Joss Whedon Answers!

March 31, 2000

Been undying to hear JOSS WHEDON's answers to all your "Buffy" and "Angel" questions? Well, throw a stake on the fire and get comfy -- he totally tells all!

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VANILLASKY: "Buffy" is like this huge cult hit now. If you could go back and change something from the beginning (knowing it was going to be huge), what would it be?

JOSS: Now that "Buffy" is a huge hit, if I could go back and change something, I would own more of it. Actually I don't have a real answer for that. I designed the show to be a huge cult hit and made it pretty much the way I wanted from the start. There's certainly not an actor I would trade in my ensemble, and the show is exactly what I had hoped it might be and more. So, there really isn't anything I would've changed that I can think of.

ZENBALL: A lot of what goes on in the shows is from all sorts of different cultures, along with your own unique contributions. How did you get your healthy fascination with the supernatural?

JOSS: I love horror movies, I love science fiction, I love fantasy. I love any world that is different from the one I'm in right now. I think I mostly love the supernatural because I don't believe in it at all, and therefore I love the escape of it.

ROSS: Is there anything that you would like to do on the show but can't because of censors or budget, but could in a feature film? If so, what?

JOSS: The censors aren't really a problem for me, because I'm not really big into gore, but budget-wise there's plenty we could do in a feature film that I would love to do. As DOUG PETRIE is fond of pitching, a hundred demons on horseback. Cool. Also, people flying, spells, and castles, and locations, and actual props, and all kinds of things we can't really afford doing on the show every week. It would be incredibly fun to do a motion picture in its huge scope, but at the end of the day all I really need are these actors and a good idea. The rest doesn't really matter.

MIRIAM: I know that some "Buffy" episodes are available on video, but are there plans (or intentions) to release them on DVD? Please say yes!

JOSS: I have heard no plans of releasing anything on DVD. I do however hope that in the future, maybe after the running of the show, the entire series will be released on DVD. Then I can do a biting, witty and possibly drunken commentary over the whole thing.

SHARON: Is there any story behind or meaning to Angel's tattoo?

JOSS: Angel's tattoo actually has a very fascinating story behind it. When we said we wanted a tattoo, TODD McINTOSH, our makeup artist, said, "How about this?" And we said, "Okay." And one unexpected side note to that story is that I asked, "What is that, a bird or something?" And Todd said, "Uh huh."

KATIE: Have you (or will you) ever made a cameo appearance on either show?

JOSS: I have never made a cameo appearance on any show, although occasionally I do little bits of voice over at the last minute if a vocal thing isn't working. My biggest contribution is the radio announcer in episode eight of season one. I know you all recognized me. Also, CINDY from post-production and I did the heavy breathing in Buffy's sex dream in "Innocence" because I was too shy to ask the actors to. (Come to think of it, most people really wish I hadn't told them that.) It would be fun to do a cameo, but I don't really have time.

LYDIA: You've said that Xander was you in high school and Cordelia was named for a nasty person your wife knew, but are any of the other characters on "BTVS" or "Angel" based on people you know?

JOSS: The only character that was really ever based on somebody I knew is Oz. There was a guy in college I knew, who was short, played guitar, very quiet, incredibly cool, named Oz, and somehow I sort of extrapolated from that and worked him in as a character on the show.

NATALIA: Where do you get all your ideas for the different monsters and demons you have on the show, and do you do a lot of research for different aspects in the show such as the witchcraft used in the show?

JOSS: A lot of the ideas early on in the show came from horror movies that we loved and wanted to put our own high school spin on. Nowadays we structure the show around what the kids are going through, and we build the demons and the mythology around that. Occasionally someone will bring up an actual myth or an actual legend, and we'll put some real research into it. But generally speaking, being true to existing mythology isn't really a priority on the show, since we are in the process of creating our own all the time.

LYNN: Two questions that you have given conflicting answers for in the past -- how old is Spike (over 200 or 126), and who's his sire (Angel or Dru)??? What are the official answers?

JOSS: I don't have the math in front of me to figure out Spike's age, but it is closer to 126 than 200. I believe it was in 1850 that Angel made Drusilla and then Drusilla made Spike. Now, this is where it gets confusing for everybody, your sire can mean anybody in the line that made you. So, Drusilla is Spike's sire, but so is Angel in the sense that Angel made Drusilla and Drusilla made Spike. If we were being more literal we would call him a grandsire, but that term does not exist in the vampire world, so sire just means somebody that you are connected to because they came before you on the line. By that reckoning you could say that Darla is Spike's sire since she made Angel.

MIMOSA: What is your all-time favorite "Buffy" quote?

JOSS: My favorite "Buffy" quote? There's no way. It changes every week.

KATE: Please clarify -- was Drusilla a member of the gypsy clan that restored Angel's soul? Or are the two totally different stories that I'm just linking on my own? (And I hope she returns one day!)

JOSS: Drusilla was a young cockney lass whose family were coal miners. She was Catholic and lived in London. She was not a gypsy.

STEPHANIE: What are your favorite "Angel" and "Buffy" episodes?

JOSS: Favorite episodes. "Buffy": "Hush" was so exciting to make and just felt really cool when we finished it. It felt like we'd done something new and that was a nice experience. Ultimately, "Innocence," the episode where Angel goes bad, is my favorite. That was the moment when everybody working on the show realized we had done something that was emotionally true and really different, and taken the show to a whole new level, so I would say "Innocence" probably comes in first. "Angel": so far the episodes that are about to air. I'm not sure when these answers will come out, but the episodes that follow, 17, 18 and 19 of this first season, get into some very interesting and creepy personal stuff with our characters and the people around them, and they made me more excited about the show than I've been yet. Apart from that, I'd say the "Buffy" crossover "I Will Remember You." 'Cause it kinda broke my heart.

ARIELLE: Inevitably, you spend countless hours with the cast of "BTVS." When things are rough and tapings take forever, how do you and the cast unwind?

JOSS: The cast and I unwind by becoming irritable and bickering like children.

LISA: You're stranded on a desert island. Which two "BTVS" and "Angel" characters would you want with you and why?

JOSS: Stranded on a desert island with two characters. Do I get two from each show? OK, well, with "Buffy," I'd want Buffy, 'cause she could probably kill my supper and build a hut. And Willow, 'cause she's wicked smart and could figure out how to get us rescued while I sat under a lazy palm with a drink made out of a coconut. If it was "Angel," I would probably want Angel for the same reasons as Buffy, and Cordelia, 'cause you know, who knows when we're gonna be rescued?

SUSAN: Why is Angel shown in the daylight so often now that he has his own show? The "indirect light is OK" excuse seems pretty lame given that no vamps in Sunnydale ever seem to appear in the daylight. Angel should clearly have fried in every episode to date.

JOSS: Angel being shown in daylight now that he has his own show is just a problem we're having every week. The second episode of the show was color-timed incorrectly, so what was supposed to be the dim blue of fading night became the bright orange of early morning. People just get sloppy every now and then when you're working on a show every day. Every now and then they'll send us dailies where it looks like a big shaft of sunlight is hitting Angel and we try to cut around it, and we're trying basically to do better. But yes, every now and then we look at the show and go, "Was he a vampire at some point?" You know, I've got two shows to run here, I'm very busy and have a lot to do and I don't appreciate you guys attacking me like this. (breaks down and weeps)

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