DAVID FURY
I had to say we sort of stumbled our way through it a little bit. There were some great things that came out of it, but it was a very tricky thing. It did result in some brilliant episodes. We got to do “Hush.” Just brilliant stuff in the midst of it. But it was a little bit of a new animal, Buffy season four. There was always going to be a little bit of trying to find the right mix.
While few would contend that the fourth season of Buffy was one of its best, no one would quibble that a true standout was “Hush,” an episode with only seventeen minutes of spoken dialogue over a forty-four-minute running time. In the episode, the enigmatic Gentlemen arrive in Sunnydale and steal the residents’ voices so that no one can scream when they cut out the hearts of their victims. Directed beautifully by Whedon, “Hush” is the only episode of 144 to be nominated for an Emmy Award in Outstanding Writing for a Drama Series, as well as Outstanding Cinematography for a Single Camera Series. It lost in both categories.
SARAH MICHELLE GELLAR
(actress, Buffy Summers)
It was one of those moments where I thought, “Oh, this is great! A whole episode with no lines!” I was, like, “This is a breeze!” And boy was I wrong.
JOSS WHEDON
Writing it I was terrified. I was more terrified than with the musical that I just couldn’t pull it off. When we were shooting it, everyone knew their action, but there were no lines, there was no rhythm, there was no cues, so everyone would do everything all at once. We had no way to communicate a rhythm.
Making his Buffy debut was versatile actor Camden Toy as one of the Gentlemen that preyed on the mute citizenry of Sunnydale. He would return several times to the series including as the skin-eating demon Gnarl in “Same Time, Same Place” in season seven.
CAMDEN TOY
(actor, the Gentleman)
By the time we got called in to audition for “Hush,” they still weren’t sure what these characters were going to be. I think they were still called “The Laughing Men.” Because there was no dialogue, there was talk with the producers, “Well, can’t we just get an extra to do this?” Thank goodness Joss said, “No, we need some physical performers to actually bring these to life.” Because of that, they were auditioning really last-minute. I got the call that afternoon from my agent, who said they want to see you at 5 P.M. that night. Usually there’s a day or two in advance. And I’m, like, “Tonight? What about the script?” And they said, “There’s no script; just go.” So, I’m, like, “Uh, OK.”
The casting director and Joss were the only people in the room. They weren’t recording any of the auditions. That was kind of what Joss did—he was in the room and he made the decision. They asked me to do an improv where you float in, you cut this young man’s heart out, and then you float back out with the heart.” I’m, like, “What? OK.” “Oh, and they’re smiling the whole time.” So, I do this kind of illusionary thing physically, where it looks like I’m floating. I try to sort of glide in smiling and I cut the heart out.
I finished the audition and Joss kind of starts waving at me, turns his back and goes, “OK, thank you. Oh God, I’m going to have nightmares now.” At that point, I thought either I’ve gotten the role or he thinks I’m a total psycho. I was worried I blew it, but the next day I got a call from my agent saying they wanted me and that’s the episode where I met [actor] Doug Jones.
The design for the unsettling Gentlemen was created by Whedon and realized by the series makeup team of makeup supervisor Todd McIntosh and Optic Nerve’s John Vulich, a veteran of Babylon 5, who passed away in 2016.
CAMDEN TOY
There were six of us actually, all together. Two of them were stunt guys and the other two were Charlie Brumbly and Don Lewis. Charlie was the wisecracking guy on Baywatch Hawaii. When we were shooting, he was constantly cracking us up. Don Lewis was well known in the physical community, because he did puppetry and shadow work. He did all the shadow puppetry work in Coppola’s Dracula. All four of us had a really strong background in physical theater: clowning, mime, martial arts, puppetry. I think that’s really why those characters came to life so much.
