Jane Espenson [scénariste, productrice]

Choupinette ^^

Une nouvelle interview de Jane au sujet de "Once Upon a Time" (contient des SPOILERS pour la série !) :

Nouvelle vidéo interview de Jane Espenson :

Citation :

Team Husbands Talks Web Series Comic Book, Charity Event

Already a hit Web series, Husbands is set to take the comic book universe and charity world by storm in the coming weeks.

Written and created by Brad Bell (who stars as the character of Cheeks) and Jane Espenson (Buffy the Vampire Slayer, Torchwood, Once Upon a Time), Husbands recently completed its second season and focuses on a gay couple that drunkenly got married after just a few weeks of dating.

In the following interview, conducted yesterday at New York Comic-Con, TV Fanatic speaks to Espenson, Bell and costar Sean Hemeon about the show's upcoming comic book (out October 24!) and November 11 charity event, in which the team will head to Salt Lake City, screen an episode of Husbands and speak to GLBT youth in the area to help them understand that they aren't alone.

Nouvelle interview de Jane, qui parle notamment de la saison 9 de Buffy en comics, pour laquelle elle a écrit récemment :

Citation :

Graphically Speaking: An Interview with Jane Espenson

At this year’s New York Comic Con, I was lucky enough to interview prolific television writer Jane Espenson. Jane has had a long career having written on shows such as “Star Trek: The Next Generation,” “Dinosaurs,” “Game of Thrones,” and “Battlestar Galactica” and that’s still just a drop in the bucket. She is widely recognized as a soldier in the Joss Whedon Army of Scribes (my term, TM suckers), having written on all of his shows since “Buffy the Vampire Slayer.” She currently writes for ABC’s “Once Upon A Time” and co-created the original web series “Husbands” with Brad Bell. Jane was gracious with her time and I managed to get through a conversation with her without getting nerd vomit all over myself. But man was it close. Slight SPOILERS ahead.

Me: You wrote an episode of “Game of Thrones” last year. Can you tell us about the process of adapting George R.R. Martin’s voice for the screen?

Jane Espenson: Well, I was a hired gun. David [Benioff] and D.B. [Weiss, the showrunners] brought me in and said “Lucky you, you get to write the one with the golden crown! Your chunk of the book goes from this page to that page.” They had broken it down into the scenes they had wanted in the episode, which I had to adapt to fit TV. It meant making it shorter, more concise and driven toward a single theme, pulling the very best from the page. It was really a joy.

So…Billy the Vampire Slayer!

[Enthusastic] Yeah! [Laughs]

That sounded cool. The slayers get their own Batman, in that he doesn’t have powers, but he’s still part of the team. My immediate thought was of Xander.

Well it’s out now, so you can buy a copy and see. The fact is, Xander could have called himself a slayer, but he doesn’t think of himself as a slayer. He doesn’t identify as a slayer. Here [Billy] is a boy that says “I choose. I wasn’t Chosen, but I choose. I like Buffy and I want to be a slayer.” I don’t think Xander wanted that. Also, vampires have changed. In season 9, we have what are called “zompires,” which are not as sneaky and plan-y. They’re a different breed. So Billy has a strong watcher named “Cute Devon,” and they have the tools to get the job done.

When will we see more of Billy?

Issue 15 is the second issue of the Billy arc. Drew Greenberg [another current Buffy writer] wrote the story together. I wrote issue 14 and he wrote issue 15. Whether or not Billy sticks around after that, I wouldn’t be surprised.

Well, it IS the Joss Whedon universe. Who knows what could happen?

That’s right. Anyone can die.

Where did the term “flobotinum” come from?

It was a word that was used in “Buffy” before I got there. It meant the “magical, mystical thing” for that given episode. But I have a feeling that predates it. I thought it came from “flogiston,” the term from early physics, which turned out to be disproven. But I guess that’s wrong. Who knows?

You’ve been writing in the Joss Whedon universe for over a decade. How do you still motivate yourself to keep telling these stories?

Because the characters keep changing. That’s one of the wonderful things Joss does and one of the great things about the [Buffy] comic book universe. We can take the characters forward through time, so now Dawn and Xander are involved and very committed. There are new emotional journeys for the characters to go on. You never run out of story, similar to “Once Upon a Time,” where the circumstances of the characters change, forcing the characters into new emotional places. Always story.

Speaking of “Once Upon A Time,” my girlfriend’s family watches it and they say “bring back the Huntsman.”

Of course they do. The Huntsman was lovely and beautiful [Laughs].

Can I ask you a ridiculous question?

Sure.

