Joss Whedon: The Genius Behind Buffy Read online

  Joss told a group at the Academy of Television Arts & Sciences that the idea of how he could make it work came after watching an episode where Spike (James Marsters) was killing slayers through the ages. Marsters brought his guitar to the set one day and began singing and Anthony Head also sang.

  He was surprised at the talent his cast had in belting out tunes. “I studied everybody’s range,” he says. “I know which of my cast members like to sing and which want to avoid it like the plague. I know who my heavy hitters are and I’ve geared the entire episode toward servicing that, so that everybody is comfortable.

  “It terrified some of the actors...but pretty much everyone came on board and did a wonderful job. It’s something I’m proud of in many ways. It is also one of the most difficult things I’ve ever produced.”

  “I was one of those who was horrified by the idea,” says Hannigan. “It wouldn’t have been so bad if I could carry a tune, but that isn’t the case. I have to say Joss made it fun for us.”

  Whedon composed 11 original songs for the musical and even hired a professional choreographer and vocal coach to prepare his stars for their solos. “It’s amazing that I lived to tell the tale,” says Whedon, who spent six months shaping his vision into a reality. “When I tried to get Ali’s (singing) range, she threw herself on the ground in my office and went, ‘No!’ It was actually kind of adorable. And Sarah (Michelle Gellar) wouldn’t come up at all. Half of the cast was like, ‘Whoohoo!’ and the other half was like, ‘Why do you punish us?’ But, after six years, they’ve met every challenge I’ve ever thrown at them. So it’s no surprise they pulled this off too.”

  When I tried to get Ali’s (singing) range, she threw herself on the ground in my office and went, ‘No!’ It was actually kind of adorable.—Joss

  Hannigan was especially freaked out. “I begged, ‘Can’t Willow have laryngitis?’” she jests. “But it was beautiful. Now that I’ve seen the magic they can do in an engineering studio, I’m glad I got to do it.” Trachtenberg successfully lobbied for a dancing role. “Joss wanted to write a whole song for Dawn,” she reveals, “and I wasn’t up for that.” Joss therefore wrote a dancing number instead. “Dancing is definitely much more fun for me,” she admits.

  The show’s star was also reluctant. “I’m not a singer, and I hated every moment of it,” says Sarah Michelle Gellar. “It took something like 19 hours of singing and 17 hours of dancing in between shooting four other episodes.” Gellar’s initial impulse was to use a voice double, but she nixed that after hearing her songs. “I basically started to cry and said, ‘You mean someone else is going to do my big emotional turning point for the season?’”

  I’m not a singer, and I hated every moment of it.

  —Sarah Michelle Gellar

  Once More with Feeling contains 35 minutes of music and 13 minutes of dialogue. Each song is a seamless part of the overall story and advances the plotline. The episode, after extensive cutting, was eight minutes too long and Joss couldn’t bring himself to cut any further. The executives liked it so much they agreed to let it run long.

  “Buffy’s first number, ‘Going Through the Motions,’ is a straight-up Disney production number—wicked Disney,” says Whedon. But mostly “there are a lot of ballads, because the characters are going through emotions—and because I go to a sad place when I write.” But there are exceptions, including Spike’s rock number “Rest in Peace” and Xander and Anya’s ’30s-style song and dance number “I’ll Never Tell” that, as Anya confesses, is ”retro pastiche that’s never going to be a breakaway pop hit.”

  The episode took six months to create. Joss had only learned to play the piano a few years before, and spent three months developing the score. He did it on his own, despite his novice compositional skills. There were three months of voice and dance lessons for the actors, and weeks of shooting around four other episodes. “It was a nightmare,” says an exhausted Whedon. “The happiest nightmare I ever had.”

  The reviews were almost universally positive. Entertainment Weekly said that “Whedon has struck gold again in the best and most original episode since last season’s ‘Hush;’ one would almost think this was a season premiere or cliffhanger because of what ensues.”

