The Star That Joss Whedon Believes Caused The Buffy Movie To 'Fall Apart'
In the wake of the highly influential series version of "Buffy the Vampire Slayer," the 1992 movie of the same name gets a lot of undeserved flak. Many fans of "Buffy" the series find the film to be a little too cheeseball for their liking, and with "Buffy" creator Joss Whedon's extremely vocal dislike of how the film turned out, it's been easy for others to take a similar stance. As I've pointed out before in writing about the film, "Joss Whedon also famously hates the 'Buffy the Vampire Slayer' movie, frequently citing his dislike of the changes director Fran Rubel Kuzui made during production. Odd, considering between Kuzui and Whedon, only one of the two has ever actually experienced life as a teen girl, but I digress."
However, Whedon has also been very vocal about another reason he feels the "Buffy" movie failed, placing blame on the shoulders of one of the film's lead performers. And no, he doesn't mean Kristy Swanson. In a 2003 interview with IGN, Whedon placed the blame on arguably the film's biggest star at the time, Donald Sutherland (who played Buffy's Watcher, Merrick). "I believe that part of the problem was that the director was unable to control the big, fat, wannabe movie star who came — you know, the old guy ... Donald," said Whedon.
"They were changing their lines and running roughshod over her and everybody else, and I'm sorry, you can't have that," he amended. "You have to have faith in the leader, and in that situation, the leader has to be the director. In TV, it has to be the producer." Now, I could say "People in glass houses shouldn't throw stones" but given the countless allegations the cast of the "Buffy" series has made over the years about a toxic work environment, I don't know if Whedon has a leg to stand on here.
And the pot called the kettle
The interview with IGN isn't the only instance of Whedon popping off about Sutherland. During a conversation with The A.V. Club in 2001, Whedon took things a step further and called the Emmy Award winner a "prick." Read his rant below:
"He was just a prick [...] He would rewrite all his dialogue, and the director would let him. He can't write — he's not a writer — so the dialogue would not make sense. And he had a very bad attitude. He was incredibly rude to the director, he was rude to everyone around him, he was just a real pain. And to see him destroying my stuff ... Some people didn't notice. Some people liked him in the movie. Because he's Donald Sutherland. He's a great actor. He can read the phone book, and I'm interested. But the thing is, he acts well enough that you didn't notice, with his little rewrites, and his little ideas about what his character should do, that he was actually destroying the movie [...]"
Listen, I'm an unapologetic lover of the "Buffy the Vampire Slayer" movie, and it speaks a lot more to my sensibilities than the series ever did (despite loving the series), and given what we now know about Whedon's controlling behavior on his own sets, it's hard not to view his comments as nothing more than a tantrum from a creative who felt threatened by someone daring to question his self-believed "brilliance." Was Donald Sutherland actually a prick, or is Whedon a man incapable of taking constructive criticism or trusting an actor's instincts? I don't have an answer for that, because I wasn't there, but I do know that no one else who has ever worked with Donald Sutherland has made a sequel project and included creative choices that retconned his visions so that fans could enjoy the property again.
Why bring up Whedon's 20-year old quotes?
Alright, look, I'm sure some of you reading this are wondering why we're even discussing comments Whedon made over 20 years ago about a less-than-stellar '90s movie. It sounds like old news, and in the grand scheme of things ... who cares? However, all of his comments were made long before people knew the truth about Whedon as a person in leadership positions on sets, and long enough ago for the general public to have formed their opinion on the film with his influence in the back of their minds.
After the untimely and tragic passing of Paul Reubens aka Pee-wee Herman, many people decided to give the "Buffy the Vampire Slayer" movie another try — considering his role as Amilyn is not only one of his best, he even reprised it on the "What We Do in the Shadows" series.
The result was a lot of folks realizing, "Hey, this movie is a lot of fun, actually!" and that's because it is a fun movie, but the comments of the writer who became wildly successful and was hailed as a hero have been hanging over the public's opinion of the film for decades. This should serve as a reminder to us all that treating the words of anyone as gospel is a great way to prevent the possibility of developing an opinion for ourselves. Give "Buffy the Vampire Slayer" the film a watch and see how you feel about the film.
If you don't like it, at least you'll know that it's because you didn't like it and not because some guy who has been accused of treating his casts terribly on multiple projects told you not to.