From: owner-stillpt-digest@smoe.org (stillpt-digest) To: stillpt-digest@smoe.org Subject: stillpt-digest V2 #189 Reply-To: stillpt@smoe.org Sender: owner-stillpt-digest@smoe.org Errors-To: owner-stillpt-digest@smoe.org Precedence: bulk stillpt-digest Thursday, September 21 2000 Volume 02 : Number 189 Today's Subjects: ----------------- Restless ["Hilary L. Hertzoff" ] Re: Restless [GHighPine@aol.com] b/pilot ["Donald G. Keller" ] b/press ["Donald G. Keller" ] b/structuralist fun ["Donald G. Keller" ] Re: b/pilot ["Marta Grabien" ] Re: b/pilot [GHighPine@aol.com] Re: b/pilot [Todd Huff ] ---------------------------------------------------------------------- Date: Wed, 20 Sep 2000 08:44:36 -0400 (EDT) From: "Hilary L. Hertzoff" Subject: Restless Okay, this episode must be a jinx where I'm concerned. I've just tried to tape it for the second time and screwed it up for the second time. Is there anyone out there who would be kind enough to send me a copy of it (and To Shanshu in LA)? I would be willing to send money for a tape or to trade a copy of anything I have taped in the past either Buffy or other. (I'm missing 3 other Buffys, but this is the only one I'd prefer to have before the season started, rather than waiting for the DVD.) Thanks, Hilary Hilary L. Hertzoff From here to there, Mamaroneck Public Library a bunny goes where a bunny must. Mamaroneck, NY hhertzof@wlsmail.wls.lib.ny.us Little Bunny on the Move hhertzof@panix.com by Peter McCarty ------------------------------ Date: Wed, 20 Sep 2000 11:38:35 EDT From: GHighPine@aol.com Subject: Re: Restless This was only the second time I've watched this ep. Never had time to rewatch the tape. Amazing how much unity it has, and sense, on a second viewing. And it occurs to me that there may be a connection between "Dawn" and the First Slayer from the "dawn of time." Gayle ------------------------------ Date: Wed, 20 Sep 2000 15:23:44 -0400 (EDT) From: "Donald G. Keller" Subject: b/pilot I meant to mention earlier that, through the wonders of Meredith's technology, I was able to watch the original =Buffy= pilot (thanks, Meredith). I watched it twice, since I didn't know when I was going to get another chance. (It's quite strange to "watch TV" with a laptop--well--in your lap.) As has been reported before, it's an approximately 20-minute early draft of =Welcome to the Hellmouth=, and among other things it's really interesting to see scenes one knows by now practically verbatim with different blocking and line readings. (And bits like the library scene, with its much taller balcony, where to punctuate that she's leaving Buffy jumps over the railing to the floor.) One of the things I admire most about "Welcome to the Hellmouth" (I'll get around to saying so at length one of these days) is the deft way it handles letting us get to know the characters, the introductions and re-introductions, the exits and entrances; now I admire it even more, because this early version is extremely clumsy at the very same thing; characters wander in randomly and deliver lines that stick out like sore thumbs, etc. No motivations, no dovetailing... It's =so= much tighter a script in its final version. And I have to agree with the consensus that the actress playing Willow was not very good, and needed to be replaced. (Among other failings, the way she played her Willow did not seem that bright.) One unfortunate loss from this earlier version, though, is a long speech by Buffy in the second library scene (at the point in the final version where after a short speech she says "Go ahead--prepare me!" and then walks out), all about Giles not understanding what it was like for her to discover she was the Slayer, what it was like when Merrick died (Buffy has never mentioned Merrick in the series at all). Artists have their reasons, but I regret the cut. Question: would =I= have given the series a go-ahead on the basis of this preliminary sketch? Candidly, it's a close call. Allowing for not-so-great special effects (figuring that's a budget problem that would be resolved), the one acting flaw and some patchiness in the script don't make such a great impression; still, what is good in the final series premiere was already good in the pilot (some of the same things that were good in the original movie, Buffy's relationship with her Watcher), so that's on the positive side of the ledger. (Now that I've said that, the pilot is only a step or three better than the movie, while the final version is a whole quantum leap above.) Marginal yes, I guess, but admittedly hindsight plays a part in that feeling. Anyway, it's certainly interesting enough to see and I'm glad I got the chance. ------------------------------ Date: Wed, 20 Sep 2000 15:26:29 -0400 (EDT) From: "Donald