The Extras - A Look Back with Supernatural's Bob Singer

Episode Date: November 15, 2021

Executive Producer and Director Bob Singer joins the podcast to take a look back at his career in this two-part podcast series.  We begin part 1 with a review of how Bob first broke into Hollywood on the horror films “The Night Strangler” starring Darren McGavin, and Stephen King’s “Cujo,” starring Dee Wallace. Then we discuss one of Bob’s all-time favorites, the 1990’s hit TV series “Midnight Caller” starring Gary Cole.   We wrap up his early career with the story of how Bob ended up going from director to showrunner of “Lois & Clark: The New Adventures of Superman,”  starring Dean Cain and Terri Hatcher.We then transition to how Bob was brought on to Supernatural starting with the second episode.  And we discuss his work with creator Eric Kripke and co-showrunners Jeremy Carver, Sera Gamble, and Andrew Dabb over the fifteen seasons of the series.  In-between we talk about some of the memorable character introductions of Castiel and Crowley, Bob’s passion for directing, and the development of the meta episodes before finishing with a rapid-fire round of questions.Otaku Media produces podcasts, behind-the-scenes extras, and media that connect creatives with their fans and businesses with their consumers.  Contact us today to see how we can work together to achieve your goals.  www.otakumedia.tvThe Sitcom StudyWelcome to the Sitcom Study, where we contemplate the TV shows we grew up with and...Listen on: Apple Podcasts   Spotify The Extras Facebook pageThe Extras Twitter Warner Archive & Warner Bros Catalog GroupOtaku Media produces podcasts, behind-the-scenes extras, and media that connect creatives with their fans and businesses with their consumers. Contact us today to see how we can work together to achieve your goals. www.otakumedia.tv

Hi, I'm film historian and author John Fricke. I've written books about Judy Garland and the Wizard of Oz movie, and you're listening to The Extras. Hello and welcome to The Extras, where we take you behind the scenes of your favorite TV shows, movies, and animation, and their release on digital, DVD, Blu-ray, and 4K, or your favorite streaming site. I'm Tim Millard, your host. My guest today is film and TV producer and director Bob Singer.

Bob was the co-showrunner on all 15 seasons of Supernatural, and I had the privilege to work with him on the home entertainment extras for 12 of those seasons. As some of you may know from listening to my podcast with filmmaker Jeff Maynard on the Supernatural Season 15 extras, due to the restrictions caused by the pandemic during the last season of the series, we were not able to Bob two of the extras that we wanted to do. In part one, I will be reviewing Bob's career in Hollywood before we dive into his time working with the four other co-showrunners on the series. In part two, we will take a look at the classic rock music in the series, as that was the extra I think we all were most excited to produce for the box set. And we will hear from Bob, his memories of the final season and his thoughts as

he looks back on the finale one year ago. Hi, Bob. Thanks for coming on the podcast today. My pleasure. Well, it's been one year since the series finale of Supernatural, and I thought it'd be fun to have you on the show to take a look back and talk about some of the extras we wanted to do for the box set, but didn't have the chance to do due to the COVID-19 pandemic. But before we do that, I thought it might be interesting for the fans to learn a little about your career before Supernatural. How did you first get interested in filmmaking? Well, I was always a movie fan and a TV fan, but I always thought working in the business was something that other people did. I had no idea how to even go about getting into it. And as luck would have it, and I think everybody needs a little luck in this life, I was in a job that I used to caddy for. His name was Dan Curtis, who was executive producer of Dark Shadows soap opera and other things. And when I met him, he was on the street.

He was doing a Dark Shadows movie. He asked me what I was doing. I said, well, I'm not happy where I am. And he said, well, if you want to come along and have a six week job, just sort of being a gopher production assistant, I'll be happy to have you. And so I did that. And we did the movie. And Dan kept me on for a time.

