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Sequential Tart posted a new interview with Raelle Tucker. She wrote, among the others, Faith, CSPWDT and episode 2.20.
Enjoy! Some spoilers about episode 2.20
Writer Raelle Tucker has been responsible for many of the pivotal moments in the story of the Winchester brothers over the past two years, and was gracious enough to answer some questions for me.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Sequential Tart: Is there a particular moment you can remember when writing became what you wanted to do?
Raelle Tucker: I was too young to remember that moment. When I was three I started reciting these "poems" ... I don't know if we can even call them that — they were basically just gibberish that sort of rhymed. But my father was a struggling playwright, so he became convinced I was some kind of prodigy. He followed me around with a notepad, writing down everything I said. I don't know if I just did it to please him at first, or if I somehow inherited his ability — the whole "destiny" idea feels a little dramatic — but for whatever reason, writing was always something I could just do. And as I grew up, it became clear to me that it was pretty much the only thing I could do. I was a crappy student, socially awkward, I wasn't athletic, or hot enough to get by on my looks, or brave enough for a life of petty crime. Writing was the one thing that made me feel like: "Oh, I'm not just a complete waste of space ... maybe there's a reason to survive high school." So I started writing and directing plays. I opened my own theatre company, and that became my entire life. I barely had a social life. I virtually dropped out of school. I guess I decided — if this is what I'm meant to do, then nothing else matters. I didn't realize how ridiculous that was until I became a professional writer ... and it suddenly occurred to me that this was a job. A cool fucking job ... but still, how much actual living had I missed out on while I was sitting in front of a computer trying to write about life?
I still struggle to find that balance. I have to remind myself not to throw myself off a bridge when something I've written doesn't turn out the way I'd hoped ... or to get outside occasionally and talk to actual humans. It's hard, because writing has always been this driving, passionate obsession for me, and I’ve never been able to feel that way about anyone or anything else.
ST: Of the work you've done, are there particular things you're especially proud of?
RT: When I'm writing something that I'd be embarrassed to say out loud, that's when I know I'm on the right track. That's always the goal — to get personal — to try and put myself on the page. Because everything else is just technique. If you work at it long enough, almost anyone can learn to write a structurally competent script. But having something to say and the guts to say it, that's what being a writer is about for me. Of course, it's also the hardest thing to do. I've been doing this all my life, and there's probably only a couple of my scripts that are specific and unique enough that I feel like: "Nobody else in the world could've written that." And they're not television scripts. I love TV, but for obvious reasons, it's a somewhat restrictive medium — most of the stuff that goes through my head you can't show on TV.
ST: What was it like adapting and directing the short film The Clay Man? Is it an experience you'd like to repeat in the future with other projects?
RT: It was the hardest thing I've ever done. By far. I'd directed a lot of plays, and making a film was always something I'd planned on doing. Of course, I had to pick a special effects movie my first time out — which is like saying: "I'd like to lose some weight, I think I'll just sign up for this fifty mile marathon." I didn't exactly ease myself into the deep end. We only had a few days to shoot. Which meant we had about forty set-ups a day to pull off. There were thirty crew members crammed in a one-bedroom apartment in Hollywood. It was in August, during a heat wave — the special effects make-up was literally melting off the lead actor. Everything that could go wrong went wrong. When it was over, I felt like I had PTSD — I didn’t even want to watch the movie for two years. Now enough time has passed, and I'm able to look at it and say: "Wow, that's actually a cool little film." It looks almost effortless on screen. It's funny how the experience of making something can be so drastically different from the outcome.
As for whether or not I’d do it again, in a way, I feel like I have a responsibility to keep directing. Only something like four percent of working directors are women ... which is a really disturbing statistic ... and I think it goes a ways to explaining the shortage of interesting female characters we see on film and television. Programs like AFI's Directing Workshop for Women (which produced and helped fund The Clay Man) are working to change that. But in the end, it's up to us to get out there and make sure our stories get told. So, yeah — when a project comes along that I think is important enough, I'll definitely do it again. God help me.
ST: The personal stories of women involved in the sex industry make for bestsellers on the book charts at the moment, but it's something you explored years ago in the play Will Strip For Food. Do you think you'll ever revisit the subject, or do you feel you've said your piece and made your point?
