Okay, by “meet” I mean, of course, “sitting in a crowd listening to a speech” and by “maker” I mean “the guy I really really like,” but that’s what it felt like yesterday when I went to see Joss Whedon speak at Sydney’s Opera House. This is the guy who wrote the show that changed how I viewed and still view television. Buffy the Vampire Slayer was the first show that I watched and then actually retained. I mean, there were shows that I liked and watched frequently, but it always went in one ear and out the other, but Buffy was different - it’s hard to explain and it’s a story for another day, but all I know is that I’m grateful it happened.
I didn’t know what to expect going into this thing yesterday. I figured he was going to talk about how cool it was to do the stuff he does and then he was going to be grilled embarrassingly by over-zealous zealots he calls “fans.” I have some friends who saw him in Melbourne the night or two before and said that he was charming and intelligent (which was no surprise) but the host they had didn’t facilitate well. Even though I believe we had a different host, I thought the worst that could happen is that we’d have a douche up on stage showing his ass, but I mean, a bad host is better than no Joss at all.
We were warned right. Will Anderson, a local comedian, was a crude and disrespectful facilitaor. Not that I think he meant to be, as I understand it, he is quite the fan, but he wore flip flops and swore a lot. Sometimes there were awkward pauses in conversation where the audience and Mr. Whedon were like “ehwha?” Not to mention he would occassionally interrupt the guest of honor to get his own less funny quip in. That said…
…then there was Joss.
And oh boy, was there Joss. He came out on stage with a bang. Smoke and blue light brought a silhouette out into the shape of a man; a hero to so many. Then he started to speak. The fact that he was just talking several yards away from me made the fangirl in me want to piddle in excitement. At that point he could do no wrong. Then, something brilliant happened. He said that he was going to talk about something different this time around, that he wasn’t going to give the stock standard speech about networks and little trivia about the shows that we could find out anywhere on the internet, he was instead going to talk about himself and what made him tick.
Oh. Em. Gee.
That. Just. Happened.
It was amazing. He got really intimate. He spoke about his childhood and his fears growing up and what scared him and what his “dark place” was. He said before he never knew why he wrote teenaged girls with superpowers. He always just thought they were cool, but something must have been asked at the Melbourne talk that made him think because he said that the last few days has put some things into place for him. Yes, he will always write about teenaged girls with superpowers, but more than that, he will always write about hopelessness. He said that these young girls he wrote were his avatar because he is a small scared man that will always need to be saved. Wowza.
Ah, now, that is interesting. He said that he was always frightened, helpless, and alone. He talked about his father and how he was scared of his disapproving scowl 1 and how if you dropped him three blocks from his house and turned him around twice, he would likely die of exposure. There was a vulnerability and a truth to what he was saying that I have never heard from him in any interview or DVD extra. It was amazing. Amazing is not the best, most articulate way to express that, but it’s all I got. There was something very human but still “Joss is God” like about him as he continued to talk.
When he spoke about himself and his eccentricities it was amazing how much I related to him. I know that must sound pompous, but I can’t help it. When he spoke about a plain, uneventful, childhood unworthy of a memoir and his social inability to speak to people, especially women, and I was there with him. When he said that he said he wanted to be everything, to do everything; to paint, to write, to draw, to dance, to play in a band — but then only got good enough to then quit, I wanted to jump out of my seat and shout ‘amen.’ When he said that he was not scared to be alone but often was, I empathized wholeheartedly, thinking about the little study I have made for myself that no one is allowed in. And when he said “I will never be less than a storyteller,” and spoke with a subtle, non-pretentious passion that oozed from ever pore, I was inspired and filled with hope. It was so moving that I didn’t want it to end.
But it did. Will Anderson came back on to try to be funnier than him and the mics were opened up to the audience to ask the equivalent of “what was your favorite childhood toy and why?” 2 I just wanted to scream at them all and get Joss to keep talking about whatever it was he wanted to say – politics, religion, shoe polish, anything – but alas, that would have been really awkward and Joss would have looked at me funny, so I allowed it to continue on course.
I did not expect to be a giant fangirl about this. I thought it would just be something fun and cool to say, like I mentioned, he was the guy who started it all. Showing up was the only way I could show my gratitude. I’m now so glad that I went, I got so much more out of it than ever thought possible.
