The Extras - Cars, Guitars, and a 1967 Chevy Impala Named “Baby"

Episode Date: February 23, 2022

Hollywood has a rich legacy of memorable picture cars.  And one of the most beloved on television in the last decade is “Baby,” the midnight black 1967 Chevy Impala made famous by the Winchester Brothers - Sam and Dean, in the hit TV show "Supernatural."For 15 seasons, Jeff Budnick was the Picture Car Coordinator for "Supernatural," and his job was to ensure “Baby” and all of the other cars on the show were ready when needed.  In this episode, Jeff takes us through the chance meeting that launched his career on "X-Files," where he had the good fortune to work with highly regarded TV director Kim Manners.  Once X-Files ended, Jeff transitioned to the show "Supernatural," beginning with the very first episode.  Jeff describes the Impalas that he received from the pilot filming, and how he added to the various show cars over the years. He shares stories from the hectic first season, including his favorite episode, “Route 666.”  And he explains what the P.O.S cars are, and details some of them used in the series.  Jeff shares personal stories of the crew, how they formed a band called “The Impalas,” and what he has been doing during the time TV production was shut down due to the pandemic.  We also go through the challenges in filming the episode "Baby," where the whole episode was filmed from the POV of the car.  Jeff then tells us stories of Jensen Ackles's affection for the car, and why he received "Hero car #1."  And Jeff explains where the other "Hero" cars ended up.  He recounts some of the fan cars used in episodes and events.  And in an emotional send-off, Jeff details taking the cars he worked with for 15 seasons to the tractor-trailer for their final journey to the end of the road.     To see exclusive photos and videos of the final send-off, visit us on Instagram @theextras.tv   Website: www.theextras.tv/podcastsThe 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. Today we have a fun show for fans of Supernatural,

or anyone interested in picture cards for TV and film. I've said before on this podcast, I had the opportunity to work on the home video extras for Supernatural, starting in Season 4 through Season 15, and it was one of my all-time favorite shows to work on. During those years, I had the pleasure to either consult with or interview our guests today for numerous extras, and I had hoped to do a documentary extra for the final season 15 or box set release highlighting his work with what many consider the third star of Supernatural.

My apologies, Castiel. However, due to the COVID-19 shutdown of TV production, we were not able to execute our extra on Baby. So today we will cover some of the ground I was hoping to discuss in our home entertainment extra. The subject of our discussion today never spoke a word, but was a key contributor to the show's tone, image, and style. After the two main characters of Sam and Dean, played brilliantly by the stars Jared Padalecki and Jensen Ackles, this is likely the character in the most episodes. For Supernatural fans, you know the character I'm talking about, baby, as the 1967 Chevy Impala is called in the show. Now, one of the things I try to do in this podcast is bring you interesting personalities

who work on your favorite shows or films. This next guest falls into that category. He's a terrific guy that gets to do what he loves, and he's very good at it. He was the picture card coordinator for all 15 seasons of Supernatural. Jeff Budnick, welcome to The Extras. Hi, it's good to be here.

Yeah, it's good to see you. It's been a few years since we got to actually interview you for one of The Extras. So I'm really happy that you were able to make it on the show today. Before we dive into Supernatural, I was curious, how did you get into film and television work? Well, kind of a cool story. I've always been a car collector. When I was young, I had tons of cars and I was driving a 59 Cadillac down the freeway. And a gentleman, beeping his horn, pulls me over and says,

do you want to rent your car to the movies? And I was like, hmm, what's that? You know, I never even heard of that before. You know, films being shot in Vancouver. So that was the first season of X-Files. And was a nigel habgad his name was and uh so i went over there and um they used my car as a main character car and uh it was uh jesse ventura remember the wrestler yeah uh he was the main actor on the show he's called a man in black so that was his main car it was a beautiful black 59 cadillac just gorgeous and And so that was my first introduction.

And I just kind of went to set one day, looked around and people standing around eating and chilling and everybody having a good time. Oh, this is really cool. You know, and you get paid for this. Right. And at the time, I had my own neon sign company and had a partner on it. So I was in the neon trade. I used to work on neon signs when I got out of high school.

And so we were real busy at the time. And we had crews partner on it. So I was in the neon trade. I used to work on neon signs when I got out of high school. And so we were real busy at the time. And we had crews and business was good. But then I thought it was really cool, the movies, you know. So Nigel went on holidays one time for a couple of weeks. He said, can you take over? And I said, sure. So two weeks went by and then never heard back from Nigel. He went on a cruise and then turned his phone off.

And it was the weirdest thing. So they said, can you finish out the rest of the season? There was like about two months to go. So I took off work. My partner said, I'm taking two months off. I'm just going to do this movie thing. And then I got a hold of Nigel. He says, oh, it's stressful.

I just didn't want to do that show anymore. You can have it type thing. So that's how I got started. And the next fall, he was asked me back for the next season. And in the meantime, I did a bunch of pilots and stuff in between. And, you know, so I've been doing that for, geez, I don't know, over 25 years. Wow, that's a great story. So then that was your own car that they wanted to use.

Yeah. So what I used to do, so they used to come to me and say, hey, do you know where I can find a 55 Chevy or an old Cadillac? And I, because I was into car collecting and building and all my crowd wear, so I knew where to find stuff easy. And the best thing in life I love is to hunt. I love to hunt for cars and guitars is my two things in life that are better than any drug. So somebody's paying you to do that, paying you to do what you absolutely love. So there's no other better thing in life than getting paid for what you love to do, right? That's for sure. So then I just switched over to the film, and then I kept a silent partner in the sign company for about another 15 years. And then my buddy Marty bought me out. And since then, it's just been cars.

