Why can't 'Buffy' creator get any respect?
By Allan Johnson
Tribune television reporter
Published September 30, 2001
Not his name, but the name of the television series he produces. The moniker is one part supernatural, one part high school cheerleader: "Buffy the Vampire Slayer." It doesn't exactly sound like "Masterpiece Theatre. Even the show's star says the title wasn't warmly embraced at first. "People didn't want the show named 'Buffy the Vampire Slayer' because they were afraid it would turn people off," said Sarah Michelle Gellar, who plays the title character. But the series (7 p.m. Tuesdays, WPWR-Ch. 50) has garnered the devotion of a legion of hard-core fans and TV critics around the country, even as the blond demon-slayer and her posse struggle to break through to mainstream recognition. "It's always had a respect on the fringe, where people are saying, 'Oh, this is a cool show,' " said Anthony C. Ferrante, editor and publisher of genre entertainment magazine Cinescape. Whedon himself is respected in Hollywood as a writer, producer and director who shepherds a smartly written, well-executed show that is as scary as it is wise, and that uses its sci-fi/supernatural/action elements as metaphors for the frightening trials and tribulations that all people -- young or old -- encounter in life. But even though the series is coming off what may be its best season yet, last spring the show was essentially let go by its former network, the WB. "Buffy's" sixth season will debut Tuesday on UPN, which picked up the show after the WB dropped it last spring over money issues. Worse yet, in July "Buffy" and its cast were snubbed completely by members of the Academy of Television Arts and Sciences. The lack of a single Emmy nomination this year was a shock to many who thought the show had reached a high point last years on. "I'm not saying I threw a party," laughed Whedon, 37, while on a break from production in his offices in Los Angeles. The show was considered a lock for a writing nomination for Whedon's emotionally charged episode "The Body," in which Buffy finds her mother (Kristine Sutherland) dead. Gellar herself also seemed destined for a best actress Emmy nod for her remarkable performance in the episode. "The thing about awards are you know exactly how much of it, quite frankly, is [garbage], and how much of it is actually meaningful and is your peers honoring you," Whedon said. "It's something we all want, it's recognition we all want. It's also good business. It helps a show, it helps the companies I work for and work with if the show is honored like that. "It's disappointing," Whedon added, "but at the end of the day, the critics treat us with enormous respect. Our fans love our show, we love our show. And so it's not really that important." Flying under radar Whedon thinks the lack of an Emmy nomination this year (he got a nod last year for writing the haunting, mostly dialogue-free episode "Hush") is due to factors beyond his control -- chiefly, the network not making enough noise about the show. "Last year's campaign was based on, `Don't say what the show is, and people will watch it unsuspecting.' And it worked," Whedon said. The same mind-set of flying under the radar and not making a huge noise about the show was again applied this year, but "that was a mistake," Whedon said. "This year we should have been [saying], `Remember us? Remember us?' In the end, `Buffy the Vampire Slayer' [being nominated once] turned out to be a fluke." "We don't make the show to win awards," Gellar said last summer at the Television Critics Association's annual press tour. "The reason we stayed on the air in our first 13 [episodes] was because we had this incredibly strong fan base, this Internet fan base, fans that would write in to magazines." But that rabid fan base may add to the perception that "Buffy" is just another cult show. "There just seems to be this conception that anything involved with the fantasy world automatically means that it's a silly show," said E!Online's Wanda, who adds that the sci-fi TV classic "The Twilight Show" never won an Emmy for best series. Compounding the possible genre bias is the fact that "Buffy" has always been marketed toward a younger audience -- despite the fact that the show tells universal stories involving well-intentioned, realistically flawed human beings who are gamely trying to navigate life's roadblocks. "The name `Buffy the Vampire Slayer' doesn't exactly call to people in their 40s or 50s. However, I know a lot of people in their 40s and 50s who watch the show and love it," said sociologist Patricia Baker, who owns Massachusetts-based advertising and marketing company the Big Picture Agency. "You have a young crowd that's very interested in the show and loves the show, but that might turn off a number of older people who actually might find it as interesting as I do." Breaking through The down side of being a cult series is "it does sort of put you in a niche that some people are just [put off by]," said Whedon, who wrote the screenplay for the original 1992 feature "Buffy" and received an Oscar nomination for co-writing "Toy Story." The series