Comic Con Supernatural Panel, transcript, part 2
**sightofland made a spoiler-free edit of the transcript. Link below, after the post.***
PARTICIPANTS: Ben Edlund (BE), Eric Kripke (EK), Jensen Ackles (JA), Sera Gamble (SG)
MODERATOR: Craig Tomashoff (CT)
Part 2
CT: You actually raised one point. I sort of thought again, watching that, that I feel kind of sorry for Sam and Dean. Really, how much fun do you ever get to have? It’s dark. You have to beat demons all the time. Have you ever thought of doing, I don’t know, the “Hawaiian episode” or something like that, y’know?
JA: I have often been trying to pitch the “demon surfer”…in Hawaii. (Asylum nod!)
EK: That’s true. I…you know, that’s not really the show. (Jensen “pounds” on the table.) I mean, there was a quote, I think, from Sam Raimi actually, which is, y’know, “Invent characters you love, and then torture them.” And Sam and Dean, that’s their heroic struggle, man. Y’know, we’re hoping for a happy ending for the Winchester boys [note: I had to laugh at this, in light of “Tall Tales.”] when it’s all said and done, but y’know, they’ve got a lot of work to do. And then…but they have fun along the way, but their fun is sort of reckless-cowboy fun: It’s roadhouses and beer and loose women and, y’know…
CT: You’re saying that like it’s a negative.
EK: It’s not a negative. I’m saying there’s like a real… part of the show, it’s on the road, and there’s sort of a wish fulfillment to just be able to ditch your job, ditch your life, get in a muscle car, and just cruise the country. That’s fun too, that part, the Great American Road Trip. There are moments, so it’s not all bad. I mean, you can’t have a horror show and have nice things happen like, “What a delightful piece of pie!” (as Kripke pantomimes eating a piece of pie)
CT: Actually one of my favorites from last year was the - I think, Ben you wrote it - the Hollywood episode.
EK: Yeah!
CT: (addressing BE, difficult to hear) They (indicating the audience) really know you. Where did that come from? It was a kind of fun, one-off sort of thing.
BE: Yeah, well, y’know, that just, sort of, proves that they can have fun in a way. It’s more *we* have fun than they have it…
EK: That’s right.
BE: They have lighter moments here and there, and that one I think came from…well, really, the Hollywood episode is the challenge for every kind of show, you know what I mean? You’re eventually going to take look at something like that, especially if you have…y’know, you’re getting around the country. This is a show about Americana, in a lot of ways, probably one of these big, central kind of draws: Americana, American ghost stories take place there. But that was just really, really lots of fun to do. I don’t know.
EK: And we became enamored with the idea of…that they make…they’re making, basically, an episode of Supernatural…
BE: Right.
EK: …in the show. One thing we did, and I’ll completely admit this, I might get busted for it, I don’t really give a crap. But Gary Cole was this studio executive, you know? And every note he gave the production were real notes we got from the network. So if you go back and look at it, we have had to suffer every one of those notes like, “Why can’t it be brighter?” and all those things. And then we hung him! And snapped his neck! It was sort of like, that’s our response.
CT: Finally, you get even, after all this time.
BE: A lot of catharsis in that show.
EK: It was very cathartic, if nothing else.
CT: I’m curious about what you heard when you were pitching the show. Did you guys do it…?
EK: It was the funniest thing. The notes, calls…
BE: They were loving it!
EK: They loved it. “We love it! It’s so funny!” We’re like, “Really? Because we’re ripping on you.” But they loved it.
BE: Yeah, they really did. Well, it’s…
EK: They have a sense of humor.
BE: It’s true. It’s a funhouse mirror. I like those. I like to look like a little round one, and then a tall, skinny one.
EK: He does, he does.
BE: I really do. I’m stuck on the tall, skinny one.
CT: Do you have them in the office? Do you walk by and…did you put one up and…?
EK: He just likes to go to carnivals. It’s a weird thing for him.
EB: I’m glad you hired me. Nice to have an address to show up at everyday. Keeps me grounded.
EK: It’s true, it’s true.
CT: Actually, I’m curious. Step back to the beginning of the show, when you’re pitching it around just to get it on the air. what the reaction was. Was it the same, “Yeah, but could we get them a dog?”