And that's sort of how I got into it. And then he moved to California. And I came out with him and kind of worked my way up from assistant to associate producer to producer. Then partnered with Dan Blatt, an old friend of mine for a while. And then went out on my own. One of your earliest credits that I saw on IMDb was as an associate producer on the classic 1973 TV movie, The Night Strangler, starring Darren McGavin. Right. That was a sequel to The Night Stalker, which was the first one of those with that Kolchak character that Aaron McGavin. Right. That was a sequel to the night stalker,

which was the first one of those with that cold check character. Right. And yeah, those were, I think Dan directed that one and they were, they were fun to do. Yeah. I was just talking on another podcast episode that Kino Lorber just released

the Blu-ray of the complete series for the night stalker. So that's available for the fans if they're interested. I don't think it includes the movie Night Strangler, but it does have the same character of Kolchak. Right, yeah. We weren't involved in that. I think we just did the two movies. I'm not sure how the series evolved,

but we weren't really involved in the series. Gotcha. Well, then I also noticed you worked on Cujo, 1983 release of the Stephen King book. That was one scary movie, if I recall. It starred Dee Wallace. How did you get onto that movie? I was partners with Dan Blatt at the time,

and that was a property that Danny acquired. And in those days when we were doing these things, a lot of time I would do a movie, be on the set with a movie, and then the next one, Danny would be. And Cujo was sort of his baby. I was on set somewhat. We were shooting in Northern California. Really

good movie. Stephen King was great. He wrote the original script. And then we wanted to do some rewrites on it and bring some, another writer in. And he was totally cool with that. And at the time after he saw Cujo, he said he thought that was the best adaptation of one of his books to date. That was pretty shining.

Right. I mean, I was fairly young at that point. I remember seeing that and just being scared, scared to death, especially when she's, you know, in the car and the dog is just attacking the car. Yeah, it was amazing. And we actually had a number of dogs, and there was a man in a dog suit, and then there was a dog in a dog suit to do the different things that the dog had to do. It was an interesting shoot, and Dee was great. Danny Pintaro, who played her son, was terrific.

Not an easy picture to do. Louis Teague directed it, did a really good job. And interestingly, Jan de Bont, who went on to direct a lot of big movies, was the director of photography. Oh, wow. Well, the next one I kind of wanted to focus on was this TV show, Midnight Caller, that went on for three seasons, 61 episodes, quite a bit, starring Gary Cole. And that was about an ex-cop

who hosts a late night talk radio program and then also gets involved with his listeners' problems in his off time. That was a fun format and you had quite a bit of success on that show. How'd you get involved there? That one was, by the way, one of my favorite things that I did.

It was just, I loved that show. Gary was great. Remains a good friend to this day. I was at Fox on a producing deal at the time, but that deal was about coming to an end and I didn't know if I was going to get renewed or not. Originally, Lorimer had bought that script that Richard DiLello wrote, and Bob Butler, who was actually somebody that I knew and had done a pilot with a

few years before, was supposed to produce and direct it. But then he got, I'm not sure what it was, but I think it was some sort of science fiction thing at Columbia and bowed out. So Lorimar then hired Thomas Carter to direct it. And they called me and asked me if I would produce it. And we had to kind of negotiate my way out of my last three months at Fox. And then had an overall deal with Lorimar that was folded into producing Midnight Caller. Thomas is a great director and learned a lot from him, actually. I noticed you directed eight episodes. Is that kind of where you first started directing for television?

I directed a lot of second units. And then I had done there during the writer's strike in 88, I had directed an afterschool special. We were all kind of bouncing around looking for work that after school special was the first thing that I had directed from beginning to end and then

I wrote a script for Midnight Caller and I just said I think I have a vision of this that I really want to direct it myself and I did that one, that was called F called fathers and sins and Peter Boyle was the, was the main guest star on that. And then, you know,

kind of took to it like a duck to water and just kept directing. Yeah. I remember enjoying that show a lot. It was, if I could give you just kind of one aside on that. Sure. It was the, cause you know,

you make these TV shows, you're sort of in a vacuum, you know, back in those days you didn't, didn't have the social media and all that. So, you know, you weren't quite sure how the show was being received except by the ratings. But that episode, which dealt with Peter Boyle coming back, a missing father, the Gary Cole's father, but also Wendy Kilbourne's father. So it was kind of a back and forth between the two father stories and the father, her father dies in that episode. I was sitting in my office a few days later and I got a call and my assistant said, there's a woman from

