A two-panel Paley round-up

[kaycee_a]

I went to two Paley Fest panels this year: Freaks & Geeks/Undeclared Reunion and Supernatural.

Freaks & Geeks/Undeclared
This panel was a two-fer. We watched an episode of Undeclared, had an Undeclared panel, intermission, watched an episode of Freaks & Geeks, and had a Freaks & Geeks panel. Judd Apatow moderated both, and a few cast members overlapped. Let's see if I can remember who was there.

Undeclared: Seth Rogen, Jason Segel, Jay Baruchel, Carla Gallo, Monica Keena, Timm Sharp, Jarrett Grode, Christina Payano, Kevin Rankin, David Krumholtz, Amy Poehler, and Gerry Bednob.

Freaks & Geeks: Seth Rogen, Jason Segel, Linda Cardellini, John Daley, Samm Levine, Martin Starr, Busy Philipps, Sarah Hagan, Natasha Melnick, David Krumholtz, Stephen Sheppard, Paul Feig.

The two panels are sort of running together, so some highlights from both:

• Judd really wanted to cast Jason in the lead role, but the network didn't like him. He said they didn't believe him as a guy who couldn't get laid. So they cast Jay. (This was an ongoing rib towards Jay, who recently got engaged.)
  
• As an F-you to the network, Judd cast Jason in a recurring guest role and used him as often as he could.
  
• Undeclared, I think, premiered about September 12, 2001. The country wasn't ready for comedy, and everyone felt a little stupid making a comedy at that time. Seth and Judd wrote an interview/article on Undeclared for TV Guide that ran in the September 11th issue. They also felt bad about that.
  
• Jason Segel has a really joyous laugh that scrunches up his entire face.
  
• Seth Rogen has a really weird laugh that's very much like a loud heh-heh-heh-heh-heh.
  
• Jason Segel and Martin Starr lived together, in a three-bedroom apartment that had two very small bedrooms and one large one. To be fair, they each crammed themselves into one of the small rooms and left the big one empty.
  
• Stephen Sheppard auditioned for the role of Harris on a whim. He was staying with family friends in the "boonies", and they were getting stir crazy, so his mom and his aunt talked him into going to the open call by promising they could go out to a nice dinner afterwards. There were so many people at the call that Paul(?) started walking through the room looking for interesting people. There was a skinny kid in the corner reading under a curtain of hair. And the rest was history.
  
• Even now, Stephen Sheppard seems just as socially awkward in real life as his character.
  
• John Daley was 13 when they filmed. He had his first on-screen kiss (and his first on-screen erection) on the show. He didn't have pubic hair, and they were giving him a hard time about still having believed in Santa.
  
• They possibly ruined Santa for Judd's eight-year-old daughter, who introduced both panels.
  
• Judd told a story of Samm Levine's audition, and how they weren't very impressed and were going to dismiss him, when "out of the blue" he broke into a William Shatner impression, and that was that.
  
• Samm said the impression wasn't "out of the blue" at all; he'd read in his character description that he did impressions, and had asked the person he checked in with at the audition if he should do one. That person gave him a very enthusiastic YES!, so after he finished reading his scene, he looked over at her to see if he should do the impression. She nodded and gave him the thumbs-up, so he did.
  
• James Franco somehow got into his head that his character's back story included having been abused by his father, and so he was extremely sensitive to touch. No one but James knew this about his character, so in one scene, Busy Philipps was supposed to say, "What the hell, Daniel?" and she slapped his arm with the back of her hand. James took her by the shoulders and threw her to the ground, knocking the wind out of her. It caused a bunch of confusion all over set, people ran to their trailers... and it's all on tape somewhere.
  
• After the pilot was finished and they had a screening, Linda ran to the bathroom and cried because she thought she was horrible, everyone else was awesome, and she was ruining something amazing.
  
• The wrap party doubled as Samm's high school graduation and his eighteenth birthday party. It was eleven years to the day before the panel, which was also on Samm's birthday.

There was so, so much more! It was a fabulous panel, almost four hours long including the screenings. We missed our reservations at the Stinking Rose, but it was totally worth it. My memory of Undeclared from watching it however many years ago was that it was good, but not up to par with Freaks & Geeks. I'd kind of like to re-watch both now!

We were sitting in the back, and I had some tallish heads in front of me, but here, have a few pictures:













There are a couple more in the flickr set

Supernatural
Let me start with who was there: Eric Kripke, Sera Gamble, Jared Padalecki, Jensen Ackles, Misha Collins, Jim Beaver, and Ben Edlund.

Because everyone had to hop on a plane back to Vancouver, they didn't air an entire episode. Instead, they did a clips reel of the season so far, and then showed about five or so minutes of an extended scene plus outtakes from The French Mistake, and then a few minutes from an upcoming episode. It was all very entertaining, and I was more than happy to get more panel in place of an episode I'd see in a few weeks, anyway. *g*

• Eric was pleased with "his" death scene. He was glad to die in a manly way.
  
• Jensen does not have an aquarium in his trailer. Or a helicopter. But in season seven, things are gonna change.
  
• Eric regrets some of the exposition scenes from the pilot episode. He said he wrote dialogue that no human beings would ever say in conversation. Jensen appreciates that guest actors get most of that kind of dialogue these days.
  
• Misha regrets Castiel's gravelly voice, and said it's starting to cause medical problems. In all future roles, he'll speak in a nice falsetto.
  
• When Jared asked Jensen's first impression of the new guy, Jensen said Misha seemed nice, but really weird. The first time Misha spoke as Castiel, Jensen looked at the cameraman and mouthed, "what is he DOING?" He's told Misha all this before, so it's okay.
  
• A fan asked if Missouri Moses would ever be back, and Eric said she was supposed to be a central character in the last episode of first season. They were already prepping the episode when they found out the actress was unavailable, so they were scrambling to find a replacement. The replacement ended up being Bobby. Jim is eternally grateful.
  
• Misha's request for his character in The French Mistake was to have him be as douchy as possible. When he wasn't quite douchy enough for Misha's taste, he did his best to douche him up even more.
  
• Jared misses playing Soulless Sam. He had a lot of fun with him.
  
• Jensen is relieved Real Sam is back. He felt lost playing Dean against someone who was not at all the character he's played against for the last five years, and he was really having a hard time with it.
  
• Ben Edlund is directing Episode 20. It will be be Castiel-heavy.
  
• They haven't heard about a seventh season yet.
  
• They have a coda in mind for when the series finally comes to an end.
  
  I took a few pictures. Like, about 200. Some of them were blurry. A lot of them were very similar to other shots. But there were still a lot (a lot) of good ones, and my poor little flickr account only displays so many and I didn't want to wipe out all my recent pictures, so I did my best to whittle them down to about 40.
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  There are yet more in my flickr set
  
  So... that was that. I had a LOT of fun at both panels. I sat with stormcloude and ran into without_me several times at Supernatural. Always nice to see/catch up with friends I see all too infrequently! A very successful and entertaining Paley weekend indeed!