Sarah Michelle Gellar ’felt degraded’ After Sex Scenes
POSTED BY: Angeldove
UPDATED: Tuesday, May 24, 2005 13:25
VIEWED: 45612
PAGE 6 of 7
Weasy:
Quote:
I think it's unfair to criticise her for stating her opinion. Which after all is just an opinion - she didn't actually refuse to do any of it.
Well, there are several reasons why it's "fair" to criticise SMG for stating her opinion: a) because everybody has the ability to state their opinions, so anybody stating what they think of SMG's opinion is merely excercising the same option SMG did, albeit in a less-read venue; b) because SMG comes across as whining about the show that brought her a relatively great measure of fame, success, and presumably money (well, more than I will see in a given fiscal year, surely); c) because what SMG did, and is continuing to do, is in very poor taste, for many of the same reasons listed previously; d) it can be perceived that, by doing all this "whining," SMG is pretty much offering a slap to Joss Whedon, BtVS, and everybody she worked with on that show; e) Scooby Doo; and f) Scooby Doo 2.
Since it can probably be safely assumed that nobody, here, knows SMG personally, all we have to judge her actions by are her actions, and those interviews. I'm sure she's a lovely person, I just question the advisability of some of the things she's said, as they make her appear ungrateful, with a very high opinion of herself. She also doesn't seem to have any discretion when it comes to choosing post-BtVS vehicles for her talent, although I haven't seen The Grudge yet, so maybe she is trading up. Finally.
The most obvious reason she did not do any commentary on the DVDs, all time issues aside, is that talent does get paid for that kind of thing, so it may have been a cost issue.
"There is no grace under pressure for a cat on fire." Cosi
NOTIFY: Y | REPLY | REPLY WITH QUOTE | PERMALINK | TOP | HOME
Yes, you're right we do have the right to give our opinion on things she says and does, but this thread is for the most part not doing that, it's having a go at SMG because we don't agree with her particular feelings about something she had to do. Given that none of us had to do what she was required to I don't feel that we have any right to make a judgement about whether or not it was actually degrading.
For something to be degrading it's degrading to that person - personally, and whether or not the fans think it was, we can't say that it wasn't degrading to her. We can say we don't view it that way - but that's not the same, and it's not what people have done.
Dollars are clearly an issue - but I think anyone who says they aren't in showbiz at least a little bit because of the money is lying.
BTW: The Grudge is very good. Well worth seeing. But I still think Cruel Intentions was as well.
NOTIFY: Y | REPLY | REPLY WITH QUOTE | PERMALINK | TOP | HOME
Quote:
Originally posted by Weasy:
I just don't see why it's considered horribly unfair of her to say she didn't like it later on -when her job isn't at risk.
Because its cowardice and an ego attack bubble-wrapped in the soft focus of retrospection. The inference from her quotes about season six was that had she spoken up, "the show wouldn't have lost its way" (to paraphrase the big issue quote) and would therefore have gone beyond season seven.
If she so strongly disagreed with it, she should have said something.
Quote:
Well, not exactly - if you think about it, Buffy was a team written show, and it's obvious on occasion that the networks got their way instead of Joss. He didn't have complete control over the show either.
You misunderstand - Buffy was created by Joss. The show was the story of the character he created. He remained on the show throughout its run, and so whilst other writers wrote the words, Joss was at the very least involved in the beats of every season and the direction each character went in. Plus, if he disagreed with something, he was the end decision maker.
Yes, the network gave notes no doubt, although I suspect they lessened in the later years - but they didn't define the characters.
"I threw up on your bed"
NOTIFY: Y | REPLY | REPLY WITH QUOTE | PERMALINK | TOP | HOME
Sarah comes across very unprofessional, ungrateful, and arrogant in interviews. When I read things like: "I ran into Joss' office, screaming, "Buffy would never do this," I am appalled! Joss is the executive producer and creater of the show, for heaven sakes! She admits to yelling at her boss? How stupid is she? Does she think we are impressed by that?