Sacramento, I believe on the phone for you, saw the show the other night, wants to talk to you. And I picked up the phone and she said that her husband had passed away a number of years ago when her daughter was 12. The daughter was now 16. And the daughter never had talked about the death of her father. That was just like a subject that didn't, you know, she was just blocked on that. They saw that episode of Midnight Caller together. And for the first time, the daughter opened up about the death of her father. And she and the mother had an in-depth conversation.

And she called me up to thank me because it somehow broke the daughter free of her bonds about her dad's death. I thought it was very nice. And then it just sort of hit me. You're not making these things in a vacuum. People are affected by what you do. people are affected by what you do. And, you know, always sort of cognizant that since then that the audience out there is, you know, you're making a difference in terms of Supernatural that really became evident.

Yeah. Yeah, it sure did. Boy, we'll get to that in a little bit, but Supernatural was so embraced by the fans and so many people have had their lives just dramatically changed with their friendships, with the different charities and just everything that's gone on outside of the show. Yeah, it's quite remarkable, actually. Yeah. You were also an executive producer on one of my favorites back in the day, Lois and Clark, The New Adventures of Superman, starring Dean Cain and Terry Hatcher,

which ran for four seasons. Tell us about your experience on that show. I was at Warner Bros. at the time. And actually they had come to me and asked me, oddly enough, Butler had directed the pilot. So Bob and I crossed again. They came to me to first direct some episodes. And I kind of said, no, I said, you know, I'm really not a big comic book fan. And this is not an area that I'm particularly you know, I'm really not a big comic book fan. And this is, you know, this is not an area that I'm particularly skilled in, I don't think.

So I said no. And then they came to me a few more times. And finally, Les Moonves, who was running Warners at the time, said, I really need you to direct an episode. And I said, OK. Did I say no before? I meant to say yes. And I got through directing the episode. And the next morning he called me to his office and said,

what do you think? And I told him, well, I thought the production was a bit of a mess, but that the actors were really great together. And he said, I want you to take the show over. Wow. You know, which I did. And it was an interesting sort of experiment for me. Again, things like Mid mean midnight caller i was

really emotionally invested in kind of telling stories that i wanted to tell lois and clark was different it became a little more academic for me but i guess i did all right because you know the show kind of lifted up after i came on and i think it got better and, uh, you know, we went for four years. So what do I know? Right. I think it's still mentioned as a lot of people's favorites who grew up in that era. Like myself, it was our introduction to those characters just in kind of a more human way versus just Superman as a object from a comic book.

And I think that's what made it special and why it still resonates with a lot of people today. So that's, that's pretty fun. And I didn't really know that you had worked on that show. Somehow that had escaped me. Well, yeah, I fly beneath the radar. Well, I know you came in to do some extras for the DVD releases and that might've been right before I started working at Warner Brothers. Well, you were also directing a lot during those years. It looks like you did the Lois and Clark episode. You directed Charlie Gray's Time Cop and you did the Pilot of Turks. You did a Smallville, Hack Monk, some really great shows. So you were really developing your directing during that time as well. Yeah. And I think if you said, what do you enjoy the most?

I would probably say directing. You know, I always said, you know, when you said, what do you enjoy the most? I would probably say directing. I always said, when you direct, you're the pitcher and the catcher. Well, then all that led up in 2005, you boarding Supernatural. Tell us how you first got involved with Supernatural. Stay with us. We'll be right back. Hi, this is Tim Millard, host of The Extras Podcast. And I wanted to let you know that we have a new private Facebook group for fans of the Warner Archive and Warner Brothers catalog physical media releases. So if that interests you, you can find the link on our Facebook page or look for the link in the podcast show notes. Or look for the link in the podcast show notes.

