April 2004 posts


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. -- ......., 08:10:39 04/01/04 Thu

Spiral

....spiralling down into entropy once more,
locked doors to be opened in all directions;
inspecting endless dreams, spasmodic
reflections punctuate the mirror of this
existence; essence, inflected before, was
punctured into senseless state; the error of
my way, foreseen by the elders, is multi-
plied into trilogy-but! what eulogy is this,
that chronicles the achievements of my
failure? Thrice synchronised, lured into
discontent, I resent this plurality - and now,
it creeps upon me, warm and sickly sweet,
for I reaped the rewards of movement; to
meet stillness is bliss, satanic and stalwart-
I ought not to go-show resolve I sought so
long ago; but this is deception all; ever since
the inception of this state, I have been...


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For your April Fool's pleasure -- Pony, 11:50:43 04/01/04 Thu

Someone has set up a Salon parody site and it's featuring a piece called "Confessions of a Fanfic Writer" about a dedicated AtS fan. It's making fun of an anonymous article the real Salon had up last week about the perils of being a mid-list novelist, but it knows its fan facts very very well. It's a sobering mirror to stare into, but very funny!

http://www.teevee.org/archive/2004/04/01/arts-fanfic.html

Replies:

[> thanks, pony! that was fun! -- anom, 13:56:03 04/01/04 Thu

I especially liked the writer's pseudonym!
Buffy -- Jennifer, 04:30:49 04/02/04 Fri

All I can say is "holy cow". After somehow getting stuck in a plethora of "Simon & Garfunkel" websites,who I don't even care for, so I have no idea why I kept reading for so long, I somehow ended up here, and end up in "Buffyland". I've only watched the show once or twice, and considered it, well, for teenagers. However, after reading some of your intelligent and um, deep posts, I have to say, I will look at the show in a different light. Well, if I look at it. BUT I MIGHT!! You guys DO make it sound much more interesting now! I guess I'm redundantly blabbing now, but I'm just shocked at how in-depth these posts are. I wonder if EVERY TV show has such a faithful following. Hmmmm. Anyways, take it easy guys.

Replies:

[> Re: Buffy -- Seven, 06:58:33 04/02/04 Fri

Have some faith in your instincts!

I do not believe that most shows have as faithful a following or have as much to offer the fans as the shows created by Joss Whedon and Mutant Enemy (ME). We have a lot to talk about because it has been provided by the show. It is definatley more substantial than the surface level and it may take a couple episodes of viewing the great characters and getting a feel for the mythology of the show before you are wholly convinced. I implore you to do so and if the intelligent (much more so than I) people from this board played a hand in turning you on to it, all the better.

[> [> B-WAH-HA-HA-HA!!!! You must assimilate! You WILL Watch. Welcome to the Sunny(dale) side, Jennifer. -- Briar Patch (Briar Rose's evil twin>^..^<), 18:20:18 04/02/04 Fri

Joss speaks on "Save Angel" efforts -- Masq, 10:49:00 04/02/04 Fri

This is second hand from the save_angel Live Journal community, but I have no doubt it's true:

Joss on the Radio

This morning on LA radio station, kroq, they talked to Joss on the phone. When asked what the fans could do to help save Angel, he said To keep doing what they are doing. Just thought I would let you all know.

Replies:

[> Smack -- Mwaa -- JM, 16:43:10 04/02/04 Fri

That was an enormous kiss, in case it didn't translate.

[> [> *blushes* -- Masq, 19:13:21 04/03/04 Sat


[> More here -- abt, 00:33:20 04/03/04 Sat

description of interview


transcript here, spoiler warning, contains final episode title

[> [> And on radio on Monday too -- abt, 05:46:10 04/03/04 Sat

Radio
Darla as Virgin Mary -- Ann, 07:32:20 04/03/04 Sat

Darla as Virgin Mary

I have become enamored with Darla. I am watching S1 AtS for the first time and her character, to me, has been redeemed. I had never particularly liked her on BTVS. The schoolgirl outfit always annoyed me.

But while reading the thread below about Lilah, it occurred to me that Darla could in be viewed in a comparison to the Virgin Mary. I had seen Darla initially as proud but somewhat fearful "mother" of Angelus. But now I am wondering if she is being used as a twisted Virgin Mary of sorts, the Mother of the greatest of them all - mother to the greatest vampire of them all; Angelus. Mary brought us Jesus and Darla produced Angelus and later Connor. Could this be a twisting of the greatest mother/son story of them all? The Master, Darla's almighty father, wants her son Angelus to sit on his right hand (of the father). Darla comes from a Virgin/a colony. (I love plays on words like these). The Master is almost an Angel Gabriel figure coming to Darla singing in the night when he vamped her. The psychic split between human/Darla and Vamp/Darla shown in Reunion, echoes the split in the human Mary and the mother-of-god-Mary while she retained her virginity after conception and birth. Darla encourages Angelus' role as evildoer like V-Mary encourages Jesus' role as savior.

I haven't seen "The Trial" but is looks as if Angel is willing to die to save her sins and soul. A willingness to die for the "sins of man" like Jesus did. Darla while pregnant with Connor is described as having an "impossible pregnancy" much like Mary's virgin birth was theoretically impossible. Darla then dies while giving birth to the child so in doing so, in an act of pure selflessness, saves her child (now Connor) and is now in a "grace"ful state. Mary is often associated with this word: "Hail Mary, full of grace". She even comes to her child Connor in a vision of sorts like Mary does to others in their times of need.

Darla says: "What we once were will inform all that we have become" which is a twist on many bible passages that refer to angels coming to people to give warnings or advice and specifically as Angel Gabriel comes to Mary.

I have not seen S2-3 1/2 yet so it is possible this comparison is off the mark. But there seem to be enough similarities for this twisting of stories to be accurate. There may be even something to the fact that Mary Magdalene was thought to be a prostitute woven in somehow. Perhaps the merging of the "pure" Mary with the supposed "impure" Mary Magdelene somehow into the character of Darla. I will ponder some more. Somehow I think that may hold truer for Drusilla given her religious background. Another days post.

PS: So I checked the archives after writing this and noted some discussion of this topic regarding Darla as Madonna in her visits to view the "Temptation of Christ". About 1 1/8 down the page by Rufus.
http://www.atpobtvs.com/existentialscoobies/archives/nov01_p3.html
Saw "Home" For First Time -- Joyce, 14:26:39 04/03/04 Sat

I saw the AtS S4 finale, "Home" for the first time. As season finales go . . . it was okay, but nothing to really get excited over. To be honest, S1's "To Shanshu in L.A." was the best finale I've seen.

The best scenes of "Home" were the scene between Wesley Wyndham-Price and Lilah Morgan, when the former tried to save the latter by destroying her Wolfram & Hart contract; and when Angel confronted Connor in the sport's store. Good acting from the four actors involved in these scenes.

It's interesting that the entire Fang Gang, save for Fred, were prepared to accept Wolfram & Hart's offer. She seemed surprised that Wesley was willing to accept. This makes me wonder if Fred is really a good judge of character. I had assumed so, following her interactions with Spike in early S5, but now I'm not so sure.

Despite the gang's resolve, Angel had went ahead and made an executive decision for all of them. Did he really have the power to do so? Why didn't the others question his presumption? Or were they just willing to follow him, blindly? From what I've seen, Angel was not in the position to inform them of his decision before it was carried out. Yet, he never bothered to tell them what happened? If the Fang Gang ever finds out about his decision and continue to follow him, I will probably develop grave doubts about their wisdom and their ability to think on their own.
Transcript of the Joss Whedon commentary for s7.22 Chosen -- Rufus, 14:40:13 04/03/04 Sat

All credit and big thanks goes to Deborahw37 from BAPS
Reposting with Permission

Transcript of Joss Whedon's commentary for "Chosen" on the BTVS Season 7 DVD set

It's 2AM I've got to work in the morning but hell I'm gonna do Chosen and now it's 3.15 AM and I did act one ...the rest is silence till tomorrow...


Teaser

Hi I'm Joss Whedon and this is the very final audio commentary on the very final episode of the very final series of Buffy and if you've actually sat through all the episodes and all the commentaries and you have a feeling of exhaustion confusion and sort of a low riding rage that you can't really describe or understand then you'll know how I felt when we shot this , to say that I was wiped out by the time we got here is the understatement of the world and no scene I think showed that more than this one because we had so little time to shoot so much and I'll explain about that as we go to the credits

Credits

You see that was actually the first stuff we shot and we only had David for a little while and I mean a really little while I had about seven hours to do about ten pages and it all required everybody to be completely on point but that's what you get with Nathan and Sarah and David professionalism everybody was right on their marks and everybody worked really hard and it was a good start to this because there was no episode that we ever shot that was harder, bigger and that left less time for me to try and do anything interesting with the camera it left less time for the DP to light it left less time for everybody to do their best work and yet somehow people managed to.


Act One

The stunts I did not have to shoot that day John Mettland shot most of it second unit and you'll be hearing a little bit about David Soloman who shot a huge amount of second unit for me on this show because it took so many days

What can I say about Nathan Fillion that hasn't already been said, he's a great hero and a great villain and just delightful I was so happy to have him back for the beginning of this episode just because I wanted to work with him and he'd gotten to work with other directors and I didn't think it was fair that he didn't get me, and I thought splitting him in half from the crotch up was you know maybe a little on the nose as a radical feminist statement goes but for his character I really thought he'd earned it so.

And David you know again came and just was right on the money same as Sarah from the first take which was important the only person who didn't do their best work here I think was me because lack of time meant that here we are that's an over that's an over and then we have a two shot over over two shot which is pretty much the gold standard for boring t directing but when we're in the kind of hurry that we were on this one we didn't have any choice, they make one big move in this entire scene and once they do we started shooting both of them at the same time, it's the rarest thing of all usually you light one direction it's very specific and then it takes awhile to turn round and light in the other direction but every now and then when you're desperate you ask your DP to light both people at the same time, it's not undoable both of them look good here but we had two cameras running the whole time .. it also helps the scene sometimes because both people are in it in their coverage in their close-ups at the same time and they're giving their all and they're feeding off the rhythms of the other person very specifically so you're not cobbling together something that has taken what could be hours apart . It's a fun way to shoot it just makes life hell for the DP and Ray came through as he always does really spectacularly on it.

Yes there will be praise because a lot of people really impressed me you know this was a really hard episode hard episode to shoot one of the shots coming up this one a steady cam shot designed to show the scope of the giant graveyard and give a little motion and emotion to what they're doing, course the giant graveyard is our parking lot, the graveyard that Gareth Davies our producer suggested we build at the beginning of season two to save time going out to graveyards we shot the first half of that scene the first half of that night and then we came out here to shoot the rest of it again the time constraints were insane and yet this stuff looks great and the two of them are as funny and real as they've ever been so that worked out just fine . and David doing my all time favourite thing being petty, whenever Angel is Petty I think he's at his best . And I love the fact that I feel the scope of the graveyard which is where I thought Buffy and Angel should leave their relationship on this show because it is the iconic place for Buffy the graveyard , more than anything else. A lot of this last episode had to do with finding that perfect iconic moment and that perfect iconic thing that really says this is a summation of what we've done . I've done it before I did it in episode 22 of season 5 where I had Buffy fighting a vampire in the alley at the beginning I had made a lot of the statements to sort of round out my feelings about the show but life went on and the show went on and writing a second final episode of Buffy was much harder than writing the first partially because I'd already written one partially because I knew that this was the end at some point I just had to let go and just write forget about the pressure about it being perfect, it's not going to be and it isn't but make it good enough hit the beats give an episode so that people would remember. We knew where we wanted to go thematically It was just getting there. This speech about cookies well not cookies exactly but I believe baking was in there was originally pitched by Marti Noxon early in the season and I think as the show runner I could have done a better job of bringing us to it, it comes to this conclusion a little bit out of the blue and that's my fault but we knew that emotionally it's where we wanted to get and where we wanted to get to was the idea of my relationships don't work out because I'm still becoming a woman and finding my place and I don't need to be finding the perfect guy at age 22 or however old Buffy is at this point, I can wait, I can wait until I'm fully formed and I think that's a very important message and when Marti had thought about this in her own life and she told me about it I was like I think this is exactly where we need Buffy to get . And it helps with the other really complicated part of writing this episode which is how to get Angel and Spike together in the same show, have her have the big emotion for both of them and not make her look like the slut queen of slutdonia as Marti herself would say . It was very tricky and I'd like to point out that I had to do it in the same act, that by the end of act , well before the end of act one she's sleeping with Spike.

