In a sign of yet more overwhelming fan support of the WGA strike, the writer/director of the Buffy: The Vampire Slayer fan documentary "IRL (In Real Life)" is donating $5 from each sale of the film towards a relief fund for entertainment professionals and their families. "IRL" tells the story of the fan community that sprung up around the official Buffy online posting board the Bronze, and what happened to that community once the show moved to UPN and the board was closed. The blurb on the film describes it as the "life, death and afterlife of an online community."

Tuszynski sat down with us for a few minutes to talk about the documentary and why she supports the striking writers.

FFN: What made you decide to study Buffy fandom, particularly the Bronze, for your documentary?

ST: The idea to do a documentary film about the Bronze actually came to me very early on, because "Trekkies" came out in the late 1990s so I was already a Bronzer at that point. And when I saw it I started throwing things at my television. I was incensed. That wasn't a documentary about the fandom experience, it was "hey let's find the most extreme examples possible and have a freak show!" It infuriated me. The film skipped over the thousands of people for whom media is a hobby, who participate in discussions or make art as a way to relax on weekends or during down time, not because they treat it as a religion. There wasn't even a genuine attempt at balance, I thought. It reinforced every awful stereotype about media fans while purporting to be objective.

I wanted to make the anti-"Trekkies." I wanted Buffy fans, especially Bronzers, presented fairly and not held up for ridicule. We had a lot of talented people in the Bronze, but not many of them were actually people with film degrees or any kind of production experience. I was one of the people who had the background that would be necessary to do this. And I found the Bronze in August of 1997, just a few months after the show started, so I was an old timer in Internet years.

When I started the project, I thought I would get maybe a 15-20 minute piece out of it. I assumed this would be something only of interest to other Bronzers or maybe some Buffy fans. But as I worked on the film, I started to see the threads emerging of people talking not just about the Bronze but explaining why the Internet as a whole had been important to their lives, and I began to realize this was more than just a short biography of a single community. These were real fans telling their story in their own words, something that we haven't gotten much of, because it's easier to play the "they look normal but check out what they do for fun" angle and get attention that way. (In fact this issue comes up in the interviews in the film. A number of people talked about having to tell their friends and families about their online activities and how problematic it could be because of this perception. One of the special preview clips on the website, I think the second one, actually includes some of this discussion.)

FFN: What kind of response have you had to "IRL" from other fans? Were you surprised by any particular responses?

ST: There's been some displeasure, mostly of a rather passive-aggressive nature, people wanting to know why one thing they cared about was in the film or something else was left out, etc. That's to be expected. You can't possibly please everyone. On the whole the people who've spoken to me about it have been positive. The Bronzers who have seen it seem to feel that it's a good representation of the community. I've had a number of colleagues who are academics or researchers say that the film has been useful in classrooms to help open up discussion about what people do online, and that means a great deal to me.

The most surprising response has been from people who are neither fans nor interested in Internet research but who understood the story being told in the film. One of the reviews on Amazon.com said something to the effect of the person felt like they missed out on something by not getting to be involved in the Bronze. My ultimate hope is that the film contributes to a better understanding of what "fandom" can be for people and make it less a freakish, shameful thing and more "just another hobby.

FFN: What made you decide to donate proceeds from "IRL" to the relief fund? How much has the sale collected so far since you made the announcement?

ST: It's been a little under ten days, so we're just getting started. I'm hopeful that within two weeks we'll have gotten to the $50 mark. Not an enormous contribution, but not pocket change either.

I've been avidly supporting the strike since the fall. I'm not a WGA member, since I never accrued the credits needed, but I have twin interests in that I'm a screenwriter by training and I'm heavily interested in the effect of the Internet on the future of media. And the issues the WGA is confronting right now are the same for the writers, the actors and the directors. There's a lot at stake. The outcome of this strike could impact the development of online entertainment media for decades.

My sympathies are nice and all, but I live in Ohio. I can't go support people on picket lines without buying a plane ticket. I had already promised myself I wouldn't download or watch anything from iTunes or those types of sources for the duration. And while the writers are struggling with the financial difficulties this strike brings on them, one of the vulnerable spots in terms of publicity is the damage being inflicted on people who aren't part of the problem – the crew members, etc. who are out of work because of the strike through no fault of their own.

My friend Allyson Beatrice, who wrote a book on the Buffy fandom that also came out last year, pointed me to this Relief Fund for the crew members. The WGA now has one up as well. I agreed with Allyson that those people deserved our help. I have suggested people can just make direct contributions to the support funds, but I wanted to do more than that.

I released this film myself, through an on-demand publisher. I don't have a corporation telling me what a fair rate is for me to be paid for my work. The money left after the DVD costs goes to me to pay off the production costs I incurred while making the film. While releasing it this way handicaps the film because it exists outside the promotional atmosphere of the studios, I'm incredibly lucky to have control over my own work. And volunteering to give up part of the royalties – to take money out of my own pocket – seemed a much stronger statement than just telling people to donate money. It simultaneously supports independent (and fan-run) productions rather than corporate products, so people can sort of "vote with the wallet" on that, and it also puts money into the hands of the people who are suffering while the studios try to break a union.

FFN: Do you have any other projects in the works you'd like to promote?

ST: Well at the moment, in between teaching and being on the job market and promoting the film (!), I'm trying to finish my first novel. My screenwriting professor used to tell us to "clear our heads" by writing prose fiction and I didn't understand that until just recently, how much less stressful it is when you don't have to worry about the cost of a sets or locations and so forth and can just write a story.

In terms of film work, I've been in touch with Kathy Kleiman, from eniacprogrammers.org. She's trying to put together a documentary about the women who helped program ENIAC, one of the first computers. I offered to try and help mobilize some online awareness of the project via sites like Facebook and myspace.

I have a project of my own that has been sitting on back burners for a while now while I worked on "IRL." It's about the women who worked as spies during WWII. We've been overwhelmed with WWII nostalgia and retrospectives recently, but we're only just now learning how important a role women played in the intelligence game during the war and the years after as these materials are declassified. I have a stack of books about a foot high that have come out in just the last few years. I don't know if this would be more suited for fictional or non-fictional work, maybe both.


Firefox News would like to thank Stephanie Tuszynski for chatting with us and for all her hard work in making and promoting this film.  If you would like to purchase your own copy of "IRL," please visit the official CreateSpace E-store to order.  (Click here for a $5 off coupon code.   Using the code will not affect the donation amount.)