The Grass is always Greeny-er

Það er hægt að segja margt um David Greenwalt (sem er kallaður ‘Greeny’ af vinum og samstarfsmönnum), einn af aðalframleiðendum Angel og hægri handar maður höfundar þáttanna, Joss Whedon, en þú getur ekki sagt “that I'm computer illiterate because I do know how to go online and all that but I never do because it only means answering my own email,” játar hann spaugsamlega í byrjun viðtalsins. Það kemur ekki á óvart að hann hafi ekki tíma til að fara á netið, því hann hefur mikið að gera, eins og þið eigið eftir að komast að. David staðfestir að Joss, með-framleiðandi Angel og handritshöfundurinn, Tim Minear, og einn af aðalframleiðendum Buffy the Vampire Slayer og handritshöfundurinn Marti Noxon sýni honum stundum hluti sem eru að gerast á mismunandi vefsíðum. “It's always fun to hear what the fans think and what they're doing. I just don't have the kind of stamina that Joss has to get in there and interact. They all get a little addicted to it, I think.” Hann heldur svo áfram í gríni, “They're like, ‘Oh everybody loves me. Oh wait, that guy didn’t like me,' it's too much emotional stuff.”

Það sem virðist vera David hjartnæmast er ástríða hans fyrir verkum sínum, sem er ekki auðvelt að ákvarða þegar kemur að David Greenwalt. Hann byrjaði að skrifa í háskóla, þar sem að hann var einnig tónlistarmaður og lagahöfundur. Reyndar hafði hann fyrst aðallega áhuga á að semja lög og vera í hljómsveit. Það kom ekki nógu vel að sögn David svo að hann ákvað að reyna fyrir sér sem leikari. Sem betur fer fyrir okkur gekk það ekki nógu vel heldur. David ólst upp við frekar venjulegar aðstæður. “It was a very nice, fairly normal middleclass childhood here in west Los Angeles.” En umhverfi hans var á kafi í skemmtanabransanum og brátt hætti hann að fá hafnanir vegna hlutanna sem virkuðu ekki fyrir hann, og í staðinn uppgötvaði hið rétta hlutverk til að láta drauma sína rætast. “That's kind of my world, I lived here in L.A. where they make that stuff.” Reyndar byrjaði hann sem ‘stand-in’ fyrir gamlan vin sinn, leikarann Jeff Bridges, og þó að hann hafi aldrei orðið heltekinn af leiklist, náði hann sér í bakteríuna nýlega þegar hann lék í The Enforcers, sjálfstæða mynd eftir ‘story editor’/handritshöfund Angel, Mere Smith.


Anywhere but here

Fyrst köfum við aðeins ofan í fortíð David. Margir þættir í lífi fólks hvetur það til að gerast handritshöfundar og leikstjórar; æskan getur leikið stórt hlutverk í að skilgreina þær hvatningar og fyrsta spurningin fyrir David er hvenær hann hafði verið að reyna að finna út hvað hann ætlaði að vera þegar hann yrði stór, hvort hann hefði fengið sína eigin ‘epiphany’, en það var titill á mikilvægum þætti í annarri seríu af Angel. “That's interesting,” byrjar David. “Some little part of me knew always from a very early age that I would be a writer, I didn't know when or what kind of writer but I knew I leaned that way. I loved books, I read a lot as a kid and I also loved old Hollywood movies. I love old Cary Grant movies and the romantic comedies; people in tuxedos, people in foreign lands and I'm sure psychologically that I always wanted to be elsewhere wearing better clothes, saying more clever things.”

