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[shadowkat]

1. I'm falling in fannish love for Joss Whedon again...weirdly. I've loved his last two interviews. And what he wrote on Tumblr about Hillary was wonderfully moving. The latest? This charming interview where he admits that he was a Buffy/Spike shipper all along.

Lastly, because I've seen a lot of people arguing about this online: Buffy/Spike or Buffy/Angel?

I’m a Buffy/Spike shipper. I always felt like he was a more evolved person, but that’s like saying Juliet’s going to be so happy with Benvolio and everyone will love it. Buffy/Angel is for the ages; Buffy/Spike is maybe for me. Actually, I’m a Spike/Angel shipper. Completely re-write the equation.

I feel validated. Been arguing that for years with crazy Spike and Angel shippers.

Come on, people, Spike was a heck of a lot more fun for the writer to write, and he didn't have all that much involvement with the Angel series, that was Greenwalt and Minear's baby. It wasn't until the last two seasons that Whedon was heavily involved.

{Okay enough ego stroking. I figure no on has been reading this anyway, so it doesn't matter.)

2. Frequency is bugging me -- the time travel story line doesn't quite work. They have things change in the past, but the main character isn't really all that affected in the future, physically.

The main character hunts down this killer in the present, while her father hunts him in the past. He beats her up. She beats him up. And when she's about to kill him, he disappears, because he got hit by a bus in the past, while her Dad was chasing him. So he disappears, and she's still banged up from fighting him, and still remembers all of it.

She shouldn't be banged up at all. Since it didn't happen. Nor should she remember any of it. Because didn't happen. She didn't travel back in time. So what, is there some mystical bubble around her that enables her to remember one time line and be physically affected by it, as well as the other? Also other people should be positively and negatively affected in various ways not just the protagonist. There should be more of a ripple effect.

This is my problem with Time Travel stories...the science doesn't quite gell. Timeless' writers are doing a better job of it than Frequency.

Comments

[local-max.livejournal.com]

Right. Well I definitely knew that Cordy was to be the big bad of s4 long before CC's pregnancy was well known. What I didn't know -- or had forgotten -- was that the plan was for her to be dead, rather than, say, for her to be rescued and redeemed, or some such. Either way can actually work. AtS is a tragedy -- and so having Cordelia genuinely have to be killed, and for that to be the end of her character, would work on the show. They did end up having Wesley and Fred die quite brutally -- even though with Wesley at least he didn't die a villain, just in a very dark place. (If we ignore the comics, it also seems quite likely that Gunn would have died at the end of NFA...but unlike Wesley, Gunn survived to the last frames, and was not in quite as bad a place as Wesley was emotionally and spiritually, so it's a less fully tragic/negative ending.) I agree that "You're Welcome" was an okay episode that didn't entirely work. When I first saw the episode, I cried -- which doesn't happen that often with TV. I think the anticipation really got to me, even though Cordelia wasn't my favourite character. I still think that the final scene between her and Angel is very well acted, and one of the few moments where she and DB actually have real chemistry. However, the episode as a whole doesn't quite hold up, and there's a weird tension between the almost saintly send-off the show is giving Cordelia and the way she encourages Angel to torture Eve and to feel proud of himself after all he accomplished was to beat up Lindsey and to let the Senior Partners take him away to probably torture him. It's also odd, because there is the feeling of lack of resolution -- that the story really still was partly about Cordy's character flaws in season four, told through the Jasmine arc, and that having Cordelia back in her full glory without really acknowledging the full extent of what happened didn't quite work. It's not really a redemption -- because the element that what "Evil Cordelia"/Jasmine did has anything to do with the real Cordelia is only really hinted at in season four, and there's some wiggle room. It's a bit like some of the material for Angel in BtVS' season three, where the show is dancing around whether Angelus told us much about who Angel is, but eventually we got things like Enemies, and then Angel's own series, whereas with Cordelia she ends only on this high, martyr-y note. Which is not bad exactly, because Cordelia was quite heroic, but it's also more interesting if season 4 Cordelia was partly Cordelia and shaped by Cordelia's flaws.

My understanding with MASH is that McLean Stevenson and Wayne Rodgers had expected that the show would be more of an ensemble, and that they would effectively be leads -- but that the show was clearly developing into an Alan Alda star vehicle, and that they asked to be written out for that reason. I'm not sure how much actual animosity there was. I think Larry Linville and Gary Burghoff left later on more because the show took its toll from going on for a long time, rather than specific dissatisfaction with their role in the show. (I've watched and really like MASH, though I don't know all the behind-the-scenes stuff.)

Yeah, I think Marsters really has built up a narrative about what Spike was that is less painful for him than really living inside the character for those performances, some of which he may have blocked out. It's very interesting that actors don't fully remember everything they did.... It is such a weird thing, the difference between the fan and the artist.

[shadowkat67.livejournal.com]

Yeah, fans want to believe the actors live their roles or that everybody on the set gets along, etc. They forget it's just like any other workplace. Some people hit it off, some don't. Not unlike being in fandom actually, there are some people you click with and there are some who grate on your nerves.

It's very interesting that actors don't fully remember everything they did.... It is such a weird thing, the difference between the fan and the artist.

I thought so as well. But it also makes a lot of sense. And it depends a lot on the medium. Theater actors do remember what they did for the most part, but theater is different than tv and film -- in theater the actor is in control. They get to interpret the role, the words, and how to play it with little interference and no editing from the writer or director. In film, the director controls everything, and they get to interpret it with little interference from writer or actor. In film -- the actor is the director's puppet -- a tool he uses to tell his story. And if the actor doesn't comply, he may replace him.
In television, the show-runner/writer controls everything, and they interpret it with little interference from the actor or the director -- unless the actor is an executive producer and has a bit of power, which is rare. In TV - the actor is the writer's tool or puppet.

Another difference is the sheer volume of scripts. In theater, you have one script, you have weeks, maybe months to get down the lines. When actors are doing television, they get on average about twenty scripts to memorize a year. Often the scripts are being revised while they are memorizing or rewritten. They may film a scene one day, and get a brand new script for it the next. For prime time or night time television, they get the script about 24 hours before they have to film it. The scripts are more than 100 pages long, not all of it will make to the screen, much of it will be rewritten before it airs. Also, scenes are often filmed out of order. And the actor isn't always told the order. The actor also doesn't know what the writers are going to do to the character or their character's motivations or arc until he or she gets the script. And if it's a serial, their character could change on a dime. Add to that -- the actor will be told to do things that he/she didn't sign on for and would not have agreed to, if they'd known about it. In TV, unless you put a clause in your contract that you won't do this -- you do it because if you don't do it, you are in breach of contract. And you may not know about it until an hour or two before you are told to do it. (Gellar has a no-nudity clause in her contract, that's why you never saw Buffy naked.) Imagine not being a singer or dancer, you can't hold a tune, have no rythm. and being handed a script to do a musical? That's what happened to Sarah Michelle Gellar on Buffy. (David Boreanze and CC came to Whedon after that and informed him that if he attempted to do a musical episode on Angel, they'd quit.)

Also on TV, there's no character bible, no direction on motivation, you don't have the whole story in front of you. The writer's are often writing it as it goes. And most are intutitive writers...and grab what the actors show them. Marsters said he had to make his own motivation for staying in Sunnydale, it wasn't clarified in the script or told to him.
So one day he tells Whedon, I've decided Spike is hanging around Sunnydale because he's in love with Buffy and can't shake her. That's why he hasn't killed her and sticks around and occasionally helps out. Whedon's response is "whoa, why didn't I see that? That's brilliant, let's go with that!"