Joss Whedon: The Biography (11 page)

In 1991, Sandollar executives Howard Rosenman and Gail Berman approached Kuzui Enterprises, in the hopes that the Tokyo-based distribution company would partner with them to produce the film and perhaps bring in some Japanese investors. The company was headed by producer Kaz Kuzui and his wife, director Fran Rubel Kuzui, whose first feature was 1988’s
Tokyo Pop
. The film, which she also cowrote, tells the story of a young American woman who travels to Japan and falls into a new relationship while dealing with the clash of cultures. Fran had been looking for a new project, and within five pages, she knew
Buffy
was it.

The director responded to the script’s competing notions of destiny and making one’s own path, and how they related to growing up. In Joss’s tale, the vapid and popular Buffy’s life changes when she’s approached by a (somewhat creepy) older gentleman named Merrick Jamison-Smythe. Merrick informs her that she is the latest in a long line of Vampire Slayers and he is her Watcher, who holds the sacred responsibility of guiding and training her. Buffy initially refuses to believe him, especially when
the ideas of “slaying” and “training” interfere with her social life. Finally, she accepts her fate as the Chosen One—even if it means she’ll come to an early death fighting the undead and their vampire king, Lothos, who’s primed to take down yet another Slayer. “When we’re kids, [we] know we’re part of
something
, and the process of being an adult is finding the something you’re a part of,” Fran said. “This is the story about a girl—and it’s very important that it’s a girl—finding out how powerful she really is.”

The Kuzuis agreed to produce the film—on the condition that Fran would direct. As the director, she would have creative control over the project, and she talked with Joss about her ideas for revising the script. In addition to a female sidekick for the lead vampire and a more likeable Buffy, she wanted to make the film more of a commentary on pop culture—not unlike the way
Tokyo Pop
had explored Japanese culture through an American’s eyes. “The original script of ‘Buffy’ was pretty simple,” Kuzui said. “She was a cheerleader who killed vampires. There were no martial arts and she was a very passive, uninspired girl.” Fran suggested two more iconic Asian influences to Joss: Sailor Moon, the animated schoolgirl whom she felt was very empowered, and the martial arts films of Hong Kong director John Woo. “[Joss] loved the idea,” she recalled, “so we set out to rewrite the script.”

Fran and Kaz then submitted the revised screenplay to 20th Century Fox to see if the studio would be interested in backing the film. It landed on the desk of script reader Jorge Saralegui. Script readers are studio gatekeepers of sorts—they read all the scripts that come in and, for each, write up a brief synopsis with a breakdown of good and bad points and suggest whether a studio should pass on it or buy it. Saralegui recommended that Fox buy
Buffy
, for its strong vampire themes and how deftly the lead character transitions from a shallow cheerleader into a warrior prepared to face her destiny. But what really blew him away was the stylized way in which the characters spoke. “That theatrical, neo-surf speak,” Saralegui explains. “At that point, I actually hadn’t seen that anywhere else.”

Just three weeks after Joss turned in the revised draft, 20th Century Fox bought the film, retaining worldwide distribution rights and giving it a budget of $9 million. Fox wanted the movie and wanted it fast, to capitalize on the impending vampire movie trend. Francis Ford Coppola’s big-budget
Dracula
was due in November 1992, filled with A-list stars Anthony Hopkins, Gary Oldman, Winona Ryder, and Keanu Reeves.
Horror director John Landis would release
Innocent Blood
the previous September, and Anne Rice’s bestselling book
Interview with the Vampire
seemed to finally be headed to production after over a decade in development. And there was still room for a more youth-oriented variation on the theme; Hollywood hadn’t had a big teen vampire hit since 1987’s
The Lost Boys
with Kiefer Sutherland.

Casting began quickly so that the film could premiere in the summer of 1992. Kristy Swanson (
Knots Landing, Hot Shots!
) signed on for the titular role, and Donald Sutherland, Kiefer’s father, took on the role of Buffy’s mentor and trainer, Merrick.
Beverly Hills, 90210
heartthrob Luke Perry was her love interest / boy in need of rescue, Pike. As for the villains, Rutger Hauer, Rice’s original choice for the lead in
Interview with the Vampire
, would play Lothos, while Joan Chen of
Twin Peaks
signed on as his sidekick Amilyn.

But the female sidkick Joss had added at the director’s request would not make it to the screen as written. Just as filming was about to begin, Chen left the project due to a financial dispute. To replace her, producers turned to a male actor: Paul Reubens, best known for playing the childlike Pee-wee Herman. Reubens had been arrested in July 1991 for indecent exposure in an adult movie theater; the resulting media backlash caused him to retreat from the public eye. After reading Joss’s script, Reubens’s biggest concern was over the physical appearance of his character in his first movie after the arrest. He wanted Amilyn to look as far from Pee-wee Herman as he could get—in fact, he wanted the character to look like he did in his mug shot. The offer came in and the role of Amilyn was his; no audition was needed, and he could look how he wanted. The only stipulation was that he was not allowed to announce his involvement, and although
Variety
leaked it anyway, the news was not nearly as widely disseminated as it would have been in a more plugged-in era.

