Buffy The Vampire Slayer

The 25th Anniversary of Paley Fest 2008, honoring the best in television, paid tribute to BUFFY THE VAMPIRE SLAYER last night at the Cineramadome in Hollywood.

Present were creator Joss Whedon and fellow creative producers Marti Noxon and David Greenwalt. On the talent side, Sarah Michelle Gellar (Buffy), Nicolas Brendon (Xander), James Marsters (Spike), Emma Caulfield (Anya), Michelle Trachtenberg (Dawn), Charisma Carpenter (Cordelia), Seth Green (Oz) and Amber Benson (Tara) attended with absentees being Alyson Hannigan (Willow), Anthony Stewart Head (Giles) and David Boreanaz (Angel).

The cast and creative team gathered together on stage after a screening of the Season Six musical episode “Once More With Feeling” to discuss the evolution of the series, the darker tone of Season 6, Buffy having a fling with a girl in the BUFFY – SEASON 8 comic and of course what the future holds for everyone’s angst filled slayer.

Fellow producer and ANGEL co-creator David Greenwalt summed up the allure and power of the series by saying, “There’s nothing like taking all your pain and misery and shoving it into very good looking people’s mouths."

This was an evening of camaraderie, jokes and revelations as iF MAGAZINE offers up the best quips and quotes of the evening.

ON THE EVOLUTION OF THE BUFFY:

SARAH MICHELLE GELLAR (Buffy Summers): I came out to L.A. for pilot season, and I would say “I’ve read this amazing script. Joss Whedon. TOY STORY,” and all my friends felt sorry for me because I was on a midseason replacement on a network no one had heard of, on a show based on a movie that wasn’t all that. And literally people would look at me and say, “at least you got a pilot your first time out here, that’s great, next year you’ll get one that will go.” I remember Joss and I having lunch after he made me screen test eleven times for the role. And he said the basic principal of the show, is you take all that is horrible about youth and all that is scary and literally made them into monsters. And I think anybody could relate to what high school is like, it is how that is a worst monster for you and your worst nightmare and it was something that was so relatable. That was the whole key to the show.

JOSS WHEDON (Creator): A lot of the template for the show came when we were breaking the third episode, the Witch episode. David [Greenwalt] came up with the idea about “a mother was jealous of her daughter’s youth and had stolen it from her.” It is absolutely the essence of the show. It took the idea that there’s good guys, there’s bad guys, there’s monsters and it took it one level further into the pain and into what people are capable of, and in particular what David Greenwalt is capable of. It was a seminal moment for me. It made me realize there’s more to this.

ON SARAH MICHELLE GELLAR BEING JIMMY STEWART:

WHEDON: David and I used to crow when we realized what Sarah could do. We used to call her Jimmy Stewart, because he was the greatest American in pain in the history of film.

GELLAR: I never knew that. You called me Jimmy Stewart?

ON CORDELIA LEAVING BUFFY THE VAMPIRE SLAYER FOR THE ANGEL SPIN-OFF:

DAVID GREENWALT (Executive Producer and co-creator of ANGEL): It was the right thing to do, because we couldn’t do ANGEL without her. We needed her balance in ANGEL. And I channel Cordelia pretty well.

CHARISMA CARPENTER (Cordelia Chase): I literally used the words to Joss, “If it doesn’t go, what happens?” And he said, "you will always have a net here with BUFFY,” so I said “let’s do it.”

ON MEMORIES OF WORKING ON THE “ONCE MORE WITH FEELING" MUSICAL EPISODE:

JAMES MARSTERS (Spike): This was total terror from the cast. [Joss] would not let anyone off the hook and none of us signed up to be singers in front of millions of people. Tony Head and I were already recording and we were kind of comfortable with it, but like a lot of the actors, we weren’t professional singers. The thing I loved about it, how everyone screwed their courage to the sticking place and did it and came through, because they knew we had a great script. What was so impressive to me, was the courage of the cast to do something they weren’t expert at, especially Sarah.

GREENWALT: When we started BUFFY, [Joss] had this keyboard, and if he used three chords, I would give you a hundred bucks. He was playing around on this keyboard and five or six years later, he writes a musical that is worthy of Broadway.

ON WHETHER OR NOT BUFFY COULD BECOME A BROADWAY MUSICAL:

WHEDON: I would love to take “a BUFFY” to Broadway, but it would not be [“Once More With Feeling”]. This is an episode of television. You would have to start from scratch. I’ve spent some time daydreaming about it, because I’m me, but the problem I couldn’t assign it over “do that, write a BUFFY musical, just show it to me when you’re done.”