RT: I was twenty-two when I wrote that play. At the time, I was struggling to make a living as a writer and working nights as a topless dancer. Like most of the women I met in that industry, I felt pressure to lie about my night job. Or at best to justify it. I wasn't ashamed of what I was doing. I didn't feel exploited by it. I didn't always love it, but it beat the hell out of waiting tables. Above all, I didn't feel like it defined me. But it changed the way people saw me ... there were all these negative assumptions made. Will Strip was a reaction to that. It was a ballsy premise: to base a play around my experiences, and the experiences of a group of other writers and actors I knew who'd all chosen to use their sexuality to pay the rent. We focused primarily on the positive ways the sex industry had affected our lives ... which is something that hadn't been explored much at the time. This was before Carmen Electra was teaching strip-aerobics, before every Beverly Hills housewife had a pair of Lucite heels and a pole in her personal gym. Maybe we were naïve, but we really didn't expect the play to take off the way it did.
It was a very personal, cathartic piece, and I'm extremely proud of it. At the same time, it didn't change anything. I hung up the G-string years and years ago, and even though I now work on a successful television show, that time of my life is still something I'm nervous to discuss openly. So, I guess as long as it continues to be an issue, I'm sure it will keep finding its way into my work.
ST: Television, theatre and film are all, by their nature, collaborative media, which kind of subverts our culture's notion of creativity as belonging primarily to tortured geniuses sitting alone in attics. I'd like to hear a little about what that's like for you as an artist: working as a story editor on others' scripts, what it's like to co-write an episode, shifting to solo writing, things like that.
RT: I have to admit, I'm on the tortured side. I can get a little Charlie Kaufman in Adaptation. I usually spend half the day giving myself little pep talks — "No, you’re not the crappiest writer that ever walked the earth ... I'm sure there's at least one that's crappier than you." I'm ridiculously tough on myself. That's why collaborating is so great — if it sucks, there's always someone else to blame. I'm kidding of course. I've always loved collaborating, that's why I wrote with Sera Gamble for so many years, and that's probably what attracted me to television in the first place.
There's no question that writing solo allows you to dig deeper — it's easier to follow your instincts if you don't have to pitch them and justify them to a room full of people. But I'm one of those total geeks that gets off on breaking a story — camping out in the writer's room with a bunch of heavily caffeinated, stressed-out writers, throwing shit around until something clicks, watching everyone's ideas come together like puzzle pieces ... for me, that's probably the best high ever.
ST: A show with multiple writers, no matter how tightly controlled by the executive producers, is going to have some small inconsistencies with characterization. Your version of Sam and — perhaps especially — your version of Dean have remained remarkably coherent throughout the twists and knocks of the series, which does a lot to make the plot through the seasons feel like an organic progression rather than a planned arc. Are there any exercises or tricks you use to keep these characters realised in your head?
RT: Thank you. I wish I had some special secret to share. I don't always get to pick the concept of my episodes — about half the time Eric just walks into my office and throws an idea at me: "It's like The Others meets Deliverance. Go!" My job becomes about trying to find something in that premise — a moment, a character arc, a line — something that's meaningful to me, and writing to that. The entire episode becomes about building to that moment for me. It may sound simplistic, but I think when you're expressing something that's real to you, it's obvious on the page, the actor feels that, the audience recognizes that. I know I do when I see it.
ST: Are there any elements or directions present in the show now that would have surprised you when you began?
RT: Actually, no. And that's probably a good thing. Supernatural is a show that knows exactly what it is and what it's about. And I think it's pretty much stayed true to that through both seasons. It's easy to become consumed with the ratings game, with trying to please everyone ... but I think when a show does that, it often loses or muddies what's really essential about it. It's a delicate balance — you want to be open to new ideas, you never want to let your characters or your premise get stale. At the same time, sacrificing the reality of the world you've created just to be inventive, or shocking, or to give fans what you think they want is always a risk. Eric and Bob have fought hard to protect their vision of the show. And I'm proud of them for that.
ST: "Hunted" picks up some of the thematic threads laid down in "Faith" — both episodes' villains are human beings who believe they have the right to decide who should die. This isn't a subject one necessarily expects to find on a show like Supernatural.
RT: "Hunted" and "Faith" are both episodes where the real monsters are human beings. In a nutshell: people terrify me. The extremes we'll go to — the atrocities we'll commit under the guise of morality .... If I really want to get the shit scared out of me all I have to do is turn on CNN. I don’t want to get too political — we're talking about a horror show on The CW after all ... and I'm all for a kick-ass scare sequence, or funny one-liners. But I'm a firm believer that television can be entertaining without being totally devoid of meaning. I'm not talking about getting all preachy and soap-boxy — I'm just talking about not shying away from the more complicated issues. I think Supernatural's at its best when it balances hardcore hand-in-the-meat-grinder moments with real human themes, like grief, family, faith, etc. It's one of the few shows that has the potential to make you laugh, cry, and scream, all within seconds of each other.