Interestingly enough, it’s only Doug Jones and myself that have our real mouths where we can smile. The idea originally was they were just going to have a plastered-on smile. I remember thinking after auditioning for the role, this is so wrong. They hired me because I scared Joss with my smile. But I thought, “Hey, shut up, it’s not my place to say,” but as they were getting Joss to give the final sign-off on the design, he was, like, “Whoah, wait a minute. We hired Camden and Doug because they both scared me in the room, in broad daylight, with no makeup, with just their smiles and now we’re covering them up? No, no, no, you can’t do that. You actually have to have their smiles.” They were, like, “But we’re shooting like the day after tomorrow.” And Joss said, “No, not for Camden and Doug. You can do it for the other guys, but Camden and Doug, we have to have their smiles.”
They made it so they’re like little veneers that fit over our actual teeth, so it’s our actual mouth and they mostly focused on us, because that’s much scarier than a plastered-on smile.
Said Whedon at the time, “I was drawing on everything that had ever frightened me: Nosferatu, Pinhead, Mr. Burns—anything that gave that creepy feel. We got into a lot of reptilian monsters and things that look kind of like aliens, and what I wanted from these guys was, very specifically, fairy tales. I wanted guys that would remind people of what they were scared of when they were children.”
CAMDEN TOY
The very first scene that we shot as the Gentlemen was that scene where we knock on the door and the young man opens the door. We float in, cut his heart out, and our—I think we called them “the footmen”—are holding him down. So we shoot the actual door opening later, but the actual scene where we float in, we shot first. And, of course, it’s one of the few cases where, as an actor, I don’t have to worry about hitting my mark. I’m either on a platform that’s on wheels, that’s on tracks, that they’re pulling or pushing on wires. I remember after the first take the props person or someone went, “Oh my God” after they yelled cut. They said, “I can’t believe the dialogue you guys are having and you haven’t said a word.” That’s when Doug and I were, like, “I think it’s working.”
It was also Amber Benson’s first episode as Tara, and she thought we were even scarier in person. The cast literally wanted to have nothing to do with us. After the take, they would just sort of walk away. Only Marc Blucas would say, “Hey, how’s it going? Great to have you guys.” Everybody else was scared of us. Amber Benson’s mother told us to leave her alone, that she was really scared by us. We would literally sit with crew or sometimes with Joss to eat, but the rest of the cast would not come near us. It was pretty wild.
In addition to shooting on the Santa Monica stages at Bergamont Stages as well as Westwood’s UCLA, which doubled for UC Sunnydale, the episode filmed several days on location at Universal Studios for Sunnydale exteriors as the ominous Gentlemen made their way through town . . . very quietly.
CAMDEN TOY
In the beginning, we shot at Universal Studios, where we were floating down the street for a few days. We were also on a college campus down in Alhambra. The last scene we shot, we were floating down the hall. If you see our feet, we are actually on wires so they had to do that in studio, because they wanted a wider-angle shot. So as soon as they would pull back, we would be on wires—when it’s like a headshot or a shoulder shot, that’s when we’d be on platforms, because the wires were very difficult. Those were tough. Even Joss talked about that on the DVD commentary. He says, “Oh, yeah, the tall one there is Doug Jones and the shorter one’s Camden Toy. The two of them scared me so much, in broad daylight, with just their smiles. So I knew they were going to be great.”
One of the season’s biggest surprises was the sudden death of Lindsay Crouse’s Professor Maggie Walsh at the hands of the nefarious Adam, who seemed destined for a mor
e sizable role.
JOSS WHEDON
A lot of our great shocks come from things that we can’t control. We were basically told by Lindsay Crouse’s agent that she had to be done by Christmas. We knew that was going to be the progression, that she would create Adam and Adam would destroy her, but we weren’t sure how it would completely unfold. Given the situation, we decided to do it abruptly, and that charmed the hell out of me. It’s always fun to do something a little startling. To an extent, the characters are telling us what they need, and to an extent the situation dictates what happens.
