Slayers and Vampires

by Edward Gross,Mark A. Altman

  TIM MINEAR

  I have to say that Mutant Enemy, bar none, was exactly what Howard Gordon said it would be. I learned so much working with Joss and David, and for me that’s going to be the highlight of my career. I don’t even know how to describe what it was like to be at Angel while Buffy was on the air, and then on Firefly. Angel may have been the highlight for me. I was intimately involved with every aspect of that show. I got to direct episodes, which brings everything full circle. From the time I had my 8 mm camera to this moment, I wanted to get behind the camera and I wanted to not just write the stories, but tell the stories and make the stories and direct the stories and edit the stories. As a writer/producer in TV, you get to do all of those things. The fact is that the writer/producer conceptualizes what’s going to happen, gets the costumes, talks to the production designer about what the thing is going to look like, interacts with the director of photography, sits in the editing room with the editor, sits with the composer and spots the show and says, “I want Wagner here, and I want this to sound like Bernard Hermann.” You get to do everything in television and this was the best film school ever.

  BEAUTY AND THE BEAST

  “Angel’s just something that you’re forced to wear . . .”

  Of Angel’s five-season run, it was the fourth that was the most in danger of running off the rails creatively, for a number of reasons. For starters, there was a behind-the-scenes shake-up. David Greenwalt was gone, having departed over a contract dispute with production company 20th Century Fox; Tim Minear, although involved creatively for part of the season, was serving as a show runner along with Joss Whedon on the sci-fi series Firefly; Marti Noxon was focused fully on Buffy’s final season, with david Fury taking her position as consulting producer; writer Steven S. DeKnight came over from Buffy; Elizabeth Craft and Sarah Fein were brought in as staff writers; Ben Edlund, following the cancellation of the aforementioned Firefly, joined the show as producer; and, while Jeffrey Bell would eventually end up serving as show runner, early on writer/producer David Simkins was brought in from outside by Mutant Enemy to guide things. His credits prior to doing the show included Dark Angel, FreakyLinks, and Roswell, and after Angel he moved on to such shows as Charmed, Blade: The Series, The Dresden Files, Warehouse 13, Grimm, and Powers.

  STEVEN S. DEKNIGHT

  (supervising producer, Angel)

  After spending two seasons on Buffy, Joss came to me at the end of season six and said he wanted Tim Minear to run Firefly, but he didn’t want to take Tim away from David Greenwalt and leave him with a hole in his staff—obviously this was before David left the show. So Joss asked if I could help out and move over to Angel. I’d always expressed an interest in the show, because I watched it every week. I always came down to the Angel office, which was right down below the Buffy office, [to] talk about the episodes each week. And then I’d come back up to the Buffy office and say, “Did you see that fight on Angel last night? Why aren’t we doing fights like that?” I was always talking about how beautiful it looked and it was letter-boxed, and why weren’t we letter-boxed? Buffy was my first love and the show I wanted to be on when it ended, but I just couldn’t resist coming down to Angel. Plus, you know, there was a promotion and raise and opportunity dangled in front of me, which didn’t hurt at all. In true Godfather fashion, Joss made me an offer I couldn’t refuse.

  BEN EDLUND

  (producer, Angel)

  In 2001, I ended up doing the Tick live-action show, which was many things. In addition to being a nightmare, it was also a good thing. It was really hard, so I needed to take time off. Then I had no money and I needed a job, and I heard Firefly was being done. My agent told me “this spaceship show” was being done by the guy who did Buffy. I was sort of out at that point, just body surfing and trying to write a feature, so I went in. Actually, I remember, I did not know who Joss was. I went to a meeting for Firefly and I ended up shaking Tim Minear’s hand and calling him Joss. You’re supposed to not get the job after you fuck up that bad, but we had a fairly good meeting. And as I understood it, I think Tim Minear was a big proponent of mine, maybe because [laughs] I might have amused him. But very much, as I understood it, he was a champion of mine in the hiring process and I’m quite grateful to him. He had a quasi-mentor energy, which I appreciate to this day.