This exit for Angel was designed to mirror his first exit him backing off in the darkness. Something hopefully iconic enough and something to give people hope that Buffy and Angel might one day work out because some fans, now I realise not many but there were a few fans who feel that the Buffy Angel romance was like a big deal and clearly I thought Parker was the most important romantic relationship of her life other people disagreed that's fine I guess they can do that they care about the Angel thing, some people care about the Spike thing I don't know why we couldn't get Parker in there too but apparently no you know whatever so that vocal minority who care about Buffy and Angel meant that we had to do service by him. Comment on screen action) "eye socket jokes always funny"


And this was how to get her in the sack with Spike half an act after Angel had left but you know the experience. I've said this probably a hundred times and probably all of them on the audio commentaries to these damn episodes the trick is always to make the audience go through exactly what she's going through It's confusing to us emotionally that we should bounce from one to the other and it's confusing to her but Spike is the person in her life right now. That drawing is one of my own creations and a lot of the crew members were like "why does he hate Butthead?" and I was like "Oh it's supposed to be Angel" and that was something that I did on the day it wasn't in the script, that's the kind of wacky improve I've got going.Who knows what could happen. At any moment I could come up with that I think that's actually the only thing I came up with. Asides from the script The great Marsters with a chemistry with Buffy that is just
completely different from Angels and different to Davids and it works very very well he's more on Buffys level he's they're vulnerabilities come out and I don't just mean as characters but as actors.

Around each other and that really works it works on a different level. Their relationship, clearly been through a lot much more in fact than her relationship with Angel and you feel that history with these two and they bring it to the set they come to work and that's why we still came to work because they did And James the ability to turn on a dime is a very rare thing in an actor from incredibly noble or scary to completely dorky or disarming, he does it with the tongue line earlier he does it here you'd be amazed how few people can actually do that and the last person I ever expected to be able to do it would be a theatre trained actor yet he's got the chops he can go from Dracula to Jack Benny in a heart beat which is one of the reasons why I love him that and his shiny shiny hair.


From: "deborahw37"
Date: Fri Apr 2, 2004 11:19 pm
Subject: MORE TRANSCRIPT

First the dreaded Luke and Laura bit .. and then when you calm down.. please take the time to read and think about the next bit I jumped ahead because I couldn't bear not to .. I'll jump back later and do the rest properly

The idea behind their sleeping together is very important it was that their relationship had enough trust in it that it was physical and romantic but not sexual that was of course in response to the rape issue of last year when he had attempted to rape her because he didn't understand the boundaries of their relationship, he was soulless but having gotten his soul and having fought to become a person we wanted to say this man can be redeemed from that not and I've said this before, not in a Luke And Laura,he rapes her and hey get married way not in an all is forgiven way just in the way of he's still a human being who did a wrong thing and we still count him as a human being, I think that's a very important message, that their relationship should be complicated and yet come to a place of trust without saying alright they're going to become lovers again because I think that would be wrong I think that would be the wrong message I think that it's a very fine line.

I love watching them face off,I love Nathan he tells his little jokes almost like he's an old man his little puns and his silliness the delight he takes in his character is just so very charming and the point he's hitting on of course being the whole point of the show,being the whole point of the season and it seemed not only really affordable to have Sarah playing the First fort the most part of this but also the smartest because we've come full circle and it did make sense that we had Sarah telling herself literally that she was alone. These two didn't get along together at all I thought they would but they were complaining their outfits were too similar their trailers were the same size and there was trouble " I'm drowning in footwear" just one of those lines that make you glad that you're a writer that you can write something that silly and actually out it on the air it's an odd thing to end an act with an affirmation of potential victory but it made sense to me here because it's so strange

End of act one


Ok calm down and look at this!!


Ok I'm going to skip forward to the end and then go back and fill in the middle later


On to the hand clasp



The sunlight hits Spike the sunlight's channelled through Spike and it gets nasty some of the body language from these vamps again CGI really beautifully done The idea of the soul as the thing that elevates and kills him felt like a good wrap up and again going from the epic to the humorous in a heartbeat that's our boy The girls kept walking through the beam and I had to say "you're being chopped in half . duck and she did and she fell but she wasn't hurt nobody was hurt it's all fake . The idea of the bus was just that it felt right we had to get a lot of people out and it's a school bus and that's what we did this shot one of my favourites too , he's looking for her she's right there he doesn't find her those always get me.

This was an interesting scene because both James and Sarah came to it from the wrong place really, they were playing things falling apart and the terror of it and I said that what I wanted was for them to completely distance themselves from it and I explained how the sound was going to drift out ( Hand clasp) this was sort of a romantic image the two of them, we actually did it with real fires. But the hands were all gelled up and you could tell so this is CGI and it looks beautiful I thought it was a nice comment on their relationship.What I basically told them was play the romance be proud of him , love him when you say you love him / love her when you say she doesn't love you . forget about the crumbling world for that period of time it doesn't exist it's a cinematic trick but it's a necessary emotional one I was surprised that they hadn't come there because usually with the three of us we come to a scene in exactly the same place and this time it really was sort of different eventually Sarah said if you have what you think you need I think we should move on because I'm not sure I understand how this works but I look at the two of them together and you know their work is tremendous , but that is part of making TV and movies sometimes you'll get a take from an actor that blows you away and they'll go "oh I wasn't feeling the thing can we go again and I'm like " you just gave me gold" " but I didn't feel it" and I'm like " The audience will" sometimes you can let them have another and sometimes you just say " trust me, the audience will be there cos I was" . another beautiful image our boy goin down for the last time even though everybody already knew he was gonna be on Angel



Ok look at that

PLAY THE ROMANCE BE PROUD OF HIM LOVE HIM WHEN YOU SAY YOU LOVE HIM"



sorry to shout but It's kind of important




Act Two

Well this shot is kind of a cheesy trick but it got everybody in frame so I liked it this scene was one of those OK gotta make our day kind of scenes . I shot the room as a three waller , you'll notice I don't come around on Giles when he speaks to Willow I get him in profile which I don't mind doing, I don't need to be in every bodies faces the whole time exactly for every moment but it was a function of the very small amount of time that we had that I played it in the proscenium form almost you never do see that forth wall and the bed helped. Some people have complained that the magic that this scythe, originally from the Fray comic that I was writing at the same time is a little to convenient , and my answer to those critics is " well don't tell everybody" it is convenient and that doesn't really bother me because ultimately to e the magic the phlobotonin was always secondary to what needs to be said and had to do with empowerment and the way to get there was through Willows magic and what it means to her and being a slayer and what it means to them so the fact that everything really fell into place a little too easily, maybe I could have thought of something a little more interesting but that isn't where my heart was, my heart was in the heart more than it was in the magic.

This scene well first all of the first time that Buffy got through this speech which I'm sure you can realise when you watch the episode we shot all as one , there are two parts to it and it's very long and it is about twice as long as what you see on screen we cut about half of it in the editing room apparently my pen runneth over so Sarah's basically doing a scene that is four times as long as what she does here and did she get every single word right on the first take? Yes she did the extras actually spontaneously burst into applause when she was done? Yes they did. Again it's one of the reasons why we went as long as we did, working as hard as we did the fact that she could do that. I'd also like to point out that it was Eliza Dushku who actually stopped to point out how much she liked the speech how much she liked the scene how much she liked the work and coming from an actor who knows they're gonna spend half the day standing there looking , with no lines I though that was particularly gracious.

In this scene she accused me of getting back at some girl because of the way Wood kind of disses on her but actually it just made me laugh, and there aren't any girls I need to get back! (Laughs) actually I think I told her that's if what I was doing with the show it would be going another four seasons.

But I think there two just had a lovely chemistry and this is not necessarily something that would have been in the last episode a relationship talk from the two of them but it deals with the isolated nature of the slayer embodied here by Faith rather than Buffy which is really an important part of the season and it just tells us a little something about the two of them and pays off at the end two takes you know in either direction , both of them were so on point so delightful, Eliza not happy about giving up control of being like vulnerable and he attacks her skills and the expression " Dude I've got mad skills" was actually said to me by Eliza in reference to serving ice cream , working at the Dairy Queen I believe not in reference to anything else but I loved the phrase so much I though I simply have to have Faith say it . Which since it was me writing it became dirty. Weird, it's a thing. DB Woodside from the first frame that I saw in the first episode he intrigued me so much a real you know a real comer a real epic guy just a little bigger than life and you look for that so often you don't get it, it's really hard to find someone. It was a match I love Iyari and Allie in this scene well I love Allie in pretty much every scene where she doesn't have to speak a foreign language and I think It's not a big secret that originally I had planned to bring Tara back and when that didn't work out you know I was looking for the anti Tara, somebody as un earthy and unlike her as possible.
Iyari has a wonderful presence and a great physicality with Allie that is just very natural so I liked working with them ,this is like my first time because I didn't shoot any up until this one because I was too tired ,I was pretty much too tired to shoot this one too but I had no choice, I couldn't let somebody else do it except for the parts that I let John Maidland and David Solomon do which again we'll come to later and the reasoning behind the two of them was very simply somebody had to end this show with a God damned girlfriend and why shouldn't it be Willow? Somebody has to end in a decent relationship because we've seen so any of them fall apart.

I loved doing this as a one er because I love a One er you have to do them a lot more times they take about as long as doing a scene with coverage but when you get it and it's all there It's delightful and Tom well I can't say enough about him, this thing he does with his hood when he says step back he had never done in any take he just threw it in there now here we go he had never done that before and it just he's always trying to bring more to the table not in that annoying " I have an idea that will ruin the shot" way but just in I'm staying in it and I loved that he became a huge part of the show . this scene was also added so that we could give Amanda some screen time so that later on I could kill her because I wanted to take a toll I think that Emma knows that as well as any., a battle without some kind of a toll is not a real battle. Pulled wide here because I had planned to shot that on set and when they said we're going out I said well then dammit I'm pulling wide so they know we really went there that night we actually had four directors shooting porch scenes for four different shows and this bit here I did actually add on set not just the picture of Butthead on the punching bag but this where I said " I wanna get a couple of shots (we were going fast). And that one I didn't know if we were going to use the two of them. and to me it's almost the most important shot in the show because it shows the mystery of their relationship and that's one where I wanted the audience to fill in the blank I wanted whatever you want to have happened to have happened If people believe that on their last night together they made love great if people believe that on their last night together they talked all night if people believe they had a fight great whatever it s it's up to the viewer the viewer has earned that and I love that analytical nature that there should be work for the viewer to do in that sense emotionally I think that makes it more textured and that shot of the two of them looking at each other I just find that beautiful.


He talked about this right over the beginning of act three but I kept going. Now I'll post this as act two and get back


BTW Red Bull makes the typing faster !


Act three


And I loved this shot too setting up all my parameters Look around big wide lens and then of course the great Andrew Oscar speech of the show which made me laugh every single time we did it sometimes out loud which was of course not a good thing for the director to do during a take his Brother Tucker of course who we referenced all the time was the guy who tried to destroy the prom and we had originally wanted that actor Brad to be one of the nerds but he was busy and couldn't so we found Tom and played up the idea that everybody couldn't remember him because he was somebody else's little Brother which by the way happened to me in high school all the time but I love that, the little continuity things are very important to me that sentence ( whatever you say is going to sound like Goodbye) was actually said to me by Marti after the show when she was leaving the house after we had watched it.. why it nearly made me cry , but I don't cry because I am a manly man This moment I don't think I really need to explain what's going on here I felt that it was very important and I think the audience did too that these four have their moment together, these four who started it all should finish it all and Much in the same way they began it that's why I echoed the exact lines from Giles this shot as I feel the every ending of the two part beginningand this shot also very important as they peel off one by one friends going to their destinies and Buffy left alone. I shot that in slow motion but unfortunately it was so slow that it took up about half the show a whole long walk for Buffy where she walked down through the basement and remembered things and walked in slow motion really really long, I had to cut it I had to cut a lot of things my shows almost always come out long because I talk to much, in this instance I'm supposed to be talking right now too much but I almost cut this shot which is again I think one of the most important shots just for time when we were shooting but the idea of all these girls bleeding together I think had a good earthy almost menstrual metaphor to it which I think is important since they're all becoming Slayers . Oh did I give it way? Well if you're listening to the audio commentaries you probably already know that. My biggest regret about this episode was that I didn't get to do more funny Willow stuff there was just so much plot to get through and Funny Allie is such a great thing and I wished we'd had more of her

This shot is rather seamlessly welded in by Ronnie and our guys at Zoic and really gave us an epic feel that we just didn't have the money for on this show all these many years so we've been saving all year for this very sequence and these very shots the idea that there was now a technology where you could do hundreds of thousands of bad guys it just didn't exist in the first six years and people well somebody saw The Two Towers and the fact of the matter is what I saw was a literal thing that was in cinefax explaining that they had this new technology you could create thousands of bad guys and I was like that will make this battle different from all the others the sheer number.


