Joss Whedon: The Biography Read online

  Joss often jumped into the conversation with personal reflections and insider information on episodes:

  Am interested in showing dreams of past slayers—bottom line, the past is expensive to produce on TV…. The past is more expensive cuz clothes, cars, landscapes all change—everything has to be bought or made. I never taught Nickie to dance like that. Xander is based on me but I am a swell dancer (actually, I never danced in high school.) (ever.) (I’m not bitter.) (This series has nothing to do with my bitterness.) (It’s not about revenge.) (The names of the girls who would not dance with me are as follows: #1, Wen—) We interrupt this bitterness to answer the folowing question: Yes there will be more dreams. They’re fun to shoot.

  And when Joss posted, the Bronze would come to a cross between a total standstill and frenzied chaos. “It was always such a BIG DEAL when he was posting,” Melanie Morris, another poster, says. “It sometimes brought out the worst in people—those trying to vie for his attention and to get him to respond to their posts and questions.”

  To the Bronzers, Joss and other Buffy insiders elevated the board’s importance. These fans weren’t just talking to a bunch of strangers about a Vampire Slayer; they had an actual connection to the show. “It was special that [Joss] took the time to post. It made us more loyal fans,” says early Bronzer Amanda Salomon. “You could argue there were Machiavellian overtones to their coming there. They get us to spread the word about their show. Still, we got private words from him that the other people watching didn’t get to hear.”

  In the fall of 1997, two posters had the idea to throw a party so that Bronzers could take their conversations offline and actually meet in person. This event was the first Posting Board Party (PBP). It was held at the Planet Hollywood in Santa Monica—a quick ride on the freeway from Los Angeles if any official Buffy folk wanted to come by, although expectations were very low on the part of the organizers that anyone from the show would actually show up. On Valentine’s Day 1998, the restaurant was filled with roughly one hundred Bronzers and their friends when Joss and cast members Alyson Hannigan, Nicholas Brendon, Seth Green, Tony Head, and David Boreanaz arrived. They were also joined by several Buffy writers; stunt coordinator Jeff Pruitt and his wife, Sophia Crawford, who was Sarah Michelle Gellar’s stunt double; and the makeup artist responsible for so many vampire faces, Todd McIntosh. For the Bronzers in attendance, it was a little mind-blowing that so many people from a show they loved would come out to a small fan gathering.

  The inaugural PBP was first and foremost a party for the Bronzers—people who talked to each other every day but saw each other rarely if at all. The fact that actors, writers, and crew showed up was just a bonus. Unlike at a convention, where people line up in order to get an autograph or take a photo with an actor, at a PBP, people would mingle, dance, and occasionally run into David Boreanaz or Nick Brendon and chat, possibly snap a picture, and go.

  After that first successful event, the PBP would be held every Presidents’ Day weekend through 2003, and continue to get bigger and bigger each year. Bronzers would travel in from all over the world, creating their own Bronze of sorts in the official hotel.

  “It was always lovely to meet fans,” writer Marti Noxon says, “because you get into this vacuum where you’re [working episode to episode] and you kind of are dimly aware that it’s actually being watched. You sometimes forget that that thing you’ve been editing for days actually has some emotional impact, because it becomes routine to you.” Often the interactions between the fans and the crew and the cast went beyond mere appreciation. Noxon remembers being told “really touching, emotional stories about how Buffy is helping certain people at stages in their life feel good and feel more hopeful.”

  To Joss, the connection was perhaps even more valuable. “I don’t think people realize, even the Bronzers, how wonderful it was for Joss to have that community,” Kai says. “Joss is not a guy who’s going to walk around and make friends at the market. He’s isolated, and he had a community. That was a community for him too. It was really nice for him to have that feedback and to have that comfort of the Bronze.”