  That was a really good camp to get in. So we worked for the twelve episodes of Firefly, it got canceled, and I was really fortunate to have been in the situation where I was able to distinguish myself, and Joss wanted me to transfer from Firefly to Angel. They brought me on and I was writing on the last part of season four. I was kind of like this bubble of investment being dragged along by Mutant Enemy for the next season. And then I did the full fifth season.

  STEVEN S. DEKNIGHT

  I agreed to go to Angel. We wrapped Buffy and everybody’s taking a hiatus. I pop in to the office during a hiatus, if memory serves me correctly, to start clearing out my office. I go into David Greenwalt’s and he goes, “Hey, how you doing?” “You know, starting my vacation.” He says, “OK. You’re writing the first episode of next season.” I found out he was supposed to be writing it, but he was in negotiations with Fox to renew his deal. It wasn’t going well, so he decided to leave the show. As a result, whereas I thought I would kind of ease into the season, write an episode around six once I got my feet wet, that wasn’t the case at all. So I got to do the first episode of season four. I spent my vacation working on that episode. Then wrote it again, because it had such a loose break. That was part one of my most painful memories working for Mutant Enemy. I had written a script and Tim Minear really liked it, and Jeff Bell really liked it. Tim Minear was consulting, I believe, and they’d enlisted Jeff Bell to help oversee the show while they were looking for a new show runner. There were a lot of things about the script that didn’t work, because we didn’t dot the i’s or cross the t’s before we dove into writing it.

  My note session was tortuous in my mind. It was, like, a two- or three-hour note session. I was in the room with all the other writers and Joss was being shadowed by a reporter—I want to say for The New York Times. The reporter was in the room as I was basically dismantled, having given up my vacation to write this. I can chuckle about it now, but it stung at the time. The bigger picture is, he was absolutely right. The episode needed to be rebroken, no doubt about it. But that was my auspicious start on Angel.

  David Simkins at the time was under an overall deal with Fox, and, with Greenwalt leaving, it was the studio’s suggestion that he become part of the show, an idea he rejected when first broached by his agent. It was his feeling that the writing staffs at Mutant Enemy were fairly insular and it simply didn’t seem like the right fit. Ultimately, though, he was convinced to go in for an interview.

  DAVID SIMKINS

  (executive producer, Angel)

  I was familiar with Buffy and Angel in terms of the zeitgeist of it all. I’d seen them both and liked them very much, but I was not a die-hard fan. I respected them and loved what they were doing in terms of opening the door for a different, better, more fun kind of storytelling that TV had not been exposed to before. Those two shows were incredibly groundbreaking in terms of approaching material and doing something with the vampire genre that was unique and fun.

  DAVID FURY

  (consulting producer, Angel)

  In season four, Angel needed a little more help. I was working on the show concurrently with season seven of Buffy. This was the year that David Greenwalt left, and Tim Minear, who was going to be the new show runner, went to run Firefly. So suddenly the two main guys from Angel were gone. I was a senior writer on Buffy and they wanted me to come on. I came on as a consultant and it was a difficult time initially, because we were trying to acclimate. And they brought in a show runner who struggled.

  DAVID SIMKINS

  The meeting was very unusual for me in terms of how most of these interviews go. Usually when I’m being interviewed for a job like this, the questions run th
e gamut from what you’re watching on TV, what you like, how you work with writers in the room, do you like to break off and give the writers an idea and let them come back to you with it more fleshed out? Usually it’s kind of specific, because room work when you’re writing for television can be a bit of a crucible of sorts. A lot of emotions come out in the room, a lot of jokes, a lot of good stuff. But the interview with Joss was different in that Tim Minear was there as well. The interview was such that I was not asked a lot of questions. The sense that I’d had—and it had happened before—is that in between the meeting being set up and the meeting actually happening, another player is being offered the job. So you’re sitting there in this interview, not really being interviewed. The suspicion was that there’s somebody else waiting in the wings and they’re just waiting for the deal to close. So I sat on the couch, I listened to Joss and Tim crack a lot of inside jokes about actors and Fox executives. I did my best to laugh along, but I really couldn’t follow the thread, having not been a part of the clique. The meeting ended, and, driving home, I called my agent and said, “That was interesting, but I’m not going to get the gig.” I was already moving on mentally to the next thing.

