Slayers and Vampires
Page 54
Angel was a more difficult show to grab, but we tried to grab meaning in the episodes about the human condition. How to be good in a world that’s not so good. All those things we tried to work into [the show]. I think that’s a huge part of what those shows were, and it’s something that I don’t see in other places. When we talk about them when I’m on other shows, and I talk about those things, people turn their nose up at it. They think it’s, like, “Oh, that again.” But I point out that when it doesn’t have that, you’re just telling plots. You’re not telling stories, and there is a big difference. A plot is stuff people do, and a story is what it means and the thing you carry with you and the thing you can relay to somebody. And even as you’re telling me how it felt when you watched Fred die, it’s hard to manage that kind of emotional connection to a show. I don’t feel that emotional connection to other shows often, only the best ones.
SARAH LEMELMAN
(author, It’s About Power: Buffy the Vampire Slayer’s Stab at Establishing the Strength of Girls on American Television)
I was pretty young when I started watching Buffy. I have an older sister, six years older, to be exact, so when the show came out, she was probably around thirteen, which was the audience that the WB was shooting for. I really looked up to my sister then, and I still look up to her now, so I would always watch the show with her, despite my mom’s urging for me to get to bed. Some of the jokes may have been lost on me as a kid, but I appreciated it on a surface level back then—it was a fun drama/fantasy/supernatural show. Plus, I think I was always a feminist. I liked action movies, but I liked them even more when they had a female protagonist. Lara Croft was one of my heroes as a kid. Buffy also became one of them. And now, twenty years later, she’s still one of my heroes, but I appreciate the show on a much more sophisticated level.
The show is filled with all kinds of references to feminism that the casual viewer is likely to miss. I can’t tell you how many times I’ve watched the show, and each time I find something new to appreciate. Even the most overplayed episodes, like “Once More, with Feeling” or “Hush,” you can’t help but smile while watching it, even if you’ve seen it dozens of times.
JOSS MOLINA
(co–executive producer, Agent Carter)
I am really curious to see what Joss comes back as, because for the longest time he hasn’t really had the full freedom to do whatever the hell he wants. The closest thing he got to doing whatever the hell he wanted was Firefly. Buffy came out of a movie that he hated, because they ruined the script. And so Buffy the series came out of him rescuing that. It’s still very much his, but it was an existing title. Angel, of course, is a spin-off. Dollhouse came as an idea that he pitched over lunch to Eliza Dushku after he went to the bathroom and came up with this idea.
Firefly was the last thing that really came out of him fully formed that he loved. You can tell how much he loved it and loves it still. He’s still involved in the Firefly fandom. He still supports some of the Browncoat charities. And when he went to the feature side to do Avengers and Age of Ultron, again it wasn’t 100 percent his thing. These weren’t characters that he was creating. They were characters that he loved, that he grew up with, but he had a responsibility within the MCU, and, you know, he had a lot of mandates that he probably wouldn’t have chosen to impose on himself.
STEVEN S. DEKNIGHT
I, like many, many other writers, was deeply influenced by Joss and honored to be a part of the Buffy-Angel base. I always consider them like my postgraduate work. It’s where I really learned so much, and I’m so thankful to have been a part of that and to have been able to work with so many amazing people and tell stories that were, especially for the time, batshit crazy. Now you’ve got more of a chance to tell crazy stories, but back then it was very unusual. It was just the high point of my life.
FELICIA DAY
(creator/actress, The Guild)
I don’t think there’s anything like it on TV now. There’s something about Buffy that appealed to people of all ages, and I think right now if you look at examples of characters’ ages, they’re very much narrowly focused on teens. There’s something universal about the point of view and the way that the themes were in the show that just appealed to people from all walks of life. That’s when you really effect people in a bigger way with your art. And I think that’s what Buffy did very singularly.
ARMIN SHIMERMAN
(actor, Principal Snyder)
Usually, I go to Star Trek conventions, so it’s primarily Star Trek people. But since Buffy, and that’s been many, many years now, there’s always a sizable number of people who come up to me at Star Trek conventions and say we loved you as Snyder. And my response always is, you weren’t supposed to love me as Snyder.
JAMES MARSTERS
(actor, Spike)
I kept saying to the cast, you know, I’m a Star Trek fan, guys. If you can provide the audience with a world that is delightful enough to go back to, even when you know what’s about to happen, after the plot stops surprising you and you still go back for it—if we can do that, we could be the new Star Trek. And some of that is performance, so we gotta bring it right now. And if we become the new Star Trek, I’m the new Spock. I claim Spock. Shotgun, right now. Spock-Spike, Spike-Spock, same—so close. Anyway, I get to be Spock.
MERCEDES MCNAB
(actress, Harmony Kendall)
Anything you do, you never expect as an artist that people are still talking about it twenty years later. It’s pretty outstanding. You can never appreciate how popular the show is even to this day and grasp there are millions of people out there that watch and love it and live and die on it until you go to the conventions.