So how did you get involved with Supernatural then? My coordinator that I worked for is Mark Gould. He's a transportation coordinator. Brilliant man. I worked with him my whole life. And he basically gets shows and that's kind of, he gets in with the production manager and they kind of use the same crew so they get a show. So we

started that Supernatural with Mark Gould and that's how I got on there. But I knew Kim Manners because I did X-Files with Kim Manners. And I also did a pilot called Alaska with Kim Manners between that. So I think, you know, he was happy to see me and I was happy to see him. And it all just kind of worked. You know what I mean? There's a bunch of good people that I did work with around the industry and they all came together.

It was a super team. Supernatural was just fantastic. So how early on did you get onto the show? I did the very first episode and I've done every episode right to that. Even though I was up for all days, I still did episodes from my phone. You know what I mean? I still took care of it, right? Because the pilot was shot here in LA, correct? Yeah. So the first one after the pilot, they shot the the pilot was shot here in la correct yeah so the first one after the pilot shut up they uh they shipped the cars there so they shipped two in pounds

and i remember in in the sequence in the pilot it ran through a house and uh it got damaged and so they sent these two cars and they were just killed like they were so i had to rebuild them really quick and then at the same time, two wasn't enough. So I said, you know, we should build a third one. So I bought another one and built a third one. They were the hero cars of the day. But as time went on, those cars started getting rough and we started building better cars. And we turned those into stunt cars.

Because from the pilot, they already had skid plates, fuel cells, harnesses. You know, they were all ready to go to do their stunt work. So they were tough cars, really tough cars. So when you say you, you know, got additional cars, what was it? You would go hunting for an Impala and then if it's a different color or depending on the shape it's in, you had to have some body work on? Yeah, that's it. You know, but myself, I even had one before the show. I had a 67 four-door hardtop in my partner of mine.

We grew up together. My buddy Rob, he has a farm, six-acre farm. It was chicken barns. So ever since we've been kids, we've always gone halfies on cars. And he does all the towing and I get the rentals, right? So I have a side company called Movie Motion. That's the company I've had for all my life. And I rent cars to all shows.

Anything in town here, I do Riverdale, A Good Doctor, all these things in town. I send them cars, right? So me and him do that. And he has the farm there. And there's probably about 300 cars out there. And they're all period cars. So all the way through the years of Supernatural,

when we saw something cool in the background, there was either you know the gremlin and you know all the cool cars that they'd steal and that was all my stuff or most of my stuff and jerry you know why he just had an awesome eye he took care of the flavor of the show right so he and he trusted me too to picking cars that would fit that character you know in the background you know just said do what you do you know get one of do what you do, you know, get one of these for the gas station, you know, and not show up with tow trucks and, you know, or whatever. He just trusted me that I knew what I was doing on that end, right?

It's funny because I, one of the first cars I drove was a 1970 Chevy Impala. It belonged to my grandpa. And you know how cars get passed down, right? It went from him to my brother and then from my older brother down to me then from me down to my other brother it kind of just went through the family but too bad i didn't keep that one yeah 70s a nice year yeah i love all cars all makes you know what i mean it's just a passion uh you're just born with i guess i i my dad was a car collector racer. He used to race a quarter mile.

So when I was little, I used to go to the racetrack. I think that's where I got the disease from. That's awesome. So right from the beginning, I mean, right in the pilot, you just see the prominence and the importance of the car to the show. So when you came on to the show, you knew that the car was going to be a big deal, right? They probably told you that right from the beginning. Tell me a little bit about that first season and the challenges of, you know, having the different cars available for them.

Tell me a little bit about that. The first season, it was one of my favorite seasons because every episode was its own story. You know what I mean? It didn't go like, you know, over the years, it started to be going like 20 episodes into one type thing, where back then it was like each episode, and there were great stories, like Route 666, that was an awesome one. So there were real busy car shows.

We jumped the car 50 feet in one episode. And so I was busy as can be. You know, it was a very busy car show. Over the years, it seemed to get less and less, but the first year was very, very busy. And it was endless pockets, you know,

it was just like, this is what we want, this is what we need. And that was what they got. They said, I built two monster trucks for Route 66 in five days,

two matching monster trucks. And we put one in a, in a pond and we jumped the car. We put a cop car on a pipe ramp and rolled it. And we had crashed a Lincoln. Like it was all this stuff was amazing episode.

One of my favorites. That's awesome. But you got money. And so people work through the night, 24 hour shifts or whatever to get it done in time. Right. It was a lot of that in the first season. Who actually drives the car or drove the car?

So they always shared throughout the season, Jensen and Jared, you know, depending what the script demanded. And then over the seasons, Jared, you know, sometimes he'd crash the car into things, bump it into things and do this and that. And so then in later years, it was Jensen that did most of the driving. And then you got your stuntman. You know, anytime there was a stunt. But, you know, Jensen was a really good driver. He did a lot of the stuff himself. Hats off to him.

He is a good, he could be a stunt driver if he wanted to, you know. He's very coordinated in that way, right? And then when it came to some of the, you know, the shots where it's just, because you guys would take the car out, right? Between seasons or at the beginning of a season and just get second unit type shots or how did you do those? Yeah, we've done a couple of trips like that where they're awesome trips. You know, we have this place called Okanagan and up there it's our desert belt. It's a dry desert, beautiful tunnels and bridges and train bridges, trellis bridges.