G. Keller" Subject: b/press Finding mentions of =Buffy= in unusual places... =The New York Times Book Review= for 9/10/00 features a review of a book called =Innocence= by Jane Mendelsohn, the reviewer being Louis Bayard. The review begins: "The book sits in my hands. It is the second book the author has written. Every word is serious. The declarative sentences pile one on top of another. They carry their solemn freight and pass it on. The book must be read quickly. It will vanish if you do not read it quickly. Vanish like bats in the inky night..." (I had already picked up the novel and looked at it in a bookstore. That's a pretty good parody of its style. A pretty annoying style.) Anyway...the book is told from the point of a teenager who figures out there are vampires at her high school, to put it in one succinct sentence. Which is why I flipped through it to see if it might be interesting. I'm not really sure, and Bayard thinks it's a comedown from Mendelsohn's first novel, =I Was Amelia Earhart=. Later in the review he asks: "Why would a pedigreed writer like Jane Mendelsohn churn out such an arrant potboiler? Or, put another way: Why would Amelia Earhart's spiritual executor write a script treatment for =Buffy the Vampire Slayer=?" Which is pretty annoying, of course; but he has the grace to continue: "Actually, with its umbrella-wielding ghouls and its supernatural Internet visitors and its closing homage to =The Wizard of Oz=, =Innocence= is a little corny by =Buffy= standards and nowhere near as witty." So fine; I'm willing to let him wiggle out of it that way. (Though he does argue for the vulgar vitality of genre fiction in his conclusion.) =Buffy= more respectable than a literary novel? No argument here; and I'm doubtful about reading the book. Still, Mendelsohn does understand what she's up to: there's an interview with her (no =Buffy= ref, though) in the 9/26/00 =Village Voice= (=The Voice Literary Supplement=, to be more exact; it comes with the rest of the paper in NYC)--which, annoyingly, is more about the interviewer than about Mendelsohn--where she says: "...I'm interested in horror in general, and I think adolescence is like a horror movie. Emotions are so extreme, and the body is going through severe physical changes. And the conventions of the Gothic novel make external a state of mind." I think that's a statement Joss Whedon would sign off on. ------------------------------ Date: Wed, 20 Sep 2000 15:28:48 -0400 (EDT) From: "Donald G. Keller" Subject: b/structuralist fun I haven't, in all my silence, stopped reading and researching (though without a specific goal at the moment--my next real work is to finish revising the dream-essay): here's a little something I wrote the other night. I've discussed some this before, but what follows takes a different angle and focus. I was reading =Shiva: The Erotic Ascetic= by Wendy Doniger, one of the principal Sanskritists (she's among a group working on finishing the incomplete van Buitenen translation of the =Mahabharata=) and comparative mythologists; this is one of four or five excellent books I have of hers. It's a structuralist analysis of a vast number of texts about Shiva, acknowledging Levi-Strauss but organizing her schema in her own way as dictated by the material. One of many interesting things I found in her introductory section was the following: "The Sanskrit word =vai=...[is] a kind of emphatic copula which cannot be read as an equals sign...[it] implieds an affirmation of relationship...correlative opposites as well as correlated identities." She concludes with a colloquial equivalent: "there is something between them." This seems to me strikingly congruent to the opening line of Jung's =Mysterium Coniunctionis=, his =magnum opus= on alchemy: "The factors which come together in the coniunctio are conceived as opposites, either confronting one another in enmity or attracting one another in love." Both of these thoughts (or two minds with but a single thought) dovetail with something I had been thinking about, which I can state now in the following terms: Buffy =vai= Angel =vai= Faith. There's something between/among them, all right. From a mythanalysis point of view, this is one of the most fascinating character interrelationships in the whole "myth-cycle." Consider that each pair of them has a great deal in common which is in opposition to the third: Buffy and Faith are both young, female, mortal, Slayers; Angel is old, male, immortal, a vampire. Faith and Angel have both lived on the dark side and killed humans without compunction; Buffy has been on the side of "light" all along, and professes to not enjoy her Slayerhood. Buffy and Angel, though not altruistic by nature, have had altruism (heroism, if you