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Jeph Loeb - Interviewed 22nd October 2001
Teen Wolves and Arnie
Tell us a bit about how you started out in Hollywood.
The first thing I ever did was a little movie with Michael J. Fox called Teen Wolf. In the same year I did a movie with Arnold Schwarzenegger called Commando. So, people didn't know what to do with me. I'd written this teen comedy and also this big action movie. At their heart, they were both big comic books which seemed obvious to me - but I guess not to anybody else. (laughs).
They both had their own enjoyment to them - I don't really have a niche that I like to put myself in, that's what's led me through my career - not quite wanting to stay in any one place at any one time.
I've always been a comic book fan, since I was a kid. I started collecting rather obsessively at the age of ten and now have this collection where my garage is supposed to be, much to the chagrin of my wonderful wife.
I was working on a Flash (the fastest man alive) movie for DC Comics and Warner Brothers which never came together. Jeanette Kahn, the publisher at DC Comics asked me, if I wasn't going to do the movie, would I like to do the comic book.
It was a little bit like Santa pulling up in front of the house and asking would I like to go for a ride on his sleigh on Christmas Eve. So, of course, I said yes. Now, for someone who had been collecting comics as long as I had, I was remarkably naive in terms of the way comics are produced.
I thought very much like television there would be a bunch of freelance assignments that would be open on top of whatever the regular writer was doing. So I told DC I wanted to write Superman. They said, "Well, we have someone who's already writing Superman." So I said, "Well, fine, then Batman." They said, "No, we also have people writing Batman". We finally got around to the Challengers of the Unknown, which even I hadn't heard of, but you have to start somewhere.
What came out of that was that I met an artist by the name of Tim Sale, who I collaborated with for years. That led to a number of things. We're probably best known for Batman: The Long Halloween, a year-long detective serial we did for DC featuring Batman. It won numerous awards, including the Eisner, which in the world of comic books is equivalent to an Emmy.
We also did Superman for All Seasons, which was a graphic retelling of the Superman origin in a pulp-spun Norman Rockwellian kind of way. Between those two things, while I was still writing and producing movies and television, I suddenly had a new career in the comic book industry.
Little Monsters and Comic Books
How did you become Executive Producer on the Buffy Animated Series?
I was working as a writer/producer on a show that I'm not sure they have in England yet called Maurice Sendak's Seven Little Monsters. Maurice Sendak, the creator of Where The Wild Things Are, had written another children's book called Seven Little Monsters - a very, very simple story about seven monsters. Each had a name that was a number: One, Two, Three, Four, Five, Six and Seven. I took that and adapted it.
It's on PBS (Public Broadcast) over here as an animated series and we're about to go into our third season of the show. It's great fun. It's sort of the Adams Family meets Maurice Sendak, so it's very boisterous, with Marx Brothers references and things I really like in terms of comedy.
In the middle of all this, I got a call from my manager asking whether or not I was a fan of Buffy. You can't watch television and be a comic fan and not be and so I said, "Yeah!". So they said, "Would you like to go over and have a meeting with Joss?" I went really in order to meet Joss. I didn't know there was going to be any possibility of getting the job - in fact, I didn't even know what the job was - I just wanted to meet Joss.
It was one of those very strange things where not only did I want to meet him, but as I found out when I got there, he had wanted to meet me and I had no idea why he wanted to meet me. I immediately went to some awful place where I owed him money in some weird way, but as it turns out, as many people know, Joss is a comic book fan and he was a fan of my writing comics.
It was an odd way to meet somebody in Hollywood, because we're normally only used to meeting people through movies or television or something like that. Joss liked comics, wanted to talk about comics then wanted to talk about Buffy then talk about Buffy: Animated.
When Harry Met Buffy?
Pitching for Animated Buffy
The first question that they asked me was, how did I see the animated series? I thought it was a trick question. I sat quietly, not quite sure what to say. Finally, I figured just say what's on your mind, which was, "Like the show."
Everyone in the room gave a collective sigh of relief and I said, "you're going to have to explain that to me. It's one of the best written shows on television. If you're going to do an animated version, why wouldn't you just do that?" and they said, "Well, you have to understand that we've had lots of pitches. We've heard everything from Buffy Babies to Buffy The Vampire's Friend to 'Buffy goes to England and there she meets a young warlock who's going to school in a castle and he wears glasses and has an owl' (laughs)... that's all fine, but that's not our show."
That was the beginning of what has been almost a year-long love affair. I've never worked in an environment that is both as creatively challenging and as creatively rewarding as this. I don't say this lightly, having worked with a lot of creatively challenging people. There's just something that's just great fun about what we're doing and I think it shows in the work.
Animated Origins
Who initially wanted the show to be made - Joss or Fox?
As with everything that is Buffy, it's because Joss wanted it. Fox, of course, was delighted. They couldn't believe they were going to get yet another turn at the wheel.