  10

  THE BUFFY WAY

  Joss had found a true creative partner in David Greenwalt, a guide to the ins and outs of television production who showed him the respect that he had craved on his earlier projects. Greenwalt, in turn, was inspired and excited by Joss’s ideas, how he crafted stories that connected with fans on such a deep, personal level, something he knew from experience wasn’t often found on television. So it was a bittersweet moment when Buffy was picked up for a second season—because Greenwalt had left the series for The X-Files.

  Four years into its run on Fox, The X-Files had grown beyond the typical constraints of sci-fi television to become a critical and popular hit. Mainstream critics now held it up as great, “classic” television, praising the writing of series creator Chris Carter and the standout performances of its stars: David Duchovny as an FBI agent obsessed with aliens and conspiracy theories, and Gillian Anderson as his partner, a skeptic medical doctor. The X-Files was the cult genre show that mass audiences actually knew about; while Buffy was drawing an average of 3.7 million viewers each week, The X-Files topped 19 million. In short, The X-Files was everything that Buffy aspired to be.

  However, it was not a fit for Greenwalt, and he left almost as soon as he arrived. “It is a show that I liked and admired but didn’t really quite realize until I got there that I couldn’t write The X-Files to save my life,” he recalls. “It was about its fourth year—it was a really good time on the show, and I don’t get this show, you know? The X-Files was so cerebral and too … too mysterious for me, in a way. I get Buffy. I get something with emotion and heart and a search, so the deal completely slipped and I came back to Buffy right away.”

  Greenwalt wasn’t the only one who wanted to be in business with Joss for the long term. In August 1997, Variety announced that 20th Century Fox had signed a four-year overall deal with Joss. An overall deal is a development contract under which a studio secures a producer’s services not just for a particular series but for whatever projects he or she pursues, usually in exchange for a lot of money. Joss’s was worth $16 million. He was given $1 million to fund his production company, Mutant Enemy, and he would executive produce its TV projects and write, direct, and produce any Mutant Enemy films. Not only would he get to develop and write his own films, but Joss had finally won the right to direct them.

  Going into the second season of Buffy, Joss had a lot more confidence in his ability to run a series. He’d had the experience of putting together his first writing staff, and he had a good sense of what sort of writers would be a good fit: people with “distinctive voices who can blend into the orchestra” of the show, who could write Buffy the way he wrote it, with a distinct patois and pop culture sensibility, and who were just good people. For Joss, the best writers were the best people, and “the person behind the words is ultimately how the show is shaped.”

  Joss had to create the second-season writing staff almost from scratch, as Dean Batali and Rob Des Hotel were the only first-season writers who remained on staff. Fortunately, Greenwalt’s return also netted X-Files writer and executive producer Howard Gordon, who would join the staff briefly before leaving to create his own sci-fi series for Fox, Strange World. In addition, Joss set his sights on a newbie writer who was just breaking into television—and who had the audacity to turn him down.

  “I got offered a job on another network show that already had its order,” Marti Noxon says. Joss called her and asked if it was true, that she was turning down Buffy. When she explained that she preferred Buffy tonally but needed the financial security of the other gig, Joss told her that if she wanted to be a better writer, she should wait for their offer. “He said, ‘Come on, that show sucks,’ and we talked for a while. He was so winning and so sure of himself, by the end of the conversation I had totally changed my mind.” Noxon called her agent when they hung up and turned do
wn the other series. She started on Buffy soon after.

  The remaining scripts were assigned to freelancers, bringing Parenthood’s Ty King and the sitcom writing team of David Fury and Elin Hampton into the fold.

  On the set, Joss realized that he would have to take stronger control, to avoid the distracting behind-the-scenes drama of the first season. He realized that by trying to be everyone’s friend, he had failed to create a position of authority for himself. He also needed to regain a balance of work and personal time—fewer all-nighters away from Kai. He considered a comment Jeanine Basinger had made about film directors, that “a director doesn’t have to create anything, but he is responsible for everything,” and reinterpreted it as a mission statement for his role as an executive producer on TV. “I don’t have to write a line of the script … I don’t sew the damn costumes, I don’t say the words—but I’m responsible for everything in every frame of every show. That’s my job, whether or not I’m directing the episode,” he said. “So that’s why you have to have that complete faith, that kind of blind faith in a leader who has the ability to lead…. I just also think leadership is something that is earned. I respected those above me, and demand the same from those below me. I don’t think there’s anything wrong with that.”