You know, they had done the pilot. I wasn't involved in the pilot. And Eric Kripke wrote a terrific pilot. And he's just a terrific writer. When the show got picked up, I think the studio wanted an older, steadier hand to kind of watch over things. You know, where the young Kripke I think might go far afield. I don't know. Well, he was pretty young at the time

to be a showrunner, wasn't he? He was, yes. And not terribly experienced. So Eric and I had quite a few meetings. Finally, you know, he pushed a button and said, okay, fine. You know, and he was wary. I think he had one experience before where they, you know, teamed him up with someone and that didn't work out particularly well, either for him or the show. And I, you know,

I told him, I said, look, this is your show. It's your vision. I would just be there to kind of help and, you know, kind of get you through pitfalls and things like that. Anyway, Eric said, okay, let's do it. And I would say right from the beginning, we had a wonderful partnership. It was never a moment of tension between us. And I think those first five years of Supernatural were probably as much fun as I've had producing a show as I've ever had. And Eric was great to work with. And, you know, certainly in year one, we made a number of mistakes.

But again, I think Jensen and Jared combo could kind of get us past some scripts that maybe weren't the best scripts or some directors that were hired that weren't the best directors because those guys were just magic together. Much in the same way that Dean and Terry were, you know, you couldn't deny the chemistry.

Tell me when you first met Jared Padalecki and Jensen Ackles. I think I'd met them briefly while we were in pre-production, but didn't have a, didn't establish, you know, really a relationship with them. You know, and the idea was that I would be more involved in, in, in LA, at least for the first 13 episodes, trying to get the show off the ground and so forth and so on. Then I think it was episode seven, Phantom Traveler, and the director had dropped out for whatever reason. And I was in Chicago because my wife and I ended up writing on the show.

Mother was ill and I was in Chicago because my, uh, Eugenie is my wife and I ended up writing on the show. Mother was ill and I was in Chicago. I got a call from Eric said, you have to go to, you have to go to Vancouver. This director drops out. You have to be there in two days. Okay. So,

you know, I flew back to LA, back to bag and flew to Vancouver. So I think on episode seven, it was the first time I had worked with them. We all got along great. And that was a fun episode to do. And seven, it was the first time I had worked with them. We all got along great. And that was a fun episode to do. And I thought it was, I think it was the first time that we had sort of explored a little more comedy in the show.

You know, what the guys could handle in terms of comedy. And, you know, they were great. I remember David Nutter, who directed the pilot, called me up after it aired. And he said, I think the show turned a corner last night. And I think what he meant by that was that we were getting into their characters a little bit more and seeing the fun side of them. And that kind of paved the way for a lot of stuff that we did subsequently. Right. Well, the first two seasons were were a lot about that monster of the week. And I love a lot of those episodes.

When did the show start to transition into the season long mythology? Was that in the third season? I think we started probably more in the second season, although I can't remember specifics. But, you know, Eric originally wanted Monster of the Week and then monsters that you could Google them. We sort of realized fairly quickly that you're going to run out of those monsters pretty quick. You know, so we found different vampires, different werewolves, so forth and so on. But one thing I think that we did really well, and I credit Eric a lot with this, is that Eric used to say, every

villain is the hero of his own story. And so we tried to give the monsters their own stories and make them interesting, not necessarily just nameless, faithless monsters. And I think that's one thing that we did really well, and I think that's one reason why the

show could last as long as it did. Then, as this sort of started to evolve, and we realized, well, we could bring this character back or that character back. And kind of the overall arc of the season then started to sort of form itself. And certainly by season three, that was kind of where we're at. And we used to break it down. We said, well, how many of these episodes are going to be mythology stories and how much are standalones? And even in the standalones, there was always at least some nugget of what was going on in the mythology. Right. Those first two, three years, you just never knew if you were going to get a next season pickup. That was, um, you guys were switching

networks and, uh, it was really hard to know for you. When did you finally get a sense that you weren't going to have to be on the edge of cancellation? I would think maybe somewhere around season four. I think we felt we had some firm footing. We were getting good ratings. The original management at CW was never particularly a fan of the show, but I don't think they ever came up with anything they thought, well, that could replace us. Although I think they tried. So, yeah, we lived on Tenderhooks for the first few seasons.

