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shadowkatHmmm interesting Mutant Enemy Reunion Podcast with all the writers that worked on Buffy and Angel reunited, well everyone but Joss Whedon and Minear. (The writers include Espenson, Noxon, Forbes, Greenwalt, Greenberg, Fury, DeKnight, and Goodard.)
It's fascinating in regards to how a television is built, how the writers work together, and how they writer's viewed things.
Some outtakes?
* What would Buffy have been like, if they'd had twitter? How much would the writers have been influenced by Twitter? Because they are now. Twitter has a heavy influence now, apparently.
* We were Really crappy detectives (the writers) -- and so it was more interesting if they went with the emotional issues and Whedon used to state -- hunt for emotional clarity.
*Originally, Angel was a really twisted show --- with a far darker take on things. (Angel was a much trickier show to find the emotionality.) First spun -- noir Los Angelos, that was going to be really dark. In the first show after the pilot, Angel was going to lick blood off the floor after the woman dies...as a sort of metaphor for addiction. And they had a cop undercover as a prostitute. And the network lost their minds...the WB really wouldn't buy it, and they weren't wrong. So we shut down for a while and retooled it.
They didn't want to do a male Buffy show -- they wanted something more adult, darker. Unfortunately, most of the audience was Buffy fans, which was lighter, and they would be young girls and wouldn't be happy with that darkness.
Joss -- says to this day he didn't know why it worked.
What worked, they thought, was what was like to be a good man in this world? Minear really found the voice of it. And that it was bold.
* How it is important to have show-runners knowing what they want. Elizabeth Craft talks about how hard S4 was, because Greenwalt had left, and she had no clue what the series was about, still doesn't. Minear held them together -- and said would Joss hate that?
It's hard, they said to work without the show-runner in the room apparently.
* You don't have to force yourself to put things on a board or stay in a room until you can come up with something.
* In one episode, "Why We Fight" -- they were three days from shooting, and didn't have any ideas or a script yet. So, Whedon comes up and says..."We're doing a WWII submarine episode." So they go out and buy submarine's for dummies to educate themselves on submarines. The hardest thing was to come up with ideas for each episode. And it was frightening when they often couldn't come up with an idea until like two or three days before shooting.
* Conversations with Dead People -- that apparently was a nail-biter. They didn't have a script or anything up until the last minute. Just the fact that they had to kill Jonathan.
* Don't give people what they want, what they need means -- I'll kill people I love, cast away my darlings, really make it painful.
* Doyle's death. Glenn Quinn was told if you don't come to my set on time and learn your lines, you're out. But he just couldn't because of his own problems. So they killed him off and people were really upset with us.
* Being a TV writer is exciting...that there is something magical happens...you just keep writing, and keep writing. And Whedon would push production if it wasn't mostly there and not mostly working.
They'd go to the mat until it worked.
* Marti was given a list of movies to watch from Whedon for the show -- including Billy Wilder, Luvich, things like Ice Castles, Real Genius, The Sweet Smell of Success...
* You can't have an off week -- you have to find a way, wait until it's ready, stop it until it is there.
* Regarding Netflix's Daredevil -- there was no more freedom. Marvel had a strict budget, can't go over-budget. It is a little less forgiving. If you do or 10-13 episodes, same amount of time to do them, but on the flip side, you have more time to do them -- although make a lot less money.
* Marti has moved away from theme, has become an anti-theme person. With Joss it had meaning. But usually it doesn't matter and is just an organizing principle. But life to Marti's mind -- doesn't work by theme. Greenwalt -- feels that theme gives a cohesive quality theme to the story. He feel it worked well with Buffy. He hasn't written theme in anything since Buffy. But he feels that sometimes you want to watch something and think ah...
Serialized -- not an episode has a theme, the season does.
Whedon knew more or less what the end of the season would be. He knew where he was heading.
And a lot of showrunners don't look it at like that. Smallville didn't. And how can you not know where you are headed. (They make quips about Lost, which a couple of the writers worked on.)
* How was the story broken? How were the Big Picture stories pitched?
They had onions. He used onions to demonstrate big picture scene.
It had to have heart, had to make sense, had to have enterprise and had to be simple.
Take a look at what influences the show-runner. (What did you see over the weekend, what did you think...at one point everyone went nuts over Harry Potter. Whedon took them all out to see South Park for one weekend, and they all sang the songs from South Park in the room.)
