Inside the Head of Jim Kuntz

Interviews by Fans
Title:	Inside the Head of Jim Kuntz
Interviewer:	Amy Murphy
Interviewee:	Jim Kuntz
Date(s):	July 2004
Medium:	online
Fandom(s):	Xena: Warrior Princess
External Links:	full interview is here, Archived version
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Inside the Head of Jim Kuntz is a 2004 Xena: Warrior Princess fan interview at Whoosh!.

Series

For others in this series, see Whoosh! Interview Series.

Some Excerpts

I've always had an itch to write. I started several novels in college which fortunately have long since been destroyed and forgotten. I wanted to write, I just didn't really have anything to say. Then amazingly in middle age I became a Xena fan. And then by accident, I read an article about the fan fiction on the Internet which I didn't even know existed. I finally found some and began reading. Some was very good, some was very bad, and a lot was just pornography. But I decided what the h***, I can do that. And the show really inspired me with the characters of Xena and Gabrielle. They lend themselves so well to drama and because they are searching and flawed you can find the pain and humanity in them so easily. After I put up the first story and got so many kind responses when I didn't really expect any, I was hooked. I think ego takes over after that. Like Pavlov's dog, the more people ring my bell with a kind word the more I salivate and want to produce so they'll ring the bell again. Kind of shallow I realize, I should be writing out of a deep hunger to create art but really all I want is my belly rubbed and my ears scratched, but hey, whatever gets you there right. Right?

I like [subtext]. A lot. Xena and Gabrielle are such a romantic couple to me with the trials and travails they've been through. The idea that they truly love each other, no hold barred, touches me. Plus of course Lucy Lawless and Renee O'Connor are just beautiful actresses and beauty appeals to me like it does to anyone. Who wants to see two ugly old f**** making out. Yuck. But those two, very hot. And of course as a straight male I have the usual fantasy of watching for awhile and then joining them. Pedestrian I know but there it is, I said it out loud. But on a deeper level we all long for a soulmate. Someone who knows us, good and bad and loves us anyway, without reservation. And we know them just as well and feel the same. We're all trapped in these flesh prisons of ours, eternally separated and lonely. So we each in our own way fantasize that we are Xena and have found our Gabrielle.

I was disappointed [in the show's ending]. Not that they killed her off. I've done that myself. But that the emotions that could have been played out in the end were left so flat and uninspired. If they were going to kill her then it should have been an intimate moment, one of deep personal feeling and pain. Think ONE AGAINST AN ARMY but even deeper. It cried out for an ending that would bring down the house like the death of Romeo and Juliette. Gale Sayers saying goodbye to Brian Picallo in Brian's Song. Instead it happened so fast it left you stunned and feeling stupid, like an ox hit in the forehead with an axe handle. Or they could have gone for crashing Wagnerian drama, which is what they tried I think but frankly they didn't have the skill or the budget to bring it off. It should have been the thunderous passing of a god of war, instead it ended with a whimper. I've heard some say the violence was pornographic. I think that's just sour grapes. The violence wasn't any more extreme or offensive than having Xena's arms chopped off or being beaten half to death in a harem then telling her tormentor she wants to be his number one wife or Gabrielle being dragged or all those people being graphically nailed to crosses. Common folks, Xena: Warrior Princess has always been overloaded on violence. It's too late to complain now.