And this, this I knew I was coming to from the start of the season pretty early on in it Buffy was isolated as a character even in the world Buffy and her gang never ensemble always like the star and the others in the magazines and what not and it was very important to me to say Ok great that you've worshipped this one iconic character but find it in yourself everybody and that's why we shot the people all overand that was a great fun thing to do the very last thing I shot for the show on first unit was the girl in the trailer and Drew Goddard pointed out that it was kind of a great shot to be shooting at this point for this show and I can't say enough about our little baseball girl, so may people just lost it I thought "oh this is gonna be too cheesy the baseball thing" but so many people were like " I was that girl, I played little league it's so important" and that's the cry moment for a lot of people again I can't say enough about the Zoic guys the job they did integrating these things and Felicia Day as Vi and Indigo as Rona just doing great work they really stuck you know a lot of girls came a lot of girls got killed and.

This image which we referred to, speaking of Lord of The Rings as the Blanchett image, obviously meant to she couldn't stop talking about her black haired evil and the idea that when she empowers these women she comes to something even more powerful beyond the concept of power beyond the powers of evil something truly connected about connection about Women's connection to the earth and that it can bring out the best in her and it would be nifty it seemed like a good conclusion to her story her arc.

This scene this story all of this stuff this is where David Solomon really came in and helped out, he shot for days of second unit because there was simply so much to shoot and without him I mean he was a great director on the show and a great producer anyway and without him doing this episode I never would have made it through he kept it interesting. We actually had to stop filming one night one Friday night half way through because I was just too tired

Felicia was like "you hooked me up fat" she loved all of this footage we got of her but she looked great. that shot was very specifically storyboarded before we ever did anything, that was very important (Buffy swings scythe and dusts multiple ubies) I wanted to get that moment of just everybody doing everything in slow mo I thought it came out really nice though .

And if you're going to pay off things that people have dealt with over the years , Bunnies are going to be one of the most important Emma just about the funniest person who ever looked that good DB loved to fight, so did Tony I wished we could have had more of that again we wanted to keep everything moving as fast as possible and you know "I have swimmers" ear" is just something that Tom said that made me laugh and so I put it in I don't know why the characters saying that it's not going to stop the vampire. People complained again that the vampires were too easy to kill, they were supposed to be stronger than other vampires and the fact of the matter is it's true like the convenient magic it's true because again I was more interested in showing the empowerment than I was in the continuity to make every vampire as hard to kill as the first one would have been too hard.

End of act three




Act four

Shooting the battle as it was required many ,many more days than we had scheduled and more directors so once I got all the big moments out this was a very important thing too the sharing of the scythe means the sharing of the power just about as literally as you can get . Had to use a little sunlight since it was the middle of the day. (Anya dies) one of the most brutal images we've ever done and you know done to keep the sense of battle , you know the un heroic death also interesting because I'd never seen it before I'd never seen anybody cut like that and I came up with the idea of the stuntman using a half sword and digitally adding the rest of the sword and the cut so just instead of one of those slices like you always get in swordfight movies we really cut someone down And of course Sarah following as well that was because I needed a toll I needed this battle really to feel like a battle and I couldn't kill any of my core four and still call it a happy ending I couldn't kill Dawn and still call it a happy ending either so Anya got the nod and to make it as un heroic as possible just felt very real and very creepy and that shot was in fact her last shot(get out of my face) a lot of people didn't actually get that this was a pun but it seemed like the right thing and here you've really got to give it up for the composer he increased the budget of the show by a half just because his music gave it such an epic feel this music to me embodies so much of what I was striving for , it makes the thing feel twice as epic it was a beautiful piece of music. that's May a great great stuntwoman who gave us beautiful footage as Felicia did too all the girls really enjoyed their fighting, they wanted to fight more and more , Iyari particularly. Sarah at one point said look we're going to need more footage, just keep rolling and I'll fight.


The sunlight hits Spike the sunlight is channelled through Spike and it gets nasty some of the body language from these vamps again CGI really beautifully done The idea of the soul as the thing that elevates and kills him felt like a good wrap up and again going from the epic to the humorous in a heartbeat that's our boy The girls kept walking through the beam and I had to say "you're being chopped in half. duck and she did and she fell which was fun but she wasn't hurt nobody was hurt it's all fake . The idea of the bus was just that it felt right we had to get a lot of people out and it's a school bus and that's what we did this shot one of my favourites too , he's looking for her she's right there he doesn't find her those always get me.

This was an interesting scene because both James and Sarah came to it from the wrong place really, they were playing things falling apart and the terror of it and I said that what I wanted was for them to completely distance themselves from it and I explained how the sound was going to drift out (Hand clasp) this was sort of a romantic image the two of them, we actually did it with real fires. But the hands were all gelled up and you could tell so this is CGI and it looks beautiful I thought it was a nice comment on their relationship .What I basically told them was...Play the romance be proud of him, love him when you say you love him,love her when you say she doesn't love you. Forget about the crumbling world for that period of time it doesn't exist it's a cinematic trick but it's a necessary emotional one I was surprised that they hadn't come there because usually with the three of us we come to a scene in exactly the same place and this time it really was sort of different.Eventually Sarah said if you have what you think you need I think we should move on because I'm not sure I understand how this works but I look at the two of them together and you know their work is tremendous , but that is part of making TV and movies
sometimes you'll get a take from an actor that blows you away and they'll go "oh I wasn't feeling the thing can we go again and I'm like " you just gave me gold" " but I didn't feel it" and I'm like " The audience will" sometimes you can let them have another and sometimes you just say " trust me, the audience will be there cos I was".another beautiful image our boy goin down for the last time even though everybody already knew he was gonna be on Angel.


I loved revving Felicia up to as much intensity as we could get that was fun, right there we're going around the lot our little lot and then this actually miniatures and CGI and I'm just obsessed with people running and jumping on things the big leap and so I got one at the end of my show . Its an old trick there was another old trick( Sunnydale falls away .. I love that by the way you couldn't have a better description of what happened to Sunnydale) the first trick was she jumped the bus drove under her but actually they happened at different times and we were still doing something which we did when Faith fell into the truck they were talking about the bag how to cheat the perspective and I was like can't we just shoot them both and then do a split screen? And then of course this I have to say, the endless road behind them was something that came from Tony Head he pointed out "oh that's beautiful an endless horizon it's a perfect image for the rest of the show and the rest of their lives" and I was like "yeah that's great except I parked in front of it and you guys play in front of the bus and we're never gonna see it" So I gave that moment to Sarah of just looking out and seeing that horizon cos I agreed with Tony I thought it was beautiful and I didn't think it should be missed. And then of course that poor sign which in one incarnation or another has been knocked down so many times.


Again I had very much planned not to have any reason for Anya's death any reason behind it or any reason to come after it, but the writer in me couldn't not resolve it somewhat I think the audience needed what Xander needed which was something and that something was Andrew learning that the think that he's sort of reviled for, making up stories becomes the thing that he helps Xander with becomes the thing that he actually is good at, giving her the epic death that she didn't actually get to have.


( Faith/ Wood) I think that these two have as grown up and textured a relationship as any of the characters on this show and they had about four scenes together total so I love that about them I love how much goes on in each of them when he dies dying, having a character die and then suddenly bringing them back to life is something you can only actually earn after you've killed a couple so this was a nice opportunity to say this isn't over yet, to have the call back and I wouldn't have been able to do it if I hadn't legitimately offed a few beloved characters.


And then we come to what is the final shot, needless to say we shot this one a bunch of times I had this in my head from the start when we first did it we started up high and it looked kind of fake and cheesy and they're of course playing against an abyss that isn't there but I knew this was going to be a one er I knew it was going to be a slow push in we started to shoot it and then Ray the DP said you know what? the lights not that good the winds not that good lets just leave the crane arm and go shoot the little bits in front of the bus So we held off for about four hours and came back, tried again everybody getting their lines a tough thing, everybody being in the right place in frame but I wanted it to just be everyone and to end with the close up of Buffy because what this shot ultimately is about is what a lot of the shows about which is that the story goes on that there is closure but not a closing that what we've seen is a life being formed like the cookie dough speech explains , this a life in progress a life that in some ways is just beginning, like that smile. That's all I have to say thanks for watching my show

Replies:

[> Awesome! I can't believe you did this...thanks so much! -- Nino, 16:24:46 04/03/04 Sat


[> [> deb did it, it's all deb's fault....I only cut and paste....;) -- Rufus, 17:19:37 04/03/04 Sat


[> [> [> well thanks deb! -- nino, 18:30:56 04/03/04 Sat


[> Thank you, Rufus -- Vickie, 16:25:38 04/03/04 Sat

And OnM was right. Who would'a thunk?

[> [> Huh? What? I was right about something?? Holy s**t! Now I gotta go read this thing! -- OnM, 20:09:27 04/03/04 Sat

Big time thanky to Deb & Rufus-- time to cut/paste/print & read!

:-)

[> [> Uhh, Vickie-- I've read this twice now, and I'm still not sure what you're referring to... -- OnM, 10:09:08 04/04/04 Sun

....when you said I 'was right'. Do you mean about Wood and Faith, that he actually did die, and she brought him back with her touch? Joss doesn't actually say that, although he does confirm that Wood did pass on, and then came back to life.

Absolute confimation or no, I still do really love that scene, and what it represents for the characters!

:-)

[> [> [> Re: Uhh, Vickie-- I've read this twice now, and I'm still not sure what you're referring to... -- Vickie, 19:19:55 04/04/04 Sun

I think he does, kind of. He says that it's not too much of a cheat, to have someone die and then bring them back, if you've already killed off some beloved characters.

( Faith/ Wood) I think that these two have as grown up and textured a relationship as any of the characters on this show and they had about four scenes together total so I love that about them I love how much goes on in each of them when he dies dying, having a character die and then suddenly bringing them back to life is something you can only actually earn after you've killed a couple so this was a nice opportunity to say this isn't over yet, to have the call back and I wouldn't have been able to do it if I hadn't legitimately offed a few beloved characters.

I would never have accepted this one, had the Whedon not said it himself. Of course, he doesn't actually say Faith restores him with her touch...

[> [> [> [> The shooting script strongly implies that he was gone, then revived. -- OnM, 21:07:59 04/04/04 Sun

The exerpt:

***

WOOD: Did we make it?

He looks at her. A Beat.

FAITH: We made it. We won.

He smiles a little... and then he is just staring. And still. Faith takes a moment, then moves to cover his eyes.

He coughs, spasming back to life, and she draws back her hand, as startled as he.


WOOD: (whispers) Surprise.

***

Now, another aspect that I like about this scene is that once again, it can be either interpreted realistically, or fantastically. It is in the realm of realverse possibility that while his heart may have stopped, and/or he stopped breathing, the brain would still function for at least a minute or two afterward. When her fingers brushed against his face, he could have sensed the touch, and his heart could have started beating again, kinda like a neurological 'Ctrl-Alt-Del'. Not common, for sure, but it does happen.

Or, the more 'spiritual' take where, as I theorized, Faith employs some of Buffy's gift for bending reality ('I have so much strength...') and her touch literally revivifies him. From a story standpoint, I prefer this take simply because it plays out as such a perfect 'ending' to the Faith character arc we've seen over the multiple seasons.

[> You have NO idea how happy I am to read this. -- an_old_one, 20:30:52 04/03/04 Sat

I feel like my tv-watching life from Season 5 to Season 7 has been totally vindicated--I was not blinded by unreasoning Spike-lust. I saw exactly what Joss wanted me to see, what he was showing me all along. It's amazing how being told you're totally out to lunch time after time can shake your confidence in your ability to interpret something. I kept trying to say, "But wait, this is what I SAW...," but I kept getting shot down.

Thank you.

[> Thank you Rufus and deb -- solo*spinout, 21:23:10 04/03/04 Sat

JW is still the master; he keeps his genius close and not in commentaries. Maybe he will teach a Class at UCLA on skills and techniques of Genius, but he writes here in generalities. He still believes in *Trust the Story*.

ME's writers keep their ablities away from us fans as well, unless they are writing scripts.

[> Thanks deb and Rufus . That was Awesome!!!! -- Artemis, 23:06:01 04/03/04 Sat


[> Thanks, Rufus. That was a great treat! -- Jane, 00:06:40 04/04/04 Sun


[> Re: Transcript of the Joss Whedon commentary for s7.22 Chosen -- Deb W, 01:04:56 04/04/04 Sun

Hi Rufus
Could you do me a favour I've just been over to Whedonesque and note that folks are annoyed by the shipper stuff and me cutting to the last scene. Whedonesque isn't taking sign ups at the moment so could you tell folks that the unshippered , un buggered about version is available on More than Spike or if you could bear to do yet more cut and pasting could you edit those bits out of wherever you linked to

I was posting as I was transcribing but I'd like everyone to be able to have the chance to see it without my inane burblings and make up their own minds

Nothing I can do about the run on sentances though, thats Joss . just be glad I edited out the Umm ers and such like I tried putting them in but it quickly became unreadable .... if someone could bung this note up on the thread at Whedonesque too I'd be grateful

thanks and sorry to be a pain

[> [> Here's the edited version of the commentary for "Chosen" -- Rufus, 03:07:27 04/04/04 Sun

thanks again to deb....

