Date: December 2001
Price: £2.75
Page Count: 52
Editor: Darryl Curtis
Stake Out
Four episodes into the new season of the show, time stopped for most people. Still recovering from September’s terror attack on 9/11, the time lapse between reality and publication had delayed up-to-date news. Native New Yorkers Sarah Michelle Gellar and James Marsters openly did what they could to help, making announcements, asking for blood donations and supplies for those that needed it. Slayer and Vampire working together, to save the world.
There was very little behind the scenes information being released either, mainly due to the secrecy surrounding the musical episode. We did get some clues: the musical would feature a song titled “Going Through the Motions” and would also, at time of press, be six minutes longer than the average Buffy episode. It would also be produced in widescreen, which would be explained in due course.
Also going widescreen, but on a regular basis for the first time, was Angel Season Three, who announced actor Daniel Dae Kim, later of Lost and Hawaii 5-0 fame, would recur as new Wolfram & Hart lawyer Gavin Park.
Finally, Michelle Trachtenberg was asked about the possibility of Dawn becoming a Slayer, or perhaps headlining her own show. “I’ve been asked if a spin-off would be of interest to me. It’s quite exciting! I love my character and I love that the writing lets me exercise any type of acting that I want to do, to really show what I can do.” She also revealed that Dawn would find a potential love interest in this season’s All the Way, a boy named Justin. Of course, we all saw it coming, but there was no way that Justin was getting any suntans lately…
Random Access
This month, Anthony Stewart Head stops by and discusses not shaving his legs and whether he would open and play with his Giles action figure…
Writer’s Block
Buffy writer David Fury.
Xander the Great by Paul Simpson & Ruth Thomas
Conducted in between seasons, the magazine caught up exclusively with Nicholas Brendon as he discussed the new season and Xander’s place in it.
Nicholas Brendon has been very busy since he finished playing Xander Harris in the fifth season of Buffy the Vampire Slayer. “We’ve been travelling for five weeks, all throughout Europe,” explains the actor. “I did a trip for the US Air Force, and we hit about eight or nine different bases in Turkey, Germany, Italy and England. I entertained, talked, signed autographs. That was very emotional and fantastic.”
Time, then, to ask Nick about his thoughts on life on the Buffy set. The last two seasons of the show have often seen Xander on the outside of the Scooby Gang – like Giles, he was no longer part of Buffy’s day-to-day life at college, although he was always willing to help in the fight against evil. During that time, his relationship with former demon Anya has developed with Xander proposing marriage just before the climatic battle with Glory in the season five finale. “It’s been nice that their relationship has been natural,” says Nick. “At least Anya’s not a demon right now! It’s an honest relationship, but you have to remember, she’s a demon. It seems like a ‘real’ relationship in the sense that my character is the most real guy. He has no super powers. He’s the comedy guy. You need him around to make a joke or two when things get too emotional or scary.”
He sits back, looking thoughtful. “It’s kind of ironic that the comedy guy has the most honest relationship, but I dig it. I’ve got a job still – that shows I must be doing something right!”
For a time, Xander was drifting on the tide, waiting to see what life would bring him, but in recent episodes, he’s become one of the most focused members of the group. Nick points out that it doesn’t prevent the show’s writers from taking Xander off into a fantasy realm.
“They still can. The whole show is in a fantasy realm, so if you have too much fantasy, it’s a problem.” The fact is, his very ordinariness makes Xander stand out against the others. “I never really wanted any super powers,” Nick agrees. “Xander has some traits that I would like to have as Nick – but I can’t share those with you right now! But it’s been nice that my character doesn’t have them, because it sets him apart. Everyone else has them. You’ve got a witch, a Slayer, a vampire, another witch and a Watcher – and that’s a power. And then you’ve got the Key. So I’m the only person who isn’t a bundle of energy. I’m just an everyday Joe.”
Except, of course, when Count Dracula is in town. Nick instantly switches to his insect devouring impersonation of Renfield that he created in the fifth season opener ‘Buffy vs Dracula’. “Except for then, yes,” he mutters. “And then I got a bit weird.”