And so we'd take a unit, a tractor truck and trailer, bring a couple of pals up and do some great shots. And those are a fun week off, you know, with your friends and hitting the bars at night and having good times. It was good trips. Did you ever do any driving in the car or was that always somebody else? Yeah. Yeah. I've driven it quite a bit. Not too much like on set, but those driving things, I did some driving and stuff like that, but I never went to set much in the younger years I did.

But later on, I didn't really need to at Frank on set. And when I needed extra drivers, I'd phone the hall and he'd bring in extra people. And I always had good mechanics on set, too. So tell us a little bit about Frank. Who's Frank? Frank Pankow. He is the picture car wrangler. And he came on probably about season four. It was Johnny Lange was the first guy. When I first started, I hired him as a car wrangler. He moved up to driving cast or moved over to driving cast. And then I brought in Frank. He is on set every day with the car. And what he does is he, I had my own truck and trailer. It was a stacker.

So you could put two in at a time and he'd take that to set every day and unload them and bring them in. And then if there's any other cars, he would arrange to get them close to set for their filming time. And that's called the Pitch Car Wrangler. So he's been my guy for, let's say, most of the seasons. And then what was your official title on the show? Pitcher Car Coordinator. Coordinator. Gotcha.

So coordinator. Basically, my job is to do all the budgets. I sit down at the production meetings, budget meetings, and Pitcher Car meeting, you know, discuss what character is driving what, what vehicle's going to be used for what stunt, and do I need to double or triple this vehicle, you know, that kind of thing. And then once my budget's passed, I go out and spend all that money as quick as I can to make sure it's ready in time for day one. So was that for every episode that you'd have that meeting?

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. No, every eight days is an episode.

In every episode, you have a concept meeting, a production meeting, a picture card meeting, and sometimes a budget meeting. So how many different babies were there? Maybe not necessarily at the beginning, but let's say in season 15. At the very end, there was Hero 1, 2, and 3. And then we had Stunt Car 1 and 2, which was the original two Impalas that came from the pilot. And then we had a third

Stunt Car, and that one was the one that took most of the beating when we had to flip it on its roof or do whatever. That poor car has been flattened so many times and brought back to life where you'd look at it and go, there's no way of the beating when we had to flip it on its roof or do whatever right that poor car it's been flattened so many times and brought back to life or you'd look at it go there's no way this car's coming back we've had it on its roof we've had it uh you know through baby we smashed through all kinds of stuff and then we had a thing called a butt car which is basically show the car

and uh it would come apart into three pieces and the roof would come off. So when they were doing some crazy shots, like in a baby episode, they were lying in the car and they had a drone shot from up above looking down and it's, you know, you can't achieve that with a regular car. And then we had two junker cars that I've always kept because parts are really hard to get. And I've bought cars over the years uh i was going to use them for another car and i had to use them for parts i needed the parts off them and uh but we had two junkers and one of the junkers was the original one that was t-boned uh by the semi in the last

episode in season one and that's when you didn't know if they lived or died and the show was coming back and i used to wait to see who got picked up. Right. But yeah, so that was all the cars. And then I had a few of my own. I remember I had one in my junkyard there and I was going to restore that one for my son because my son was a fan of the show and he was turning 16. So I had that car, but I started taking parts of it here and there, but it was still a restorable. And then at the time when he turned 16, I had a 69 Pontiac Parisian convertible, a red one. He's like, Dad, I'd rather have that. Which I don't blame him because it wasn't a four-door, it was a convertible.

So I gave him the Pontiac. And then I just ended up using that other car for a parts car for the show. And then I found another one you know years later and then i did the same thing i i had it on an episode uh we did a scene was like a junkyard scene and just i like doing stuff like that throwing cars in here and there so i threw them pal in there and uh as a car enthusiast would appreciate that that's the same as baby right and then after that i sold them off uh and I thought they were drunk, but both of them got restored by fans of the show. There's a guy in Portland named Dave.

He ended up... We did a trade. He had an old Chevy, a 55 Chevy shell. And I've always wanted to build a race car out of 55 Chevys. So I traded in the Impala shell for the 55 Chevy shell, which I still got. And it's almost finished. I've been building that car for the last few years. But he built a baby out of the other one

and I think it's finished or almost. So there's a few floating out there, you know. There's lots of fans that have them and especially in Vancouver, there's, you know, some cars floating around. So I assume then you use the Buck car whenever you needed to do the close-up shots on stage.

Is that right? Yeah. That area is called PMP or poor man process. And basically in the early years we would set that up in there and we started using it. But the problem with that car for the PMP is where the roof joined, because the roof came off, the

headliner had a seam there. So when you're shooting, you know, going over their shoulder, you can see that seam and Kim hated it. So he said, well, we'll just use a regular car. So we never, after that, we never used a buck car again on the PMP. And then we'd bring in the regular cars, unless it was a shot, like I say, one from baby, but that was on site. But we very rarely used a buck car on PMP probably after season two.

So when you see the rain hitting the window and then Sam, you know, is there, that's all the PMP process, right? But that was an actual real car. Yeah, it was cool because Frank's job there, when the car's on PMP, he gets a bunch of Apple boxes and he gets a big beam. And he sits on an Apple box and he's rocking the car up and down. It looks like they're going down the highway. And then they have these moving streetlights that go by in the background and it looks so real. Like when you watch it on TV, they do a fantastic job of that. Yeah, it looks, it's really cool.