ON THE HARDEST EPISODE TO SHOOT:

GELLAR: “Hush” for me was the hardest. It was one of the moments where, I thought “Oh, this is great, a whole episode with no lines, this is a breeze.” And boy, was I wrong.

ON SEASON 6 BEING THE DARKEST SEASON:

GELLAR: It was definitely tough for me, it’s so hard to separate myself from her. It was tough for me to see the situations and think that BUFFY wouldn’t do this. I know Marti and Joss talked me down off the ledge a couple of times. It felt so far removed from me and maybe that was the point. I was struggling and she was struggling to find who she was. It felt so foreign to me.

WHEDON: I would like to mention, after Season 5, I said [to the writers] “Season 5 went great, this season, it’s got to be funnier. So let’s lighten it up.” [laughs] I do remember, there was a time I said to Marti, “okay, I think Buffy has been gone for too long, we’ve lost her and now it’s time to win her back.” And [Sarah] had a conversation with her on the exact same day.

MARTI NOXON (Executive Producer): [Sarah] said to me, “I lost the hero completely in all this exploration.” And I remember we talked about in terms of Season 6, it’s that time in high school, where you lose yourself.

GELLAR: For me, I looked up to her. When I was younger, I would have loved to have a role model like that. You don’t have to be the smartest and most beautiful, but you can protect your family and people you love and be a powerful woman and that’s what made it powerful for me.

NICHOLAS BRENDON (Xander): You mean it wasn’t Susan Lucci? [laughs]

ON WHETHER BUFFY SHOULD BE WITH ANGEL OR SPIKE:

BRENDON: Given the comic book, I would say Willow.

GELLAR: I did not know about this until five minutes ago. Someone asked me, “how do you feel about Buffy’s new relationship, she’s with a woman.” I said “she’s with Willow.” But it wasn’t Willow.

WHEDON: It’s not a giant life change, like Willow, but it’s somebody young with somebody they like a lot — and they have a lot of time on their hands.

ON THE POSSIBILITY OF A BUFFY MOVIE:

WHEDON: My answer would be, there are so many stars that would have to align, but there’s a reason I worked with all these people for so long, they’re enormously talented and clearly from the comic, it’s a story I can’t let go. I think it would be really cool.

ON WHETHER A MOVIE WOULD FOLLOW THE CURRENT SEASON 8 COMIC BOOK MYTHOLOGY:

WHEDON: Hypothetically, if you could make things align, that would be fun. When I did the comic FRAY that took place 200 years in the future, [I thought] there’s no way this could affect the show, so it’ll be safe, but we ended up using a little of that mythology from the comic book. So I feel a certain obligation to work in that mythology, and it would be lovely to make it all tie in, but if I had to shoot down everything I’m doing in comics, because we were doing a project where I was filming with these actual people, I wouldn’t lose a lot of sleep.

ON WILLOW AND TARA FALLING IN LOVE:

AMBER BENSON (Tara): I had no idea Alyson and I would become lovers [on the show]. We were taken aside three episodes in, and told “by the way, you guys have really good chemistry.” Which was weird, because the crew kept coming up “you guys, look really cool together.” I had no idea going in, this would be the track going down, but I think the beauty of the show, is it has heart. This is something that is very important to Joss.

GREENWALT: The WB called me and said “is he really going to do the gay thing,” and I said, “he’s really going to do the gay thing, you should get used to it.”

WHEDON: They only called me once. They said “you know, we have a lot of gay this year. We’re kind of gayed out. DAWSON’S [CREEK] and this other show.” And I said, “I don’t watch those shows, we’re going to do this thing. It’s true to the character, it’s what we’re going to do.” And they said “do we have to have the kiss.” And I was like, “I’m packing up my office.” I never pulled that out, except that one time. “But we’ll lose advertisers.” In fact, it wasn’t the kiss [where we lost advertisers], we did actually lose advertising and have to pull back from a storyline one time when Buffy was working at a fast food joint.

ON BUFFY THE VAMPIRE SLAYER NOT WINNING WRITING EMMY’S OR DIRECTING EMMY’S:

GELLAR: We had the fans and that’s better than any awards. When it came to the fans, they were so loyal and to all of us, that was more important.

WHEDON: Yeah, you don’t put BUFFY THE VAMPIRE SLAYER on the WB thinking “I’m gettin’ Emmy’s.”