itself averaged about 4.4 million viewers per show when it was the WB, numbers that would ensure its cancellation on any other network. But never underestimate the power of a cult series: Fox's "The X-Files" is an example of a show that started with a small following and eventually crossed over into mainstream hit territory. From "Xena: Warrior Princess" to "Roswell" -- all the way back to the original "Star Trek" -- most cult shows thrive because of the devotion of their fans. Some do make the leap into mainstream success: Making that happen is the challenge now faced by "Buffy's" creators and UPN executives. Still, Whedon vows not to water down the show to get "Buffy" into the Nielsen Top 10. "I'd rather have 100 people who need to see my show than 1,000 people who like to see my show," he said. "I'll take the badge of `cult' and wear it very proudly. It means the show's affecting people on a different level." Cult or not, the show is a valuable addition to the UPN stable, which needed "Buffy's" strong female demographic after establishing itself as the home for young male viewers with WWF wrestling and the now-defunct "Star Trek: Voyager." "Buffy" was available because the WB didn't want to renew its licensing agreement last season for the $2 million per episode 20th Century Fox Television was asking, even though the series gave the mini-network serious credibility when it premiered in 1997 after a string of lame WB comedies and weak dramas fizzled. Harsh words WB head Jamie Kellner didn't help matters during negotiations when he said, "We will take all the revenue we can generate with `Buffy' and we'll give it to you in a giant wheelbarrow. And if that's not enough, then take it to somebody else. You've demonstrated you're not the kind of partner we should be doing business with." After some nasty public feuding between the "Buffy" camp and WB execs, UPN eventually signed a two-year, 44-episode deal for a reported $2.3 million per episode the first year and $2.35 million the second. The pact also called for UPN to pick up "Angel," a "Buffy" spinoff that airs Monday at 8 p.m. on WGN-Ch. 9, if the WB canceled it. Ironically, the WB kept "Angel" because the series, which is more action-oriented than "Buffy," brings what UPN already has and what the WB craves -- male viewers. It's now been several months since the battle over "Buffy" ended, and things seem to have settled down; Whedon and Co. continue to make "Angel" for the WB. "There's no bad blood with the WB," said Marti Noxon, an executive producer for "Buffy." "It was business that changed that relationship. And so we still talk to all the WB representatives and executives about issues relating to `Angel.'" But Whedon is excited that "Buffy," which has also spun off comic books and a new animated series, now has a network partner that is supportive of its quest for greater recognition: "They're pushing the show really hard." Not only is UPN promoting the show heavily, new viewers may be drawn by "Buffy's" reruns, which now can be seen five nights a week at 6 p.m. on 20th Century Fox's FX cable network. "Because they're going to be rerunning it on FX, people are going to be jumping in and saying `Oh, this is what this is about, wow, this is . . . great,'" Ferrante said. "And then [those viewers are] going to bleed over into the UPN audience." For new episodes, Whedon is concentrating on business as usual, which includes bringing Buffy back from the dead. She sacrificed herself to save her sister Dawn (Michelle Trachtenberg) in last season's finale. Noxon and Whedon wouldn't give much details about the coming season, though it's known that Buffy's "watcher" or mentor, Rupert Giles, will now only be a recurring character because actor Anthony Stewart Head wanted to return to England to be with his family. But they did say that Buffy's resurrection in Tuesday's potent two-hour premiere will reverberate through the season. "It's not just `Poof, I'm back!' and everything's fine," Noxon said. "There's going to be some serious repercussions to the fact that she died and stayed dead for some time." Gotta sing Having led the show itself back from a near-death experience to possibly breakthrough success, Whedon is forging ahead with "Buffy" and "Angel," content that his vision for both won't be clouded with desire for Emmy glory. An indication of his resolve is "Buffy's" all-singing episode, which will air in November. Taking such chances is proof that Whedon isn't changing the series just so he can get the respect that a statue might give him: "If that were the reason I was making shows, it certainly wouldn't be called `Buffy the Vampire Slayer.'"
Maybe it's the name that doesn't get Joss Whedon any respect.
Copyright 2001, [url=/]Chicago Tribune[/url]
------------------
Amberholic #1969
Keeper of the kitten spirit that lies in us all
Keeper of the fluffy pink rhinos (don't ask)
The 100th Light for Tara
Bardlet #15 (thanx Angie)
"Ignorance and prejudice and fear walk hand in hand."
from 'Witch Hunt' by Rush
[This message has been edited by JJ (edited October 01, 2001).]
[This message has been edited by JJ (edited October 01, 2001).]
I
."