YouSaid · the spoken record

Ilene Chaiken

lines on the record: 98
first: 2017-10-11
most recent: 2017-10-11
sittings or episodes: 1
sources: podcast

Every line below is reproduced as it was said and linked to the record it came from. Nothing here is summarised or generated. Directory · Search · Corrections

“And I just want to assure you that handmaids tail has everything to do with why the L word is getting made now. That's right. I switch to that. Okay.”
2017-10-11 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Recode Decode: Ilene Chaiken, showrunner, ‘Empire’ · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Library that owned all the rights to Handmaid's tail. And we went back to Gary Levine and it was seven years after Gary and I had initially said we wanted to do it. And I said, Gary, we've got the rights to handmaids tailor. You're still interested. And he said, yeah.”
2017-10-11 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Recode Decode: Ilene Chaiken, showrunner, ‘Empire’ · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“And I kept thinking, we've passed the baton and there are more lesbians on TV, not enough, but it'll happen and there will be. And it kept not happening. And there really isn't adequate representation or any really interesting or evolutionary or revolutionary representation on television still. And I thought there would be when the Elwer went off the air. Gary and I had also talked for years about doing handmade's tail. Right. And I pursued Handmaid's tale back when I was still doing the L word. And we tried to get the rights to it and couldn't. And I finally moved on because the rights were unavailable. And then a couple of years ago, I was having lunch with an executive at MGM who said, what are you doing next? And I said, well, I really want to do handmaids tale, but I can't get the rights. And he said to me, oh, we just bought the library. That is, MGM just bought the library.”
2017-10-11 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Recode Decode: Ilene Chaiken, showrunner, ‘Empire’ · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“And back then, nobody was doing Reboots. Suddenly everybody's doing them. But I just also didn't feel that it was the right time. I mean, we had Barack Obama in the White House, things were pretty good.”
2017-10-11 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Recode Decode: Ilene Chaiken, showrunner, ‘Empire’ · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“We've talked over the years and about probably almost five years ago, they said to me, Eileen, don't you think we should bring back the L word? And secretly I thought no. I'm doing other things and you're all doing other things and it's not the right time and maybe someday. But I never said no to them. I just said, yeah, I think maybe, you know, let's talk about it. And we would keep talking about it and we come up with ideas about how to do it. But I kept thinking this is not going to happen right now. Showtime isn't going to be interested. I talked to my dear friend at Showtime, who's now the president of the network, who was then my point executive, Gary Levine, who's one of my favorite people in all of television. And I talked to him about it, and he said, I don't know.”
2017-10-11 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Recode Decode: Ilene Chaiken, showrunner, ‘Empire’ · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“So bringing the show back came about in this way. And there are several different answers to your question. Jennifer Caden Lisha, who've remained good friends of mine and whom I think of as the three most iconic members of that cast. Yes, Jennifer.”
2017-10-11 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Recode Decode: Ilene Chaiken, showrunner, ‘Empire’ · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“So, when we did that photo spread, I knew that Showtime and I were talking about bringing the show back, but none of the actresses knew.”
2017-10-11 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Recode Decode: Ilene Chaiken, showrunner, ‘Empire’ · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Had technically nothing to do with rebooting the L word. That was an L word reunion, and there were actually two dead people in the photo spread because...”
2017-10-11 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Recode Decode: Ilene Chaiken, showrunner, ‘Empire’ · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Think that it had the effect of allowing us to be seen, allowing us to feel safer coming out and living our lives openly, I think a lot of people felt more able to come out to their families and friends. I mean, that's the biggest impact that it had. It was a cultural impact, something that I hear about a lot from people. Yes. And then I think that in the world of media and entertainment and storytelling, It was part of a moment in which we became more represented. We became more seen and more a part of the fabric of representation in storytelling.”
2017-10-11 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Recode Decode: Ilene Chaiken, showrunner, ‘Empire’ · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Not because I don't want to be powerful or that I don't think that women should be powerful. Because I had a shrink once who said to me power doesn't belong in love. And creativity and love, I think, are a lot alike. You don't want to approach this from the point of view of power. I want to be powerful and be able to do whatever I want to do. But when I'm... Involved in a creative endeavor, I don't want it to be about power. I want it to be about inspiration.”
2017-10-11 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Recode Decode: Ilene Chaiken, showrunner, ‘Empire’ · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“And by the time we came out the other end, I think I was better at it. Making television, and I did come out with, you call it power. I don't all that comfortable calling it that. Certainly the ability to...”
2017-10-11 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Recode Decode: Ilene Chaiken, showrunner, ‘Empire’ · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“I wouldn't have done anything differently. I mean, I would have been better. I would have been a better storyteller always The way that it went was great because I didn't know what I was doing when I started and they gave me a chance to learn on the job.”
