Buffy The Vampire Slayer

Fans of ’Buffy the Vampire Slayer’ won’t let their favorite series die; packs of them gather to participate in a ’Buffy’ sing-along night. In this asap video and story, DAN SORID and RAY ZABLOCKI join fans at a New York movie theater where they take in the Buffy Sing-a-Long experience. Sing or we’ll use your marrow to make an amuse bouche for Satan. "Buffy the Vampire Slayer" creator Joss Whedon in a demon sandwich. The Buffy Sing-a-Long cast prepares to slay the audience.

Buffy sings! And you can too.

Vampires don’t die easily, and they apparently do great in revivals. Like other science fiction classics such as "Star Trek" and "Doctor Who," "Buffy the Vampire Slayer" lives on, three years after the series ended, through a potent fan subculture.

While "Star Trek" fans have their conventions, "Buffy" fans now have a public sing-along. Their source of inspiration for the sing-along is "Once More, With Feeling," a groundbreaking and Emmy-nominated episode written and directed by the show’s creator, Joss Whedon. This episode is legendary to followers of the show for its painstaking homage to the Broadway musical form. Without "Once More, With Feeling" there probably would not have been the recent "Scrubs" musical episode. And Whedon’s creation clearly influenced actual Broadway productions such as "Avenue Q."

"Writing a musical is the single most labor intensive form of writing that there is," Whedon said in an interview with asap. "Once More" comes from the series’ sixth season in which a demon, played by Tony Award-winning Broadway actor Hinton Battle, casts a spell that causes everyone in town to sing, dance and reveal their innermost feelings. Adding an element of danger, the dancing occasionally leads to spontaneous combustion.

BUFFY FOREVER

The fan production, complete with cast, contests, fan participation and a goodie bag with fake vampire teeth, has been playing since September in Manhattan, and is slated to continue monthly this year. Its creator, a theater programmer from Colorado named Clinton McClung, plans to bring the production to theaters across the country.

Like other television shows, "Buffy" has a cult following on the Internet, where there are discussion groups, fan pages and the inevitable podcasts. The show has even inspired a book that explains physics using the faux California universe of the show as the framework. But to fans, "Buffy" isn’t just about an escape to a world of magic and otherworldly heroes; it’s a show about female empowerment — represented by the blonde beauty as powerful vampire killer — and the inner strength of the humdrum and the nerdy.

THE BIRTH OF AN INSTITUTION

McClung says he is a Buffy fan, but not its biggest. Instead, he enjoys creating interactive cinema, an interest he developed programming midnight shows at a theater in Brookline, Massachusetts.

He witnessed the draw of sing-alongs firsthand when he screened the 1965 classic film "The Sound of Music" for three weeks. Devoted fans — primarily older women and gay men, he says — came to sing along with Julie Andrews. He followed that up with a free show of "Once More, With Feeling." Hundreds of people showed up. He was later able to license the show for public screenings and brought it to New York’s IFC Center. Once there, he built a volunteer cast made of up New York professionals, including a lawyer, and added a few interactive games such as an act-along "Buffyoke" contest.

TAPPING THE COMMUNITY

During an early showing at the IFC Center, McClung asked for volunteers to role play the characters in subsequent screenings. The would-be actors stand in front of the audience, lip-syncing and dancing and eliciting fan participation. He found a cast of outgoing fans who were thrilled to be able to play their favorite characters in front of an audience. Neil Buchalter, a Web designer who plays the bottle-blond Brit vampire Spike, stayed in character as he told of his bond with the character. "The romantic soul, the unrequited love," he said. "That’s all me."

EXPANDING THE BUFFY BRAND

McClung hopes to package the production and ship it around the country.

"In this day and age there’s a rabid fan base for almost anything," McClung says. It’s an observation taken seriously in the halls of media giants, which try to squeeze profit out of their television productions long after they’re canceled, mostly through DVD sales.

Television show seasons are among the top sellers on Amazon.com, and they aren’t cheap. The complete series of Buffy the Vampire Slayer on 40 discs sells on the Web site for $165. For those who need even more, a Buffy comic series, published by Dark Horse comics and overseen by Whedon, is set to launch in March.

Find out more about the Buffy Sing-a-Long event by watching asap’s video documentary.