Miss Kitty
~ Out of this World ~
Nombre de messages : 60540
Age : 34
Date d'inscription : 07/01/2009
 | Sujet: Convention à Sydney (Australie) - 2001  Mar 1 Nov - 21:12 | |
| Transcript de la convention s'étant déroulée en 2001, à Sydney, en Australie. - Citation :
FSF Spike Convention – Q&A – Transcript
date: May 19-20, 2001
place: Sydney, Australia
transcripted by: Bendy / Lilycat (thank you)
Hello hello… thank you Sydney. Damn there’s a lot of you here [takes off coat] take your pictures, I’m such a queen for a day, thank you… I think what they want to do is have the pictures first and then questions later, but we can do both at once if you want to… it’s very exciting- I feel like I should be saying we’re at war now or something, something important. [poses].[someone comments on his posture] You know they keep telling me that on Buffy and I never listen to them- I’m serious, I’m learning about how to act with Sarah Gellar, ’cause you can’t get in Sarah’s light and so when they do my over stuff- I never stand up straight on the show, I’m always like this [slouches, headtilt] otherwise I lean my head this way, I’m never in the same place twice and they’re always like ‘James, you’re in the shot, your big thick huge head is just blocking the star of the show again’ So from now on you’ll notice, from now on when I’m acting with Sarah, when you see the back of my head, Spike’s always like this [stands stiffly upright] and then when you see me I’m always like this [slouches, headtilt].
[poses for photos some more]
There’s gonna be a microphone floating around, I think it would be much better just like answering questions, interesting stuff starts to fall out that way. So we have a mic if anyone has anything interesting they want to tell me… uh, the nastier the better. [to first questioner] You’re on, baby.
Q: Well I wanna start by saying Spike rules. [JM thanks her] Could you please tell us about your days in rep theatre?
JM: In rep theatre? Oh… [takes drink] The problem in America was, is, that ah, there is no rep theatre any more. That got cut out… Ronald Reagan took care of that one. There was a time apparently they tell me, back in the golden days of Jimmy Carter when there was a lot of arts funding that got completely cut out. So there’s a lot of theatres in America that call themselves rep theatres-repertory for those of you who don’t know is when a theatre mounts, say four to six productions at once, and so an actor plays a villain one night, then a good guy, then a goofball… and it’s just like a banquet for an actor… but it’s very expensive, you have to store six sets, you have to have extremely big casts and people can’t afford to do it any more, it’s sad. I wish I could tell you what it was like — it’s like what were the Greeks- what were the beautiful golden days of the Greeks like [shrugs]. But yeah. Give to the arts and they will find out how fun that is. [smattering of applause] Clap for it man, yeah, the arts [raises hands, audience applauds].
[the mic no longer works. someone passes him another]
Q: Hi James… you’ve thrown me, I’ve forgotten my question [JM says something] Sorry?
JM: [without mic] I don’t need a microphone, ’cause now I can show off.
Q: Okay, please do. But yeah, I’ve been watching the progress of your character, and thinking god he’s such a teenager — do you think he’s a teenager in adult form?
JM: Do I see Spike as a teenager? That’s a very good question — no, I’m serious — he is a very young vampire, he’s only a hundred and twenty. So he’s immature, man. You know I wanted to have Dru tell him [bored voice] ‘yes, I’m going for Angel, these things happen when you live for eternity — grow up.’ But yeah, he’s grossly immature for a vampire, he’s a little baby. ‘You hurt my feelings, Buffy’.
Q: Hi James [JM: hello, love.] I just wanna say you are so hot. [audience cheers, JM looks embarrassed and walks up and down]
JM: Thank you, but I try so hard not to contemplate that. I’m serious I told myself if I ever wake up and say to myself, ‘hi, I’m a celebrity’ [shakes head] shoot me, you know? Tie me up with a rope. But thank you.
Q: [same questioner] I just think you’re an amazing actor and I love you so much. Especially on the top part of Angel when you’re on the top and you’re hassling him and you’re saying he’s a big poof and all that. I’ve got it my computer — when you start up my computer that’s all you hear…
JM: How do you think like Boreanaz feels about that? Seriously- everybody likes that, that’s their favourite speech from Spike, and it’s on his show, you know? By the way I thought that that was one of the bravest things the producers and the writers could have done for their show because that was only their third episode of Angel, they didn’t know if it was going to fly or it would be cut or cancelled immediately… and they lobbed every criticism that anybody could throw at that show and put it right in my mouth and they dissed themselves, that’s why they’re so cool.
Q: [same questioner] I just wanted to ask if you do your own stunts.
JM: Uh, no. I don’t do all my own stunts, I do about seventy percent of my stunts. I come from stage, so, on stage you don’t get a stuntman to come in. So I know basic hand to hand combat, basic broadsword, fencing, dagger, stuff like that. But there are people who are much better than I am — Steve Tartaglia is the stunt Spike. The rule of the show basically is if my feet are on the ground, it’s me — so if I’m flying around with a big Kung Fu move or bouncing off the wall and hit the guy, that’s Steve Tartaglia, who is a maniac and does not know the word safety. He freaks people out all the time. There’s a bit that you guys are gonna see at the end of the season when Spike takes a big fall, and it had to be cut with the best stunt fall guy in all Hollywood. There are only three guys that’ll take a hundred and seventy foot fall and we got the best guy to do it, but it also has to cut with Steve taking a six foot fall, onto concrete. I mean they gave him a couple of foam bricks where- I would say five, maybe. And he — most guys would try to like not jump so high… he took it off a chair like this [demonstrates] jumped up, kipped and then went flat, so he went six feet up in the air and then straight down on his face. Right? And then me, I get down on my knees and I do this [gets on knees and slumps forward, looking weedy] And the embarrassing thing is like all the whole crew is like ‘Oh, great stunt James, we’re so glad you’re not hurt’. While Steve’s bleeding in the corner. Really- one time in Crush when Buffy decks Spike and Spike takes it straight into the uh, there’s a vanity there… Steve just [struggles to explain] frapped his face against the cave wall, I mean it was just blood all over the place, and he was lying on the floor and the director and producer are talking- bringing me over and start talking to me about the new shot as they just carried him away. I’m just ‘stop, man — he’s hurt’ and he’s all [macho] ‘no, guys, I’m okay. I’m fine, get me the superglue’. That superglue is what stuntmen use instead of bandages, they superglue their faces back together so they can get back in the shot. I figured out that stunt guys get hurt all the time, they just don’t admit it. They always say ‘I’m fine, I’m fine’ and then they go off by themselves and collapse. I’m kind of the same way because I like to do my own stunts, and if I get hurt they don’t trust me to do the stunts, so once I did this — the stunt guys, they got into — they understood that I would not complain if they tagged me, or if I get hurt I’m not gonna tell anybody that I’m hurt. Suddenly they start pulling out all these potions and salves from Asia, and all of this secret medicine that keeps you going, and so I’ve been let into the internal world of stuntguys and — those guys work hard, they’re maniacs. Anyway, next question.
