- I was appalled at the California Supreme Court decision. This diary has NOTHING to do with Prop 8.
- The title is a play on a line from the Buffy series (also a user-name here on DKos).
If you don't understand both, just move on to another diary, please.
Fran Rubel Kuzui, and her husband, Kaz Kuzui, need to put down the crack pipe.
Yes, we understand that the Kazuis apparently have retained some rights to produce feature films of the Buffy franchise, and they think they can produce a successful Buffy feature without participation of Joss Whedon and his crew.
And, laughably, they think they can produce a successful Buffy feature without the characters and actors who populated the ‘Verse.
How do I put this delicately? The Kuzuis are out of their fucking minds. Reality? Kazui? The twain shall never meet.
The Kazuis are making two mistakes: (1) they think that Buffy is a brand that is fully integrated socially, like The Simpsons, South Park, Star Wars; and (2) they don't understand that our loyalty is to Joss and his band of producers and writers (Jane Espenson, David Fury, Drew Goddard, Drew Greenberg, Marti Noxon and Doug Petrie).
"Star Trek" for example means something to average people, even if you’ve never seen a single Star Trek product. "Batman" means something to average people, even if you’ve never seen a single Batman product.
But Buffy?
Ask anybody on the street what they know about Buffy, or Buffy the Vampire Slayer, and you’ll get one of three reactions: (1) blank stare; (2) vague recollection; or (3) rabid enthusiasm. But Numero Tres is only gonna happen like maybe 10% of the time – or less.
If the response is Numero Dos, odds are the person also has Batman visions of Adam West climbing a wall with stupendous special effects and a camera set on its side.
Numero Tres?
The Kazuis don’t understand that it’s all about Joss.
Joss and Jane Espenson, David Fury, Drew Goddard, Drew Greenberg, Marti Noxon and Doug Petrie. These folks sat down every day, for eight years (seven seasons of Buffy plus Season Five of Angel), and made shit up. And made it important. And make the characters real. And accounted for chronology, and human emotion, and good and evil, and even stylish yet affordable boots.
This is serious stuff. Serious as an SAT question. Hard-core academics have invested substantial energy into serious literally critique of the ‘Verse.
What the Kazuis don’t apparently understand is that our loyalty is to Joss, his crew of incredibly talented writers and producers, and the characters they created. Characters who grew and changed and are not only more interesting than people we actually know, but who are in most instances BETTER people than people we actually know.
And you know what? Without Joss, and his writer/producer Scoobies, and the actual Scoobies, and Angel and Wes and Gunn and Illyria and even Harmony (Harmony for christ’s sake!) a random feature film would be nothing but ashes in our mouths.
Let's make this perfectly clear for Fran and Kaz:
we won’t pay to see your movie
we won’t rent it from Blockbuster
we won’t rent it from Netflix
when the local library has a copy, we might check it out just to see how horribly, horribly wrong something can go
Perhaps their energies can be redirected in more fertile directions – like giving us the Spike feature film we’ve all wanted and about which James Marsters has commented something to the effect of "make it soon, ‘cause I’m aging, and William the Bloody does not."
And so, vote.