I think when one of our extras, we had a shot of that and it looked, it looked so cool. But when you watch it on TV, so natural looking. Yeah, Frank's eating a sandwich, sitting on an apple box moving everything up and down looks like he's doing 80 miles an hour but uh nothing's moving there so vancouver obviously you know once winter hits or fall the fall hits and the the rain comes and then winter it's pretty cold were there any unique uh challenges that were presented when filming on location with the cars? Yeah, not too bad. You know, I mean, locations never put us in really bad spots where we'd be jeopardizing the shots. I mean, we've got snow, not a lot, but you know, I remember one night

it really snowed. I got a beautiful picture of the Impala sitting with everybody's left for the end of the night and the streetlight is lit and the snow is coming down and the things covered about six inches of snow. It's just awesome. But I mean, I've been a few times like that. I mean, it was very cool doing that route 666 when we did the monster truck in the pond. It snowed that night and it was so cold and people have to get in the water and, you know, actors. And it's just like it was a tough one. Lots of mud.

Yeah, it's pretty, pretty mild up here and it's just like it was a tough one lots of mud so yeah it's pretty pretty mild up here and it's getting better every summer our summer's getting longer and uh winters uh we don't see snow very much up here in town you know today's on the mountains yeah yeah in season seven the boys were wanted criminals so they put baby i think into storage and used another car that pontiac acadian oh yeah is. Did I have that right? Yeah. And I, I mean, I think this was referenced as the POS car. Yes.

Yeah. Can you tell us what that means? Piece of shit. That's what POS is. And yeah, you know, it's a good thing about Jerry. Like I say, he just looks at me and goes, you know what we need, right? And I'm like, yeah. So I sent pictures, but I was a pile i still have it's

one of my cars but it goes out all the time it's funny the shows you think you know if you had a ferrari or something i'd go out all the time you know it's all the junk you know my beater pickups and uh stuff like the acadian the pintos and pacers and all that junk it uh that's what the movies like to rent were there any other memorable pos cars uh there's so there's a whole whole season they just stole cars every and but i was always trying to get muscle cars so you know there was a roadrunner but we had to age it down to make it look like a piece of shit but it was a beautiful 69 roadrunner and we just put fake primer on it and remember remember we did a 67 Mustang Fastback.

Yeah, there's a lot of... I always try and put cool cars in there. I even had my... One of my favorite cars is a Willys Coupe that I have. I got a lot of cars. There's a Hot Rod Gasser, and we did an episode and I had it in the shop. It was cool because they did a big wide on it and it looked really good in the episode.

It's cool when they, when you go back and you watch TV and you see a lot of stuff that you have is to me, it's like art. You know what I mean? When I look out on TV, I see the art form of it, not just the car. And, and that's what, you know, Jerry sees too, right. Which is pretty cool. So. Yeah. So you work pretty closely with the production designer, Jerry Wannick, right? Yes. Yeah. It's basically, um, before I go to a picture card meeting, I go see Jerry personally and just, we sit at the desk and I just kind of, we talk and we're showing pictures and he goes, yeah, that's my favorite. That's my favorite. So what I do is what his favorites are,

I put them on the top of the pile. So when you go to see the director, the first car show him is Jerry's favorite. You know, and that's and the director knows that. The most directors know that if I'm showing you this for this character, that's what Jerry likes. But sometimes you get directors that, you know, want their own direction and had a different idea. And then so then you talk about and discuss it at the meeting and start seeing number two or number three. And sometimes it's totally something opposite than what we talked about. And then I got to start scrambling on my phone and looking for pictures. I'd done that tons.

And then I'd pick out a car on my phone. I'd go, perfect. And away you go, right? The best thing about that job is the interesting people that you meet. You know, I met some fabulous directors and producers and stuff like that. Very artistic people, very cool people musically, you know, and stuff too. Right. So I'm a musician. So Jerry, he's got great taste in music and we go to concerts together and stuff like that.

And we're very, very alike on music and things like that too. So it's pretty cool. Yeah. I mean, the music in the show is pretty awesome. Right. And in the car, you know, when Dean's putting in the cassettes, it's a great part of the great part of the show to have the car so that you can play the classic rock on the old cassettes. It just creates a great vibe. Yeah.

I don't know if you knew this, but we had a, we had a band called Impalas. So early in the season, we'd have our rap parties and it would be my band that played the rap parties. And we did that for about two or three years. And then we started using some of the crew in the band. And then we said we just formed a band. So we actually made a whole band out of the crew. And then we did the rap parties like that. And everybody would get up, Bob Singer, all the producers, everybody would go up and sing. And it was like doing karaoke. And we had some wicked rap parties that were so much fun. I got to see some of the footage.

We rarely got a chance to use the footage because music licensing rights, the songs you guys were singing, but I would get to see it. It was great fun. Yeah. Yeah. I had a blast doing that. I missed that part of it for sure. I'm still playing.

I, I, I play tomorrow night and I play once a week. But with COVID, it's been tough to do the parties because up here you're limited to 50 people. And it's about an 8,500 square foot warehouse. And in there, I have a bunch of my nice cars, like all my show cars and stuff. And then all my neon signs. And upstairs is a lounge. And in that lounge, I have a cigar room and a bar. And it's pretty elaborate, pretty nice. And I built that. Me and a partner built this place together.

We built this to have the live band parties and have our friends come there and enjoy our good times with friends instead of driving all the way downtown or you know it's five minutes from our house right so it's been a lifelong dream of mine and my friends and so we finally finished it but we finished it right in the middle of covid oh wow so we never really had a grand opening party and so we had a party i say a couple weeks ago for the people that helped us build the building and some close friends. So it was good. The band got to play in front of people, which was amazing. And what instrument do you play?

