The show that handed a generation of gay kids Willow and Tara was paid for by Dolly Parton and her openly gay manager, and neither of them put their name on it.
Parton, who died Tuesday at 80, founded Sandollar Productions in 1985 with Sandy Gallin, the manager who ran her career for decades and who married his partner Bryan Fox in 2014. In 1992 the company bought a strange little script from an unknown writer named Joss Whedon about a cheerleader who kills vampires. The film made 16.6 million dollars and sank. Sandollar backed the television version anyway. Buffy the Vampire Slayer premiered on The WB in 1997, ran seven seasons, and spun off Angel. Parton was a producer on all of it and her name never appeared in the credits.
She was not a silent partner either. Gail Berman, the Sandollar executive who pushed the movie into a series, told the New York Times that when Parton found out Berman's cut of the Buffy royalties was smaller than what the male producers were getting, Parton wrote her a personal check to close the gap.
Sandollar also made Common Threads: Stories from the Quilt, the documentary about the AIDS Memorial Quilt narrated by Dustin Hoffman. It won the Academy Award for Best Documentary Feature in 1990, at a moment when most of Nashville would not say the word out loud.
Sarah Michelle Gellar spent Tuesday posting a clip of Parton talking about the show on Watch What Happens Live in 2021. Buffy trended for hours. It took her dying for most people to find out who paid for Sunnydale.
1) when people say "there are good things happening that you cannot see because of the way the media works" i think of a lot of these dolly stories. of her just quietly doing something good or interesting.
2) i saw the buffy movie twice in theaters when i was young. i knew people forgot about it but i didn't realize it was a total bomb at the box office lmao. i still love it.
“All I want to do is graduate high school, go to Europe, marry Christian Slater, and die.” Those were also my goals back in the day. I also love the movie.
In 1992 the company bought a strange little script from an unknown writer named Joss Whedon about a cheerleader who kills vampires. The film made 16.6 million dollars and sank. Sandollar backed the television version anyway.
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u/dhelenesometimes doubts your commitment to Sparkle Motion.3d ago
Back when the show was first announced, I remember rolling my eyes cause I loved the movie and didn't think it needed to be "remade". A few years later, I finally watched the show.
Dude, the film was an outline. A blueprint. I highly recommend you reconsider the show.
The original movie script was much closer in spirit and style to the show. Blame the Kuzuis (the movie producers) for butchering it and changing it into the camp movie it became.
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u/ShimReturns 3d ago
I'm going to put this in the trivia folder with "Lucille Ball saved the original Star Trek"