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However naively, Luke was remarking on a really actual tradition on the time. Female administrators had been beneath such stress to show their value to a sexist trade that buying a stylist for in-person polish in all probability appeared like a small value to pay. In the early nineties, Kuzui barely had any friends. In the massive studio system, there was Amy Heckerling, Penny Marshall, and Kathryn Bigelow. Many of the crew on the set of Buffy the Vampire Slayer had by no means labored with a feminine director. Twentieth Century Fox, the studio backing Buffy, had by no means launched a film directed by a girl. Yet right here she was, making a film about feminine empowerment, an announcement at stark odds with Hollywood’s actuality.
Deep into Buffy’s six-week shoot at a Santa Monica warehouse, Kuzui walked off the set, pissed off by “unprofessional and unkind” behaviors inside her crew. After about fifteen minutes, Luke got here to the place she had secluded herself.
He sat subsequent to her. “Everybody feels really bad,” he mentioned.
“Well, they should,” Kuzui answered.
“I know. And I want to apologize for it.”
Kuzui checked out him. “If I were a man,” she requested, “would this have happened?” “No.”
They contemplated in silence for a second. Then he requested, “Will you come back to set with me?”
“Sure,” she mentioned. “As long as everyone understands that that’s not acceptable anymore.”
They stood up, and simply as Kuzui was about to stroll again on her personal, Luke stunned her with an enormous gesture. He swept her off her ft and carried her, damsel-in-distress type. “He wasn’t a big guy,” Kuzui remembers, laughing, “but I’m pretty small, too.” He walked all the best way again to set, after which gently positioned her proper subsequent to the digital camera.
Luke wasn’t chargeable for the dangerous power that compelled Kuzui to take a stand that day, however as a younger star on the rise, he possessed the facility to shift it. His carrying stunt may’ve utterly rankled another person, however Kuzui seen it as supportive and campy, within the spirit of the movie itself. And the underside line was, they trusted one another.
Luke wasn’t blind to the feminist import of Buffy. In interviews, Luke often referred to his character Pike because the “damsel in distress,” for getting rescued by Buffy and for being far outpaced by her supernatural preventing abilities. Of all of the solid members, “Luke and Paul Reubens were the ones who got it the most,” Kuzui says. She additionally credit David Arquette, who Luke folded into the undertaking (he additionally really helpful Kristy Swanson because the heroine; she and Luke had been relationship round that point). For camaraderie, Kuzui often relied on Reubens, who performs a vampire in his first massive function submit–Pee-wee Herman, and Arquette, who performed Pike’s friend-turned-vampire, however she known as Luke the “great advocate for the film.” He understood that enjoying a person in awe of a girl’s energy was each the enjoyable of the film and its fanged chunk at Hollywood’s normal fare.
Luke was “always 100 percent present for me,” Kuzui maintains, but it surely was clear “he was being torn in several directions.” There was no downtime for him between takes; he was all the time signing stacks of images, or being interviewed on the telephone, or assembly with Cyd LeVin, his supervisor. LeVin believed in Luke, and wished to capitalize on his momentum, which meant holding him busy. Sometimes he confirmed up for one in all Buffy’s many evening shoots trying so drained that Kuzui needed to ask, “Are you okay?” He downplayed her issues.