2017-10-11 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Recode Decode: Ilene Chaiken, showrunner, ‘Empire’ · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Right. But people are now watching it. What was interesting about the audience of that show is I kept thinking everyone was like, oh, that's not when it first got announced. It was like, it's not going to work. I'm like, what's not to like hot women sex? There's nobody that doesn't want to watch it, gay men like it, lesbians like it, straight men like it, it's like it did, it got a wider audience than what you'd imagine. Did Showtime think that?”
2017-10-11 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Recode Decode: Ilene Chaiken, showrunner, ‘Empire’ · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“It's not casting contingent because you're not going to get any stars. And I said, you know, that's lovely. I'm really glad you're going to make my show regardless of whether we get stars, but I'll bet you we are going to get stars. Women are different. Women are bolder and less afraid Men, but also women have less to lose. You're not talking about guys that fear that they're going to lose their careers because they play a gay man. Women aren't going to have as much to lose, but also the audience isn't going to judge them in the same way. So I said, you know, let's just see. I think we will get some interesting actors. And the first person to sign on was Jennifer Beals.”
2017-10-11 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Recode Decode: Ilene Chaiken, showrunner, ‘Empire’ · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“I try not to imagine the relative success or failure of my projects when I'm working on them. I try just to make them and make them well. That said, I had these conversations with Showtime, that same guy, which he said to me, and they had a tough time with queer folk. They couldn't cast it. They cast all unknowns because nobody... Of stature, of note, wanted to play a gay man. And so Jerry Offsay said to me, we're going to make your little lesbian show. We're committed. You kept calling it little lesbian”
2017-10-11 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Recode Decode: Ilene Chaiken, showrunner, ‘Empire’ · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Little lesbian show And that's how it's done in Hollywood. So you started to make it. It obviously cast it. Jennifer Beals was critical to the casting. And then you brought up a lot of unknown, relatively unknown actresses at the time. What did you imagine would happen? Because it hit like an atom bomb, really. I guess we shouldn't use that right now with Korea. But how did you imagine it would be thought of?”
2017-10-11 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Recode Decode: Ilene Chaiken, showrunner, ‘Empire’ · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Then showtime after turning me down and really laughing at me for this idea, they bought the rights to an English series called Queer Folk. And made a show about gay men. And the night that dirty pictures won the Golden Globe, Jerry Offsay, who was the president of Showtime, whispered in my ear, I think we like to try the little lesbian show with you.”
2017-10-11 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Recode Decode: Ilene Chaiken, showrunner, ‘Empire’ · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“And they laughed at me and said no. That's not anything we're ever going to do. But that's a cute idea. And I moved on. I wrote another movie for Showtime, in fact, that also got made. But I still wanted to write about being gay. About my experience of gayness, I still thought even though I had never written series television, I thought this is where that story belongs because it's ongoing stories. It's stories about life ongoing And in the way that serialized television has historically done melodrama. Elevated melodies.”
2017-10-11 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Recode Decode: Ilene Chaiken, showrunner, ‘Empire’ · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Which is what they called the article. And I went into Showtime and I said, you know, should you make a television show about lesbians in Hollywood? Wouldn't that be cool?”
2017-10-11 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Recode Decode: Ilene Chaiken, showrunner, ‘Empire’ · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“So I wrote this movie for them Dirty Pictures, which wound up winning a Golden Globe. And it was Showtime's First Golden Globe, and they loved that. And they felt like this is really going to happen. We're going to start to compete with HBO. And I loved it too. I loved not that we won a Golden Globe, but I loved writing this movie, writing about art, writing about gay themes, writing about things that I really cared passionately about. And at the same time, I had written this article, as you know, not a journalist, but I wrote an article for Los Angeles magazine about the gay and lesbian baby boom. The baby”
2017-10-11 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Recode Decode: Ilene Chaiken, showrunner, ‘Empire’ · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“They hadn't yet had a hit. They didn't, they wasn't really on the map. Their big thing was some television series, the Playboy hour or something like that. They were doing some Playboy programming. But they were starting to make movies and identify that they wanted to compete with HBO.”
2017-10-11 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Recode Decode: Ilene Chaiken, showrunner, ‘Empire’ · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“So it was about what the NEA funds That they considered to be transgressive art, and they were defining it as obscenity and trying to defund the NEA. And so there was a museum director in Cincinnati who put on the Maplethorpe Show and then was charged with obscenity and put on trial. And that was the movie that I wrote. Weirdly, James Woods played the The one”
2017-10-11 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Recode Decode: Ilene Chaiken, showrunner, ‘Empire’ · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Oh, the other guy was a Pittsburgh guy. Anyway, they had a controversy because they displayed it at a Washington, D.C. Museum, and it became the biggest story. And then there was protests and anti-protests and this and that, and there was a giant penis on the mall at one point, which was enjoyable for me.”