“I started writing screenplays in my early to mid-twenties,” heldur hann áfram, "and started getting fairly serious about it maybe about 25. I wrote movies for a long time, mostly with Jim Kouf [ráðgjafar framleiðandi Angel] and started having some success a few years in.“ Eitthvað af þessari snemmbúnu velgengni kom með eftirtöldum myndum: : Utilities (1981, með Robert Hays), Class (1983, með Jacqueline Bisset og Rob Lowe) og Secret Admirer (1985, með Kelly Preston og C. Thomas Howell), sem hann leikstýrði einnig. ”Then I started experimenting with television, which is a much kinder and better medium for most writers of screen and TV.“ David heldur svo áfram til að útskýra mál sitt, ”A writer in television has a little more clout, a little more say, a little more producorial power in the product. Plus it's a faster and more immediate product so you have a chance to really learn something of what you're doing.“

The Import of Writing

Þrátt fyrir að Greenwalt sé aðeins rétt að stíga inn í sextugsaldurinn, heldur ákafi og andi innra barns hans sköpunargáfunni uppi. Hann á sitt eigið framleiðslu fyrirtæki; með 25 árum í ‘bransanum’ er hann virtur handritshöfundur, framleiðandi og leikstjóri. Maður mundi kannski halda að með öllum þessum störfum sem hann gegnir í Angel, að hann vildi bara slaka á og einbeita sér að handritskrifunum, sem honum finnst mest umbunað, en þessi mjúkmáli, glettni persónuleiki dýrkar togstreituna. ”I thrive on all the chaos and responsibility,“ svarar David hlæjandi, ”but every once and awhile I think, 'Oh this [just to write] would be fun.' A lot of people in our business move the other way, they don't write anymore at all. They produce or they oversee stories but they don't physically write. Last year,“ minnist David, ”I think I wrote five of the episodes and my wife, bless her, was saying to me, ‘It’s great for you, you should keep writing. I know it's chaotic, I know it makes it harder on the family and it makes it harder at work when you're working a lot of weekends but it's better for you to be writing,' and it's true!“

”The writing is the center of everything, that's the thing you want to be doing,“ segir hann. ”And since the kind of writing we do requires actors and film and a production and millions of dollars; obviously you want to have a show on the air, then you want to have your fingers in as many pies as possible because you want that control. When we started with Buffy,“ minnist hann, ”Joss was practically and sometimes literally living here. You'd come in at seven in the morning and he would have been here all night, maybe he slept two hours on the couch or something. That was very common in the beginning. I think, as people who like the shows and follow the shows themselves, the satisfactions are large and the challenges are large. These are very big shows and very difficult to produce. We pack as much as humanly possible into the 8-10 production days it takes to do them. Most people in my position start to say, ‘Well, I’ll retire or I'll write a little or I'll consult,' and I feel like that quite a lot,“ játar hann hlæjandi. ”But really, if truth be told, I probably would just keep doing this as long as I could stand it because it's so much fun.“

A Question of Direction

Noxon, Smith og Amber Benson (Tara Maclay úr Buffy) hafa öll sest í sæti leikstjóra á síðasta ári við verkefni fyrir innan og utan Whedon-heiminn. Hvað er það við leikstjórn, hvað er svo aðlaðandi sem dregur þessar hæfileikaríku konur að og lokkar þær í þetta ævintýri? David gefur okkur sína túlkun. ”I love directing and it's less lonely than writing; it comes after the writing, the script is finished which is always the hardest part. Many writers become directors, some people just always want to direct and be filmmakers. In my experience as a movie writer,“ útskýrir hann, ”people don't interpret your stuff correctly and by ‘correctly’ I mean how you intended it, what your intent was. Without the proper direction you'll see an actor make a different choice than the one that you want to tell your story.“

Annar ókostur við að hafa ekki þetta vald, er sá möguleiki að leikararnir drepi niður brandarana þína. ”Jokes are very hard to set up and tell, and make them look organic, lifelike and real,“ útskýrir David. ”The humor and the pathos, they have to be done correctly so as a writer you start to feel like, ‘I know I can do as well as this person.’ Not all writers actually – it doesn't [always] work out so well,“ hlær David. ”But we've been really fortunate there in all our people who have moved up and done well.“ Ein af þessum manneskjum sem heillaði David með leikstjórahæfileikum sínum, er Mere Smith. ”Her set ran as well as our set,“ játar hann stoltur, ”they were on top of everything. I think she did a very smart thing by making 30-40 pages of it as a sort of big, fancy calling card, which makes a lot of sense to me. She has James Marsters (Spike) and a lot of really good people in it, and E.J. [Elisabeth James, aðstoðarmaður Greenwalt] produced it for her and did a great job. E.J.'s worth her weight in gold believe me,“ segir David með aðdáun.

