Joss Whedon: The Genius Behind Buffy Read online

  Marti Noxon, Buffy executive producer and “parking ticket lady,” clutches her Saturn.

  “... Early on, Buffy was simply amazing. It took teen alienation and angst about as far as it could go—name me a bigger outsider than a vampire killer—but did it with rare humor and panache. This was a sophisticated, witty, well-written, well-cast, well-acted show from the start, one that didn’t hit you over the head with its metaphors.”

  This was a sophisticated witty, well-written, well-cast, well-acted show from the start, one that didn’t hit you over the head with its metaphors.

  —Tom Walter

  So why is it that the show gets so little respect when it comes the big awards shows? Is it the genre or the teen orientation? Is it the quirky name?

  “I don’t mean to be rude but, sometimes people look at a title and make a decision. I know when Joss first was creating the show people didn’t want it named Buffy the Vampire Slayer because they were afraid it would turn people off,” says star Sarah Michelle Gellar.

  “This show is the most wonderful mix of brilliant, witty writing and phenomenal performances and evolving stories. And if people turn their head to it and say they won’t watch it like they would watch the Power Rangers, to me that really is just ignorance,” says Gellar.

  “There are some people who never take genre shows seriously,” says Whedon. “It’s a prejudice that I’ll never understand. But because anything to do with fantasy just turns them off and anything that’s humorous must not be meaningful. So this year they are all going to be doctors so we can get some Emmys.”

  Oh, there’s that Emmy word. The show has been nominated but it’s still a sore subject among the cast and crew.

  “But we specifically—we don’t make the show to win awards. The reason we stayed on the air in our first 13 was because we had this incredibly strong fan base, this Internet fan base, and fans that would write into magazines. They’re the reason we make the show, and that’s the accolades that I think we all, as a group, look for,” Gellar says.

  “We have received nominations in the past and that was rewarding, and so you sort of go ‘maybe that will happen again.’ But the fact of the matter is with a name like Buffy the Vampire Slayer you’re never going to be Emmy bait. So it’s sort of—it doesn’t really affect the way we do the show. It’s not like were are going to say ‘let’s make a very special episode, let’s figure out an Emmy theme, what do they like, what do they go for?’ It’s not relevant to us,” says Whedon.

  “Also, I said this before, but I think that the voting population for the Emmys are not the people who watch our show,” says Noxon. “And so much of it is the shows you watch and talk about with your friends and peers about. I think in general, the newer people to the WGA (Writers Guild Association) and the SAG (Screen Actors Guild) and all of these different organizations don’t know they can join the academy. So until there’s a younger constituent...”

  I think the show should be nominated, so there. I don’t care.

  —Emma Caulfield

  Emma Caulfield (Anya) steps in, “I don’t think it’s very political to say it, but I’m going to say it. I think the show should be nominated, so there. I don’t care. We have the best writers working for us. We have an amazing creator, show-runner, I mean all the way around. We have an amazing cast, one of the most talented ensemble casts put together, and it would be nice to be nominated. I think the show should be nominated. So there.”

  “What bothers me the most is that the cast isn’t nominated,” says Whedon. “We are a genre show, but I think they are ignored because they are young and they don’t get the recognition they deserve. I defy you to show me a better ensemble than these guys,” he says pointing to all of his cast members.

  Whedon even paid for a campaign designed to help the show win an Emmy, but to no avail. “I feel like I just spent a lot of money trolling for a compliment that I didn’t get,” Joss now says with regret.

  What’s Next?

  There are some indications that season seven will be the last. Gellar’s contract is up at the end of season seven, and she has been unwilling to commit beyond this point. Joss has signed an eight-figure production deal with Fox and is increasingly pulled in multiple directions.

  One possibility is that the series continues, but without Gellar. There was some speculation that the introduction of Dawn at the beginning of season five (at 15, one year younger than Buffy in season one) was a hedge against Gellar’s possible departure. Another alternative is the return of Faith. At the time of this writing, Eliza Dushku has just signed on to appear in the final five episodes of season seven Buffy (and three episodes of Angel), sparking the interest of curious fans. Could Buffy become Faith the Vampire Slayer?

  “I think absolutely you could have a show that revolves around Eliza. She is an extraordinary talent,” Whedon tells TV Guide Online. “But [it] would be a very different show. There’s a reason why Sarah is Buffy and Buffy is Sarah. What Eliza brings to the show is very different than what Sarah brings. They have very different personas ... a very different kind of magnetism.

  “Could there be another Slayer?” Whedon continues. “Yeah. But you are talking about a radically different show, and right now I’m happy with this one.

  “[Besides], I don’t really think that far ahead,” he says. “I’m thinking about [season seven] and I know Sarah will be here. And I imagine that she will be here for some time after that.”

  Could there be another Slayer? Yeah.—Joss

  A third possibility is the end of the series, but its resurrection as a series of movies (a la Star Trek). Joss has expressed interest in a movie, as have many of the cast, but insists this will have to wait until the series ends.