Despite being the ‘comedy guy’, Xander has also been the voice of wisdom in a number of episodes. “Wise-ass moments? Wise cracking?” Nick suggests, then turns serious again. “That’s just emotion. That’s just who that kid is. It doesn’t have anything to do with the comedy aspect of it. I would maybe like to delve into the emotional side of Xander a bit more, so he’s not just coming out with the one liners. But it’s there and we’ve seen it before. He gets pissed at people who get mean to his friends, and he’s scared of people who are stronger than him. He’s a sensitive soul who likes to crack jokes.
“I feel like both sides of him,” he adds. “The comedy is so much fun, because then you get to go home and watch it. I enjoy watching myself on the show. When I watch the comic moments with my friends, family and loved ones, and I’m making the room laugh and they’re the people that know me best. I know I’m doing something right and I feel really proud. But I’ve also made them cry before. Not because of the show – I’ve done some pretty stupid things.”
One of the most emotional episodes of last season was ‘The Body,’ in which the Scooby Gang all tried to deal with Joyce’s death in their own way. “I’ve never lost anyone close to me before, so it was kind of weird,” Nick recalls. “It was good. The script was great, but the way Joss is, I was waiting to see the finished piece. He had said that he wasn’t going to have a stitch of music in it, which I thought was really going to add to the hollowness and loneliness of it. The script read really, really well, and it was very emotional. I just wanted to know how he was going to shoot it.”
Nick notes that one unexpected side-effect of ‘The Body’ was to bound the cast and crew closer together. “The whole crew reads the new script when we’re working, especially when it’s one of Joss’, and he brought people together. It’s a very sombre script, but people actually opened up. A lot of people who had lost somebody said that he had really nailed it.”
With Buffy entering it’s sixth year, Nick has one eye on the future. “After this is done, I would like to star in my own show,” he says. “Whether that’s with other people from this show, I don’t know. When I was first booked on Buffy, I wasn’t ready for that. It’s a lot of work. I’ve got two more years contracted to this great show, and every day I’m learning. My preparation is getting ready for the next stage.”
For the time being, Nick is concentrating on acting rather than looking at going behind the camera. “When you’re acting as much as I am, God thank you, you’re learning every time you’re on set. You just ask questions. I can direct actors, but there’s a lot of technical stuff too.”
As to Xander Harris’ immediate future, Nick Brendon is more than happy to leave it in the writers’ capable hands. “Their vision seems to have worked thus far,” he points out, “so it’s nice to stick with a winning line. When you don’t have to worry about something in life, and you are confident that it’s going to be taken care of, why worry about it?”
Man in the Mirror by Matt Springer
An interview with the award-winning make-up expert and guru, Todd McIntosh.
When you visit the Buffy the Vampire Slayer set, you leave with one overwhelming impression: They’ve got a lot of trailers. White campers, to be exact. Most of them are for the show’s cast members to relax and prepare between scenes. But inside one of those trailers is where a huge portion of the magic behind Buffy takes place. One particular December morning, for example, it’s a veritable who’s who of Sunnydale’s baddest. Spike is relaxing in a chair while his head is spray-painted. Glory’s loyal manservant, Dreg, stops by for a touch-up before slithering off to do his master’s bidding. Her hair in curlers, Glory herself is being fully prepared for another taxing encounter with the Slayer.
No matter how powerful the villain might be, they all start here, in Todd McIntosh’s make-up trailer. Working in conjunction with the show’s special effects house, Optic Nerve, he’s brought to life every Big Bad from the Master to Glorificus. And along with the other key members of his crew, McIntosh continues to produce some of the most varied, complicated and spectacular make-up effects on television today.
“There really isn’t anything like Buffy out there, aside from Angel,” McIntosh explains. “You can come to work every day, and you don’t know. You might be doing a couple of trolls, and you get to do a vampire. As long as I’m busy and kept interested, I’ll always be here.”