Nauðsynlegur hluti af leikstjórn er að það þarfnast mikillar hæfni. Það er ekki eitthvað sem þú getur fullkomlega lært, það verður að vera eitthvað sem þú getur séð fyrir þér, að sjá persónurnar lifna við af blöðunum. ”I think it's like writing in that sense, there's a great deal of craft that one can learn in both areas. Certainly in terms of lenses and lighting and how to shoot judiciously, particularly in serial television but you have to have some innate feeling.“ David býður upp á dæmi frá því hann byrjaði fyrst að skrifa kvikmyndahandrit, ”I would watch these directors on the set and they would be concerned with, ‘What kind of jacket is the actor wearing? What kind of glasses is he wearing?’ and I was concerned with, ‘What’s the story that we're telling? What's the performance?' You know, the thing that matters is the story, the performance,“ leggur hann áherslu . ”I love having the control of being able to get the beat between [the actors], get the timing the way I want, the way I imagined directing them. It's give and take, you just don't come there with a finished product in your head, you interact with the actors and the Director of Photography and everybody. It's a wonderful group effort to make the best thing you can. It's such a challenge in those pique days of shooting but it's wicked fun.“

The Charisma of Cordelia

Drama og frammistöður sem fólk fær venjulega verðlaun fyrir eru yfirleitt óþreyjufullar, sársaukafullar og grátandi, að mati Greenwalt. Komidía, hins vegar, er alveg sér á báti. ”Funny is probably the hardest thing,“ veltir David fyrir sér, ”many people can cry tears although I don't know that I can cry tears. I can probably learn how to but that seems hard to me too. It's so hard to find people who can do comedy; it's a very rare gift actually.“ Charisma Carpenter blandar hina fullkomnu blöndu af ”girl Friday, bitch of the month and aspiring champion“ í persónu sína, Cordelia Chase. Það sem hún hefur náð að rækta núna yfir árin, er sína eigin tilfinningu fyrir gamanleik sem passar alveg fyrir þessa samansetningu. ”You know, I'm the one that dragged her to Angel,“ segir David stoltur. ”When Joss came to me and said, ‘What do you say we spin off this Angel guy into a show, do you want to be a part of that?’ I said, ‘Of course and we should bring the character of Cordelia.’ “Hann útskýrir tilfinninguna sem umkringir þáttinn og afhverju Charisma hafi verið fullkomin viðbót. ”Angel is dark, Angel's also incredibly funny but you think of him as a kind of Batman; serious, mythic hero and I just thought she'd be a great accompaniment to Angel.“

Charisma hefur vaxið upp líkt og karakter hennar síðan hún byrjaði í al-fyrsta þættinum af Buffy í mars árið 1997. Cordelia veit nú tilgang sinn og er byrjuð að taka vel á móti, þannig að þessi breyting er jafnvel áhugaverðari fyrir áhorfendur til að horfa á. ”The thing I like [about] working with Joss is, it isn't, ‘Here’s our formula and we're gonna do it every week.' I think it's cool when things change. You can go all the way back to the days of Buffy and Angel,“ David býður upp á dæmi, ”here's this vampire guy and they fall in love and the next thing they're having sex, and then he's gone bad and then he's dead and then he's back from hell and they moved on. People move on, they move forward with their lives and Joss doesn't just rely on what we did last week. It really makes it challenging but fun because people are growing and changing and Cordelia is a perfect example,“ segir hann. David gefur okkur svo vísbendingu um að eitthvað af þessum breytingum muni hafa áhrif á hana í þessari seríu. (Þetta er búið að gerast, en þetta er ***SPOILER*** fyrir þá sem hafa ekki séð 3. seríu af Angel.) ”This year the visions are going to get worse and worse and they are going to nearly kill her. She's becoming deeper, an utterly different person than she was before yet she'll always be outspoken and blunt but she's kind of turning into a super hero.“
*(lok spoiler fyrir 3. seríu Angel)*





”This Feature is used courtesy of CityofAngel.com"