Behind the Scenes

he Beast rising from the depths of hell, Cordelia sleeping with Angel's son and the return of Angelus! It's bedlam in the city this season on Angel and the man plotting much of the insanity is writer Steven S. DeKnight. After two seasons and five episodes scripting on sister-show Buffy the Vampire Slayer, Joss Whedon offered DeKnight the opportunity to jump ship and become a staff writer for Angel's fourth season. A fan favorite since his debut with Buffy's episode Blood Ties, DeKnight has brought his signature penchant for exploring the dark and controversial to his tenure at Angel. He has written or collaborated on six stories this season including the pivotal episodes, Deep Down, Apocalypse Nowish and his directorial debut, Inside Out. CityofAngel.com had a chance to talk to the infamous "Pantless" DeKnight as he was putting the finishing touches on Inside Out. We got to the bottom of that nickname, the path that eventually led him to Joss Whedon's universe and some reflections on his directorial debut.

EXTRA HUMBLE BEGINNINGS

Everyone comes from somewhere and Steven S. DeKnight started life in the wilds of Southern New Jersey. "I grew up in a really tiny town in South Jersey called Millville about an hour from Atlantic City. Factory town, very small - it didn't even have its own movie theater so I'd have to bike a half an hour to the next town when I was little to catch a flick. My parents were both working class, factory workers. We weren't poor per se but it was definitely a living from paycheck-to-paycheck childhood." When asked if writing was his ambition from an early age, Steve laughs and answers with an emphatic, "Hell, no!" Acting was actually Steve's early passion. "I always loved TV and the movies and I did a lot of acting in high school." Post graduation, Steve was intent on pursuing a career in performing. "I decided to strike out to the West Coast - as far away from New Jersey as I could possibly get. I went to school in Santa Cruz, CA. I picked it because one, it had a film program and two - it had the nicest brochure I'd ever seen," he laughs. "Rolling hills, sheep, the ocean - it was gorgeous. I went there for four years and never actually did anything on the film side. I was a theater major: acting and playwriting."

Steve's first head shot!

The acting dream lost much of its luster mid way through Steve's collegiate career. "I had intended to be an actor and then about half way through all the plays I was doing, I just realized I wasn't 6'2" and 190. I thought I could be a better writer so I started writing plays." Successful in his new endeavor, Steve graduated and went to UCLA to pursue his M.F.A. in Dramatic Writing. While honing his craft, Steve had another important epiphany about his career direction. "I realized that as much as I loved play writing, there were people better suited to the craft than I was. I was still more movie oriented and I didn't want to starve to death as a playwrite. That was a huge issue. I am passionate about my craft but I'm also a very hungry person and I like to eat," he chuckles. "I stuck around for an extra year to go through [UCLA's] screenwriting program. I was mentored by two fantastic people: Richard Walter and Lou Hunter, just a couple of great guys who really taught me how to write a screenplay." He adds, "Then I graduated and promptly couldn't get arrested for more years than I would care to admit."

As is common for those pursuing the arts in Hollywood, Steve suffered through those proverbial "lean years." Steve explains, "I ended up taking a job as an ESL [English as a Second Language] teacher at a little Japanese school in the Valley. I didn't know a word of Japanese and I thought, 'I'll be here 6 months, maybe a year at most.'" Steve sighs, "Six and a half years later, I was still there. So, I just went to work everyday and at night churned out feature spec screenplays. The screenplays didn't do me a damn bit of good but I got a job on MTV's Undressed - my extra humble beginnings." MTV's Undressed is one of the more "distinct" shows airing on the music cable network. The premise: a quasi soap opera about young, attractive people who think about, talk about and have a lot of sex. Just how did Steve land on that particular show's staff, you ask? "I had a friend who worked on the pilot.

"If I had to write, 'She strips down to her bra and panties' one more time, I was going to go nuts!"

He called me and told me he was working on this 'horrible, Roland Joffe sex, MTV half hour thing.' He said, 'I don't think there is a chance in hell MTV is ever going to pick up this piece of crap but if it goes, I can get your stuff to Roland's people.' So six months later, he calls up and says 'I don't know how this happened but they picked it up. Send me over some of your stuff.' At that time, I had only done one TV spec and I blush to confess it was a Deep Space Nine script. Let me tell you, nobody, including Deep Space Nine wanted to read it. There wasn't a big call to read a Deep Space Nine," he snickers. "But I sent it over and in a bizarre coincidence, the guy who read it at Joffe's company was a huge Deep Space Nine fan. He loved it and I met with the head writers and got the job." Thus, began what Steve describes as "a whirlwind year and a half."

