 Starring: Sarah Michelle Gellar, Nicholas Brendon, Alyson Hannigan, Anthony Head, James Marsters, Emma Caulfield
Director: Joss Whedon
Year Of Release: 2001
Plot: Something strange is going on in Sunnydale. Buffy and the Scooby Gang can’t stop singing about everything and they soon realise it’s not just them, as the whole town is launching into massive song and dance numbers at the drop of the hat. It turns out some strange demons are around that kill people by getting them to sing themselves to death, and Buffy must find a way to stop them. |
It’s almost embarrassing that the only Buffy The Vampire Slayer DVD I own is a single sixth season episode that was released separately because 20th Century Fox thought people would be interested in seeing Sarah Michelle Gellar and co. going musical. It is great fun and perhaps the biggest surprise it that the music is actually very good and most of the cast are actually pretty good singers.
While Gellar’s voices is a little weedy, at least it’s in tune and Anthony Head shows that he’s a very good singer indeed. My favourite bit is during a song called ‘I’ve Got A Theory’, where ditzy ex-demon Anya suddenly goes all rock ‘n’ roll with her insane idea that the reason everyone is singing is due to bunnies. It’s bizarre and hilarious and one of my favourite ever Buffy moments. However I really ought to own more Buffy as it is a series a like a lot.
Watching the episode I couldn’t help but think that despite the massive worldwide success of Buffy, the cast have had very mixed fortunes since series ended. Some of them have done okay, while others have pretty much disappeared. Of course David Boreanaz got his own spin-off series, Angel, and now stars opposite Emily Deschanel in the smash hit series Bones. Alyson Hannigan is also doing okay. She made the American Pie movies while making Buffy and since she stopped playing the witchy Willow, she’s been part of the cast of the successful sitcom, How I Met Your Mother.
Good marks also have to be given to Michelle Trachtenberg, who showed up towards the end of Buffy’s run as the Vampire Slayer’s magically appearing from nowhere younger sister, Dawn. As well as recurring guest spots in the likes of Six Feet Under and Gossip Girl, she’s also starred in films like 17 Again and Black Christmas, and will be seen this year in both Cop Out and Young Americans, as well as nabbing a major role in the hit new US medical series, Mercy. As she’s still only 24, Michelle certainly seems to have a bright future ahead of her.
Slightly less successful in cashing in on their Buffy status, but still doing okay, have been Anthony Head and James Marsters. Head, who played Giles in Buffy, moved back to the UK once the series ended and while he’s appeared in an awful lot of British TV shows, from Monarch of the Glen and The Invisibles, to Sold and Merlin – and of course Little Britain – there’s little doubt that his status has dipped since the vampire slaying ended. Likewise Marsters, who segued into the last season of Angel after Buffy ended, has had to make do with recurring guest roles on TV and parts in minor movies since the show ended. He’s appeared in the likes of Smallville, Without A Trace and Torchwood, as well as films such as Dragonball: Evolution and PS I Love You, but there’s little doubt he’s the guy you call in for a supporting, rather than someone you want in the lead.
However the rest of the main cast members have pretty much vanished completely. Emma Caulfield, who played ex-demon Anya, has had a few roles since Buffy, but the only things anyone would have heard of is an episode of Monk and a guest spot on Private Practice. Perhaps more surprising is the almost total disappearance of Sarah Michelle Gellar and Nicholas Brendon, who were perhaps the two biggest players in the Buffy universe.
Initially Gellar seemed to be doing okay, making the two Scooby Doo films while filming Buffy and then following it up with The Grudge once the show ended. However since then her relatively meagre resume has been marked by duds like Southland Tales, The Return and Possession, and voiceovers in things such as TMNT, Happily N’Ever After and Robot Chicken. It really does seem people are only interested in her as Buffy (and to be honest, she was fairly annoying in the show while all the characters around her were great, so I’m not even that convinced all that many people were genuinely interested in her as Buffy).
Nicholas Brendon, who played Xander in Buffy, has also done very little that anyone’s seen in the past few year. He was in quickly cancelled 2005 TV show Kitchen Confidential (which also featured Bradley Cooper, who’s probably glad the show failed now that The Hangover has made him a superstar), has done a few episodes of Criminal Minds, but other than that he’s solely been making low budget movies nobody has seen, such as Blood On The Highway, Fire Serpent and The Portal. With only a TV movie called A Golden Christmas and the unheralded indie flick Sweet Lorraine coming up, it doesn’t look like we’ll see him back on top anytime soon.
We also shouldn’t forget the series’ creator, Joss Whedon, who’s also had a tricky time post-Buffy. His problem seems to be that while he has an incredibly loyal core of fans who love everything he does, he has a more difficult time getting a larger, general audience to show up for his brand of entertainment. Indeed, even Buffy moved from The WB network to UPN in the US, because the former channel didn’t think the number of viewers justified the cost and so they dropped it after the fifth season.
After Buffy, Whedon made his sci-fi western series, Firefly, which is legendary for being absolutely adored by some very vocal fans, but got canned halfway through its first season. However, while the Internet rage at the cancelling of the show and massive sales of the series on DVD convinced Universal to take a shot on a feature film version, Serenity, once again Whedon couldn’t make it appeal beyond his core fans and the movie flopped.
While his most recent series, Dollhouse, made it to a second season, it’s recently been cancelled and so will now end partway through it second outing (Dollhouse star, Eliza Dushku, is another person who rose to prominence through Buffy, playing rogue slayer Faith, but has found it difficult to capitalise on her fame). One of Whedon’s more successful recent ventures was the 2008 internet-only Dr. Horrible’s Sing-Along blog, starring Neil Patrick Harris and Nathan Fillion. The series of cheaply make musical shorts about an aspiring supervillain was an Internet smash, then became a best-selling DVD and even won an Emmy.
Next up he’s returning to film, writing Cabin In The Woods and possibly directing a supernatural thriller called Goners. We’ll have to wait and see whether these succeed, but it must be very frustrating for him, because while he has a lot of fans, his work rarely seems to catch on with the casual viewer. It means that despite making good shows, the economics don’t work and so since Buffy and Angel he’s been struggling. However he is talented enough that I’m sure one day he’ll catch a break.
All this just goes to show that even being part of a series that becomes a cultural phenomenon doesn’t mean much once the show has ended. Some of the actors from Buffy have had continued success, but even then, it’s difficult to say whether Buffy actually helped with that or not, or if they’re talented people who would have got the roles anyway. Other like Sarah Michelle Gellar and Nicholas Brendon have struggled massively, and it’s more than possible that Buffy is now an active hindrance to their career, because they’re so identified with the show. It’ll be interesting to see where all these people are in another 10 years time, although for my money, the one I reckon we’ll hear most from is Michelle Trachtenberg, who seems to have a very bright future ahead of her.
TIM ISAAC
PREVIOUS: Bubba Ho-Tep - Or, the wonders of an old Elvis fighting a mummy, and the legend that is Ossie Davis
NEXT: A Bug’s Life - Or, the astonishing success of Pixar
CLICK HERE to see the index of 909 films and TV shows the Movie-A-Day Project will be covering
CLICK HERE to find out more about the idea behind The Movie-A-Day Project
CLICK HERE to follow Movie_A_Day on Twitter
