Marstersverse - Джеймс Марстерс

VasquezE(01/17/04 17:24:45)

Геро, я почитала статью - это старая статья за март 2002 года. Buffy Online дают понять, что это что-то новенькое, но они то ли ошибаются, то ли намеренно вводят в заблуждение.
Вот текст этой статьи в txt

Interview with the Vampire
Article & pics appeared in Buffy Magazine March 2002
As Spike's role in Buffy cranks up a gear, we talk to the actor behind the
neutered vamp, James Marsters, to find out what's in store for his
character.
James Marsters' character saw some major developments in Buffy the
Vampire Slayer's fifth year, as we learned how the aesthetic poet William
was sired by Drusilla and turned into the rampaging monster we all love to
hate. Meanwhile, in the present, he's become infatuated with Buffy and
befriended the lost and confused Dawn. "To my mind, Spike has not
changed," James Maintains. "He's always been love's bitch, basically."
James firmly believes that the fifth season saw an unusual evolution
rather than a major change in the character. "If Drusilla had had a
younger sister, Spike would have tried to save her in the same way, with
the same depth of emotion that he did with Buffy's sister," he says.
"That's what I thought was so attractive about the character to begin
with: he had the contrast of being the really soulless vampire, but was
also truly in love. You saw a very romantic, tender side to him, even in
the second year. I thought the conflict and the tension between these two
things within him was interesting. That's why he wasn't a flat, cardboard
villain - he was a bad-ass, but he was so much in love. He was a real
sweetheart to Drusilla. So that was interesting."
Juliet Landau's prior film commitments meant she was unable to return
to the show's third season, leaving Spike to reappear alone. "Then I hated
my girlfriend Harmony," James continues. "She was there to deflect my
wrath for Dru, as always happens. Poor Harmony! She really got hers!"
James feels that Spike has effectively come full circle. "He's back to
where he was at the beginning, in a way," he states. "He's screwed though,
man, and he knows it too! He's in love with Buffy, but Buffy is never
going to be in love with him. He's so beneath her.
James has found it interesting witnessing Spike's recent developments,
although he reveals that he hasn't had much input into the character's
story arc. "It's interesting to work with a writer as he moves through his
characters," he says. "And to some extent it's undeniable that, as you
become part of each other's lives, who I am becomes fodder to Joss'
imagination. But it's not in my control."
However, James notes that there have been elements of his performance
that may have informed the way in which the writers have approached Spike.
"If you go back to 'School Hard', the first time I saw the Slayer I very
consciously played the hunter, both sexually and violently. In that scene
I'm looking at her, thinking, 'I'm going to have you, and I'm going to
kill you'. It's a leopard look. I'm like, 'Good going, Slayer, come on...'
I play those scenes like a hunter, and I wonder to some extent if other
people picked up on that. I don't know if Joss did.
"I don't have knowledge of what's happening in the next episode,"
James adds, referring to the show's production process. "Much less do I
have control. I always try to keep a balance - when Spike does something
really mean, I've always tried to give him a little warmth. I've always
thought it was my job to keep the audience with the character. When your
character sticks Buffy with a cattle prod, you really need to make sure
that the audience isn't going to think, 'The hell with him!', and leave
the character. I didn't want them to go off Spike at that point, which I
thought they might. The bit with the cattle prod was over the edge!"
James has always gone out of his way to ensure that the audience
doesn't forget that Spike is really not a very nice guy, that he's not
someone with whom you'd want to be intimate. "He's a monster," he admits,
"but if he likes you, he'd be your monster, and he would protect you above
all things. But he is a monster. I don't think women mind if he's a
monster, as long as he's their monster! Take note, guys," he grins. "You
can get away with anything if it's 'all for her'!
"I have no idea why Spike is sexy," James continues more seriously.
"He's sexy because Joss tells me to play him as if he is. To me, Spike is
a magic trick that I'm in on. I'm pulling some of the strings on that
puppet, but there are a lot of other people manipulating that character,
not just me. I like my part of it, and I'm very proud of it. I love the
character, but in a way when I look at him when I'm watching the TV show,
he's not me. The character is defined by what he says, not how he says it.
Spike is define on the page - when you read a script, you can see that.
However it is good to see that he's still sexy."
Spike's relationship with Dawn has enabled more character development.
"I used to bite people, and now I'm saving kids," James says ruefully.
"But if you're in love with someone, everyone they love becomes important
to you, because they're important to that person. So you develop
relationships with those people, and they become important to you. And in
a short amount of time, that becomes its own relationship.
"Spike and Dawn got put in contact with each other, so maybe he's not
so bad, which of course means they must be setting me up for something. My
mind just spins! I don't know what the hell they're up to. I never know
what Joss is thinking, I really don't. Nor do I really want to anymore. I
just want to go through this experience. They've softened me so much that
it's made me think I'm going to go evil. Spike's never the same two
seasons in a row. Maybe they're going to have to kill me... I have no
idea."