More than Spike

Teaser

Hi I'm Joss Whedon and this is the very final audio commentary on the very final episode of the very final series of Buffy and if you've actually sat through all the episodes and all the commentaries and you have a feeling of exhaustion confusion and sort of a low riding rage that you can't really describe or understand then you'll know how I felt when we shot this , to say that I was wiped out by the time we got here is the understatement of the world and no scene I think showed that more than this one because we had so little time to shoot so much and I'll explain about that as we go to the credits

Credits

You see that was actually the first stuff we shot and we only had David for a little while and I mean a really little while I had about seven hours to do about ten pages and it all required everybody to be completely on point but that's what you get with Nathan and Sarah and David professionalism everybody was right on their marks and everybody worked really hard and it was a good start to this because there was no episode that we ever shot that was harder, bigger and that left less time for me to try and do anything interesting with the camera it left less time for the DP to light it left less time for everybody to do their best work and yet somehow people managed to

Act One

The stunts I did not have to shoot that day John Mettland shot most of it second unit and you'll be hearing a little bit about David Soloman who shot a huge amount of second unit for me on this show because it took so many days

What can I say about Nathan Fillion that hasn't already been said , he's a great hero and a great villain and just delightful I was so happy to have him back for the beginning of this episode just because I wanted to work with him and he'd gotten to work with other directors and I didn't think it was fair that he didn't get me, and I thought splitting him in half from the crotch up was you know maybe a little on the nose as a radical feminist statement goes but for his character I really thought he'd earned it . so

And David you know again came and just was right on the money same as Sarah from the first take which was important the only person who didn't do their best work here I think was me because lack of time meant that here we are that's an over that's an over and then we have a two shot over over two shot which is pretty much the gold standard for boring t directing but when we're in the kind of hurry that we were on this one we didn't have any choice, they make one big move in this entire scene and once they do we started shooting both of them at the same time, it's the rarest thing of all usually you light one direction it's very specific and then it takes awhile to turn round and light in the other direction but every now and then when you're desperate you ask your DP to light both people at the same time, it's not undoable both of them look good here but we had two cameras running the whole time .. it also helps the scene sometimes because both people are in it in their coverage in their close-ups at the same time and they're giving their all and they're feeding off the rhythms of the other person very specifically so you're not cobbling together something that has taken what could be hours apart . It's a fun way to shoot it just makes life hell for the DP and Ray came through as he always does really spectacularly on it.

Yes there will be praise because a lot of people really impressed me you know this was a really hard episode hard episode to shoot one of the shots coming up this one a steady cam shot designed to show the scope of the giant graveyard and give a little motion and emotion to what they're doing, course the giant graveyard is our parking lot, the graveyard that Gareth Davies our producer suggested we build at the beginning of season two to save time going out to graveyards we shot the first half of that scene the first half of that night and then we came out here to shoot the rest of it again the time constraints were insane and yet this stuff looks great and the two of them are as funny and real as they've ever been so that worked out just fine . and David doing my all time favourite thing being petty, whenever Angel is Petty I think he's at his best . And I love the fact that I feel the scope of the graveyard which is where I thought Buffy and Angel should leave their relationship on this show because it is the iconic place for Buffy the graveyard, more than anything else. A lot of this last episode had to do with finding that perfect iconic moment and that perfect iconic thing that really says this is a summation of what we've done. I've done it before I did it in episode 22 of season 5 where I had Buffy fighting a vampire in the alley at the beginning I had made a lot of the statements to sort of round out my feelings about the show but life went on and the show went on and writing a second final episode of Buffy was much harder than writing the first partially because I'd already written one partially because I knew that this was the end at some point I just had to let go and just write forget about the pressure about it being perfect , it's not going to be and it isn't but make it good enough hit the beats give an episode so that people would remember. We knew where we wanted to go thematically It was just getting there.

This speech about cookies well not cookies exactly but I believe baking was in there was originally pitched by Marti Noxon early in the season and I think as the show runner I could have done a better job of bringing us to it , it comes to this conclusion a little bit out of the blue and that's my fault but we knew that emotionally it's where we wanted to get and where we wanted to get to was the idea of my relationships don't work out because I'm still becoming a woman and finding my place and I don't need to be finding the perfect guy at age 22 or however old Buffy is at this point, I can wait, I can wait until I'm fully formed and I think that's a very important message and when Marti had thought about this in her own life and she told me about it I was like I think this is exactly where we need Buffy to get . And it helps with the other really complicated part of writing this episode which is how to get Angel and Spike together in the same show, have her have the big emotion for both of them and not make her look like the slut queen of slutdonia as Marti herself would say . It was very tricky and I'd like to point out that I had to do it in the same act, that by the end of act , well before the end of act one she's sleeping with Spike .

This exit for Angel was designed to mirror his first exit him backing off in the darkness. Something hopefully iconic enough and something to give people hope that Buffy and Angel might one day work out because some fans, now I realise not many but there were a few fans who feel that the Buffy Angel romance was like a big deal and clearly I thought Parker was the most important romantic relationship of her life other people disagreed that's fine I guess they can do that they care about the Angel thing, some people care about the Spike thing I don't know why we couldn't get Parker in there too but apparently no you know whatever so that vocal minority who care about Buffy and Angel meant that we had to do service by him. (Comment on screen action) "eye socket jokes always funny"

And this was how to get her in the sack with Spike half an act after Angel had left but you know the experience. I've said this probably a hundred times and probably all of them on the audio commentaries to these damn episodes the trick is always to make the audience go through exactly what she's going through. It's confusing to us emotionally that we should bounce from one to the other and it's confusing to her but Spike is the person in her life right now. That drawing is one of my own creations and a lot of the crew members were like "why does he hate Butthead?" and I was like "Oh it's supposed to be Angel" and that was something that I did on the day it wasn't in the script, that's the kind of wacky improve I've got going. Who knows what could happen. At any moment I could come up with that I think that's actually the only thing I came up with. Asides from the script.

The great Marsters with a chemistry with Buffy that is just completely different from Angels and different to Davids and it works very very well he's more on Buffys level he's their vulnerabilities come out and I don't just mean as characters but as actors.
Around each other and that really works it works on a different level. Their relationship, clearly been through a lot much more in fact than her relationship with Angel and you feel that history with these two and they bring it to the set they come to work and that's why we still came to work because they did, and James the ability to turn on a dime is a very rare thing in an actor from incredibly noble or scary to completely dorky or disarming, he does it with the tongue line earlier he does it here you'd be amazed how few people can actually do that and the last person I ever expected to be able to do it would be a theatre trained actor yet he's got the chops he can go from Dracula to Jack Benny in a heart beat which is one of the reasons why I love him that and his shiny shiny hair.

The idea behind their sleeping together is very important it was that their relationship had enough trust in it that it was physical and romantic but not sexual that was of course in response to the rape issue of last year when he had attempted to rape her because he didn't understand the boundaries of their relationship, he was soulless but having gotten his soul and having fought to become a person we wanted to say this man can be redeemed from that, not... and I've said this before, not in a Luke And Laura, he rapes her and they get married way not in an all is forgiven way just in the way of he's still a human being who did a wrong thing and we still count him as a human being, I think that's a very important message, that their relationship should be complicated and yet come to a place of trust without saying alright they're going to become lovers again because I think that would be wrong I think that would be the wrong message I think that it's a very fine line.

I love watching them face off, I love Nathan he tells his little jokes almost like he's an old man his little puns and his silliness the delight he takes in his character is just so very charming and the point he's hitting on of course being the whole point of the show .being the whole point of the season and it seemed not only really affordable to have Sarah playing the First fort the most part of this but also the smartest because we've come full circle and it did make sense that we had Sarah telling herself literally that she was alone. These two didn't get along together at all I thought they would but they were complaining their outfits were too similar their trailers were the same size and there was trouble " I'm drowning in footwear" just one of those lines that make you glad that you're a writer that you can write something that silly and actually out it on the air it's an odd thing to end an act with an affirmation of potential victory but it made sense to me here because it's so strange

End of act one

Act Two

Well this shot is kind of a cheesy trick but it got everybody in frame so I liked it this scene was one of those OK gotta make our day kind of scenes . I shot the room as a three waller , you'll notice I don't come around on Giles when he speaks to Willow I get him in profile which I don't mind doing, I don't need to be in every bodies faces the whole time exactly for every moment but it was a function of the very small amount of time that we had that I played it in the proscenium form almost you never do see that forth wall and the bed helped. Some people have complained that the magic that this scythe, originally from the Fray comic that I was writing at the same time is a little to convenient , and my answer to those critics is "well don't tell everybody" it is convenient and that doesn't really bother me because ultimately to the magic the phlobotonin was always secondary to what needs to be said and had to do with empowerment and the way to get there was through Willows magic and what it means to her and being a slayer and what it means to them so the fact that everything really fell into place a little too easily, maybe I could have thought of something a little more interesting but that isn't where my heart was, my heart was in the heart more than it was in the magic.

This scene well first all of the first time that Buffy got through this speech which I'm sure you can realise when you watch the episode we shot all as one , there are two parts to it and it's very long and it is about twice as long as what you see on screen we cut about half of it in the editing room apparently my pen runneth over so Sarah's basically doing a scene that is four times as long as what she does here and did she get every single word right on the first take? Yes she did the extras actually spontaneously burst into applause when she was done? Yes they did . Again it's one of the reasons why we went as long as we did, working as hard as we did the fact that she could do that. I'd also like to point out that it was Eliza Dushku who actually stopped to point out how much she liked the speech how much she liked the scene how much she liked the work and coming from an actor who knows they're gonna spend half the day standing there looking , with no lines I though that was particularly gracious.

In this scene she accused me of getting back at some girl because of the way Wood kind of disses on her but actually it just made me laugh, and there aren't any girls I need to get back! (Laughs) actually I think I told her that's if what I was doing with the show it would be going another four seasons.

But I think there two just had a lovely chemistry and this is not necessarily something that would have been in the last episode a relationship talk from the two of them but it deals with the isolated nature of the slayer embodied here by Faith rather than Buffy which is really an important part of the season and it just tells us a little something about the two of them and pays off at the end two takes you know in either direction , both of them were so on point so delightful, Eliza not happy about giving up control of being like vulnerable and he attacks her skills and the expression " Dude I've got mad skills" was actually said to me by Eliza in reference to serving ice cream , working at the Dairy Queen I believe not in reference to anything else but I loved the phrase so much I though I simply have to have Faith say it . Which since it was me writing it became dirty. Weird, it's a thing. DB Woodside from the first frame that I saw in the first episode he intrigued me so much a real you know a real comer a real epic guy just a little bigger than life and you look for that so often you don't get it, it's really hard to find someone. It was a match
I love Iyari and Allie in this scene well I love Allie in pretty much every scene where she doesn't have to speak a foreign language and I think it's not a big secret that originally I had planned to bring Tara back and when that didn't work out you know I was looking for the anti Tara, somebody as un earthy and unlike her as possible. Iyari has a wonderful presence and a great physicality with Allie that is just very natural so I liked working with them ,this is like my first time because I didn't shoot any up until this one because I was too tired ,I was pretty much too tired to shoot this one too but I had no choice, I couldn't let somebody else do it except for the parts that I let John Maidland and David Solomon do which again we'll come to later and the reasoning behind the two of them was very simply somebody had to end this show with a God damned girlfriend and why shouldn't it be Willow? Somebody has to end in a decent relationship because we've seen so any of them fall apart.

I loved doing this as a one er because I love a One er you have to do them a lot more times they take about as long as doing a scene with coverage but when you get it and it's all there It's delightful and Tom well I can't say enough about him, this thing he does with his hood when he says step back he had never done in any take he just threw it in there now here we go he had never done that before and it just he's always trying to bring more to the table not in that annoying " I have an idea that will ruin the shot" way but just in I'm staying in it and I loved that he became a huge part of the show. This scene was also added so that we could give Amanda some screen time so that later on I could kill her because I wanted to take a toll I think that Emma knows that as well as any., a battle without some kind of a toll is not a real battle.
Pulled wide here because I had planned to shot that on set and when they said we're going out I said well then dammit I'm pulling wide so they know we really went there that night we actually had four directors shooting porch scenes for four different shows and this bit here I did actually add on set not just the picture of Butthead on the punching bag but this where I said " I wanna get a couple of shots (we were going fast)
And that one I didn't know if we were going to use the two of them... and to me it's almost the most important shot in the show because it shows the mystery of their relationship and that's one where I wanted the audience to fill in the blank I wanted whatever you want to have happened to have happened If people believe that on their last night together they made love great if people believe that on their last night together they talked all night if people believe they had a fight great whatever it s it's up to the viewer the viewer has earned that and I love that analytical nature that there should be work for the viewer to do in that sense emotionally I think that makes it more textured and that shot of the two of them looking at each other I just find that beautiful ...