  To Joss, part of the reason he needed to assert control was to oversee the fantasy elements of the series. “The thing about fantasy is it creates its own seemingly arbitrary rules: ‘And then her face turns into the moon.’ ‘I love it!’ ‘And then her sister has long fingernails.’ ‘That’s idiotic! That could never happen!’ There’s always a reason for it. There’s a genuine instinct,” he explains. “When we did the Halloween episode in season two, I remember actually shouting, ‘No, the dwarves are demons! The midgets are vampires!’ I was so mad because people were not listening to me and they had done it wrong—because if you turn into a demon, you might change shape. If you turned into a vampire, you wouldn’t.”

  Joss remembers how he yelled, “Take him away, it doesn’t work!” then realized, “Wow, I actually just shouted that with genuine anger in my heart. My job is so awesome.”

  The second season brought on-screen changes as well. The series’ focus shifted from largely stand-alone stories to a narrative more entwined in mythology. Buffy had slain the Master in the first season finale, and much younger, more impetuous adversaries arrived in the form of aggressive punk-rock vampire Spike (James Marsters) and his somewhat psychotic, somewhat psychic girlfriend, Drusilla (Juliet Landau). Spike and Dru are overjoyed to discover that their old friend Angelus has taken up residence in Sunnydale, but horrified when they learn that their murderous, manipulative ally, once dubbed the Scourge of Europe, has been cursed with a soul and become the do-gooder Angel. On a lighter note, Seth Green joined the cast as the laconic and dry Oz, a werewolf who is terribly smitten with Willow.

  Buffy began to hit a creative stride that drew more praise for the series and, more important for the network, more viewers. In January 1998, the WB moved the show to Tuesdays at 8:00 PM eastern time to help launch the new series Dawson’s Creek at 9:00. That week, it aired a two-part story, with “Surprise” on Monday and “Innocence” on Tuesday. With those two episodes, the “high school as a horror movie” concept opened up to show that the scariest monsters in our lives are often the people we love.

  In “Surprise,” the gang plans a surprise seventeenth birthday party for Buffy, which gets diverted when they get word that Spike and Drusilla are gathering the pieces to reanimate the Judge, a nearly undefeatable demon with the power to rid the Earth of the “plague of humanity.” The Judge awakens, Buffy and Angel narrowly escape him, and they make their way to his apartment, where they make love for the first time. At the end of the episode, after Buffy has fallen asleep, Angel rushes to the street and crumples in pain.

  On Tuesday night, “Innocence” opens with Angel recovering—then killing a streetwalker who has come over to check on him. The gypsy curse that gave him back his soul, and thus his humanity, was broken when he experienced a moment of true happiness with Buffy. He has reverted to the evil Angelus, who revels in taunting Buffy when she finds him again in his apartment:

  ANGELUS: You got a lot to learn about men, kiddo. Although I guess you proved that last night.

  BUFFY: What are you saying?

  ANGELUS: Let’s not make an issue out of it, OK? In fact, let’s not talk about it at all. It happened.

  BUFFY: I don’t understand. Was it me? Was I not good?

  ANGELUS: You were great. Really. I thought you were a pro.

  Later in the library with the Scooby Gang, Buffy realizes that it was their lovemaking that broke the curse and is devastated that she brought about Angelus’s return. (He will go on to become the Big Bad of the season.) But a Slayer cannot take time off for heartbreak, and she again saves the world, this time by blowing up the Judge with a rocket launcher. When she returns home, her mother is waiting with a birthday cupcake. Joyce, who knows nothing of slaying and vampires, asks Buffy what she did for her birthday. Buffy responds, “I got older.” Urged to make a wish, Buffy just watches the candle flame burn.

