Juliet Landau, of Buffy the Vampire Slayer fame, is gathering the forces of darkness for A Place Among the Undead, a groundbreaking documentary about vampires, and the creative minds behind the stories we know and love!
Buffy fans know her best as Drusilla, one of the most beloved and iconic villains of both Buffy and its spinoff show Angel. Now, Juliet Landau is going back to her roots, diving into the vampire myths and legends, and exploring the fandoms of not only Buffy, but also Interview With a Vampire, Dracula, True Blood, Underworld, and much more.
Landau has enlisted an incredible hoard of talents, including Joss Whedon, Tim Burton, Gary Oldman, Willem Dafoe and Anne Rice for what she herself calls, “An insider’s view into the vampire phenomenon,” A Place Among the Undead.
Today marks the launch of the 30-day Indiegogo campaign, and here to introduce A Place Among the Undead and to explain why you should donate and help this project rise from the grave is Juliet Landau herself!
Hypable: I found it intriguing that A Place Among the Undead is branded as, “transcending the traditional idea of a documentary,” and then you’re asking, “did you ever wonder what the undead talk about?” Are we looking at a blend of interviews and acted sequences?
Juliet Landau: Yes, absolutely. One of the reasons that vampirism has been such a phenomenon through the ages, and is such an enduring force, is that we can use the metaphor of vampirism for such a diverse range of ways to look at the human condition.
For instance, Joss Whedon uses the metaphor of vampirism for, “high school is a nightmare,” which most people can relate to. At least I, certainly, can relate to it. As Joss says, he never has a follow-up question to that! And with Anne Rice, she wrote Interview With a Vampire when her daughter had died; her daughter died of leukemia, so she created a child vampire who lived forever. And she said that Interview With A Vampire is all about loss and grieving.
With Kevin Grevioux, he said that he created Underworld [based on] his experiences with interracial dating, so he created two species who don’t get along, one of them being vampires. And Joss said that Angel was his look at addiction… It gives us such a prism, a mirror really, to reflect ourselves. And so, in A Place Among the Undead, each of the narratives is inspired by one of these metaphors, and explores one of the metaphors that is reflected in the conversations.
What aspect of the documentary are you most excited about sharing with fans?
JL: It’s a first of its kind in so many ways. It is becoming the most definitive vampire documentary ever. And we really gather the who’s who of the genre, who’ve never been seen before in one film. To get to talk to Joss Whedon, and Tim Burton, and Gary Oldman and Willem Dafoe and Anne Rice… the list of interviewees has been so fascinating and so exciting, and people have been coming to us and wanting to be a part of it!
We interviewed [True Blood actor] Robert Patrick and Charlaine Harris, who created the books that True Blood is based on, and Kevin Grevioux, who created the Underworld franchise, and Jim Kouf and David Greenwalt — who I also worked with on Angel — who created Grimm that’s on TV now, and it’s… it’s just been this incredibly charmed project where people have wanted to talk about it. So that’s part of the thing that’s just been so much fun about it.
I assume you’re already putting it all together?
JL: We are! We have nine minutes that are perks on the Indiegogo page, and we also have the video that shows some of the content. We have begun cutting it, although we’ve only shot like 50% of the movie… and there is potential, depending on if we exceed our budget, to make this a TV series, because the subject is so vast and we have so many incredible people who want to be a part of it. So it may have to be a three-part TV series or a six-part TV series.
We’ve actually already broken it into two separate feature-length documentaries: There’s one called A Place Among the Dead that covers crime, reality, when people take the fantasy of vampirism too far, and then A Place Among the Undead, which covers every aspect of vampires in myth and pop culture. Undead is what we’re crowdfunding for, and we’ve shot two of the narratives so far. We shot one in New Orleans and one in London, and they’re pretty beautiful.
It sounds like you’re really taken with this whole vampire phenomenon yourself.
JL: I really am. And what’s interesting is that I wasn’t initially, until I started working on Buffy. And the thing that’s been kind of compelling for me is that, when I worked on Buffy, I didn’t really approach Drusilla as a vampire. I thought of her as a human being, and I thought about all the facets and dimensions, and to me that’s what made the character so interesting.
She was rife with so many contradictions and so much complexity, and so I thought of her as a human — I mean, obviously she had supernatural elements — but in terms of fleshing her out. And it’s only from this vantage point and this perspective of making this project that I’m really looking at it from a very different side of things than I ever did back then. And I’ve found that really exciting.
It’s so great to hear that you’ve been so inspired by this character you’ve played. And obviously Buffy has inspired so many people.
JL: You know what’s been so incredible with crowdfunding is getting to interact with the fans, and getting to make the project that the fans really want to see. A week and a half ago there were like 40 people that started as our street team to help us get the word out about A Place Among the Undead, and they were mostly Buffy fans or Drusilla fans or Joss Whedon fans, and [they call themselves] “Landau’s Legion.” So I actually have a legion, which is kind of embarrassing (laughs). I can go around saying, (British accent intensifies) “My legion!”
But the thing that’s so cool about it is that, in the space of a week and a half, we grew from 40 to 1,600 people, so it kind of is a legion! And I’ve got to say, I’ve never really gotten to experience [fandom] on this level, and it’s just… I’m gonna get emotional about it, but it’s been so… to have that kind of support and to feel like you’re all making something together has just been incredible. And they’re so talented.
