Director's Cut: Guy Bee

The Official Supernatural Magazine talks to director Guy Bee about his work on Supernatural, from his debut in season one's Asylum to his return for season six's Family Matters and beyond... This extract from our interview begins with Guy recalling his reaction to the news that he would be directing a Western episode, Frontierland...

I'd just seen [the Coen Brothers' version of] True Grit, so I was really hopped up on that level of grunge and dirt and filthy teeth. It's funny, though, because when I first got the script, I'd just watched True Grit and Black Swan, and Black Swan deals with a person that has a dark side. When I read the first page of Frontierland, which at the time was called Gallows Pole, it was the showdown [scene] and while I'm reading it in my head I'm like, "This dark shadowy figure... Dean's fighting himself! It's a dream. It'll be cool to shoot this thing with all that authentic western stuff and then he'll wake up from it and realize that the dark shadowy figure is him." Of course, then I read the rest of the script and I'm like, "Wait, we're actually really going back to the [Old] West!"

Of course, the whole episode didn't take place in the Old West. What was your favorite part of the Castiel-Bobby storyline?

We did the gag in Frontierland where Castiel gets stabbed by Rachel, then he shows up in Bobby's kitchen and Bobby says, "We fighting or running?" So the idea I had was that Cass would literally come through the ceiling, but if you look up it would be repaired. We did a thing where Bobby was reading something, then we wrapped around him and as we got to over-his-shoulder, we had a mannequin in a trench coat drop through frame. It worked great in my mind, but every time the dummy came through frame, it had one leg in the air or [something else comically wrong]... and it became really funny. At some point I said, "It's just not working." So we just did an off-camera sound effect and Bobby goes, "What the hell?" and you buy it.

You had a different kind of challenge with your next episode, this season's Hello, Cruel World. It picks up right where the season opener left off. How did that work for you? Did you have access to dailies of the final scene from Meet the New Boss?

[Supernatural producer] Jim Michaels called me because they were getting ready to shoot the final scene that leads right into my first scene and he said, "Hey, if it's all the same to you, is it cool for Phil to do your first scene?" And I was like, "Of course!" Because you're talking a couple extra hours to get that scene while everything and everybody are already there and ready to go. The interesting thing that happened was Misha Collins got really sick and they ended up not being able to finish that scene because he was about four shades of green. So they ended up going really late, not finishing the scene, and then I started my episode the next day and ironically enough actually picked up a couple shots that Phil couldn't get to. And I also did a scene for Jensen's episode [The Girl Next Door] because they hadn't built the set yet. So it's funny how that turned out, but there are still little snippets of my first scene that Phil directed.

You can read the full Director's Cut feature with Guy Bee in Supernatural Magazine #30 (US numbering).

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