In Battlestar Galactica, Starbuck says “I’m not afraid of dying. I’m afraid of being forgotten.” In the present, we have a Starbucks on every corner. Please tell me I’m reading too much into that.

Wow…there was no conscious attempt to connect Starbuck to the ubiquity of Starbucks. But that name will not be soon forgotten, so I guess she’s alright.

Thanks. That was unbelievably nerdy of me.

[Laughs]

To this day, we mourn “Firefly.” Joss Whedon even said he still has stories to tell in that universe. Do you?

I wrote a short story that had to do with Kaylee and Wash [“What Holds Us Down”] trapped on a disabled ship, which Kaylee has to fix with no help while they’re being hunted. I absolutely loved it. I wrote it to be internal, so it wouldn’t be a great episode, but it made a great short story. But something like that where Kaylee has to do something awesome and mechanical under terrible timed pressure and isolation. I like that a lot.

Anything new coming out with your web series, “Husbands?”

Not only is “Husbands” a series, but we’re also doing a digital comic book. It starts October 24th. People can find out about it on the Dark Horse site or at the Love Husbands site.

I was wrong. Nerd vomit was everywhere. But hey, it was awesome. For the premiere of the “Husbands” digital comic book, check out the Dark Horse website (www.darkhorse.com) or the Love Husbands website (www.lovehusbands.com) this Wednesday October 24th. For more of Billy, check out Buffy the Vampire Slayer #15 on November 14th from the good folks at Dark Horse Comics. Follow Jane on Twitter @JaneEspenson and “Husbands” @TeamHusbands.

http://www.geekingoutabout.com/2012/10/22/graphically-speaking-an-interview-with-jane-espenson/

Si j'ai bien compris, voici un essai de Jane sur le livre "Orgueil & Préjugés" :

Jane Espenson rejoint l'équipe qui travaillera sur le spin-off de Once Upon A Time, qui se déroulera à Wonderland :

Vidéo interview de Jane Espenson, elle évoque notamment Amy Acker :

Citation :

Chloe Dykstra sat down with writer/producer Jane Espenson (Battlestar Galactica & Buffy the Vampire Slayer) and other fans at Gallifrey One to discuss the Women of Doctor Who, and the evolving role of women in science fiction.

Citation :

Jane Espenson and Brad Bell Interview at MCM London Comic Con

Jane Espenson and Brad Bell Interview at MCM London Comic Con

POSTED BY CHRISTOPHERFRANCIS ON MAY 27, 2013 AT 7:17 PM

At the MCM London Comic Con, a small roundtable discussion brought
together MCM Buzz and the fantastically charming writing duo of Jane
Espenson and Brad Bell. They have brought many great scripts to screen
for all manner of shows, but together have created the brilliant
web-series Husbands – a marriage equality sitcom currently with two
seasons online alongside a third in production with CW Digital, as well
as a six-issue comic book available both in print and digitally.

Q – I feel that some YouTube series’ have had that little fan
following but they really need to be everywhere, they need to be
observed more, and I see that Husbands as it got to its second series
increased its fan base quite a bit with the Q&A that happened at
VidCon. How has the interaction from the fans actually been?

Brad Bell: It’s incredible.

Jane Espenson: Really positive.

Brad: And it grows every time, every year when we go
back to something we’ve been to, like VidCon. Our first VidCon we
noticed our first increase in the audience, the second VidCon was a
bigger room, and that filled the room, it’s very cool.

Jane: We have a slate of conventions we attend every
year and that’s good for fan outreach and we both tweet, which means
now there’s always a two-way communication going with the fans. And
because we made a Kickstarter it also opened up a communication between
us and the fans, it makes them feel like they’re a part of the team.
Which they are, they paid for that second season.

Q – Obviously you worked on the Buffy comic, Jane. I was
wondering what the difference was between working in comics versus
television.

Jane: They’re very different, I mean Brad can speak
about this too because we did the Husbands comic. Writing a comic book
is more like directing television than it is like writing television.
It’s so visual. What does the panel look like?

Brad: And you have to describe one still image, you
can’t use anything in the present tense or that suggests an action where
there’s more than one movement. The sky’s the limit in comics, you can
do anything, you can go anywhere, which is why we explored all the
different realms we could go into with comics.

Q
– I like that about the comic, as opposed to just continuing the story
of the web-series you go into all these different worlds like the
Holmesian mystery and the spy story issue. I also like how you like to
play with the formats, such as the narrator in the comics breaking the
fourth wall. Same with the web-series, when you’re actually reading
scene directions.

Jane: We like to play with tropes, and on the show
we play with sitcom conventions and in the comic book we play with comic
book conventions. That fourth wall is in trouble.