2017-10-11 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Recode Decode: Ilene Chaiken, showrunner, ‘Empire’ · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Because it was at the Corporate. That was what I was writing about. I was writing about Maplethorpe. I was writing about the Piss Christ.”
2017-10-11 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Recode Decode: Ilene Chaiken, showrunner, ‘Empire’ · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“I wound up getting, like, I was on my last leg because I had two small children. And I was supporting my family in tough times. And I got hired to write a movie for Showtime. And it didn't pay a fraction of what I was making writing feature films, but I also wasn't getting hired to write feature films the way that I had been. And I took this very cool assignment for Showtime, writing a movie called Dirty Pictures. Which was it was a true story, and it was about an obscenity trial. The work of Robert Maplethorpe. And the Republican-led Congress trying to defund the NEA and the definition of what obscenity means.”
2017-10-11 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Recode Decode: Ilene Chaiken, showrunner, ‘Empire’ · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“I don't even remember. I think probably if I had written anything great, it would have been made. That has always been my attitude. I don't bemoan the ones that don't get made. If I still believed in it, I'd still be trying to make it.”
2017-10-11 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Recode Decode: Ilene Chaiken, showrunner, ‘Empire’ · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Sex for a link. So for like five more years, I tried writing movies, none of them got made. It was frustrating. What's the one that did?”
2017-10-11 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Recode Decode: Ilene Chaiken, showrunner, ‘Empire’ · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“My name was on it. I got credit in the first position, which meant that it was worth a big chunk of money to me and it was important in my career.”
2017-10-11 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Recode Decode: Ilene Chaiken, showrunner, ‘Empire’ · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“I got into a big fight because I had a transgender character and they were outrageed by it and they just started talking to me about, you're trying to make this into a gay movie and you're corrupting the IP and I just kind of lost heart. So that was the worst note.”
2017-10-11 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Recode Decode: Ilene Chaiken, showrunner, ‘Empire’ · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Well, I had this premise that girls should star in action movies, that we should make a feminist action movie. Nobody really was buying into the premise, but it was being talked about this. Must have been still the 1980s Or, no, the early 90s. And so I got hired to adapt a comic book based on Esme's posse. I got hired to adapt a comic book called Barbire about a kick-ass woman in the near future. And I wrote it thinking the biggest star of the moment back then was Dimi Moore. She was the highest paid actress in history. And I thought, I want Dimi Moore to be barbed wire. I'm going to write a big feminist female-driven action movie. And I wrote this script and I was really excited by it. And it was a very difficult process because, of course, it was all men who were giving me notes.”
2017-10-11 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Recode Decode: Ilene Chaiken, showrunner, ‘Empire’ · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“All right, so you would have the reason I'm asking this because you've been a writer and executive on these things where you have a lot more control. And we'll talk about that. So you started doing the writing. Your first success was the L word then or not?”
2017-10-11 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Recode Decode: Ilene Chaiken, showrunner, ‘Empire’ · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Directors were powerful and aspirational in every possible way. Television was nothing that anybody wanted anything to do with. And being a writer, especially a feature writer, was exactly what it is today. You're the most valuable and the most abused member of any enterprise.”
2017-10-11 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Recode Decode: Ilene Chaiken, showrunner, ‘Empire’ · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“It wasn't that I thought the power was in it. I still wanted to be a filmmaker and really the value, what everybody wanted to be back then was a director. CIA had that t-shirt, but what I really wanted to do as direct. Yeah.”
2017-10-11 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Recode Decode: Ilene Chaiken, showrunner, ‘Empire’ · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“From the script itself. So I want to stay with Executives a minute because it's changed because the power has changed. So were you thinking that because you thought the power was in executives from executives?”
2017-10-11 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Recode Decode: Ilene Chaiken, showrunner, ‘Empire’ · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“It was a little scrappy girl action movie at a time when nobody was making those kinds of movies, was really angry and feminist and just kind of full of everything that I Was pissed off about And I came back and sat in my office and waited to get fired and then slipped the script to an agent I knew and said, I'm not going to be an executive anymore. I'm a writer, get me a job.”
2017-10-11 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Recode Decode: Ilene Chaiken, showrunner, ‘Empire’ · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“It was some young Turk that I hired as a junior development executive came for me and it just got very nasty and ugly and there's lots of gossip involved that I won't get into. And during that time, every once in a while, I try to write something. But when you're being an executive, it's hard to focus on anything creative. And so I'd get halfway through a script and think, oh, no, no, I can't do this. But then I knew I was going to get fired from Quincy Jones Entertainment. So I went to telluride for a week while all my friends went skiing. I locked myself in the house and I wrote a script.”