When he directed HUSH, Marti and Jane went with Joss to him Universal, and they'd try to break story on the porch of the house...while Joss was directing HUSH.
Steve DeKnight talks about how Marti came in to help them save an episode in Angel. Marti was getting married that weekend.
Fury -- we wrote towards Act breaks, four acts and a teaser. Every act break, figuring out what it would be...was what they'd lay out first. However, Greenwalt states do not fall in love with Act break. Because everything had to be earned.
Now -- if you write a scene three and a half pages people get nervous, then you could go to four pages. But you needed to write really detailed act breaks. People had to put it on the board and write very small.
If you got the break right -- then the outline would be good. But, Greenwalt adds, not true now, it starts exactly the opposite on a show like Grim, they go word for word, and start outline again.
Fury -- he would go to ABC and he got notes. Constantly. Prior to that he didn't. But ABC gave writers a lot of notes. To the point of feeling like they were taking dictation. Fox and ABC post Buffy, the bureaucracy was about control. To the point the writers felt like all they were doing was what they were being dictated to do. (Proof that networks destroy TV shows, not writers.)
ABC apparently tried to bury Grey's Anatomy, because Shondra Rhimes stood up to the network and refused to do what they wanted and take the network's notes. They were taught under Whedon and on the WB, where they rarely got notes, maybe just one...from the network, to networks that gave them notes on every single thing. (Stupid networks should stay away -- the best series have no notes.)
On Buffy, Joss and David Greenwalt would give notes during first three seasons. If Joss liked something, he'd put a check mark next to it. IF you make him laugh...it really worked. Marti and Joss also gave notes, then it was Joss, Marti and David Fury who gave notes. Sometimes Joss would add lines or cross bits out.
Usually two drafts and a clean-up version. But he did give you the ability to take the script home.
Joss's process was to never rewrite. He hadn't to rewrite. So he'd pace and pace and pace, then he'd write it down and in no particular order.
There was no rewriting on set. The actors might ask to change the line, but they weren't permitted to, Joss was VERY protective of the script.
* Characters more challenging than others.
- Riley was a bitch to write. How do you follow Angel? We thought it would be fun to have an all-American good guy, but guess what? Boring. Didn't get interested until he was letting vampires suck off of him -- but then we got rid of him. He was a good rebound guy.
-- Needed the nice guy for Buffy for her to realize didn't work. They couldn't just jump from Angel to Spike, needed the good guy in between.
Who was fun to write?
Spike and Giles.
And the nerds.
Fury loved writing for Harmony. He thought she was hilarious. Greenwalt said he loved writing for Charisma.
* How do staff writers get impassioned about a project that isn't yours?
Espenson: How do you know it's not ours?
Noxon: Joss was generous with us. He let us own it. Whedon was secure with what he did and not jealous of his writers, or had issues with letting them shine.
Apparently it was theirs as a group. Each person contributed. And Fury felt it was extraordinary that he wrote 90% of Helpless. Because he had never experienced that before. That it was his.
Whedon might change fifteen or twenty minutes of it. They were allowed to express their voice.
However, Greenwalt adds, that no decent showrunner wants to rewrite. Whedon created a whole language for the kids to have. So, they job of the staff writer is to write like the showrunner, to write in their language.
It's fascinating in regards to how a television is built, how the writers work together, and how they writer's viewed things.
Some outtakes?
* What would Buffy have been like, if they'd had twitter? How much would the writers have been influenced by Twitter? Because they are now. Twitter has a heavy influence now, apparently.
* We were Really crappy detectives (the writers) -- and so it was more interesting if they went with the emotional issues and Whedon used to state -- hunt for emotional clarity.
*Originally, Angel was a really twisted show --- with a far darker take on things. (Angel was a much trickier show to find the emotionality.) First spun -- noir Los Angelos, that was going to be really dark. In the first show after the pilot, Angel was going to lick blood off the floor after the woman dies...as a sort of metaphor for addiction. And they had a cop undercover as a prostitute. And the network lost their minds...the WB really wouldn't buy it, and they weren't wrong. So we shut down for a while and retooled it.
They didn't want to do a male Buffy show -- they wanted something more adult, darker. Unfortunately, most of the audience was Buffy fans, which was lighter, and they would be young girls and wouldn't be happy with that darkness.
Joss -- says to this day he didn't know why it worked.