Q: Hi. It’s a bit of a stupid question, but if you were a kitchen appliance, what would you be?
JM: [laughs, thinks hard] A spoon. I’d be a spoon. [looks at a loss, laughs again] Anything that would go into the mouth of a pretty girl. [audience laughs]. By the way these are the best questions — can you write the questions for all the other conventions that I go to? These are much better. Much.
Q: Okay. I just wondered — we all have our own favourite Spike quotes but I wanted to know what yours is. Like if you have a favourite awesome Spike quote or episode moment that you’ve done — I know you’ve done like a million of them but if you could pick one that you really love.
JM: See this brings up this strange thing that I don’t even know you want to hear about — my memory of doing Buffy is that if we get the lines right, we move on. So we forget like ‘what was that scene, did we do that scene, what episode was that scene from’, ’cause we work like twenty hours days five days a week, and so it’s hard for me to come up with any specific line. [thinks] I always like ‘he’s a biig fluffy puppy with bad teeth’ [audience approves] I like that one. [laughs] David’s gonna kill me. He’s gonna have me back on his show just to kill me.
Q: We hear so much about on TV sets you have quite a bit of down time in between saying lines like he’s a big fluffy puppy. What do you do in your down time?
JM: Sleep. Either study lines, or try to catch up on sleep. It is- sleep is the holy grail on a television set, it is the main thing is ‘how did you sleep last night, how are you doing with the sleep situation’ it is, god, go in a crash on your bed for twenty minutes if you can. It is a marathon, the psychological effects of which I am still surprised at. [laughs] It’s just insane. You have nothing, you have no life, you’re just in your trailer and you’re just — and thank god I love the TV show, you know. Because what I realized is that if you hated your TV show, you’d be working the same hours. But luckily what we all know on Buffy, at the end of the day, at the end of the week when the film comes out it’s gonna be delightful. And that floats us through all of the — but that and, I like to get action figures and put them in nasty positions. [audience laughs] And I just got the Spike doll, and now I gotta get the Buffy doll. And I’m trying to get some positions going but it’s a little hard to work with — we’ll see about that, the legs have got to bend a different way- but anyway.
Q: The Giles doll has an axe.
JM: Yeah, doesn’t he? Can he hold the axe? Because Spike, the doll guy, he needs the Kung Fu grip thing, man. He can’t hold any of the cool guy weapons they gave him. They fall out of his hand, he’s like the pathetic vampire slayer. [demonstrates] Oops. [someone suggests superglue] Yeah, superglue them in. No, but I was interested to see that they gave me a stake, you know. I thought hey, they’re selling me as a vampire slayer as opposed to just a vampire, I thought that was cool. I wanted Giles to have a flaming bat in his. I though that was bad-ass.
Q: I just wanted to say Fool For Love was like the coolest episode, when you get to see the whole evolution of the character in forty five minutes, that was just incredible. But if there was one person you could work with anywhere, who would it be and why?
JM: One person that I’d like to work with. I would choose two — Robert de Niro and Meryl Streep. Yeah. Because both of them seem to realize something that I’ve only started to scratch at, which is what you bring to the set is what you cannot help but bring to the set. And that you just have to come there and be prepared to surprise yourself. And to improvise. So that all the cool little plans that I make up the night before that I want to do to the scene- that’s just crap. You know your lines, look into the other guys — and have the courage to follow your instinct. And what I’ve read in interviews from them and what I’ve seen of their work, that’s what they do. And what happens then is that the camera actually documents something that is happening for the first time. Not someone acting like it’s happening for the first time, but what is actually happening. In fact Meryl Streep only does three takes. She will refuse to do any more than three takes, because after that it’s acting. [shrugs]
Q: Do you have any say in Spikes future or is that all up to Joss?
JM: It’s totally up to Joss. Do you know how good of a Christmas present I give him every year? [laughs] ‘Need a back-rub, bub? Can I walk your dog?’ It is totally up to Joss. And at first it was terrifying because Joss — if he likes your character he will start putting you through gross humiliation. That for him is the human condition. And so when he put me in the Hawaiian shirt, I was really grousing about it, you know, I was in the make-up trailer which I thought was kind of like the lunch room, where you’re safe… and I’m like ‘if I was told I was playing Urkel, I would sign up for Urkel. But I was told I was playing Spike, and now I’m playing Urkel.’ So I got talked to about that. But by at the end of the season I was- I told him it was like a rollercoaster — scary at first but by the end of it your heads back and you’re laughing. I told him ‘dude, put me in a tutu if you want to. I don’t care’. And he’s got me kissing Buffy, so [laughs] whatever you want, Joss.
Q: Hi. What’s it like to work for Joss? His writing’s so fantastic… watching the show, he’s just so clever.
JM: Makes me feel like a mental pygmy. It’s wonderful, like I say… coming from theatre, we have arguments over the authors intent. What the author intended, because the author is usually dead. So you could win an argument with the boss, the artistic director of the Guthrie theatre, if you win the argument about authors intent. But my job is so much easier ’cause I just go ask Joss. It’s wonderful working with him — he has a humility and also a passion about his work. He knows exactly what he wants, but he’s still a guy that drives a 1989 Celica. He just cut a $20 million deal with Fox and he drives this ’89 car. And he’s like ‘it’s a good car’. He’s a freak, he’s a brilliant freak. He was up for an Emmy, I think, and he turns up to the television critics association with a t-shirt saying ‘hack’. It just seems like he dares you not to be cool enough to appreciate him. Yeah, I love him. He’s a personal friend actually, we hang out a lot — I think he’s a great guy.