prefer) thrust upon them, and have accepted it; Faith to this point has been self-centered (in several senses). Also, Buffy and Angel had a deep emotional bond to one another, something Faith has never had (with either of them or with anyone--her relationship with the Mayor was of a different sort, more like Buffy's with Giles). Let's look further, at a component "myth" of the "cycle" in two of its "variants": 1) In "Graduation Day," Faith shoots Angel with a poisoned arrow; Buffy comes after Faith and stabs her. Faith extracts herself from the situation, ending up in a coma; Buffy cures Angel by forcing him to feed on her. We can represent this "myth" by the following simple diagram (where - --> means "attacks," in some sense). F-->A B-->F A-->B Note the striking symmetry of the diagram: each of the three appears twice (once attacking, once attacked) and is absent in the third instance. 2) In "5x5"/"Sanctuary," Faith shoots Angel (twice); Buffy comes after Faith and threatens her; Faith extracts herself from the situation, ending up in jail; Angel chews out Buffy and sends her home. Which can also be diagrammed: F-->A B-->F A-->B Admittedly, I've used "attack" in a somewhat loose manner (sometimes as verbal attack); and obviously the "meaning" of the two "myths" is different: among other things, the protagonist of the first "myth" is Buffy (with Angel secondary, opposed to Faith), while the protagonist of the second "myth" is Faith (with Angel secondary, opposed to Buffy); this change of angle changes the meaning. Remember, too, that previously I'd noted a similarity of pattern between "This Year's Girl"/"Who Are You" and "5x5"/"Sanctuary"; it overlays and interpenetrates the above-presented pattern (just as does the "stabbing" motif that occurs near the end of =all four= seasons so far: the Master, Angel, Faith, Adam). Conclusion? There's a thought struggling to be born, about how all three are essentially the "same" character ("multiforms" of one another in Doniger's terminology), with differing characteristics manifesting in the three "versions" at different times. They describe in fact a gradation of liminality (sorry...): Buffy is caught between her desire for a normal life and her =dharma= as the Slayer (i.e. forced into a reluctant relationship with evil); Faith wavers between embracing Slayerness and a willing relationship with evil; Angel teeters on the balance-point between his human (good) and vampire (evil) natures. Thus, all three in different ways embody internally (Angel quite literally) the good/evil opposition, and thus each can dramatize either side of it in conflict with either or both of the others...and the show has run quite a few of the possible permutations of this structure so far. That's more the beginning of an essay than a full-fledged exploration of the subject, but it's worth getting down in this form so far. ------------------------------ Date: Wed, 20 Sep 2000 15:19:43 -0700 From: "Marta Grabien" Subject: Re: b/pilot Glyph of envy > I meant to mention earlier that, through the wonders of Meredith's > technology, I was able to watch the original =Buffy= pilot ------------------------------ Date: Wed, 20 Sep 2000 19:27:40 EDT From: GHighPine@aol.com Subject: Re: b/pilot In a message dated 9/20/00 12:27:15 PM Pacific Daylight Time, dgk@panix.com writes: << Question: would =I= have given the series a go-ahead on the basis of this preliminary sketch? >> Did anyone? It is my impression that this so-called "unaired pilot" (which I haven't seen) was not actually a pilot but what is known in the business as a presentation tape or demo tape, a kind of pre-pilot made usually at the producer's own expense in order to get the go-ahead (and financing) from the network to make a pilot; and it is my impression that "Welcome to the Hellmouth" is the actual pilot. But I could be wrong, and welcome correction. As to the cut scenes, I bet they were left in the script, and filmed, but cut afterward because the show ran long. Gayle ------------------------------ Date: Wed, 20 Sep 2000 18:03:28 -0700 (PDT) From: Todd Huff Subject: Re: b/pilot > > I meant to mention earlier that, through the > wonders of Meredith's > > technology, I was able to watch the original > =Buffy= pilot > Although I'm the one who first came across it, I was never able to get a good connection to download it and now the site's gone. I'd appreciate it if somebody with the files and the time (or a fast connection) could e-mail them to me at nottodd@earthlink.net Thanks. __________________________________________________ Do You Yahoo!? Send instant messages & get email alerts with Yahoo! Messenger. http://im.yahoo.com/ ------------------------------ End of stillpt-digest V2 #189 *****************************