The support for you and for Drusilla has really been incredible. I’m a Buffy fan, of course, and to see the fandom still going strong…
JL: Yeah, that’s one of the things with Buffy, in terms of the staying power: I’ll meet people that say, “Oh, I’m watching it now with my daughter,” or “I’ve just started watching it.” It continues to pick up new fans all the time and in every kind of age group. It really does speak to such a huge demographic. It’s really special.
I don’t know if you agree with this, but I feel like part of the fascination with vampires comes from the fact that, through history, there’ve been all these rumors and legends about vampire-like figures… and part of the fascination probably comes from the fact that it might be true. It’s not, but it might be.
JL: It’s interesting you say that, because one of the people that’s been working with us just saw the nine minutes of excerpts, and one of the things she said is that it’s really weird, ’cause you’re watching this and you know you’re talking to creative people, you’re talking to writers and actors and directors and all that stuff, but there’s sort of this feeling when you’re watching it when you’re kind of like… this could actually be true! So, absolutely, that’s part of it. And there’s always been, you know… they dig up bones and this person’s been staked through the heart. There’s always stories surfacing about that stuff.
I imagine that it must have been really interesting for you to get to step behind the camera for this project, and get to engage with all these amazing talents — but as the director.
JL: I have to say, I love it. What’s so cool about this is that I’m doing the narrative, so I’m acting, and then, in terms of interacting… like, with Willem Dafoe, we reached out and he was like, “Oh I’d love to come and talk about it.” And his performance in Shadow of the Vampire is so electric, and so phenomenal, that to get to sit and talk to him about it and hear all of his inside stories about that project and that process and inhabiting that character… It’s been really fun. I mean, that’s the thing, I don’t know if work should be this fun (laughs).
That sounds incredible! And you said you acted in this. Do you play a vampire again?
JL: …I am pleading the fifth on that one!
Okay! So, with all these old movie and TV show revivals happening in Hollywood, do you foresee these vampire fandoms like Buffy or True Blood getting a second wind, old stuff coming back or new vampire franchises popping up?
JL: I’ve heard about a whole bunch of new stuff that’s actually in development, and getting made. I think it’s a wave that continues, it’s continuing to be something that people want to explore and want to see. And I can tell from the people coming to us, and wanting to talk about it, how much enthusiasm and interest this creative community has in it. And obviously, feeling it from the fans that I’m interacting with, they have an appetite for it. So it does feel like it’s going strong and it’s gonna continue.
Is that one of the reasons you’re doing this documentary now, because you’re seeing this enduring passion for the vampire fandoms?
JL: You know, this has been percolating really since I worked on Buffy. I was so extremely fortunate to work with the brilliant Joss Whedon and to get to play that character, and whenever I’ve hung out with creators, writers, directors or actors who’ve lived in the vampire universe, I’ve had the best conversations. And I’ve always thought, “I wish people could see these conversations.” It’s the stuff that’s never been shared before on film, and there’s a real camaraderie between people that have kind of been in this world. I wanted to make this project that had an insider’s view into the vampire phenomenon.
Did interviewing Joss make you miss playing Drusilla?
JL: Yeah, it was so much fun talking to Joss. He was literally turning in his cut of Avengers two weeks later, so we ended up going to his offices, and it felt like going into the Pentagon or something because we had to sign an NDA and there were pictures up of the Avengers and of all these people working, and I really couldn’t believe that he had the time at that moment, with that much pressure and that much money on the line.
And it was just so fun! We had a really stream-of-consciousness conversation, and then he was actually supposed to go back to work, and he kind of came back in and was like, “Oh, I thought of some more things!” It was really fun to revisit it. And I had a similar feeling with Tim [Burton], because of having worked with him on Ed Wood. There was a nostalgia in it that was actually really lovely.
To wrap up, tell me what other kinds of perks people can look forward to if they donate to the Indiegogo campaign.
JL: Yes! We have a bunch of really cool stuff. We’re actually doing a “stake” — as in s-t-a-k-e, as well as “steak” — dinner, in L.A. on November 7, so that will be a limited-edition perk in time for Halloween. That will be fun in terms of getting to hang out with people… and as long as they don’t actually stake me, it should be fun.
Oh yeah, don’t want them to get too meta.
JL: Yeah, they better just eat steak! And then we also have this amazing thing: Gary Oldman and Dev (Deverill Weekes, ed.), my husband, have made this one-of-a-kind, photographic Undead Odyssey book, with exclusive tintype photography. Gary has a camera from 1853, and he shot portraits of a number of our interviewees, like Joss Whedon and Robert Patrick and myself, and it’s literally one of those cameras where he goes under the cloth and you have to hold still, and he paints up a metal plate and then he goes and develops it. And the portraits are just exquisite, and have never been seen before.
Then Georges Jeanty, who was the comic book artist for season 8 and 9 of Buffy, has done an exclusive poster for the Indiegogo campaign, and artist Mike Collins, who’s done some other Whedon artwork that’s super popular, he did an incredible poster for us as well. So yeah, we’ve got some really, really cool perks.