I play the bass guitar. I played guitar in the early years in the palace and the bands before that. I played guitar my whole life. And then probably eight years ago, maybe, I started playing the bass. Couldn't find a good bass player, really. So we started passing it around between me and my buddy. And I was like, wow, this is kind of fun. And I buy some cool basses.

I'll be into this, right? So I say I collect guitars. I got my building down there. I have a guitar room. My place is called The Vault. So say I collect guitars, I got a, at my building down there, I have a guitar room at the, my place is called the vault and I probably got 30 or 40 guitars in there that are vintage guitars and stuff that I've collected my whole life. Oh, that's very cool. Yeah. If you like that stuff, you'll, you'll like my man cave.

Yeah. Yeah. I'll ask you to send us a picture so that the fans can see it on the website. Sure. I'll ask you to send us a picture so that the fans can see it on the website. Sure. Speaking of working with directors, there's one episode, of course, that we have to talk about, and that's the baby episode. Season 11, episode 4, written by Robbie Thompson and directed by Thomas J. Wright. It was shot from the point of view of the car, and a good chunk of it was actually filmed in the car, I think.

How did you kind of, how was that first brought to you when you were, you brought into the process to talk about it? And obviously you were an important member of the team for figuring out how to do that episode. Tell us about that.

Yeah. So that episode, usually you get a concept script, you know, they give you a little concept thing. It's about a paragraph blurb of what the next episodes are going to be two months ahead. So you kind of prepare yourself mentally. And then that came along. You know, as soon as I started reading, it was all car.

So I had a lot of time to prep, which was great. But it grew and grew and grew as it went on you know what i mean and so when we got to there i used every impala i had i used my cars my parts cars and just absolutely went through everything that i had like we destroyed a lot of stuff and uh but you know what how hard that episode was it went like a snap. Like it went awesome. It just shows you how good the people and the crew are. Because to pull that off, and then you got Tom. You know, he's very, I don't know what to say about Tom.

He's one of the best, for sure. An old pro. Yeah, he's directed a lot of my favorite episodes. Learned a lot working with him. Was there anything in that episode that was especially problematic or that they had to come back to you and kind of work through? No. You know what?

I say it went so smooth on my end. Like every day was stunts. I had two units going at once. So I had mechanics on one. You had a full set of wranglers on one set. And at the same time, we got a stunt crew. I got a full set of mechanics and wranglers on there. I i got you know

trucks towing and going and you know it was just crazy but uh and i was on set you know that whole episode basically pretty well because um it was all it was just so much stuff but uh you know i i was proud of everybody everybody just did an awesome job and couldn't have gone better didn't have any problems it was just you know working through the night to fix the car. A lot of times we'd smash a car and then the next day that car played again. So we're taking fenders and hoods and, you know, bumpers off the night before and switching seats out and, you know, pulling doors off. And it was all the different camera angles. Like on the day we'd be pulling doors off the car,

they'll take this one, I'll take that one off. And you have to be ready with a mechanic and go, go, go, right? Pulling windshields out. And it was definitely a lot of work, but it was very cool. Yeah, it turned out great. It's just such a memorable episode with all the hard work that everybody put into it, for sure. Yeah, it turned out really well.

I think that's the best episode. I really do. Out of the whole season, in my eyes, generally. Right. Other than that baby episode, what are some of the more memorable episodes for you because of the work you had to do providing the car and and with baby yeah that's a good question there's so many i mean i just loved uh you know every episode was pretty cool i always love when cool cars are there i remember there was an episode where death drove a 59 white Cadillac,

pulled up, and they had him in slow-mo, and he's walking by people, and people are just dropping dead. That was a killer scene, like in a killer episode. Like, that was so good. And I brought all these burnout wrecks and all this stuff. And they had just a couple of blocks from the studio there. There's a corner there where they built a fake town. I think it was for the Watchmen set.

And it stayed there forever and everybody films there. And that's kind of where we did that, but it's so cool because all the safades, uh, are amazing. They look like old, uh, New York town and, but you can do anything there. You can blow up cars. And, you know, I'd done so many shows there and a lot of cool stuff. Let's transition now, jeff to season 15 the last season of the show in march of 2019 jared and jensen and misha the stars of supernatural announced on twitter that the next season season 15 would be the last how did you find out season

15 would be the last and what were your feelings when season 15 would be the last? And what were your feelings when you, you heard that? I think Jim Michaels told us at a production meeting. That's how we knew for sure. And you know what, I think it was time to move on. It was done. In my eyes, you know, it's been, it's been a great run and we went out with a bang and, and, you know, it was positive. The whole experience was positive.

So I don't have any remorse or bad feelings. Or, you know, I just was happy that I was there for the ride. And I look forward to my new adventure. But it was weird. The whole COVID thing came in at that time. And it really sucked because we never got to have a wrap party. We never got to say goodbye. And that was tough.

It really was. And then we came back and I think we did two episodes. Yeah, you came back. I mean, tell us a little bit about when the shutdown happened in March of 2020. There were only a couple episodes to go. What did that do for you and your team? How did that impact you? Well, everything shut down here.

It was like absolutely this whole town shut down. There wasn't even traffic. Like, it was crazy. Everybody was kind of unaware what the future was going to bring. And it was kind of a weird moment for sure. But at the point, I welcomed it because i have so many cars i built like i built hot rods and cars and i got a lot of irons in the fire properties and things so i'm always busy so for me not working and i got to stay home because i got a garage at my house too a shop so

i just go to the garage and put the tunes on and start working away. So, so many of my project cards got done in that, I think it was, was it five months? I think we had a break here. I enjoyed it. So, so we went back and we did the other two episodes and it was a somber time for sure. Cause everybody, you know, knew that was it. And then after that, right after that, I got on a show called Turn Hooch. And it's a Disney series. And it was different. You know what I mean? Because when you work with the same crew for that long, it ran itself.