Reflecting on the experience even Steve seems non-plussed. "We did 150 half-hours. It was an insane process. It really taught me how to write fast under pressure. In that job, you were always writing." Watching an episode of MTV's Undressed, the word "quality" isn't exactly the first thing to come to mind. So, was it hard for Steve to work on a show he admits he didn't like so much? Steve confides, "After the first season, it became a lot easier because I lost all artistic sense or anything resembling caring about what I was doing. There are only so many ways you can have people strip down to their underwear. Honest to God, towards the end if I had to write, 'She strips down to her bra and panties' one more goddamn time, I was going to go nuts! It was killing my soul."

Steve's salvation wouldn't come until about a year and a half into the gig. "During one of the brief breaks between the seasons of Undressed, I decided what I needed was a new agent. I had a wonderful agent but it was an actor's agency." He explains, "She was the only literary agent there and she didn't know many people in television. I figured I needed to parlay this MTV thing into something fast before I was teaching English to the Japanese again," he adds. "So, I decided to write another TV spec. I was ping-ponging between an NYPD Blue or a Buffy the Vampire Slayer. I loved Buffy and it was a whole lot closer to my voice so I did one of those [scripts]. Unfortunately, I finished it during staffing season where all the writers [in Los Angeles] are trying to get jobs so no agency really wanted to talk to me during that period because they were busy with their own clients. I thought, 'What the hell! I'll send it to my current agent, maybe she has a cousin who works in TV somewhere.' So, I'm not kidding, she knows three people in TV and one of them was George Snyder who ran Mutant Enemy at the time. She sent it to George, he read it, really liked it and they called me."

WELCOME TO THE WHEDON-VERSE!

Steve could finally see a light at the end of the proverbial tunnel but sadly it was only as bright as a 20-watt bulb. "I went in for a meeting and they told me, 'Buffy isn't looking for anybody. Angel is all staffed up but we are launching an animated show [of Buffy] and we thought you might want to work on that?' He explains, "Animated money is not great but I thought if I did a year on that maybe they would give me a freelance Buffy or Angel. First, they told me, 'Joss has to read [my script] and he pretty much doesn't like any of the Buffy specs, so we'll give you a call.' I sat around for a month and finally I got a call from Joss saying he really loved the script, 'Come in, let's talk.' So I went in and we shot the shit for like half an hour talking about movies, comic books and superheroes. At the end he said, 'Look I know you're interviewing for the animated show but do you want to do a freelance Buffy?'" Steve laughs as he recalls his enthusiastic answer of, "Hell, Yes!" It was season five on Buffy and he scribed episode thirteen, Blood Ties. It dealt with the pivotal moment when Buffy's sister, Dawn [Michelle Tractenburg] finds out she is The Key. Humbly Steve adds, "It went pretty well. Joss offered me a full-time job and here I am."

Switching gears from Undressed to Buffy offered a challenging transition but all in the right direction according to Steve. "Working on Undressed was such a group thing. There were so many people giving you notes: the head writer, Roland Joffe, MTV, everybody was giving conflicting notes so it was a mess." Buffy was different for Steve because, "Joss has a very clear idea of what he wants and basically you get notes from Joss and Marti [Noxon, co-executive producer of Buffy] if Joss is busy. I wasn't dealing with the network," he adds. "Joss dealt with the network and pretty much, they would ask him to do something and he would say, "No", which is the way it should be. It was fantastic. There is nothing better as a writer than getting notes, story ideas and direction from somebody that you respect and think is better than you are so you can really learn how to do things. Working here has been the best experience and the people here are just fantastic." The rapport amongst the Mutant Enemy writers is something of an industry legend at this point and Steve just adds to the love fest. "There is very little ego here. It really is all about the story and the writers especially are very intent on having a good time. We want to hang out and laugh all day and enjoy each other's company. It's very rare to find a show where there's not an asshole among them. Joss once said, 'You can be the best writer in the world but if you don't get along with my family, I don't want you on my show.' I totally agree."

Sarah's least favorite scene ever from the episode, Dead Things

While he only wrote for two seasons on Buffy, Steve was responsible for some of the more controversial moments in the history of the show especially with the episodes, Seeing Red and Dead Things. Steve laughs as he comments, "I don't know if you read the Entertainment Weekly article recently?" In the edition, Sarah Michelle Gellar officially announced season seven would be her last on the series. "Sarah was good enough to point out her least favorite moment was in one of my scripts [Dead Things]. I feel very honored." Seriously, he adds, "I totally understand why that part made her uncomfortable [in which Buffy and Spike share a sexual encounter at The Bronze nightclub]. I wish that I could say it was my idea but it's something Joss had in the back of his head for a year. It just so happened that it happened in my episode."