EK: No, no, it was an idea, or a version of an idea that I had for probably like eight years before it got set up. And it used to get a really cold response, but there were different versions of it, and some of them really sucked out loud. You know, one of them was an anthology, one of them was a reporter, and there were all these different versions of the show, and it was always met with a collective yawn. But it just goes to show you. It’s like, you hold on to an idea long enough, and sooner or later the market kind of turns and…the market of what people are looking for just kind of turns in your favor. And I just happened to be pitching it, just by a fluke of timing, right as “Grudge” and “The Ring” were tearing up the box office, so it was a really easy pitch to sit down in front of a network and say, “You know, ‘The Ring’ and ‘The Grudge’ are doing [great at] the box office. I want to do that on TV.” And of course, the show wasn’t really that. In your heart you know what you want the show to be, but you just need a pitch to get them excited. And they were really excited. We were actually in a bidding war over the pilot once the timing was right. So, a lot of enthusiasm for the idea. And then I wrote it, and then they said, “We hate it!” But at least the pitch sold. That’s really true. I spent three months on a script, and was like, “Here’s my baby…” and I showed it to them, and they’re like, “This is unreadable,” and they tore it up, and they said, “We hate it,” and so me and co-executive producer Peter Johnson…I spent three months on the first draft. We tore it up. We re-broke the entire story. I wrote it in ten days, and that was the pilot that got shot.
CT: I can see why you hung the guy and broke his neck now.
EK: Yeah, well.
CT: It made you feel better, and you got it out of your system. Going back actually the Hollywood episode makes me also wonder, going down, everybody, tell me your favorite episode. Do you have a particular one? Maybe whether you wrote it, or you had a big part in it. Was there any one that you look back on and go, “Yeah, that’s the one.”
SG: No, no I’m kidding. Well, I really like the pilot, so…I fell in love with the show when I saw the pilot. The second I saw that ghost for the first time? I was like, “That is the show I’m working on, for sure.” And I just think we do really good season openers. I really like “In My Time of Dying” a lot. Yeah. Yeah. And everything Ben Edlund ever wrote, of course.
BE: Thanks. (second part of his comment is inaudible)
JA: I mean, I’ve got a few that are very dear to me. I mean, obviously the pilot stands among all the rest. “Dead in the Water” holds kind of a special place in my heart. It was kind of the first time where I really got a sense of who Dean was, and I was able to peel back some layers. But I think more recently my favorite, just because of the amount of the toll that it took on me personally, was the finale of season 2, “All Hell Breaks Loose, Part 2.” You know, after building a relationship, both on-camera and off-camera, with the guy that plays your brother on the show, and then have to play scenes in a room with him dead was very, very hard and emotional for me, and at the end of the day I just…I was completely spent. So I think that that really…I was able to kind of just go someplace and do that. You know, those are kind of defining moments for me as an actor: to be able to do that kind of stuff and really feel proud about it.
EK: I mean, you know, I love them all. They’re all kind of different versions of my kids, but my favorite in…my single…if I had to choose one single episode in season 2 as my favorite, it’d have been “Nightshifter,” Ben’s bank robbery episode. The concept was so tight, and it was so well-written, and Phil Sgriccia, the director, who has directed some of our best episodes. If you look, the ones he did are always some of our best. He just shot the hell out of it, and it was the most, probably for me, the single most entertaining of the season.
BE: All right. Thank you.
EK: Hey, you’re welcome. (in mock-ominous tone) If you don’t choose one from me, you’re fired!
BE: They’re your children. Yeah, I like, I like all of them. You know, oddly enough, I was, before you said that, I was actually thinking the genie one. You know, your directorial debut…
EK: My directorial debut! Thanks, man.
BE: But also…you know, Jensen, you went through a hell of lot in that one too…
JA: Yeah.
BE: It wasn’t like, directly…it wasn’t as built…you know, the big “lose your brother” thing, but there was an emotional place that that got to. That thing, I really loved that. And the story conceit worked as well. This is a good show, I think. I like it! I also really…the thing that really got me into the show, I mean, like, more so than I usually get into TV at all, it was the run…the end three episodes of the first season, when it really first started to do its first “curl.” The “curl” of the mythology sort of crashed on its first shore was really great, and the way that the… The plotting, the breaking, and the intensity of it… rocked, so… Good! Well done!