DAVID FURY
I don’t know if Joss has said this, but she is at least partly inspired by his own mother. His mother was a college professor and she was a very big feminist. Very strong willed. I think she had a huge impact on Joss’s life. Certainly the fact that he is an ardent feminist himself. I think his mother can take credit for that, but she was a very strong willed, very strict woman. But one that Joss respected very much. I believe that Professor Walsh was at least partly inspired by his mother in the sense of being this very good, strong-willed professor that students were scared of. The idea of a mother figure was interesting. She was sort of Riley’s mother. She was Adam’s mother. When she had scenes with Buffy, it was very much like Buffy was dealing with a mother-in-law character.
Joss was very interested in seeing this girl that he presented in high school who struggles to be normal, knowing that she has to rise to the occasion and save the world, suddenly being wholly terrified of this woman and totally intimidated by her. Lindsey did a good job. It was a tricky character. The whole Initiative thing was very tricky, and, of course, what she represented allegorically might be the most personal thing about it for Joss. I don’t think the rest of us could latch on to it as clearly as he could. There might have been some things being worked out there.
Another milestone for the series was the season capper. After defeating the Big Bad in the penultimate episode of the season, Joss Whedon wrote and directed the stylish and surreal finale in which the Scooby Gang confront the First Slayer in a series of dream-like vignettes more akin to an episode of Twin Peaks than Buffy, providing a remarkable coda for an uneven season.
JOSS WHEDON
It was about combining the totally surreal with the totally mundane. Obviously, things had to get worse at the end of each act—people had to be in peril, because this thing was trying to kill them in their dreams. But beyond that, there really was no structure. I was basically sitting down to write a forty-minute tone poem.
ARMIN SHIMERMAN
(actor, Principal Snyder)
I was very surprised when my agent called and said you have another episode of Buffy. I said, “Buffy? I’m dead on Buffy.” And with all due respect to all the other episodes I did, I think the very best work on Buffy, perhaps in my whole career, was in that last episode, “Restless.”
JOSS WHEDON
The last episode was all dreams and it’s just about as strange as it needs to be. It was a very fun episode and it sort of summed up everything that everyone had gone through, what it meant to them and where it was. It was divided into four acts that are four dreams, one each for Giles, Xander, Willow, and Buffy. It’s basically four short stories about how these people feel. We came to realize that we’d taken them to a pretty interesting place.
ARMIN SHIMERMAN
It’s a terrific episode, and I’m particularly pleased with my work in that one. There was a note in the script from Joss to me saying, “Armin, have you ever seen Apocalypse Now? You need to see this.” As a person who lived through the sixties, ironically I had never seen Apocalypse Now. So I studied the film and Marlon Brando’s performance in particular and I’m really happy with it.
A FIGHT FOR LOVE AND GLORY (AKA DEATH IS YOUR GIFT)
“So Dawn’s in trouble. It must be Tuesday.”
Foreshadowed in the fourth-season capper “Restless,” the fifth season of Buffy begins with the arrival of the Key, in the form of Buffy’s younger sister. For some, the arrival of Michelle Trachtenberg as Dawn was a welcome breath of fresh air, introducing a bizarre new element into the mythos, while others felt she was a glorified Cousin oliver (and if you don’t know who that is, go look it up—we’ll wait). While viewers may have been puzzled over the sudden, enigmatic arrival of Dawn in the Summers residence, the show also introduces the season’s new Big Bad, Glorificus, or Glory, played by a scenery-chewing Clare Kramer, and Glory’s mellow distaff doppelgänger Ben, played by Charlie Weber.
Glory, a hell goddess exiled from her dimension, is intent on returning home. In order to do so, she needs the Key, which we learn was hidden by a band of monks in the form of Dawn. Unfortunately, the use of the key will unlock a portal unleashing all the beasts of hell on earth. Realizing the Key would need to be protected, those cagey monks transformed it into human flesh, in the form of Buffy’s younger sister, created from the blood of Buffy, knowing she would give her own life, if necessary, to protect it. Which is exactly what she does in the moving season finale.