2017-10-11 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Recode Decode: Ilene Chaiken, showrunner, ‘Empire’ · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Was a TV producer called Tom Patchett, and he had a company, and I worked for him for less than a year. And then I went to work for Quincy Jones. Who was starting a company with Warner Bros., Quincy Jones Entertainment, they had invested a lot of money in him, and he wanted to make movies and television. And I was brought over there as their head creative executive and spent three years there, and we put together the Fresh Prince of Bel Air. And I wound up being a producer on that, not a writer producer. But it was both a wildly fabulous time and a great experience, and also my crash and burn executive job. It was very political, very intense, really fun and kind of heady, but also so many knives out always. And I got caught by one of those knives. What happened?”
2017-10-11 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Recode Decode: Ilene Chaiken, showrunner, ‘Empire’ · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“I wanted to write and direct, but I got caught up being an executive, and it's very seductive. I mean, you just become competitive and you want to step on people's heads and get ahead. And I just got very caught up in it. And when I left spelling, I had one weird little job in between, but then I went”
2017-10-11 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Recode Decode: Ilene Chaiken, showrunner, ‘Empire’ · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“It was just after dynasty in Dallas and just before Beverly Hills 90210. And the one really significant thing that I did when I was working for Aaron Spelling, nobody knows wasn't Aaron Spelling Production. We put together Twin Peaks.”
2017-10-11 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Recode Decode: Ilene Chaiken, showrunner, ‘Empire’ · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“I developed movies for a number of years. I worked for two producers with a movie deal at Warner Bros. One of those producers went over to work for Aaron Spelling. That was the mid-1980s. And I was developing movies. And I met Aaron Spelling. He said, would you like to come and work for me in television? And because it was Aaron Spelling Productions, I thought I might as well. And then I wound up for five years running Aaron's television company, being the head of development, and then the head of television and production. And it was in the most fallow time in Spelling's history. It was when he was just irrelevant and falling out of favor.”
2017-10-11 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Recode Decode: Ilene Chaiken, showrunner, ‘Empire’ · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“And so I left that I don't think anybody uses that term anymore. Yeah. But Mike Ovitz called me into his office and gave me one of those mafioso talks that he was known for and said, you know, we'll be good to you if you protect our secrets and go and be a D-girl and we'll see where it goes.”
2017-10-11 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Recode Decode: Ilene Chaiken, showrunner, ‘Empire’ · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“I tried to impress Mike Ovitz. Right. Because he was the boss back then. And so I did all kinds of industrious things, came up with projects, met with clients, and did everything I could to impress, but kept not getting promoted. But there was some recognition that I had some ability as a storyteller. And finally, I got offered by a couple of clients a job as a development executive. Back then, we called it a D-girl.”
2017-10-11 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Recode Decode: Ilene Chaiken, showrunner, ‘Empire’ · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Well, I didn't start out wanting to be an agent, but when you go into that program, you become competitive and you just want to do what everybody else is doing. So I was on an agent track, not moving fast enough, but trying really hard to become an agent in that very, very cutthroat world.”
2017-10-11 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Recode Decode: Ilene Chaiken, showrunner, ‘Empire’ · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“I was a reader. They put me in a little cubby hole, and all day long I read scripts and wrote coverage. And then eventually they moved me onto a trainee track and they opened the mail room to women who wound up being pretty good at carrying typewriters and made me a trainee”
2017-10-11 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Recode Decode: Ilene Chaiken, showrunner, ‘Empire’ · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“It was before women were allowed to work in mail rooms. So I was hired as an assistant and I was told, you know, you'll be on this, a mailroom track, but you can't be in the mailroom because girls can't lift typewriters.”
2017-10-11 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Recode Decode: Ilene Chaiken, showrunner, ‘Empire’ · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“I went to film school and came to Hollywood within a year after being graduated from film school, planning to be a great filmmaker, a great writer, director, but had to get a job and did what many people do who come out of film school, like looked for a job in the business and I wound up, my first job was as a trainee at Creative Artist Agency. It was a very long time ago”
2017-10-11 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Recode Decode: Ilene Chaiken, showrunner, ‘Empire’ · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“I We're going to talk about that in a second. And then, of course, she's most famous for the L word, which is a show that was groundbreaking in its time. And we're going to talk about where that's going because it looks like there might be a reunion and a new thing. And let's just get into it. First thing I want to talk about, Eileen is let's talk a little bit about your background because when I talk to Silicon Valley people, I always talk about where they came from and how they got to where they got. And your background is really interesting. You were an executive, the beginning of your career you came out to Hollywood, fresh-faced, and you wanted to do what?”
2017-10-11 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Recode Decode: Ilene Chaiken, showrunner, ‘Empire’ · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Well, I worked for, I was an executive with Aaron Spelling when they were famous shows, but I did learn television at his feast.”
2017-10-11 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Recode Decode: Ilene Chaiken, showrunner, ‘Empire’ · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT