Jane Espenson

I’ve interviewed several folks with cool jobs in the entertainment industry, but Jane Espenson just might have my dream career.

CandyespensonEspenson may be best known as a former Buffy writer, but her current gig as co-executive producer on Battlestar Galactica is just as enviable. Currently, she’s spending her days on the picket lines, though she also has a new book in stores, Serenity Found: More Unauthorized Essays on Joss Whedon’s Firefly Universe (Benbella, $17.95).

This week we chatted about the strike, Battlestar and Firefly. Tune in to next week’s podcast to hear more:

Hi, Jane! So are you really out on the picket lines every morning at 6 a.m.?

Yeah, I’ve done my picketing for the day, ’cause I’m on the 6-9 a.m. shift. Why did I pick a career with so much walking in it?

How are your feet?

Not so good, but a fan sent me arch supports — Dr. Scholl’s, actually — so I couldn’t be happier. My fans take good care of me.

What’s it like when you’re out picketing for three hours or more? Because we see maybe 10 seconds of it on the news every night ...

Well it’s just like that, only it’s three hours long. (Laughs) You walk, you press the crosswalk button and you walk back. There’s chanting, there’s exciting moments when we go shoulder to shoulder ... it’s a lot of walking, and three hours is a lot easier than four. We were doing four hours a day before the Thanksgiving break, and now they’ve decided three hours a day is sufficient, which is much better, because the difference between three hours and four hours is immense.

Is it the same group of people every day, or does it change?

It’s pretty much the same, because we’re assigned to our gates. So all of the Battlestar writers are all at the same gate — we happen to be at the same gate with the Law and Order: SVU writers, who we’ve all gotten to know, a lovely group of people. We also have some writers from the new comedy Carpoolers that are in our group, so we see the same people every day, except that some people just come by and join us. So we’ll have students or aspiring writers or just fans of the show who come out, and they tend to change day to day.

Are you shouting, too?

Our group shouts because our group is very organized. We know what we’re there to do, we have our little list of chants and we chant and we get it done. There are other groups that I’m told are picketing almost ironically. They’re picketing with detachment and they’re a little too cool for school, but that’s not our line.

What have you thought about the mainstream media’s coverage of the strike?

I feel like it’s been a little downplayed, maybe because it always feels bigger when you’re involved in it, so you expect it to be the No. 1 story: "What do you mean, a cruise ship sinking is bigger than us? How is that ... Oh, right, because it’s a cruise ship sinking." But I have to say, the Internet coverage has been fantastic, the fans have been fantastic, and more and more I’m seeing articles that are getting the writers’ point of view right, so I’ve been very pleased with that.

Are there things that you’re hearing or seeing that aren’t being covered?

I’m not sure that the fan involvement, which is so clear on the Internet, is being made as clear as it could be in the mainstream press. The stuff with the stars involved gets more play, when in fact it’s the stuff with the mainstream, grassroots fans who come out in amazing numbers and send us food on the picket lines every day and are participating in that pencils program ... I’m not sure that’s as clear as it is to us that that’s a bigger part of our everyday strike experience than the involvement of the movie stars.

And are you worried about Battlestar not being able to finish its run? Because I’m worried!

As a fan, I am worried. As a writer, I am assured by Ron (Moore, the executive producer) that we will finish this story.

As soon as the strike ends, is that the first thing you’ll do — resume working on Battlestar?

Absolutely. I turned in a document to Ron, like, the day before the strike. And the day after the strike, he’ll give me notes on it, and I’ll do my rewrite.

And of course you can’t tell me a thing about it.

I know! Oh my god, the things you don’t know — it’s amazing. Wait ’til you see the season premiere. I’m so thrilled, because I was a fan before I was a writer, just like on Buffy. This whole thing’s been really similar to my arc on Buffy, where I was a fan, I begged to get on the show, through luck and hard work I got on the show. Now I get to see it from the inside, and it’s just as satisfying from the inside, and just the delight in knowing ... It’s like, you know how sometimes it’s fun to buy a gift because then you get to watch the person open them? That’s how I feel right now. We’ve put all these great gifts in boxes, and now we get to watch people open them.

Now let’s talk about Firefly/Serenity, because you’re still in that world. Were you planning on doing another book?

No. The first one felt almost like an afterthought. Firefly was over, the movie was on the horizon. I sort of thought this was one of the last, little, fun filagrees on my involvement with Firefly. ... I was really surprised when they approached me for the second book, and I was really happy that it was much earlier in the process. I was able to suggest some writers for the book, I was able to be more involved in giving some notes on the essays, put a little more thought into the whole thing.

So is this your Firefly goodbye, or is it just another chapter?

Well, I think now that series have such a long life post-broadcast, I’ve learned that nothing is goodbye. I thought I said goodbye to Buffy, and now I’m going to write one of the Buffy comic books.

Yes, that will be awesome!

Yeah, I know. I know what my story is, and I’m so excited. I haven’t written it yet, but Joss already said, "OK, here’s the basic idea behind your book." And what if Battlestar turned into, like, a series of MOWs the way that Alien Nation did? I haven’t heard anything about that, but boy, if I were at Sci Fi, that’s what I would do with Battlestar. So who knows when it’s goodbye? Series just keep going. So sure, if there were interest in a third Firefly book ... Joss (Whedon, Firefly/Buffy creator) is really good at turning products into other products. Where there is a story to be told, he tells it, and he finds a medium to tell it in. So who knows if Firefly could still have life in it yet.

If you could write for a show that’s no longer on the air, what would it be?

I wanna write for M.A.S.H., I wanna write for Alien Nation. I’d love to write for thirtysomething, I’d love to write for Barney Miller and Mary Tyler Moore, all those amazing shows. Lou Grant — ooh, I love Lou Grant, that’s a nice show for me. Stories that are about something. In a way, it’s almost like sci-fi: They would tell sort of "ripped from your headlines" stories, but encoded a little bit. I would love to dip into the past like a salad bar and just write one of everything.