It really did. There was never a problem. Everybody knew everybody's temperament, their quirks or whatever. So you get like a family, right? So you learn how to work well together, right? So when I went on to that show i mean you know the coordinator was awesome and the people there that i worked with are awesome but it was really hard because it was a lot of new people that were in the industry and it was a really

scramble and i found it really tough and then everything went to zoom you know and i'm not a great computer guy to be honest with you know what i? So I like going to a pitch car meeting and seeing the director in person and show him the pictures, explain whatever I need to explain. So I did that. I finished that off, and then I said, I'm going to take some time off. So basically, I've taken the last six months off. I've just been building my hot rods and playing guitar. I got offered a couple of features and a pilot.

So I never looked for work, which is a good thing. They hunted me down. So you've been doing this long enough and you're known in that, in Vancouver. Yeah. It's been a funny how time flies. The time flies when you're having fun. And that's what I did. I had fun for 15 years, right?

For sure. Were you there the last day of filming on that bridge or not? I was there and it was done by just kind of helping out and moving cars, you know, and I had to drive a driver to drop off

his personal at another location. By the time I came back, traffic was so bad I ended up missing the shot on the bridge. I got there when it ended. But you can't really see anybody anyway. At the end with all the crews there, it just kind of looks like a blur, right? No, I missed that shot. But I was there for most of that day.

It was cool. Everybody was there. What were your feelings that day? Well, it's definitely, you look back in your time and you get proud of what you did. More of a proud moment, I think, for me. I was like, oh, no, maybe I'm going to see you guys. And I look forward to working with everybody there. And they're like family, right?

So it's just a different lifestyle instantly. So once you leave that day, it was my life changes, but not for the worse. You know, I've been blessed to have a great family and friends. So life was good. No complaints. I assume probably 15 years on Supernatural. It's the longest show you've worked on. Yeah.

Yeah. That was it. That was it. I think X-Files. I'm not sure how many years I did on X-Files. Maybe three or four yeah i did series on it's called twilight zone back in the day and that went a bunch it's uh i can't even remember all the shows i've done but on so many of my earlier days i did a lot and then when when supernatural takes a hiatus we'd always pick up another show for that

two months off get a little pilot or something so all those little pilots in between it it adds up to a lot of shows after a show is done um obviously there's kind of cleaning up things um we have some video of you and your team somebody's driving baby after that last shot into the trailer and maybe even you filmed the video. I can't recall. Anyway, we have some video of you and your team driving baby into the trailer. That's it after that last shot. Take us through what happened after baby had her last filming. Yeah. So basically, yeah, I remember that shot.

I've seen that shot. So basically all the cars we have, we, I call it the bat caves is where I keep all the impalas. You know, so there was a warehouse that we kept everything there. All the picture cars were there and I'd keep my freight liner with the trailer parked there. And that was our headquarters. And so it made me sad for a while. And then until I got word on who's getting what and where the cars are going and that kind of thing. So basically, Jensen and Jared got one.

Jensen got Hero 1. That's the big block car. Jared got Hero 2. And that was a beautiful car. And then Hero 3 went to Warner Brothers Museum. I guess they got like, I've never been there, but apparently they got a museum where they keep all their cars, which would be great to see. That was a really nice car. I bought that car.

It had 70,000 original miles, and it was on an island here. We have an island. I took a plane there and ferried back. That was probably the second nicest car, I think. Hero number one only had 12,000 original miles when I bought it. I remember when I got it, it was original paint. I read it untouched. I had 12,000 original models when I bought it.

And I remember when I got it, the original paint, I read untouched. And then we took it apart and threw a big block in it and diff brakes and posi and, you know, and, uh, change all the suspension. It was tough to do because I'm a car enthusiast. The car is only original one. So it, and I don't mind buggering up some older car, you know, cars are more modest, but a 12,000 original model car, it might've been one of the lowest mile cars in the world. Right. But it made for a good car. Hero one is definitely the best car at a mall they're they're cool like see i'm not a

hard top guy and two-door when they first brought the car in and i saw the four-door i'm like oh why do they do that when you just get a two-door chevelle or a two-door car and the reason they got the four-door back then the cameras were so big and they thought you know go in the back seat you you have room, get in and out. And then we went to HD, we went to little cameras, and everything changed. And, you know, you could have a smaller car, right? But then you learn to love the car, you know, and you start, you look when all the windows are down, it's a hardtop. Not like most of the four-door were post, but they made a model, it was a hardtop.

And the roof line is, the only roof line is totally different than a two-door two doors more of a fastback roof so it really looks like a muscle car it gives it this real roundy beefy muscle car look and then it i started getting attracted to it so you know i learned to like it you know more as time went on but uh at the beginning i wasn't a fan of the car you know i was like maybe get a Chevelle or something you know or something you know it's more but like I say it grows on you and then now that I've built so many and done it all they're they're pretty cool car so hero one goes to Jensen hero two goes to Jared you put them on a flat flatbed trucks and they get shipped off or what happened? Yeah, I got, I got a video of that day. I got a video of myself driving a hero number one to the car hauler to deliver

to Jensen. It was my last drive. And I just, I've never posted it, never shown it to anybody, but I just took a video of me going, Oh, this is my last drive and baby, you know, that was a touching moment. That's when I felt weird about the whole thing. When I had to drive baby over to the trailer and I'll never see it again. And actually I videotaped the truck leaving with all them powers on it. And I was just like, oh God, this is it. They're gone, you know, and that was it.

