Buffy the movie experienced similar growing pains. Whedon cooked up the screenplay in 1988 after watching countless blond-bimbo-gets-murdered-in-alley-by-demon horror flicks. "I thought, I'd love to see a movie where [she] kills the monster." Just as appealing was tackling teen angst. "For me, high school was a horror movie," says Whedon, who attended New York's ritzy Riverdale School. "Girls wouldn't so much as poke me with a stick." (Apparently that has changed: He's now married to Kai Cole, 30, a textile and interior designer.)
But by the time Buffy hit theaters, Whedon's vision had been warped. Director Fran Kuzui hiked the camp factor and downplayed the terror. "When you wink at the audience and say nothing matters, you can't have peril," points out Whedon.
Buffy, though anemic at the box office, had a second life on video, and the movie's producers approached Whedon about doing the series his way — with a savvier Buffy and a darker tone. He agreed, joining a growing group of film folk dabbling in TV, drawn by the lightning pace and promise of creative control. This year alone, Spike Lee and Edward Burns are developing comedies for ABC; Robert Altman produced the upcoming ABC anthology series Gun; and Roland Emmerich and Dean Devlin (Independence Day) are cranking out a sci-fi series for Fox.
Of course, TV has its own drawbacks. Instead of $80 million to throw around, he has to scrape by on about $1.2 million per show. ("They'd tell me, that scene where she's attacked by 30 vampires? She's attacked by two vampires.") There are censors — ever ready to tone down gore ("It's the least bloody violence on television," boasts The WB's Garth Ancier) — and the occasional scrapes with the network: The WB initially thought the name Buffy was too '80s, says Whedon.
But he's not complaining. "As far as I'm concerned, the first episode of Buffy was the beginning of my career. It was the first time I told a story from start to finish the way I wanted." To heck with his agent.
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