SPN ChiCon 2018 Part 1
Jul. 28th, 2018 10:22 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
borgmama1of5Since I live in Chicago, I always attend the Chicago convention, and I thought some of you might like to read about this year's event:
Friday 7/13
Richard Speight was directing SPN in Vancouver, so Rob Benedict was emceeing solo. I enjoyed seeing him without Rich, getting to direct the jokes instead of receiving them.
Chad Lindberg and Gabe Tigerman
Rob christened Chad ‘Chadwick,’ which he then called himself throughout the panel.
Ash’s mullet story: The mullet was comprised of extensions that were clipped onto his own hair. When Ash was killed off in season 2, Chad asked if he could have the mullet as a souvenir and one of the stylists gave it to him. He had it for 3 years, then got an audition for a role where having a mullet would have been perfect, so he had a hairstylist friend attach it and then trim it so it looked better. He auditioned—didn’t get the role—and then a few days later he got a call about coming back for an episode in season 5, followed by a frantic call from the set stylist asking if he still had the mullet? ‘Uh, sure…’ They used it, and Chad said if we look at the scene carefully we can see that in heaven Ash has the ‘sexy mullet.’
Both Chad and Gabe—like every one of the actors—expressed gratitude and amazement at how the SPN family has totally changed their lives.
Jason Manns
Jason appeared without a beard and, responding to comments about that, brought up being at a con with Rob when Rob had shaved his beard for a part. Multiple fans kept saying to Rob that they missed his beard, until finally, when one woman said she liked how Rob looked better with his beard, Jason interrupted and said to her, ‘Do you really know what you’re saying? This is his face, and you’re saying you like it better when you don’t see it…’ Of course the fan was mortified, and Jason was telling the story humorously. (But certain men look better with beards, and Rob is one of them. Jensen and Jared are not…)
Then someone asked Jason the prank question, and he said while he’s never been pranked, he was part of a prank played on someone else. There was a con where at the last minute both Rob and Rich had to bow out (it was New Jersey 2017) and Creation asked Jason to emcee and lead the band for the weekend. He had to learn 30 songs in a week and was very nervous, and deliberately tried to set the bar low for expectations. After it was over he was in the green room with Jensen and Jared, and people kept coming up to him and saying how he’d done a great job. Jared stood up, pulled off his beanie (Jason was very clear on that point,) and exclaimed ‘There’s a prank in here!’
So the boys had Stephanie from Creation write an email to Jared from the Creation email account, saying that Creation was going to give the hosting job to Jason for the rest of the year because he’d done just as good as Rich and Rob and was a lot cheaper. Jason heard that Jared and Jensen later approached Rich on set—he was directing an episode—and had him come to Jared’s trailer, showed Rich the email, and asked Rich what they should do about it. According to Jason they had Rich going for 20 minutes, and when they finally told him it was a joke he threw pillows and tried to say he knew it.
Rachel Miner
Basically Rachel is incredibly grateful for fandom, we inspire her and we made her see that there was a way she could contribute to the world. She is very upbeat and positive and owns her nerdiness, especially when it comes to books. I would describe her as a ray of sunshine—as clichéd as that sounds, she really is.
David Haydn-Jones
Another actor who revels in being with fandom. One of his funny stories was about his name getting misspelled often, usually the Haydn part gets altered to Hadyn, but one time he was listed on a program as ‘David Haydn-James’ and then recently Creation misspelled David as ‘Daivd’ so he joked that he was now ‘Daivd Hadyn-James.’
He has his own headcannon about Ketch, that Ketch did have a twin brother and that in the BMoL school ordeal he had to kill his twin, which is why Ketch was such a cold killer.
He knows that a lot of fans are surprised that he is not British, they expect that accent, but he is Canadian—and then he gave us a Canadian version of a MoL, which was hilariously polite.
He is very proud of his <3 campaign—his tee-shirt to benefit Alzheimers patients. He explained that when he started getting ‘<3’ on Twitter he didn’t know what it meant—he thought it meant he was less than 3, whatever that meant, until someone explained it was a sideways heart. He thinks that the people who care for Alzheimers patients are true angels on earth, and he is deeply grateful to fandom for letting him make this difference.
He thinks Ketch should accidentally see Bobby and Mary kissing and let his character react to that.
Kim, Briana, and Lisa
Kim needs to write a book…When she gets a question that triggers her passion, she is simply incredibly honest and eloquent. I’m just going to put a couple of the things she said:
What does she do when she is struggling emotionally: ‘When I feel like I have nothing, I give something away.’