  According to Salon, “picking apart the technicalities of this Buffy episode... is the best way to miss the point of how beautifully it worked, how gracefully paced, clever and affecting it was. For one thing, Whedon figured out how to make the music a seamless part of the action, by working it into the plot as a joke.

  “But Once More with Feeling works mostly because the musical numbers are keyed right into the heartbeat of the show, a show whose mythology, by now, in the midst of the sixth season, is so rich and deliciously Byzantine that you could almost design a college course around it. There was joy and lightness in Once More with Feeling, particularly the sequence where Tara and Willow, the show’s Wiccan lesbian lovers, cavort in an almost insanely sunny park, twirling about in medieval-looking frocks. The scene ends in the couple’s bedroom, with Tara gently levitating inches above the bed as Willow hovers somewhere just below the frame, one of the best metaphors for the bliss of oral sex I’ve seen on any screen, small or large.”

  Buffy pushes sexual boundaries in season six with a number of intense scenes between Buffy and Spike, especially Spike’s attempted rape of Buffy in Seeing Red. Noxon and Whedon decided to include this scene as a reminder to the many fans who seem to have decided Spike was one of the good guys. “People kept saying, ‘You know, Spike’s a really great guy’ I’m like, ‘I know, he’s come a long way. But in his heart of hearts, he still doesn’t quite know the difference between right and wrong,’” Noxon said of the episode. Buffy and Spike’s relationship had a clear sado-masochistic component. Of course, these weren’t the first sado-masochistic scenes in Buffy. There were a number of others, most notably Drusilla’s torture scene with Giles and vampire Willow’s playtime with the “puppy” (the alternate universe Angel).

  Sídebar: My set vísít to Buffy

  In the middle of Santa Monica you’ll find a grouping of tin buildings that make up the set of Buffy. When Joss says they built the whole thing out of a bunch of tin huts, he means it. This isn’t your typical television lot. Within the humble exterior lies what looks like a street in any small town. There’s a cinema on the corner and a Mexican restaurant across the street. If it weren’t for the “Magic Box” sign on one of the storefronts, you would never know that it’s Sunnydale.

  A great many of the scenes for Buffy are shot inside this huge fauxcinema; it holds the entire downstairs of the house where Buffy lives. The front of the house has been built to look just like the original home located in Torrance, California—this is called a second face. It’s used so that the show doesn’t have to shoot exteriors on location. The crew of Buffy started doing exterior shots on this lot after wearing out their welcome in Torrance while shooting the season three finale. That final explosion scene set off half the car alarms in town!

  It’s a little eerie to cross the threshold into the home of Buffy Summers. I’d never imagined how striking an experience it would be to witness the place where the magic of Buffy occurs. Being an entertainment reporter has its perks; I was afforded the opportunity to touch the worn chairs on the front porch, examine the books stacked in mission-style cases and sit in the dining room where the Scoobies spend so much time hanging out.

  I stepped into Buffy’s living room. There stood the very couch where Joyce died in “The Body.” I took a few steps deeper into the house and found myself in the hallway where Buffy vomited after she found her mother dead, and hurried on into the homey kitchen which leads to the dining room. I peeked around the right corner to find the front entryway and the staircase that should lead up to Buffy’s bedroom—but the upstairs of the house is actually a part of a different set, in the back of the huge soundstage.

  I made another round about the downstairs set, taking in little details that comprise Buffy’s liv
ing space—knickknacks, pictures and furniture that I’ve seen via a cathode ray tube for years and could now actually touch and see. I then left the first story of the house for the other side of the soundstage, where I got to examine the upstairs section of the Summers’ home.

  I was immediately drawn to Dawn’s bedroom, a pink, purple and green teen haven. Teen magazines litter the floor and furniture, and there’s a stuffed Scooby Doo tucked away in the closet. (Wonder where that came from?) Puzzles and books fill the bookcase, along with a groovy lava lamp. Photos of a much younger Dawn—a Dawn the audience never saw—grace the walls, and notebooks are stacked on the desk next to a wizard snow globe and a large framed picture of Joyce.