Brad: I like that because that’s very much the way
we talk and it’s because of the industry that we’re in so we’ll be
telling a story and we’ll say, “We had a couple drinks CUT TO: 2AM –
Interior Strip Bar…” (Laughter) So it works, because it is breaking the
fourth wall without breaking the fourth wall. It’s almost nodding to it.

Jane: It’s the way of breaking the fourth wall
figuratively in natural conversation. The character of Cheeks is an
actor, lives in a world populated by actors, so speaks like a script
without actually being aware that he is in a show.

Q – What inspired you to branch out into the comics side of
things, having done the web-series? Obviously, Jane you’ve worked on
Buffy comics, you’ve seen that side of it.

Jane: Exactly, having seen it helped, but also we
didn’t know if there would be more. We had finished shooting the season
that the Kickstarter supported, so as far as we knew this maybe the only
way we could bring these characters forward.

Brad: It was a way of continuing the story.

Q – Are you going to consider the stories in the comics as canon?

Jane: Yes. They are canon in that the character Cheeks wrote a comic book.

Brad: Yes, and this is kind of an exclus-… this is
some new information. The new material that we’ve done for season three
is somewhat of a prequel to the comic book.

Q – Obviously with your series it’s homosexuality in America,
they get a bit taboo about that. What inspired you to go forward with
this, what made you think you’ve got a market?

Brad: Because we love pushing against taboos.

Jane: Exactly the taboo was not a disincentive, the taboo was-

Brad: -why we did it!

Jane: Yeah! Nobody’s doing this. This is something
that is important to us that nobody’s doing. And it’s custom-made for
television that has done newlywed comedy well forever. It appears as if
nobody’s stepped forward to do this, so why not us?

Q – Are you taking another angle on the debate? With the
first season it was more about marriage equality and the second is more
about public opinions and how accepting they are, are you going to take
it another direction in season three?

Brad: I think there are different elements of the
same story to tell. How are we perceived by the public as a couple? Why
are we the poster children for all gay people everywhere? Are
we setting a bad example or are we just doing what any straight couple
would do? And just exploring realms of that conversation. Domestic,
public, intimate, fame…

Jane: And always just bringing it back to this
relationship. At the heart it’s about a relationship, not about a cause.
And so, bringing it back to “Are Cheeks and Brady gonna make it?”

Brad: That’s what marriage is. It’s what makes marriage work for them, for any couple.

Jane: Which actually speaks better to the cause than
waving the flag. You may see stories that are more intimate and
domestic with less of the big press angle.

Brad: I think the more intimate and domestic stories
still have that socio-political satire and comedy, because we can’t
really…well at least I can’t… you could probably write a story without
all of that.

Jane: Yeah, we could just make it about them arguing about whatever, but-

Brad: -you feel uninspired about doing that. What’s the bigger idea here?

Jane: We definitely set out with the idea that this is a show with an idea at the heart of it, with a reason to tell it.


Q
– So with that level of awareness when you’re originally writing the
show and the characters, were you going through like, “Okay, so, here’s
things that the straight community might be against so we might look
into that, or the gay community might be weird about to try and tailor
it?” Or were you more “Here’s the characters. Here is a narrative arc.
People can either deal with it or not like it, here we go.”

Brad: More the second one. And sometimes while we’re
writing the story I will find something interesting in the scene like,
“Oh, this would be a good moment to make a point,” make a parallel or
analogy for this, and we have room for some commentary there, or I’ll be
reading comments on some news story on a gay blog or a conservative
blog and I’ll see this idea people have and I’ll think, “Well that’s a
completely bullshit idea!” Like why are people acting as if this is
true, and find a way for that to work in the story that we’re telling. I
have a passionate reaction to something, we start there. What intimate,
domestic, marriage equality sort of story would work to communicate
that idea.

Q – Do you think it’s interesting that media hasn’t
fractured, but you’re able to do things now such as YouTube and Netflix,
where there was Hemlock Grove, you can commission series’ now without
the big networks. Do you think it’s quite liberating for creative
people? If you get turned down you could always go and take it somewhere
else.

Jane: Absolutely! We even skipped the stage of
getting turned down! (Laughter) We just want to do this and we want to
do it our way and we want to do it right now. There is access to content
making in a way that’s never been possible before. You could even do it
for a whole lot less money, this is where people can just go with a
webcam and say what they’re going to do, and if their content is really
good, it’s got a shot. You don’t have to demonstrate that there is an
audience for it; you can do it as a way to demonstrate that there is an audience for it that was important to us.