EK: Thank you.
[Part 3 soon…]
PARTICIPANTS: Ben Edlund (BE), Eric Kripke (EK), Jensen Ackles (JA), Sera Gamble (SG)
MODERATOR: Craig Tomashoff (CT)
Part 2
CT: You actually raised one point. I sort of thought again, watching that, that I feel kind of sorry for Sam and Dean. Really, how much fun do you ever get to have? It’s dark. You have to beat demons all the time. Have you ever thought of doing, I don’t know, the “Hawaiian episode” or something like that, y’know?
JA: I have often been trying to pitch the “demon surfer”…in Hawaii. (Asylum nod!)
EK: That’s true. I…you know, that’s not really the show. (Jensen “pounds” on the table.) I mean, there was a quote, I think, from Sam Raimi actually, which is, y’know, “Invent characters you love, and then torture them.” And Sam and Dean, that’s their heroic struggle, man. Y’know, we’re hoping for a happy ending for the Winchester boys [note: I had to laugh at this, in light of “Tall Tales.”] when it’s all said and done, but y’know, they’ve got a lot of work to do. And then…but they have fun along the way, but their fun is sort of reckless-cowboy fun: It’s roadhouses and beer and loose women and, y’know…
CT: You’re saying that like it’s a negative.
EK: It’s not a negative. I’m saying there’s like a real… part of the show, it’s on the road, and there’s sort of a wish fulfillment to just be able to ditch your job, ditch your life, get in a muscle car, and just cruise the country. That’s fun too, that part, the Great American Road Trip. There are moments, so it’s not all bad. I mean, you can’t have a horror show and have nice things happen like, “What a delightful piece of pie!” (as Kripke pantomimes eating a piece of pie)
CT: Actually one of my favorites from last year was the - I think, Ben you wrote it - the Hollywood episode.
EK: Yeah!
CT: (addressing BE, difficult to hear) They (indicating the audience) really know you. Where did that come from? It was a kind of fun, one-off sort of thing.
BE: Yeah, well, y’know, that just, sort of, proves that they can have fun in a way. It’s more *we* have fun than they have it…
EK: That’s right.
BE: They have lighter moments here and there, and that one I think came from…well, really, the Hollywood episode is the challenge for every kind of show, you know what I mean? You’re eventually going to take look at something like that, especially if you have…y’know, you’re getting around the country. This is a show about Americana, in a lot of ways, probably one of these big, central kind of draws: Americana, American ghost stories take place there. But that was just really, really lots of fun to do. I don’t know.
EK: And we became enamored with the idea of…that they make…they’re making, basically, an episode of Supernatural…
BE: Right.
EK: …in the show. One thing we did, and I’ll completely admit this, I might get busted for it, I don’t really give a crap. But Gary Cole was this studio executive, you know? And every note he gave the production were real notes we got from the network. So if you go back and look at it, we have had to suffer every one of those notes like, “Why can’t it be brighter?” and all those things. And then we hung him! And snapped his neck! It was sort of like, that’s our response.
CT: Finally, you get even, after all this time.
BE: A lot of catharsis in that show.
EK: It was very cathartic, if nothing else.
CT: I’m curious about what you heard when you were pitching the show. Did you guys do it…?
EK: It was the funniest thing. The notes, calls…
BE: They were loving it!
EK: They loved it. “We love it! It’s so funny!” We’re like, “Really? Because we’re ripping on you.” But they loved it.
BE: Yeah, they really did. Well, it’s…
EK: They have a sense of humor.
BE: It’s true. It’s a funhouse mirror. I like those. I like to look like a little round one, and then a tall, skinny one.
EK: He does, he does.
BE: I really do. I’m stuck on the tall, skinny one.
CT: Do you have them in the office? Do you walk by and…did you put one up and…?
EK: He just likes to go to carnivals. It’s a weird thing for him.
EB: I’m glad you hired me. Nice to have an address to show up at everyday. Keeps me grounded.
EK: It’s true, it’s true.
CT: Actually, I’m curious. Step back to the beginning of the show, when you’re pitching it around just to get it on the air. what the reaction was. Was it the same, “Yeah, but could we get them a dog?”