  But later that afternoon I received a phone call that I had gotten the job. I was floored; I didn’t know how I got the job. I just wasn’t sure what was happening there. But, again, I told my agent that I was going to pass, because it didn’t feel right. I respected Joss and Tim and loved the work they were doing, but it just felt with so many seasons behind Buffy and three behind Angel, I would be coming into a situation where it was already a well-oiled machine. And to be perfectly honest, I wasn’t sure why they weren’t hiring from within. I was a little confused by that, and then I thought what was happening was Fox was paying me since I was under contract, and it’s very common for writers or producers to be put on another show so the cost can be written off. I told my agent it felt like I was being put into a position just to make Fox happy, but he told me I was overthinking it. So for the second time, against my better judgment, I said, “OK.”

  STEVEN S. DEKNIGHT

  You can’t just bring anybody onto a Joss Whedon show to run it. You’ve got to get his sensibilities; you need to understand him. They brought in a guy—David Simkins—who was very nice, but he just didn’t mesh. It just wasn’t a good fit.

  DAVID SIMKINS

  One of the first things that happened after I got the job is that Joss and Tim and I all went out for dinner, ostensibly for what I thought was to explain the ins and outs, or tell me what the ropes would be that I’d have to learn. But then Joss told me that the first two scripts for the season had already been written and—and he used this exact expression—they had been “Simkins-proofed,” which he laughed at. I kind of laughed at that, too, but what I understood that to mean is that the first two scripts had been written in case I was going to screw up the start of the season. It was a bit disheartening, I have to admit, to know that I was already being seen as a bit of an interloper and a bit of a nuisance. But I understood that. I knew that Joss’s relationship with the studio was a bit tense and that he was having some problems on Firefly, that they weren’t happy with the way things were going there. Buffy was wrapping and they wanted Angel to stay on. It’s something that, if I was in Joss’s position, I would have considered if I knew that someone like David Greenwalt was leaving. I would want to get a head start. I don’t think Joss meant it maliciously; it was just that sometimes Joss says things that are truthful, but there can also be a bit of cruelty in that truth. That’s what makes his writing so good is that he’s honest in the stories he tells and the characters he writes.

  But I buried all that and got a hold of the first three seasons of Angel, watched every episode, and absolutely fell in love with the show. So I felt I was ready when we opened the room for real and I met the writers, sat in the writers’ room, and was eager and on board and happy to be a part of it.

  DAVID FURY

  David Simkins couldn’t quite acclimate to our way of working. He didn’t quite understand the show and he didn’t quite understand Joss’s sensibilities. And we did. We were much more in tune. The people that Joss hired and kept were people whom he basically mentored in the way of doing things, the way to tell stories, and the way to break those stories. And it was an odd experience, because to get someone from outside the family to run the show was a bit of a feeling of them abandoning their show. I was there as a consultant, but at some point it became very difficult to help. We weren’t talking the same language. You realize, “Oh, we have a problem here,” and we’re not going to be telling the kind of stories that meant something or work for us.

  DAVID SIMKINS

  Usually when you’re hired as a show runner, if it’s for your own show or a first season you’re coming in on, you have a certain autonomy. You’re definitely filling out a list of requirements a studio or network has for the show. If you’re hired for a detective show, you don’t make it a musical . . . unless you’re Joss, and then it’s great. In this case, I was very aware that there was a specific language to this show, a shorthand and a familiarity that all of the writers had with these characters and this concept. My initial thought was to sit down, shut up, keep my eyes open, and just make sure that the trains ran on time. To do that, I had to let these trains be driven by people who knew how to drive them. I was there to watch the narrative arcs in terms of where the characters were going and [make] sure things were carried forward. I had no inclination to come in and redefine the show or say we’re going to do this, we’re going to do that. That wasn’t my job. I was basically hired to make sure the stories, outlines, and concepts got to Joss in a timely manner. And when he approved or disapproved of those ideas, to make sure that all got relayed to keep things running as smoothly as possible.