____
He also made it clear that his father was a good man, one who never beat or abused him. He was just intimidating and Joss was just scared of disapproval. ↩
Though sadly that girl wasn’t there this time, even though I have seen here at every event I’ve gone to since moving to Australia. ↩
It’s pretty much just that. The entire series of Buffy the Vampire Slayer series compressed into 3 minutes to that song. You know, that song. Well, you’ll know it when the video loads.
Okay, so it’s not one of those quasi-clever mash up vids that we’re all such big fans of these days., but it’s well edited. That’s why I like it. It’s simple. The editing and timing take you on an actual journey instead of merely having you observe clips taken from a show. People with a lot of time on their hands really baffle me and I’m constantly surprised with what they come up with.
Sometimes it’s good to have a look back at things you enjoyed once upon a time and remember why you liked them in the first place.
When I was much younger, I was a big fan of Nick @ Nite. I’m not really sure why, but I really dug the Laverne & Shirley and Taxi reruns (though I’m fairly sure I never absorbed one single storyline and could not tell you, to save my life, what one episode was about). Peppered in the commercial breaks, Ben Stein, of all people 1 would come out and give little TV tidbits. I can remember one night in particular when I was floored to find that the television hour was only fifty minutes long. Fifty? Wow, that’s amazing! What do they do with the other ten minutes?
My older self is all too aware of what they do with the other ten minutes. They stretch it so it’s more than double and pack it full with the most grading ads of television history.
My Ben Stein/ I Love Lucy days were probably around 1995/1996. Last night, I was watching a show and it t was 39 minutes long. I know, you’re saying, Carrie, that’s pretty long for a sitcom. Yeah it is, except I was watching a so-called “hour long” drama. Do I need to repeat myself? 39 minutes. ”Hour long” show. Sitcoms today, like 30 Rock and How I Met Your Mother are fortunate enough to hit the 18 minute mark these days.
I don’t even know how I can express how ludacris this is. Packing a fulfilling storyline into less than twenty minutes– it’s doing more harm than good for our shows. The quality of our shows are having enough trouble as it is without having this uphill battle. It is possible to argue that it just forces the writers to make a much more crisp story in which they have no time to fool around with fluff, but you know what, that’s bull feces, and just an excuse for slackness and the lowest common denominator philosophies 2
The average Buffy episode lasted 43 minutes. That’s a four minutes drop in eleven years. When How I Met Your Mother first began, it was 22 minutes long. That’s four minutes in four years. And it’s the same damn show!
Not only is the hour disappearing, but at an increasing rate. At some point, writers aren’t going to be able to tell any story at all.
I don’t watch TV shows as they air. I prefer to watch them in large chunks of episodes and without commercials. I do not think I am going to like being able to watch a half-hour show in ten minutes and a hour show in thirty. The luxury of watching an episode is gone. It has been swept away with the rest of our face paced existence.
There might be a glimmer of hope though. Most basic cable hours are still forty-seven minutes long while some of the networks like Showtime and HBO still hit 53-54 minutes. Too bad these aren’t all that mainstream, and we still rely on the four major networks to supply us with our fix — even if the quality and quantity are racing each other down the drain.
At least I think it was Ben Stein, why would my brain lie to me? ↩
My friend Ben has finally decided to get a real blog. He’s been sort of blogging on Facebook, but he decided that it was time for him to branch. Good for him, bad for me. Unfortunately, Ben writes on THE topics and in THE way that I would love to and he does it much better than I could. 1 As I scanned his blog for the second time this evening, I saw he has delivered yet another terrific post. This one was about the sudden disappearance of the TV credits over the last few years. Personally, I would have just said “Blame Lost” and be done with it, but that’s why he’s better at blogging than me. I am just as sad as he to see the credits disappear from our television screens. I remember being physically depressed every time I watched Lost and saw the incredibly boring type float across the screen into abyss because it meant no real credit sequence, but ultimately, I got it, and it worked on some levels. Lost is about a group of people who are quite literally lost and are floating in what seems to be nothingness — it might as well be anyway. It’s a theme thing. My heart sank when this seemed to be an “Aha!” moment for TV Execs who thought this would be an excellent way to squeeze in yet a few more ads. Perhaps I am wrong on this though, and this is merely showrunners last attempt to regain a little bit of their ever-dwindling hour2 of entertainment by chucking the credits and adding 43 more seconds of awesome TV. Who knows.