  There are more pictures of Joyce in the hallway leading to Willow and Tara’s room. The walls are loaded with family photos, pictures of the Summers’ women smiling as if there were no danger lurking in Sunnydale, no Hellmouth just down the road.

  The comfortable sparse decor of Willow and Tara’s bedroom is violently interrupted by the still-broken pane of glass and the bloodstain on the carpet. Though I knovv it’s fake blood, the room still gives me chills. The walls seem to contain a deep sadness, and I think I can now understand a bit better what drove Willow over the edge at the end of season six.

  The upstairs bathroom is in need of a good cleaning. Evidently someone’s too busy fighting demons to scrub the white and black vinyl floor. I took a second to remember Spike attempting the rape of Buffy in this room just before his soul was restored. I then made my way to Buffy’s room.

  There’s so much to see in this bedroom, where many of the props were taken from the sets of other shows. There’s a small little case that has been taken from the show Space Above and Beyond and a sticker on her mirror that says Professional Murder. I couldn’t resist sitting on her bed and looking at all the pictures of Buffy with other characters in the show. It just felt amazing to be sitting right in the middle of one of the only sets to survive since season one (the Bronze set is also still used)—for six years fans have watched Buffy grow up in this very room, in this very house.

  I wanted the chance to see more, and got a distant view of the cemetery where Buffy does so much slaying. I saw a set in the process of being built across the soundstage—it looks like they’re rebuilding the high school. I also got to venture into Spike’s crypt. The sturdy-looking room appears to be solid concrete, but mostly consists of plastic, Styrofoam and plywood. Spike’s TV (for daily episodes of Passions) is missing, but his chair sits by the door next to some filthy cobwebs. The melted candles in elaborate stands finish off the Goth dwelling that Spike calls home.

  I also took a peek into Xander’s apartment. Everything in his cozy abode screams kitsch, from the Tiki bar (complete with hula girls) to the Star Trek figurines. A large basket of laundry and an ironing board take up a corner of his bedroom and there’s clutter everywhere: Fantastic Four comics, hockey magazines, hockey sticks and surf boards. Looks like Xander is missing Anya in more ways than one.

  Time got away from me while I explored the world that had come straight from Joss’ vivid imagination—it was time to interview a couple of the actors who worked on the show. Time for me to step outside of Joss’ surreal world and find out more about what made his vision a reality.

  I know, he’s come a long way. But in his heart of hearts, he still doesn’t quite know the difference wrong.

  —Marti Noxon

  In a classic Whedon move, the nerd troika turn out to be a fake, while Willow winds up as the season’s “big bad.” “Her magic gets out of control,” says Hannigan. “Things go awry and it’s frightening.” Sighing, she adds, “I don’t want to be bad! Nobody will like me. That’s the hardest thing to get over as an actress. What if they don’t like me?”

  But Hannigan has fun with Willow’s evil side as well. “You know, there’s this power that comes to you when you just sort of let loose and play the bad girl,” says Hannigan. “During that time Willow was doing what she thought was best for everyone, and she didn’t see it as evil in any way. She brought Buffy back from the dead, not to punish her, but to free her from some weird alternate dimension she thought Buffy was in. Things did get a bit out of hand and the power went to her head, but she’s paid for her crimes.

  “I was grateful that Joss and the gang gave me a chance to show a different side of Willow. Now we know she always has that lurking underneath and it gives her a little more depth.”

  In the last scene of the season, it’s revealed that Spike’s soul is restored. It’s not clear whether Spike knew this would happen, but it’s abundantly clear that Whedon has interesting things planned for season seven.

  Season seven

  At the time this writing, season seven is not yet complete, but Joss has promised a lighter tone, and, so far, has delivered. “[Season six] has been fantastic, but it has had a darker tone. To be honest, some of the episodes depressed the hell out of me. This is where we wanted to go ... into the dark of the woods. But next year is going to be very different. We’re going back to our original mission statement. Back to the joy of female empowerment. This year was about adult life and relationships—and making really, really bad decisions. Next year will still be scary and different and strange, but it will be more of a positive outlook. People will stop abandoning Dawn. Willow won’t be a junky anymore. Buffy won’t be dead.”

