Tell us how you became aware of Buffy?
My name’s David Greenwalt and I was Joss’s right hand man on Buffy and then Joss and I created the spin off Angel together.
I was a movie writer in the 1980s. I wrote Secret Admirer, American Dreamer and Class with a fellow named Jim Calph, who’s a very talented movie writer. He went on to write Stake Out - unfortunately I didn’t team with him on the hit.
Eventually, like many of my colleagues, I began to dabble in television because it was fun and it was immediate. Before I knew it I fell in love with television, particularly because in American television the writer is king. You have a lot of control over your work if you become a producer as well at the same time.
I had done a very short live show called Profit that starred Adrian Pasdar, about a man who was somewhat psychotic and lived in a box, but also worked at a very wealthy corporation and manipulated people. That was wonderful fun, what’s the expression, outside the box? It lasted about four minutes but the show got me a lot of attention in town, the town being Hollywood.
It was about 1996 and I read every pilot that was out there and had the opportunity to meet all the big producers. And from my big stack of pilots I said, "This funny thing called Buffy The Vampire Slayer, this is the best written pilot, not only this year but probably one of the best written pieces of work I’ve ever read. How could a thing with a funny, odd little below-the-radar title like that be such a great piece? I have to meet this guy, I have to find out what this is about". So I met with Joss.
