Parts of this are spoilery, so beware. . .
I found this at the C&S temp board:
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From www.horroronline.com/
JOSS WHEDON Interview Part One
by Ian Spelling
"What we're going to see is a resolution of Buffy's (Sarah Michelle Gellar) particular journey of what it means to be a slayer and what Dawn (Michelle Trachtenberg) means to her," reveals Joss Whedon of "The Gift," the fifth-season finale of Buffy the Vampire Slayer, which will air on May 22 and marks not only the 100th episode of the series, but the last to air on the WB before its move to UPN in the fall. "The whole Dawn as Key arc, who or what she is, will be resolved. There's going to be a big-ass fight and I mean a BIG-ASS fight. It was so big that we could barely film the fight. There's also going to be some death. But, unlike last year's finale, this will be core group stuff.
Whedon, the creator and executive producer of both Buffy and its spin-off series Angel, also wrote and directed "The Gift." It's one of a handful of episode that he wrote and directed. "I directed `The Body because I knew that was the episode in which Buffys mother (Kristine Sutherland) would be dead," he says.
"I will usually either take the big emotional episodes or the crux pieces, the ones that turn the show around or the ones in which theres something I very much want to try or something I want to talk about. I did the Tara (Amber Benson) episode ("Home") because I wanted to talk about family. I wanted to do a smaller episode that wasnt in the canon of the biggest, most important episodes. And then, with shows like `Hush and `Restless, there was an element of `I want to try something new. That was also the case with `The Body."
"The Body," to state the obvious, was a pivotal episode. The entire Scooby Gang had to deal with the ramifications of Joyce Summers' demise. Buffy was left parentless and responsible for the care of Dawn. The Scoobies were left without a mother figure. And the series lost one of the elements that kept it grounded in reality. "There was a lot of sobbing and gnashing of teeth about the episode," Whedon notes. "It's been overwhelming how people responded to `The Body. People responded to that episode much more than I expected them to." That may be because, in a show about demons and vampires and the gates of Hell, Joyce died of natural causes. "I wanted Buffy to face that. The whole show is about a persons journey through life. It started as a journey through adolescence. Buffy and the other characters have gotten a little older since then. I wanted to put something into the show that everybody goes through and I also want to have something Buffy couldnt fight. I didnt want to have a monster that she could resolve her issues with by punching it in the noggin.
"The fact of the matter is that death is something you can't fight, that you can't prepare for sometimes and, ultimately, that you can't deal with. That was something we need to see Buffy go through. Once we'd established that fantastical universe it was all the more startling and horrific to have something as disturbing as natural causes, or as mundane as natural causes. I'd actually told Kristine that Joyce was going to die back in year three. I knew exactly what we were doing for years four and five back then. She actually spent a year in Italy during year four. She said, `You know, Im moving to Italy for a year. And I said, `Thats great because theyre going to college and Buffy wont be seeing that much of Joyce. And the year after that youre going to be all over the place because Im going to kill you."
So far, the implications of Joyce's death seem real and powerful, not to mention perfect fodder for further developing the show's characters, themes and storylines. Likewise, the introduction of Dawn worked dramatically and the introduction of Tara and her relationship with Willow (Alyson Hannigan), despite some initial controversy, resulted in solid stories. But not all risks pay off; cases in point season four's unpopular Initiative arc and Buffy's ill-fated romance with Riley (Marc Blucas).
"What went right and what went wrong?" Whedon asks, repeating the question. "I love Marc and I loved Riley as a character. Some people responded to him and some people didn't. Basically, it came down to two things. One, there was nobody getting over Buffy and Angel (David Boreanaz). Just nobody. Two, because I'd seen the tortured Romeo and Juliet, `This is the wrong guy, hes going to make me miserable romance, I wanted to see Buffy have a nice relationship with a nice guy. America doesnt want to see that. America doesnt give a rats ass about a nice relationship with a nice guy. So it became instead a scenario where people thought, `Oh, she has a nice guy. Shes going to walk over him and not get that shes not getting it. I think those were the problems. I think Marc really came into his own on the show, particularly this last season. I really like the way he performed what he was doing. What I loved about him was his Gary Cooper kind of quality. But Gary Cooper cant live in the Buffyverse.
"When people didn't respond to Riley and that romance they way I had hoped, they didn't respond to the Initiative arc either. He was our in to that whole world of the Initiative. We didn't have the money to make it look really good, so they kept patrolling past the same bush. Spike (James Marsters) was hiding behind that shrub and I was like, `Why dont you look in the shrub? Its the only shrub there is! We wanted to bring a James Bondian world to the show and, quite frankly, it was too expensive. So I dont know if we ever achieved the visual grandeur we needed to get that great government paranoia sort of fun."
Moments earlier, Whedon mentioned that he had in mind Joyce's death in season fives as far back as season three. That, of course, makes one wonder if he's already mapped out how and when Buffy will end. "I don't have an end of the show in my head because at the end of the show we start making really expensive movies every four years, not unlike what Star Trek did, only with somewhat younger and more compelling people in them," Whedon says. "I don't have an ending because I think of Buffy as life and I don?t like to think about the end of that. Life doesn't stop until it does completely. Buffy is not a show I feel I can wrap up neatly with a ribbon. We know after the final frame of whatever episode ends the show that these live will go on, these people will continue to change. Nothing is frozen in time. That's the whole point of the show, that we're always changing and growing."
Next week: Joss Whedon Interview part two: Angel, Buffy comics, and the Buffy animated series
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ands begin to shake:: I can wait, I can wait, I [b:dff4dd8baa]can[/b:dff4dd8baa] wait....