Here is another quote from Sarah: "When we filmed the episode where Angel breaks up with her, I cried for 25 minutes. I thought I was having a breakdown. They had to shut down the set." I wonder how much money the studio lost shutting down the set because Sarah wasn't able to control her emotions? That's the sign of an actress who has had very little professional training.
The problem is, Sarah started to confuse Buffy and Sarah. Just because SHE couldn't understand why Buffy would do certain things, doesn't mean that other people feel the same way. As Alfred Hitchcock told one of his cast members: "You're an actress, fake it!"
And Weasy, I disagree with your comment: "If you think about it all that season six stuff *was* horribly abusive." I disagree. Working at a burger joint, having water pipes break, taking care of your whiney little sister, and sleeping with the wrong person, sounds to me like human drama.
I think there were many people who just wanted Buffy to be an all perfect super-hero. In season six, Joss made Buffy into a real human being with very real human flaws. To many people were looking for fantasy....
I love you, Joss!
NOTIFY: Y | REPLY | REPLY WITH QUOTE | PERMALINK | TOP | HOME
Quote:
Originally posted by dietcoke:
Sarah comes across very unprofessional, ungrateful, and arrogant in interviews. When I read things like: "I ran into Joss' office, screaming, "Buffy would never do this," I am appalled! Joss is the executive producer and creater of the show, for heaven sakes! She admits to yelling at her boss? How stupid is she? Does she think we are impressed by that?
Perversely, I have no problem with her doing that - I've explained why I feel she's wrong - but it at least shows she was involved in the character.
Quote:
Here is another quote from Sarah: "When we filmed the episode where Angel breaks up with her, I cried for 25 minutes. I thought I was having a breakdown. They had to shut down the set." I wonder how much money the studio lost shutting down the set because Sarah wasn't able to control her emotions? That's the sign of an actress who has had very little professional training.
Not sure I see your logic - this isn't a hissy fit, or an actress storming from or refusing to come to the set, its someone who has, clearly, given something of themselves for the scene - not a sign of lack of professionalism - whether the story is true, I don't know, but I see no reason not to accept it happened.
"I threw up on your bed"
NOTIFY: Y | REPLY | REPLY WITH QUOTE | PERMALINK | TOP | HOME
Quote:
Originally posted by Misguided By Voices:Quote:
Originally posted by dietcoke:
Sarah comes across very unprofessional, ungrateful, and arrogant in interviews. When I read things like: "I ran into Joss' office, screaming, "Buffy would never do this," I am appalled! Joss is the executive producer and creater of the show, for heaven sakes! She admits to yelling at her boss? How stupid is she? Does she think we are impressed by that?Quote:
Perversely, I have no problem with her doing that - I've explained why I feel she's wrong - but it at least shows she was involved in the character.
I do have a problem with her behavior. Screaming at your boss or a fellow employee is insubordination. Unfortunately, I've seen too many employees loose their job because they couldn't keep their emotions in check and act like an adult. (Yes, I used to work in Human Resources.)
Quote:
Here is another quote from Sarah: "When we filmed the episode where Angel breaks up with her, I cried for 25 minutes. I thought I was having a breakdown. They had to shut down the set." I wonder how much money the studio lost shutting down the set because Sarah wasn't able to control her emotions? That's the sign of an actress who has had very little professional training.
Quote:
Not sure I see your logic - this isn't a hissy fit, or an actress storming from or refusing to come to the set, its someone who has, clearly, given something of themselves for the scene - not a sign of lack of professionalism - whether the story is true, I don't know, but I see no reason not to accept it happened.
In regards to my logic, allow me to explain. "Buffy" is a Screen Actors Guild (SAG) or union show. You shut a set down, you still have to pay the actors for a day of work. Then you have to add another day into the shooting schedule to pick up for the lost day. Now you must pay the cast and crew time-and-a-half for overtime. The studio has lost money and now has cranky actors who have to work on their day off to make up for the lost day.
