Kripke-inspired road trip...
So last weekend I dragged my long-suffering husband to Toledo, Ohio to visit their absolutely amazing art museum (seriously, if you get a chance, visit it; it's stunningly good), but also, because hometown boy Eric Kripke was giving a talk there. A free talk. Two hours from me. I was excite.
Okay, so … Toledo. First time I've actually been in the city, vs. just driving past. It's a ramshackle area, but to explore it is to reveal, in some small way, where Kripke and SPN came from. Smallish and hanging on by its fingernails, Toledo squats like an old cemetery in the shadows of the huge BP Oil refinery. If you head north, you hit Lake Eerie, which-this time of year-isn't awful. If you head south, you're in the middle of nowhere. Every other building seems to be derelict. Toledo's 'historic homes' district is chock full of Victorian painted ladies that have seen far better days, the colors peeling and the yards weedy, but they're still some of the most gingerbreaded, neo-Gothic delights I've seen in a long time.
(The stupid watermark-like blur is the back of my phone. Should've rolled down the window, duh.)
The industry in town is the aforementioned oil refinery, glass factories, the University of Toledo and a whiff of tourism. So you end up with this strange amalgam of artiness, decay, and working class valor. I dig it. It's very early-season's SPN. I totally get where Kripke was coming from.
(A supposedly haunted building in downtown Toledo, the Pythian Castle.)
Kripke himself is an unassuming, warm, funny guy. The first few rows in the museum's auditorium were reserved for his family and friends, including past grade-school teachers. The majority of the audience was SPN fans, quite obviously, and not young ones either. It was a mix of ages, but far and away the crowd skewed older. If anyone yaks on about fandom only being for the young, or that the future of the SPN fandom is the 16-24 year olds, don't believe them.
I did a bit of a live-tweet of his SPN-topical points, which I won't repeat here but you can hit my twitter and follow the #KripkeSpeaks tag for the highlights: https://twitter.com/hashtag/kripkespeaks?f=tweets&vertical=default&src=hash
Lemme see if I can distill the talk down to a few points here, though. He worked very, very hard to get where he's at, and that hard work-regardless of failure-is what opened a lot of doors. That tenacious Midwest work ethic. No matter how small the job, he did it 200%. He slept on floors, he made huge mistakes, he kept his eyes open for serendipitous forks in the road. You've got to have a freight train mentality, but never … never … think you've got it mastered. Lean into the fear.
There were two sticking points in his tenure with SPN that he was ready to quit over: when the WB (the CW's predecessor) wanted to ax the classic rock soundtrack, and in one of the episodes (he didn't specify which one), there was a flashback to young Sam and Dean, and the network didn't want to do it. Kripke simply said, “Then I quit.” And he meant it. “You've gotta mean it, or you have no bargaining chip.” Needless to say, the network caved. But he would've walked over either of those situations if the network hadn't conceded.
Kripke always loved comedy, and wrote comedy script after comedy script, to no real avail. But he was getting recognized as someone who did solid work. He was a writer's assistant or some such lower level employee when they needed someone to write a script in a pinch. It was horror, but Kripke shrugged and said “What the hell, I'll do it!” It succeeded far better than any of his comedies. He'd been dreaming and fine-tuning his SPN idea for years, and that horror script got him in front of some big names, finally. They didn't like the idea of the heroes being reporters-it felt like a rehashed “Kolchak, the Night Stalker” to them-but then on the fly, he made the leads brothers. In a muscle car. He plucked inspiration from his Toledo childhood. And the big names perked right up. (The stuff he offered “on the fly” had been notes he'd scribbled in the margins of his script. Never let those gems go; you never know when they'll come in handy!)
For me, the biggest take-away was “Show me a confident writer, and I'll show you a bad one.” Now, this doesn't mean that you shouldn't know your worth, that you shouldn't love what you do. Plow forward like a freight train, do your very best work, but never stop learning. If think you're the hottest thing since the Pet Rock, well … whatever happened to those Pet Rocks, anyways? When someone crows too loudly about their own expertise, their own authority, they've likely stopped learning. You miss so many opportunities if you think there's only one way to do things.
His next TV adventure, Revolution,, was very stressful and fraught with challenges, but he still did his damnedest to make it succeed. When it got canceled, though, he wasn't disappointed.
Timeless was far more of a joy to create. That one, he was sad to see go.
Then he showed the trailer for his newest show (to be available on Amazon Prime) and it looks sooooo good. The Boys. He's working with the gang that developed Preacher, and sounds like it has that same iconoclastic, dark-humored vibe. YUM. So Kripke gets to exercise his comedy chops after all! (Though, really, SPN had some fantastic comedy moments too. Who says the horror genre has to take itself so seriously?)
He took a handful of questions afterwards, during which he revealed he'd love to participate in the last season/episode if his contract will allow. TULPA THIS SHIT, Y'ALL.
I had to split at that point because my husband had been patient enough and I was getting hangry and itching to see the museum, but Kripke hung around for autographs. Like the good egg he is. The industry needs more writers like Kripke. I enjoyed the heck out of Toledo, and him.