Between the success of Buffy now, the success of Buffy in syndication, the success of the VHSs and DVDs - particularly in England - the success of Angel, they're swimming in good fortune.
The idea that someone would want to get another look at the franchise could only come from Joss. What makes it unique, and what I think is the reason to do it is that Joss saw this as an opportunity to go back and tell stories in what we call the 'Year One' era.
Everything that happens in the animated series takes place right after Buffy moves to Sunnydale. For Buffy fans out there, we refer to this as episode seven and a half. We are talking about a time where Xander has a crush on Buffy, where Willow has a crush on Xander, where Buffy has a crush on Angel and we don't know that Angel can turn bad. We just know at the moment that Angel is this mysterious, soulful person that can help.
It's where the metaphor of teen angst and the trial of High School works best for the series. What's great about the live action series is that Joss had this unique perspective, which was to have the show in each season grow a year, so the actors and the environment would change.
In the animated series, we're not bound by that. What we'll be doing is - going back to comics - telling stories within the pages of the stories you already know. So, Buffy Animated will be in continuity, will tell stories that will refer to episodes the fans already know, and will wink at the episodes that they would fit in between.
For the most part, they are those episodes that, if Joss had a chance to do it all over again - and he does - he's going to go back and tell you these stories.
Blast from the Past
Have any specific ideas from way back been adapted for the new show?
We have that conversation a lot, Joss saying, "I always wanted to do this story, but because they grew up so quickly, we couldn't do it."
For example, Buffy and Willow's first baby-sitting assignment doesn't work when they get to be seventeen or eighteen years old, but when they are fifteen or sixteen, that story still plays. The idea of Driver's Ed, getting your driver's license, only worked in the first year, because once you got past that, it became odd that those were not things that had already taken place. But, true to form, Buffy is still a terrible driver!
So, there isn't anything that is going to change but you're going to see more of the reasons why. As with any really good Buffy story, whether it's baby-sitting or getting your driver's license, it really isn't about that - it's about teen anxiety, human anxiety or human emotion; that feeling that you want to belong that Buffy does so well.
Animated Discussions
What stage has the project reached?
The way animation works, things happen simultaneously. We have six scripts finished, on our way to thirteen. We will be, in the next month, recording those six scripts.
In the meantime, we are doing what is called a model pack, which means we are getting [to understand] how the characters are going to look, but not in any kind of animated form. We are first seeing what they look like on the page. Let's see what they look like when you turn them - front, back, centre, upside down, whatever - so that when you do actually get around to animating them, the animation team can say, "Oh, that's what that character looks like from the back." That's gone extraordinarily well.
We cannot yet disclose who our animation team is, because it's not all yet locked down contractually, but we have, in our estimation, the best team working in Saturday morning animation.
When Joss and I first sat down, we hit on the fact that Batman Animated really revolutionised the way that animation looked and felt for the first time in a long time. Because of this, it could reach an audience - a more adult one - which up until then, hadn't been tuning into television animation during the day. Believe it or not, that was ten years ago.
The trick was to bring [to animated Buffy] that level of sophistication with a buoyant new look, so that in the year 2002 people can now say, "Okay, now we've raised the bar that much further." That is really the goal of the show. That is the goal of any project Joss takes on - he sets the bar very high then looks at everybody and says, "How are we going to jump over it?"
The shoulders that we are standing on are Batman Animated, Batman Beyond and the Simpsons. It seems like an odd combination but the thing that the Simpsons does so well is that it manages to pack in an enormous amount of information into 22 minutes, combined with it can shift gears from uproarious comedy to something that's more serious within a matter of seconds. That really is the challenge that's open to us.
No Sex - we're Cartoons
Writing for a Saturday morning audience
Jane Espenson - who is truly one of the great writers on the show and is one of our writers on Buffy Animated - was asked the difference between writing for the animated series and the live action series, and she said that it's really quite simple. All you do is write it as if it were for the live action show, and any time you think there is going to be sex, you put in a joke. Then you have the animated series!
That is not far from where we go, but we don't want anyone to think that it's jokey. It has a sense of humour, the same sense of humour that the [live action] show has. What it would lack is the more blatant sexuality or the more obvious innuendo.
We push the envelope as much as we can and as much as the network will let us. As I said before, these characters have crushes on each other, but they don't quite know what they are going to do when they get together. As my son once said to me, "No one on the cartoon show is going to hook up," and that's quite accurate - no one is going to hook up.
Each episode has its own particular flavour - there'll be sad episodes and there'll be funny episodes and there'll be romantic ones. It'll be very much like the live action show with one big exception. In the live action show, each season has an overall arc that you follow, but each one of the animated shows will be stand-alone shows. The pilot episode introduces you to Sunnydale and introduces you to the entire cast in kind of a unique way.