Actors who have attended a professional acting school (League of Professional Actors Training Assoc.), learn techniques on how "let go" of the emotions that their character feel. Sarah obviously didn't have that type of training.
This is why I find her unprofessional.
NOTIFY: Y | REPLY | REPLY WITH QUOTE | PERMALINK | TOP | HOME
Quote:
Originally posted by dietcoke:
I do have a problem with her behavior. Screaming at your boss or a fellow employee is insubordination. Unfortunately, I've seen too many employees loose their job because they couldn't keep their emotions in check and act like an adult. (Yes, I used to work in Human Resources.)
And you know how the rest of the conversation went in this case? No, because its a quote in a magazine article - did she run in "screaming" or was that for effect in the interview?
It comes across as very much (and I'm going from your own tag line here as well as the tone of your posts) that you attend regular prayer meetings at the Church of Joss, and you're attacking SMG because you perceive he has a problem with her. He cast her as Buffy because she was the best person he saw for the role, so he obviously thought something of her.Quote:
In regards to my logic, allow me to explain. "Buffy" is a Screen Actors Guild (SAG) or union show. You shut a set down, you still have to pay the actors for a day of work. Then you have to add another day into the shooting schedule to pick up for the lost day. Now you must pay the cast and crew time-and-a-half for overtime. The studio has lost money and now has cracky actors who have to work on their day off to make up for the lost day.
Actors who have attended a professional acting school (League of Professional Actors Training Assoc.), learn techniques on how "let go" of the emotions that their character feel. Sarah obviously didn't have that type of training.
This is why I find her unprofessional.
This doesn't parse. You're jumping to conclusions without evidence or assuming things to suit your argument.
Did the show shut down, or that set? Did they tell everyone to stand around? I don't know, you don't know.
They "shut the set" for 25 minutes. Set up on a scene can take longer - so where's the loss?
I think we can both agree Meryl Streep is a professional actress? Well she doesn't do stage shows because she corpses - how unprofessional. Surely she should be able to inhabit the character during the entire scene.
There are plenty of actors that say they get involved in their parts - they may or may not be trained at how to avoid it, but some of them deliberately inhabit the character to try and get
a more "honest" performance.
Oh, and by the by, a cursory google search suggests she went to the High School for the Performing Arts in New York.
"I threw up on your bed"
NOTIFY: Y | REPLY | REPLY WITH QUOTE | PERMALINK | TOP | HOME
Weasy,
Excellent analyses. And I liked the quotes you found that basically confirmed what I had suspected, that Sarah was highly involved and almost intertwined with the complex character that was Buffy. Miss Gellar is a superb actress, and I can't understand why so many fans of the Buffyverse don't understand that without her, the show would have been nowhere near as good as it was. I cannot imagine anyone in place of Sarah that could have done half as good a job, no matter how much genius Joss could have applied.
With a bit of empathy, one can almost taste her underlying joy in playing Catherine in "Cruel Intentions." It was a break from Buffy, and she did a marvelous job.
Also, a good actress like Sarah will affect the character to the extent that she becomes it, and vice versa. The writers always need to write for the specific actress to some extent. Sarah WAS Buffy. She alone brought that chacter to life. So if Sarah felt that Buffy would NOT have done certain things, I think Joss ought to have at least listened. I personally felt a lot of the sex scenes were lame onscreen, and also needlessly clumsy and embarassing. I side with Sarah here.
We need to remember that ultimately, she did fully as much for Joss Whedon (and the WB, for that matter) as he did for her.
She was by no means whining.
NOTIFY: N | REPLY | REPLY WITH QUOTE | PERMALINK | TOP | HOME
Misguided, I thought we were having a discussion, not an arguement. I was attempting to clarify why I feel the way I do.
All I have to go on is what I read; good, bad or indifferent. I continually see a pattern in these interviews, that puts her in a very flattering light.
