Buffy The Vampire Slayer: The Script Book, Season One, Volume 1 (Paperback)

by Various Authors (Author) "The front of the affluent Southern California school gleams darkly in the moonlight..." (more)
Key Phrases: hyena cage, hyena people, vampire slayer, Militia Guy, Miss French, Teacher's Pet (more...)

Editorial Reviews

Product Description

"It's my first day [of school]. I was afraid that I'd be behind in all my classes, that I wouldn't have any friends, that I'd have last month's hair. I didn't think there would be vampires on campus."
-- Buffy, "Welcome to the Hellmouth"

A true fan knows that one of the very best aspects of Buffy the Vampire Slayer is its hip, irreverent, witty writing. Slayer-speak packs one of the show's strongest punches. And the scripts are as much fun to read as they are to watch.

Here, collected in one volume for the first time ever, you can find the first six scripts from Season One. Read along as Buffy arrives in Sunnydale, and revisit her early encounters with the "gorgeous in an annoying way" Angel. Best of all, these scripts represent the most complete source for the writers' and creators' vision-complete with production cues and dialogue and scenes that never made it to the small screen!

Read these killer scripts: "Welcome to the Hellmouth," "The Harvest," "Witch," "Teacher's Pet," "Never Kill a Boy on the First Date," and "The Pack"

Product Details

• Paperback: 384 pages
• Publisher: Simon Spotlight Entertainment; 1 edition (November 28, 2000)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0743419340
• ISBN-13: 978-0743419345
• Product Dimensions: 10.9 x 8.5 x 0.8 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.8 pounds
• Average Customer Review: 4.8 out of 5 stars See all reviews (8 customer reviews)
• Amazon.com Sales Rank: #449,278 in Books (See Bestsellers in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

13 of 13 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars language delights of "Buffy", January 13, 2001

By	Elisabeth COTTIER FÁBIÁN (Paris, France) - See all my reviews (REAL NAME)

Watching "Buffy" T.V. series or cassettes is huge enjoyment already. Reading this script brought pure delight: sharp wit, self-derogatory under-/overstatements, punch and speed - this script is, quite definitely, for lovers of language. Stage directions, as indicated between parts of dialogue,are about as savoury as dialogue itself. I've just one reservation:I suppose, to really relish this book as it should be relished, one should obviously have seen related episodes on either TV or cassette. One then remembers Charisma Carpenter's studied drawl, Sarah Gellar's brisk deadpan humour, and Nicholas Brendon's fantastic "fool's faces". Only then does one realize, not just how good the writing is, but also, how brilliantly the whole cast has done its job. Yes, this definitely does show just how brilliant the whole "Buffy" act was - and still is. Can we PLEASE have scriptbooks of what follows?!...

13 of 14 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars In the beginning of Buffy there were the scripts..., December 25, 2001

By	Lawrance M. Bernabo (The Zenith City, Duluth, Minnesota) - See all my reviews (TOP 10 REVIEWER)    (COMMUNITY FORUM 04)

The good news is that original shooting scripts of "Buffy the Vampire Slayer" are available, as in this volume offering up the first six episodes of Season One. But the bad news, relatively speaking, is that we just get the scripts without any extras. The pages are your traditional Courier style font (including the title page), and while the pages are not in blue, pink, green, yellow, goldenrod and salmon to reflect the various revisions, if you follow the revision dates on the top of the pages you can figure that part out. Therefore, while I appreciate having the original scripts in front of my while watching the episodes so I can see what has been deleted/added/changed (these are not transcripts; big difference), I would have really liked to have a bit more such as introductions by the writers talking about the genesis of the script ideas or problems they had to overcoming in putting the script into production, beyond the production notes and stage directions. Certainly some of what I am looking for can be found in "The Watcher's Guide," which covers the show's first two seasons, but given how first-rate the BtVS companion volumes have been I am rather surprised this is a comparatively bare bones effort.

Included in this volume for those of you who do not have the first 100 episodes totally memorized are "Welcome to the Hellmouth" and "The Harvest," both written by series creator Joss Whedon, "Witch" by Dana Reston, "Teacher's Pet" by David Greenwalt, "Never Kill a Boy on the First Date" by Rob Des Hotel and Dean Batali, and "The Pack" by Matt Kiene and Joe Reinkemeyer. After the two-part pilot these other episodes reflect a time when the Buffy mythos was just starting to get organized. After all, Buffy has yet to find out about Angel's true nature and the emphasis is on how high school is a living hell if you are a teenager, but even more so when you are perched on the Hellmouth. Besides, once you get the first half of Season One you have to pick up the second half as well. Then there is Season Two...

8 of 8 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars A delight, December 12, 2000

By A Customer

Let's be honest: Anyone who buys this book -- or, let's face it, who reads this review -- is a pretty hard-core Buffy fan. Which means this book is perfect for you. The writing on this show is among the best on television, so it was a real pleasure to find these scripts online. I was surprised to see that the author's asides -- whether describing a monster's lair or a teen-ager's clothing -- are just as funny as the dialogue you hear on screen.