DAVID FURY
That fan base is really extraordinary. People still approach me with their children who are fans. Or some eighteen-year-old will approach me and say my mom and I used watch the show. And it’s great. Especially when it’s young women, because the show is so important to them. That was something I took for granted. I didn’t realize how empowering it was. As the father of a daughter, I’m grateful I got to be a part of something that moved so many young girls that they are special, that they are all potential slayers. The idea that they have the power within.
JOSS WHEDON
(creator / executive producer, Buffy the Vampire Slayer)
I would never take all the credit for everything. There are definitely precursors. I don’t think Xena gets nearly enough props for being an extraordinarily daring show. They were crucified, for God’s sake. And credit for [having] an extraordinarily textured, believable, strong character. But it got heaped in genre world and didn’t break through the mainstream in quite the same way. Ultimately, they didn’t have our writing staff. I did. When I started, Buffy was kind of a radical concept, and I was, like, “Really? Why?” The idea of a female carrying an action show—well it’s all across the boards now. It’s not even a question now. Even when we were pitching the animated show, they said, “Boys won’t accept it. You need a boy character who’s just as strong as Buffy who’s in it with her,” and we were, like, “We really don’t think you’re getting the point.”
That is no longer an issue. Now there will be some backlash, and a lot of shows with empowered women in them suck, because most shows are bad. The cream rises and that’s the thing. But it’s in the mix now, and that’s a good thing.
SARAH LEMELMAN
It’s a shame that many people watch Buffy on a surface level nowadays and either view it as campy, especially since some of the special effects have not held up, and give up on it or they enjoy it but don’t see some of the subtler references to feminism and female empowerment in it, such as Whedon’s turning the girl-in-peril trope inside out.
ANTHONY C. FERRANTE
(director, Boo)
I think the interesting thing about TV vampire series and other creature series is how often they want to be Buffy but miss the point of what made Buffy work. Vampire Diaries, Moonlight, and The
Originals are a bit too serious at times—more Twilight than Buffy. They’re romance novels, in essence, instead of allegorical tales. And while Vampire Diaries has done some amazing things, it’s really in a different space than Buffy. I think both Buffy and X-Files created templates. Show runners and networks want to recapture those shows; both of those were lightning-in-a-bottle-type things.
What you need to succeed is having someone like Joss Whedon or Chris Carter, with their own point of view, coming in to subvert the genre and make it their own. If you’re trying to think about, How can I create a show that’s the next Buffy or X-Files?, it’s almost guaranteed to fail or come up short.
STEVEN S. DEKNIGHT
I had a meeting with an unnamed executive at Spelling years ago and they openly admitted Charmed was their stab at doing a Buffy show. I had to respect them, because what they did worked and outlived us all and their ratings were better than ours ever were. It’s what I call the Joan of Arcadia syndrome, which was not a bad show, but it definitely does not work outside the box. You usually don’t go to the superdark places on these shows.
JOSE MOLINA
I left Angel to go to Dark Angel. After Dark Angel, I came back to the Whedon camp for Firefly. It was funny because working on Dark Angel, me and a couple of the members of the staff were still watching Buffy and Angel religiously, and we would come into work and go, “Why can’t our show be as good as that one?” And so we would try to Whedonize our own show, but Dark Angel wasn’t really designed to be that. So our pleas fell on deaf ears until season two of Dark Angel. The studio and the network decided that they wanted us to become Buffy and they wanted us to have the monster of the week, so we had to retrofit or reverse engineer our franchise to be theirs. And that didn’t work, either. But it shows how seminal Buffy was becoming that other networks were starting to notice enough that they were, like, “Yeah, we agree we want your show to be as good as their show.”
SARAH LEMELMAN
Buffy has helped the popularity of vampires erupt. I’m only vaguely familiar with The Vampire Diaries, but I remember when it first came out, because my sister was very excited about it and talked about it a lot. The next day in school, I walked into my first class, which was Spanish II, and literally all the girls were talking about The Vampire Diaries. I wished that I watched it the night before, but I had marching band practice, which precluded me from watching it, and I just never jumped on the bandwagon after that.
As far as I know, The Vampire Diaries heavily focuses on the relationship between the lead actress and the vampire, Stefan. Later, Stefan’s brother Damon enters, and we begin the love triangle. This reminds me of what happened with Buffy/Angel/Spike, but the viewers couldn’t see it as drawn out as in The Vampire Diaries, because David Boreanaz left Buffy for his spinoff, Angel. Though we did see Spike always comparing himself to Angel, like in the penultimate episode of Buffy, where Angel has a guest appearance. In the episode, Spike sees Buffy and Angel kiss and gets very jealous.
Also, in season five of Angel, the episode “The Girl in Question” centers on Spike and Angel traveling to Italy upon news that Buffy is in trouble (but turns out, she’s now dating their arch-nemesis, The Immortal, another vampire). Before the two heard this news, they started competing with each other over who Buffy really loves. The point of me saying all this is that Buffy sort of paved the way, showing that vampire shows can be successful, and other shows have used that and have then turned it into more of a love story as the main feature.