Q: I want to ask a question that’s not related to Buffy- it’s two-fold. What motivates you to want to get up and act, why acting? And are you doing Shakespeare in Chicago, and why Macbeth? Sorry that’s three.
JM: Basically acting was just fun. From a very early age, I found it fun I suppose because I had a facility for it. I think that’s why anybody- you know if you’re good at math, it’s because you do it, and it becomes a little bit easy, and you get a little success at it, and you just keep following that. It was fun. I was also drawn in plays to a sense of a large group of people coming together in one cause… that ends up being kind of beautiful in front of- and powerful hopefully… or very boring. And the ability to fool large groups of people. Into thinking that I’m killing this guy, or we’re now in France, it’s just so funny really. But we all suspend our disbelief and we can go anywhere we want to. Um, and you asked why Macbeth? Macbeth is, it’s a very profound meditation on evil. I think Shakespeare is saying evil is a product of human choice, not of an external devil. We don’t want to blame someone else for our actions- this is a human being doing an evil deed. And also quite frankly it hasn’t been done well. There has been no good Macbeth since Laurence Olivier did it in ’57. So it’s ripe. It’s a beautiful peach just waiting for someone to pick it off and kick butt with it. I’m just praying Kenneth Branagh doesn’t screw it up before I get to it. He’s too old. He’s a good actor but come on, Macbeth has got to kick butt on the battlefield. Kenneth is, you know, fifty years old. Well, it’s too old for the battlefield, and also Macbeth has got to be ambitious and young, that’s why you can forgive him. Or at least understand him. He’s not yet wise. Kenneth is old enough to be wise. [audience laughs] I’m not trying to put him down, his Iago was impressive, his Iago was incredible, I mean absolutely like honey. Much Ado was brilliant as well, but Macbeth is not his role. [someone asks about Hamlet] Hamlet? I didn’t like his Hamlet. His [some Shakespeare character] was brilliant but see I like Mel Gibson’s Hamlet much better. [audience agrees] first of all he’s got Franco Zeffirelli who directed it, so it’s got that going for it, but Mel got to a childlike innocence that since, that Holden Caulfield kind of thing- of someone who is almost an adult, who is trying to figure out how to become an adult in a very mixed up screwed up world. And how to get past disillusionment into action. Do I give up? The world is screwed, do I give up or do I do something about it. And I thought that Gibson got a much cleaner, much more humble… I though Kenneth Branagh just wanted to show off. [shrugs] It’s tough… my Hamlet would probably suck worse than that. But kudos to Mel, basically. Hey, he’s an Aussie, right? Yeah. Go Aussies.
Q: I just wanted to know, it was rumoured that you were leaving Buffy to focus on movies, is that true?
JM: No, it’s a big lie. Joss is such a trickster, he like to lie on the posting boards. Basically Riley was leaving the show and he wanted to cover that up. So he had Riley staking me in the chest with a plastic spike- uh, stake, and he showed that on TV, he shows Riley staking me and then puts the rumour out that I get a movie, and everybody doesn’t even think about the fact that Riley might be leaving the show. And that’s what that was about. He asked me to be in on that one, and I had a hard time lying to people- what I said was ‘I’m not in a position to deny that’. I was Richard Nixon…
Q: Hello, I’ve just got something that might stretch you a little bit- have we introduced you yet to Tim Tams?
JM: Tim Tam chocolate bars? Yes, suck ‘em through coffee and hot chocolate? [thumbs up]
Q: [same questioner] Are you a milk chocolate fiend or a dark chocolate fiend?
JM: Milk chocolate. Although all chocolate is good. It’s chocolate.
Q: Who do you most like working with on the show and is there anyone who is a real pain in the ass?
JM: [laughs] That’s a real safe question to answer. No. In all honesty, frankly, there are no pain in the asses — well there was one. He was a guest star, he was in for one episode and what it really reminded me of was man, that’s the first one I’ve met. Everyone else is cool. We all seem to have been hired because we’re good at working as a group as much as our talent as actors. And that goes for the crew as well. But yeah man, there was one guy that David Boreanaz and I were gonna truly beat the living hell out of. ‘Cause he did something inappropriate with Sarah. I mean he didn’t tou- he said something. And apparently it had happened before — and David and I were like ‘who holds him and who hits him’, man. And I wanted to hold him and David was like ‘Dude, he’s big — I’ll hold him, you hit him’. We didn’t, and he hasn’t been back on the show and he never will be. But everybody else is absolutely fabulous. We like to hang out with each other afterwards, we often actually go over to Joss’ every week to read Shakespeare plays. The actors, also the writers and people from the show and then we all drink a little bit and play music and stuff. So they are a fantastic group of people. My favourite person to work with is Tony Head. ‘Cause I think he’s the best actor on the show. I became a bad ass on the show when Tony told you I was a bad ass on the show. Remember that scene in the library? He told you people to be afraid of Spike ‘he’s a badass and everyone’s afraid of him’ and all of a sudden everyone shakes. And he does all the heavy lifting of the show, he does the, what’s called the exposition- he sets up all the information that you need to know, all the background that you need to know for the story to start. And that’s really hard to keep interesting. And if we ever lose Tony, we’re in trouble.
Q: I have a question on your accent — why is it poof and not puff?
JM: [laughs] because I’m a dumb American, is it supposed to be puff? Tony tries to help me with this stuff but it just, sometimes he’s not on the set. Poof, puff, puff? [gets it right] Now is that Australian or English? It’s both. Puff. [tries again] I’m gonna have to tell them to not write that word in, I just can’t get it right. He once told me ‘James, say ass. It’s not arse, its ass, we say it like the rest of the world’.
Q: Hi, I was just wondering if you can do the accent for us and are you gonna sing?