While I completely echo Ben’s disappointment, I wonder if perhaps there is a light in the tunnel. The way people watch TV has changed over the last decade and will continue to in the near future. This is largely due to box sets and internet downloading (legal or otherwise). Now hours and hours of a series can be consumed in one go, ad free, for as long as the viewer can stand it. It’s like watching an insanely epic movie that just keeps going. You watch a season and when it runs out, you just run down to Blockbuster and get the next one. I often talk to people who have spent the last weekend marathoning or catching up on a show (or two). It’s easy to spend days on a show that’s a masterpiece. I know I’m guilty of this, and surely you are too.
Now, let me ask a question. You have the entire series of 7th Heaven in front of you to get through — what you don’t like it? It’s a perfect example because it has eleven seasons of deliciously boring episodes to get through, but fine, you pick the series of your choice. Depending on the show, you can have 80 – 100 episodes to get through. So here it is… How many episodes in are you before skip the title sequence? 10? 5? 2? Whether it is because the viewer is so engrossed in the show that they want to get to the action as soon as possible or it’s just due to the credits’ repetitive nature, spending that 45 seconds watching characters do the same dance to a song you will have in your head for days now is an absolute chore. I know I skip them, especially now that credits are less common, and I come to a show that still has them (usually a cable network) I just want to claw my eyes out. This goes double, triple even, for Showtime’s Dexter, who’s credit sequence goes on for almost a full two minutes.
As someone who’s ultimate goal in life is to get their own successful television series, I would love nothing more than to have an awesome credit sequence leading into my equally as awesome episode. I even have the tone and music and shots picked out in my head. It would be easy to blame commercials and the ever decreasing hour, but I wonder, even if we were given back the lost time, with the current trend of viewing, would we want to bring back credit sequences?
In the spirit of Ben’s post, I have decided to post a few fave sequences myself. Enjoy.
Full House
By todays standards, the series and credits were God-awful, but there’s still something about these credits delightful. It’s possibly that thought that these characters would take the time out of their busy days to turn and smile at the camera. How nice is Danny Tanner? Though I have long grown out of the show, and others of it’s calibre, there is something about the early nineties opener that really knew how to get your toes tappin’ and put in you in a good mood going into the episode. Step by Step, Family Matters and many more are all guilty of it and have equally entertaining opening counterparts.
Growing Pains
In a similar vein, there was Growing Pains. I loved this show and I still know every word to it’s theme song. I remember loving watching all of them grow up — though the young Jason and Maggie pictures that have been technicolored is a bit off putting. Oh look! They’ve left silly Jason out by the fence again! Silly man.
Edit: I just noticed in this particular version of the credits it was Mike who was left abandoned on the curb. Oh, those Seavers, always mixing things up!
Buffy the Vampire Slayer
Pardon me, but I can only link to this one. For some reason it’s near impossible to get the actual credits of the show off of youtube and once I actually found said actual credits, the embedding rights have been removed. Such is life. However, if you are in the mood for Buffy credits Alias Style, Charmed Style, Season 8 comic style or in still photos you are absolutely in luck.
Buffy had a great title sequence. It quickly set the mood for the show and introduced the characters in a way that showed off their individual personalities. I may be bias about this, but I think if you’re able to find them, it’s worth checking out.
And just so you’ll feel my pain.
Dexter
These credits are a beautiful work of art and damn near perfect. They are visceral and confronting while maintaining an mundanely domestic quality, in other words, these credits ARE the show. Well done, Showtime… but really, two minutes?
Since this post took so damn long to put together, no Wii Fit for me tonight. I’m taking my flabby self to bed.
Also, a link to Ben’s blog has been added to my links.
Ben, if you are reading this, you better not get a big head or I’ll have to punch you in it. ↩
A forty-two minute hour. What a concept… I wonder if works in exercising? ↩
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