If we look at True Blood, there was so much going on there, but the thing that everyone remembers is, Who should Sookie choose? Bill, the “nice” vampire? Or Eric, the dangerous but alluring vampire? Teenage girls eat up love stories, especially when it involves vampires, because it’s fun to fantasize about the dark and mysterious figure swooping you off your feet. It’s why Twilight blew up, despite its source material being quite weak.
HARRY GROENER
(actor, Mayor Richard Wilkins)
I still meet fans who say, “I just started watching Buffy, and oh my God I just love it—it’s great!” And you get stopped every once in a while by a younger generation that is just beginning to discover it. And then some of the older people in my generation . . . kind of go, “Don’t tell anyone, but I love Buffy.” I enjoy all the fans talking about it, because I like talking about it, too. It was such a good time. It doesn’t always happen that way in television. If you’re doing an episodic, once in a while you get a part that’s really interesting and fun. Most of the time, they’re all primary colors. You’re going to be red today, you’re green, you’re purple—that’s all you are, and you can’t be anything else. Or you’re just information. If you’re in a cop show and you’re on the street and you’re working at the store and they come and they ask you, “You see this guy?” “Yeah, I saw him. He’s around the corner. He was wearing a purple shirt.” That’s it.
MERCEDES MCNAB
No matter how old you are, no matter where you live, where you’re from, there is something for everybody. People can still relate to it. There’s action; there’s comedy. I feel like anybody can relate to that show.
THOMAS P. VITALE
(executive vice president, programming and original movies, Syfy and Chiller)
I’m not saying anything new here when I say that Buffy is definitely a top-fifty show in the history of television . . . Not just “genre” television, but all television.
HOWARD GORDON
(executive producer, Homeland)
Buffy was a brief experience, but a formative one. I was extremely lucky, because I really do think that Joss and [Breaking Bad’s] Vince Gilligan are the people I’ve worked with who have a voice that is extraordinary and unlike anyone else’s. I’m glad I got a front-row seat to it.
FELICIA DAY
It has a legacy that hasn’t been equaled in female empowerment. There’s a lot of male superheroes on TV right now, not a lot of female ones. Back then, there were other shows like Birds of Prey. There were a couple of others, Charmed even, but Buffy really was the one that stayed apart from the rest, because there was something underneath it that really carries the legacy through. It’s kind of sad that we’re not there yet. We’ve kind of taken a left turn, but everything eventually comes back onto itself, and I’d love to see more shows with that irreverent tone with females in the lead, because the torch is a little bit out right now. But I think always Buffy will be the touchstone to that kind of genre.
JOSE MOLINA
So now that Joss Whedon has two of the top-grossing movies in the universe under his belt and a handful of hit shows, I’m really curious to see what he chooses to do next. If he’s going to stay on the feature side or if he is going to come back to TV. I am of two minds about what I think he will do. Part of me thinks that he’s going to want to do TV, because you get to write it, you get to shoot it, you get to air it, and it’s done and you get to do that thirteen to twenty-two times a season. A lot of us writers thrive in that environment, where you’re constantly up and at it. You don’t have the two-to-three-year turnaround, the slog of getting a movie from pitch to script to production to post to everything else. But I think he may get more freedom and less commitment if he stays in features, and he’s got a couple of kids who are both high school age now, so it wouldn’t surprise me if the feature world allows him a little bit more time to spend with people that he honestly hasn’t had a ton of time to see.
JOSS WHEDON
The thing I miss most is sitting in the writers’ room, because I’ve never been around a group like that and I don’t think I will be again. Just so funny, so dedicated.
DAVID GREENWALT
(executive producer, Grimm)
I’m very proud of the work. Joss used to tease me, like, “Well, doesn’t every pilot go to a show and stay on?” Until he got into Firefly and Dollhouse and stuff that didn’t go that long, but he used to give me a lot of shit. The success of Buffy—and by “the success” I mean the
way it reached people of all ages and emotionally—was so satisfying because you worked so hard.
DAVID FURY
I was really proud to start my career in dramas working for these guys and these shows. We all kind of recognized what we were doing was amazing. What Joss was able to do and put together and the way he looked at things was just very different than what we get from other people. I know a lot of people and it’s not there. They’re talented in their own ways, but they don’t know that special something that seems to make a difference in a story that makes you go, “Oh, I get why we’re telling this story now.” We were doing that when we were doing twenty-two episodes a year minimally. Now, shows that have ten or twelve episodes. So when you think about quality control, I’m not saying all the episodes are good or great, but a lot of them are. The average is pretty damn high. In other words, the worst episodes are still worth seeing, and I couldn’t say that for a lot of shows.
DAVID GREENWALT
Yes, it’s much more fun if it’s a hit than if it’s not. You’ve got to work as hard whatever one you’re doing. I was very sad to kind of leave Joss and Marti. We were very close, and that kind of broke my heart a little bit. Then I went on to do my own thing, and the shows I worked on were really good; they just didn’t take off for whatever reason. That was a good six years.