and part 2
From Cross and Stake, originally from Usenet.
This about the kiss:
Q: The Willow/Tara kiss scene: there were stories that there was a major battle with the network to allow it. What really happened?
J: What really happened was our mission statement was. There have been a lot of shows, and I don't know if they show here, but a lot of shows in the last couple of years have been very big with the heavily advertised lesbian kiss: this is a great ratings ploy - they take one of their characters, they tell you for about five months that she's gonna have a lesbian kiss, she has it, doesn't like it or gets over it or whatever it is and they get a big ratings boost. And so our one mission statement on Buffy was when they kiss it will be when they should, it will be in the most mundane of moments or emotional, it will not be a big stunt, we just wanna slip it under the radar, we wanna make it natural, we wanna make it not exploitative but something real. So we didn't even really mention it; I never tell the network what I'm gonna do ahead of time any more anyway; every now and then they'll call me and they'll say, "Um, when you say Buffy's dead. GOOD, ' cause she's going to another network!" They did call and they said, "Can we take out the kiss?" And I said, "No." They said, "Can she just kiss her on the forehead?" I said, "No." And they said, "Well, we may have a problem with that." And I said, "Well, just so we're clear." I have a very good relationship with their Standards & Practices, we always have a back-and-forth, but with respect: these are good, hard-working people, it's not like, "Oh, the censors, they're idiots!" We don't have that attitude. Besides, they let us get away with anything, because half the things we say, I don't think they understand! They've been good, but that particular thing, I felt, was so important to that show, it was such the perfect moment for that kiss, and there comes a point where if two characters who are in love don't kiss, it starts to be fake, it starts to be a little offensive. So I basically said, "Just so we're clear: if the kiss is cut or trimmed in any way, I'm walking out of this office and I'm never coming back," which was so cool! [applause] It was cool because I don't usually say things like that; if I was one of those guys who, "Rarr-rarr-rarr!" every. I always want to collaborate with my network, they're the people who show the show and I respect them, but this particular issue, I was like, "Let's just avoid the barter system, let me just make it fast [in the sense of "firm"], this is what's gonna happen," and they called me next day, they were like, "Kiss is in," I was like, "God bless ya."
Here's the whole thing:
Q: How much input into casting of Amy Acker? Will she be a regular? Is the physicist aspect integral to her development next season? If season kicks off three months down the road, nervous about our not seeing Fred's homecoming and reaction after being away for five years.
J: Well, I can answer all those questions! And the most exciting part is that I get to take full credit for Amy Acker. Because I don't always, I'm not responsible for every piece of casting, like David Boreanaz, where I was saying, "I dunno, you think he's good-looking? He's kinda got a forehead thing goin'," and the girls were like, "Caaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaassssssssst hiiiiiiiiiimmmmmmmmmm! Yeeeeeesssssssssssss!", so sometimes I miss the mark a little bit. We'd been looking for some time for another female for the show to sort of balance it out, really give us a core group, and so we had some generic sides written up, just so that we could see different actresses with different looks and different rhythms and just see if there was somebody out there who just clicked and [where] we said, "OK, she might work in the group", and, y'know, it was a real crap-shoot, I mean, we'd seen dozens and dozens, and I'd pretty much given up hope, and Amy walked in the room, and according to Marti Noxon, I turned into Jerry Lewis, the moment she did, I was like [goes Jerry Lewis, unintelligible], I was just completely lost it all [sic], I was, "That's the girl!". Then she read, I was like, "Ooh, she can act too! Good!" And I was like, "I have to have her, she's gotta be on the show, I want her to be a regular, in the opening credits, it's done," but of course you have to convince other people of that too. And also sometimes there is such a thing as a great auditioner: somebody who comes in the room, blows you away, you put them on film and they disappear like white on white, and you're like, "Oh, but they were so good in the rooooommmmmmmm!" So, y'know, panic: because I didn't want anybody else to have her, I actually wrote a scene overnight for her and J. and Alexis, because I knew J. and Alexis would be my quickest studies, and I could just hand them a three-page scene and say, "You're doing this tomorrow morning," and I shot it on the schedule as quickly as I could just to see if she worked on screen, and she was terrific, and I sent it to the network and the studio and she was hired in a day. So that was great, and she came on, and I thought she was wonderful in Pylea. The idea of whether or not her being a physicist matters: we want to make it matter, but the whole writing staff came to me, and it was like, "Do we. have to know physics?", and I was like, "Well, I'm not gonna! I have two shows! I'm busy!" We want it worked out in her character: we want her to be a little different, bring something a little different to the mix in terms of the gang. And as far as her homecoming and her dealing with the issues, we have worked it very specifically so that come, say, three months later as we always do on our show, everybody's kind of been in stasis, the whole thing with Buffy's death, everybody has been dealing with their own problems, so that it's almost as though it were a week later: we will be able to deal with her, her family, how she adjusts to the world, all that stuff, the same way we'll be dealing with Angel's reaction to Buffy's death and all of that stuff. It was a problem, we were like, "We wanna make sure we don't lose any of the interest and fun of having this character need to sort of find themselves in the world," so we basically locked her in a room for three months.
