. “The timing is just sort of bad right now.”

  Head will do ten shows out of twenty-two in season seven. “He’s like that family member who lives far away, and you only get to see him every once in a while,” Whedon says, “and that’s what makes it special.”

  For Head, working on the series was a blessing. “I’ve worked on so many shows where there were too many different people trying to control what was happening, and it was a complete mess. We don’t have that with Buffy. Joss knows how every single thing that is involved with the show must go, and the rest of us follow his lead. He’s made a terribly appealing show that is enjoyed by people of all ages, and that’s quite an amazing task when you think about it,” Head declares.

  Whedon is clearly delighted with Head’s contribution. “Tony is great. A real actor. He really cares about the craft. It’s all there. The only conflict Tony and I have is that I always want him to give me less. He always wants to get out there and put it all on screen. I keep going, ‘The British guy—more restrained!’”

  Joss and some of the season four cast, with Alyson Hannigan and Emma Caulfield looking mischievous.

  “There was one point several seasons ago when I turned to Joss and said, ‘I’m not happy,’” says Gellar. “I just don’t feel like myself. I feel like Buffy’s being pushed around by everybody. By Faith, by this one, she’s not trusting anybody, and I really feel like she’s lost herself and I’m unhappy because I can’t figure out why I’m doing these things.

  “And we sat down and we talked, and he said, ‘you know what? I see what you’re talking about.’

  “Do you have any idea what it feels like as an actor when the creator of your show will sit down and talk with you like that? And to know that you can trust him to fix whatever problem it is. There are times when I’ve gone to him and I didn’t understand why we were doing certain things and he explains it in such a way that it all makes sense. You just have to trust in that genius,” says Gellar.

  You just have to trust in that genius.

  —Sarah Michelle Gellar

  The end of season three marks the Scoobies’ graduation from high school and, predictably, they depart with a bang. Again writing and directing the two-part season finale, Joss created a giant CGI snake, blew up the school and brought the high school class together amid a hail of flaming arrows (“because you have to have flaming arrows” he says). Evil is vanquished, Buffy graduates, and Angel heads off to L.A. and his own series.

  Season four

  Season four takes the Scoobies out of high school and into the world of college and work. Buffy finds new love, defeats a demon/human cyborg and takes on a secret paramilitary initiative.

  Joss was equally busy. Even while overseeing the launch of Angel he continued to look for new ways to challenge himself as a writer and a director. The result was Hush, an episode in which most of the episode—29 minutes—was without any spoken dialogue. What could have been a gimmick show became a memorable, horrifying episode.

  Hush is one of Joss’ favorites and it’s no accident that it was nominated for an Emmy It is one of Buffy’s best conceived and most celebrated episodes. “I like being able to experiment when I write,” says Joss, “and ‘Hush’ is exactly that. If it challenges and makes me think in a different way, then it’s a lot more fun.”

  “He called me to talk about ‘Hush,’ says Professor Jeanine Basinger.”He asked what films there were about someone who couldn’t speak and I suggested the Spiral Staircase. She’s a mute and knows who the murderer is, and he’s trying to kill her. And of course she can’t tell anybody. He doesn’t really need this in any way. He just likes a sounding board. He always comes up with his own original idea. He’ll call me for what movies he should be looking at for certain ideas, and it’s very flattering for me that he cares to ask.”

  Season four also introduces a romance between Willow and Tara. Fans were shocked when they realized where the relationship was heading, but for Joss it was a natural progression.

  I like love stories, and that’s what [the] Willow and Tara story is.—Joss

  “I like love stories,” says Joss, “and that’s what [the] Willow and Tara story is. We’ve seen Willow grow and mature in these other relationships and then when Tara came along, it just made sense. In college, well, that’s where most people begin to explore their sexuality. We put Willow and Tara into situations, as witches, that were somewhat physical but not sexual. And as their relationship began to mature we saw them together in a different way. At the time the network was more than a little wary about having a gay couple on the show. They didn’t want anything too intimate and there was to be no kissing involved. But as the story moved along, so did the network. The fans have embraced the story in a way even I couldn’t have imagined, and it’s meant a great deal to a lot of people out there.”

  The lesbian story line was a surprise to Hannigan, but one she was more than willing to take on. “I know it upset some of the fans, but the truth is I’ve been so grateful to have been able to touch so many lives with this story. People walk up to me to this day and tell me thank you for bringing such a wonderful love story to life. I tell them it was the writers and Joss who are to thank. They did it and they did it in a respectful and loving way.”