He talked about this right over the beginning of act three but I kept going ... Now I'll post this as act two and get back


BTW Red Bull makes the typing faster !

Act three


And I loved this shot too setting up all my parameters Look around big wide lens and then of course the great Andrew Oscar speech of the show which made me laugh every single time we did it sometimes out loud which was of course not a good thing for the director to do during a take his Brother Tucker of course who we referenced all the time was the guy who tried to destroy the prom and we had originally wanted that actor Brad to be one of the nerds but he was busy and couldn't so we found Tom and played up the idea that everybody couldn't remember him because he was somebody else's little Brother which by the way happened to me in high school all the time but I love that, the little continuity things are very important to me that sentence ( whatever you say is going to sound like Goodbye) was actually said to me by Marti after the show when she was leaving the house after we had watched it.. why it nearly made me cry , but I don't cry because I am a manly man This moment I don't think I really need to explain what's going on here I felt that it was very important and I think the audience did too that these four have their moment together, these four who started it all should finish it all and Much in the same way they began it that's why I echoed the exact lines from Giles this shot is I feel the every ending of the two part beginning.
And this shot also very important as they peel off one by one friends going to their destinies and Buffy left alone I shot that in slow motion but unfortunately it was so slow that it took up about half the show a whole long walk for Buffy where she walked down through the basement and remembered things and walked in slow motion really really long, I had to cut it I had to cut a lot of things my shows almost always come out long because I talk to much, in this instance I'm supposed to be talking right now too much but I almost cut this shot which is again I think one of the most important shots just for time when we were shooting but the idea of all these girls bleeding together I think has a good earthy almost menstrual metaphor to it which I think is important since they're all becoming Slayers . Oh did I give it way? Well if you're listening to the audio commentaries you probably already know that . My biggest regret about this episode was that I didn't get to do more funny Willow stuff there was just so much plot to get through and Funny Allie is such a great thing and I wished we'd had more of her

This shot is rather seamlessly welded in by Ronnie and our guys at Zoic and really gave us an epic feel that we just didn't have the money for on this show all these many years so we've been saving all year for this very sequence and these very shots the idea that there was now a technology where you could do hundreds of thousands of bad guys it just didn't exist in the first six years and people well somebody saw The Two Towers and the fact of the matter is what I saw was a literal thing that was in cinefax explaining that they had this new technology you could create thousands of bad guys and I was like that will make this battle different from all the others the sheer number

And this, this I knew I was coming to from the start of the season pretty early on in it Buffy was isolated as a character even in the world Buffy and her gang never ensemble always like the star and the others in the magazines and what not and it was very important to me to say Ok great that you've worshipped this one iconic character but find it in yourself everybody and that's why we shot the people all over and that was a great fun thing to do the very last thing I shot for the show on first unit was the girl in the trailer and Drew Goddard pointed out that it was kind of a great shot to be shooting at this point for this show and I can't say enough about our little baseball girl, so may people just lost it I thought " oh this is gonna be too cheesy the baseball thing" but so many people were like " I was that girl, I played little league it's so important" and that s the cry moment for a lot of people again I can't say enough about the Zoic guys the job they did integrating these things and Felicia Day as Vi and Indigo as Rona just doing great work they really stuck you know a lot of girls came a lot of girls got killed and.

This image which we referred to, speaking of Lord of The Rings as the Blanchett image, obviously meant to she couldn't stop talking about her black haired evil and the idea that when she empowers these women she comes to something even more powerful beyond the concept of power beyond the powers of evil something truly connected about connection about Women's connection to the earth and that it can bring out the best in her and it would be nifty It seemed like a good conclusion to her story her arc.

This scene this story all of this stuff this is where David Solomon really came in and helped out, he shot for days of second unit because there was simply so much to shoot and without him I mean he was a great director on the show and a great producer anyway and without him doing this episode I never would have made it through he kept it interesting. We actually had to stop filming one night one Friday night half way through because I was just too tired.

Felicia was like "you hooked me up fat" she loved all of this footage we got of her but she looked great. that shot was very specifically storyboarded before we ever did anything, that was very important ( Buffy swings scythe and dusts multiple ubies) I wanted to get that moment of just everybody doing everything in slow mo I thought it came out really nice though .

And if you're going to pay off things that people have dealt with over the years, Bunnies are going to be one of the most important Emma just about the funniest person who ever looked that good DB loved to fight, so did Tony I wished we could have had more of that again we wanted to keep everything moving as fast as possible and you know "I have swimmers" ear" is just something that Tom said that made me laugh and so I put it in I don't know why the characters saying that it's not going to stop the vampire . People complained again that the vampires were too easy to kill , they were supposed to be stronger than other vampires and the fact of the matter is it's true like the convenient magic it's true because again I was more interested in showing the empowerment than I was in the continuity to make every vampire as hard to kill as the first one would have been too hard.

End of act three

Act four

Shooting the battle as it was required many ,many more days than we had scheduled and more directors so once I got all the big moments out this was a very important thing too the sharing of the scythe means the sharing of the power just about as literally as you can get . Had to use a little sunlight since it was the middle of the day. (Anya dies) one of the most brutal images we've ever done and you know done to keep the sense of battle , you know the un heroic death also interesting because I'd never seen it before I'd never seen anybody cut like that and I came up with the idea of the stuntman using a half sword and digitally adding the rest of the sword and the cut so just instead of one of those slices like you always get in swordfight movies we really cut someone down And of course Sarah following as well that was because I needed a toll I needed this battle really to feel like a battle and I couldn't kill any of my core four and still call it a happy ending I couldn't kill Dawn and still call it a happy ending either so Anya got the nod and to make it as unheroic as possible just felt very real and very creepy and that shot was in fact her last shot ( get out of my face) a lot of people didn't actually get that this was a pun but it seemed like the right thing and here you've really got to give it up for the composer he increased the budget of the show by a half just because his music gave it such an epic feel this music to me embodies so much of what I was striving for, it makes the thing feel twice as epic it was a beautiful piece of music. That's May a great great stuntwoman who gave us beautiful footage as Felicia did too all the girls really enjoyed their fighting, they wanted to fight more and more , Iyari particularly . Sarah at one point said look we're going to need more footage, just keep rolling and I'll fight.

The sunlight hits Spike the sunlight is channelled through Spike and it gets nasty some of the body language from these vamps again CGI really beautifully done The idea of the soul as the thing that elevates and kills him felt like a good wrap up and again going from the epic to the humorous in a heartbeat that's our boy.
The girls kept walking through the beam and I had to say "you're being chopped in half. duck and she did ad she fell which was fun but she wasn't hurt nobody was hurt it's all fake . The idea of the bus was just that it felt right we had to get a lot of people out and it's a school bus and that's what we did this shot one of my favourites too , he's looking for her she's right there he doesn't find her those always get me.

This was an interesting scene because both James and Sarah came to it from the wrong place really, they were playing things falling apart and the terror of it and I said that what I wanted was for them to completely distance themselves from it and I explained how the sound was going to drift out (Hand clasp) this was sort of a romantic image the two of them, we actually did it with real fires. But the hands were all gelled up and you could tell so this is CGI and it looks beautiful I thought it was a nice comment on their relationship .What I basically told them was...
Play the romance be proud of him, love him when you say you love him ,love her when you say she doesn't love you. forget about the crumbling world for that period of time it doesn't exist it's a cinematic trick but it's a necessary emotional one I was surprised that they hadn't come there because usually with the three of us we come to a scene in exactly the same place and this time it really was sort of different. Eventually Sarah said if you have what you think you need I think we should move on because I'm not sure I understand how this works but I look at the two of them together and you know their work is tremendous , but that is part of making TV and movies sometimes you'll get a take from an actor that blows you away and they'll go "oh I wasn't feeling the thing can we go again and I'm like " you just gave me gold" " but I didn't feel it" and I'm like " The audience will" sometimes you can let them have another and sometimes you just say " trust me, the audience will be there cos I was". Another beautiful image our boy goin down for the last time even though everybody already knew he was gonna be on Angel

I loved revving Felicia up to as much intensity as we could get that was fun, right there we're going around the lot our little lot and then this actually miniatures and CGI and I'm just obsessed with people running and jumping on things the big leap and so I got one at the end of my show . Its an old trick there was another old trick( Sunnydale falls away .. I love that by the way you couldn't have a better description of what happened to Sunnydale) the first trick was she jumped the bus drove under her but actually they happened at different times and we were still doing something which we did when Faith fell into the truck they were talking about the bag how to cheat the perspective and I was like can't we just shoot them both and then do a split screen?
And then of course this I have to say, the endless road behind them was something that came from Tony Head he pointed out "oh, that's beautiful an endless horizon it's a perfect image for the rest of the show and the rest of their lives and I was like " yeah that's great except I parked in front of it and you guys play in front of the bus and we're never gonna see it" So I gave that moment to Sarah of just looking out and seeing that horizon cos I agreed with Tony I thought it was beautiful and I didn't think it should be missed. And then of course that poor sign which in one incarnation or another has been knocked down so many times.

Again I had very much planned not to have any reason for Anya's death any reason behind it or any reason to come after it , but the writer in me couldn't not resolve it somewhat I think the audience needed what Xander needed which was something and that something was Andrew learning that the think that he's sort of reviled for, making up stories becomes the thing that he helps Xander with becomes the thing that he actually is good at, giving her the epic death that she didn't actually get to have.

( Faith/ Wood) I think that these two have as grown up and textured a relationship as any of the characters on this show and they had about four scenes together total so I love that about them I love how much goes on in each of them when he dies dying, having a character die and then suddenly bringing them back to life is something you can only actually earn after you've killed a couple so this was a nice opportunity to say this isn't over yet, to have the call back and I wouldn't have been able to do it if I hadn't legitimately offed a few beloved characters

And then we come to what is the final shot, needless to say we shot this one a bunch of times I had this in my head from the start when we first did it we started up high and it looked kind of fake and cheesy and they're of course playing against an abyss that isn't there but I knew this was going to be a one er I knew it was going to be a slow push in we started to shoot it and then Ray the DP said you know what? the lights not that good the winds not that good lets just leave the crane arm and go shoot the little bits in front of the bus So we held off for about four hours and came back, tried again everybody getting their lines a tough thing, everybody being in the right place in frame but I wanted it to just be everyone and to end with the close up of Buffy because what this shot ultimately is about is what a lot of the shows about which is that the story goes on that there is closure but not a closing that what we've seen is a life being formed like the cookie dough speech explains, this a life in progress a life that in some ways is just beginning, like that smile.

That's all I have to say thanks for watching my show

[> [> [> Re: Here's the edited version of the commentary for "Chosen" -- Deb W, 04:26:00 04/04/04 Sun

Rufus thank you, you're a star!! I'm working on the transcript for LMPTM at the moment so if anyones interested I hope to be posting sections today and the whole thing on MTS tonight .though I can't promise because transcribing four voices is kind of headache inducing

[> [> [> [> Rufus -- KdS, 04:36:30 04/04/04 Sun

Please could you at least do a link to the LMPTM commentary when it's up? I promise not to erupt ;-)

[> [> [> [> [> I'm putting it together, when I get part 4 I'll post the whole thing here........ -- Rufus, 18:17:03 04/04/04 Sun

Parts one to three are already up at the Trollop board and when the last one is posted I'll put it up here.

[> [> [> [> Thank You!! Could you post LMPTM here too? Please? -- s'kat, 11:22:42 04/04/04 Sun

I've been reading it on BAPS and of course I'll read on
MTS too. But I know a lot of friends of mine, I'd like to see it, who don't frequent those sites since they aren't into that specific character.

Any chance you can post here too? Really appreciate it.

Also thank you so much for transcribing this. I have no idea how you did it. I've listened to some of these commentaries with more than one person and I can't distinguish. Heck trying to transcribe the SUCCUBUS CLUB one with Minear and Fury last year just about killed me.
So kudos! You've done a wonderful job and it is greatly appreciated. I really love reading it.

[> [> [> [> [> Re: Thank You!! Could you post LMPTM here too? Please? -- deb w, 23:49:45 04/04/04 Sun

Well I say at the start that DF and DG can be difficult to distinguish between and I hope I got it right most of the time . Thanks Rufus for bringing it over here .

I'll do part four of LMPTM after work tonight, but with the four voices it was taking two to three hours an act and I had to stop at act three yesterday

Oh and Mushmouse at MTS has offered to have a go at punctuating Joss for me because some people are finding his run on sentances hard to read ( lucky that I took out all umms and " you knows" or it would have been impossible) . Anyway when it's done I'll put up a link to that version.

