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VasquezE (03/02/04 16:26:27)
Maтериалы в журнале "Баффи".

DeborahMM со Спарклей расшифровала интервью-статью в новом номере Buffy Magazine

Another month, another BtVS magazine. I don’t by any means always buy it, but I did this time, because it features another interview with JM, and because the whole magazine is full of Spike stuff. It starts in the editorial, where they say that ‘each month we get absolutely inundated with letters from readers who want more Spike – Spike posters, Spike interviews, James Marsters’ phone number’ etc.

There’s a special Spike issue of their quiz (I knew all the answers, thus confirming my status as Sad Fan Girl), and there’s quotes and pictures from Becoming part 2 (the Spike/Buffy conversation by the police car. There’s also a feature about the various season’s Big Bads, which has this to say about the downfall of the First in season 7: ‘Girl power. Between an army of Potentials and a witch more powerful than all the men who first called the Slayers, Buffy has some serious dusting power. Oh yeah, and let’s not forget some major boy power from Buffy’s new champion, Spike.’ Heh! Boy power.

The JM interview, which is full of lovely pictures, didn’t raise my hackles once, mainly because he doesn’t talk much about Spike at all, but mostly about acting, his music, doing the audio books etc. I’m not going to transcribe all the music stuff, simply because I’m not very interested in it, although obviously I hope that it’s something from which James will derive enjoyment for as long as possible. However, there’s some interesting stuff about his early life which, although I read it before, not in so much detail, and also a very little about Spike and the AtS set.

Interview by Abbie Bernstein.

The early life stuff:

‘James was born in Greenville, California and raised in Modesto, where he began acting in school plays and community theatre. After graduating from high school, he first attended the Pacific Conservatory of Performing Arts, then moved to New York to take his acting studies further. It was a tough time, James recalls: “I was really poor in New York. I lived on 48th Street, between Eigth and Ninth at the Hotel Belvedere with another student, who was even more unhappy at school than I was. I also at another time had an apartment in Queens, down by the water in Astoria, where I didn’t have any glass on the windows – I had newspaper over the windows.” Still, James explains that there were some good things about living in New York: “Going to the museum, going to the Guggenheim and just glancing down at whatever the big installation was on the floor. Going up to about the second or third floor on a really nice sunny day when the light is really intense, or going across to the Metropolitan Museum and giving them a quarter and watching them give you the poop-face but knowing they had to let you in anyway, and staying warm that way. There was a Japanese tea garden there that I used to spend a lot of time in – it may still be there.” James moved to Chicago, where he and some friends founded the Genesis Theatre, then eventually migrated to Seattle, where he co-founded another theatre company, the New Mercury Players, named after Orson Welles’s theatrical troupe. “I’ve been involved professionally in more than 70 plays,” James estimates. “I think I produced 20 to 30.” He lists a few of his favourites: “Steven Berkoff’s ‘Kvetch’, we did in Seattle, Christopher Fry’s ‘Phoenix Too Frequent’, the production we did in Chicago, ‘A Life is a Dream’, the Pedro Calderon de la Barca play known as the Latin Hamlet, that we did in Seattle, and also John Olive’s ‘Killers’. There was an original play called ‘I Might Be Edgar Allan Poe’ that I was very proud of. We were the first theatre to do Dr Suess.” The New Mercury theatre eventually closed. James explains: “We had critical acclaim, we had good audiences, we were making 70 per cent of our operating revenue at the box office, which is a very high percentage for an American theatre, but we did not have non-profit tax status, which meant that we didn’t get grants in time to bail us out whenever we had a low attendance.” It wasn’t the theatre closing that brought James to Los Angeles, however: “I came down here because I didn’t want to die poor! In the end, I was hanging around with 50-60 year old actors who I respected, who could work at the Guthrie, could work anywhere in America, and who didn’t have a car. And I finally thought, “It’s time for me to try and just get something in the bank before it gets too late,” he laughs.’

A little snippet about Venetian Heat:

‘Mutant Enemy had been willing to give Spike a smaller role for part of AtS’s fifth season so that James could go to Europe and film ‘Venetian Heat’, a feature in which he would have played a married Italian farmer in pre-WW2 Italy, who discovers he is gay. Unfortunately, the project has been postponed, but James is philosophical about what happened: “As is true with all independent films, the financing had to come from a lot of different areas, so there were a lot of different areas that could have fallen through – and one did. Oh, well, “he adds, “I’ll catch Italy later.” Since James will be around after all, will Spike be written more strongly into the episodes? “I suspect so,” he laughs.’

I feel sad that he missed Italy and hope that he has another chance like that one day. Can’t place when this interview could have taken place, though. Perhaps around the time Destiny was filmed?

Finally, a bit about the current season and Spike:

‘However, even with all this going on, James says he still loves playing Spike and is pleased to stick with AtS as long as Joss wants him on the show. During the last season of BtVS, James gave several interviews in which he said that his Method acting technique wasn’t designed for sustaining a role year-in, year-out. “Method acting for series television can eat you alive,” he told BtVS Magazine last year. Does he still feel that way? “With the Method,” James clarifies, “it depends on what you have to play.” In other words, it’s only a problem when scenes like the attempted rape in ‘Seeing Red’ come up; so far, AtS has not called for anything similar. “The things that I’m having to play here on AtS, I can go ahead and indulge myself and get into and not get burned by.” For a self-professed badass vampire, Spike has spent a considerable amount of time on BtVS and AtS in a state of profound terror, an emotion a lot of performers – especially men – are reluctant to depict fully. James has no such hesitation: “It’s not difficult at all. Even the biggest guy’s guy is afraid. The difference between cowardice and courage is what you do when you’re afraid. Everyone feels fear,” he says. “I think it’s very human and as an actor, it gives you a lot to do.” Besides a less flammable (emotionally and literally) Spike, another contrast that James is finding between AtS and BtVS is the gender balance of the series regulars. Does the set feel any different because of it? “The hairstylists don’t have to pay so much attention to the cast members,” he replies. “No, seriously, that’s a big difference. One strand of hair can cost us 10 to 15 minutes. Girls have longer hair and it’s harder to keep it perfect. On AtS, we don’t have to hold for hair,” he laughs. “But it’s a Hollywood set. We’ve got girls in the cast, and we don’t crack dirty jokes all the time. There’s not that much difference in male/female. I guess there could be, but both Sarah and David are real professionals, so that it’s not like Sarah inflicted a feminine atmosphere and David inflicts a masculine one”. So overall James is happy with the way things are going, and the many different directions that his life is taking him in. As he neatly sums up, “I’m pleased that my career is growing. I work very hard at it – and I’m proud of what I do.”

Elsewhere in the magazine there’s an interview with April Weedon Washington, in which they ask her how come she didn’t get to reprise the part of Nikki Wood in season 7. She says: “I received a call from the casting director at BtVS saying that they were bringing the character back. I was told to come in and audition back in September. Then I got a phone call from casting saying that there was “a certain maturity” about me now, so I didn’t get the part.” She’s obviously very disappointed about it, because she goes on to say: “It was a blow for me not to get called back. I’m trying to get my acting career off the ground and this might have put me on the map.”

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