Q: How's it going with the BBC in the talks for the Giles spinoff?
J: It's going very well. It's going very slowly, just because there's so much else going on, we never get a chance to talk. What we're trying to do now is figure out how we would budget it and how it would be produced and paid for and all that stuff; I want to make it over here, and the thing that excited me about the BBC, besides the fact that I like the kind of shows they make, is that they only make six of them. And I was like, "Well, I can do that, I can do another show if there's only six." And Jane Root, who's head of BBC2, said, "Well, sometimes we do as many as ten" - "Oh, my God, when do you sleep? I only did FORTY-FOUR!" But we're still, it's so embryonic and could fall apart, which is why Tony's being very level-headed about it, even though I keep saying, "Oh, it's gonna happen, it's gonna happen." We know what the show is, we know what we wanna do with it, it's really now a question of when can we figure it out, when can we make it work. My hope is to shoot the pilot this winter and for it to come out a year from this fall. all six glorious episodes.
Q: Is that the other reason why you're here in the country?
J: Actually, Jane and I didn't manage to get together 'cause we both got colds at the same time. No, I'm here because whenever I can go anywhere, I come here. [applause]
Q: Hello. J [basso]: Hello.
Q: You've said on the DVD commentary that Tony Head performs more than half his scenes without trousers on; is that true?
J: Well, more than half, obviously. Tony has kept his trousers on very diligently for many years now. Y'know, when you do these DVD commentaries, you think you're gonna have all this interesting stuff to say, you run out of stuff in about five minutes, and you basically start telling lies about your actors, so I figured I'd use Tony because he'd actually laugh about it instead of hunting me down and killing me.
Q: I believe you're working on a comic which is just about to come out: can you tell us about that and what it's all about?
J: Yeah: I've just started a comic that came out last week called Fray, which is the name of the Slayer 200 years from now, who lives in Manhattan, who's a professional thief. Basically, I've always wanted to do comic books; I started to get a little more involved with Buffy and some of my writers were writing Buffys, and I was like [whiny], "Oh, I want to do somethiiiiiiiing!", so I wheedled at Dark Horse and decided to do a mini-eight-issue-series, and oh, I see somebody holding it: You're my favourite fan of all! I wanted to do something in the Slayer mythos because it had already been developed and I wouldn't have to just start from scratch, but I didn't want to do anything that would interfere with the show, so I figure if I set it 200, 300 years from now, everybody dead, so they'll be fine, I won't have to worry about destroying some arc we could have done seasons from now. And it's really hard, it's really interesting, it's wonderful and it's available now!
Q: Have there been any storylines that the actors have refused to do?
J: Er, y'know, I'm trying to think if there's anything, uh. no, there haven' t. [Don't think he was aiming for a joke on dictatorial-ness.] Occasionally people have had problems with certain things. I had one actor who for religious reasons was uncomfortable with playing a demonic presence, but unfortunately didn't tell us about that until right before filming, so I was like, "Uh, sorry dear, just this once." But my actors are game for everything, and of course the one person who might have been thrown for a loop in the last couple of years would be Alyson, since I decided to make a slight change in her character, and she never even blinked, she was like, "That's cool; where do I stand?" She had no problem with it at all. Also, if they did refuse, I'd kill them, because they work for me. But no, we haven't had to alter the course because of them, I'm happy to say.
Q: Is Passions a real show?
J: Passions IS a real show. Let me explain to you: this is a soap opera that has come on in the last couple of years, and actually I started working it into the show because Sarah is obsessed with it. Because there is a little boy who's actually a doll, who lives with this witch and comes to life when nobody's looking, who's played by an 18-year-old midget, and this whole story arc is going on in the middle of this young-rich-people-in-love soap opera. It is the strangest show ever. Sarah actually has a picture signed by him on her trailer wall, she is completely into it, so I decided to throw it to Spike and Giles as well. Yeah, it's real, and apparently they started mentioning us on their show too, and so there's a great beautiful love between us; they may not realise we're making fun of them, but I just told several thousand people, so I guess that's not a problem any more!
