Re: Alyson & Sarah question

[danspector@xxxxxxxxx]

No, I'm with you on this, Desiree.

I think it's perfectly right for Sarah to assume that Joss would break
the news to the cast. He runs the show, she doesn't, why should she
have to tell people "I'm quitting, sorry you'll be out of a job." It's
his responsibility to get her to sign on, and his responsibility to
break the news to the others when he can't get her to do so.

And also, Joss has since told IGN FilmForce that he knew he wasn't going
to do a Season 8 anyway. So, real nice of him to let SMG take the heat
for "ending BtVS", huh? What a prince.

A lot of the anti-Sarah stuff came from Jeff Pruitt (fight co-ordinator,
from "Some Assembly Required" through "Restless"). Pruitt has a bit of
an ego (in January, 1998, he posted on the Bronze claiming that he
understood Joss's ideas of the show better than any of the directors and
he was responsible for making that vision come through) and by Season 4
had come to resent the fact that he felt his wife, Sophia Crawford
(stunt double for Buffy, from late Season 1 through Season 4) wasn't
getting her just due because SMG was giving interviews about the stunt
work that she did herself. Pruitt shot off his mouth, loudly and
frequently, and got fired for it. 

Ironically, Joss hadn't wanted to hire Pruitt because he thought having
the stuntmaster married to the lead stuntwoman was a problem waiting to
happen, and he was right. But, according to Pruitt, Dean Ferrandino,
whom Joss had hired to take over as fight coordinator for Season 2 (if
you've seen the S1 "fight" scenes, you know why Jeff Smolek had to go)
wouldn't listen to Joss, and so Joss jettisoned him after "When She Was
Bad" and hired Pruitt, despite his reservations.

Contrast Pruitt's SMG-bashing with the praise that Michael E. Gershman
heaps on her in his commentary on the DVD of "Consequences" (and
Gershman was leaving his post of cinematographer when that was recorded,
so saying that Sarah is "like a third daughter to [him]" is very
unlikely to be a suck-up), and we can see, IMO, that Sarah, like
everyone else, has good days and bad, people who like her and people who
don't. Portraying her as the sole cause of badness on "Buffy" always
seemed like an easy out to me. It's Joss's job to keep the set happy
(for one thing, he's the only one who's SMG's boss), and he failed.
Most likely due in part to turning that responsibility over to Marti
Noxon. who I somehow doubt has any great skill at this sort of thing.

JMO,

Dan