JM: [audience cheers] I only do the accent for money- no, I’m just kidding. Yeah, I’m gonna sing, I love to sing. I sing around town in LA all the time at a club called 14 Below, sometimes at the Opium Den. I do a lot of originals. And what would you like me to say in the accent? [in the accent] Usually I lower my voice and speak very deeply, and the sound guy often asks me to speak up, and I say no. It’s just something that I hope I get better at- I didn’t do it very well in the beginning… if you notice in the first- in School Hard I was like [bad accent] ‘You were theyer’. What in living hell country are you from? South Carolina Hampton, New Hampton, Virginia? Plantation owner Spike, I don’t know. It’s gotten better. But yeah, at some point I will pull out a guitar — do you guys wanna do that now? Yeah? [loud applause] [someone passes him a guitar] I don’t know how loud this is gonna be, we don’t have a mic for it, this is just going to be impromptu. But let me do a couple of originals, okay?
This is a song I wrote instead of smashing my apartment up- about a girl who would not call me [audience doesn't believe it]
[sings Goodbye, audience claps along]
I love that, I can sing about stuff I would never tell you for real, but put it in a song and somehow it’s acceptable. This is glorious.
Q: I was just wondering what you musical tastes are and whether you will sing us your Buffy song.
JM: [confused] I don’t have a Buffy song.
Q: Yesterday you said you wrote a funny song about Buffy…
JM: [confused] Was I at the bar, last night? I don’t remember- I got a bunch of songs, but none of them are about Buffy, I’m sorry — what was the first part of your question? Oh, I have a wide range of musical tastes, right now I’m heavily into Miles Davis. Especially this album that’s been haunting me for a year, called So What. I just- I can’t get it out of my head, it’s just amazing. Also Byrd. He’s one of my favourite jazz musicians. I’m getting into Robert Johnson- he was the guy, they say he sold his soul to the devil at the crossroads for the secret of the blues. And he was one of the first ones to play the blues, and nobody had heard anything like it at the time. Johnny Lee Hooker is another early guy that I like to listen to — I still like Nirvana, nobody else has [audience cheers] yeah, see my feeling is that the boy bands kind of took everything over — grunge kid of got us back to the punk roots of rock and roll, and then the corporate stuff has just taken over again and we got the Britney Spears and the N’Sync and Backstreet Boys — and basically a lot of music that seems to have been created in a corporate boardroom as opposed to a garage which is where I like music to have come from. So Greenday, I love Greenday, Radiohead, Coldplay rocks. The list- okay, I like Morsheeba, Portishead, [thinks] everybody, I love music. I just lost about a hundred and fifty CDs and I’m just sick about it. Yeah, I come home, light my candles, put on my Miles Davis, light incense and go sit on the couch. Yeah.
Q: Thank you for singing
JM: thank you, could you hear it back there?
Q: Yeah. With Buffy there’s the whole concept of vampires and sexuality, that whole thing with Riley just whacked us over the head with it, but I was wondering how you felt Spike fit into it?
JM: How Spike fits in with the sexuality of the show? [asks her to repeat the question and thinks] Vampires get to take whatever they want. Whenever they want it they get it. And there’s something about a man taking a woman that way that’s very sexual, you know like if a woman wants to be taken that way, there’s nothing better for the woman than a man who’ll just sweep her right off her feet. Which is exactly what a vampire does. [audience laughs] They’re also a lot older so they’re very experienced at that stuff. And it’s just as it was designed probably, originally, the act of biting on the neck and becoming a vampire is very much a metaphor for sex. So it’s just unavoidable. Because you mingle your blood, you mingle with each other, you change each other when you do that. As far as how Spike fits into that- the thing is, is that originally vampires and demons in the world of Buffy was not meant to represent that at all. They were really meant to represent the fears and the dangers of adolescence. So they were meant to be monstrous and ugly and hideous and then killed. And I think I threw Joss a little bit of a curve ball when he cast me, because I don’t think that he knew that some of the more, the sexuality was gonna come through in the role. And I’m not sure he knew what to do with me after that so he threw an organ on me and put me in a wheelchair. [laughs] ‘I got good news and bad news, we’re not gonna kill you like we planned, but we’re gonna put you in a wheelchair and you’re gonna watch your girlfriend be kissing on Angel’. I was just like ‘you’re gonna pay me? okay’
Q: Hi James. I’ve just got two questions for you. There are so many brilliant writers on Buffy — besides Joss who is your favourite writer, and who writes Spike the best, and I just wanted to know how it felt jamming with Four Star Mary at the PBP?
JM: It felt great to jam with Four Star Mary, uh, they are a tight band. I’m hoping to rehearse and play with them again in Europe actually, in June for a couple of dates. Having to keep to the absolute rhythm of the band was kind of hard, because I’m used to playing with myself so [audience laughs] and the bassist is going ‘what are you doing?’ But by the end of it I kind of caught on, I used to play in a band in high school, and I kind of got back into the rhythm of it and actually we needed to do an encore together and I’d never rehearsed the song and they were like ‘dude, it’s in C, keep up’. And I did, [geeky] I can play rock and roll man. So that was really fun. What was the first part of your question? [repeats question] That’s a tough question because they all write him so well, they are all so good and I’m afraid I would offend a large group of people by singling someone out. I have to say though, that the speech that everyone loves so much that was from Angel, was written by Douglas Petrie. He’s also the guy that wrote Fool for Love which was mentioned when we go back and meet Spike. Also I think he has an ear for a terse kind of language which Spike uses, he compacts the sentences, takes the conjunctions out, makes it less fancy. Some other writers have tended to make Spike sound a little more like Giles. I’m always trying to get him to be more lower casing. But that said, they are all brilliant. Joss is like [evil voice] ‘I have the finest group of writers in all Hollywood and they’re mine’. Because he’s- he’s probably made them all sign contracts for like twenty years. He’s no fool. But that’s the great joy in the series, you know when a script comes out, all the actors huddle around reading together, we can’t wait to see what happens, we’re like fans ourselves. Plus we’re completely kept in the dark, we’re like who’s dead, who’s dead, am I dead?
