Yesterday afternoon, writer Marti Noxon was kind enough to devote fifteen minutes or so talking to the dolts from the Arrow in the Head Podcast (i.e. myself and Ammon Gilbert). Noxon, who has a long list of television credits to her name – including “Buffy the Vampire Slayer”, “Angel” and “Mad Men” – was promoting her latest project, Disney’s I AM NUMBER FOUR, on which she gets co-writing credit. While we talked at length about that, we eventually had to get down to some horror business; namely, her work on the upcoming FRIGHT NIGHT remake and the “Buffy” reboot, which she’s not involved with but almost certainly has strong feelings about considering she penned twenty-three episodes of the show.
For starters, we asked Marti if her background in vampires and vampire slayers was beneficial to her in getting the FRIGHT NIGHT gig. She responded: “You know, high school and vampires… and they were looking for a somewhat comedic – cuz the original movie is funny in ways. So they were looking for someone who, tonally, would get that. And the great part is I have a lot of affection for the original movie, so for whatever reason the minute they said that I was like ‘Yeah, I could have a point of view about that.’ A lot of times with vampire stuff I’m not particularly interested, because I worked with someone who does it so well, and had such a smart, funny take on it. To revisit it, you don’t want to do something that sucks! And as much as I’m glad that Twilight has kind of woken up the whole genre world again in a good way, some of those vampires are pretty wimpy for my taste. I was excited to have the opportunity to write a really bad vampire.”
We followed up by asking if the remake follows the original closely, or if it takes the story in a new direction, to which Noxon answered: “There are certain moments in the original that we definitely wanted to recapture, so the spine of the story is very, very similar. The way it plays out, and some of the details, are quite different. But it’s very recognizable as Fright Night.”
We then asked for Noxon’s opinion regarding the “Buffy the Vampire Slayer” reboot, wondering if she was surprised by the announcement. “I was actually pretty shocked that they would proceed without Joss. I understand why they’re doing it if Joss doesn’t want to do it, it’s a property that’s worth something. There’s always people reinventing stuff from the past. I think I said this before though, I’m just glad it’s not me trying to do it. (Laughs) I would not want to be the person doing the new Buffy. I mean, I have my fair share of haters on the internet, but man, this person… it’s going to be dangerous. Like, go to Comic Con and you’re at risk!”
There’s much more from the lovely Ms. Noxon on next week’s Arrow in the Head Podcast, so keep your ears peeled when it hits!
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