ou can say a lot of things about David Greenwalt, (affectionately referred to as 'Greeny' by his friends and coworkers) Angel's executive producer and right-hand man to series creator Joss Whedon, but you can't say, "that I'm computer illiterate because I do know how to go online and all that but I never do because it only means answering my own email," he humorously admits as we begin our interview. It is not surprising that he doesn't have the time to go online either, as you will find out, this is one busy man! David is happy to affirm that Joss, Angel co-executive producer/writer Tim Minear, and Buffy the Vampire Slayer executive producer/writer Marti Noxon will show him things going on at different sites around the Internet. "It's always fun to hear what the fans think and what they're doing. I just don't have the kind of stamina that Joss has to get in there and interact. They all get a little addicted to it, I think." He confides joking, "They're like, 'Oh everybody loves me. Oh wait, that guy didn't like me,' it's too much emotional stuff."

Actor, Jeff Bridges and his now famous stand-in, David Greenwalt

What we found David to be the most emotional about is his passion for his craft, which is not so easily defined when it comes to Greenwalt. He started writing in college, where he was also a musician and songwriter. In fact, his first interest was more focused towards writing songs and having a band. That didn't pan out so well according to David so he then tried acting. Luckily for scores of movie and television viewers that didn't pan out so well either. David had an average life growing up. "It was a very nice, fairly normal middleclass childhood here in west Los Angeles." But his surroundings were immersed in entertainment and soon instead of being rejected by the things that didn't work for him, he discovered the ideal role to make his dreams realities. "That's kind of my world, I lived here in L.A. where they make that stuff." In fact, he began as a stand-in for his old buddy, actor Jeff Bridges, and although acting never really took hold of him he got the bug most recently doing a little turn in The Enforcers, an independent film production by Angel story editor/writer, Mere Smith.

We wanted to first delve a little into Greenwalt's past. Many different elements inspire people to become writers and directors; childhood can play a very big role in defining those inspirations and in playful irony we began by asking David when he was trying to figure out what he wanted to be as he was growing up, if he had his own epiphany, that being the title of a pivotal episode during Angel's second season. "That's interesting," David begins. "Some little part of me knew always from a very early age that I would be a writer, I didn't know when or what kind of writer but I knew I leaned that way. I loved books, I read a lot as a kid and I also loved old Hollywood movies. I love old Cary Grant movies and the romantic comedies; people in tuxedos, people in foreign lands and I'm sure psychologically that I always wanted to be elsewhere wearing better clothes, saying more clever things.

This romantic comedy saw early Writing and Directing success for Greenwalt

"I started writing screenplays in my early to mid-twenties," he continues, "and started getting fairly serious about it maybe about 25. I wrote movies for a long time, mostly with Jim Kouf [Angel consulting producer] and started having some success a few years in." Some of that early success came with the feature films: Utilities (1981, starring Robert Hays), Class (1983, starring Jacqueline Bisset and Rob Lowe) and Secret Admirer (1985, starring Kelly Preston and C. Thomas Howell), which he also directed. "Then I started experimenting with television, which is a much kinder and better medium for most writers of screen and TV." David goes on to explain, "A writer in television has a little more clout, a little more say, a little more producorial power in the product. Plus it's a faster and more immediate product so you have a chance to really learn something of what you're doing."

Considering that Greenwalt is just now tiptoeing into his youthful 50s, his spirit and enthusiasm reflecting his inner child allow for all the creativity he has accomplished. He has his own production company; with 25 years in the business he's an accomplished writer, producer, and director. And considering all the different hats he has to wear on Angel, you'd think he would just want to kick back, relax and concentrate on the writing aspects of his work, which he deems the most rewarding and yet, you'd be surprised to discover this soft-spoken, playful personality loves the turmoil. "I thrive on all the chaos and responsibility," David replies with a big laugh, "but every once and awhile I think, 'Oh this [just to write] would be fun.' A lot of people in our business move the other way, they don't write anymore at all. They produce or they oversee stories but they don't physically write. Last year," recalls David, "I think I wrote five of the episodes and my wife, bless her, was saying to me, 'It's great for you, you should keep writing. I know it's chaotic, I know it makes it harder on the family and it makes it harder at work when you're working a lot of weekends but it's better for you to be writing,' and it's true!

"The writing is the center of everything, that's the thing you want to be doing," he states. "And since the kind of writing we do requires actors and film and a production and millions of dollars; obviously you want to have a show on the air, then you want to have your fingers in as many pies as possible because you want that control. When we started with Buffy," David remembers, "Joss was practically and sometimes literally living here. You'd come in at seven in the morning and he would have been here all night, maybe he slept two hours on the couch or something. That was very common in the beginning. I think, as people who like the shows and follow the shows themselves, the satisfactions are large and the challenges are large. These are very big shows and very difficult to produce. We pack as much as humanly possible into the 8-10 production days it takes to do them. Most people in my position start to say, 'Well, I'll retire or I'll write a little or I'll consult,' and I feel like that quite a lot," he laughingly admits. "But really, if truth be told, I probably would just keep doing this as long as I could stand it because it's so much fun."