And then I thought, well, I think we're in pretty good shape. I never thought we were 15 years in good shape. But, you know, I thought, well, we'll get five, maybe six seasons out of this. And then when Mark Petowitz came in to run CW, he was such a fan of the show. And kind of the attitude from the network point of view just changed drastically. Although the rank and file at CW was great. You know, we were just always worried about the leadership that she left and Mark came in and then it was just really clear sailing after that. I started working with the show in season four on the home entertainment

release. And I recall that I don't remember which season it was, but they would move you from Thursday to Monday to the, it just felt like you were the show. Supernatural was the show that they would just move around and somehow the fans would just go with the show. And despite all of that uncertainty of when the time slot, eight o'clock, nine o'clock, Thursday, Monday, the fans just went with the show. And that eventually I think won everybody over to say, we've got to do better by the show and really kind of give you guys a better time slot. I think that's true. And yes, we were bounced around an awful lot. You know,

I think if you were working at that time for ABC or CBS or one of the other networks, you would kind of look at something and say, Oh my God, that's a bad time slot. I think on the CW it didn't really matter much. And the fact that the audience stayed with us, I mean, they do, we were just solid, you know, but you know, I don't think there was any what you could consider

breakout hits on the CW where they said, oh, well, Thursday night is a great night to be on or Tuesday night is a great night to be on. That didn't really exist.

You know, sometimes they'd put us at eight o'clock so we'd be a lead-in for a show because they thought we had the better ratings. Right.

It was an interesting time. But, you know, we always just kept our head down and just tried to make the best show we could right the other stuff you can't control there's no point in stressing about it yeah exactly well in a show that goes as long as supernatural there's always key points where you can say this was a change that was a change for the good new characters are brought in talk about the introduction of Castiel played by Misha Collins in season four in the episode Lazarus rising and the importance of that character and Misha

to the show. Well, I don't think, I don't think anyone at the time knew what that would become and getting an angel on the show was always, you know, and I used to say to her, we're going to have demons, we're going to have angels. He was against that, wasn't he? He was, he was resistant to having angels on the show. And kind of what got him in a headspace

that he'd go with an angel was he goes, okay, we can have an angel, but angels are going to be dicks. They're not going to be, you know, on a cloud with a halo and, you know, they're going to be dicks. They're God's warriors. Right.

And Misha's entrance, the shot that we did of him was really quite an entrance, probably the best entrance we've ever done of any character. But, you know, the plan for him was not what it ultimately became. I can't remember how many episodes we thought that character would play, but he was so good. And the audience really seemed to take to him immediately. And that really started this kind of opening the door for us

to bring in these characters that we could repeat and bring back and tell their stories. Took some of the owners off the guys, and I thought made for a more interesting show. And then you had the Bobby Singer character and Crowley, and it just kind of kept building from there. And, you know, I think certainly Misha's character was the jumping off point for all that. Yeah. In season five, I think, is when Crowley was introduced.

Was that kind of set up as a counterbalance to the Misha character or was it just... Again, not really. It was really supposed to be a one-off, you know, he was a crossroads demon, but we loved what Mark did with the character so much. We said, oh, we've got to bring this guy back. And if you bring someone back, you can't just keep them stagnant in this one sort of place. He just couldn't be just a crossroads demon. We couldn't build stories around that. So we started building his character up until eventually he became the king of hell. But again, it was an actor that you just wanted to see. So we made that work. And, you know, Jim Beaver, you know, the Bobby Singer character, which I was away when Eric named that was up to record. And I see the script come in and, you know,

and Eric says, oh, you know, it's a fun thing. It'll be a one-off, you know. directing. And I see the script come in and I'm in on there. It's a fun thing. It'll be a one-off. You know? It didn't turn out that way. It's a great little nugget of trivia. I remember a friend of mine who I never think in New York would watch the show.

He says, what happened to the guy? I can't believe you're naming characters after yourself. I didn't know it. I didn't know it. It was Eric. Well, after the first five seasons, I think Eric moved on from the show. And you had another showrunner come in, Sarah Gamble, who you were working with. So that was really the seasons when the Angels and Demons took off.