  The network was nervous about the onscreen romance, but Joss had a strategy for managing
this. “We got away with it because we didn’t tell them what we were doing.”

  There was some fan discontent in season four, over specific issues (like Willow and Tara), but mostly regarding the quality of the season. This discontent was misguided; while not all of the ambitions in season four were realized, the overall quality was strong. At the same time, it appeared that Joss was taking on too much.

  “I really have no idea [how I will juggle two shows],” Joss admitted. “I am burned out already. [Angel executive producer] David Greenwalt and I just stare at each other balefully and say, ‘What were we thinking?’ I think my life is over, and that’s just something I have to deal with. [Seriously], I don’t know how it’s done. Basically, it just means I work harder. We were working 16 hours a day on Buffy, and now we work 16 hours a day, but more concentrated. It’s more mentally exhausting. But it’s not like you can let it slide. I still don’t work on Sundays when I can avoid it. Now I’m actually firm about not working Sundays, since I’m so burned out after the week, more so than before.”

  Joss wrote and directed the season four finale, Restless. Interestingly, Joss had resolved the main conflict (destroying the cyborg Adam) in the previous episode. The final episode is an extended dream sequence, featuring dreams by each of the four main characters as their sleep is invaded by the spirit of the first slayer.

  This innovative episode creates a spooky and surreal David Lynch ambience and, like Hush, pushed Whedon as a writer and director. It covers a lot of territory, including a highly erotic scene of Willow body painting Tara, a battle with the first slayer and Armin Shimerman (the actor who played the Principal through season three) as Walter Kurtz from Apocalypse Now. Every scene is soaked with subtle meanings, references and foreshadowing. Except, Joss hastens to add, the cheese-man. “People never believe me when I say the cheese-man meant NOTHING,” Joss reveals. “Cheese makes me laugh.”

  Season five

  Like every season before it, season five takes Buffy in a new direction, with a new set of issues and characters. The first episode ends with the enigmatic introduction of Dawn, Buffy’s mysterious younger sister. The story centers around Glory, an immensely powerful Goddess bent on the destruction of Dawn, the opening of a portal to a hell dimension, and, in the process, the destruction of Earth as we know it. Season five is wonderfully done and raises a set of core issues, including friendship, grief, death, sisterhood and independence. It also shot down criticism that Joss was spread too thin to maintain Buffy’s quality.

  The first episode, a funny and enthralling encounter between Buffy and Dracula, is on its surface a stand-alone episode. But Buffy vs. Dracula cleverly sets up the story arc for the season. This episode highlights the insecurities that ultimately lead to Riley’s departure. It also, in Xander’s determination to stop being “everybody’s butt-monkey,” showed us the motivation that would ultimately lead to Xander’s emergence from the basement and his engagement to Anya. And most importantly, the episode introduces Dawn, who would become a regular on the program.

  Michelle Trachtenberg won the coveted role of Buffy’s younger sister. Trachtenberg knew she was joining a successful show and was already a big fan when she came on board. Like Gellar and Hannigan, the young Trachtenberg was already a Hollywood veteran, having begun acting at the age of four. She played Lily Montgomery on All My Children, was a series regular on The Adventures of Pete & Pete and made several guest appearances on Meego, Guys Like Us, Figure it Out, Dave’s World, Law & Order and Clarissa Explains it All. She’d starred in the feature films Harriet the Spy, Inspector Gadget, Can’t Be Heaven, The Cage and Melissa.

  And she did all of this before turning 16.

  Getting the role as Buffy’s little sister was one of the best moments of Trachtenberg’s career. “I was so happy, because I was such a big fan of the show already,” laughs the actress. “I couldn’t believe that I was actually going to get to hang out with these cool people and characters every day.”

  Trachtenberg fit right in with the Buffy cast; it didn’t hurt that she already knew Gellar. “She had worked on All My Children and I knew her from there. She has become like a real sister to me, and in the beginning, she and everyone else was worried about how I was doing. Was I happy? Was everything going OK? They make you feel very loved and a part of the family,” says Trachtenberg.

  When she joined the show the character Dawn was called the Key. In the beginning, Trachtenberg wasn’t clear on what that meant. She says Joss told her in an early meeting that Dawn was a regular teen who was a Key, and even he didn’t know how it was going to all work out.