About fandom: ‘Because of you guys I’m getting closer to the person I want to be.’ She explained that we keep her honest by pointing out when something she says or does doesn’t line up with something she’d said about how to act. When that happens, she has the choice of making her actions line up with what she’d expressed as how she wanted to behave, or to say fuck it, she wasn’t going to live up to her ideals today. But that calling her out requires her to make a conscious choice. (I personally found this explanation very profound.)
About goals: ‘Have a goal but don’t depend on it for happiness.’ Find happiness along the way to getting there because sometimes you don’t get to the goal…or you do get there and then what?
Lisa added to that topic: ‘Success without fulfillment is ultimate failure.’
Essentially their panel was one giant therapy session…And a stellar example of how when one person succeeds, everyone succeeds, it’s not a cutthroat competition.
Karaoke
Friday ended with karaoke…I stayed for a while, but headed home to get a little sleep before it was over.
Saturday 7/14
Rich and Rob’s Intro
Rich came out and laid on the stage, demonstrating how exhausted he was from catching a redeye flight from Vancouver to be here. He jokingly couldn’t get the name of the city right, going through multiple cities and states, at one point welcoming Duluth, to which Rob objected, leading Rich to start a ‘so Rob hates Duluth’ riff. Rob lets himself get wound up by Rich so easily…
Rachel, Kim, Briana, Ruth, and Lisa
The all-the-women panel was much like yesterday’s panel of Kim, Briana, and Lisa, lots of ‘you are my tribe’ to each other. At one point Rachel told about having to do a stunt in a movie where she was walking on a thin board very high above ground in high heels with no safety net because the stunt coordinator was very tough and didn’t believe in coddling. He was walking backwards across the board while she walked toward him, and she was scared for herself but also terrified that he would misstep and fall. Kim jumped up and wanted to punch that stuntman right now for putting Rachel through that.
Kim also gave an impassioned thank you to every teacher for what they do.
The Costume Contest
Sandy and I hung out all weekend with 4 women who have been to multiple cons together: Gisa, Tedra, Nikki, and Karen (and Karen’s patient husband Larry.) They had created a costume for the costume contest that was jaw-dropping: they recreated a motel room. Sandy and I helped them get the pieces on stage—Creation was really helpful in letting them preset as much as possible—and then we led the applause to secure them the best costume title. Seriously, it was mind-blowing—look carefully at the room divider Tedra made, and the wallpaper Nikki found, and the starburst clock!
Karen’s holding up the wall and Nikki and Tedra are sitting on buckets to support the couch
Rich, Rob, and Matt
Matt and Rich were wearing red pants, and Rob was very hurt that they had coordinated without including him…
Matt was asked about General Hospital and ribbed himself about all the shirtless scenes and the ridiculousness of his character’s plotline.
I got a turn at the question mic and I asked, “We heard a story from Jason yesterday about Rich and Rob being replaced by him. Can you elaborate on your end of that story?” Rich ran with it—“I was in the middle of directing an episode…” Jared and Jensen approached him at lunch, asked him to come to their trailer. ‘We need you to look at an email…’ which was from Stephanie saying that Creation was replacing him and Rob with Jason. “It was well thought out because they’re evil people…” Rich looked at the phone for several minutes and his reaction was ‘Huh’ because Jason is a friend, and good for him, but…”The first thing I said was this is gonna kill Rob.” The guys kept it going, asking if they should step in, did Rich want them to call Creation? ‘No, it’ll be a bummer, but you can’t tell Rob, it’ll kill him.’ Finally Rich figures he has stuff to shoot, he can’t dwell on that he just got fired, he starts to leave, and they say ‘Okay, stew on this…we’re fucking with you…’ and Rich said he did the only thing he could do, he tackled Jensen to the floor. Then Jared said he forgot to hit record, and Rich was more upset that they’d been planning on recording his reaction! They all cracked up then, with the guys saying they thought Rich would flip out…and as they’re talking they realize that they can’t tell Rob about the joke because it’ll kill him! Rob interjects at that point that the next con they all sat him down in the green room and before they told him they repeated, ‘This didn’t happen, it’s a joke’ several times before explaining it. Rich ended by saying he was so grateful that he didn’t make a jerk of himself with his reaction or he would have never lived it down…and he thanked me for making him relive that experience…
What did they think of each other the first time they met? Matt met Rich at one of the early versions of the Creation extra events, meeting up with fans in the hotel bar, and Rich kept ordering drinks for everyone—and put the tab on Matt’s room, so when Matt went to check out he had a $300 bar bill—‘which you still haven’t paid back.’ Rich said that he had run into Rob several times prior to working together at Creation, but that each time he introduced himself Rob didn’t remember meeting him before.