McIntosh and his crew have become a vital part of the Buffy family. Everyone who appears on the show passes through the trailer at some point, and it’s up to McIntosh to create just the right atmosphere for the performers. Describing the trailer as a place where actors can feel safe to prepare for the day without being rushed. James Marsters says simply, “Todd is modest. He rocks.”
The Buffy make-up team has also been recognised for its brilliance several times with awards. They snagged Emmys in 1998, and this past year, they were awarded the highest honour offered by their peers in the industry, the first-annual Make-Up Artists and Hair Stylists Guild Award, know as the ‘Georgie’ until the guild discovered a plumbers’ union award with the same name. But for McIntosh, earning awards isn’t what his job is about.
“The awards don’t mean what you think they might mean,” he explains. “But this is our union, which means a little bit more than the Emmys. It’s our peers. Also, the awards directly relate to your reputation. When you have a resume out there and a producer is looking at it, he’s more likely to take the one with the Emmy on it than he is to take the one without the Emmy. It does have its place, and we are happy to have it for that. Besides, we got to stand up there with the little statues and wave them. Tuxedo, gowns, glitter, sparkle – it’s the whole thing. What more can you do?”
Snagging awards from his fellow make-up artists at a black-tie ceremony is a far cry from McIntosh’s beginnings, doing make-up for community theatre productions in his hometown of Vancouver, British Columbia, at age 12. Though he’s advanced since then to the top levels of his profession, and having working in both film and television, his inspirations remain the same.
“I started in make-up because of Dark Shadows,” McIntosh says. “That was Dick Smith. The first time I ever really noticed that there was such a thing as make-up, that’s whose work I was looking at. I remember things that Dick has actually said to me about how he takes time to sculpt a nose, and I’ll go over it from every single angle. I remember those quotes when I’m doing my own sculpture – the advice about how to approach the work as opposed to specific techniques. Those you invent as you go along – you invent your own style.”
Now McIntosh is drawing inspiration from his counterparts on Angel, a show he watches religiously. “I love their work,” he effused. “Dayne Johnson and David DeLeno are both dear friends of mine, and they’re both extremely good make-up artists, so it’s no surprise that they’re coming up with some of the most wonderful beauty and monster make-up ever. On Buffy, we’re still trapped in the reality of high school and college. On Angel, they get a chance to do beauty make-ups on a level way beyond what we’re allowed. Everyone’s so glamourous, and Darla and Drusilla look just breath-taking.”
So far, this fifth season of Buffy hasn’t produced any make-up intensive heavies on the level of Adam, Balthazar or D’Hoffryn, but things have still been busy. In addition to the monster make-ups which involve applying and blending the appliances provided by Optic Nerves, McIntosh and crew also do the ‘beauty’ make-ups that your average human cast member receives before beginning the working day. Keeping Sunnydale crawling with nasties and its human residents looking glamourous has the team busy from before dawn to well after dusk.
“Every season I think, ‘Well, it can’t get much heavier than this,’ and it does,” McIntosh admits. “We’ve been having a very busy time of it this year. Even though we haven’t done anything so grand and extraordinary that I’m ready to put it up for the Emmys yet, every episode has so many things happening that it’s very busy. All four of us in the department are run off our feet.”
But in spite of the hectic pace of shooting, which can bring McIntosh and crew onto the set as early as four or five in the morning, he says there’s still no better place to be working in television today.
“I don’t think there’s any show that can compare,” McIntosh says. “Not only do we have the glory of having all these wonderful make-ups to do, but we’re also a small family. We have this little core of people and a tiny lot to ourselves. I makes it fun to come back to work.”
Episode Spotlight
Graduation Day (Parts 1 and 2)
How to Appear on Buffy by Amy Britt
Buffy and Angel casting director Amy Britt gives some tips to any budding performers who wish to move into a career in television.
Comic
This strip is labelled as The Heart of a Slayer (Part 3), material from Buffy the Vampire Slayer #27.
Poster
A Season Six promo of Sarah Michelle Gellar as Buffy.
The Watcher's Guide 