Q: Where would you want to go later in Australia?
JM: I wanna go, I wanna go see- is it the Blue Mountains? I really want to do that. I want to go through the Botanical Gardens. I want to see some of the museums… and I want to go to some of the nightclubs [dirty laugh] but I also want to see- [audience member makes a suggestion] I’m afraid my ass-kissing- my ass-kicking girlfriend [audience laughs] but if we ever hit the rocks I’ll give you a call. But seriously it sounds like there’s a billion things to do round here- just brilliant, I can’t wait. Although this is- I think I’ll just stay in big rooms and have people telling me they like me a lot, that would be fun.
Q: Since last year, have you done another convention with Tony?
JM: No. I think that was the last one I’ve done with him
Q: You haven’t got back at him then? For what he did to you when you were on stage.
JM: I don’t remember…
Q: He asked you a question from the audience and you didn’t know it was him? And he asked about rumours that you were really bad on the set and nobody liked you…
JM: [laughs] Yeah, I’m a total jerk, man ‘get me my coffee!’. No, I’m the one guy that cannot stand any of that. I can’t stand anybody waiting on me. It’s like god, I’m just a guy, guys. I’m from theatre where we bring our own lunch and have to pay two bucks a day for coffee, you know. It still tickles me, the free food still tickles me. I can’t get over that part of the job.
Q: As an actor with the background that you have, you take it very seriously. How do you take the rejection, because you don’t get every role, and how do you feel about TV actors who aren’t actors, they are just people on TV like in some Spelling productions?
JM: Yeah. See the thing is there are thousands of actors who are better than me out there, in Hollywood. They are just not getting hired. And actors tend to get a bad rap, because the worst of us get work. I can’t understand why. What I think it is, is that a lot of directors and producers are very good at documenting an event, as far as where to place the camera and how to cut, how to light it but they are much less interested in the event itself. And give that over much more to the actors so — they say in stage casting is more than eighty percent of the job, if you get the casting right, basically you just show up and make sure they show up on time and let them work. But in film, it’s not that important. What was the other question? [rejection] Oh, rejection and stuff?- oh, that’s- that’s just, that’s the whole [dismisses it] pshh. You have to audition about twenty to twenty five times to get a role. And basically I went to LA thinking I have my own… flavour of coffee. And some people are gonna want that and some people are not, but I am not gonna get anywhere trying to be a different flavour than I am. I just gotta be myself, and wait for the person to come along that’s looking for that. And also I told myself that I needed to find a director who is as good at his job as I am at mine, because it doesn’t matter how good of an actor I am, if he’s no good at casting I’m not gonna get the role. And just lapsing into anger and bitterness and resentment [smiles] No, you really have to get used to that. There’s a lot of rejection. And then [smiles] the critics get a hold of you [laughs] but I learned that one too. I was in a play once in Chicago, where we had two reviews — the first one came out and called us gods… like just floated above the earth, it was like a six hour original play about the French Revolution that was actually pretty cool. And the other review called us morons. And they saw the same show, the same night… you know ‘who told them they were actors? Burn the theatre please.’ And I really learned a lesson, you know. It’s just one other persons opinion, it’s just these guys can get in print. But yeah, I’ve got tough skin now… actually, no, I cry like a baby [laughs].
Q: Hi. Spike’s really evil, but Spike’s really cool at he same time. How do you feel about portraying someone that makes evil cool?
JM: That’s a very good question and one that originally bothered me. Because he was not supposed to — the audience was not supposed to react to him that way. He was supposed to be a punk rock asshole that was gets killed by Angel as his first act of evil after sleeping with Buffy. But that didn’t happen- but what did happen though was that Joss was exploring more grey areas, he said so in an interview. And someone said once that good done by an evil hand is still good. And I think that we are all a combination of good and evil, and I think that we’re going to see Spike trying to become a better person. I don’t know, that’s a really good question. I’m hoping that I’m not making evil look cool. I hope that that’s not it. I hope what the audience responds to in Spike is his romance, is the fact that he will not be beaten, he will not let himself be beaten… that he’s funny. But I hope it’s not the evil that is floating the character. Same thing about smoking- they always ask me, ‘hey you want a cigarette in that scene’ and unless I’m forced to smoke I don’t want to — I don’t want to send the image out that smoking is cool. [applause from the audience. Mic stops working] I’ll have to use my voice again.
Q: You have a girlfriend as I’ve heard, I was just wondering how long have you been with her and if anything will eventuate?
JM: [mic still isn't working so he pretends to talk dirty and makes a gesture or three. Someone passes him a new mic] Five months, things are progressing very well. We’re both very happy, yeah. We’re randy as hell [laughs].
Q: It sounds like from the beginning when you were conceptualizing the character Joss gave you a pretty complete picture from the beginning. But when you were conceptualizing did you imagine the character as a loser in love or did it just happen accidentally?
JM: Well you know I think what made Spike different than a normal villain was how was someone who was truly evil and a devil spawn have true love for his girl? And really want her to be safe and happy and secure… and that was the interesting dichotomy that I think is the reason I didn’t get staked. What was the other part of the question? [did it happen by accident? I think it off-sets the thing about evil being cool... 'cause he's just humiliated on a regular basis] Well that’s the thing, you know at first I just though that Joss- he didn’t want me cool, he was what, jealous or something? But that’s not it. For him, cool is not interesting. For him badass is very easy to set up. It’s like [dismissively] ‘set him up as a badass, and take him down, it’s no problem..’ For him the human journey is more interesting. And that involves a lot more humiliation so I came to understand that he really was putting his hand in and really dealing with the character, and trying to make him something that was sustainable. If you notice, Buffy goes through humiliation after humiliation after humiliation — they all do. In Joss’ world that’s just life. So it means- it actually means he likes me a lot [laughs]. Oh yeah! [picks up Red Bull] see they think I need that — ‘speed it up, dude’.
Q: When Spike was William, he was not a bad person, he was just quite powerless. When he became Spike he got the ultimate power of life and death. So it was like payback for all the people that ever made William feel terrible… then Spike got his chip and he’s back to being powerless again- do you think since he got the chip he’s rediscovering his humanity?