Tell me a little bit about working with Sarah in those years that she was the showrunner. Well, Sarah was, you know, had been with us, right? Maybe I can't remember, but maybe episode two or three. Right. She had a writing partner at that point, and then they decided to write on their own. And, you know, Sarah was kind of a bit of a star in the, you know, in the writer's room. And she wrote great scripts, and she seemed to be a natural fit to, you know, take over where Eric left off. My working relationship with all the people that did that job, I think, was always good.

With Sarah, it was probably a little bumpier in the beginning than with Jeremy or Andrew. But we got through whatever little difficulties we had. And I think, you know, her two years there, we turned out some good work. Yeah, there were a lot of great episodes during that time. One thing that Supernatural did fairly early on and became known for were your meta episodes. Do you recall what led to the first meta episode and why just why they were able to work so well for Supernatural?

I don't see which was the first one. I think it was Hollywood Babylon in season two. Yeah. I don't think that one is quite as meta as the others. But, you know, again, you know, what's a good setting to tell a good kind of horror story? You know, a haunted set. You know, I mean, basically, I mean, you're talking Phantom of the Opera, sort of. Right, right. You know, we could then kind of come up with some fun characters in that sort of Hollywood

world that's very rich. It's a rich area. So that one wasn't a hard one for us to see. And, you know, as usual, you know, I can call him some favors. And Gary Cole guest starred in that one. And he was great. That was the first one where he said, well, we can go a little far afield and kind of make some of these things a little crazier than just your straight ahead story.

And I think that paved the way for changing channels and the French mistake and those episodes. Yeah. And the fans seem to really embrace them. And I, the cast seemed to really enjoy doing those as well. Yeah. You know,

they were nice kind of breaths of fresh air, you know, they, they had a lot of humor in them and, and it kind of showed that we didn't take ourselves too terribly seriously. You know, to this day, I think French Mistake is not only one of the best ones we ever did. I think it's one of the best episodes of television. It's a spectacular episode.

Yeah. And Edlin wrote it and Charles Beeson, may he rest in peace, did a fantastic job directing it. Yeah. French Mistake is in season six for those fans who don't know. And we did an extra on that episode and we had a trivia track as well. It was such a great episode when you just knew it right away. And so we really tried to focus and do some extras for the home entertainment release on that. Yeah, and again, I mean, we just went crazy on went crazy. I mean, Eric gets shot in the way.

You know, we, we just, you know, talk about killing your children. Yeah. Yeah. Well, in season nine, the men of letter set finally gave the boys a home and was another turning point in the, in the show, especially released in terms of the production. And in those seasons, you and Jeremy Carver built the storylines, I think around the Leviathan, the men of letters mythology, talk about working with Jeremy Carver. Jeremy had worked on the show. Um, again, I'll mix my seasons up, but he had been on the show a number of seasons. And before he went off to do a, uh, a show of his own in German, I always got along great.

I love Jeremy's writing. Then at the end of season seven, I had kind of, I wasn't sure. I said, maybe this should be it for me. I had lunch with Melinda Hagee, who ran

Current for Warner Brothers Television at the time. Melinda said, we don't want you to leave. What would it take to, you know? And I said, well, I don't know. Sarah's leaving. She says, well, if we brought Jeremy back and had him do the job, I was just thinking, well, that piques my interest because I really like Jeremy a lot and think he's a really talented guy.

And then there were a few other things that I wanted, which they said yes to. And so we came back. And, you know, Sarah left us in an amazingly difficult place. She had Jensen and Castiel stuck in purgatory. And that was the end of season seven. And I said, well, that's a great cliffhanger, but you're leaving. Do you have any ideas how we get out of this? And she goes, no, no, not really so jeremy and i came up with some stuff and i actually thought that season eight was one of our best seasons uh i think jeremy and i really kind of worked well

together and that was uh you know where sam hits the dog and ends up with a relationship uh with a relationship with a woman and Dean gets out of purgatory with the help of Benny the vampire. Right. You know, and I thought we took some really kind of nice chances and made some left turns that people wouldn't see coming. And I thought that season worked really well. So I think the time with Jeremy on the show

was really terrific. I think we did some good stuff. Yeah, I really enjoyed working with Jeremy on the extras for the home entertainment as well. He did not like being interviewed and he was always trying to ask us to interview other people. And we would say, Jeremy, but you're the showrunner. We kind of need to hear from you. The fans want to hear from you. But he's such a nice guy.