Yeah. So it's tough to see him go for sure. Definitely. So talk a little bit about Jensen. He, I mean, Dean Winchester in the show is very attached to Baby. But in real life, Jensen Ackles, the actor, also was very possessive in a way of the car. Talk a little bit about his affinity for Baby. Well, definitely he has an attachment to that car for sure. Like you say, there's always the one that drives.

I think there's like, you know, some fast driving or whatever. He wanted to drive. Deep down, he always knew that he'd probably ending up with the car. I'm not sure if it was in his contract down the road or however he got it, but he knew that that was going to be his baby, right? So we always made sure it was top running and it always got the best of the best. You know, Hero 1 was no doubt better than any other one of them. Everything was changed on that car.

Because it started off as such a low-mile car, all the door gaps are nice and, you know, the windows weren't scratched. The other ones, you can kind of weren't scratched and in the other ones you can kind of see the bumps and bruises from the years of uh filming with them you remember like wait when they film they're all around the car i mean they got layers and layers of paint on them because so many times you have to paint because it scratches and dents and suction cups and whatever have you right so uh the hero one we always kind of i don't think that thing's got maybe more than two paint jobs on it because we always kind of took care of it frank that one set

making sure everybody you know staying away as best they can and being gentle right so do you recall how many miles hero one had on it when you shipped it off yeah i think i might have 30 or something uh we put a lot of miles on it for those years and he figured toward it every time to set and those are just set miles you know so i think we doubled it now at least but uh yeah good question i should have took a picture of the speedometer i mean that's still not that many miles for for the edge of the car obviously yeah and that's all just drive-by so you know every mile's a drive-by or something. That's the only time we've got mileage.

I'd take it once in a while. I'd run them out on the highway. Especially Hero 1, it would load up, but it had a 502 Generation 6 big block Chevy. And then, you know, the roller rockers and aluminum heads and all that stuff. And so just idling all the time, it would load up, follow the plug. So you had to take it for a good run once in a while.

I think Frank one time took it out for a good run and lost control. He claims the throttle stuck. Pretty good story, but I'm not buying it. But he was pulling out of the studio and he gunned it. And he slid over to the passenger seat and knocked out his shoulder, took it out of placement, dislocation. And then the car went off a ravine into an embankment of trees and a bush. And he got out the passenger door.

And he was hurt. He dislocated his shoulder and the car wasn't too bad, just some scratch, just some bruises. But he was pretty embarrassed. But that car's got a lot of power. You got to respect it. You know, if you're playing around with the throttle, it's going to bite you in the ass, right? So we had a few stories like that over the years. Pretty funny.

Jeff, have you gone to any of the fan conventions there in Vancouver? And if you have, what kind of feedback do you get from the fans about Baby? Yes, I've been to plenty of conventions. They'd fly me out to them if I wanted. And I'd go there and sign signatures. And then they'd have an auditorium where they'd have some people and I did a couple there were like 200 people fans and talk about the car for like an hour in a chat and take questions and things like that and they were great I enjoyed it

and I did that probably half a dozen times I went to Kansas and Seattle. But it takes up your whole weekend, you know, and I'm a really busy guy. You know, I got a lot of stuff on the go, being in the band and family and cars and everything. So I did, like I said, I did a bunch and then I kind of stopped doing it after a while. But I really enjoyed it. I get to meet all the fans and, you know, they're all good people and everybody's more educated than me on the show you know it's amazing how how they uh know so much stuff sometimes like hey you remember in episode six uh this character was driving this car i'm like no i don't i don't remember that but i really enjoyed it i i

thought it was very cool you know what kind of feedback would you get from the fans well they all love baby and uh i was just a builder of the would you get from the fans? Well, they all love Baby. And I was just the builder of the car. You know, I just worked on the show, right? But a lot of fans, they love that car. It's like, I can say it's the third actor in the show for sure. So they get very passionate about it. And I met some great people, some great fans.

They've given me artwork and, you know, and things. And, yeah, it's been been cool it's a big family it's a very um undergroundy kind of show uh but the fans are very loyal and it's amazing they come out let's go back to um to jensen a little bit what was Jensen's favorite thing about Baby? I think he liked the horsepower and the motor. When we got that it basically was his idea of making more power because the small block Chevys don't have a lot of power and so he just says, you know, what can we do to make more power? And then when it was discussed we put a big block Chevy in it with a posi rear end and

a stronger transmission, turbo 400 transmission. And it worked well. And then when you go fast, you got to stop fast. So then, okay, now we're going to be well with disc brakes. So we got four wheel disc brakes and then the suspension wasn't that great. So we ended up putting all hot skid suspension and sway bars. And the more power you got, you got to compensate for that on other things like handling and braking so ended up that's how we just kept going on it and even

some of the small block cars were good cars they had four-wheel disc brakes and sway bars and you know things too for performance they just didn't have the power anytime we had to do a big burnout or something we use hero number one because you just touch the throttle and the tires were spinning so you know that's basically definitely needed that for for the show he needed the car with the power did jensen ever have any complaint that you guys then addressed other than the power i'm sure he probably had lots over the years um yeah nothing nothing major i mean you know we always had a problem with the windows fogging in the winter. And we tried Randy from Special Effects. He had like a heater blower motor in the trunk.