  DAVID FURY

  Joss was very focused on Firefly and they didn’t seem to want to think about Angel. They said, “Good luck with it.” The feeling was almost they couldn’t care less; just let somebody else run it. I don’t know if that’s the case, but it felt that way at the time. I would seek out Tim and Joss; I would go to the set of Firefly to try and talk to them about, “Here’s where we’re at with my story to the third episode,” and I would be going to them directly, because I wasn’t getting what I needed from David Simkins. Everyone was kind of struggling and morale was down. It was a very tricky time. I just wanted us to be able to do good work. I wasn’t looking for anybody to get in trouble or leave. I was just concerned that the show was going to fall apart, and that’s exactly what was happening.

  DAVID SIMKINS

  Having the first two scripts written, we had a bit of luxury there where we could take some time to figure out what the third and fourth episodes would be. We had some continuing stories and arcs that we had to honor, so that was included as well. I would say to Joss or Tim, “What do you think of this?” or “How does this work?” Jeff Bell, bless his heart, one day I was sitting with him at the table in the writers’ room and was sort of noodling on an idea, and Jeff leaned over and very sweetly whispered, “That’s not this show,” and I was very thankful, because that was the kind of thing I was needing to know coming into a situation that was new. I looked to Jeff for that; he was very good at that sort of thing.

  DAVID FURY

  To some extent I separated myself. I would basically use Joss as the de facto show runner and go to [him] and Tim for notes rather than going to David for my episode. And David seemed at that point fine with that. I was more, like, “Let’s wait and see when David tries to write the show if he grasps the way it’s done.” Sometimes until you actually do it, you don’t really understand why you’re doing it this way. But he never got the chance; they just kind of moved on anyway. I had actually proposed that Jeff Bell would be an ideal choice to run the show, because Jeff had worked closely on it in the last year and was already a producer there anyway. I said, “I think you need to promote somebody from within who knows the show and knows t
he Mutant Enemy way of doing things, and I think it should be Jeff.” In the end they agreed.

  DAVID SIMKINS

  The details of what went down is that we were looking for our third script idea. I’d gone to Joss and pitched a concept about a villain who was trading futures. Not in a stock market sense, but this character had a way to identify the potential in someone’s future abilities. Like if you were going to grow up and become a world-famous surgeon, he would know this, take your future, hold on to that mojo from you, and sell it on some kind of black market to the highest bidder. It was kind of an odd concept. David Fury got the nod to write the script, and I remember clearly one day in the writers’ room, we were trying to break the story.

  Now I’m very much the kind of person where you just keep going wherever the story goes. You know it’s going to end up in the weeds at some point and you’ll pull it back. I’m sure David is that way, too, but for whatever reason on that particular day he turned to me and said, “I don’t get this. I don’t understand what this story is about.” I said, “Well, David, I don’t think any of us do. That’s kind of the point of why we’re here, trying to break this.” But then I realized later that there was a bigger issue going on. I got the sense that David was not particularly happy with my presence there. I could be completely reading into that, and I have nothing but respect for David—he’s obviously a very accomplished and talented writer—but for whatever reason, there was an issue there.

  STEVEN S. DEKNIGHT

  I remember I was on set for the first day of shooting on that season premiere. David Simkins and I were on set. Then he left to go back to the office. A couple of hours later I got a call that he had been let go. They had Jeff Bell step in as kind of an interim show runner, although, of course, in classic fashion they wouldn’t give him the title until the next season. I can’t say enough good things about Jeff Bell. Gracious, calm, good humored, just really lovely. He got everything dumped on top on him and just executed the season wonderfully in my opinion.