ST: Almost half your episodes to date — "Nightmare", "Salvation", "Hunted" — are pivotal moments in the show's mythology arc, and some of the emotionally meatiest the series has to offer. Are episodes like that more difficult or stressful to work on than the 'horror movie of the week'-style plots?
RT: They’re definitely more difficult. And they take a lot more time to break. Because every choice you make in an episode like that matters — the series is going to have to answer to those choices for as long as it's around. The basic horror film plots can be a lot of fun — because they're generally closed-ended, you have more freedom to focus on building the scares, or playing the humor ... 'cause it's kind of hard to justify Dean cracking a joke when someone they care about just got his/her head blown off by a demon. Finding those lighter moments in mythology episodes can be tough. But as a staff writer, those episodes are far more rewarding, because it's your chance to really contribute to the history of the show. Creating a new character that goes on to have a life on the series, it's like they’re your baby ... you get to proudly watch them evolve ... and on this show — ultimately get butchered in some colorful way. It's awesome.
ST: Okay, this is absolutely the geekiest question of the bunch; I promise it won't get any worse than this: in your zombie episode, "Children Shouldn't Play With Dead Things", there's a wonderful small scene at Mary Winchester's grave. Was Sam burying John's dog tags your idea?
RT: I'd love to take credit for that, but the dog tags were all Eric Kripke and Bob Singer. One of the challenges of writing this show is finding creative ways to get into stories. We can't just open on a newspaper article or Dad's journal every time. Visiting Mary's grave was my idea. After John's death, I knew I wanted to do an episode about grief, to explore the different ways our guys handle it. Burying the dog tags at Mom's grave gave us the perfect opportunity to not only find a case, but to cut straight to what the episode was really about — how differently Sam and Dean both cope with loss, and the conflict that creates between them.
ST: Are there any scenes that have turned out exactly how you imagined them? Any you were completely surprised by the final execution?
RT: The episode that surprised me the most as a whole was "Faith". It's probably the episode I'm most proud of. Because there were things in that story that Sera and I both felt very invested in talking about. So while we were developing it, we were kind of afraid that those things — the darkness, the moral ambiguity of the story, would become watered down or disappear. But we couldn't have been more stoked with the final outcome. It wasn't just the episode we’d wanted to write — it was better. It didn't shy away from the gray areas, but it was grittier, muddier, scarier than we'd imagined.
ST: Supernatural fans are notoriously skittish when it comes to new characters, yet the audience reaction to Ava was very positive. Can you talk a bit about writing her?
RT: Supernatural is a pretty testosterone-driven show. That's part of what attracted me to it in the first place — I'm not exactly a girly-girl. But at the same time, none of us want to create a world where every female character is just a damsel in distress in a bloody bra. Obviously, my goal with Ava was to create a character that our female fans could identify with. I wanted her to be grounded, ordinary in a way. As if I'd plucked her out of a random supermarket isle and just thrown her into this bizarre world. The hardest thing about writing her was reminding myself to look at this world through fresh eyes. 'Cause after a couple years of working on this show, discussing demons feels as normal to me as talking about what I had for lunch. But for Ava, everything she's experiencing is earth shattering. She's as skeptical as any of us would be, and I think that's part of what makes her so accessible.
ST: Are you writing any of the remaining episodes this season?
RT: I wrote four episodes this season: "Children Shouldn’t Play with Dead Things", "Hunted", "Roadkill", and "What Is and What Should Never Be" — which is the only one that hasn't aired yet. Eric Kripke directed it. I haven't seen a cut yet, but people are excited about it. All I can really say without spoiling it is that it's about a genie — not the kind in a tube top and harem pants. It's a pretty Dean-centric, character-driven episode, with a very different tone than anything else I've written for the show. It'll be interesting to see how it plays for the fans.
ST: Apart from Supernatural, are there any projects you're currently involved in?
RT: I just finished writing a pilot about a family of drug smugglers. I've got a couple plays in the works. But honestly, hiatus just started for me, and I'm really looking forward to sitting out in my garden, drinking wine and not talking or thinking about writing for as long as I can possibly stand it. Or at least until next season.