JM: Well originally when they talked about the chip they talked about Malcolm McDowell in Clockwork Orange. They said he’s still evil, if anything he’s more angry because he can’t do anything about that. And I think you saw that more in last season. But now that he has discovered that he is in love with Buffy, that’s a much better motivator to keep him from doing evil. And so I think that is why you see him softening. That’s why he’s so concerned that Dawn be safe, because she’s important to Buffy. What I found was- what was most interesting about doing FFL was that it made sense to me, it wasn’t a different character, it was exactly the same guy. ‘Cause in my life, I was — I’m a freak, okay. I’m a total freak, always have been and by now proud of it. [audience cheers] yeah… go freaks! When I was in grade school, junior high, I was very much an outcast- looked freaky, didn’t fit in. By high school I discovered punk rock, and I didn’t want to fit in, I didn’t care… I then became very popular. But I just took after anybody that had ever done me any wrong. And then after high school I went through a very violent time in my life- I got in a lot of fights, and was hanging around with a lot of bad people, doing things that I don’t really want to talk about right now. So I kind of understood how that happens, and what we saw with William was that he had great passion, that he simply wasn’t able to focus yet. And becoming a vampire in a very perverse way helped him do that. Did that answer your question at all? Cool.
Q: Hi. There’s some very strange fanfic out there — have you read any of it and if so what did you think of it?
JM: I have not, just because — see this brings up a very interesting thing, I don’t have a computer, because it so — it’s like bourbon, going to a fan site you know, it makes you feel so puffed up about yourself and so cool, and I promised myself when Joss asked me to come on the show as a regular, I hung up the phone after screaming like an idiot and then like I didn’t even pretend to be cool, I sat down and I was like ‘okay, I’m gonna be getting a lot of money, I’m gonna be getting a lot of fame, but the most important thing is if I can keep from becoming an asshole’. So, I’ve found that being a celebrity is not that psychologically healthy. Because you need people around you tell you when you’re being a dick. And usually as a celebrity people don’t do that, they let you get away with things. And you don’t realize that you’re going, sliding down a hill. And that happened to me actually, the workload was getting so much that I was starting to get pissy. And Joss pulled me aside and said ‘Dude, straighten out. There are too many people looking at you, there are too many people having a bad day because they see that you’re not having a good day. You are not allowed the same sort of range that most people are [shrugs] Sorry dude, it’s just the job’. You know. Did that answer your question? Good [apologizes to next questioner] I’ll be with you in one second. So I don’t go to the fan sites because I don’t want to contemplate my celebrity too much. Because you guys are so good at complimenting me and I do love it, you know it’s like heroin — just don’t go there. But I will read it all later on, after I’m not famous any more.
Q: You played on Millennium, how did you find working on that set as opposed to Buffy, and do you get much chance to work on different shows?
JM: I don’t get a lot of chance to work on different shows, just because of the workload, especially now that they’re using me more. We start at four thirty am on Monday, and go all the way through until four thirty am on Saturday morning. So there’s just no time at all for anything. Then for the day and a half that you get for your weekend that you get you do laundry and sleeping and that’s it. I loved doing Millennium, Chris Carter and company are just an amazing group of people from the X-Files and Millennium. They work a lot like Joss does though, which is that he has two units running at the same time, which is technically illegal. But it means that you get twice the amount of shots than you’d normally get. Mostly- if you look at a scene on most TV, you get like the long shot of everybody and then close-ups of everybody? But on Buffy and X-Files and Millennium when it was on, you got a lot of more interesting shots because they had two crews working on that scene. But what it also means is that it burns the actors and the crew to a crisp. But that’s why they make this [holds up Red Bull and smiles]. That and I slap myself in the face. After Red Bull doesn’t work I start slapping myself.
Q: I was wondering do you ever get nervous or uncomfortable doing certain scenes like kissing scenes or showing your hot body to everyone?
JM: I love showing my hot body [audience cheers] But that brings up an interesting question, about love scenes that is kind of a secret again that maybe you guys don’t wanna know about, it’s that love scenes are very tricky. I had love scenes with Sarah this year, you know I have a girlfriend, Sarah now has a fiancé… and it makes it very uncomfortable, because she’s gotta deal with a fiancé who’s jealous — understandably — my girlfriend is jealous… you know she’s gonna be kissing another guy, and no matter how many times you say it’s just a job, it’s just a job, your lips are coming together [makes grr noise] and I’ve dated actresses and I’m dating an actress and she does love scenes and it just makes me insanely jealous. And it’s the same for everybody. So we try to get through it with a lot of humour, and we crack a lot of jokes, and luckily Sarah is a consummate professional… the first time I kissed her I bit her. She was like [shocked] ‘he bit me! You bit me’. I’m like, [embarrassed] ‘Sarah, I’m a virgin at this.. I guess I bite people, no-one ever minded before’ [laughs].
Q: James, have you ever picked up a script and said there is no way in hell I’m doing that?
JM: Not out loud. Yeah, that was with the Hawaiian shirt, but you see the Hawaiian shirt and I’m in it, man. I am a building block for other people to tell a story, and I’m very clear on that. And even though something might be very scary to me, when I watch it and it’s all within the context of what it is, it’s just brilliant and I’ve released myself to that. So as I told Joss, do whatever the hell you want. Put me in a tutu, I don’t care. Now he will, having said that he’s gonna test me. ‘Cause he made Buffy into a rat- Sarah asked for a week off to do Saturday Night Live, and he was like ‘sure Sarah, no problem’, and that episode she’s a rat. I’m never gonna do Saturday Live.
Q: I was just wondering, you write your own songs and stuff, do you think you’ll ever release an album or anything like that, and what do you think if Angel ever came back?
JM: He’d get his ass kicked. [laughs] Yeah, Spike would not let him come within fifty miles of Buffy, you know I don’t know. I don’t know what’s gonna happen with that. As far as putting out an album, I would like to… that’s not something that one wants to rush though, as much respect as I have for William Shatner I don’t want to…[audience laughs] [WS impression] ‘hey Mr Tambourine Man’. A great guy, I’ve met him by the way, a great person, but think that you have to respect the fact that I need to train myself and become a good musician before I do that otherwise it’s disrespectful to everybody else.