I was very aware that some of what Joss said would spark some debate and I wanted to be sure that you could go to the season 7 DVD and verify any quote word for word .

Nonetheless you'd be amazed at how many people think I "spun" it because I posted it on a Spike board .Hence my asking for the version without my comments on it to be posted here and at Whedonesque . (Thanks Rufus and Jana for helping out with that)

I found all of the commentaries and extras fascinating and, once my fingers recover and my keyboard cools down ,I'll have a go at some more transcripts


Deb

[> [> [> [> [> [> Comment on Chosen -- Rufus, 03:38:19 04/05/04 Mon

Deb,

For you I made a comment at Whedonesque....

First off, thank-you to Deb for taking so much time to transcribe the commentary.

I think the most important thing Joss said during the commentary was at the end...

"I wanted it to just be everyone and to end with the close up of Buffy because what this shot ultimately is about is what a lot of the shows about which is that the story goes on that there is closure but not a closing that what we've seen is a life being formed like the cookie dough speech explains, this a life in progress a life that in some ways is just beginning, like that smile."

Chosen wasn't an end but a life that is still becoming, still being formed. Ships may be part of what the show is about but not the only thing. I don't care if Buffy ends up with Angel or Spike, what I cared about was what Joss summed up in his final line. Life forms, it changes, it becomes.

*****************

Now back to this board. Loved the mention of Parker cause in his sarcastic way, Joss points out something important in that Parker, even the poop-head he was contributed to what Buffy became by the end of the series. Angel has had a place in Buffy's life and in season 7, Spike had a new place in Buffy's heart, one that she wasn't sure about yet and was still figuring out. I keep going back to that Marie Louise VonFranz quote........

"By our interactions with each other we redeem us all."

No other show has brought that quote to mind more than Buffy the Vampire Slayer. It isn't one ship the counts but the total of all our ships (romantic, platonic, familial) that make us who and what we are. In Season 5, Buffy's gift was death, in season seven her gift is her interactions with all the characters that brought her to that smile.

[> [> [> [> Re: Here's the edited version of the commentary for "Chosen" -- DebW, 10:37:09 04/05/04 Mon

If you follow the MTS link for the Chosen transcript you will now find that it's easier to read , thanks to Mushmouse who did the impossible and punctuated Joss!Many thanks to her for her hard work.
LMPTM is now finished but as Rufus has kindly been bringing it over to here I'll leave her to do the last bit

cheers
Deb

[> [> Wow, thanks for all this work. -- KdS, 04:07:30 04/04/04 Sun

I can't say that some of the content makes me happy, but it's a huge job and I'm very glad you did it.

[> Ahah! -- Arethusa, 06:35:54 04/04/04 Sun

I almost cut this shot which is again I think one of the most important shots just for time when we were shooting but the idea of all these girls bleeding together I think had a good earthy almost menstrual metaphor to it which I think is important since they're all becoming Slayers

Remember when we discussed how a teenage girl might have been chosen to merge with the demon essence to create slayers because she menstruates? (Under Darby's Symbiosis: Love is Your Gift.)

[> I'm very sorry. I'll take back everything I said.. -- Rahael, 12:41:35 04/04/04 Sun

in defense of Marti Noxon.....hah. I still haven't gotten over the cookie dough thing.

[> [> Oh, and a thank you to Deb! - I know the effort involved in these transcripts -- Rahael, 12:50:25 04/04/04 Sun


[> Parts 1 - 3 of the Commentary for "Lies My Parents Told Me" -- Rufus, 01:47:58 04/05/04 Mon

All credit goes to Deb who gave us this gift.....makes the time left to wait for the new Angel eps easier to take.

Lies My Parents told Me


Teaser



Hi this is David Fury the co writer and director of Lies My Parents
Told Me. This is DB Woodside who plays Principal Robin Wood. James
Marsters who plays Spike. This is Drew Goddard who was the co writer.

(DB and DF are kind of hard to distinguish at times so I hope I
got the right bits to the right writer for the right comment)



D Goddard: We open here in central Park which is not Central Park in New
York it's in fact Greff? Park Los Angeles California and we married in shots of New York into some open spaces can you see where that big wide open space is behind where they're fighting we added some New York Skyscrapers.


J Marsters: And this is one of the top three female stunt performers that
I've ever had a fight with DG " really?" she was fabulous yeah and really good stories in between shots, when you're wet late at night you've got to have good stories


D Fury: she was also really beautiful which also helps

She wasn't hard on the ears

J M: Yeah but no the actress was great but actually I was talking
about the stunt performer

DF: So am I, I dropped by that night.

JM:: Oh yeah...(he says something else that's lost in laughter)

DF: This actually looks incredibly and I'm surprised how much it
does look like Central Park in New York.
JM: Yeah you did a really good job.

DG: Yeah we found a good location I'm from New York as well so.


DF: We looked at a lot of places But this is the one that really spoke to me and said this is where we can we needed the pavement they dressed those benches which are accurate to what Central Park benches looked like back in the seventies.

DB: And this Woman right here is KD Alpert who actually played my
Mother we actually did a film together a few months before we did this together so we were already friends.

DF: Now when I saw this on TV there's some computer rain added in
but now there's nothing here what's up with that?

DG: There was actually someone had added that in right before we delivered it to the network and we don't know who. in these rain shots you'll see that the rain is hard to see here when it's on her just the way it's lit but it's very clear when it's on Robin
and someone added some digitised rain which looked terrible. ( Much Laughter)


DG: I so remember I panicked I was there and I went woah wah what
happened? There was a big scramble and by the time it aired in the United States they took out the fake rain so that's all real fake rain as opposed to the digitised rain.

DB: And yes that is me that got thrown on the roof of that car cos that hurt.

DF: Good sports.

DB: This was fun this was a lot of fun.

DF: I love the way this fight turns out.

DG: Favourite move coming up here this was a front double kick that little move that Spike does is really an homage to Fool For Love, twirling the pole down on the subway.
JM: Yeah that's great but you gave me a shovel man and that makes it a little harder.

DG: Yeah but I knew you could handle it (Vamp dusts) that's always the fun thing to do the staking reveal.

JM: I love it that I stake and Spike gets him off his ass.
DG: This was a lot of fun to shoot because we always try to keep the background action going on I love how she just keeps pounding away at him. And that was you really bleeding I believe?

DB: Yeah yeah that's quite true.

DF: In all seriousness I loved that teaser I loved shooting that teaser you know I hadn't shot any fight scenes as a director so this was my first attempt my first go at it and it turned out to be great fun it really helps when James and DB are both so willing to be to
go as far as legally possible for actors in their stunts and they'll go "yeah I'll take that fall for you I'll jump in it.

DG: This is basically him saying that James and DB have a problem and somebody needs to come talk to them. (James giggles "who cares?") That shot right there on the credits was the shot I was paying homage to with James spinning the pole.

JM: And you know you gave yourself two fight scenes in a teaser which is a pretty tall order.

DG: Yeah that's a pretty action packed teaser he's right and then comes the very slow act one beginning.


Act One

DF: That's actually an artificial push in I neglected to push in on DB as I wanted to when we shot that cos, you know , young director but you know we were able to add in in electronically

DF: This was a tough scene from the writing standpoint, we struggled with it, we probably went through about eight drafts.

DG: Yeah the biggest problem was it's length was it's length, we knew what the scene could have in it but if we put everything that the scene could have in it it was an eight page scene It was long, long, long, and as well played and as well acted as it is it's just a long time to be in the same room.

DF: I think what we ultimately decided was we got to allow the exposition to happen in this sort of "Who's on first" homage that ( I love the way DB plays this)

DG: Yeah nice.


DB: It was actually a lot of fun for me this actually was the first time that I worked with Anthony it's the first time that I worked with him.

DF: Yeah and Tony brings up everyone's performance like that.

DB: He's great, so much fun.


DF: That's one of those camera moves that I'm working on keep that camera moving in a very static scene is what I'm doing and DB had this great thing where he comes in and says " you're a freelance demon fighter" and he's like embarrassed and don't mention that and goes to the door and closes it .

DB: That's one of the things my secretary doesn't know about me though.

DF: Yeah.

DG: It really helped to motivate the move to the desk. Sarah is so great in this scene she has the ability to deliver comedy in such a kind of, it's kind of a low key way but it's hysterical.

(DGs names come upon screen) DG: I like that part right there.

(DFs name comes up) DG: That parts less interesting.

Here's the whose on first routine

DBs eye work is outstanding


DF: You know we have a problem on our shows where we become our own worst enemies with our extensive mythology and sometimes it's hard to just get into any of this and one of the methods that we use is to just completely make fun of ourselves
Because at the end of the day it does get a bit ridiculous.

Much laughter

DF: Now here's one of those flaws that you notice it's something that's interesting because some people pick up on it and some people don't, one of the things you try for when you're shooting is eye line, if you see Buffy is looking off to the right and so is Tony they're supposed to be speaking to each other and both looking off
to the right and that's actually technically incorrect although most people unless I mention it don't really notice.

DG: Wow, I did not notice that.

DF: Yeah I probably shouldn't have mentioned it. Actually Tony's being shot from Robin's point of view right now although he's conversing with Buffy so it kind of throws the loop a bit.

DG: But you know in some strange way it works because you've set it
up in the master so we know where everybody is DF that's mumble mumble mumble . (not a clue what he said here sorry) I do remember thinking that this was the worst eye lined episode I've ever been a part of. Much laughter including a distinctive JM giggle.

DG: Again another scene that was very difficult to write because so much exposition had to be explained about what it is we're doing to Spike with that stone what's going on what it does JM and yet the characters are still in conflict which is a
constrict on how you write it.

DG: His is definitely, I don't know how you feel about this Fury but
this was one of the most difficult scripts to write.

DF: Oh yeah.

DG: Because there's so much who's the good guy who's the bad guy who ya know, with some scripts you have a very clear opinion this one is very yeah you know the shades of grey take a long time to sort of suss out.

DF: For me that was not so much the more difficult part the more difficult part was as you were saying, there's so much mythology there's so much back story there's so much hidden agenda, so many things that need to be expressed that it's in danger, it can be in danger of bogging down the story and clouding it .The greys in there I kind of enjoy, the fact that we're sympathetic to Spike and we're sympathetic to Wood and Giles.

JM: Yeah but then you go and stick a worm in my eye I mean that's cool.

DG: Yeah a little CGI effect , it was a long time trying to get this the right looking stone, our prop guy spent a long time trying to find the right stone that would look the way it was described.

DG: The wonderful thing about this scene was that I remember standing there that day and it was a kind of a long day and watching James do this over and over and over again and what's amazing to me is how great the acting is when you don't even know what it's going to look like at the end of the day I just remember seeing this and thinking that it was great.

DF: This was also a kind of a tricky shot the wide shot which was the transition piece we're going into Spikes head and I wanted to have him seeing himself as we angled round pre vampire.

DG: (As JM giggles at the terrible poetry) I so enjoyed the first
thing I wrote because I had to write the scene for when we were casting the Mother of Spike, Ann, and I had to write this scene so the first thing I wrote was the poem and I was so proud of how bad it is ( laughter all round) bad is hard to write. I can write bad
Victorian poetry.

JM: It's hard to write good bad poetry. And they finally spent some real money and actually built a wig for me and gave me these mutton chops which to tell you the truth I know they're period but they look kind of weird to me.

DF: Yeah the thing that troubled me was that we could not get we could not match you the way we did the way you looked when we last seen you in Fool For Love.

JM: They'd already cannibalised that wig for later in Fool For Love.

DF: Yeah but you would think they'd be able to completely copy it you would think and yet they wanted to put their own touch on it or something.

JM: Well you finally gave them money so they wanted to do it real period.
DF: Well.

JM: That's what you get for giving the artists money man, they get fancy.
(giggles)

DF: Well we won't do that again.

DG: I love how this scene really sets up the relationship that he has with his Mother.

DF: Yeah yah it's really seeing Spike as William.His humanity and the love he has for his Mother and to not make him too much of a mommas boy . But of course he is.

JM: (laughing) Because he sits at her feet. Cos you know.

DF: While she sings . alright he's a Mommas boy but there's such genuine love when he says I'll always take care of you whatever it is ,that's so very sweet and warm.

JM: Yeah.


DF: Another tricky FX shot James had to keep his head still to match this.

JM: Which is really hard for James to do . You know that's tough.

DF: But whaddya know he does it beautifully that was actually really nice and his eyes change first which was. We'd never done a two part morph before.

JM: And here's where you just don't think about how silly you feel. Cos all the really cool stuffs being done later and I'm just freaking out for fifteen minutes.

DF: Yeah. And it took a half an hour to drop the stone and get it in frame. You know what when in doubt always push in on DB.

