Creation and Casting
Buffy the Vampire Slayer was originally conceived for a 1992 feature film that pitched Buffy against a similar villain controlling vampires below Los Angeles. Disappointed by the final film, screenwriter and series creator Joss Whedon reworked his script into a television series more in line with his original vision. He and the staff writers employ fantasy and horror elements in the series to represent real-life conflicts for the adolescent characters, while frequently undercutting the horror aspect of the show with comedy. Sunnydale High School is situated atop a portal to hell called a Hellmouth, which Whedon uses to symbolize the high-school-as-hell experience. Pragmatically, Whedon admitted that placing the high school on a Hellmouth allows the writers to confront the main characters with an endless array of evil creatures.
Veteran character actor Mark Metcalf appeared in heavy prosthetic make-up for the role of the Master, belying his iconic performance in the film National Lampoon's Animal House (1978) as Douglas C. Neidermeyer, a strident rule-following ROTC officer (and the associated role in Twisted Sister's "We're Not Going to Take It" music video). In 2011, Metcalf acknowledged that his Animal House role would probably live much longer than he, but also recognized his roles on Seinfeld—where he plays a similarly named character called "Maestro"—and Buffy the Vampire Slayer as his favorites. Many actors auditioned for the part, but Metcalf, according to Whedon, played it with more complexity, bringing a "sly and kind of urbane" sensitivity and a charm to the villainy of the character.
Read more about this topic: Master (Buffy The Vampire Slayer)
Famous quotes containing the words creation and, creation and/or casting:
“For me, the principal fact of life is the free mind. For good and evil, man is a free creative spirit. This produces the very queer world we live in, a world in continuous creation and therefore continuous change and insecurity. A perpetually new and lively world, but a dangerous one, full of tragedy and injustice. A world in everlasting conflict between the new idea and the old allegiances, new arts and new inventions against the old establishment.”
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“Reason sits firm and holds the reins, and she will not let the feelings burst away and hurry her to wild chasms. The passions may rage furiously, like true heathens, as they are; and the desires may imagine all sorts of vain things: but judgement shall still have the last word in every argument, and the casting vote in every decision.”
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