One thing I noticed is that whenever Rob is asked a question about what would Chuck think of something, he always answers as Chuck, not as Rob giving his thoughts on Chuck’s opinion. I find that incredibly amusing…
Mark Pellegrino
I am impressed despite myself with how invested Mark is in knowing his character. Lucifer doesn’t know how to deal with power in an appropriate way…he is defensively cruel.
Mark has instructed his agent to accept SPN jobs over anything else he is offered if there is a conflict.
Misha
Misha was in a troll-the-audience mode…I didn’t take any notes during his panel, just listened.
As Rich and Rob were coming back on stage Misha was answering the last question by revealing that ‘a lot of Supernatural is made up.’ Rob immediately said ‘Does that mean I’m NOT God?’ to which Rich quickly said, ‘Don’t tell Rob, it’ll kill him!’
Dinner
The group I ended up going to a genuine diner nearby, complete with 1950s formica tables and tile floor, and the older waitress we had could have come straight from an episode of the show—she ‘honeyed’ us, and commented on our menu choices, and wanted to know all about what we were doing (having convention guests wasn’t uncommon, though she didn’t know the show) and I think the only thing missing was that she wasn’t cracking gum…
Saturday Night Special
My big takeaway from this year’s SNS was man, those SPN women can sing!!! I love how Ruth, who does not have a professional singing background, has a song (Crush) that she acts as much as sings; how Kim is perfectly suited for the hell-raising song she belted out with her whole heart; and Briana and Lisa, who are trained singers, gave me chills listening to their strong, amazing voices! And Rob, bless him, turns into a total rock god when performing, not a trace of his nebbish sidekick persona when he is giving his all to anything he sings or plays…and the man’s energy!!!Seriously, how a forty-something who had major medical issues can go all out for two hours...I want whatever he’s drinking!
Stayed tuned for Part 2, Sunday's panels...
Friday 7/13
Richard Speight was directing SPN in Vancouver, so Rob Benedict was emceeing solo. I enjoyed seeing him without Rich, getting to direct the jokes instead of receiving them.
Chad Lindberg and Gabe Tigerman
Rob christened Chad ‘Chadwick,’ which he then called himself throughout the panel.
Ash’s mullet story: The mullet was comprised of extensions that were clipped onto his own hair. When Ash was killed off in season 2, Chad asked if he could have the mullet as a souvenir and one of the stylists gave it to him. He had it for 3 years, then got an audition for a role where having a mullet would have been perfect, so he had a hairstylist friend attach it and then trim it so it looked better. He auditioned—didn’t get the role—and then a few days later he got a call about coming back for an episode in season 5, followed by a frantic call from the set stylist asking if he still had the mullet? ‘Uh, sure…’ They used it, and Chad said if we look at the scene carefully we can see that in heaven Ash has the ‘sexy mullet.’
Both Chad and Gabe—like every one of the actors—expressed gratitude and amazement at how the SPN family has totally changed their lives.
Jason Manns
Jason appeared without a beard and, responding to comments about that, brought up being at a con with Rob when Rob had shaved his beard for a part. Multiple fans kept saying to Rob that they missed his beard, until finally, when one woman said she liked how Rob looked better with his beard, Jason interrupted and said to her, ‘Do you really know what you’re saying? This is his face, and you’re saying you like it better when you don’t see it…’ Of course the fan was mortified, and Jason was telling the story humorously. (But certain men look better with beards, and Rob is one of them. Jensen and Jared are not…)
Then someone asked Jason the prank question, and he said while he’s never been pranked, he was part of a prank played on someone else. There was a con where at the last minute both Rob and Rich had to bow out (it was New Jersey 2017) and Creation asked Jason to emcee and lead the band for the weekend. He had to learn 30 songs in a week and was very nervous, and deliberately tried to set the bar low for expectations. After it was over he was in the green room with Jensen and Jared, and people kept coming up to him and saying how he’d done a great job. Jared stood up, pulled off his beanie (Jason was very clear on that point,) and exclaimed ‘There’s a prank in here!’
So the boys had Stephanie from Creation write an email to Jared from the Creation email account, saying that Creation was going to give the hosting job to Jason for the rest of the year because he’d done just as good as Rich and Rob and was a lot cheaper. Jason heard that Jared and Jensen later approached Rich on set—he was directing an episode—and had him come to Jared’s trailer, showed Rich the email, and asked Rich what they should do about it. According to Jason they had Rich going for 20 minutes, and when they finally told him it was a joke he threw pillows and tried to say he knew it.