  It’s not clear that Gellar is on board with a movie. She’s expressed skepticism that a second Buffy movie would do better than the first. So the fate of any Buffy movie is still very much up in the air.

  So if season seven is the end, what does Joss have in mind for the series finale? According to Head, “I know what he’s got in mind, but I ain’t going to tell you. It’s brilliant.”

  6

  Angel

  “Angel was the one character Who is bigger than life in the same Way that Buffy was . . . a kind of superhero.”

  —Joss Whedon

  The WB launched Angel, a Buffy spin-off, in the fall of 2000. Angel was set in the Buffy universe, but was intended to be very different in tone. Angel was aimed at twentysomethings looking for meaning in a confusing world. The concept was film-noirish, and originally focused on Angel as a private eye, solving a supernatural case each week.

  Critical to Angel’s success was finding an identity that was clearly distinct from Buffy, while still appealing to Buffy fans. “When we conceived Angel, we knew we wanted a much darker show and for it to be different in tone from Buffy,” says Whedon. “It’s inherently different because the star is David, but at the same time we didn’t want to do the same thing we had done before. It was an opportunity for us to move in a new direction. The show is set in Los Angeles because there are a lot of demons in LA, and a wealth of stories to be told.

  When we conceived Angel, we knew we wanted a much darker show and for it to be different in tone from Buffy.—Joss

  “We also wanted to take the show a little older and have the characters deal with demons in a much different way. Angel has a business that he runs with his friends. And he has relationships with different demons. We learn that not all demons are bad. The show complements Buffy in a lot of ways, but they couldn’t be more different.

  “Buffy is always the underdog trying to save the world, but Angel is looking for redemption. It’s those two things that creatively make the shows different.”

  “Well, there’s no denying, of course, that Angel grew out of Buffy,” says Greenwalt, coproducer of Angel. “But even from ... the first time David came to Buffy ... we were always discovering new things. I’ll never forget the first episode ... Buffy discov
ers that he’s a vampire and they kiss for the first time, and it was just incredible. You know David brought so much of that to the role. David always represented something scary and then something occasionally funny, which are all of the things we like to do. But when we spun the show off originally, our notion was this will be a really dark, gritty, urban show.

  “Our show takes place in the big city, the characters seem older, they seem more mature, it seems more like the travails of your twenties. It just seems meaner and leaner to me, this show. But certainly there are many elements ... I was going to say that are stylistically the same, but that’s not the right word. Something in the way that Joss finds the core of things, and just when you think something wonderful is going to happen, something terrible happens and vice versa.”

  For David Boreanaz (Angel) having his own show has been both exciting and frightening. In the beginning he had talked with Gellar about the pressures of being the lead and what that means, but it didn’t prepare him for the burden he would bear. Whereas in Buffy it was Gellar who was in most every scene, now it was Boreanaz’s turn to be the focus of almost every frame. It meant a lot of hard work and long hours.

  David Boreanaz, looking a bit Angelus-like.

  Whedon knew from the first season of Buffy that Boreanaz had something special. It was watching Boreanaz in a season-two episode of Buffy that convinced Whedon that he could carry his own show. He wasn’t the only candidate; Whedon also felt that Hannigan, for example, had the appeal to headline a show. But the character of Angel was special. “Angel was the one character who is bigger than life in the same way that Buffy was,” says Whedon. “A kind of superhero. And I knew—as the dark, mysterious love interest—that he had the potential for a breakout character. But I also knew he had the potential to go away after a couple of episodes. But then we found David Boreanaz and he doesn’t seem to be able to go away at all,” laughs Joss.

  Something in the way that Joss finds the core of things, and just when you think something wonderful is going to happen, something terrible happens and vice versa.

  —David Greenwalt

  To bring a sense of continuity to the show, Joss and Greenwalt decided to bring the character Cordelia Chase, played by Charisma Carpenter, with Angel. She initially helped the vampire set up Angel Investigations, and provided much of the humor in the seriously dark show.

  Charisma Carpenter plays the ever evolving Cordelia.

  “You know, it’s a little scary when you are moving from a successful show to something that may or may not do well,” says Carpenter. “For me though, it was a no-brainer. There wasn’t much more they could do with my character on Buffy. If Cordelia stayed in Sunny dale, she would never grow. I was flattered when Joss and the guys asked if I would be interested in doing the new show. They told me some of what they had planned for my character and I just jumped on board.

  “I liked the idea at first that Cordelia was going off to be a small fish in a big pond and she doesn’t have a clue on how to survive in the entertainment world,” says Carpenter. “We learned a lot about her character in those early episodes of Angel that we never knew before. Look how much she has grown over the years since Angel began. I certainly didn’t see any of this coming—oh that’s funny, because Cordelia probably could have seen it.”

  Whedon was intimately involved in every aspect of the show’s launch, but it was clear from the outset that Buffy would continue to dominate his time. Joss Whedon and David Greenwalt coproduced Angel, and Joss, while trying to direct one episode per year, left the day-to-day management of the series to Greenwalt. But, Greenwalt insists, Joss is always involved.