Q: Today and yesterday you mentioned going back to Joss’ house and reading Shakespeare. Is there going to be a Shakespeare Buffy episode?
JM: You know thoughts go around his head just like crazy, and yeah, he once had the idea of trying to do something with Shakespeare, or taking some of the motifs and some of the themes, the plotlines and figure them in. But if you notice Shakespeare is all through, uh, he’s constantly quoting Shakespeare, especially the names, the titles are often taken from Shakespeare. He’s a total Shakespeare fiend. I am trying to convince him to do a Hamlet — because he did the best Iago that I’ve ever seen, he is really quick, man, his reading was really quick and really clean. And I think that he deserves to do a Hamlet, it’s his favourite play. He’s afraid that he would be too high profile, and that he would be judged too harshly, but what I tell him is that he deserves to have Hamlet live in him for three months because it will change him. And he deserves it, he’s a good enough actor and he deserves to let that happen for him.
Q: Hi James [JM interrupts to cough a second] What’s your favourite alcoholic drink, and have you tried Aussie beer yet and what do you think of it?
JM: I don’t drink. I’m sorry, I haven’t drunk in a long long time. But I’m sure your shit rocks [laughs].
Q: Tony Head was back in the UK not so long ago, and he mentioned having his own show, do you know anything about that?
JM: Yes. They are thinking of calling it Ripper. It would be kind of a whodunit with a very violent underside, and you would understand very clearly why that man is called Ripper. That man would start to kick ass. And that’s what I love- see the thing about Tony is that he’s such a fabulous actor, and what you forget is that he’s very sexy and dangerous at the same time. Remember when he was beating up on that dude, uh, what’s his name, Ethan? And he was like wiping his hands, ‘just one more time’. I was like ‘Dude, I don’t want to meet you in a dark alley, man’. So he is like going around thinking of weapons that he’d like to use on the show. I just hope that I can go and get my ass kicked on his show.
Q: And the second question is what will you be doing in the UK next month?
JM: Oh, I will be performing with Four star Mary and kicking around London. Just soaking it up. And I’m gonna go check out France and see what they’re doing over there. You know, crepes, stuff like that. I wanna get kicked off the Eiffel Tower for lewd behaviour. Like what is lewd behaviour in France, like how far do you have to go… to get kicked off the Eiffel Tower for lewd behaviour?
Q: [can't hear because there was no mic]
JM: Am I afraid of being typecast as the cool guy? [laughs] I don’t mind at all. I think that Spike both has a real cool side but also a very funny, human side. And I think that I am able to show a lot of different sides of myself. So I’m not worried at all. And if I have to play the badass cool guy for the rest of my life that’s cross I’ll have to bear too. But I don’t wanna dye my hair forever, you know. It hurts. Yeah.
Q: Hi James, I was just wondering if you have any scary crazy fan encounters that you’d like to share with us?
JM: You know what, no, I really haven’t. I’ve found that Buffy fans tend to be pretty intelligent, frankly. They probably appreciate good writing, which more than anything that’s what floats the show. They tend to get it, they tend to want to say thank you for your performance and that ‘I hope I’m not interrupting your dinner’, or ‘do you have time for a moment, may I talk’. I’ve always had great, great interactions with the fans. Nothing negative at all to tell you the truth. Now of course on Star Trek… I love Star Trek, I’m just digging on Star Trek… I used to be a Trekkie man, I used to have the ears. [smug] Told you I was a freak.
Q: Hi James, I’d like to ask you a serious question — are you a breast or a leg man?
JM: The breasts are so soft, and they’re right there, but the legs lead to heaven.
Q: [bloke with bleached hair] Hi James, just wanna say great hair, [something about the Spike/Dawn friendship] without giving away any spoilers, where would you personally like to see Spike go towards the end of the series?
JM: I would like him to decide whether he wants to be good or evil, I would like him not to be forced by the chip. I would like the chip to come out and for him to have to grapple with if his love for Buffy is enough to make him give up evil. That’s what I’d like.
Q: So who is someone famous that you’ve met that you did the whole fanboy thing to? Like [fanboy] oh my god oh my god.
JM: Yeah, I so blew it too [shakes head]. I was doing one of these and Leonard Nimoy was back there. My girlfriend at the time who couldn’t care less about Star Trek… I went off to be shown the works and everything, came back and they’d been having a wonderful conversation about Shakespeare together. I come back, and I was just [geeky idiot] ‘I really just wanted to tell you…’ and the wall went up, and he was just like ‘thank you very much I gotta go now’. She met him, I didn’t. Too bad, oh well. [embarrassed] I can’t believe I did that.
Q: Hi. I read that you were in Julius Caesar, I was just wondering who were you in Julius Caesar?
JM: Actually I wasn’t. Let’s see, I have done Macbeth twice, Romeo and Juliet, Much Ado… um [audience suggests Winnie the Pooh] Winnie the Pooh, another fine Shakespeare [laughs] No, I’d love to play [Cassius?], I’d love to play Mark Anthony. Those are some great roles. I’m not old enough for Brutus yet, but that’s a great role. But [Cassius?] is a great role. Yeah, he’s a ruthless man. He’s a good man who’s willing to kill people to institute democracy. So that’s a very interesting choice.
Q: Hi James, how are you?
JM: I’m doing good, actually.
Q: Two things — I was told you were a live-wire, are you?
JM: Am I a live-wire? Well what do you think? I — yes, I have a dangerous lack of fear which gets me in trouble a lot, yeah.
Q: [same questioner] And of you and Billy Idol… I think you’re better looking than he is.
JM: [laughs] Thank you, thank you. I was supposed to be the Sid Vicious of the vampire set- I keep hearing Billy Idol and nothing against Bill, but Sid Vicious man, and I didn’t quite make it [laughs]. But no, Billy rocks, and thankyou. Billy does rock.
Q: Hi. If you weren’t acting, what would you be doing?