JM: Yeah.

End of act one



Act Two


JM: I love this scene because Spike is in absolute denial and it's hilarious.

DG: It's like anyone else's fault but his, anything but what's really happening.

DF: Oh I love that "when I was a baby". she sang it to him when he was like thirty years old. (laughter)

DF: Oh here's an interesting thing you remember this Drew? This scene started the act we didn't come back this way for quite a while and there was a long extended scene that Drew wrote that was a really funny exchange between Xander and Tom Lenk as Andrew that we just couldn't get to work and it didn't quite. it worked so much
better to break it up like this cos we'd be in the cellar for so long that it was better that we broke it up rather than start the act with this.

JM: Wasn't there also a scene with DB and me in the kitchen that didn't make it?

DF: Yes.
JM: Around a whisky bottle.
DF: Another scene that broke my heart to lose. This episode came in at what twelve minutes over which was ironic cos a lot of my episodes come in short but you see when I shoot them I shoot every little detail. Of course the stage whisper that obviously Spike can hear every word but he sits there pretending that he can't like super vampire
hearing.This is a transition I liked doing, it's him looking at his hand and this hand slips into it and right now. It's Juliet.

DG: Now I'll tell you that one of the things that I think makes this show so special is this scene right here that captured these two people who are absolutely terrifying you know and yet there's a kind of humour to it that's just pitch perfect.

DF: That's the magic for me of Spike and Drusilla, that they were perversely funny and yet terrifying.

DG: It's kind of like Bonnie and Clyde.

DF: And yet genuinely care about each other and I think that's the key to the villains in the Joss Whedon universe is they actually have an agenda and they care about things as opposed to just being evil.

JM: Something about Juliet got me to a place I couldn't get any other time I can just be very me when I'm with her she can go, she's just.

DF: Oh and she's blowing in your face which I remember.

JM: It's drying my eyeballs out and I can't concentrate on my lines.

DF: Spike and Drusilla are so iconic and the two of you are, it was such a pleasure to shoot this iconic couple one of the last times in a Buffy.

JM: And what you got so well was the intermediate for my character ,the intermediate step between being William and Spike which we never had done that.

DF: When you were Spilliam. Giggles. Oh sorry.


JM: It's just that when I got the script I thought that was really, really cool.


DG: I remember coming down to the set and watching the period and James working so hard on that , you guys really worked at you getting that Spilliam as you say over and over which I don't think a director who hadn't written it would have really.


DF: Lets James get a look at this collar right now I mean James just messed up his collar cos he wanted that's part of his suit coming undone , his whole appearance becoming undone and turning closer to Spike.


JM: Well he's been partying for like two days or so. Does that sound familiar?


DF: Unfortunately the costumer kept straightening the collar between shots and James was like "Leave my collar alone!! I'm trying to, this is a thing! It's my character"
You know I owe a huge debt of gratitude to the actors for their performances in this and James particularly. The actress here who played his Mother whose name unfortunately I can't think of, I wish I could and please forgive me it was there right at the beginning
of the show and I've neglected to look but she's a wonderful ,wonderful, I think she did an
Amazing job here I was very happy with her.


JM: Yeah she was great.

DF: I think that what you two do together is amazing JM the thing was though David that you were very specific you were one of the most specific directors you and Joss as far as acting as far as doing a take that so many other people would have taken and moved on and moved me just like one millimetre the other way and really I thought you were one of the two best directors for actors you and Joss


DB: Oh yeah what I actually love about you with me is you really, really gave me room and space to bring other things in and kind of mix things up and no one had actually done that on the show before and I feel that this in this episode is my best performance and I actually owe it to number one the writing of you guys and of
course my co star here who kept pushing me to be better.


DF: While we're praising David Fury here you know what I loved about
you guys is how much you loved working with me. Laughter


DG: No, I will just say that as a writer there's so many different ways a director can screw things up. ( JM chuckles) And it was just such a joy to watch everything get infinitely better and that's a credit to Fury and to you guys and to our entire cast.


JM: Frankly I'm, oh go ahead I'm sorry.


DG: No, no. It's just I'm so proud of this episode I'm so proud to be a part of the way that this turned out and oh, here's my favourite scene.


DF: It's interesting that this is your favourite scene because this scene really kicked your butt.


DG: Well that's why it's my favourite it's because I probably did twelve drafts of it and finally Fury just came in and ( DB: I love this scene man) just rewrote all of it and it turned out great.


DF: Well more so I think I saw in it I guess I had the picture in my head of how it could work. I mean there's a concern here because Giles is making a big character turn here in that he is going to side with the idea of killing Spike after Spike has been so much of an ally so often and people had a hard time buying it but it's because I believe, I knew in my head the way these guys were to perform it and I knew that DB would deliver it such a way that it would make such a convincing argument that you would buy that
Giles would see the logic in it .That for the greater good Spike needed to go as much as it may have pained him and I really think, I have to say DB that this is one of my very favourite scenes that you're that you're really here just listening to Tony


JM: God I love this scene because when you guys shot it I got to take a nap and that was "get it right David, take your time, get everything you need"


DF: Well that was a very long nap because I took a very long time.


JM: I like a long nap.


DB: What I like about this scene is just being able to really open this character up in a vulnerable way , not do all the kind of yelling and screaming that this is what we need to do but really to kind of open up and allow Tony to see this characters pain and from that place even though he's talking in a lot of pain there's still logic to what he's saying and trying to fuse those two it was difficult but a lot of fun right there.

DF I love this moment right here with that emphatic "never NEVER!!"
so much so that I really wanted to be on DB in the edit there it almost pained me to cut off him We did it for Tony's reaction but it was a very powerful moment.


DG: You've gotta have his reaction.


DF: Yeah it's that there are alternate things to know. Now here's where we cut to the very first shot that I shot in the show Db the walk and talk in the cemetery but what had actually come before was the scene we were talking about in the kitchen ,there's a
scene where essentially Wood is stalking through the house towards the kitchen seeing Spike in the kitchen and basically it's moving in on him and setting him up for the trap and there's a great, great scene between you guys where you're sort of playing a
little chess match where we used a bottle of whisky, pushing it back and forth and it's almost like chess moves as we're kind of feeling each other out and I really miss the fact we had to cut that scene.


JM: Well, you wrote a movie and you had to shoot a TV show, you wrote ninety minutes.


DG: Well I'll be turning in much shorter scripts from now on. Oh the other thing about this scene there was believe me it seemed like a wild party going on at the time or some such thing it was a mariachi band playing through this entire scene and we had
to wait between songs to get little snippets of dialogue so it took us forever to shoot this scene it was the first night and it was just because somebody was on a loudspeaker shouting in Spanish and a mariachi band were playing ,it was very funny for a while but
it became sort of tragic as we were trying to make our night.


DF: It got worse cos it started with just helicopters and cars honking ( JM chuckles) and you would say " what possibly could happen next?" and then a mariachi band. And I want to point out we were in cemetery somebody had a mariachi
party next to a cemetery.


DG: Yeah well, we're a party town.



Part three


DB: This little room is where James and I spent a lot of days.


JM: Party time with DB.

DB: We were, I remember we spent some long nights in there and I felt bad because I felt maybe James and I were getting on every bodies nerves because we were so jazzed. It's like we had done like, you know two bottles of mountain dew. Just bouncing off the walls.


DF: I don't think I anybody was irritated. In fact you infused so much energy and so care from everyone that in fact I think it raised the bar for everyone to make these scenes great between the two of you in terms of setting up the stunts in terms of the
lighting we did a lot of 360s and 180s in that regard that we can move the camera in kind of a wide arc and use the space because it was kind of built to be lit from above so we didn't have to have lighting.


JM: Oh yeah.


DF: And it made quite a difference I know that I love this frame I think this whole scene was great I just loved the set up of DB in the foreground.

JM: And I love how you let me just stay still, a lot of directors want me to move around and it's so much smarter to stay still.



DF: I love that too actually. Now this is just you feeling everything out, you're not going to be running around a room full of crosses anyway. I like that you want to stay where you are. Stay away from the walls. Oh shirt, I forgot about the shirt, DB shall we talk about the shirt?

DB: Oh my God I told you to forget about that.


DF: We had such a discussion, DB wanted very much to be wearing this tank top.


DB: Yeah, the tank top for the muscles.


DF: And I totally got that I totally wanted to see him in it, but by the same token we have a stunt that we were going to do that we do in the next act that would have made wearing that shirt impossible , there's no way to hide the harness that we needed to
pull him back . So we went back and forth with it discussing can you lose the shirt? Can you be in the tank top?


DB: Can we get it back on in time?


DF: How do we get it back on? How do we make it all seem seamless? And not like "I'm taking my shirt off I'm putting it back on, I'm taking it off.


JM: But you have to believe that this guy could beat up a vampire and when DB takes his shirt off you're like "Oh Ok"


DF: I was so there I so know and that's why I said "you know what he's absolutely right we need him to look like this. And it's (whispers) "how do I get that shirt back on?" DB For me also it's to show that I mean in the acting to be so physical and so brutal that way , just kind of would add to the little twist at the end getting my butt kicked.

DG: You know every act ends on DBs face.

Act break



DG: I love this scene right here.

DF: I think I had the best time ever shooting this scene because of James and oh my God I wish I could remember her name.


DB: Was her name Anne?


DG: The characters name was Anne which was for those Buffy fans, it's never mentioned in the script but it's of course Buffy's middle name.

DB: I did not know that.


DF: So we called her Ann to kind of because you know we wanted, there's definitely a little bit of a Motherly, there's a Motherly sort of a symbolic connection here between Spike and his Mother and Buffy and what Buffy's been to Spike and you know all the oedipal issues that would be involved there it just seemed like a nice touch.


DG: I remember you running into my office saying we've found the woman, she looks like Sarah at that age.


DG: Yeah well she had the blonde hair and she was small, and she was British which was wonderful because part of the thing is finding an actress who can do a good British accent.


DF: Oh I love this scene, this scene our first drafts of this we didn't push it far enough and Joss came in and said make it more twisted, more twisted. Which I hated hearing of course because I'm like very conservative.


JM: (laughs) Oh yeah safety first Fury.


DF: I had to call my Mum and say "Mum I love you very much and this whole scene about possibly having sex with you has nothing to do with it. (Laughter)


JM: He made me do it, he made me do it Mum.


DF: And the wonderful thing here is just the matter of factness of her cruelty.


DG: Yes it's beautiful.


JM: Yeah and you worked like a long time for this one.


DF: She was wonderful because she totally got it, I mean even when she realised " You know what I'm becoming too arch I'm becoming too villainous" and I'd say yep you're right, bring it back, just be casual and when she did it was just very chilling I thought and the pain of watching you go through this pain as she's saying these words to you that's fascinating and it's also offered a lot of controversy , there's been a lot of controversy with my opinions about Spike and about his, the nature of Spike and a lot of people are concerned why is Spike, why is Spike letting her talk to him in that way? Why is he so hurt? He's a vampire why would he, why does he seem. And I Think that was the point of this episode it was to say Spike is an anomaly in the vampire world, he has some facet of his soul even if it was removed when he became a vampire is still, he has more humanity as a vampire than most vampires do. We haven't explained why that is but perhaps something about the character of him as a man and he's retained it as a vampire.


JM: Yeah I mean it's a kind of a technicality that you have to explain but it works as the character.


DB: This section here I think is so brutal.


JM: Yeah.


DF Now here's an interesting story, Tony wasn't here for this scene that's a stunt double I had to shoot this scene with Sarah and the stunt double this was the first night and we let Tony go cos we were running late and shot Tony's side of it ten days later.


DG: I did not know that.


DF: Tony's not even they're not even in the same space. What I did was I used the stunt doubles to tie him in, that's the only shot of Tony I had and that's now the stunt double ten days later and it works it's amazing it's the magic of editing.


DG: It works well.

DF: You know he seems like he's in the same space but she wasn't there that night. That's the stunt double getting rough.

DG: It's so good.


DF: It's so wonderful that he can deliver this performance when he's not getting the lines from Sarah, they're being read very flatly off screen by somebody and yet he's able to deliver a performance that seems to be right on top of them. It was also shot his part was shot in an entirely different cemetery so it's not even the same space in the same time he's in a different part of the cemetery entirely.

DB: It was so wild because I really, really connected to his character.

(DF, there goes the shirt back on)


DB: And it was so wild to be in this moment and to think that you've finally I mean that this character has been searching for this one vampire his entire life and here he is finally somewhere in Sunnydale he's found the vampire that has killed his Mother which changed his life for ever. And it was just this kind of surreal moment.


DF: You went to a place as an actor I saw it in you, you went to a place , I saw tears streaming down your face (DB oh it was rough) and I was flabbergasted I went "my God he's there" what a .....God it's brilliant that you could do that.