Noxon, Smith, and Amber Benson (Buffy's Tara Maclay) have all ventured into the director's chair within the last year on projects in and outside of the Whedon spectrum. What is it about directing, what's so appealing that it draws these talented women in and entices them to crave this new adventure? David gives us his interpretation. "I love directing and it's less lonely than writing; it comes after the writing, the script is finished which is always the hardest part. Many writers become directors, some people just always want to direct and be filmmakers. In my experience as a movie writer," he explains, "people don't interpret your stuff correctly and by 'correctly' I mean how you intended it, what your intent was. Without the proper direction you'll see an actor make a different choice than the one that you want to tell your story."

Another pitfall of not having this control is the potential of your actors to kill jokes. "Jokes are very hard to set up and tell, and make them look organic, lifelike and real," explains David. "The humor and the pathos, they have to be done correctly so as a writer you start to feel like, 'I know I can do as well as this person.' Not all writers actually -- it doesn't [always] work out so well," David laughs. "But we've been really fortunate there in all our people who have moved up and done well." One such person whose directorial skills David was very impressed with was Smith's self-scripted feature. "Her set ran as well as our set," he proudly admits, "they were on top of everything.

"I love directing and it's less lonely than writing, it comes after the writing which is always the hardest part."

I think she did a very smart thing by making 30-40 pages of it as a sort of big, fancy calling card, which makes a lot of sense to me. She has James Marsters (Spike) and a lot of really good people in it, and E.J. [Elisabeth James, Greenwalt's assistant] produced it for her and did a great job. E.J.'s worth her weight in gold believe me," David says with admiration.

A vital part of directing is that it requires an almost intrinsic ability. It's not something you can completely learn to perfection, it has to be something that you are able to envision, to see things come to life off the page. "I think it's like writing in that sense, there's a great deal of craft that one can learn in both areas. Certainly in terms of lenses and lighting and how to shoot judiciously, particularly in serial television but you have to have some innate feeling." David offers up an example of when he first started writing movies, "I would watch these directors on the set and they would be concerned with, 'What kind of jacket is the actor wearing? What kind of glasses is he wearing?' and I was concerned with, 'What's the story that we're telling? What's the performance?' You know, the thing that matters is the story, the performance," he stresses. "I love having the control of being able to get the beat between [the actors], get the timing the way I want, the way I imagined directing them. It's give and take, you just don't come there with a finished product in your head, you interact with the actors and the Director of Photography and everybody. It's a wonderful group effort to make the best thing you can. It's such a challenge in those pique days of shooting but it's wicked fun."

"Wasn't she marvelous in her little, jingling bikini thing?"

Drama and the performances that people normally get awards for are the genuinely anxious, aching and crying ones according to Greenwalt. Comedy, on the other hand, falls into an arena all its own. "Funny is probably the hardest thing," muses David, "many people can cry tears although I don't know that I can cry tears. I can probably learn how to but that seems hard to me too. It's so hard to find people who can do comedy; it's a very rare gift actually." Charisma Carpenter adds a unique blend of girl Friday, bitch of the month and aspiring champion to her character of Cordelia Chase. What she's been able to cultivate over the last year is her own comedic sense that is just ideal for this type of ensemble. "You know, I'm the one that dragged her to Angel," David proudly states. "When Joss came to me and said, 'What do you say we spin off this Angel guy into a show, do you want to be a part of that?' I said, 'Of course and we should bring the character of Cordelia.' " He explains the feel surrounding the show and why Charisma was the perfect addition. "Angel is dark, Angel's also incredibly funny but you think of him as a kind of Batman; serious, mythic hero and I just thought she'd be a great accompaniment to Angel."

Charisma as well as her character have grown and developed since her start on the very first episode of Buffy in March 1997. Cordelia now understands her purpose and is beginning to embrace it making this change even more interesting for the fans to watch. "The thing I like [about] working with Joss is, it isn't, 'Here's our formula and we're gonna do it every week.' I think it's cool when things change. You can go all the way back to the days of Buffy and Angel," David offers as an example, "here's this vampire guy and they fall in love and the next thing they're having sex, and then he's gone bad and then he's dead and then he's back from hell and they moved on. People move on, they move forward with their lives and Joss doesn't just rely on what we did last week. It really makes it challenging but fun because people are growing and changing and Cordelia is a perfect example," he says. David gave us a hint as to some of those changes that will affect her this season. "This year the visions are going to get worse and worse and they are going to nearly kill her. She's becoming deeper, an utterly different person than she was before yet she'll always be outspoken and blunt but she's kind of turning into a super hero."