EK: No, no, it was an idea, or a version of an idea that I had for probably like eight years before it got set up. And it used to get a really cold response, but there were different versions of it, and some of them really sucked out loud. You know, one of them was an anthology, one of them was a reporter, and there were all these different versions of the show, and it was always met with a collective yawn. But it just goes to show you. It’s like, you hold on to an idea long enough, and sooner or later the market kind of turns and…the market of what people are looking for just kind of turns in your favor. And I just happened to be pitching it, just by a fluke of timing, right as “Grudge” and “The Ring” were tearing up the box office, so it was a really easy pitch to sit down in front of a network and say, “You know, ‘The Ring’ and ‘The Grudge’ are doing [great at] the box office. I want to do that on TV.” And of course, the show wasn’t really that. In your heart you know what you want the show to be, but you just need a pitch to get them excited. And they were really excited. We were actually in a bidding war over the pilot once the timing was right. So, a lot of enthusiasm for the idea. And then I wrote it, and then they said, “We hate it!” But at least the pitch sold. That’s really true. I spent three months on a script, and was like, “Here’s my baby…” and I showed it to them, and they’re like, “This is unreadable,” and they tore it up, and they said, “We hate it,” and so me and co-executive producer Peter Johnson…I spent three months on the first draft. We tore it up. We re-broke the entire story. I wrote it in ten days, and that was the pilot that got shot.
CT: I can see why you hung the guy and broke his neck now.
EK: Yeah, well.
CT: It made you feel better, and you got it out of your system. Going back actually the Hollywood episode makes me also wonder, going down, everybody, tell me your favorite episode. Do you have a particular one? Maybe whether you wrote it, or you had a big part in it. Was there any one that you look back on and go, “Yeah, that’s the one.”
SG: No, no I’m kidding. Well, I really like the pilot, so…I fell in love with the show when I saw the pilot. The second I saw that ghost for the first time? I was like, “That is the show I’m working on, for sure.” And I just think we do really good season openers. I really like “In My Time of Dying” a lot. Yeah. Yeah. And everything Ben Edlund ever wrote, of course.
BE: Thanks. (second part of his comment is inaudible)
JA: I mean, I’ve got a few that are very dear to me. I mean, obviously the pilot stands among all the rest. “Dead in the Water” holds kind of a special place in my heart. It was kind of the first time where I really got a sense of who Dean was, and I was able to peel back some layers. But I think more recently my favorite, just because of the amount of the toll that it took on me personally, was the finale of season 2, “All Hell Breaks Loose, Part 2.” You know, after building a relationship, both on-camera and off-camera, with the guy that plays your brother on the show, and then have to play scenes in a room with him dead was very, very hard and emotional for me, and at the end of the day I just…I was completely spent. So I think that that really…I was able to kind of just go someplace and do that. You know, those are kind of defining moments for me as an actor: to be able to do that kind of stuff and really feel proud about it.
EK: I mean, you know, I love them all. They’re all kind of different versions of my kids, but my favorite in…my single…if I had to choose one single episode in season 2 as my favorite, it’d have been “Nightshifter,” Ben’s bank robbery episode. The concept was so tight, and it was so well-written, and Phil Sgriccia, the director, who has directed some of our best episodes. If you look, the ones he did are always some of our best. He just shot the hell out of it, and it was the most, probably for me, the single most entertaining of the season.
BE: All right. Thank you.
EK: Hey, you’re welcome. (in mock-ominous tone) If you don’t choose one from me, you’re fired!
BE: They’re your children. Yeah, I like, I like all of them. You know, oddly enough, I was, before you said that, I was actually thinking the genie one. You know, your directorial debut…
EK: My directorial debut! Thanks, man.
BE: But also…you know, Jensen, you went through a hell of lot in that one too…
JA: Yeah.
BE: It wasn’t like, directly…it wasn’t as built…you know, the big “lose your brother” thing, but there was an emotional place that that got to. That thing, I really loved that. And the story conceit worked as well. This is a good show, I think. I like it! I also really…the thing that really got me into the show, I mean, like, more so than I usually get into TV at all, it was the run…the end three episodes of the first season, when it really first started to do its first “curl.” The “curl” of the mythology sort of crashed on its first shore was really great, and the way that the… The plotting, the breaking, and the intensity of it… rocked, so… Good! Well done!
EK: Thank you.
[Part 3 soon…]