Enjoy! Some spoilers about episode 2.20
Writer Raelle Tucker has been responsible for many of the pivotal moments in the story of the Winchester brothers over the past two years, and was gracious enough to answer some questions for me.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Sequential Tart: Is there a particular moment you can remember when writing became what you wanted to do?
Raelle Tucker: I was too young to remember that moment. When I was three I started reciting these "poems" ... I don't know if we can even call them that — they were basically just gibberish that sort of rhymed. But my father was a struggling playwright, so he became convinced I was some kind of prodigy. He followed me around with a notepad, writing down everything I said. I don't know if I just did it to please him at first, or if I somehow inherited his ability — the whole "destiny" idea feels a little dramatic — but for whatever reason, writing was always something I could just do. And as I grew up, it became clear to me that it was pretty much the only thing I could do. I was a crappy student, socially awkward, I wasn't athletic, or hot enough to get by on my looks, or brave enough for a life of petty crime. Writing was the one thing that made me feel like: "Oh, I'm not just a complete waste of space ... maybe there's a reason to survive high school." So I started writing and directing plays. I opened my own theatre company, and that became my entire life. I barely had a social life. I virtually dropped out of school. I guess I decided — if this is what I'm meant to do, then nothing else matters. I didn't realize how ridiculous that was until I became a professional writer ... and it suddenly occurred to me that this was a job. A cool fucking job ... but still, how much actual living had I missed out on while I was sitting in front of a computer trying to write about life?
I still struggle to find that balance. I have to remind myself not to throw myself off a bridge when something I've written doesn't turn out the way I'd hoped ... or to get outside occasionally and talk to actual humans. It's hard, because writing has always been this driving, passionate obsession for me, and I’ve never been able to feel that way about anyone or anything else.
ST: Of the work you've done, are there particular things you're especially proud of?
RT: When I'm writing something that I'd be embarrassed to say out loud, that's when I know I'm on the right track. That's always the goal — to get personal — to try and put myself on the page. Because everything else is just technique. If you work at it long enough, almost anyone can learn to write a structurally competent script. But having something to say and the guts to say it, that's what being a writer is about for me. Of course, it's also the hardest thing to do. I've been doing this all my life, and there's probably only a couple of my scripts that are specific and unique enough that I feel like: "Nobody else in the world could've written that." And they're not television scripts. I love TV, but for obvious reasons, it's a somewhat restrictive medium — most of the stuff that goes through my head you can't show on TV.
ST: What was it like adapting and directing the short film The Clay Man? Is it an experience you'd like to repeat in the future with other projects?
RT: It was the hardest thing I've ever done. By far. I'd directed a lot of plays, and making a film was always something I'd planned on doing. Of course, I had to pick a special effects movie my first time out — which is like saying: "I'd like to lose some weight, I think I'll just sign up for this fifty mile marathon." I didn't exactly ease myself into the deep end. We only had a few days to shoot. Which meant we had about forty set-ups a day to pull off. There were thirty crew members crammed in a one-bedroom apartment in Hollywood. It was in August, during a heat wave — the special effects make-up was literally melting off the lead actor. Everything that could go wrong went wrong. When it was over, I felt like I had PTSD — I didn’t even want to watch the movie for two years. Now enough time has passed, and I'm able to look at it and say: "Wow, that's actually a cool little film." It looks almost effortless on screen. It's funny how the experience of making something can be so drastically different from the outcome.
As for whether or not I’d do it again, in a way, I feel like I have a responsibility to keep directing. Only something like four percent of working directors are women ... which is a really disturbing statistic ... and I think it goes a ways to explaining the shortage of interesting female characters we see on film and television. Programs like AFI's Directing Workshop for Women (which produced and helped fund The Clay Man) are working to change that. But in the end, it's up to us to get out there and make sure our stories get told. So, yeah — when a project comes along that I think is important enough, I'll definitely do it again. God help me.
ST: The personal stories of women involved in the sex industry make for bestsellers on the book charts at the moment, but it's something you explored years ago in the play Will Strip For Food. Do you think you'll ever revisit the subject, or do you feel you've said your piece and made your point?