  Season seven promises to be something of a reunion, with Whedon promising the return of Faith, Tara, Harmony, Glory and Drusilla. Giles will be in ten of the episodes, some of which were shot in England. It rained the entire time the crew was in England, but shooting proceeded nevertheless. “We got the footage. Tony and Ally are great and that’s England in the background so I’m happy,” Joss says.

  Joss was thrilled to get back to England, this time not as a shy high school student, but as a major Hollywood producer. “I just always wanted to go back over there. Because I only had to fly one person out they let me do it. I already had Tony there and it just made sense for Willow’s character to have spent her time under Giles’ watch and guidance.”

  As for the storyline for season seven, Whedon remained coy. “I can only tell you a little bit,” he said. “This is something I’ve been sort of gearing towards since the very beginning of the show. It’s a question of bringing it onto a much larger scale and at the same time making it much more personal and much more personal to Buffy herself. This year [season six] was a chance to let the other characters [shine.]

  “... The big climactic scene [was] between Xander and Willow, and that was because, as characters and as actors, they’d earned that opportunity. And I thought it was right for them to sort of be the spokespeople for what was going on at the end there. But next year Buffy will be much less peripheral to the climax. The climax will be the biggest thing we’ve ever done.”

  The big climactic scene [was] between Xander and Willow, and that was because, as characters as actors, they’d earned that opportunity. Joss

  Whedon added, “You know, every year it might be the end. Except, actually, this year [season six]. This year I really did sort of leave it up in the air. You could have said this could have been an end, but the [cliffhanger] with Spike and the thing on Angel [leaving Angel at the bottom of the ocean], this was sort of the exception to the rule. But I am looking for closure next year...because we’re making a more positive statement. This year was just about surviving the year. Sometimes the audience felt that actually it’s their chore too. What? You don’t want to be depressed all the time like me? I don’t understand. But next year is something that’s a lot more positive and definitive. And in that it has to end with an exclamation point, not a question mark.”

  Joss with real-life couple Hannigan and Alexis Denisof. Can it be only coincidence that both Willow and Wesley have flirted with the dark side?

  Joss has also hinted that there may be a Buffy—Angel crossover episode, if the networks (the WB particularly) overcome their animosity. It’s not clear ye
t whether this will happen.

  What? You don’t want to be depressed all the time like me?—Joss

  Critics And Emmys

  Critics, like fans, have embraced Buffy the Vampire Slayer.

  “Buffy sounds like goofy kids’ show to most people, but it has depth, layers and texture that some alleged ‘adult’ series could only hope for,” says Rob Owen, a TV editor for the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette.

  “Joss is a master of everything, by which I mean he’s equally adept at emotional drama and character comedy, action sequences and quiet romantic moments. The show has suffered this season [six] from his lack of day-to-day involvement. The show no longer has the balance it once had.

  “That being said, this season’s ‘Once More with Feeling’ musical episode is one of my favorites. ‘Hush,’ which has 20 minutes with no dialogue, is probably my all-time favorite episode, which he wrote and directed.

  Joss is a master of everything, by which I mean he’s equally adept at emotional drama and character comedy, action sequences and quiet romantic moments.—Rob Owen

  “Joss is just a very creative guy. He’s created a unique group of characters and allowed them to grow and mature and evolve throughout the course of the show. He has the sensibility of a fan, something not often found in TV producers, which is what endears him to the fan community. He’s a sci-fi geek at heart making shows for other sci-fi geeks.”

  Tom Walter, the television critic for the Memphis paper, concurs. “Whedon is a great example of getting a second chance and running at it, and a great example of how television is much friendlier to writers than the movies are,” Walters explains. “He was able to take a lackluster movie (whose fault was that—studio interference or whatever—prob—ably doesn’t matter anymore) and turn it into a gem of a series.