Producer/writer/director Marti Noxon.
In today's Sci-Fi Blast From The Past, Marti Noxon talks about her work in season seven of Buffy the Vampire Slayer.
Many people are skeptics when it comes to fortune-tellers and their “predications.” However, when she was a little girl, Buffy the Vampire Slayer scribe Marti Noxon was told something by one of these soothsayers that turned out to be quite true. “This person said that I was going to become a writer when I grew up,” recalls Noxon. “I remember thinking, ‘No way. I want to be something really exciting like an actress. Even better, a movie star.’ Now, of course, I think that being a writer is an exciting career and one of the best jobs in this business.”
Besides writing for Buffy, Noxon is also one of its executive producers and directors. She was first hired on the series as a staff writer for its second season and was promoted to story editor halfway through the year. Since then, Noxon has worked her way up the creative ladder and gone from co-producer to supervising producer, and was made an executive producer at the start of the show’s sixth year. On this January day, Noxon is dashing back and forth between her office and the Buffy set. Despite her hectic schedule, she is happy to take time out to talk about the show’s seventh, and possibly last, season.
“I’m very pleased with how this year has gone so far,” says Noxon. “I think we’ve achieved a good balance between the comedy and the more serious stuff when it comes to our storytelling. Buffy [Sarah Michelle Gellar] isn’t moping around as much, which I’m sure the fans are happy about. She’s taken up a stronger, more heroic position on the show, which is great. Also, Buffy and the rest of the Scooby gang have had to face up to the consequences of their actions from last season. For example, Willow [Alyson Hannigan] is learning how to better control her magic. She’s had to come to terms with Tara’s [Amber Bensen] death as well. As for, Xander [Nicholas Brendon], he’s been dealing with what he did to Anya [Emma Caulfield] and the repercussions of that. So I feel like everyone has sort of been cleaning up the wreckage of last season and doing a good job of it.
“If there’s anything I’m disappointed with this year is that we didn’t figure out how to better utilize James Marsters [Spike] earlier on. Spike is such a strong character, and at a certain point we all realized, ‘He’s been down in that basement acting crazy for quite a while. It’s time we got him out of there.’ It would have been nice if he could have done more at the start of the season, but we’ve tried to make up for that in recent episodes.”
In Buffy’s seventh season opener Lessons, our stake-wielding heroine is apprehensive about her little sister Dawn (Michelle Trachtenberg) going to school at the newly reopened Sunnydale High. Not surprisingly, Buffy’s instincts prove to be correct. While looking around the new school, she confronts the vengeful spirits of the people she failed to save. “One of the great things about this year is that we’ve been able to revisit high school life though Dawn,” notes Noxon. “So to me, the season opener was a fun way of saying to the viewers, ‘Look, we’re back to some of the old school themes.’
“I really love the scene in Lessonswhere Buffy and Principal Wood are talking and the action shifts between them and what’s going on in the basement with the kids. The character of Principal Wood is a great addition to the series. I like the mystery surrounding what he and Buffy know about each other and who Wood really is. When it came to casting the role, we were looking for an actor who was extremely dynamic and had a real presence. The person we chose also had to be able to play that mystery of the character that I just spoke of. We found all these qualities and more in D.B. Woodside and we’re pleased to have him as part of the cast.”
When asked to name her favorite stories so far this year, the executive producer is quick to reply. “I have two. The first one is Conversations With Dead People. That’s probably our strongest episode so far this season just because to me it was firing on all cylinders. The scary stuff is some of the most frightening that we’ve ever shot on this program. Just take the scenes with the poltergeist and the things that Dawn saw. I literally gasped the first time I saw them and that hardly ever happens. After all, I know what I’m going to see, so it’s unlikely that it would make me jump, but this time it did.
“The other episode I’m quite fond of is the Anya one, Selfless, which I think is just hysterical. I really enjoy Emma Caulfield’s acting so it was nice to see her have a bit more to do than usual.”
In Selfless, Noxon had the opportunity to reprise her role, albeit briefly, as the singing Parking Ticket Lady. Regular viewers of Buffy will recall that she first belted out a tune in the sixth season episode Once More With Feeling. “I used to sing in high school musicals and community theatre productions, but that was a long time ago,” chuckles the executive producer. “One day I jokingly said to Joss, ‘Why don’t you put me in an episode,’ so he did. When I found out I immediately said to him, ‘Take me out of the program,’ but he refused. Joss was adamant that once he wrote the part I was going to do it.
“Yes, it was totally self-indulgent, especially since I’m not an actor. That said, it was also a bit of a fantasy come true. I had my own little trailer and I got to go to hair and make-up. It was interesting to see what our actors go through on a daily basis, even if it was in a tiny microcosmic way. I discovered that there’s a lot to acting that’s pretty difficult. It looks easy to stand there and wait for your cue, but, in fact, it’s very exhausting because you have to keep your energy level up for hours and hours. I’ll take scriptwriting over acting any day.”
Steve Eramo
Comments