Brad: I think that that was more important to us,
than, you know, we get asked a lot of questions about profit and what’s
the new model, and those are all the things that are being figured out
and will continue to be figured out. For us, that was not why we got
into it. We got into it to prove that there was an audience, and not to
prove that there was an audience so we could sell the show. We wanted to
prove the audience for the sake of moving culture forward and showing
the powers that be that there was an audience for this and even if we
weren’t gonna get the money for it or it wasn’t our face on the flag, we
wanted to set that trend and be a part of that wave of change.

Q – Season three’s under CW Digital. Is that changing anything in your process? Does it give you more funding?

Jane: Oh, it gives us more funding (Laughter)

Q – Do you still have full creative control?

Jane: Absolutely, that was really gratifying. That
they didn’t want to change anything and didn’t particularly want to be
part of the making of process. They were very much like “Give us the
show that you’ve been making.”


Q – So it’s going to be distributed on that? Or YouTube?

Brad: Yeah, they have CW Seed, which is where
they’ll have original programming and they have a lot of interactivity,
it’s a whole new thing they’re launching this summer with the shows they
have on broadcast as well as seven original digital shows.

Jane: Seasons one and two will still be on YouTube but this new one will be Seed-

Brad: -they’ll be exclusive to Seed.

Q – Is that paid content? Or is it free?

Brad: It’s free.

Q – Where do you develop your storylines?

Jane: One of the things we do is that we look at
classic TV and we go, “What are the classic stories that have been told
about newlyweds? How are they changed by the same-sex situation?”

Brad: And how are they the same?

Jane: We also think about just what are basic topics that Cheeks and Brady would have different takes on.

Brad: Or relationships themselves. I know that I’m
regularly thinking with my boyfriend, like the other day, I was about to
kill a spider, and my boyfriend was like “You’re gonna kill it? I would
set it free”. And I’m like “Really? You’re gonna set it free?”
(Laughter) “Like, are you that guy?” (Laughter) “You’re gonna take this
spider and put it outside?” And he’s like “That’s what I would do…”
(Laughter) Here I am with a shoe (Laughter) “Fine…Set it free!
You know, if I kill it I’m going to be the bad boyfriend!” So, things
like that, they could be a whole conversation and then Brady’s like the
“sweet, kind one” and what does that say about Cheeks, because he was
going to kill the spider, and do I really know him? (Laughter)

Jane: Absolutely. We draw from media, we draw from
life, we draw from just thinking about characters and conflict. I think
there’s even competitions we’ve had, you and me, where we go, “This would be a Cheeks and Brady conversation.”

Brad: Totally. Well we just have such different
approaches to things. Jane is very, “Oh you wanna be first to get on the
plane! So you can get your bags on” and I’m all “Yeah, then you have to
sit on the plane forever! You wanna be the last one on the plane!” (Laughter)

Q – How did you two come together to develop the show? What inspired you to?

Jane: Brad used to do these hilarious short-form
humour videos for YouTube that I came across and was just so impressed
by the writing, the maturity of the writing, the quality of the joke,
the discipline of the editing. I reached out to him, just, “These are
great! Let’s get lunch!” And we became friends, and after a couple years
of that we started looking around for something to do and he knew that
online content was going to merge with television in a way that’s even
quicker and decisive than I had ever realised, and he brought me this
idea. It made absolute perfect sense to do it. It has been a remarkably
simpatico writing relationship. We write very similarly, similar
instincts, we rarely go like “No! My version of the joke is better!”
Sometimes, but not too often.

Brad: Very rarely. We are not invested in what’s
funnier because we wrote it. Because we were friends for a couple of
years, I think the reason why we wanted to work on something together
was because we noticed how consistently aligned our career choices were.
We would watch something and say, “I like this, I didn’t like that!”
and it was always the same thing.

Q – How would you sell the show to someone in Britain, who’s
never seen it before, about to go to YouTube and watch it? How would you
set up the scenario?

Brad: Well, two opposites that have been dating for a
few weeks go out to celebrate marriage equality in Vegas, they get
drunk, they wake up married, and the gays are mad, the conservatives are
mad, and in order to not betray the cause and make marriage equality
look bad, they decide to stick it out.

Jane: And they might just love each other a little
bit! Will their love be strong enough to take the couple through that
don’t know each other that much? It’s very funny. We’re never
sacrificing humour for message. We use humour for the message.

Brad: And vice versa, we’re never sacrificing the
message for humour. And if you like classic sitcoms, if you feel like
classic television, it’s modelled after that. It’s Bewitched and I Love
Lucy and Dick Van Dyke… with two guys! In the 21st century!

Q – You’ve had a selection of celebrity guests, is there any
hint towards someone popping up in season three? Or is it all top
secret?