Rachel Miner
Basically Rachel is incredibly grateful for fandom, we inspire her and we made her see that there was a way she could contribute to the world. She is very upbeat and positive and owns her nerdiness, especially when it comes to books. I would describe her as a ray of sunshine—as clichéd as that sounds, she really is.
David Haydn-Jones
Another actor who revels in being with fandom. One of his funny stories was about his name getting misspelled often, usually the Haydn part gets altered to Hadyn, but one time he was listed on a program as ‘David Haydn-James’ and then recently Creation misspelled David as ‘Daivd’ so he joked that he was now ‘Daivd Hadyn-James.’
He has his own headcannon about Ketch, that Ketch did have a twin brother and that in the BMoL school ordeal he had to kill his twin, which is why Ketch was such a cold killer.
He knows that a lot of fans are surprised that he is not British, they expect that accent, but he is Canadian—and then he gave us a Canadian version of a MoL, which was hilariously polite.
He is very proud of his <3 campaign—his tee-shirt to benefit Alzheimers patients. He explained that when he started getting ‘<3’ on Twitter he didn’t know what it meant—he thought it meant he was less than 3, whatever that meant, until someone explained it was a sideways heart. He thinks that the people who care for Alzheimers patients are true angels on earth, and he is deeply grateful to fandom for letting him make this difference.
He thinks Ketch should accidentally see Bobby and Mary kissing and let his character react to that.
Kim, Briana, and Lisa
Kim needs to write a book…When she gets a question that triggers her passion, she is simply incredibly honest and eloquent. I’m just going to put a couple of the things she said:
What does she do when she is struggling emotionally: ‘When I feel like I have nothing, I give something away.’
About fandom: ‘Because of you guys I’m getting closer to the person I want to be.’ She explained that we keep her honest by pointing out when something she says or does doesn’t line up with something she’d said about how to act. When that happens, she has the choice of making her actions line up with what she’d expressed as how she wanted to behave, or to say fuck it, she wasn’t going to live up to her ideals today. But that calling her out requires her to make a conscious choice. (I personally found this explanation very profound.)
About goals: ‘Have a goal but don’t depend on it for happiness.’ Find happiness along the way to getting there because sometimes you don’t get to the goal…or you do get there and then what?
Lisa added to that topic: ‘Success without fulfillment is ultimate failure.’
Essentially their panel was one giant therapy session…And a stellar example of how when one person succeeds, everyone succeeds, it’s not a cutthroat competition.
Karaoke
Friday ended with karaoke…I stayed for a while, but headed home to get a little sleep before it was over.
Saturday 7/14
Rich and Rob’s Intro
Rich came out and laid on the stage, demonstrating how exhausted he was from catching a redeye flight from Vancouver to be here. He jokingly couldn’t get the name of the city right, going through multiple cities and states, at one point welcoming Duluth, to which Rob objected, leading Rich to start a ‘so Rob hates Duluth’ riff. Rob lets himself get wound up by Rich so easily…
Rachel, Kim, Briana, Ruth, and Lisa
The all-the-women panel was much like yesterday’s panel of Kim, Briana, and Lisa, lots of ‘you are my tribe’ to each other. At one point Rachel told about having to do a stunt in a movie where she was walking on a thin board very high above ground in high heels with no safety net because the stunt coordinator was very tough and didn’t believe in coddling. He was walking backwards across the board while she walked toward him, and she was scared for herself but also terrified that he would misstep and fall. Kim jumped up and wanted to punch that stuntman right now for putting Rachel through that.
Kim also gave an impassioned thank you to every teacher for what they do.
The Costume Contest
Sandy and I hung out all weekend with 4 women who have been to multiple cons together: Gisa, Tedra, Nikki, and Karen (and Karen’s patient husband Larry.) They had created a costume for the costume contest that was jaw-dropping: they recreated a motel room. Sandy and I helped them get the pieces on stage—Creation was really helpful in letting them preset as much as possible—and then we led the applause to secure them the best costume title. Seriously, it was mind-blowing—look carefully at the room divider Tedra made, and the wallpaper Nikki found, and the starburst clock!
Karen’s holding up the wall and Nikki and Tedra are sitting on buckets to support the couch
Rich, Rob, and Matt
Matt and Rich were wearing red pants, and Rob was very hurt that they had coordinated without including him…
Matt was asked about General Hospital and ribbed himself about all the shirtless scenes and the ridiculousness of his character’s plotline.