  “Our offices are close,” Greenwalt emphasizes. “When we were on Buffy, my office was right next to Joss’s, and now I’m downstairs in the same building with all of the other Angel people. And there’s not a major thing that happens on the show that isn’t something that he and I haven’t discussed. And usually it’s some surprise.”

  Gellar was a bit apprehensive about the spin-off, concerned about losing Whedon’s direction, not to mention one of her favorite costars. “Joss is our show,” says Gellar, “I mean this is him. And when he first told me that he had this idea, I cried. I was excited for David. I was so excited at the concept that Joss would have a chance to tell more stories, because that’s what he does so brilliantly. But I was concerned, because I don’t think we know how to make our show without him.

  “Joss assured me that no matter how famous and busy he becomes he will be involved in our show. As long as I know that, I’m happy. And as for David, he is amazing actor and I miss working with him. At the same time I think he’s doing a fantastic job with his show.”

  “There’s a certain amount of pressure that comes with having to be the lead in your own show,” says Boreanaz, “but it isn’t like I’m doing it all by myself. We have this great cast and crew who are a huge part of what we are doing. So I feel some pressure, but only in that I want us all to do well.”

  The show has been a learning process for Boreanaz. “I’ve learned that kindness is more than a loving word, that extending one’s hand to your fellow workers and getting through [the] day together is [important]. Shooting a television show can be very difficult and at times it can really wear on yourself as a person. And if you keep reminding yourself that it is a job and you show up together as a team and as a whole, that . . . you can prevail and get through the day or the eight days that it takes to shoot one episode.

  Yes, he’s married. David Boreanaz and his real-life wife Jaime Bergman (Son of a Beach).

  “Since I arrived on Buffy as a recurring character, I’ve grown considerably as a person on the inside from the help of my friends and my family. And now that I’m married, I have a beautiful wife and a child. Life has been very good to me and I look at that as a reward in itself. So along the way you learn, and as long as I keep learning with the show and struggling, trying to find something new every day with it, then it’s more exciting for me to show up. The hardest part is showing up. Getting out of bed for anybody is hard, and driving to work-well, actually I get picked up. Getting into the passenger seat is difficult,” he laughs.

  Greenwalt credits Boreanaz with helping him keep his temper. “David is always reminding me that we all have a purpose here, we are all here for [a] reason and it all fits together in a way that you can’t always see, and he’s actually helped me keep my temper a few times.”

  “It’s important to stay grounded,” says Boreanaz. “You have to keep reminding yourself that it’s a show. We’re here to entertain and put out the best product that we possibly can. And on our show, we set the bar extremely high. Sometimes I set it high and get frustrated with myself, but that’s just the type of person I am.”

  The first season was a tough one for everyone involved. The show was still trying to find itself creatively and though they had many hits, there were also a lot of misses. The balance between dark and light was often difficult for the writers to define, and there were many times when the show was overly dark.

  As noted, Angel was initially conceived as film-noirish, with each episode setting up and resolving a detective case. This format, while interesting, abandoned some of Buffy’s core strengths, notably the focus on relationships and the multi-episode story arcs.

  There were also problems with the two creators, Greenwalt and Whedon, being stretched too thin. They were both working sixteen hours a day, six days a week, and while they felt like they were telling good stories, they were the first to admit there were problems. In the middle of the season, Whedon, Greenwalt, and all of the writers were thrown into meetings to find out what it was the show was missing. The network execs, who were patient with Joss in the past, insisted that they fix the show and do so immediately

  “It wasn’t like, ‘Oh my God, it’s the end of the world,’” Joss relates. “It was the network telling us that we needed to make an adjustment, and David Greenwalt and I saying, ‘We wish we disagreed with you, but w
e don’t.’

  “It was a matter of getting back to what we told the network we would do,” says Whedon. “We created this world for Angel but at the same time we had to make the stories something people could relate to in some way.

  “We knew when things weren’t working,” Whedon says. “It was a matter of sitting down and doing a bit more planning. We had to take a hard look at the first year and see what worked, and what didn’t. Then we had to make some decisions about what type of show we wanted to put out there.”

  Some cast changes were made and new characters were brought into Angel Investigations. Doyle (Glenn Quinn) who was one of the original members of Angel’s entourage was written out and Cordelia inherited his demon powers. They also brought in Alexis Denisof, who played Wesley Wyndam-Pryce on Buffy, at the end of the season.

  When they began the show, they had wanted to do an anthology where each episode wrapped up a case. Unfortunately, the viewers were more invested in the characters and the mythology. So, the show began to take a turn for the better when the characters were better developed, with multi-episode story arcs and a stronger mythology for the series. The writers felt they had a strong through-line with the Wolfram and Hart story, so they decided to make the lawyers a part of the show’s mythology.

  Charles Gunn (J. August Richards) was added to the investigative team and the writers brought back some old Buffy favorites, Darla (Julie Benz) and Drusilla (Juliet Landau).