Looking Back on Supernatural – A Chat with Writer Davy Perez

It’s no secret that Davy Perez is one of my favorite Supernatural writers. If you read my episode reviews regularly, you’ve heard me say that more than once, and he’s the only writer who wrote a chapter in the new book There’ll Be Peace When You Are Done: Actors and Fans Celebrate the Legacy of Supernatural, all about his journey as a writer and his experience on the show. There’s an online book club that’s currently reading Peace, and they’re inviting the contributors to join in their discord chat when they’re discussing that chapter. I pop in when I can, so I joined them when Davy’s chapter was the topic of conversation – and so did he!

It was Davy’s first time using Discord, so the only emoji he could find to try to express himself was the watermelon – which has remained the Book Club’s favorite emoji and is now used for all kinds of positive expressions in Davy’s honor.

The book club always has great questions and Davy had some great answers, so I’m sharing them here with the rest of the fandom (with Davy’s permission of course).

BC: What was it like to write an episode for Supernatural?

DP: I used to watch a lot of shock horror (in the) 80’s and kinda channeled that.

BC: How much influence did the network or the studio have on the writing?

DP: The network and studio give notes, but don’t mandate or dictate anything.  They are more there to
guide you toward the ideals that they want the show to always be (striving) for.  The writers/producers are still in charge of the story in the end.

BC: You said in your chapter that you had only watched a few episodes of Supernatural when you were hired, so you were not overly influenced by what had come before and had fresh takes on the characters and story line direction.

DP: In general, writing an episode is a lot like doubting yourself every step of the way (while also having
to) believe in your own genius. Also, specifically with SPN and with any show, you always do the work, from beats on the cards, to outline, to then just working on the scenes.  I aim for an act a day when
(working) on a script.  I actually found that whenever I watched an old episode, I found inspiration for
bringing something back, or looking at something from a new angle.  I was hired to bring in fresh ideas, for sure, but I like innovating from existing stuff vs. just fabricating from thin air.

BC: What do you think have been your most significant contributions to the characters’ development?

DP: My most significant contribution might be either the glasses or the sweaters (in Mint Condition and American Nightmare).

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(Me: mm hmm)

DP: Maybe the cowboy hats too  (in Tombstone).

BC: (wholeheartedly agreed on all of the above)

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Star Trek’s Robert Picardo’s New Video Spoof asks ‘Why Was I Not Born Brent Spiner’?

I write most often about my favorite show for the last fifteen years, Supernatural. But before Supernatural took over my life, I was a lifelong Star Trek fan, literally since I was a child. I’ve watched most of Trek’s incarnations, and loved both The Next Generation and Voyager. And my research is on both fandom and the psychology of being a fan and also celebrity and what that entails psychologically.  So I was delighted to run across a hilarious little video by Robert Picardo (who played the iconic role of the holographic Doctor on Voyager) – which was inspired by an equally hilarious video by TNG’s Brent Spiner (Data) – that has something to say about celebrity and the profession that both are in.

The pandemic and being in isolation has changed the entertainment landscape in every way possible, mostly not for the better (other than delaying the ending of Supernatural perhaps, but that’s another story), but one thing it has brought fans is some unique social media offerings of all kinds from their favorite creative people – including these two videos. Both Brent Spiner and Robert Picardo have current projects going on that are exciting, but I’m glad they took the time to share a few minutes of poking fun at their profession, the idea of celebrity, and themselves!  (You can check out the video plus a special director’s cut at the end of this article)

We discovered that we’re both from Philly before we actually started the interview.

RP: James Darren from Deep Space 9, who’s a great guy, is also a Philly guy – and proud of it!

Lynn: Rightly so. Philly rocks. I loved your video, it was hilarious! It’s also very catchy. I knew you could sing, since you sang on Voyager, which I think helped it be very aesthetically pleasing, and the lyrics are also very witty. How did it come about? Did you write and conceive of it yourself?

RP: Yes I did. My friend and colleague from Star Trek TNG, Brent Spiner, who played the character Data, who was an android — and probably the most famous and popular AI character in Star Trek, simply because their show was the first of the reboots and I think had the biggest audience when they were on of all of the subsequent series. Brent, about 6 weeks ago on twitter, uploaded a hilarious 2 minute or so singing parody that I highly recommend you watch…

Lynn: Oh, I did! When I saw yours and it mentioned Brent’s, I immediately went looking for his – it’s a hilarious spoof of himself and of celebrity and it’s awesome.

RP: And really he did that as a gift to his social media fans. It was just something he decided to do – it was shot during the lockdown with appropriate precautions. He thought it would be fun to give something humorous like that to his fans. I was very impressed.

Lynn: Me too!

RP: Meanwhile, a mutual friend of both Brent’s and mine named James Marlowe – his main business is to produce big corporate events for large tech companies like Apple and Facebook. He has a whole staff of people he had on salary and none of them were working because these events were all being cancelled.  I had shot before with his little crew of five or six people to do videos for these events, so that’s how I know James and Brent also knows him. He called and asked if I’d seen Brent’s video. I said I watched it and it’s hilarious and he said, would you like to answer it? I said, what do you mean? And he said well I have a crew that’s at your disposal. I’m paying them and they’ve got nothing to do. I said, I can’t think of a single thing, but thanks for the offer.

Lynn: (laughing)

RP: So I hung up the phone and I thought about it. I thought that Brent’s was so colorful and fun and joyous, I thought wouldn’t it be amusing if I did something entirely different that looked sort of like a lament, like film noir in black and white, a joke lament, like an actor bitching about his career.

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Leonard Nimoy and the Legacy of Fandom

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The loss of Leonard Nimoy has hit the world hard today – a talented actor, director, writer, and humanitarian. For those of us in fandom, the loss feels personal, which may be hard to understand for someone on the ‘outside’. Even fans who weren’t born when the original Star Trek zoomed onto our (tiny) television screens in gloriously limited special effects feel the void left by his passing. Nimoy, and Star Trek, were so pivotal to the beginnings of fandom as we know it, that it’s difficult to quantify the depth of his contribution to this vibrant thing we call ‘fandom’ or how much the universe feels darker without him in it.

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