I got a turn at the question mic and I asked, “We heard a story from Jason yesterday about Rich and Rob being replaced by him. Can you elaborate on your end of that story?” Rich ran with it—“I was in the middle of directing an episode…” Jared and Jensen approached him at lunch, asked him to come to their trailer. ‘We need you to look at an email…’ which was from Stephanie saying that Creation was replacing him and Rob with Jason. “It was well thought out because they’re evil people…” Rich looked at the phone for several minutes and his reaction was ‘Huh’ because Jason is a friend, and good for him, but…”The first thing I said was this is gonna kill Rob.” The guys kept it going, asking if they should step in, did Rich want them to call Creation? ‘No, it’ll be a bummer, but you can’t tell Rob, it’ll kill him.’ Finally Rich figures he has stuff to shoot, he can’t dwell on that he just got fired, he starts to leave, and they say ‘Okay, stew on this…we’re fucking with you…’ and Rich said he did the only thing he could do, he tackled Jensen to the floor. Then Jared said he forgot to hit record, and Rich was more upset that they’d been planning on recording his reaction! They all cracked up then, with the guys saying they thought Rich would flip out…and as they’re talking they realize that they can’t tell Rob about the joke because it’ll kill him! Rob interjects at that point that the next con they all sat him down in the green room and before they told him they repeated, ‘This didn’t happen, it’s a joke’ several times before explaining it. Rich ended by saying he was so grateful that he didn’t make a jerk of himself with his reaction or he would have never lived it down…and he thanked me for making him relive that experience…
What did they think of each other the first time they met? Matt met Rich at one of the early versions of the Creation extra events, meeting up with fans in the hotel bar, and Rich kept ordering drinks for everyone—and put the tab on Matt’s room, so when Matt went to check out he had a $300 bar bill—‘which you still haven’t paid back.’ Rich said that he had run into Rob several times prior to working together at Creation, but that each time he introduced himself Rob didn’t remember meeting him before.
One thing I noticed is that whenever Rob is asked a question about what would Chuck think of something, he always answers as Chuck, not as Rob giving his thoughts on Chuck’s opinion. I find that incredibly amusing…
Mark Pellegrino
I am impressed despite myself with how invested Mark is in knowing his character. Lucifer doesn’t know how to deal with power in an appropriate way…he is defensively cruel.
Mark has instructed his agent to accept SPN jobs over anything else he is offered if there is a conflict.
Misha
Misha was in a troll-the-audience mode…I didn’t take any notes during his panel, just listened.
As Rich and Rob were coming back on stage Misha was answering the last question by revealing that ‘a lot of Supernatural is made up.’ Rob immediately said ‘Does that mean I’m NOT God?’ to which Rich quickly said, ‘Don’t tell Rob, it’ll kill him!’
Dinner
The group I ended up going to a genuine diner nearby, complete with 1950s formica tables and tile floor, and the older waitress we had could have come straight from an episode of the show—she ‘honeyed’ us, and commented on our menu choices, and wanted to know all about what we were doing (having convention guests wasn’t uncommon, though she didn’t know the show) and I think the only thing missing was that she wasn’t cracking gum…
Saturday Night Special
My big takeaway from this year’s SNS was man, those SPN women can sing!!! I love how Ruth, who does not have a professional singing background, has a song (Crush) that she acts as much as sings; how Kim is perfectly suited for the hell-raising song she belted out with her whole heart; and Briana and Lisa, who are trained singers, gave me chills listening to their strong, amazing voices! And Rob, bless him, turns into a total rock god when performing, not a trace of his nebbish sidekick persona when he is giving his all to anything he sings or plays…and the man’s energy!!!Seriously, how a forty-something who had major medical issues can go all out for two hours...I want whatever he’s drinking!
Stayed tuned for Part 2, Sunday's panels...
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no subject
Date: 2018-07-29 04:20 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2018-07-29 11:19 am (UTC)Thank you so much for your account 😆
no subject
Date: 2018-07-29 02:21 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2018-07-29 07:01 pm (UTC)It's awesome that you know the Motel Room cosplayers! I saw some tweets about it and was delighted to see it won because how ingenious!
no subject
Date: 2018-07-29 08:31 pm (UTC)Interesting that Mark has instructed his agent regarding the Spn work!
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Date: 2018-07-29 10:45 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2018-07-29 10:46 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2018-07-29 10:47 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2018-07-29 10:48 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2018-07-29 10:49 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2018-07-30 03:59 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2018-07-30 09:03 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2018-07-30 11:52 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2018-07-31 01:13 am (UTC)