We made the speaker grills vents. So it looked like there were speakers still. And it would blow hot air on the window. And then it was too hot. And it was melting things. And we tried all kinds of stuff and so that was probably one of the biggest things rainy nights trying to keep the windows clear and frank could be there with rain x or whatever that stuff was called and

rubbing it on the windows and have heaters in there and so that was probably you know one of the harder things and not i mean they perform well They got a full frame. You know, you can take them off a jump. So you can, you know, you can beat on them pretty good. And they're like a tank. You know, they're a very strong car. They take a lot of beans. I know the show worked with a number of charities and I think Make-A-Wish was one of them.

Is that right? Yeah, that's correct. I think a set visit was part of what fans got to enjoy, but wasn't a ride-in baby also one of the things you sometimes provided for the fans? Yeah, Holly Hollis, she would usually bring people out. She was great. You know, if the boys weren't around, you know, weren't there that day or whatever, I'd be the guy. I would bring the car out, do a walk around, and then take him for a ride around the block and uh that was great you know we had uh met some wonderful people and it's a

great thing to have uh makes them feel better makes everybody feel better and fans of the show to come out to it's great so no i thought that was an awesome program there's a you know lots of stuff like that would happen where media would come out they'd fly out a bunch of meetings from mexico or around the world and they'd want me to bring the car out and you know i let people start it or you know and sit in it and take all their pictures and they just they loved that stuff i did that quite a bit actually that was uh that was always happening i remember you did that for us when we did our piece with the fans who won the contest and we had the fans from Japan and from England. And, uh, we, we came up, we interviewed you, but you know, the fans all got to get their picture in the car. It was raining cats and dogs that day.

So we didn't actually go for a drive. So you guys pulled the car into the stage so there would be dry and the fans could get their pictures inside and everything yeah that's going back i do remember that you know that was a lot of fun yeah i know it's wonderful they reached out to that and helping out a lot of other places like that i know christmas time we'd raise so much money and they'd give it to uh i think to make a wish our children this is vancouver they're at the mcdon just going to call it. And it wasn't a good cause but every year we'd be like, of all the film productions in town, we'd be

like the most raised and stuff. It had a really good group of giving people. So we'd have a Christmas party every Christmas and you'd pay so much a ticket and then you also would donate something. Then you had a raffle and then you'd whatever was donated somebody win but all the money that they raised for paying

for the tickets and all that went to the charity and they raised huge money you know it was really good the crew all enjoyed that night everybody got to let go and have some drinks and last night before christmas type thing right so it was good in 2018 i went to the supernatural paley festival at the kodak theater in hollywood and that was um about the scooby natural episode so they had the scooby um do mystery machine there but they also had a baby car there do you know who provided that car yeah um there was a gentleman. I can't think of his name. I'm sorry to say that, but he lived in L.A.

And he had a car. And once in a while when there was something in L.A., I would phone him and I'd put them in touch. They dealt with him directly. So, Jeff, there are some people who rebuild the cars and you have at times used those cars. I know for the episode that you filmed in Chicago, tell me a little bit about who you worked with on that episode. Yeah, that was a deal where they had to do a shot in some Chicago streets. And so I talked to Rick Blevins there and out of canvas and see if he had something that was close to the neighborhood up there that I could use. And I know he used a girl's Stephanie's car.

I'm not sure where she lives normally, but it got shipped up there. And then Rick came up and I think he helped out on set, you know, kind of like a car wrangler, I guess. And Jim Michaels was there, Bob Singer. And they did their shots and everybody was happy. The car performed well, but I think it was really, really cold. Everybody said it was

freezing cold outside, but it worked out well. You know, the cars are, Rick does a great job. They're identical to Hero 1 in every way. So it's very particular and thorough on those builds.

So yeah, so that was cool. They got a screen used car. The value of the car, I'm sure, has gone up. And pretty cool to get to see your car on TV. For sure. One thing I forgot to ask you, Jeff, was about the trunk of Baby and the weapons cache back there. Who developed and built that out? That came, you know, it waserry uh for sure you know designing whatever

weapons they need and stuff like that but you know that's uh part of the art department set deck together and props you know they kind of all work together and loaded that baby up and uh there's a lot of stuff in there like you look look, you know, over the years, I always thought, I don't know if I ever built my own supernatural car and then I would, you know, get the stuff in the trunk. And I started collecting and through Rick, he's got people all over the world that make this stuff. You know, they make the right flask and they,

identical, you can't tell the difference. So he would always mail me up some stuff and I started collecting, but I realized it'd be a lifetime to to do all that like it's so much stuff it's amazing the guns alone and and up here you know guns are uh not available so everything would have to be made out of you know 3d plastic or decommissioned guns i guess uh so that's hard stuff to get up here harder stuff so, Jeff, it's been a real pleasure talking with you today. Thanks for coming on the show and sharing your stories with the fans.

Oh, it's been my pleasure. It's, uh, it's brought back some memories, uh, good memories. And,

uh, I hope to see a lot of the crew again soon. Uh, I guess I'm going to get back in the workforce here in a few weeks. And usually when I do that, I bump into people and, uh, get back to normal life.

For sure. Thanks again to Jeff Budding for coming on the show. Jeff has also shared some photos and I'll have a few of them on the website at www.theextras.tv. If you're on Facebook or Instagram, I will be posting most of the photos he's provided there. So follow us at TheExtrasTV on Facebook and Twitter and at TheExtras.TV on Instagram. I'll be posting the videos Jeff mentioned about his final ride in baby on our Facebook and Instagram pages. So be sure and follow us so you don't miss those they are really worth looking at they're they're a lot of fun they're kind of poignant and um you just can't see them anywhere else so

thanks to jeff for providing those if you enjoy the show please take a moment to subscribe and even leave us a review as that really helps us get the word out on the show until next time you've been listening to the extrasras with Tim Millard 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.