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Delving into the inner workings of this season's Buffy the Vampire Slayer and Angel |
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Angel: The Comedy Within - Jane Espenson / Tim Minear / Chris Golden When writing humor it is key to be aware of the two things. Using humor when a moment is just too dark and using humor at a moment when you feel ‘oh Spike just has to say this!’ Jane got her start in writing via sitcoms and she explains the thinking behind writing comedy, "In sitcoms as soon as things start getting real and emotional and heavy that’s when you start putting in more jokes. You undercut it every time you get emotional and real because that’s
The Angel dance. Nuff said. Jokes are placed in the outline of the script right from the start. At the breaking of a story, the writers will know they’ll be writing a ‘comedy’ episode. Stage directions as well will show up in the margins of the script as in this example from Jane for a description of when Riley and Buffy will kiss: "like good cocoa, it’s both hot and sweet!" Every writer and actor will tell you that comedy is much harder to create and perform than drama. Jane explains that the key is "finding the essence of the character in the joke to make it funny." For example, Cordy scoring high on standardized tests, ‘What? I can’t have levels?’ The lesson here is that these characters will react as they would react and not make jokes at serious moments. "When a character makes a joke," Jane continues, "people have to react appropriately." Giles/Buffy/Angel will never be openly funny as opposed to Xander/Anya. "It’s harder to find jokes for Buffy, she’s a more complex character. Angel is extremely hard to write comedy for. The trick with Angel is have him really dry." But Cordy and Anya are funny with Anya being Jane’s favorite. Although having your characters come across as funny in the scripts is difficult, it is more complex when you get into the humor of comics. "You can’t have as many jokes due to space in comics," says Chris. "Because you have to write that way, it takes longer to have them react normally. In a novel you can write four pages of that dialogue but in a comic I’m always getting told to cut back the dialogue." Jane wrote a ‘Jonathan’ comic due out later this year/beginning of next to fullfill that need created by ‘Superstar’ in which the ‘Jonathan’ comic was first scene as a prop. And she agreed with Chris, "It was very hard to get jokes in." When dialogue is cut due to an episode running long Jane confides, "there’s always dialogue that can go but it’s usually the funnies." So to give you some examples of what you didn’t see, we focused on three highlights from Buffy and three from Angel.
Ever wonder if David’s dancing is choreographed? Tim offers the answer, "No, David just does a funny dance." Tim wanted to do this scene after Angel has been whamied by the ‘talking stick’. Angel is outside the police station talking with Cordy and Doyle. "You’re so wonderful, and the only way I can express myself in through interpretive dance." But Greenwalt objected, saying "No, you can’t do the funny dance, I’m doing the funny dance." Which you saw at Cordy’s party in the episode "She."
This episode ran 7 minutes long according to Tim, and here is one of the many funny lines that got dusted. "Angel is looking at the tabloid newspaper and Rebecca says, ‘According to those tabloids I’ve slept with Ernest Borgnine and I’m bulimic,’ and he says "Well, I’m the last person that should comment on an eating disorder.’ That one got cut and I was sad about that."
And sometimes the funny comes from misinturputation. Tim wasn’t there for the breaking of ‘Expecting’ and thought Joss wanted a ‘funny Cordy gets prego script.’ "Not what Joss wanted at all! He wanted body horror, less Rosemary Clooney, more Rose Mary’s baby." Needless to say Tim rewrote another version that was just horror.
Although it’s not the norm, some actors will offer that lines be changed. Jane explained what happened in the scene where Oz arrives at Willow’s dorm and tells her he has something to show her. "Originally it was scripted as Willow says,‘Do you wanna come in,’ and Oz says, ‘No, I want you to come out." The actors called from the stage and asked ‘do you really want us to say that?’ and Joss said, ‘No! Outside, outside!’" (laughter)
This episode ran 6 minutes over and they cut what turned out as a very important scene to the outcome of the preceeding scene where Giles and Spike are driving in his car. Giles jumps from the car and Spike speeds off in hopes of losing the persuing Initiative. What we never saw after Spike crashed the car was him getting out of it and saying, "I can kill demons. I can crash cars. Life’s okay!"
There are moments when subtle humor is funny, yet poinant. When Buffy is at the recently deceased Professor’s apartment, Angel arrives and slips in the hall. "That was completely scripted," Jane reveals, "and it was just something that Joss added to just puncture the heroism of a guy at the moment where he’d want to be the most graceful. And it worked so beautifully because it completely humanized him although he’s not human." Here are two favorite funny moments from this past season. For Jane, "I like Anya’s run about a world without shrimp. That might be my favorite." And for Tim, "I think it’s when Cordy tells Wesley that he can’t come in and accuse Angel of horrible things. And that nothing would ever make her turn on a friend, and then Angel pops in and says ‘he’s right.’ She goes, ‘you stake him, I’ll cut his head off.’ I love it when she turns on a dime like that." But there has to be something that was just hated. Not everything they write can be brilliant or left on the cutting room floor. Jane offers one, actually very recent, idea. "I thought that Anya and Giles should be working on a project together and really, really hating it. And they’re working with some kind of magical ingredients and something goes wrong and they end up joined at the hip. Anya and Giles are joined at the hip for the whole episode and Joss said, ‘I hate that idea! I hate that idea so much, stand up!’ and he made me stand up and he stood hip to hip with me and he said ‘Look at us, we look like idiots! I don’t want to see a whole episode of that.’" (laughter) Now that’s funny!
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