JM: License plates. [audience laughs] no really, I’m serious, the love of acting has stopped me pursuing lifestyles that really would lead me there. I stopped hanging around with certain people, stopped having to do certain things, just because I knew that if I kept doing that I would never make it to my dream. And that has kept me out of jail. Basically. So if you want to stay out of jail, find something that you love — or as William Campbell says, follow your bliss.
Q: Hi, have you contemplated life after Buffy?
JM: What do I want to do with life after Buffy? I would like to find some fool who will give me six million dollars to film Macbeth. I would also like to go back and produce theatre again, which was the most challenging and most rewarding thing I have done so far. I really enjoy developing new talent as far as playwrights and actors, I enjoy taking source material from other places and transferring it to stage. The proudest thing I did for stage was direct a play called Life is a Dream, by Calderón de la Barca who is a Spanish Shakespeare, and its been translated a million different ways, and what we did in my theatre company is go back and re-translate it ourselves. And what we found was that a lot of translators had taken huge liberties with the script, and cut out huge parts or added their own scenes that the original playwright never did — and we got back to what I think was the original play, and we rocked the house. It was about a kid that gets thrown in chains by his dad, because the stars say that the kid’s gonna turn out evil. Right, so the kid is raised as a beast — the father relents and the kid is released, but now the kid is a beast, so he immediately kills someone and the father says ‘see I told you, you’re a beast, back in chains’. But then now the people know that there is a rightful heir to the throne and release him, and the child must forgive his father and [something] his country. And it’s a very hard play to do, it’s a very violent play, and we just rocked on it, I loved it. I like dangerous plays, I like plays that make you uncomfortable.
Q: Yesterday you kind of lifted your top up for everyone, can you do it again?
JM: [hugely embarrassed, lifts up his shirt] I haven’t worked out in three months guys, that’s just more a favour than you know. Oh my god [spreads arms out] I’m a whore! Dignity, always dignity.
Q: Hi James, I just wanted to know, are you really loves bitch?
JM: Yeah. I believe in love, I believe in romance, I uh… I was raised by a bunch of very intellectual people. My grandfather on my mothers side was so intelligent that they couldn’t measure him. He kept burying the needle. So I was raised by a bunch of people who were proud that they were so, so damned intelligent. And I’ve come to realize that intelligence more often than not is the ability to spin ones wheels to no effect at all. I mean very intelligent people thought the earth was flat, very intelligent people came up with the holocaust. I think that the heart has a compass to it, much more than the brain. That’s why I like Goth, actually, because at its root it’s a romantic movement. And it’s much more in tune with the heart. So yeah, as a man I think men were made to be protectors, because we have muscles and aggression, and I think you should find something that you love and protect it and you’ll never feel more manly than that.
Interview
Hi James, we’ve got some questions for you from your Australian fans, now first of all, Spike is like a household name here in Australia — do you ever worry about pursuing a career outside of Buffy?
Uh, I just filmed two films that were different than Spike, I did a wonderful play last year that was completely different from Spike, but believe me if I have to be fenced in as the sexy bad boy in Hollywood for the rest of my life that’s a cross I’m willing to bear [smile]. Jesus had his and I’m willing to take mine.
Fantastic [both giggle] okay. You spent two days in Australia already, what are your first impressions of Australian fans?
I like them a lot [lights go out, both giggle again, someone says 'they don't like you apparently' and the interviewer says something about it being romantic] Yeah really, [newsreader voice] A candlelight vigil… you wanna take that back from the question?
Yeah sure [checks camera guy is ready] You spent two days in Australia already, what are your first impressions of Australian fans?
I think that they’re very intelligent. They seem to be a lot like Buffy fans all over the world that I’ve met, I think that Buffy tends to attract fans that enjoy good writing — because above all that’s what floats the show, is the dialogue and the plot, and the character development. Australians seem to have the ability to be both very nasty but socially acceptable at the same time. Which I think is really cool. And also y’all seem very proud of your country, which is marvelous, you guys have got a beautiful country and you know it. And uh, that’s beautiful.
Thank you. So how much of James Marsters is inside the character Spike?
Um [laughs nervously and thinks] I have… I have a side to me which is very violent and very angry. But not funny. And so the writers write a bunch of funny lines, and then I give my violence to it and in that intersection I think is where Spike lives. Spike reads on the page very much like himself. But then I inject — a lot of people ask me ‘why are you so angry all the time?’ and I’m like ‘you don’t have time’ you know, um, so… both of us outcasts, I am a freak. I like being a freak, I don’t want to fit in, I don’t want to be normal… that’s a lot like Spike. It’s the punk rock thing. ‘Oh, you think I’m a freak? I’m proud of it’.
Well good on you, okay. So what made you want to become an actor?
[thinks] It happened very early when I was in like, I guess I was nine years old… uh, and I saw a production of Godspell, and it was just the idea that a group of people could just come together and build something that was that complicated, and gave that much energy to a group of people. It was a sense of being part of something that was important. A kind of a fa- being part of a family. [interrupts interviewer to carry on] And also fooling large groups of people- I like the magic trick of it. I like fight sequences because it looks like you’re chopping the guys head off — like we had this one great bit when we did Macbeth, at the Entenmann, where Macduff at the end of the play chops off Macbeth’s head and then delivers it to the king… and we had it all upstage twenty feet high on a platform, and Macduff chops into a watermelon [getting all excited]. And chunks of red stuff just fly all over the stage and people are just freakin’ out, and we’re all just going [smirks behind hand, goofy] ‘It’s just a watermelon, man’. I love that part of it, I think that’s cool.
Sounds like a lot of fun.
Yeah, it is, it is.
Okay well this is my favourite question, what makes vampires sexy?
Ah. [thinks] because vampires can take whatever they want whenever they want it. Vampires don’t need wallets, vampires don’t need to follow the rules. Also, being bitten by a vampire is a very clear metaphor for sex. [thinks] Vampires are also in a way eternal, so they possess a wisdom that most of — mortals don’t have. They have a perspective on life that you cannot achieve in only seventy five years.
Well, James we’ll have to cut it there for today but thank you so much for talking to us and a great warm welcome to Australia.
Thank you. | |
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