Reubens, Luke Perry, and Joss were in agreement early on about the direction the film should take. All three were very specific in their desire to make a really dark, scary movie that surprised people with a strong female protagonist and a lot of jokes. Perry was looking forward to the role reversal. “Buffy’s the one who’s always having to save him, which is a nice change from the way these movies usually work. If Buffy can be seen as a hero, then I suppose Pike is the damsel in distress.”

Joss was on set through most of principal photography, which began in Los Angeles on February 20, 1992. Shooting mostly took place at night, which took a toll on both cast and crew—but he was more frustrated by the fact that Fran Kuzui had a distinctly different take on the script they’d revised together. Instead of the edgy B-horror movie Joss, Reubens, and Perry had in mind, Kuzui wanted to play up the comedy to the point of camp. She said that
Buffy
“isn’t a vampire movie, but a pop culture comedy about what people
think
about vampires.” That interpretation was a far cry from the dark tale of an empowered blonde girl who goes into a dark alley and kicks some ass. Joss had spent so much time crafting a story with a distinct purpose, but now that someone else was in charge, that purpose would go unfulfilled.

However, he also felt that as the director, Kuzui should have the final say in creating the film. “Fran Kuzui came in when nobody else wanted the film, said, ‘We’re going to put this together,’” Joss said. “Without [the Kuzuis], there would be no film…. I didn’t agree with the way the movie was going, but I also kept my mouth shut because you respect the director…. You respect the person above you, and you make suggestions and you do your best…. But you don’t ever disrupt the chain of command. You have to have faith in the person who’s running it or things will fall apart.”

“Kristy Swanson [said], ‘Please, tell me how to do this. Tell me what you want,’” Joss recalled. “I literally said, ‘I can’t.’ Because I have always treated film and television like the army, and I’m very strict about it. It was not my place. It was the director’s movie. At that point I was there to try and help the director realize her vision, and that’s all.”

It was Donald Sutherland who ultimately drove Joss from the set. Joss felt that Kuzui allowed Sutherland to take control on set, even to rewrite his own dialogue at times with no concern for the plot. “He had a very bad attitude. He was incredibly rude to the director, he was rude to everyone around him,” Joss said. “He’s a great actor … but the thing is, he acts well enough that you didn’t notice, with his little rewrites, and his little ideas about what his character should do, that he was actually destroying the movie…. So I got out of there. I had to run away.”

Seeing how upset he was by Sutherland’s actions, a friend asked Joss why he couldn’t just suck it up and let all the changes go. Joss felt that was an unacceptable reaction, both for what it would say about the integrity of the story and how it would affect his writing going forward. “You
can’t sit down at your desk and go, ‘Meh, it doesn’t matter what I write, because they’re going to change it, or they’re going to fuck it up,’” he says. “You have to sit down and go, ‘This will be perfect and pure and delightful, and realized exactly as written.’”

Interestingly, Sutherland was frustated by the course the film was taking the same way that Joss was. According to Kaz Kuzui, both Sutherland and Hauer disliked how the tone was changing from the script they’d read. “They thought the movie was very serious and became insecure,” he said. “They tried to make their roles more complex, more emotional.” Perhaps if Joss had sat down to talk with them, he’d have realized that they were all closer on the same page than he had thought.

The experience was not without its saving graces. One of the few redeeming aspects was working with Paul Reubens. According to Joss, Paul was his beacon of hope, the person who made him feel, “OK, that made me feel a little bit better about the movie, even for like thirty seconds.”

At one point, Reubens approached Joss about potentially changing one of Amilyn’s lines, concerned that the change would affect other elements of the script. Joss was ecstatic that his work was being considered so closely. “I didn’t know that you people existed!” he told Reubens. “Oddly enough, I’d mostly just worked with movie stars. I hadn’t met most of them, but I had worked with people who could just do whatever they wanted. And to have somebody say, ‘Um, no, I get that there’s a bigger picture than me’ was kind of a new experience for me.”

But by the time they were filming Amilyn’s death scene, it was clear that this respectful attitude wouldn’t rule the day. Unlike how it was written in the script, the scene would be a melodramatic, overtly comedic bit of improv in which the character spends twenty minutes dying. Joss had pretty much clocked out by this point, but Reubens was still worried about how the writer would feel. He knew that Joss wanted the film to be dark and felt that his long and funny death scene may have been a misstep.

For Joss, however, that scene redeemed, if only a little, the way he felt about Fran Kuzui’s interpretation. “Paul’s adjustment was about spinning on a dime and just being so goddamn funny: ‘This is what I’m in, and I’ve giving myself up to it,’” he explains.

Production wrapped in April, and 20th Century Fox was so convinced that the film would be a box office success that it moved the release date up to July. The studio developed a surprisingly big marketing campaign for such a low-budget film, including many billboard and newspaper ads across the country. The actors, however, didn’t all seem to be on the same page about how to publicize the film. In the same
Entertainment Weekly
article, Swanson described
Buffy the Vampire Slayer
as “a comedy, but also a satire about values in America,” while Luke Perry said that “this is not going to be a critically acclaimed movie, but I still like it. If you’re looking to find the meaning of life, don’t watch our movie. If you’re looking to have a good time, this is the best place to be.”