Meanwhile, Buffy was also confronting the departure of Riley, who has come to the sad realization that she will never truly love him, giving Spike the opportunity to pursue his lust, love, and obsession for the slayer. And, in the most moving and shocking moment of the season, Buffy’s mother, Joyce, dies of a brain aneurysm in another of the series’ finest hours, “The Body.”
JOSS WHEDON
(creator / executive producer, Buffy the Vampire Slayer)
For season five, the mission statement was family. When you think you’ve moved on and grown up and moved out of the house and living your life, family comes back. You realize that they’re always a part of your life. Some of that’s good and some of that’s bad. Also a very strong message with me is you make your own family. Or sometimes it’s made for you by monks.
DAVID FURY
(supervising producer, Buffy the Vampire Slayer)
Season five was, in Joss’s mind, very possibly the last season, because his contract was for five seasons. Every year it was a question mark about whether the show would get picked up. Its ratings were at that time minimal. Right now it’d be a huge hit show, any network would be killing for the ratings we got, but back then it was not a highly rated show. The acclaim was there, but the network would play, as often they do, the political game where they cry poverty. They’re, like, “We’re just not making enough on the show.”
This is to a large extent a negotiation ploy, but it was considered a bubble show and Joss was pretty upset with the way they’d play that it just didn’t perform well. Forget the fact that it was giving the WB a status it wasn’t getting from its other programing. It was hugely successful in terms of promoting the network. But as a last year of a contract thing, it kind of minimized the value of Buffy, which was upsetting to Joss.
MARTI NOXON
(co–executive producer, Buffy the Vampire Slayer)
It got harder every season. You’d come from a story meeting where we’re saying, “What about this?” “Oh, we’ve already done that.” “What about that?” “Well, we kind of tackled that” or, “We did something like that on Angel.” Not only do you have almost a hundred story lines on Buffy that we’ve already done, we had another show where you’re doing twenty-two stories a year on that. Obviously, we can touch on the same ground, because they’re different shows, but you don’t want them to be too close. It just compounds the complications. So that in itself makes it harder to break stories—plus, you know, the exhaustion factor. That’s probably the most challenging part of the whole process.
JOSS WHEDON
The introduction of Dawn, the death of Mom, the meeting of Tara’s family—all of that stuff was very deliberate. We knew year one of college was freedom and not a lot of mom. Kristine Sutherland, luckily, was spending a year in Italy, but it was that year, so it was perfect. We were, like, “Perfect, then you’ll come back and you’ll be very heavy in season five and then I’ll kill you.” So
that was the mission statement.
DAVID FURY
We went into the season feeling that we needed to find a way to get to the moment that defined the series and that’s what the last couple of episodes dealt with. It was great that in the end Buffy just becomes the girl who’s fighting vampires again. The introduction of Dawn was a way to explore that as well. A young girl that turns out to be more than you thought she was.
MARTI NOXON
Some of it was about bringing the Scooby Gang more together. They were a little fractured last year. So sort of “the gang’s all here” was part of our mandate, to make the relationships a little closer, a little less estranged. And then we’re gunning toward our hundredth episode, which is a pretty big landmark. One of our mandates was just to make it a hell of a ride.
DAVID FURY
That’s probably where the Dawn of it comes in, where it became a little bit more rooted in those people rather than something bigger than them. There was an effort to bring it back down to earth a little bit.
STEVEN S. DEKNIGHT
(writer, season five, Buffy the Vampire Slayer)
I was on Undressed for MTV. Each episode was three different story lines happening in high school, college, and postcollege with young adults in various sexual situations. It’s MTV, so it was all very PG-13. Created by Roland Joffé, who did The Killing Fields, strangely. I believe I was on my third or fourth season of that. I started to think, I’ve got a paying job. I have an agent. She was really sweet but kind of at the end of her career, so it would be a perfect time to write a spec and try to segue to another agency before she retires. Two of my favorite shows were Buffy the Vampire Slayer and NYPD Blue.
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