(One of the bazillion delights at the Toledo Museum of Art. I adore Edward Hopper's paintings; they will always remind me of home.)
Okay, so … Toledo. First time I've actually been in the city, vs. just driving past. It's a ramshackle area, but to explore it is to reveal, in some small way, where Kripke and SPN came from. Smallish and hanging on by its fingernails, Toledo squats like an old cemetery in the shadows of the huge BP Oil refinery. If you head north, you hit Lake Eerie, which-this time of year-isn't awful. If you head south, you're in the middle of nowhere. Every other building seems to be derelict. Toledo's 'historic homes' district is chock full of Victorian painted ladies that have seen far better days, the colors peeling and the yards weedy, but they're still some of the most gingerbreaded, neo-Gothic delights I've seen in a long time.
(The stupid watermark-like blur is the back of my phone. Should've rolled down the window, duh.)
The industry in town is the aforementioned oil refinery, glass factories, the University of Toledo and a whiff of tourism. So you end up with this strange amalgam of artiness, decay, and working class valor. I dig it. It's very early-season's SPN. I totally get where Kripke was coming from.
(A supposedly haunted building in downtown Toledo, the Pythian Castle.)
Kripke himself is an unassuming, warm, funny guy. The first few rows in the museum's auditorium were reserved for his family and friends, including past grade-school teachers. The majority of the audience was SPN fans, quite obviously, and not young ones either. It was a mix of ages, but far and away the crowd skewed older. If anyone yaks on about fandom only being for the young, or that the future of the SPN fandom is the 16-24 year olds, don't believe them.
I did a bit of a live-tweet of his SPN-topical points, which I won't repeat here but you can hit my twitter and follow the #KripkeSpeaks tag for the highlights: https://twitter.com/hashtag/kripkespeaks?f=tweets&vertical=default&src=hash
Lemme see if I can distill the talk down to a few points here, though. He worked very, very hard to get where he's at, and that hard work-regardless of failure-is what opened a lot of doors. That tenacious Midwest work ethic. No matter how small the job, he did it 200%. He slept on floors, he made huge mistakes, he kept his eyes open for serendipitous forks in the road. You've got to have a freight train mentality, but never … never … think you've got it mastered. Lean into the fear.
There were two sticking points in his tenure with SPN that he was ready to quit over: when the WB (the CW's predecessor) wanted to ax the classic rock soundtrack, and in one of the episodes (he didn't specify which one), there was a flashback to young Sam and Dean, and the network didn't want to do it. Kripke simply said, “Then I quit.” And he meant it. “You've gotta mean it, or you have no bargaining chip.” Needless to say, the network caved. But he would've walked over either of those situations if the network hadn't conceded.
Kripke always loved comedy, and wrote comedy script after comedy script, to no real avail. But he was getting recognized as someone who did solid work. He was a writer's assistant or some such lower level employee when they needed someone to write a script in a pinch. It was horror, but Kripke shrugged and said “What the hell, I'll do it!” It succeeded far better than any of his comedies. He'd been dreaming and fine-tuning his SPN idea for years, and that horror script got him in front of some big names, finally. They didn't like the idea of the heroes being reporters-it felt like a rehashed “Kolchak, the Night Stalker” to them-but then on the fly, he made the leads brothers. In a muscle car. He plucked inspiration from his Toledo childhood. And the big names perked right up. (The stuff he offered “on the fly” had been notes he'd scribbled in the margins of his script. Never let those gems go; you never know when they'll come in handy!)
For me, the biggest take-away was “Show me a confident writer, and I'll show you a bad one.” Now, this doesn't mean that you shouldn't know your worth, that you shouldn't love what you do. Plow forward like a freight train, do your very best work, but never stop learning. If think you're the hottest thing since the Pet Rock, well … whatever happened to those Pet Rocks, anyways? When someone crows too loudly about their own expertise, their own authority, they've likely stopped learning. You miss so many opportunities if you think there's only one way to do things.
His next TV adventure, Revolution,, was very stressful and fraught with challenges, but he still did his damnedest to make it succeed. When it got canceled, though, he wasn't disappointed.
Timeless was far more of a joy to create. That one, he was sad to see go.
Then he showed the trailer for his newest show (to be available on Amazon Prime) and it looks sooooo good. The Boys. He's working with the gang that developed Preacher, and sounds like it has that same iconoclastic, dark-humored vibe. YUM. So Kripke gets to exercise his comedy chops after all! (Though, really, SPN had some fantastic comedy moments too. Who says the horror genre has to take itself so seriously?)
He took a handful of questions afterwards, during which he revealed he'd love to participate in the last season/episode if his contract will allow. TULPA THIS SHIT, Y'ALL.
I had to split at that point because my husband had been patient enough and I was getting hangry and itching to see the museum, but Kripke hung around for autographs. Like the good egg he is. The industry needs more writers like Kripke. I enjoyed the heck out of Toledo, and him.
(One of the bazillion delights at the Toledo Museum of Art. I adore Edward Hopper's paintings; they will always remind me of home.)