But James is adamant he enjoys working with Michelle Trachtenberg,
a.k.a. Dawn. Kristine Sutherland has described how the young actress
brought a new energy to the set. "She rocks as an actor!" he agrees
enthusiastically. She's great to work with. She's a total pro. She's so
talented - it's so unfair! How dare she be that good! I wasn't that good
at her age - I sucked when I was her age!"
James recalls the emotion of that moment on the crane in the final
episode of the fifth season, as Spike and Dawn both realise that the
vampire cannot help her. "'You're going to die - I failed you'," he
explains. "'I can't do anything to save you. They're going to stab you to
death... sorry!' It's interesting, because the inertia was carrying us at
that point. We'd been running from Glory on the set for weeks, in pretty
uncomfortable shooting conditions at times. It was sweaty, hot and dusty,
and bad for weeks. Everybody knew it was the 100th episode, and everybody
knew that it was the last time Joss was going to be on the set every
single day. So it was the end of a significant period of time on the show.
"In some ways, filming that scene was easy," he adds. "Joss came up
there and we shot it a couple of times. He knows which moments are key, so
he always makes sure that those are right. He gives more direction than
any director, certainly on film. Most directors are afraid of giving
direction. They're worried they're going to take you off and make you
uncomfortable by asking you to act too much. But Joss knows how to get
what he wants from you without doing that."
James very much enjoyed working on 'The Gift'. "I was 15 feet up in
the air on this wicked metal staircase," he recalls. "There were a lot of
edges on that thing! Joel Gray [Doc] was great - he got called to the set
at about 2:30am. He was tired, but he fought up there like a prince."
Even an episode in which Spike didn't appear has James raving. "People
were saying, 'someone's going to die on Buffy - can you tell me who?'" he
recalls of his experiences at conventions in the weeks prior to the
transmission of 'The Body', which saw the passing of Buffy's mother. "And
they'd have a little gleam in their eye, like it was going to be fun to
see who died. And I was like, 'Yes, someone is going to die, and you're
going to wish you'd never got excited about that. We're going to kill you
guys.
"It was phenomenal," James says of the episode. "It just made me more
and more proud to be on the show. It's like, all bets are off. Just when
you think you know what the show is, it's something completely different.
I don't know if Joss is showing off, or just testing himself, but if you
notice, with every episode that he's directed, Joss has stripped away one
of his strongest points. People used to say that his dialogue was the best
- and then he did 'Hush', the silent episode. Then they said his plots
were fabulous, and he did 'Restless', a dream episode with no narrative
whatsoever. Then they said he was marvellously funny, and he came up with
'The Body', with not one joke or laugh in the whole thing. I don't know -
what the hell is he going to do next?"
James immediately answers his own question with comments on Season
Six. The musical episode, of course. He's on fire about that. "We were out
on the dancefloor at a recent convention and he couldn't stop talking
about it. It feels like it's his first job - he's so excited, it's like
his first break as a writer. He's done the music, and it's fabulous. He
still claims not to know how to play piano! He will not admit to being
good."
The actor is adamant that Spike didn't belong within 100 miles of 'The
Body'. "It was part of Buffy's journey that was not having to deal with
vampires. The challenge was not vampires that day. That would have been
horrible, and of course, that's why Joss didn't do it. The episode was
marvellous. The visual language of the episode was very much like film -
there weren't a lot of close-ups, there wasn't a lot of coverage. Joss
obviously knew exactly what shots he wanted: there were a lot of moving
masters, and he incorporated a lot of figures of action. There was one
incredible master shot: the foreground was the entire classroom, and the
background was Dawn disintegrating as she heard the news. That was as good
a shot as I've ever seen - I don't know how long he spent on that one."
Working on Buffy is still an intensely physical experience for James.
From his first day on the set, he's wanted to do as many of his own stunts
as he can, learning moves from Steve Tartaglia, his stunt double, so that
he can use them and increase the credibility of the fight sequences. "If
my feet don't leave the floor, then it's basically me," he says. "There
have been a couple of times when, frankly, I was a little tired and Steve
went in. I thought they were going to wake me to do the shot, but they
didn't. It's probably somewhere between 60-70 per cent me, and 30-40 per
cent Steve. I love the fights."
James' favourite sequence came in the flashback fight on the subway
train in 'Fool for Love', when he disposes of his second Slayer. "That was
a 15-hour fight day," he recalls. "I think Steve was in for maybe two
shots, otherwise it was all me. The train wasn't actually on the move, it
was being jerked around by teamsters, so that was pretty intense. But it
made it a little easier to fight than it looked. the woman who was playing
the Slayer, April Whedon-Washington, was really evil."
The segment also showed how Spike obtained his distinctive coat. "Yeah
- from the back of a dead Slayer," he says. "On one of my first entrances
on the show, I wanted to rob the body of the guy I'd just tagged. But the
director saw Spike as an immortal prince and said he wasn't like that. I
thought, 'no, Spike's Sid Vicious - she's got a nice coat, just take it
man!' So I was glad about him taking the coat. I always wanted to show
Spike picking up off the bones of a dead body - the carrion." He smiles.