Jane: It is top secret! But you’ve given a hint-

Brad: -I did give a hint! We do have a guest star whose… just a doll.

Jane: That’s the hint.

Q – Is it going to be Felicia Day’s cameo? Because that was a brilliant cameo.

Jane: We had Felicia Day already, so we’re hinting someone new.

Brad: Someone once asked if anyone is coming back, and… no.

Q – Not even Joss (Whedon)?

Jane: Not Joss. We may reference Joss…

Brad: …And we may bring him back in the future… but this time around we’re telling a different story and we have a guest that’s just a doll.

For all things Husbands, go to http://husbandstheseries.com/. Jane Espenson can be found on Twitter at @JaneEspenson, while Brad Bell can be found at @GoCheeksGo.

Nouvelle interview audio de Jane :

Jane Espenson était présente au 2015 Etheria Film Night, qui mettait en avant les femmes dans le monde de la fiction. Etaient également présentes Amber Benson et Juliet Landau, qui ont pris la parole pour faire part de leurs expériences d'avoir travaillé avec Jane Espenson sur BTVS :



Elle a d'ailleurs reçu le Inspiration Award (photo avec Amber) :

Spoiler:

Spoiler:

Citation :

After a red carpet cocktail reception in the Egyptian’s courtyard, attendees went into the theater for the award presentation and short film screenings. Of course, when one thinks of “women in genre,” one of the first names that pops into your head is Jane Espenson, who’s had a hand in shaping our favorite genre stories, from all of her work in the Whedonverse, to Battlestar Galactica and Caprica, to Once Upon a Time! Amber Benson helped present Espenson with the 2015 Etheria Inspiration Award for her incredible body of work, and the way she inspires countless women to create in genre, by speaking to her experiences with Espenson on Buffy. Tricia Helfer was also on hand for the presentation reading a lovely statement from Whedonverse alum, Juliet Landau, who also praised Espenson and her creativity. Espenson was her usual gracious self when accepting the trophy as she encouraged all the female creators in the audience to keep creating.

http://www.themarysue.com/2015-etheria-film-night/

Nouvelle interview de Jane au sujet des amitiés féminines qu'elle écrit, et on y parle notamment de BTVS et de Buffy & Willow :



Extrait sur BTVS :

Citation :

What are your first memories of seeing Buffy the Vampire Slayer? What about the show made you want to write for those characters?

A friend recommended that I watch it, and I immediately loved it. I think the first full episode that I saw was “Ted,” from Season 2, which guest-starred John Ritter. I also saw “The Pack,” the one with the hyenas, and loved the metaphorical nature of the storytelling. I was most impressed by the series’ willingness to mix strong humor, strong horror, and real emotion. Buffy was the show that made me want to make the jump from writing for half-hour comedies to hourlong series. I saw that a show existed where I could apply joke-writing skills, but also dig deeper, and get to say something important about the emotional jungle of the high school years.

Particularly in those early seasons, the friendship between Willow and Buffy was such a key element of the show and seemed to be something that fans really responded to.

It’s funny, I don’t recall there being a lot of fan interest focused on that friendship at the time, as opposed to any other relationship on the show. I wonder if it’s something that’s come into higher relief now as we look backwards at the series. I do think there was something really great in how accepting they were of each other. Both characters’ evolution over the series was embraced by each other and by their friends without judgment. Cordelia and Harmony could be catty, but there was never a hint of that in Willow or Buffy. It’s easy to look back now and say that it struck me as unlike anything else [on television], but at the time, I’m not sure I recognized it as such. I just loved how well defined the characters were and how their friendship made sense given who they were. A character like Buffy, who was a cheerleader brought down the social scale and thrown in with the outcasts, might not have made these new friends if she hadn’t been the Slayer. Maybe she would’ve been more like Cordelia.

Did you draw on any personal friendships to write for those characters?

My best friend growing up was very much like high school Willow: brilliant, bookish, and shy. But I’m not at all like Buffy, so I don’t think I drew much on that when I started to write for the characters. I just listened in my head to the characters that Joss had created and let them talk. And as the characters changed over the years, the friendship changed. Just like in real life, change happens gradually and you don’t realize you’re writing the characters any differently until you notice, “Whoa, we’re all the way over here now!” By the way, writing conflict is always more fun and productive than writing scenes of agreement, so when you’re “writing a friendship,” you’re likely to be affirming its ability to recover from fractures. If you’re scared to write the fractures, you’re not going to have very deep relationships to write about.

Posté par Jane Espenson :

Citation :

Fun thing happens when you work for Mutant Enemy. (Circa 2000)