RT: I was twenty-two when I wrote that play. At the time, I was struggling to make a living as a writer and working nights as a topless dancer. Like most of the women I met in that industry, I felt pressure to lie about my night job. Or at best to justify it. I wasn't ashamed of what I was doing. I didn't feel exploited by it. I didn't always love it, but it beat the hell out of waiting tables. Above all, I didn't feel like it defined me. But it changed the way people saw me ... there were all these negative assumptions made. Will Strip was a reaction to that. It was a ballsy premise: to base a play around my experiences, and the experiences of a group of other writers and actors I knew who'd all chosen to use their sexuality to pay the rent. We focused primarily on the positive ways the sex industry had affected our lives ... which is something that hadn't been explored much at the time. This was before Carmen Electra was teaching strip-aerobics, before every Beverly Hills housewife had a pair of Lucite heels and a pole in her personal gym. Maybe we were naïve, but we really didn't expect the play to take off the way it did.
It was a very personal, cathartic piece, and I'm extremely proud of it. At the same time, it didn't change anything. I hung up the G-string years and years ago, and even though I now work on a successful television show, that time of my life is still something I'm nervous to discuss openly. So, I guess as long as it continues to be an issue, I'm sure it will keep finding its way into my work.
ST: Television, theatre and film are all, by their nature, collaborative media, which kind of subverts our culture's notion of creativity as belonging primarily to tortured geniuses sitting alone in attics. I'd like to hear a little about what that's like for you as an artist: working as a story editor on others' scripts, what it's like to co-write an episode, shifting to solo writing, things like that.
RT: I have to admit, I'm on the tortured side. I can get a little Charlie Kaufman in Adaptation. I usually spend half the day giving myself little pep talks — "No, you’re not the crappiest writer that ever walked the earth ... I'm sure there's at least one that's crappier than you." I'm ridiculously tough on myself. That's why collaborating is so great — if it sucks, there's always someone else to blame. I'm kidding of course. I've always loved collaborating, that's why I wrote with Sera Gamble for so many years, and that's probably what attracted me to television in the first place.
There's no question that writing solo allows you to dig deeper — it's easier to follow your instincts if you don't have to pitch them and justify them to a room full of people. But I'm one of those total geeks that gets off on breaking a story — camping out in the writer's room with a bunch of heavily caffeinated, stressed-out writers, throwing shit around until something clicks, watching everyone's ideas come together like puzzle pieces ... for me, that's probably the best high ever.
ST: A show with multiple writers, no matter how tightly controlled by the executive producers, is going to have some small inconsistencies with characterization. Your version of Sam and — perhaps especially — your version of Dean have remained remarkably coherent throughout the twists and knocks of the series, which does a lot to make the plot through the seasons feel like an organic progression rather than a planned arc. Are there any exercises or tricks you use to keep these characters realised in your head?
RT: Thank you. I wish I had some special secret to share. I don't always get to pick the concept of my episodes — about half the time Eric just walks into my office and throws an idea at me: "It's like The Others meets Deliverance. Go!" My job becomes about trying to find something in that premise — a moment, a character arc, a line — something that's meaningful to me, and writing to that. The entire episode becomes about building to that moment for me. It may sound simplistic, but I think when you're expressing something that's real to you, it's obvious on the page, the actor feels that, the audience recognizes that. I know I do when I see it.
ST: Are there any elements or directions present in the show now that would have surprised you when you began?
RT: Actually, no. And that's probably a good thing. Supernatural is a show that knows exactly what it is and what it's about. And I think it's pretty much stayed true to that through both seasons. It's easy to become consumed with the ratings game, with trying to please everyone ... but I think when a show does that, it often loses or muddies what's really essential about it. It's a delicate balance — you want to be open to new ideas, you never want to let your characters or your premise get stale. At the same time, sacrificing the reality of the world you've created just to be inventive, or shocking, or to give fans what you think they want is always a risk. Eric and Bob have fought hard to protect their vision of the show. And I'm proud of them for that.
ST: "Hunted" picks up some of the thematic threads laid down in "Faith" — both episodes' villains are human beings who believe they have the right to decide who should die. This isn't a subject one necessarily expects to find on a show like Supernatural.
RT: "Hunted" and "Faith" are both episodes where the real monsters are human beings. In a nutshell: people terrify me. The extremes we'll go to — the atrocities we'll commit under the guise of morality .... If I really want to get the shit scared out of me all I have to do is turn on CNN. I don’t want to get too political — we're talking about a horror show on The CW after all ... and I'm all for a kick-ass scare sequence, or funny one-liners. But I'm a firm believer that television can be entertaining without being totally devoid of meaning. I'm not talking about getting all preachy and soap-boxy — I'm just talking about not shying away from the more complicated issues. I think Supernatural's at its best when it balances hardcore hand-in-the-meat-grinder moments with real human themes, like grief, family, faith, etc. It's one of the few shows that has the potential to make you laugh, cry, and scream, all within seconds of each other.