  “I’m not sure if he didn’t know, or if he really didn’t want to put too much on me at once, but it worked,” says the actress. “We’ve really developed—I almost feel like I’ve been a part of the show from the beginning because I’ve been watching it since its debut and I’m a little walking Buffy encyclopedia, rather scary but it’s fine.”

  In the touching episode Family, which Whedon wrote and directed, Joss did for Tara what he did for Oz in Innocence—he made us love her. Some fans were having difficulty accepting Tara as part of the Scooby gang. In typical Joss fashion, he took this head on, painting Tara as even more of an outsider as the Scoobies struggle with what to give her for her birthday. But conflict with Tara’s family forces the Scoobies to choose sides. They ultimately choose Tara as their own and, more importantly, we desperately want them to make this choice.

  I’m a little walking Buffy encyclopedia, rather scary but it’s fine.

  —Michelle Trachtenberg

  Even more important, in Family, Joss returned to one of Buffy’s “mission statements.” Your family can be difficult and cruel, Joss tells us, but you have the power to create your own family. Your new family can be more important, more real, than the family you are born into. This theme replays itself throughout the series, from the initial formation of the Scoobies in season one to Xander’s failed attempt to form a new family with Anya in season six.

  As Joss tells it: “When we created the show, they said, ‘Do you want [Buffy’s] family?’ And I said, ‘Well, mom and whatnot, but basically, she has a family. Her father is Giles, her sister is Willow, and it’s already in place.’ I had some things go on in my life that made me say, ‘I really want to get this message out, that it’s not about blood.’ Tara was the perfect vehicle for that.

  “Family is as much of a didactic message show as I’ve ever done. Hopefully an entertaining one.” This theme is obviously heartfelt for Joss, but he insists it’s no reflection on his upbringing. “I actually love my family!” he laughs. “We’ve been an unconventional family. I was a child of divorce, and there was a lot of shuffling around. And [there were] people who were not in my family who became of my family.”

  A particularly innovative episode was The Body, which was later nominated for an Emmy. The episode, written and directed by Whedon, employs long scenes with minimal cuts to convey a deeper sense of physicality and reality. Joss had lost his mother a few years before and the episode had a special poignancy for him.

  Michelle Trachtenberg poses with Sarah Michelle Gellar.

  I really want to get this message out, that it’s not about blood.

  —Joss

  “I really made the episode to capture something very small. The black ashes in your mouth numbness of death. The very morbid physicality of it. It’s why Buffy threw up. Why Dawn said she had to pee. Why the girls kissed. Why there were so many shots of the body.

  “You know, I worked my ass off on [that episode]. And my whole cast was extraordinary. But I really thought people were going to sort of hate it, because the whole point was, there’s no catharsis. There’s no point where you go, ‘We’ve learned this!’ or ‘She’ll always be a part of us!’ It was just, ‘My mother is a dead body. And that’s all.’ But people actually did get a kind of catharsis from it. A lot of people who have lost people said it really helped them deal with it or it really moved them. I was surprised b
y that, because my intention was just to capture that reality, not really to comment on it or be helpful about it.

  “The reactions of all the characters were based on things I’ve done. My mother was not the first person I lost. The first person I ever lost, there was a whole thing where I had to find a black tie, because I thought you had to wear a black tie to a funeral. Of course, it was California, so people showed up in Hawaiian shirts, but I didn’t know that! And I couldn’t find one anywhere in LA. I went to dozens of stores, and I was sweating and shaking, like, ‘If I don’t find this, it’ll be sacrilege!’ That’s where the Willow thing came from.

  “And then when I lost my mother, there was that numbness that I tried to capture with Buffy, but at the same time, I had already lost someone, and I was around a lot of people who hadn’t so then I was sort of in Tara’s shoes—watching other people’s reactions, and just trying to help and get through it. So it’s all there. Everybody’s got a piece of that.”

  The finale of season five, The Gift, represented the culmination of a story arc that Whedon had forshadowed in season three. As everyone knows, Buffy sacrificed herself to save the world—the ultimate sacrifice. Or was it?

  By the end of season five Whedon portrayed a Buffy that is traumatized and deeply tired. She has lost Angel, Riley and her mother and the resolution she showed when she killed Angel at the end of season two has faded. She isn’t willing to kill Dawn, whatever the consequences. When she realizes that she can die in Dawn’s place, her reaction is... relief. “The hardest thing to do in this world is to live in it.”