There's not any need for anything to run at a particular order, which is something you have to keep in mind when you do animation because networks move the order of animated shows around all the time.
The Writing Team
Aside from Jane Espenson, who else is going to be writing the scripts?
We can categorically say we have the best writing team working in half hour animation, bar none. The reason is that everyone is working on the live action series that is working in the animated show.
I got to work with Joss on the pilot and the series bible (which is the handbook for the series). He is very much involved in every script as he is in the live show - how did I get so lucky? This does, in many ways, make it an easy job for me because the people that we're working with know the characters so well and get the humour so easily.
Like Jane, Steve DeKnight has finished more than one; Doug Petrie and David Fury will each be doing at least one. Drew Greenberg, who started writing on the live action show this season, has one going. Rebecca Kirshner has a really wild one in mind. There really isn't anybody on the current writing staff who hasn't at some point come across and said "As soon as we get an opening, how do we fit ourselves in?"
Of course, we have a special episode all plotted out, waiting for Marti Noxon to be able to take a breath and go ahead and do it, only because as a fan and a producer of the show, I have to get one out of Marti somehow. That would be my dream come true.
I can't tell you the number of times our network executive and I sit on the phone and just laugh. She'll say, "Now, on page 27, Xander says..." and then she'll burst out laughing and then I'll say "Is that a note?" She'll say, "Yes, the note is that's a really funny line." I'll ask "You don't want to change it? It's not too funny, is it?" and she'll say, "No, no, we just want to let you know that that's very funny."
Short Stories
Apart from the lack of sex, what other considerations are there when
It's not an easy thing to learn, to be able to make that transition from the live action show to the animated series. First of all, you have to be able to tell what is a one hour story in 22 minutes. You are asking people who have made their living the last few years telling stories that have an hour's length of time to do it in a half hour, and many people can't make that crossover - except the Buffy staff writers, who seem to be able to do it with their eyes closed.
The other thing is that in a one hour [live action] script, if Willow and Xander are walking down the street and they are talking to each other, you can simply say, "Willow and Xander walk down the street and they are talking to each other." Between the art department and the director and all those other people, they are going to come up with how they are going to populate the street.
In animation you can't do that - you have to say, "Two red cars go by, three people on pogo sticks are in the background and two old ladies will fight." You need to populate it all with what you want the artist to draw, or the artist won't draw anything and you'll have tumbleweeds coming through.
Fortunately, because Buffy is a visual show and because so many people on the show are comic book fans and have written for comics, it is the same kind of application of skills. You need to be able to explain to an artist in a comic book what's on the page in the same way you need to explain to an animator what's going to be in a scene.
Look Who's Talking
Are the original cast going to be providing their characters' voices?
What I would say at this point is that we would love to have everyone. That is our first choice and we would hope to make that happen. Everyone has expressed interest. It's going to come down to the two biggest things in these cases, which are time and money, so we can't say yet.
Joss hopes to be able to make an announcement within the next two or three weeks in order to tell everyone what hopefully will be good news. In any event, people should rest assured that whoever is cast in the roles will be cast by Joss, and the idea is to make the characters sound and act like they do on the show.
It's not as though animated Willow is going to be written different from live action Willow. if she's not going to be Alyson, she is going to sound as much like Alyson as we can find.
Arch Nemesis
Will The Master be the main villain of the show?
One of the things that Joss pointed out was that one of the downsides of the Master story was that he never got out, and because he never got out, there wasn't actually much mayhem that he could cause. So, why not focus on other activities that went on at that time?
There will certainly be mentions of that sort of thing within the continuity, but you don't need to know the story of the Master to figure out what's going on. They still live on the Hellmouth, so there are plenty of other ghoulies to play and fight with. We have talked about the idea of creating what we refer to as our 'arch nemesis' who would be a recurring villain that was unique to the animated series, but so far I can't actually comment on that part.
We've also heard stories that Dawn may be retroactively added to the stories, as everyone remembers being around. Is this true?
There will be some surprises, that's all we can say.
Mixing it up
Would you like to write for, or add animation to, an episode of the live action series?
We haven't discussed it. We're more interested at the moment in getting the first 13 flying. The idea of linking them together would be a riot and who knows? If it's something that tickles Joss's fancy it will happen, that much I know.
As for scripting live action, at the moment producing the animated series is a full time job and a half, but being that close to the live action show and being able to work with these people and see how much fun and how clever they are, I'd be lucky to be involved. It would be wonderful to be asked.
I hate to sound dorky and that I've fallen over the rainbow, but I have - except that I don't get the slippers or the dress. Damn! Other than that, it's been great fun, but wait until they [the characters] get up and start talking, which is going to be very soon - before the end of the year. We will start to see shows come back completed in, I would say, May or June and they'll be on in the fall of 2002.