DB: I tell you though that as an actor it's just when everything just kind of locks up, when you have the writing the directing and working with James was lets just put it this way I've been spoiled and now I'm dreading the rest of my acting life . so James and I
got to find stuff to do.


DF: You surely will, we'll bring you onto Angel.


JM: Well this job got a lot more fun with you being here on board I finally got someone to be in conflict with.

DF: Now this story line the Spike side of it we originally conceived for Never Leave me it was episode 9 DG after Sleeper the episode where we were trying to get to the root of what the song was we talked about.

DF: And we broke the story with all these flashbacks and then decided it was just way too much for one episode.

JM: And now Spike wakes up.

DF: And now DB gets to take the beating. And it was really important that he gets in a couple of licks.

DB: What I like though is that you still don't know for sure that he's gonna lose, because he doesn't believe it, he just has this blind conviction that he's the good guy.

DF: He's righteous and he just keeps coming and keeps coming.

JM: I totally believe that Wood could win, we've seen him dust three or four vampires already.
DG: Oh watch, there's the kick.
JM: Look at that yeah yeah this was great just right now.

DF: Spike is superhuman ok now here's the stunt that we needed (everyone gasps as Wood flies through the air, collective "Wow"). That's what we needed the harness for and that's why we needed the shirt back on.

DG: In another life they probably could have been friends Spike and Wood.

DF: I think if the show had continued and Spike had not sacrificed himself that it probably would have happened.

DG: Alright and here comes the, this shot right? We did like four or five days later.
DF: The reason was I shot this it was this was the shot and James' performance tome was so riveting and moving that I went "I don't need a close up" because it was so brilliant.


JM: And we were also pressed for time a little bit so perhaps that's.

DF: Yeah I wad pressed for time yeah every instant I was out there but besides that I said no, I was practically weeping how great it was and it was only the next couple of days later that I went you know what I and we were back in the space again so I said lets do that close up so yeah, he turned it back on we put him back in the make up with the burn mark on his face.


JM: Oh yeah man it was a hold up putting that burn make up off and on and keeping that continuity.

DF: And I was so glad I got the close up, well as brilliant as you were in the over the shoulder I'm glad I got that close up in there.


JM: And I got to walk across the room as if I was very tired, which I always like to do that (Laughs) I'm serious!

DF: And those are tears; those are DBs real tears I was staring at the monitor going wow!

DB: It's all because of James' performance he just kept giving it and giving it (I know) Man it was incredible.

DF: A lot of morphs in this episode.

[> [> Conclusion of the commentary for "Lies My Parents Told me" -- Rufus, 13:07:04 04/05/04 Mon

Act four


DG: I remember we did one take where DB screamed as James bit into him with this passionate scream which was very powerful but it didn't seem right for our show , we just usually don't play the horror of being bitten by these creatures but it was still, it was
like a very gallant effort.


JM: And one of the few guy on guy bites I ever had and it was me that bites him


DF: Yeah our fans I'm sure were crying for it.


DB: Oh James bites like no one else I Know.


JM: Oh baby. (giggles)

DF: That's true, I can attest to that. (James giggles again). Now
Drew remember that this was the scene that Spike, sorry that Giles confesses to having killed Ben, which we thought, or I thought was pretty relevant in the circumstance because he's telling Buffy that she won't go, she won't go down to the mat when it comes down to killing Spike for the greater good. And Giles I thought really needed to tell her "I killed Ben, he was an innocent, and Ben who I killed to keep Glory from coming back and that was the end of season five. And I was so adamant that it must be in there and we shot this long speech of his confession, and when we looked at it afterwards we went "nobody cares, nobody wants to hear about Ben, that was two seasons ago. I built the whole scene around that and ten I went "Oh Okay"


DG: And you were so passionate about it.


DF: I was!!


DG: I raised a minor objection and you slapped me.

DF: I did.

DG: Right in the face!

DF: Which is not the last time it happened.

DG: (Doing Fury voice) "That's enough talkback from you Goddard!"

DB: Now the one request I have is that when you Guys bring Spike back.
DG: Ok
DB: Can he please comes back without my Mothers jacket? Give him a cool jacket.

DF: No promises my friend.

DB: I actually love this scene with Sarah, she was so incredible this day, she really actually took care of me this day, she didn't want me to exhaust myself emotionally until the close ups she was very, you know that I could keep it in for all her stuff, se just
wanted me to save it for my side. She was wonderful this way really good.


DF: And she knew exactly what she wanted to do with this scene, she knew she wanted to walk in, help you up and walk back and take in the room. She really had all the decisions, and they're correct.


JM: Oh man this eye make up was so making you crazy and I was like I so feel for you because it used to do exactly the same thing to me man, I'm vain.
(Giggles)

DF: It was really important to show that DB, or Principal Wood I should say, when he takes a beating if, you know from a super strong vampire, he pays for it. We see Buffy and Spike taking beatings, but because of their super strength they, you never have to put much make up on them; they never get that badly hurt. But DB getting worked over by Spike needed to, we needed to show that this was pretty devastating to his body.


DB: I loved that last line and how it just ripped right through his heart, there.


DG: And this episode is all about, you know, killing your parents both literally and figuratively What we think, Fury, when we were talking about this, we were sort of realising the story that Giles, that in a way Buffy is severing the ties with her Father in this scene.


DF: Well that's how originally I titled the episode Mother and Son but it was Drew that made me realise that it's not just about Spike and Wood and their Mothers, it's about Buffy and her Father figure, Giles, which prompted us to change the title to "Lies My Parents Told Me" Screen caps come up And they're the bosses.

laughter

Yeah our glorious, glorious bosses


JM: Damn you made me stay for the whole thing I'm never gonna buy those T-shirts now, you knew that! "Come in for ten, ten minutes" you said, you knew I'd still be here.

DF: Hey we're still on you know


JM: Oh (giggles)

DF: Yes, James was buying T shirts. And these are some of the wonderful people who work on Buffy. Anyway that's it from me, David Fury, and Me DB Woodside, Goodbye I `m James. And Goddard. It's done.


GRRR ARGH
Why do Angel or Spike have hard time fighting newbie slayer's? -- slayer, 15:25:23 04/03/04 Sat

In Spike's history he has taken two slayers and has come close to taking out Buffy. He could of probably taken out Faith or Kendra. When he fought Dana at first he did good but the second time lost easily. Angelus/Angel practilly almost killed Faith and Buffy but still had a little trouble with Dana. On another note Drusilla took out Kendra with little ease and she isn't up to Angel's or Spikes strength either.

Replies:

[> Re: Why do Angel or Spike have hard time fighting newbie slayer's? -- Tyreseus, 16:50:33 04/03/04 Sat

I could give you a pat answer about writers needing an engaging plot, and Dana wouldn't be much of an adversary if they easily whipped her butt, but I see the point of your question - it seems out of sync for the character for Spike to have such difficulty with this fight.

My fanwanking solution would be that, although techincally untrained, Dana had some fighting knowledge and skill from the visions and dreams she was getting confused by.

I'm also not so sure Spike could have taken out either Faith or Kendra. By his own admission in "Fool For Love," his success in defeating slayers has more to do with their psychology than skill. From buffyworld.com transcipt:

SPIKE
Death is your art. You make it with your hands, day after day.

Buffy stares at him, her face a blank mask.

The Slayer struggles beneath Spike.

SPIKE
That final gasp. That look of peace. Part of you is desperate to know: What's it like? Where does it lead you? And now you see, that's the secret. Not the punch you didn't throw or the kicks you didn't land. Every Slayer... has a death wish.

Spike grips the Slayer's head between his hands and twists violently, snapping her neck and killing her.

SPIKE
(to Buffy)
Even you.

Dana, psychologically, was a wild card. Her tripped out brain didn't grasp the same death wish that Spike used to his advantage in killing the previous two slayers.

And regarding your point about Drusilla killing Kendra - she might not have had the physical prowess or strength that Spike or Angel have, but she did have that creepy hypnosis mojo. Perhaps she was tapping into that same deathwish when she zonkered Kendra before slashing her throat, I don't really claim to know, but you can't ever base Drusilla's power on physical strength alone.

Tyreseus

Now an iBlog blogger

[> [> Re: Why do Angel or Spike have hard time fighting newbie slayer's? -- Finn Mac Cool, 18:05:09 04/03/04 Sat

Correct me if I'm wrong, but didn't Dana leap out at Spike from shadows, and wasn't she carrying the syringe in her hand that let her knock him out with just one punch. When you're dealing with creatures who can take massive amounts of punishment and move very quickly, a small, concealed weapon that drugs anyone into unconsciousness is a big advantage.

(Also, I personally never bought the whole death wish thing; just never saw it, I guess)

[> [> [> Re: Why do Angel or Spike have hard time fighting newbie slayer's? -- Tyreseus, 18:05:39 04/04/04 Sun

I don't remember the episode well enough to adress the point you bring up about the syringe, but I will look it up on buffyworld.com tomorrow.

I'm more interested to know why you don't believe the death wish thing. I mean, it's as close to canon as you can get when talking about slayers prior to Buffy/Kendra/Faith... even if it's filtered through Spike's POV. What, exactly, do you disagree with or find difficult to buy in to?

Tyreseus

Now an iBlog blogger

[> [> [> [> Partly, cause it's just one man's opinion -- Finn Mac Cool, 20:49:47 04/04/04 Sun

The fights themselves didn't display any evidence one way or the other, I felt. Add in the fact that Spike may have wanted to play with Buffy's head a little at the time (love breeding resentment and all). Or there's the very real possibility that Spike (amazed at his ability to kill two Slayers as much as Darla was) needed to come up with an explanation in his own head for how it happened, and so came up with a very poetic fantasy of him and the Slayers sharing a yearning for death. All in all, I don't find Spike's POV on this matter too trustworthy.

Also, after "Fool For Love", I never really saw anything addressing the death wish. There was the "death is your gift" thing, but that was more about being a dealer of death rather than a reciever (hence "maybe a Slayer really is just a killer"). When there are no other statements, no specific examples, and no follow up to something like this, I tend to heavily doubt it.

[> I think it may be the soul thing -- Pip, 05:56:12 04/04/04 Sun

When Spike killed his slayers he was still in souless vampire mode. That is, his viewpoint was vampires try to kill Slayers and Slayers try to kill vampires. For both sides, it's a fight to the death. But when he fought Dana, he'd acquired his soul and so wanted to help her, not kill her. That meant he was now fighting for a capture rather than a kill; more difficult, especially against a Slayer who is prepared to kill.

Same thing with Angelus - when Angelus fights Slayers, he's fighting for a kill, not a capture.

Didn't Dru use some kind of hypnosis against Kendra? That's not a skill in either Angel or Spike's repetoire.

[> [> Something I never understood about Kendra... -- SS, 06:17:38 04/04/04 Sun

Sometimes tv shows have their own form of hypnosis where someone hypnotizes you and they can get you to do literally any thing they want....

But I know that in the real world you can't hypnotize anyone into doing anything that is against their morals. Like you can't hypnotize anyone into killing someone else, unless they are already predisposed to doing that.

So what I never understood: Was Kendra's hypnosis a tv hypnosis or DID she have a death wish?

Just wondering.

SS

[> [> [> Geas, or thrall hypnosis, I think -- Pip, 06:30:11 04/04/04 Sun

More akin to tv-hypnosis than real-world hypnosis, but allowable in the Buffyverse (which uses the rules of magic). A geas/thrall spell 'slaves' one person to another's will, so they might do things which are against their morality, or against their desire.

[> [> [> [> Drusilla didn't really make Kendra do anything -- Finn Mac Cool, 17:10:10 04/04/04 Sun

She just got mesermized looking into Dru's (psychically enhanced) eyes so that she couldn't do anything else. We don't know if Dru's thrall abilities go beyond simply making someone unable to fight back.

[> [> [> Re: Something I never understood about Kendra... -- Marginal Drifter, 16:33:05 04/04/04 Sun

I think if it was that easy to hypnotise a Slayer into killing herself, Dru would have at least tried it on Buffy, who was the bigger threat, plus there was an instant before the hypnosis where Kendra could have tried to break free or at least not make eye contact. Kendra was doomed, because people had tried so hard to make her a good Slayer by not giving her any chance to develop a life or character of her own, she had nothing to fight for, no reason to want to stay alive. I think for Kendra Dru's hypnotising her just gave an escape route, let her give up.

[> Re: Why do Angel or Spike have hard time fighting newbie slayer's? -- purplegrrl, 16:15:13 04/05/04 Mon

Is it possible that Dana had different strengths because she was basically insane? Or had no sense of self-preservation? Perhaps this is why she, as a newby-Slayer, could seriously take on Angel or Spike.

On the other hand, perhaps Angel and Spike realized that she was crazy and didn't fight as hard against her as they might have against a more sane opponent.

Or it could be that soul thing.


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