What worked, they thought, was what was like to be a good man in this world? Minear really found the voice of it. And that it was bold.
* How it is important to have show-runners knowing what they want. Elizabeth Craft talks about how hard S4 was, because Greenwalt had left, and she had no clue what the series was about, still doesn't. Minear held them together -- and said would Joss hate that?
It's hard, they said to work without the show-runner in the room apparently.
* You don't have to force yourself to put things on a board or stay in a room until you can come up with something.
* In one episode, "Why We Fight" -- they were three days from shooting, and didn't have any ideas or a script yet. So, Whedon comes up and says..."We're doing a WWII submarine episode." So they go out and buy submarine's for dummies to educate themselves on submarines. The hardest thing was to come up with ideas for each episode. And it was frightening when they often couldn't come up with an idea until like two or three days before shooting.
* Conversations with Dead People -- that apparently was a nail-biter. They didn't have a script or anything up until the last minute. Just the fact that they had to kill Jonathan.
* Don't give people what they want, what they need means -- I'll kill people I love, cast away my darlings, really make it painful.
* Doyle's death. Glenn Quinn was told if you don't come to my set on time and learn your lines, you're out. But he just couldn't because of his own problems. So they killed him off and people were really upset with us.
* Being a TV writer is exciting...that there is something magical happens...you just keep writing, and keep writing. And Whedon would push production if it wasn't mostly there and not mostly working.
They'd go to the mat until it worked.
* Marti was given a list of movies to watch from Whedon for the show -- including Billy Wilder, Luvich, things like Ice Castles, Real Genius, The Sweet Smell of Success...
* You can't have an off week -- you have to find a way, wait until it's ready, stop it until it is there.
* Regarding Netflix's Daredevil -- there was no more freedom. Marvel had a strict budget, can't go over-budget. It is a little less forgiving. If you do or 10-13 episodes, same amount of time to do them, but on the flip side, you have more time to do them -- although make a lot less money.
* Marti has moved away from theme, has become an anti-theme person. With Joss it had meaning. But usually it doesn't matter and is just an organizing principle. But life to Marti's mind -- doesn't work by theme. Greenwalt -- feels that theme gives a cohesive quality theme to the story. He feel it worked well with Buffy. He hasn't written theme in anything since Buffy. But he feels that sometimes you want to watch something and think ah...
Serialized -- not an episode has a theme, the season does.
Whedon knew more or less what the end of the season would be. He knew where he was heading.
And a lot of showrunners don't look it at like that. Smallville didn't. And how can you not know where you are headed. (They make quips about Lost, which a couple of the writers worked on.)
* How was the story broken? How were the Big Picture stories pitched?
They had onions. He used onions to demonstrate big picture scene.
It had to have heart, had to make sense, had to have enterprise and had to be simple.
Take a look at what influences the show-runner. (What did you see over the weekend, what did you think...at one point everyone went nuts over Harry Potter. Whedon took them all out to see South Park for one weekend, and they all sang the songs from South Park in the room.)
When he directed HUSH, Marti and Jane went with Joss to him Universal, and they'd try to break story on the porch of the house...while Joss was directing HUSH.
Steve DeKnight talks about how Marti came in to help them save an episode in Angel. Marti was getting married that weekend.
Fury -- we wrote towards Act breaks, four acts and a teaser. Every act break, figuring out what it would be...was what they'd lay out first. However, Greenwalt states do not fall in love with Act break. Because everything had to be earned.
Now -- if you write a scene three and a half pages people get nervous, then you could go to four pages. But you needed to write really detailed act breaks. People had to put it on the board and write very small.
If you got the break right -- then the outline would be good. But, Greenwalt adds, not true now, it starts exactly the opposite on a show like Grim, they go word for word, and start outline again.
Fury -- he would go to ABC and he got notes. Constantly. Prior to that he didn't. But ABC gave writers a lot of notes. To the point of feeling like they were taking dictation. Fox and ABC post Buffy, the bureaucracy was about control. To the point the writers felt like all they were doing was what they were being dictated to do. (Proof that networks destroy TV shows, not writers.)
ABC apparently tried to bury Grey's Anatomy, because Shondra Rhimes stood up to the network and refused to do what they wanted and take the network's notes. They were taught under Whedon and on the WB, where they rarely got notes, maybe just one...from the network, to networks that gave them notes on every single thing. (Stupid networks should stay away -- the best series have no notes.)
