I scanned in the pages here but the quality is crappy so, you know, in the devoted kitty style, I typed up the whole friggin' thing. But you should look at the pictures, if only just to see Rebecca in all her glory. Heh.
Here you are:
A QUICK WIT
Buffy writer Rebecca Rand Kirshner brings her finely-honed comedic skills to bear on the latest doings in Sunnydale. By Matt Springer.
Any journalist will tell you that the most difficult part of writing a feature story is coming up with the opening paragraph. But that’s not something I have to worry about this time, because Buffy scribe Rebecca Rand Kirshner has written it for me.
“I met her at this trendy restaurant,” Kirshner suggests for the opening to her own feature, although we actually met in her office on the Buffy lot, certainly a trendy if foodless spot. “She wasn’t wearing a speck of make-up, and yet her skin was radiant. She’s even prettier in real life. She lights a cigarette, takes a deep drag. Throughout the interview, she continues to chainsmoke.”
Full disclosure – there was no smoking either, which is probably a good thing, considering the plans she had concocted years ago for her first interview. “I always had this fantasy of going for my interview and really confusing with the interviewer,” Kirshner admits. “Lighting one cigarette and putting it down, then lighting another and putting id down, and the picking the first one up during this story about how my grandmother’s death impacted my writing, and smoking them both. I always used to fantasize when I was little about when I’d be interviewed. Finally, here I am.”
Kirshner’s childhood plans for her inevitable interview point towards her most obvious creative gift, a sharp sense of humor. If Buffy really is “The Simpsons meets Twin Peaks” as Joss Whedon has pointed out, then Kirshner’s gifts fall closer to The Simpsons side of the equation – oddly enough, her fiancé works for that very show. She cut her writing teeth at the Harvard Lampoon, and her keen appreciation for alternately skewering and worshipping the minutiae of pop culture shines forth in her empassioned tale about a special dinner with Peter “Columbo” Falk while working on that publication.
“The greatest moment of my life so far has been meeting Peter Falk,” Kirshner recalls. “All he wanted to do was talk about Columbo. There was a friend and I, and he was like ‘You wanna get outta here?’. We went to Pizza Hut and discussed old Columbo episodes for hours. He was just like Columbo. You didn’t know – you’re like, ‘Is this man brilliant or mentally deranged?’ I had a trenchcoat, and he signed it for me, but he signed it 1969.”
Although being interviewed probably isn’t a huge signifier that one has “arrived” these days – after all, they still interview Gary Coleman, don’t they? – snagging a writing job on Buffy certainly is. Kirshner did just that after the show on which she made her television writing debut, Freaks and Geeks, was unceremoniously axed by NBC after only 18 episodes. Although that wasn’t an easy experience to endure, it definitely taught her some essential truths about working in television.
“I learned that a show can be really great and still not stay on the air,” Kirshner says. “It’s all a gamble. But they were brilliant people, and an ideal first job. It was just a real fortuitous primary experience, being with such great writers. The only thing that could not have this year be a disappointment was that I’m on Buffy now.”
As a Buffy scribe, Kirshner has had the chance to leap into the fray early on and make her mark, with two memorable episodes already credited to her pen. She made her Buffy writing debut with episode four of Season Five, “Out of My Mind” in which Spike and Riley each deal with extreme medical situations that would drastically alter their powers – and their respective roles in Buffy’s life. She followed that up with “Listening To Fear”, the episode that brought an extraterrestrial threat – the creep Queller demon – to Sunnydale for the first time ever. Considering both episodes sported some choice William the Bloody moments, it should be pretty easy to figure out which of the show’s characters Kirshner most enjoys writing.
“Spike is, in my mind, the perfect character,” Kirshner says, “He’s so funny, and yet he adds a darkness to the scenes he’s in. To find someone who has that kind of duality and that energy – it’s like sometimes you want to put him in every scene, because he’s like the court jester that can shine a light and reveal something about all the characters he interacts with.”
For the most part, acclimating oneself to working as a staff writer on Buffy is probably not much different from getting used to any new job – except that your boss is Joss Whedon, your co-workers regularly write lines like “I may be love’s bitch, but at least I’m man enough to admit it” and the “job” involves plotting the future of the Slayer and her friends. That plotting is done in lengthy pitch sessions, where stories are “broken” before each writer goes off to pen their particular episodes. As one might imagine, facing the opinions of your peers in such an open forum can lead to a bruised ego if you haven’t built a thick enough skin.
“There’s a presentational part of TV writing that I’m still figuring out,” Kirshner explains. “Sometimes you’ll think of something too much in your head, and if you take too much time to think about it, you’ve missed the boat and the conversation takes a different turn. You have to jump on it, and yet at every point, you’re risking your ego. It’s a different kind of writing. Writers are people who have weird stuff inside and use this medium to get it out to people. Coming up with ideas in a room means that you can’t filter it through your sentences. Sometimes it works and sometimes it doesn’t.”
Although facing one’s own creative fears is a challenge, from the start, Kirshner knew she’d be right at home in the Buffy writers’ room. “I immediately really liked everyone, which is a bonus,” she says. “If you’re going to be in a room with people, breathing their air for 12 hours, you might as well think they’re cool. I immediately was coming home to my boyfriend with stories of, ‘And then Joss made a mask out of the coffee container and wore it, pretending he was an Aztec god!’”
As for Kirshner’s future plans, she hopes to accomplish…well, just about everything. A huge self-painted canvas that hangs on her office wall speaks to her continued passion for the visual arts. She talks lovingly about the experience of moviegoing, indicating that screenplays might also pour from her word processor in the future. As an artist, she views herself in the mould of a Jean Cocteau, or even a Sophia Coppola – someone who isn’t confined to just one category of art, but who can tackle a variety of mediums in one long, exciting career.
“The things I really love are writing, theatre, fashion and acting,” she effuses. “TV writing is such a wonderful world for a writer. My idea right now is to come here and learn how modern stories are told, and not be precious about it, and not thing it has to be the one great story. You’re telling a story, and sometimes you sit in there and break it, and you don’t have much time. You’re not gonna get the ultimate story; it just has to be a real good, strong story. Buffy’s a brilliant show, so sometimes it is the great American TV episode, but you’re getting it done.”
Should the allure of television writing ever fade for Kirshner, it looks as though she has plenty of other creative projects ready to keep her occupied. Or she’s always welcome to take a position writing for Buffy Magazine. Based on her improvised lead, she seems to have this journalism racket all figured out.
***
Yeah. Because Spike just holds that show together.
Sorry. Bitter now.
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"Bitter, party of one. Bitter, party of one." she muttered... ~ Four Months After by Capt. Murdock