Q: The Willow/Tara kiss scene: there were stories that there was a major battle with the network to allow it. What really happened?
J: What really happened was our mission statement was. There have been a lot of shows, and I don't know if they show here, but a lot of shows in the last couple of years have been very big with the heavily advertised lesbian kiss: this is a great ratings ploy - they take one of their characters, they tell you for about five months that she's gonna have a lesbian kiss, she has it, doesn't like it or gets over it or whatever it is and they get a big ratings boost. And so our one mission statement on Buffy was when they kiss it will be when they should, it will be in the most mundane of moments or emotional, it will not be a big stunt, we just wanna slip it under the radar, we wanna make it natural, we wanna make it not exploitative but something real. So we didn't even really mention it; I never tell the network what I'm gonna do ahead of time any more anyway; every now and then they'll call me and they'll say, "Um, when you say Buffy's dead. GOOD, ' cause she's going to another network!" They did call and they said, "Can we take out the kiss?" And I said, "No." They said, "Can she just kiss her on the forehead?" I said, "No." And they said, "Well, we may have a problem with that." And I said, "Well, just so we're clear." I have a very good relationship with their Standards & Practices, we always have a back-and-forth, but with respect: these are good, hard-working people, it's not like, "Oh, the censors, they're idiots!" We don't have that attitude. Besides, they let us get away with anything, because half the things we say, I don't think they understand! They've been good, but that particular thing, I felt, was so important to that show, it was such the perfect moment for that kiss, and there comes a point where if two characters who are in love don't kiss, it starts to be fake, it starts to be a little offensive. So I basically said, "Just so we're clear: if the kiss is cut or trimmed in any way, I'm walking out of this office and I'm never coming back," which was so cool! [applause] It was cool because I don't usually say things like that; if I was one of those guys who, "Rarr-rarr-rarr!" every. I always want to collaborate with my network, they're the people who show the show and I respect them, but this particular issue, I was like, "Let's just avoid the barter system, let me just make it fast [in the sense of "firm"], this is what's gonna happen," and they called me next day, they were like, "Kiss is in," I was like, "God bless ya."
Q: Have you ever seen the show Forever Knight, and if so, what do you think about the comparisons that people make between it and Angel?
J: I haven't, actually: I've seen bits of one. I heard about it, and then I was like, "Oh, my God, I suck! It's the same show!" But people when we first came on started to mention it, and then I think every show has its own identity; it's like, there can be two shows about doctors, y'know, this one is a little more esoteric, but from what I understand there must not be too much confluence, because I actually stopped hearing about it pretty soon after we started airing. But when I first introduced the concept, people did say, "Yeah, there has been this thing called Forever Knight," but I'm constantly. Because I don't actually watch a huge amount of American television - I've watched plenty, I'm not like a snob or anything, but I don 't watch a huge amount. I'm always doing things that I think are sparklingly original and then finding out that every shmoe who's ever run a show has done it. Like bringing in Daw
N: I thought, "In the fifth year I'll bring in this younger character who's completely different to everyone else, at a different time in her life, and that'll be really original," and then they start listing like The Cosby Show, all these shows that did that because their ratings were failing and they felt they needed a cute little moppet or whatever, and I was like, "Oh, so I just basically suck." And this is one of those instances where I basically suck, thank you so much for bringing it up.
Q: No, actually the fans of both shows enjoy the little comparisons that we can make between them. And my other question is: is Amy ever gonna be de-ratted?
J: Y'know, it's just getting cruel at this point, isn't it? Amy is going to be de-ratted, this is a promise! [cheers] As a matter of fact, I called Marti Noxon from London, and one of the first things I said was, "Oh, and by the way, with that story we were talking about. de-rat Amy, 'cause it's just getting cruel, it's just bad, we gotta do it." So it's gonna happen. [Beat.] She's going to become an antelope.
Q: Did Larry actually die in the Series 3 finale?
J: Yes, Larry did die, we killed Larry. There are certain things that are integral, that you have to do for the integrity of character [obviously some gag, since laughter] [ed: he said 'he asked for a raise'], so. I had to kill somebody, I was like, "If we have a war and nobody we like dies." So I killed him and I killed Hamony, although that seems to have helped her career.