"I always wanted to show him putting on his eyeliner and make-up too," he
laughs, "but I don't think we'll ever do that now. The time for that has
come and gone."
While James in enjoying working on Buffy, he would also be interested
in crossing over to any new spin-offs currently in pre-production,
particularly the UK-based Anthony Stewart Head series, Ripper. "That would
be a good fit," he says. "Spike is British. I would love to come over here
and do some. That would be a dream. I think that's a fabulous idea,
harking back to Giles as Ripper. That's how I see him anyway - the rest of
it is just a little bit of a show. I love seeing Tony with the baseball
bat: I think that's where the character is. He's just being cool, because
he's learned his lesson now, but underneath it all he's just a bad-ass
waiting to come out. Tony's wondering what weapons he's going to have!
"As for the animated series," he continues, "I don't know if Spike is
going to fit in with that much. It's going to be the very early years .
But I hope they let me voice it, I wouldn't want anyone else to touch the
character, basically. I'm very possessive about him!"
James' travels around the world have given him an insight into the way
Buffy fans globally view Spike, and he's pleased to note that they respond
similarly. "Although in Britain they're better at expressing it," he adds.
"You guys know how to break the ice like nobody else. It's really nice,
because it takes the pressure off meeting people."
The actor is finding the downside to being what he describes as "a
cheesy celebrity." When he visited Australia recently, he found that he
couldn't travel around as much as he might have liked. "A magazine was
apparently running a competition," he explains. "'Whoever can find James
Marsters gets a bunch of money'. So there was a disinformation campaign
running saying that I was on the other side of side of Sydney, when in
fact I was at Darling Harbour. It was the most wonderful hotel, but I
couldn't leave. I did go out one day and see a waterfall, which was cool.
I want to go and see the world, but I would like to do it anonymously."
He doesn't have the same problem at home. "In Santa Monica, I'm
completely anonymous," he says. "People notice me, but I'm not really a
celebrity. I'm not Leonardo DiCaprio, for gods' sake! But when I go
somewhere as a 'celebrity', it's announced that a celebrity is coming, and
everyone's looking out for you from all the hype. If I just go anonymously
somewhere, I wouldn't get recognised. It's not like the Beatles in A Hard
Day's Night or anything. At a convention, I'm famous, but if I step
outside, I wouldn't be. Also, in LA, people are bored with actors. They're
like, 'Who cares if you're Dustin Hoffman? Get out of my way, I want
gas!'"
James recently worked with Buffy writer Christopher Golden on the
Spike and Dru comic book, recently released as a graphic novel, but has
gone on record about his disappointment at the end result. Although he
still want to continue working on the version of Macbeth that he has been
toiling on since before he became part of the Buffy cast, he's aware that
"when I go back to work on Buffy, there's not a lot of time. when you're
at work, you're at work. Even if I'm in my trailer, psychologically I like
to concentrate on one thing at a time. It's hard for me to split my
attention, frankly."
What free time James has it's currently focused more closely on music
making. "I'm really into my guitar," he says, his ace lighting up. "It's
going well. I'll write whatever I'm thinking. 'You screwed me, I know
you're going to hurt me. Go to hell.' Or, 'You're beautiful, I'm thinking
about you all the time'." He also finds hat the music is an outlet for any
frustrations he is feeling.
James has also had the opportunity to jam onstage with Four Star Mary,
the band who appear on Buffy as Oz's group Dingoes Ate My Baby. "That was
fun," he laughs. "They're very good. They just turn my guitar up and give
me a lot of distortion! They're good guys, and I'm learning from them.
Playing with a band is entirely different from playing by yourself. With a
band, the whole point is to keep exact rhythm, so you come in and out. You
have to hit everything cleanly, or else you muddy the whole thing up and
it disappears. When you're playing by yourself, you can just go with your
own flow, and switch it up as much as you like."
The trip to Britain allowed James to follow in the footsteps of some
of the famous bands. "Four Star were at The Garage in Brixton, and they
were having such a tight set that I really didn't want to go up. I really
try not to screw up their sets. But everybody was expecting me. It worked
out pretty good though, I have to say. We did especially well on the Cars'
'You're just What I Needed', the old cover. We were going to do Cheap
Trick's 'Surrender', but Cheap Trick had just played there the night
before, and had performed 'Surrender', so we thought we'd be tempting
fate!"
Returning to Buffy, James reveals that he's genuinely pleased that the
fans still want to see more of Spike. "We've basically turned the
character on his head this year and we risked flushing him down the
toilet. When I found out he was going to be a wuss, I was like, 'Screw
this!' But it's amazing," he admits. "It's exactly what the producers were
hoping for."
So it's made the character much more complicated, sweet, pathetic,
vulnerable and recognisable.

Я помню еще и потому, что когда-то держала этот журнал в руках