Ilene: We've been so starved for representation - and yes, gay men have also been underrepresented, but it just doesn't begin to compare to the invisibility of lesbians in the world up until recently. I think the surge of responses has really been indicative of that.
Ilene (on her similarity to Jenny on “The L Word”): Jenny, although not me, certainly reflects a little bit of my life experience. Jenny the writer who comes to L.A. and then discovers, or reckons with her sexual identity. I think that's a story that I relate to a lot.
Ilene: I wrote a...little kind of angry, girl action movie. It was a little before that was the thing, girl action movies, nobody was really doing it. It was a futuristic homage to The Seventh Samurai. And I came back from the Christmas vacation with a complete script, sat down in my office and waited to get fired, which happened very quickly. Got my script to an agent, got representation. Script was optioned, but never set up, and very quickly got a job writing a movie for Hollywood Pictures, and just never looked back.
Ilene: Primarily I think of myself as a writer. I love producing my own work for television, but I always, no matter what I do, even if I direct, I will always think of myself first as a writer.
Ilene (on her time with Aaron Spelling Television): Those five years were the most fallow time in Aaron Spelling's television history. We did a bunch of shows that didn't go anywhere. It was the era in which Stephen Bochco had just redefined television, and it was a hard moment for Aaron Spelling. Television was moving away from what he did. Now it's moved back. But just before I left, we did Twin Peaks. Well, no one really did Twin Peaks but David Lynch, but I was proud to have been involved in it. (and then she remembers)Well, actually, there was one show that I was involved with that I am actually proud of. One of the television series which I was involved with on ABC, had the first series regular lesbian character…
Ilene: I had the idea, and it was just, it was almost a lark. I was struck by the notion that television was the perfect medium to tell lesbian stories because there are so many stories to tell. Because it's not good enough to have just one character who is a lesbian in someone else's story, or even just a single character show because it's time to talk about the fact that we are many. And, so an ensemble drama seemed to be the perfect medium. So, I just kind of brought it up. I had notes, I had stories I was cataloguing. I brought it up informally with a couple of Showtime executives, with whom I'd worked with a lot, two women. They were intrigued by it, they loved it, but we all knew that it was kind of a radical notion at that time. And I think we all knew instinctively that it wasn't time yet. But, I knew that time would most definitely come. I don't know if they knew. They were two straight women. But I think I just felt fairly secure in my convictions that there would be a time when we could put a lesbian show on television.
Ilene (on whether things change from what she writes to what ends up on screen on “The L Word”): It never changes because I change along with it. I am so integrally connected to whole process that I don't feel as if I started over here and somehow I wound up over here. I am on the ride with it.
She based the character of Shane on “The L Word” on Warren Beatty from "Shampoo".
She and Chuck Pfarrer were nominated for a Razzie Award in 1997, in the Worst Screenplay category for “Barb Wire”.
Before the success of “The L Word” raised her profile, she had written the screenplays for "Barb Wire", "Dirty Pictures" and "Damaged Care".
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