Q: Also, given the many vital uses of the Buffybot towards the end of the series.
J: [English accent] You perv!
Q: .don't those vital uses make Warren something of a hero for inventing the whole process?
J: I'm sorry.?
Q: Doesn't the good and valuable work done by the Buffybot validate Warren's experiments in the first place?
J: OK, y'know, I know we're talking about the Buffybot, but I'm still not sure what the question is. not all at once. [Audience: "Is Warren a hero now?"] Is Buffybot the new hero? [Audience: "No, WARREN!"] Oh, Warren! Actually, no, Warren isn't really a hero, he's kind of a [??? sounds like "shimp"] [Ed: Shemp.], but Warren is actually gonna make a reappearance, we've got some plans for him. We've got some plans for some of our old characters coming back, not the least of whom and very dear to my heart is Jonathan. [cheers]
Q: One last question.
J: Really enunciate!
Q: Why did you choose Buffy's last name to be Anne? [slow-burning ribald audience laughter]
J: Is that funny for some reason I don't know?
Q: There's a rather famous chain of adult lingerie shops called Anne Summers. [leering applause]
J: [giggly but I reckon beneath it genuinely embarrassed]: I had no idea.! Er, no, no, it wasn't that.! Actually I did it because I wanted something very plain that just sounded right rhythmically, and because the whole thing led up to that other girl taking the name Anne, it had to be the right name, it had to be exactly, very simple. Actually, this is a little embarrassing: has anybody here ever read A Little Princess? [almost entirely female "Yes"] This is actually my favourite book, and I re-read it recently and discovered many things that were very similar to the way Buffy worked that I hadn't even noticed, 'cause I read it like ten times when I was a kid, and one of the things is that it ends with this homeless girl in the bake shop, who has been taken in and they've created a new life for her, and she's called Anne, and the chapter is just called "Anne", it's the very end of the book, and I think somehow that must have been in the back of my mind somewhere, because it's the same dynamic I wanted to do. That character who was Chanterelle when she was a vampire-worshipper and then she was Lily, she became Anne and then she was on a couple of episodes of Angel, was really important to me because she was so weak, she was such a follower and for her growth, even though it happened over five [sic] episodes and probably almost nobody has seen all five of them, to me that was a huge thing that she became somebody in her own right over the course of the series, and that's sort of the feeling I got from the end of the book there. Sorry, you wanted lingerie, I gave you A Little Princess.
Q: Have you ever had anything refused by the censors that you wanted to put in?
J: No, but I'm still tryin'! Y'know, when we started the show they were uncomfortable with the word "virgin". This is when we were airing at nine, and then we moved to eight and by the time we moved to eight there were things in the show that I am appalled by! Once we became a hit they pretty much just backed off; they were a little twitchy at first. The one thing that they are very twitchy about is anything to do with issues, like teen suicide and the gun thing; they were very nervous about us doing an episode where someone brings firearms to school, and they could not have been righter, because Columbine happened three days before we were supposed to air, and it blew up in our faces and we couldn't show the episode for months even though I think it's one of our best, but we knew the moment it happened that they'd have to pre-empt the show. Those are things they care about the most. We're not a very violent show, at least I don't think so [laughter], although there's some channel here that thinks we are. Four? ["Yes!"]. Lamoes!. And the sexual content hopefully has some aspect of poetry or metaphor to it so it's not just completely. porn. So we get stuff by. No, we don't have a lot of problems with that.
Q: Was your motivation in setting up recent plots in Angel and Buffy to get as many women into as much skimpy clothing as possible?
J: Actually, Cordelia's bathing suit was the second bathing suit we've had in 144 episodes; I believe Anya wore one in "Buffy Meets Dracula" [sic]. And if anybody noticed, there was a period of about three years where Buffy wore nothing but really long, shapeless coats; we started referring to her as "Doctor Buffy". I think we actually have the lowest skimpy-outfit quotient for a show with as many beautiful women on it as we have, of any show on TV. Absolutely I want these girls to be sexy, and absolutely I want them to be physical; same with the boys. But we always try not to be exploitative about it. We put Charisma in an exploitative outfit because she was being exploited, that was the whole point, and then we put her in something similar when she was being exalted, as both a comment on the way people see women and as a joke. But Charisma is fun, y'know, she was great about it and it all went very well, everyone was very respectful. Things do get skimpy every now and then, but that's not really what we're after, and I think we have a pretty good track record of not being completely heinous people.. although that's about to change.
Q: How do you come up with the names of the characters, and does Pike from the movie have anything to do with Spike?
J: No. I came up with Spike and Dru and I was all into that, and then somebody reminded me several months later that I had a character named Pike, and I was like, "OK, I suck" - that was another one of those exciting moments. I love the name "Spike", I always love it in pair with a woman; "Drusilla" I took from Emperor Caligula, his wife-slash-sister, whatever she was, 'cause I loved I, Claudius when I was a kid, and so I was very into the idea of this very twisted relationship, and "Drusilla" seemed a perfect classical match to "Spike". The first characters. it takes us a very long time to name characters: it's about finding a name that, most importantly, doesn't sound like any of the other characters, so they really have their own feel every time you hear their name. The great exception to this is Scully and Mulder, who both have the "ul" sound, I'm like, "That shouldn't work, but it does; that's totally good", but for me it's like very important to separate them aurally, so I sort of see, "What have I got left? I've got Aaa. OK, Anya!", or whatever. And, y'know, just find something that reflects what's gonna be their character. Y'know, you don't take somebody named Xander that seriously, it' s kind of a nicknamey name, stuff like that; Willow is all about vulnerability, and Cordelia is somebody who was in my wife's school that she didn't like. And I said, "The one thing you have to worry about, honey, is this character may become beloved," and she said [derisively], "That won't happen!"
Q: So the characters may come up earlier than the names?
J: Oh, yeah, yeah. And the Grooselugg, that took for ever, we didn't know what to call him right up until shooting. The characters can definitely come before the names, but it really helps you define a character once you have it. Everything that we do is really important in terms of the story, and it's one of the things that I've told my writers is. I try not to do this, because I consider it a sign of disrespect, but sometimes I will change the title of a show, because I think the title is really, really important to defining what the show needs to be; I actually had Doug Petrie come up to me and say, "I didn't get this show until I figured out what the title was," like, the one he was writing, because it crystallises things and it tells you what's important, and you wouldn't think of it because you guys don't see the titles. you know them, because you guys know more than your average person, but it's really important for the process of building it. The names is a more obvious example of the same thing. I can be long-winded about almost anything. Except physics.
Q: Which elements of the overall story arc to date were sketched out from the beginning, and which have evolved, and how have they evolved? I'm thinking in particular of the Angel/Buffy love story, and also the way Spike 's character has developed.
J: Nothing was really sketched out from the beginning except the very basic premise: Buffy and Xander and Willow, and the romance with Angel. It wasn't until, I think, late in the first season that I had the idea for "Buffy sleeps with Angel and he goes bad and becomes the villain". That wasn't. y' know, we were just like, "How do you sustain this romance?" And that was our answer: by making it as ugly as possible. Everything evolves; it comes usually maybe six months ahead, or it comes from a sudden shock or a sudden stroke of luck. Two obvious examples: Seth turning to me and saying, "I'm going to go make movies - goodbye" right at the beginning of Season 4, and me going, "Ohhh-kay, whaddoIdo, whaddoIdo?", and the answer was Amber Benson, so [audience whooping] that worked out fine. But at the same time Spike coming back for one episode. We wanted to bring him and Dru back in season 3 and there was so much going on, we didn't have time, but we did bring him back for the one; we were gonna bring Dru back as well, and she was doing a movie, we couldn't get her, so at the last minute we had to write a script, and we were like, "Well, what do you do with Spike if he hasn't got Dru?", and the whole episode was about Spike hasn't got Dru, he's miserable, he's lost her and it's all about love. And it worked beautifully for us, and it was watching that episode when I was suddenly like, "Oh, my God - we need James as a regular," and I hadn't even seen that before, "I need him in the Scooby gang". I knew I was gonna lose David and Charisma, and I was like, "He can fulfil that Charisma role in a way of being.", y'know, we hired him to be Cordelia, the person who says the thing that nobody else wants to say. Of course, now we have him and Anya, so an embarrassment of riches, but. It became clear also in the second year that David should have his own show, and that the way to resolve the Buffy/Angel romance was to have him go away. I mean, we're going into year 6; if we were still trying to dance our way through making that relationship interesting, y'all wouldn't be watching any more. But separating them meant that every time they come together it has enormous power, enormous meaning. assuming they show it in the right order. [laughter]. I'm fine, I'm fine. It really just sort of comes to me some months before, what's gonna happen and how it's gonna work, and it's always extraordinarily exciting when it does, and I run and tell Marti right away, and it's all cool. But it just sort of comes, and it's based on what we know, what are people responding to, who we're gonna lose, who we're gonna keep and where we need to be emotionally, so we have all those things working and it just tells me what to do, every now and then it just whispers in my ear and we go on.
Q: And at what point did you decide to have Spike fall in love with Buffy?
J: That was towards the end of his first season [?Does he mean 3 or 4?], where he had come on and really didn't have that much to do, he'd show up and go [Spinal Tap voice] "I hate the Scooby gang. 'bye!", he was sort of the wacky neighbour, and we thought, "Well, there's more there; how do we find it?" And it was like one of those things that just hits you on the head like a baseball bat, because it made such perfect sense for him to fall in love with Buffy because he wants to get his ass kicked and she's the person who always does that. And their relationship was so intense and so filled with the hate that it was as though we had been writing towards it anyway. And when I told James, he was like, "I wanted to pitch that but I thought that would be presumptuous of me," and I was like, "Well, don't worry, 'cause we're gonna go there the full nine yards." It seemed so obvious when I thought of it that I was like, "Why didn't I think of it before?", but I just have to wait for it to come.
Q: That there is [sic] demons walking the Earth all the time in Buffy and Angel, does that come from any fact or research, or is it just your idea? [uproar of incredulity]
J: It comes from living in L.A. [applause at his fielding such a nutter question] We always had to go to great lengths to hide the fact, and we explained in the very first episode how we would hide the fact that there were all these monsters roaming about. But as we would go on more and more that got really tiresome, and eventually we had to tell Mom. And we just figured that in L.A. people really wouldn't notice or they really wouldn't care. Which really is why the show is so realistic. So many people are just blasé about it, every so often someone will be surprised, but that's kind of what it's like there: it's very hard to surprise people. So it is in fact based in fact.
Q: In "The Witch", Xander makes this comment to Willow about her not sticking it into him like a railroad spike. After that, were you just waiting to create a villain who did that?
J: OK, one more time. something about sticking it in.?
Q: [rephrases]
J:. and then we actually had a railroad spike character. but then he turned out to have made up the legend of William the Bloody after all. That's probably Greenwalt. Railway spikes make him laugh. It's one of the things about him that makes him special.
Q: You say that everyone who asks you about "Restless" asks about the cheese, so I figured I'd come up with something else.
J: [right into mic] Bless you.
Q: Will Xander ever get lucky enough to reach the back of the ice cream truck? [whooping uproar]
J: [pause; laughter] Since the character of Xander is largely based on myself, I can say with some assurance that he never will. ["Awww!"] Actually, he did, they made us cut it, we have all the footage, but you'll never see it.
Q: Spike has often done heroic things, whether because he's had to or because he wanted to. How far do you think he can go to being a real hero figure, or do you think he'll never.?
J: That's one of the questions we're asking ourselves now as we break next season, is like, y'know, 'cause Spike has done very selfless things, he's shown real caring, and at the same time he can be a complete pain in the butt. We don't know the answer to that, and we're sort of gonna feel our way around and find out. And different writers have different opinions about how heroic he's been and his motivations and what's gone on, and we debate about it a lot. The only thing I can tell you is it's a real issue for us: where is he heading and how far can we take him in that direction and still feel that we're being true to the character?
Q: Are you gonna kill Kate off or are the rumours true that she's gonna be Angel's love interest?
J: Well, Kate did get a little better after he saved her life, she wasn't so depressed, she felt better. in fact, she felt so much better that she got another show. She's gonna be the new Assistant D.A. on Law & Order next year, which is a huge high-profile gig and a great thing for her and we're all excited, but it means that we probably won't be seeing quite so much of her. She was actually on another show last year on TNT, and she made herself available to do the number of shows that she did 'cause she's really sweet and really co-operative and really grateful, she's a terrific lady, but now she's gonna be shooting in New York on a really big show, so I have a feeling that we're not gonna kill her, we like her, but I don't think she' s gonna be gettin' the smoochies any time soon because she's gonna be busy prosecuting people.
Q: [the question about repeated killing for an army of Slayers]
J: [mimes repeated drowning] .dunk. dunk. No, I think first of all, this will probably be the last time we kill her, and hopefully different from the time before, and no, in fact her death will not create a new Slayer. The line now runs through Faith. So we'd have to kill Faith, and if you want us to do that. ["NOOOOOO!"] All right.
Q: How did the actors and the network react when you pitched the idea of "The Body" to them?
J: They didn't get a treatment; they just saw the first cut. I literally don't even pitch stories to them any more. Every now and then they check in, "How's it going?", and we'll tell them a thing or two, but we really just go our own way, they pretty much trust us at this point. We warned them in advance that this was gonna be a show that might gonna make some noise and we wanted to send it out to reviewers and whatnot, but they're never frightened by us doing something different because we kind of do something different every week, we really try to keep it fresh, so if we have a sort of experiment it's not like some other show getting completely postmodern and strange, our show's strange enough already that to do something that upsets the boundaries isn't that big a deal for us, so they' re cool about it.
Q: Do you think you're gonna get an Emmy for it?
J: No, but it would be nice. It would be lovely, it was so cool to get nominated at all last year, that was fun. But I still don't think that we' re in the consciousness of the Academy in such a way that it would actually get an award, but. not like I'm not hopin' for it.
Q: Have you got any plans to bring Lindsay back?
J: Lindsay is another one of those actors who keeps getting other gigs, and we hate him for it, but the answer is most assuredly yes.
Q: Have you ever thought about putting Harmony into her own vampire sitcom?
J: Actually, yes! We love Harmony very much, she really cracks us up and she's such a sweetheart. There's actually been a struggle, because the network said, "We're not sure how we feel about a character recurring on both shows," and the Buffy staff and the Angel staff were both like, "She belongs on our show, we should have her!" So we'll see more of her because she's funny, but it will not be in a sitcom format any time soon.
Q: Is that you doing the "Grrr! Arrrg!"?
J: Yes, that's me. You're supposed to have a fancy logo, and my head of post-production came to me and said, "You need a logo, and you have twenty minutes." So I drew the demon on a piece of paper, cut it out, then I drew the logo and said, "OK, take the demon and go like this across the screen, and I'll record something for it later." So yes, "Grrr! Arrrg!" was my first great acting job.
Q: The Anita Blake series [of novels] started before BTVS really kicked off. Have you ever taken any inspiration from it?
J: I've never actually heard of it. Part of that is that the moment I started Buffy I never opened a book or saw a movie or did anything or had any fun again for the rest of my life (although I somehow managed to see The Matrix ten times). I stay away from similar things in that genre because I wanna do my own thing and I don't wanna steal from them, I wanna steal from other people. If something is very similar, I'll never go near it because I don't want to get into that area of starting to do the same thing. So I haven't actually heard of it; sounds vaguely familiar, but. There are more than a few things that have similarities. I like to think that I'm the most original person in the world, but as we've already discussed, I'm really wrong.
Q: There are rumours that in S6 Buffy's going to quadruple her powers because of her death; isn't she powerful enough already?
J: Well, I hadn't actually heard that one. No. Not gonna happen. Just a rumour.
Q: Who thought up "I Will Remember You", and was it that that gave you the idea for the end of Angel S1?
J: I don't know if it was that episode that gave us the idea. "I Will Remember You" was, I think, largely my idea; I tend to come up with the basic story ideas of most of the shows. It was, I think, finally broken, because it was a tough one to figure out, by me and Marti Noxon; Marti and I work very well on that sort of thing, and we were really struggling with it, and Marti and I went to dinner and sort of clicked the whole thing into place, and she's very good with the romance and the heart and the sex and the chains and the. [double-take]. started that all heartfelt and got weird. But everybody worked on it and everybody worked on the script as well; Tim did a lot of work on it, uncredited I believe, and David and myself, so it's sort of a group effort. I think the idea was a little bit separate because we didn't know if he did become human, if that meant he would ever be able to be with Buffy anyway - she had a relationship with a human; it didn't go that well.
Q: Were you disappointed with the end result of the X-Men movie?
J: [into mic] Oh, yeah. That was a very bad experience for me, one of a long series. I keep doing these movie jobs thinking that now I'm a big muckety-muck in telly they'll all pay attention to me, but movies and television are completely separate and they just treat me like dirt every single time, and in this instance more than usual. Funny story: I did a complete overhaul of the script, they threw it out, they invited me to the read-through of the script by the cast right before filming, asking if I would come and hear it and punch it up a little bit, add some jokes, whatever, and didn't tell me that they had thrown out my entire script. They, I guess, assumed I would find out by listening to the actors say nothing that I had written, except for approximately three lines, one of which was delivered really badly, one of which was taken out of context and therefore had no meaning, and one of which got a laugh. So that was a big. I lost my entire brain over that; it was a big scandal for me, because it was so incredibly thoughtless, but that's just how movies work: nobody pays attention to the writer; no matter how important the writer thinks he is, he 's nobody in movies. And that's why the next movie I write, I'm going to direct. [enter Nicky: much banter and Brendon questions not transcribed]
J: I'm gonna stick around for a couple of minutes and then I'm gonna fade slowly away.