But despite Sarah's reservations, Dead Things rates as the one for which Steve is most proud and his personal favorite of any episode he's written for either series. But he's quick to share his reasons why it's dear to him. "Hats off to the amazing [director] Jim Contner for that episode. I thought he did an amazing job. And Lisa Lassek, the editor on that did just phenomenal work. Sometimes, you have an episode where everybody "shows up." The actors are spot on. The direction is great, the editing, the music, etc...That was just one of those episodes where everything just came together. It had humor at the beginning and then it had that great twist where [the nerds] accidentally killed Katrina and then it got dark, dark, dark, dark. We really wanted to highlight how unhappy Buffy was with herself and really show why she was mistreating Spike because she hated herself."

But Steve really drew fire for his episode Seeing Red in which Willow's lover Tara [Amber Benson] was killed by a stray bullet. Lesbian fans in particular, who adored the couple, were incensed by that episode and made it known to everyone at Mutant Enemy, including Steve. "I really didn't help my case on that one, mouthing off [on the subject] on a radio program [The Succubus Club]." He adds, "A major mistake, which I have apologized many times for and I still feel bad over it. It was the wrong thing to do and I was just nervous." But that kind of fan passion for the show and characters has become a hallmark of Whedon's shows. It then begs the question whether that kind of intensity helps or hinders a writer trying to please fans to a certain extent. "It's definitely a little bit of both. We do listen to the fans. We don't always do what the fans would like but we are aware of their feelings and that will become very evident on Angel later on this season. We are still in our hearts just people who happen to work in a television show. If somebody calls your kid ugly, you know it will hurt but you have to take it with a grain of salt."

TAKEN BY AN ANGEL

At the end of Buffy's sixth season, change was in the wind at Mutant Enemy and for Steve in particular. While he never got a chance to crossover and write an Angel episode that season, he remained a big fan. "In the office building, Buffy is upstairs and Angel is downstairs. After each Angel, I would always pop downstairs and tell David Greenwalt what I thought - which was usually, 'I loved it! It was a great show.' David, Tim Minear and I were always talking about me doing an episode for them but my schedule never matched up. But everybody knew I loved the show and was interested in doing a script." The development of Joss' Firefly series initiated the changes that brought Steve to Angel. "Joss was looking for someone to run Firefly and Tim Minear was the obvious choice. So, Joss came to me and said, 'I'd really like to have Tim run the show but if I take Tim away from Angel, Greenwalt would probably quit in protest.' To fill a little bit of that gap, and not to replace Tim, because quite frankly nobody can, Joss asked me if I would be willing to come down to Angel. It was a promotion and a little more money but he could have offered me the exact same thing and I would have said, 'Yeah!'"

"Joss, you will bring me over to Angel"

His move was only one change among many this season at Angel that made for a challenging year all around. "It was really hard with the executive shuffle in the first three months. We usually work two or three months before we start filming and that was rough. David Simpkins [Tim Minear's original replacement as Angel showrunner] was a great guy and I really, really enjoyed working with him. But it's hard to bring somebody in from the outside and throw them into running a Joss show because things are done a bit differently and the [character] voices are so specific. I think the creative sensibilities just didn't gel. So, we had David Greenwalt for a couple of weeks [who left Angel to executive produce a new series for ABC, Miracles], David Simpkins for a few months then we had nobody. Then we had Jeff Bell step in to run things." He adds, "It was rocky but I don't think it affected the stories. Behind the scenes it just took more energy to create the stories."

And if all that wasn't enough to deal with, Steve reported back to work in July of 2002, ready to slowly transition into his new position. That is until he was assigned writing the series premiere, Deep Down. "David Greenwalt was supposed to do that episode and then he had a disagreement with Fox and went to Miracles. I was on vacation in Hawaii and found out David had quit and I thought, 'Oh Jesus! This isn't what I signed on for!' But I bumped into David in the hallway a couple of days later and he asked, "You want to write episode one?" and I said, 'Okay!'" Well, so much for easy transitions. "They did throw me into the deep end. I was hoping to hang around for three or four episodes before I stepped up. The first episode was a little rocky. I had to do a major re-write on that one but after that I got the hang of it. Apocalypse Nowish was much smoother."

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