ST: Almost half your episodes to date — "Nightmare", "Salvation", "Hunted" — are pivotal moments in the show's mythology arc, and some of the emotionally meatiest the series has to offer. Are episodes like that more difficult or stressful to work on than the 'horror movie of the week'-style plots?
RT: They’re definitely more difficult. And they take a lot more time to break. Because every choice you make in an episode like that matters — the series is going to have to answer to those choices for as long as it's around. The basic horror film plots can be a lot of fun — because they're generally closed-ended, you have more freedom to focus on building the scares, or playing the humor ... 'cause it's kind of hard to justify Dean cracking a joke when someone they care about just got his/her head blown off by a demon. Finding those lighter moments in mythology episodes can be tough. But as a staff writer, those episodes are far more rewarding, because it's your chance to really contribute to the history of the show. Creating a new character that goes on to have a life on the series, it's like they’re your baby ... you get to proudly watch them evolve ... and on this show — ultimately get butchered in some colorful way. It's awesome.
ST: Okay, this is absolutely the geekiest question of the bunch; I promise it won't get any worse than this: in your zombie episode, "Children Shouldn't Play With Dead Things", there's a wonderful small scene at Mary Winchester's grave. Was Sam burying John's dog tags your idea?
RT: I'd love to take credit for that, but the dog tags were all Eric Kripke and Bob Singer. One of the challenges of writing this show is finding creative ways to get into stories. We can't just open on a newspaper article or Dad's journal every time. Visiting Mary's grave was my idea. After John's death, I knew I wanted to do an episode about grief, to explore the different ways our guys handle it. Burying the dog tags at Mom's grave gave us the perfect opportunity to not only find a case, but to cut straight to what the episode was really about — how differently Sam and Dean both cope with loss, and the conflict that creates between them.
ST: Are there any scenes that have turned out exactly how you imagined them? Any you were completely surprised by the final execution?
RT: The episode that surprised me the most as a whole was "Faith". It's probably the episode I'm most proud of. Because there were things in that story that Sera and I both felt very invested in talking about. So while we were developing it, we were kind of afraid that those things — the darkness, the moral ambiguity of the story, would become watered down or disappear. But we couldn't have been more stoked with the final outcome. It wasn't just the episode we’d wanted to write — it was better. It didn't shy away from the gray areas, but it was grittier, muddier, scarier than we'd imagined.
ST: Supernatural fans are notoriously skittish when it comes to new characters, yet the audience reaction to Ava was very positive. Can you talk a bit about writing her?
RT: Supernatural is a pretty testosterone-driven show. That's part of what attracted me to it in the first place — I'm not exactly a girly-girl. But at the same time, none of us want to create a world where every female character is just a damsel in distress in a bloody bra. Obviously, my goal with Ava was to create a character that our female fans could identify with. I wanted her to be grounded, ordinary in a way. As if I'd plucked her out of a random supermarket isle and just thrown her into this bizarre world. The hardest thing about writing her was reminding myself to look at this world through fresh eyes. 'Cause after a couple years of working on this show, discussing demons feels as normal to me as talking about what I had for lunch. But for Ava, everything she's experiencing is earth shattering. She's as skeptical as any of us would be, and I think that's part of what makes her so accessible.
ST: Are you writing any of the remaining episodes this season?
RT: I wrote four episodes this season: "Children Shouldn’t Play with Dead Things", "Hunted", "Roadkill", and "What Is and What Should Never Be" — which is the only one that hasn't aired yet. Eric Kripke directed it. I haven't seen a cut yet, but people are excited about it. All I can really say without spoiling it is that it's about a genie — not the kind in a tube top and harem pants. It's a pretty Dean-centric, character-driven episode, with a very different tone than anything else I've written for the show. It'll be interesting to see how it plays for the fans.
ST: Apart from Supernatural, are there any projects you're currently involved in?
RT: I just finished writing a pilot about a family of drug smugglers. I've got a couple plays in the works. But honestly, hiatus just started for me, and I'm really looking forward to sitting out in my garden, drinking wine and not talking or thinking about writing for as long as I can possibly stand it. Or at least until next season.