On Buffy, Joss and David Greenwalt would give notes during first three seasons. If Joss liked something, he'd put a check mark next to it. IF you make him laugh...it really worked. Marti and Joss also gave notes, then it was Joss, Marti and David Fury who gave notes. Sometimes Joss would add lines or cross bits out.
Usually two drafts and a clean-up version. But he did give you the ability to take the script home.
Joss's process was to never rewrite. He hadn't to rewrite. So he'd pace and pace and pace, then he'd write it down and in no particular order.
There was no rewriting on set. The actors might ask to change the line, but they weren't permitted to, Joss was VERY protective of the script.
* Characters more challenging than others.
- Riley was a bitch to write. How do you follow Angel? We thought it would be fun to have an all-American good guy, but guess what? Boring. Didn't get interested until he was letting vampires suck off of him -- but then we got rid of him. He was a good rebound guy.
-- Needed the nice guy for Buffy for her to realize didn't work. They couldn't just jump from Angel to Spike, needed the good guy in between.
Who was fun to write?
Spike and Giles.
And the nerds.
Fury loved writing for Harmony. He thought she was hilarious. Greenwalt said he loved writing for Charisma.
* How do staff writers get impassioned about a project that isn't yours?
Espenson: How do you know it's not ours?
Noxon: Joss was generous with us. He let us own it. Whedon was secure with what he did and not jealous of his writers, or had issues with letting them shine.
Apparently it was theirs as a group. Each person contributed. And Fury felt it was extraordinary that he wrote 90% of Helpless. Because he had never experienced that before. That it was his.
Whedon might change fifteen or twenty minutes of it. They were allowed to express their voice.
However, Greenwalt adds, that no decent showrunner wants to rewrite. Whedon created a whole language for the kids to have. So, they job of the staff writer is to write like the showrunner, to write in their language.
no subject
Date: 2018-06-02 12:58 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2018-06-02 02:58 pm (UTC)Alexis Denisof worked a lot better than Glenn Quinn and the actor was reliable. He'd come from stage and didn't have any issues. (Quinn died shortly after he was killed off on Angel, from a drug overdose. And Whedon had gotten the actor from Roseanne. They'd replaced the actor who played Whistler, because that actor, who'd been in Homicide Life on the Streets, was in prison for something or other.)
Cordelia was set up as Angel's gal Friday, and joined in the first episode.
no subject
Date: 2018-06-02 04:52 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2018-06-02 06:10 pm (UTC)That's why your statement is puzzling to me. Well that and I don't think of her as Pretentious, but I guess she could be.
no subject
Date: 2018-06-02 07:35 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2018-06-02 08:31 pm (UTC)ETA -- I just re-read what you wrote and I get where you are coming from now. It's the visions. Doyle gave Cordy the visions. But see with visions -- Doyle was playing the Wes role -- interpreting them and being a sort of reflection of Angel, while Cordy was playing the counterweight role. That's why Greenwalt asked to take her over to Angel -- he needed a brighter, more positive presence as a counterweight. Giving her the visions -- basically pulled her off of that a bit and gave her character more complexity.
Interesting -- I watched a Q&A with Espenson and Marsters, Marsters saw himself as being the replacement for Cordy in both Buffy (and possibly both shows) but that's not how the writers viewed it. They didn't see it that way at all.
I don't see Cordy or Doyle as being remotely comparable, because Doyle didn't make a good counterweight -- but where we differ is I don't think he was ever meant to be one. LOL! Doyle is more similar to Wes, they are reflections of Angel in another way. Think of it this way? Buffy=Willow, Angel=Wes/Doyle, Buffy=Xander, Angel=Cordelia.
no subject
Date: 2018-06-02 05:36 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2018-06-02 08:39 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2018-06-02 11:24 pm (UTC)I remember the writers discussing how amazed they were at the lack of any pushback from UPN for S6. I think it was Marsters who claimed they didn't even have censors there but they put one together after that season!
no subject
Date: 2018-06-03 12:36 am (UTC)The writers perspective on Spike...according to a Q&A panel with Marsters and Espenson, was that Spike was an extremely versatile character played by an extremely versatile actor -- so it became fun for the writers to see what they could throw at him and how far they could challenge his limits.
Whedon stated the only notes they got from the network were on Doublemeat Palace and Buffy's job at the fast-food franchise, that apparently upset the advertisers.