  In the DVD commentary for the episode, Joss showered praise on Sarah Michelle Gellar and David Boreanaz for their work. He declared that the exchange in Angel’s apartment was “possibly the best” scene they had done, and that Gellar broke his heart in her crying scenes. He has often cited “Innocence” as among his favorite episodes, and said it was “harder edged” and “uglier” than the stories that had come before.

  The episode is certainly a major turning point in the series, in which Joss’s storytelling reaches new levels of rawness and honesty about a very common experience for many girls—a guy turning on them after they have sex. Even Buffy, the fairly unbreakable girl, is shattered by the experience. In prior episodes, she had disappointments related to other people’s expectations—trying to be a “good girl” for her mother, trying not to get kicked out of school—but in this moment, when she gives everything to Angel and he takes it, then cruelly scorns her, it is all about her. It isn’t about slaying getting in the way or teachers being unreasonable; it is about giving the guy she loves the most intimate part of her and then being rejected. It is the universal truth of that first heartbreak, which makes one wearier and forces one to see the world as a crueler place, that every viewer could relate to. That and the fact that they must get up and make it through the battle of another day, with or without a rocket launcher.

  “You have to make sure the stakes are something more than life and death,” Joss explains. After all, the series had shown Sunnydale teens dying at the hands of demons for more than a season, and defined its heroine by her ability to fight monsters rather than get killed by them. With “Innocence,” he found a way to evoke real fear. “You have to make sure that the stakes have to do with an experience that will break this person, will twist this person,” he says. “Luckily, with Sarah we could go there. Breaking her heart was going to be way, way more terrifying than piercing it.”

  So often, you’ll hear someone who’s worked on a TV show describe the experience as “making a little movie every week.” Joss, who had come out of film school and didn’t have that much experience with hour-long television, really did think he was doing just that. “Not only were we making a movie, we were making a completely different movie every week. It was really fun,” he explains. Like at Pixar years earlier, he felt a certain kind of freedom due to his naïveté about what the “proper” way to do things was. “This one’s a French farce! This one’s a Greek tragedy! This one’s just dumb! But we tried. Not knowing those rules and just reaching for something else, something more textural and ambitious, it was actually a help.”

  Joss found that his time as a script doctor, even with its frustrations, was one of the better training grounds for being a television showrunner. Like dealing with film scripts that had already gone through several rewrites before they came to him, Joss was now working with an ongoing s
tory that had the elements in place and couldn’t be changed. It forced him to think quickly and succinctly.

  But unlike a script doctor, he had final say over what ended up on screen. “When something was good, we filmed it and it remained good,” he says. “That was probably the attraction for the writers as well, knowing if they got it right, I would never rewrite them, because I do not wish to create more work for myself. I don’t have to be the guy who did the thing; I’m perfectly happy to be the guy who runs the show with someone else to do the thing. As long as the thing gets done.”

  Joss did insist, however, on a very top-down writing process. While other series may be more collaborative, even allowing a lot of story influence from the actors, Buffy’s central ideas, themes, and structure tended to come from Joss himself. And no story on Buffy would ever be broken without Joss’s input. Over the course of 144 episodes, that’s a lot of stories.

  “Joss’s shows are really the products of Joss’s brain,” explains Jane Espenson, who joined Buffy as an executive story editor during the third season and would rise through the ranks until she became a co-executive producer in the final season. As a result, his writers’ rooms tend to be productive when he’s in them, and sometimes a little bit idle when he’s not.

  There had been changes to the way the Buffy writers’ room was run between the show’s first and second seasons. In the first, it was more of a group experience, with all of the writers including Joss and Greenwalt working together to pitch and break stories. Beginning in the second season, Joss’s writers still worked together in the room but would go to Joss to present the story once it had been broken.