N: Or dissolve.
Q: If Angel visits Buffy's grave in Sunnydale, is he gonna have a big bust-up with Spike, because [cont. p. 94].
J: Well, you've worked it out, so why don't you write me a treatment and. There's all sorts of possibilities, but we're not really thinking in the crossover mode now because of the whole network thing. But it's certainly an issue.
Q: At the end of S5 we saw Anya get crushed: is she still alive or does she end up in a wheelchair or something?
J: Y'know, she was supposed to die and I wasn't really paying attention to the footage and he was supposed to be carrying her dead body and she kept looking up, so she outsmarted me this time!
N: [Python voice] "I'm not quite dead yet! I'm feeling better!"
J: No, she's gonna be OK, she's gonna be fine. She will probably have no visible scarring at all, which is oddly often the case on our show.
Q: I've heard a rumour that in S6 Spike gets his bite back and Drusilla's involved.
J: Keep these rumours comin', 'cause I know exactly how many of them are true and how many of them are ridiculous, and the more ridiculous ones there are, the easier it is to hide the true ones, and that is one of the ones that you've just talked about. [I've no idea what he meant; probably deliberate obfuscation.]
Q: Nicky, when are you gonna persuade Joss that Xander's the real hero?
J: I was actually talking to people last night and said the exact same thing. People come up and say, "Xander should have brain power! or he can fly! and do this! and this! and this!." The point is this is the guy who doesn't have the power who's in every single fight who's always in there, and yeah, that makes him The Hero for me.
N: And next year I might actually get into glassblowing.
Q: [Welsh flag behind the bar in "Beer Bad"]
J:. because of my deep commitment to the Welsh cause to get some vowels in their language! We had absolutely no idea until somebody pointed it out yesterday. The set designers are a wacky bunch.
Q: [sounded like "Dioch am bawb" - "Thank you very much" in Welsh, anyway]
J: [after some confusion] I thought she said, "Don't come out"!
Q: After "The Pack", are there any more plans to show us the dark side of Xander?
J: Well, we have a real journey for Xander to go through, obviously: he's engaged now, so he's definitely got some problems comin' up. But we have no plans at this point to make him evil, but y'never know. The one thing I'll say about "The Pack": we watched the first cut of that show, and we were just blown away, we were like, "We have a show here! This is something different! That guy scares me!" He came to me at the end of it and was like, "I'm so happy to be playing lovable again, because that thing got into me!" I thought he was talking about playing evil, but it was the pants coming back.
Q: Are you ever gonna bring Doyle back?
J: Wow, that's a great idea! I think I won't! Ever! As I've said before.
Q: Did you lose a bet for Numfar?
J: Are you implying there was something, oh, less than dignified.? I kept pitching it and saying, "Oh, he does this, he does this." and they were finally, like, "Oh, why don't you just do it? Come on, you know you want to!" And I was like [transparent modesty] "Noooo, I couldn't possiblyyyyyy!" And I was terrified, especially because there was so much dancing, and I didn't actually prepare a dance, I knew the basic dumb thing and then I realised I had to dance for like a page and a half. So every take is completely different.
N: It was like watching a Russ Meyers [sic] film, sans the nudity.
J: Well, they cut that. Yeah, it was an interesting experience. What I always wanted to do was get completely made up without any of the actors knowing and just sit amongst them and find out what they're really like. But the period where they amend their behaviour when I come onstage is so over, so I know what they're really like and I don't have to do that. And you can't keep a secret; I tried to keep that a secret from all the actors, and Andy was the only one who didn't know about it. And Boreanaz the moment I started dancing figured out who I was, and he basically nudged Andy, and was like, [mouths and points] "That's Joss!"
Q: I was curious as to whether you've seen Monty Python And The Holy Grail, because a lot of the dancing was like John Cleese?
J: [triumphantly] Yes! Yes! That was one of the things that I thought, "Well, I should probably do this with my head" [does so], I was like, "But you need the big gloves that he had 'cause they stuck out", and I didn't even mean for it, and the moment I started doing it, I was like, "Oh, I know what this is - this is John Cleese in the castle!" - Good call! Even my choreography is unoriginal.
[This message has been edited by xita (edited July 24, 2001).]