By BetteAndTinaForever

Brava! for Women in the Arts is a committed to the artistic expression of women, people of color and youth. Their mission is to produce, present and cultivate live art, which celebrates works that explore the intersections of multiculturalism and feminism that ignite social change as well as build community.

In celebration of Women’s History month Brava held a contemporary discussion about women in art and media with Ilene Chaiken.

I went to this event with a purpose in mind and it was to ask Ilene about her take on season six and the interrogation tapes webisodes. I arrived to the theater a little earlier and was able to get a few minutes alone with Ilene to talk about some things that I thought the audience might not ask.

Here’s our short interview.

B&TF: Looking back at The L Word, what stories were you trying to tell and what was your favorite because obviously the show meant different things to different people?

IC: I was trying to tell all those stories. I was just trying to entertain people and make good television.

B&TF: What were you hoping to achieve beyond simple entertainment?

IC: Simple entertainment is what I was trying to achieve. I thought that the real achievement was to make a television show about lesbians and have it be truly entertaining and function like all popular entertainment.

B&TF: Why then begin and end season six with death of one of the characters?

IC: It was the story we decided to tell. We liked the story, we thought it was a good story, we thought it was fun.

B&TF: It was a good story, I agree but it brought a lot of negativity.

IC: We didn’t see it as negativity.

B&TF: Even when all the characters who were Jenny’s friends began to hate her for different reasons?

IC: That’s already happened and I can’t tell you how many fans had asked me over the years to do something violent to Jenny. That didn’t come from me.

B&TF: It’s true then when you say you read the boards and listen to what fans say?

IC: Absolutely. That was a story that grew largely out of fans’ sentiments.

B&TF: Well, I heard a lot of fans saying, “Oh, I wish Jenny would die” or “I wish so-and-so would be killed” but I always thought it was just a figure of speech because personally for me, even if I don’t like the character I wouldn’t wish them any harm.

IC: I loved the character and it is fiction and it’s a fictional confection. It wasn’t a violent death and it wasn’t a hard-core murder story. It was a piece of entertainment consistent with all the rest of the entertainment we did.

B&TF: Why did you leave it open with so many suspects but no solution?

IC: Maybe it’s because the story is not over yet or maybe it’s just because it was the way we chose to tell it. We didn’t think that the point was ‘Who killed Jenny?’ or ‘Whether someone killed Jenny’. It was the vehicle for saying many, many things that we wanted to say to wrap up the show. And it was also a metaphor. It was a metaphor for the bittersweet moment in which we had to say goodbye to this show and these characters. Jenny brought us into this world and Jenny brought us out of it.

B&TF: Some people are actually saying that the entire The L Word was written by Jenny because she’s the writer. It began with her coming out and ended with her dead…

IC: All these speculations are valid.

B&TF: Interesting…so if you will get the green light to make a movie what will you do? Will you pick up where the show ended?

IC: I’m not even remotely prepared to entertain that question.

B&TF: Okay. Now we have interrogation tapes coming out every Monday. Are they the edits from the interrogation scenes we saw in the finale or are they the separate scenes you shoot just for this purpose?

IC: I won’t talk about the process behind shooting it or when we shot it or what it was intended for but the one thing that I will talk about is that that was all scripted material and it was scripted in response to the things that fans wanted to know about these characters.

B&TF: I remember there was a thread on OurChart where people were asking what they wanted to know.

IC: Yes.

B&TF: Well, this is a bit of personal question for me. I’m a big Tina fan and I know we all were asking for Tina’s background forever and finally we got it and lots of people were really shocked when they saw it. Who came up with this story and was it actually a recent development or was it developed over the years?

IC: I’m very, very collaborative with the actors that I work with and it was partly scripted and partly work shopped.

B&TF: So you mean that Laurel Holloman had input in this scene?

IC: Yes, Laurel had input.

B&TF: When I was watching it I wasn’t shocked that it happened because obviously child abuse happens in families but the way she was talking about this, like for Tina it wasn’t an abuse but just a childhood experience…

IC: It was a childhood experience. In her mind it was a childhood experience. These experiences aren’t always experiences of abuse and I take sexual abuse very, very seriously. But there are also childhood encounters that one had that don’t necessarily fall into a category of abuse. I think the more important thing is that fans wanted to know more about Tina and about her life and now we know that she grew up in the South and that she had a father who was in politics and he was very right wing and her mother left him. We know many, many things about Tina that we never knew before.

B&TF: I know that right now we have two tapes out for Tina and Shane. Can you give me a little hint what’s coming with Bette’s tape because fans are nervous now.

IC (laughing): No, I’m not going to give you a hint. It’s coming.

B&TF: Well, I know but we don’t even know if it’s going to be the last one or…

IC: That’s not my decision but you should hopefully tune in and see it.

B&TF: Yes, of course, I wouldn’t miss it.

My five minutes were up because Ilene had to prepare for the event. When she was announced Ilene talked for over an hour before answering a few questions and my report about “An Evening with Ilene” is coming up next. I, too, hope that you will tune in to find out what else Ilene had to say about her career, the show and her plans for the future.