We would have to do promotional things that we did where there was a script. Jeremy was always, he didn't get tongue-tied on camera. I used to laugh, which I'm sure didn't make him feel any better. But we

always get through it. He was really good-natured about it. He would just push forward and carry on. Yeah. I mean, I missed working with him. He's a good guy. Yeah. I was sad to see when he left, but then in season 12, Andrew Dabb stepped in as showrunner with you.

And Andrew, of course, is terrific. You also brought Mary Winchester back to life that season, I believe. Talk about that transition and working with Andrew for the final four seasons. Well, you know, Andrew had been with us for a long, long time. And he started out with a partner and then they wanted to split up. And then we realized, looking at their individual scripts, that Andrew was a keeper. So, you know, Andrew's familiarity with the show and his talent, you know, he was a perfect choice to do that. And our working relationship, I think, is really strong.

And we had a good time. And, you know, good ideas. But Andrew's very open. He's not a my way or the highway kind of person. So there was a really kind of good give and take getting to where we wanted to be. And, you know, this show is different than a lot of shows. And I mean, from the time Eric worked on it, basically whoever was running the show with me

would sit down before we brought the writers in and we would work out where we saw the season arc going. And then we bring the writers in and basically say, this is what we want to do. It's open for discussion, but not wholesale changes. So we didn't really have traditional writer's room in the sense that we're meeting every day, every week. You know, I said, I like writers being off writing, not sitting in a room talking about

the weekend. And so, you know, okay, this is the arc for the year. This is where we want to go, or at least for the first 13 episodes. This is what we're trying to do. We're going to have four myth episodes, eight stand-alones. Everybody go away, come back in three days and pitch us some episodes. That's the way we worked, and that's the way we worked from the beginning of season one all the way through season 15. The show kind of ran

differently than a lot of shows run, you know, and we never had what you would call a really huge writing staff. So writers were constantly writing. There was not a lot of downtime for writers. I'm not sure how I got off on this tangent. Well, what I recall is that Supernatural was like a workhorse for the CW. You were putting out 24 episodes when other shows were putting out 19 or 21 or 22. And they asked for 24. We, we, we said, that's, that's too, we started at 22. They asked for 24.

We said, can you make it 23? Cause even in those days we were bringing the writers in for the next season, the same week that we were dubbing the last show of the previous season. Right. So there was like, there's no downtime. Right. Which was really, you know, 24 episodes. I don't know how the hell we would have done. I could barely figure out how to do it at 23. So that was, those were tiring. That was hard to do.

Right. Yeah. Yes. They wanted as many supernaturals as they could get. Yeah. And the only way that you were able to kind of give them that extra one, two episodes was probably because of the way you were running the show. I think that helps.

I mean, the other thing about this show is because up until mental letters, we never really had a permanent set. So I think Jerry Wanago is a production designer, probably built more sites in 15 years than anybody in the history of television. So we need these scripts to be, you know, you couldn't deliver a script on the day, the first day of prep.

That just wouldn't work. We needed way more lead time than that to get these episodes ready. So it was very important that we got this stuff out in a really timely fashion and that we didn't screw around. I know some shows, you know, I talk to the director, he said, well, I'm prepping off an outline. You know, we could never do that. It's just too hard a show to do.

