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David Fury - Interviewed at the Buffy soundstage August 23rd 2001

David Fury, stand up
  From sit-coms to stake-outs

I started out as an actor, professionally. I worked mostly on the New York stage and that led me into doing comedy. I was a stand-up comedian, which led me into doing sketch comedy, which led me into doing sit-coms - American sit-coms.

Oddly enough, that’s what brought me to Buffy. Joss was actually open to comedy writers rather than people who’d been working on one hour dramas. He had read scripts I’d written with my wife Eleanor Hampton (who was my writing partner) and he had read only [the comedy] half hours.

He brought us in and asked us to pitch some ideas. The next we knew, we were writing a script for the second season which went very well. [Joss] was very pleased and we were offered a job on the third season.

At that time, my wife and I were splitting up our writing partnership - not our marriage, but our writing partnership. My wife went to work on Mad About You as a producer and I continued to write for Buffy in the third season and onward.

That's my pet snake Reggie
  Is it true you provided some of the voices on Raiders of the Lost Ark?

That’s true. That was back when I was another person... I was working with a comedy group in Los Angeles called Off The Wall and somebody there had a looping company.

Looping is what they do on movies and television shows to add voices for the background or to re-loop some actors’ lines if they are muddled or not acted well.

Raiders Of The Lost Ark was the job I was called in on. I had no idea it was going to be such a phenomenon, but we came in and I was doing a lot of the voices in the film.

The one that’s most memorable is the one I do in English, because most of them were Nazis or natives. I got to do the line [at the start of the film] "Oh, that’s just my pet snake Reggie, come on show a little backbone will you". That was me.

Cameo King
  Playing a goat-slayer on Angel

Tim Minear, who wrote that episode (Reprise), asked me as a favour. He knew about my background as an actor. He wanted it to be funny [and] he knew I was a comedic actor. He wrote the part a little straight and he said "Love for you to do it," and I said "I’ll do it if you do the other guy."

He completely balked at playing the other guy, my partner, but still suckered me into doing it. I had a great time, so much so that they’ve been talking about bringing back the goat slayer [in] a little spin off. Goat Slayer - watch for it on the BBC in two years, right after The Watcher, starring Tony Head.

Perhaps you should team up with Numfar, the character Joss Whedon played in Angel?

Numfar and the Goat Slayer - writes itself (laughs) - which is good, because I don’t want to write that. The other big treat is that I’m doing a cameo on Buffy this year, so I’m very excited about that. [It's] a little musical episode we’re doing.

Do you get to sing in that?

I get to sing. That’s my whole background, I used to do musical comedy so get to do a little singing.

Real Me
  Developing the character of Dawn

I was given a lot of freedom to develop Dawn. Joss was fairly clear. Basically, it was a 14 year-old girl who should speak like a 14 year-old girl, and nobody speaks like a 14 year-old girl like I do.

In terms of how she functions within the Buffy community, that I got to discover as I went about writing it. Willow is certainly the Favourite Aunt - Willow and Tara are the Aunt characters - and Giles that grown up that [she's] a little bit "I’m not really sure about him, he is an authority figure I’m not really sure about."

I got to play with that quite a bit and give her a little bit of background. In fact, some of the background I wrote [came] out of the script, but it still infused her character in future episodes.

It was fun writing someone who had a history that we know didn’t exist, but you know we can create anything. Any shared moments between [her and] Buffy that they had prior to this were just dark creations.

Shadow
  Did you want the computer-generated snake, or was it something you were asked to include?

Actually it was. As we were breaking the story, I talked about doing something that Glory, our villain of the season, was going to summon that was a 'Key-sniffer'.

I believe it was Marti Noxon who came up with the idea of it being a snake, a reptile. She liked the idea. I was picturing something more amorphous, bug-like, something non-human looking. Running from that, Marti went, "What if it’s a reptile, what if she goes to a reptile house?" and that became that.

We’ve had some problems doing snakes sometimes. It’s very hard to pull off and I think they did a pretty good job. As a device, story-wise, I think it works perfectly fine. For me, I’m staying away from snakes for a long time. I’m going strictly with kittens or something.

Crush (spoilers)
  Writing for Spike in Love

Crush was another episode that I’d asked to do. Specifically, I’d asked to do an episode that takes the Buffy/Spike relationship to the next step.

