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Deconstructing the Emotional Allure |
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Once quoted as a 'self-proclaimed introvert' when she was a teenager, to which Marti now finds rather funny, it is not uncommon to think that writing had helped to bring her out of this so-called shell or allow her to express herself in different ways. "I think the interesting thing is I wasn't really an introvert, I was like a spazzy geek," she confesses. "I was more the kind of kid who was singing in the hall, always saying the wrong thing, just loud and obnoxious and never in the right place at the right time," Marti explains how she imagined herself. "But writing definitely helped me find a form of creative expression that was really right for me. I was always a real arty-farty, little drama, nerdy kid, and teenagerand adult," she admits laughing. "I didn't want to be a writer, I wanted to do something else. I even had a fortune-teller tell me that I was going to be a writer when I was kid and I was like, 'No I'm not!' and she's all, 'You have writer's thumb!' I was running from what a lot of people told me was probably my best asset and I just didn't want to do it. It took me a long time to settle down enough to look at what was really working and then eventually I fell in love with it, so it all worked out." As a young adult she first wanted to be an actress, "God help me. I was in lots of plays and did lots of auditions and all that crazy stuff and then I wanted to be in some kind of film production but I wasn't sure exactly what I wanted to do. I wrote a screenplay as my senior thesis in college, because I couldn't afford any film. It was either make a movie or write a screenplay and I was dirt poor, so I wrote a screenplay," she confides. "That started to get some attention and at first it wasn't necessarily something I thought that I was that good at. Then eventually I started to feel, more and more, like it was something that was really a part of me and then welldown the line I started to feel like there was nothing else I wanted to do, so I was stuck!" she says with emphasis. That's a good place to be stuck! "Yeah, it is now!" she replies laughing, "When I was saying, 'Do you want fries with that?' it wasn't so great."
Also Known As "Suicide Girl" We interviewed fellow writer Jane Espenson last summer and Noxon's name came up in conversation. Obviously, on the show, Jane is considered 'of the funny' . . . "Yes," Marti quickly agrees. Jane said she finds it very difficult writing drama although she did an amazing job this season in episode two of Buffy with "Afterlife". Where as Marti is . . . "Not funny," she breaks in again, "and yet, I can really write dramas, so we all even each other out." Jane had great things to say about Marti and one of these things was, as I paraphrase, 'Marti can just cut open a vein and let emotion flow out.' And that is so true. When it comes to emotional dialogue, Noxon is the 'It' girl! A big laugh is Marti's response, "Well, thank you! Sometimes I feel like I wish that I was more adept to the 1, 2, 3, joke. The 'punch up' is not my specially and I really labor for a joke. If something is funny in my script it's the product of sweat! Natural effervescence," she states with a soft humorous tone to her voice. Oddly enough, Marti being currently involved with writing a feature film screenplay that has a mostly humorous overtone; she must have tapped into her sense of comedy somewhere. "Oh, but see it's not funny which is the main problem," she jokes. "By about page 60, I'm like, 'They're not being funny at all anymore. This is all drama now, they're all talking about their feelings all the time.' "I have no doubt that they will probably bring in someone to punch me up after that," Marti admits. "The irony is, usually when I'm trying not to be funny is when I can crack a joke and when I'm trying to be funny it's just the Sahara up here." What Marti brought to the show and what Buffy and Angel creator Joss Whedon responded to in her work was, in actuality, the dramatic writing. "That's what I've always really responded to in my own life. Although I certainly love funny things, some of my favorite stuff is pretty dark." She offers up the film Train Spotting with Ewan McGregor as an example. "That's my flavor, although that was a pretty funny movie actually in a very sad, dark way. A lot of my work had really dark themes. I was sort of known as the 'suicide girl' when I first got here because all my stuff had suicide as a theme, or as a plot device," she laughs." That's just where I came from in my writing and fortunately because I was here pretty early on when there weren't a ton of other writers I kind of got dibs on certain material. They sort of identified what they thought I was best at. I also get to pull the card now and say, 'I want that one,' when someone's leaving or something really sad is coming down. I usually make a stand for one of those episodes." Viewers beware!
Character development has always been a strong suit in both Buffy and Angel. The writers have been able to direct the characters by almost reinventing them to a certain degree each season and have become endearing to the fans in that way. Uniquely, the show constantly receives an abundance of new fans. On any given season they can come in and the show can be totally different. In trying to explain back-story, the evolution of characters is so evident because there is a large amount of growth that is very beneficial from a viewer's perspective and very entertaining. It's quite an accomplishment for all the writers who create it. "I think, what's sort of not a very well kept secret about both of these shows is that they're really dramas dressed up in supernatural clothing," explains Marti. "They really, at the heart of them, are about the characters and they're about the emotional turmoil they go through, the ups and downs and all the stuff that informs that from a supernatural. Obviously it's not just slapped on there, we try to make it resonate thematically and really make sense to a story. "Sometimes we do stuff just because it's cool," she admits with a laugh but is quick to maintain that, "The characters are treated as though they were in a serialized drama, so by that you're required to let your characters change and grow. That, I think, is the nature of any good story, is the journey that characters go on and the things that happen to them, affect them. Joss approaches story-telling in that light and we all follow suit. So we don't tell a story unless the characters are really deeply involved and something comes out of it for them. I think that's why they do grow and change, because it's not really just a weekly series where it's just a monster of the week."
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