The 1992 movie Donald Sutherland wanted to delete from history: “I realised I was in the wrong film”
In 2024, the world mourned the loss of a true great in Donald Sutherland. He was never a conventional movie megastar, largely because of his unconventional looks, but he possessed immense acting talent, allowing him to excel in every kind of role, whether hero, villain, dramatic lead or comic relief.
Apart from the dozens of iconic movies bearing his memorable visage, his legacy carries through his sons, Angus, Rossif, and Kiefer, but one of his oft-forgotten projects is the 1992 Joss Whedon-written and Fran Rubel Kuzui-directed Buffy the Vampire Slayer, which proved to be quite a controversial production.
Different from the hugely successful TV show that would come later, the film starred Sutherland as Merrick Jamison-Smythe, a mysterious man who informs Kristy Swanson’s Buffy Summers of her vampire-killing destiny, against the backdrop of a Los Angeles high school. Alongside this, it also starred Luke Perry, Rutger Hauer, and an uncredited Ben Affleck.
The Buffy movie was in trouble from the get-go, as after selling the rights to Dolly Parton’s production company, Whedon immediately felt the film getting away from him. He disagreed with the direction of the story so much that he actually quit the production early on, which essentially gave 20th Century Fox free rein to meddle with the script as much as possible.
Moreover, filming also had to be completed in just five weeks, owing to Perry’s schedule on Beverly Hills, 90210, and in the year 2000, Sutherland sat down with The Guardian to discuss the troubled nature of Buffy the Vampire Slayer. He took issue with the fact that Merrick was killed by a vampire halfway through the film, which led to an interesting discussion with Kuzui.
“I liked the idea of that film,” he explained, “The only thing I had asked the director was that it seemed incorrect that my character would die, and she said to me, ‘That’s because you want to be in the sequel’. At that point, I realised I was in the wrong film.”
It should be noted that another purported reason behind Whedon’s departure was Sutherland’s supposedly poor behaviour on set. According to the screenwriter, the veteran star was prone to improvising a lot of his lines, which Kuzui let him get away with, and he also claimed that Sutherland was entitled, as he knew he was the biggest star working on the film.
Although it should be said that any accusations of poor on-set behaviour made by Joss Whedon must be considered incredibly ironic and taken with a massive grain of salt.
As we all know, the movie ended up being just a footnote in the history of Buffy the Vampire Slayer, and an irate Whedon reworked the idea into a TV show for The WB five years later, with Sarah Michelle Gellar in the lead role. After seven seasons and 144 episodes, it is now considered one of the greatest TV series ever made, with Merrick even returning to the show, although this time played by Richard Riehle.