So these scripts were always done at least two weeks before the actual prep started. So Wanek and his crew and other people, the visual effects and special effects people could start prepping those episodes. Right. Well, it was just a well-oiled machine. And I recall we would, from the home entertainment perspective, be trying to get the final interviews with you and Andrew and some of the

other writers. And we would say, when are you coming back to start the scripting for the next season? And often it was like in two weeks. Right. And to be fair, some of the writers had finished earlier because their episodes were done earlier, but for Andrew, who was on the last, you know, episodes,

oftentimes writing it, it was just a very small window. Oh yeah. And we were the first ones in and the last ones out, you know, a writer who had finished his, you know, his three scripts of the year, whatever, it could be done in February, March, you know, yeah, he or she would have quite a bit of time off. That wasn't the case for Andrew or me or Eric or Jeremy or any of us. Yeah, I don't know how you guys did it. That was a pretty amazing schedule. Yeah, it aged me

well bob now i have a few rapid fire questions i wanted to throw your way the first one fans vary on their vote for scariest episode but what is your favorite Favorite horror episode? Yikes. Probably Scarecrow. Of all the meta episodes, and this may be a fairly easy one, of all the meta episodes, which is your favorite? Oh, that would be French Mistake. Right. Who was your favorite guest character?

You mean someone who didn't stay with the show? Yeah. Right. Yeah. Just more, you know, less episodes than that. Oh, wow. Well, I guess she did a number of them, but you know, Donna Hanscom character, the sheriff from Minnesota, whatever she was from.

She was great. And I know we brought her back. There was also, uh, God, what was her name? The one who, uh,

had to crush on Chuck. Uh, all right. She was delightful. And we actually brought her back in the last season. Yes. God, I'm embarrassed.

I can't remember her name, but she was great. What was your favorite episode to direct? Um, I can't remember what it was called. I would, cause everybody just calling it the Rabbit's Foot episode, but it was

Ben wrote it and introduced Bella, who was a character I really liked. I can't remember the name of the episode, but it was about the Rabbit's Foot and it was like a rabbit's foot that was when you got it, you got tremendous luck and if you lost

it, your luck turned really bad. I love that episode. It was really fun to do. And, um, there was a fight scene in there that basically took us a day to do. It was a really tough choreography and Ben had written some specific stuff that had to happen in this fight, but when it all came together, it was, uh, it was really terrific. And, um, you know you know i gotta say doing the finale was special right well there's fans out there that are probably yelling out the episode name if we can't remember but i do remember the episode too uh and then the last one here is where was your favorite location to film well favorite or that's a tough question because

sometimes you know you're in a location you say well i love being out here and this is you know terrific but then there's other ones that are you know where you think you're going to get the most bang for your buck i think in season it was the introduction of um uh the vampire hunter and we did a scene it was an all-nighter at a lumber yard and um it was just spooky i mean it was a great location and we end with a big saw thing where Jensen is the saw of a vampire's head or something. And that was a great location.

And then there was this location Jerry built out on this spit of land way kind of north of Vancouver and he built this great house and it was just this beautiful location and it was kind of difficult to drive to and to get there. But when you looked at it, you know, it was like something out of a feature film. It was just a great house that he built and it just sat out on this bit of

water that was, you know, we had some beautiful days to shoot there and that was a great location. I hope you have enjoyed listening to part one of my podcast with the executive producer and director Bob Singer. In part two, we will discuss the classic rock music used in the series Supernatural, and we will hear from Bob his memories of the final season and his thoughts as he looks back now that it has been one year since the series finale. For those of you interested in learning more about what was discussed in the show today and our other Supernatural podcasts, there will be detailed information on the website at www.theextras.tv. Also follow the show on Facebook or Twitter at The Extras TV or Instagram at TheExtras.TV to stay up to date on the latest episodes and for exclusive images and behind

the scenes information about the episodes and upcoming guests. And if you're enjoying the show, please subscribe and leave us a review at iTunes, Spotify, or your favorite podcast provider. Until next time, you've been listening to The Extras with Tim Millard. Stay slightly obsessed. The Extras is a production of Otaku Media, producers of podcasts, behind the scenes extras, and media that connects creatives with their fans and businesses with their consumers. Contact us today to see how we can work together to achieve your goals at www.otakumedia.tv or look for the link in the show notes.