I'm not saying she is a bad actress, I enjoyed her very much on "Buffy" and think she was perfect for the role.
And whether Joss likes her or not is none of my business. He certainly doesn't need me to stick up for him.
Being a talented actor and being a professional one is two different things. There are many talented actors who are very unprofessional. You love them on screen and then you read that they are throwing a hissy fit on the set, showing up late for shoots, or getting themselves arrested for some reason.
All I am saying is, based on what I've read, she appears arrogant and unprofessional. When I read the at the top of this thread I just said to myself, not another one....
NOTIFY: Y | REPLY | REPLY WITH QUOTE | PERMALINK | TOP | HOME
Weasy:
Quote:
Yes, you're right we do have the right to give our opinion on things she says and does, but this thread is for the most part not doing that, it's having a go at SMG because we don't agree with her particular feelings about something she had to do.
Uh-huh. That is exactly what this thread is doing, people expressing their opinions of Gellar's opinions and behaviour as reported in a certain article. True, some of it is negative, but that doesn't make it any less opinion. Just because you happen to disagree with it, it doesn't automatically put it in some esoteric category unrelated to, well, opinion.
Quote:
Given that none of us had to do what she was required to I don't feel that we have any right to make a judgement about whether or not it was actually degrading.
Again, anybody has the right to express opinion. It doesn't matter whether or not you find it distasteful, offensive, or unworthy of la Gellar. To you, those opinions may be wrong, but everybody has the right to express them, even when they disagree with you.
Judgement is what human beings do, some of us better than others. "Judging" is not, by definition, as bad a thing as some would have us believe. It's a part of our discretion, a weighing of available evidence, coming to conclusions, establishing, yes, opinions.
As for degrading, I don't see how. Besides which, by expressing how degraded she felt after the fact, Gellar is, in essence, dismissing all the work she did on Buffy. Designating it to the file of "it was tv work, and it was degrading that one year, 'cause of all the, like, Spike-sex, and shit" (of course, I paraphrase). Which she has been doing pretty much since Buffy ended, if not before by her refusal (for whatever legitimate reasons there may have been) to play reindeer games.
She's giving an impression of herself that isn't pretty, isn't thankful that she was given the opportunity to do steady work for seven years (lucky for an actress who came up via soap opera), and could care less about the people she worked with those seven years.
Quote:
For something to be degrading it's degrading to that person - personally, and whether or not the fans think it was, we can't say that it wasn't degrading to her. We can say we don't view it that way - but that's not the same, and it's not what people have done.
I'm sure this is true. However, it didn't even reach the level of soft porn, now, did it? There are levels, and for anyone to be icked out by prime-time television's version of sex, no matter how sado-masochistic, speaks to a certain....je ne sais quois. Someone who is toeing what she thinks is a politically correct line, making herself look like a wimpy little damsel in distress on top of it. So anti-Buffy, it's hard to believe it's anything but deliberate.
Quote:
BTW: The Grudge is very good. Well worth seeing. But I still think Cruel Intentions was as well.
I loved Cruel Intentions, but not because of Gellar. Ryan Phillippe, Selma Blair, and Reese Witherspoon, all acted Gellar off the screen. And it was extremely pretty.
I thought Gellar did stand-out work on BtVS. I'm sure she's talented, and, like I said above, I'm sure she's probably a lovely person should I get to know her personally. What she's doing now, however, illustrates a personality made for marketing whatever she's into at the moment, and ignoring any previous history she may have had. My opinion is that kind of behaviour is a little short-sighted, and kind of petty. However, since I am viewing it via interviews and whatnot, my opinion is going to be coloured by those. And that is all. The converse is also true - she could be a cold, nasty, piece of work; I have no way of telling, and neither do you.
But I really don't like her behaviour, what I know of it from the information I have available. That is my opinion.
"There is no grace under pressure for a cat on fire." Cosi
NOTIFY: Y | REPLY | REPLY WITH QUOTE | PERMALINK | TOP | HOME