At this point, we knew that Spike was feeling he was in love with Buffy - and we had talked about some later episodes - but I thought it was time in this particular episode to explore that a little bit more.

We wound up tipping our hand a little bit. I’d said "This should be the episode where people find out about Spike being in love," and it then progressed into Buffy finding out, which was something we were saving for later. It turned out to be a good play because we were able to take them to interesting places throughout the rest of the season.

It was great because we got to bring Drusilla back. Spike and Dru back together again, I think, was really significant in terms of what love means to Spike. Also, having Harmony in there as well... the subtitle of that episode was Spike’s Women. This was all the women in Spike’s life and how they were just making his life hell.

Lively Debate
  You've been involved in some lively debates on the official message board regarding Spike, and whether he is redeemable.

I have, [and] my convictions [that Spike is evil and Buffy shouldn't fall for him] were true and genuine. I was not trying to provoke an argument, although I knew it would, because I always liked to stir things up with the fans a bit.

I’m kind of known as the guy who will get the little fights going, start bar fights with the fans - just because I think it’s kind of fun. People are very passionate about the show. I’m passionate about the show, and one of the fun things about it is to disagree on the direction of the characters.

While I feel that was my personal conviction, it doesn’t necessarily mean that’s where the direction of the show will go. It doesn’t necessarily mean that I won’t find some ways to still stay true within my own personal conviction while still exploring the possibilities in the Spike/Buffy relationship, but I do feel strongly that Spike is evil and Buffy is good and you sell out both characters if they completely come together in a "We love each other" sort of way.

I think we’re doing some interesting things that. We’re bordering on crossing the line but I’m comfortable where we’re going with it.

A change of direction?
  Getting behind the camera for season six

I’ll be having my directing debut in the middle of season six. I’m looking forward to that. Doug Petrie, one of our producers, also has his directing debut.

It’s a really great feeling to be working on a show where you feel completely involved in all the facets of it and to grow to a point where Joss feels comfortable letting us explore within it any way we want to do. It's his playground after all. It’s his world, it’s the universe he’s created.

I don’t know when we’ll get the chance to be doing this kind of thing again. I can only hope I continue to work for Joss forever and ever, until he kicks me out, or kills me.

Spin-offs
  What kinds of Buffy spin-off series would you like to see made?

Well, we’re already doing some of them, the Giles spin-off. That’s been much talked about right now. What Joss is doing is really smart. I think that’s going to be a great show, I get that entirely.

Faith, although she’s not a regular [would be another]. Certainly I had imagined a long time ago doing a fugitive Slayer, a Slayer on the run from the law, on a motorcycle, travelling. Kind of a fugitive, getting involved with people’s lives and at the same time fighting the forces of darkness. I think Faith would make an amazing show, except that Eliza’s a big movie star and we will probably never get that.

Willow has grown. Alyson’s a wonderful actress and she’s growing into an amazing character. Willow’s gone through a lot of changes and I can certainly see that being another show we could spin off in the future.

I think the fact of the matter is this universe is infinite in its possibilities. We have a rich past of Slayers that we’re creating in graphic novels that can be utilised as spin-offs. Joss has created a future slayer, Fray, in comic book form that I’m dying to see as a movie some time. There’s always going to be many, many different avenues we can explore and I hope to be a part of each of them.

As you mentioned, you are doing a Tale of the Slayer

Yes, I did a Tale of the Slayer. Immediately, when Joss came in and said "Want to do a graphic novel about Slayers from the past?" I immediately went to a Western. I just thought it would be really interesting to see Western conventions played out with a Slayer in the Old West.

I wrote one about a Navaho Slayer. Looking up different tribal mythologies, just to see if something sparked, I found [that in] Navaho mythology, their creation mythology, the world before people came was overrun with monsters.

They sent twins into this world. One twin was called Born For Water, who would make the earth plentiful and prepare for the people, and the other’s twin was called Monster Slayer and Monster Slayer was sent to this world to kill all the monsters to make it safe for the people. I went "That’s our show, that’s Joss’s mythology for Buffy." It was just amazing. I said "I must use this," so I explored an interesting little tale about the twin called Monster Slayer back in the Old West.