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Rebecca Rand Kirshner - Interviewed at the Buffy soundstage August 23rd 2001
Reading and writing
How did you become a Buffy writer?
Well, I have always written things and I graduated from college not knowing what I was going to do. I knew I wanted to either write or paint or act or be a fashion designer. [I thought] "Writing is what I get good grades at, so let’s start with that". Then [I thought] "I wish I could write and not be horribly poor, so maybe TV, where they pay salaries."
Also, as a writer, I thought something on TV has is a real structure to it, and something that I thought separated dilettantes from real writers was writing with a purpose or with a structure. I told myself it was like [the way] people used to write for newspapers - to learn how to write without being precious. Now I think people can use TV as that and it’s a really modern medium.
So, I came out to Hollywood and was a script reader. Only a few years ago I got my first job, on [the series] Freaks and Geeks. It was just starting out, so they were willing to take new writers. I loved it there and had a great time, but then it got cancelled. I was horribly depressed for about five minutes, thinking I would never work in a place as good as that. There are so few shows that I really like.
Well, one of them is Buffy, [and I was told] "Okay you can have a job at Buffy", so life is good again and depression is postponed a little while. I’m still a rookie writer in a way. I’m now being groomed for greatness.
Dynamite Spike
Which characters do you most enjoy writing for?
l loved writing for Spike and Harmony, together and separately. I think Spike is just a dynamite character. He’s just endlessly interesting. To say that I feel solidarity with a vampire might be dangerous, I guess, but I like Spike tons and he’s super-interesting. I also liked Harmony. So those are two, and Buffy’s not so bad herself.
Memory Loss
Do you sometimes forget what was in your own stories?
In a way I do. You’re so into the story when you’re writing it, and it’s all-consuming. You think about it when you’re eating breakfast and you think about it when you’re driving home and, for me, once it’s sort of launched I don’t remember it as well.
I watch it, and I’m surprised by what happens in it. Maybe I only have so much room in my brain but once I write something it’s out the door and into the world of fiction. I think also the problem is that you remember all the other possibilities, the roads not travelled that you discussed in the writer’s room.
You think, "Well, what if it’s this, and what if it’s that?" Sometimes you’re talking to a friend who’s a fan and they say, "What happened there?" and you think, "Which way did it go? Which way did they see it go?" So I hope I can remember what I wrote.
Out of My Mind
Was Riley right to feel inadequate?
It’s hard to go out with a superhero, as my husband knows.
Angel is a hard act to follow, but I think it wasn’t the fact that he wasn’t a super guy that kept them apart but that [Riley] felt he had to be a super guy. Maybe that’s what that episode is about, trying to be something stronger than what you are. Trying to be someone who you’re not is hard on any relationship. But now he’s in Belize and having great adventures.
Was it your responsibility to set up the scene for his leaving?
I think Joss knew at that point that their relationship was doomed. I don’t remember what I was told to do, but we were working towards that end. A sad end for Riley.
Listening to Fear
Tell us about the alien monster.
My father is an astrophysicist at Harvard and he has disowned me based on that episode (laughs).
No, he actually just requested a tape of so he could play it in his lecture. It isn’t based on anything. I think the mythology came out of Jane Espenson’s brain.
I think the alien mythology is just about myth, and I think it was Jane Espenson,’s idea - those specific phenomena occurring- just a blob monster.
Goo as well.
Goo, dangerous goo. [It’s a] slug monster from outer space. Yeah, I said it.
I think what’s interesting about that [episode] to me is there’s two different kinds of life-threatening things happening. Every episode of Buffy has something life-threatening - or it wouldn’t be interesting. But what happens when you have a blob-like slug monster that can suffocate you with slime, and then you have a tumour?
They’re both terrifying and they’re different kinds of terror. You don’t want the slug monster to be less scary, but there’s something really scary about our real monsters and the things that could really happen to us. I think it is a delicate balance, but you have to keep them within the same reality where both of those things are frightening and they can cross paths and play off each other.
Tough Love
Willow and Tara - is there conflict ahead?
Yeah, conflict’s good. I like writing for conflict. I also would seem to be writing for a lot of crazy people. Crazy talk is one of my specialities it seems.
I think that’s a problem that’s part of their dynamic, and it’s something they’re still dealing with in Season six. Definitely.
We also see a darker side of Willow.
She’s getting really, really powerful and when you have those powers and they’re growing, it’s hard to know when to stop. It’s hard to know what’s fair game and what’s not, and in a way it reflects Buffy’s relationship with Riley. [It’s about] what happens when two people of varying powers are working together or working on a relationship together. At what point do you have to stop being powerful to let the other person feel all right, and at what point is being as powerful as you can be the optimum thing for your relationship?
Tales of the Slayers
Exploring Buffy in other media
I’m interested in other mediums just in general. The idea of taking Buffy from one angle of looking at her to another is really appealing to me.
We did do a Tales of the Slayer comic book that is not about Buffy per se but about other sorts of slayers. I got to write one of the episodes in that and that was great fun. I’d love to write comic books definitely and I want to do other prose writing and I guess writing about Buffy would be really interesting. It’s always interesting when you expand the world.
Collage about Buffy and paper machè, tableau vivante, mime – all those things would be really good, definitely.
Keeping it real
Why does Buffy remain fresh after so long?
There’s a portrait of Buffy inside our house that gets older and older and older and less energetic and more tired while she stays vigorous. I think it has to do with a Faustian bargain. No. (Laughs).
She grows up. She’s a character who changes and who goes through things and that’s what blows my mind. You read Dag or Blondie or whatever - these are American comic strips - or Andy Capp for instance. They stay the same and that’s interesting for a while, but eventually you get the same beats, the same jokes.
[Buffy] continues, characters grow up, characters get ill and characters go away. They graduate from High School, they graduate from college and they go to grad school and whatever happens to them happens. I think that’s what keeps it fresh, because it’s like real life.