N. John Smith: But my main job as a line producer is being responsible for hiring and firing the crew. And making sure we get the film in the can on budget. And responsibilities of making sure the money that was allotted us to spend over the season was spent and spent judiciously and not over spent. That’s a collaboration between … I’m only as good as the writers. Because the writers can write “we need 50 hot air balloons in this episode”. And that’s what we have got to have. Well, if you can only afford ten, then I’m in trouble. Between the writers collaborating, and OK, this is what we can do. We’d always push for the ultimate limit and try and get as much production value as we could, realizing that if we spent [a million dollars] over on this episode we’d have to save it over the next eight or 10 or whatever.
Bottom line is, at the end of the year, you had to be on budget. For most years, we were on budget. And when we weren’t it was given the grace of MGM who said, “Go ahead spend the extra money.” MGM was a great company to work for. Over the 10 [years], or especially with Charlie [Cohen] over the last few years. It’s been terrific to work with him. He is very understanding. He liked the show. Which is very helpful. If your production people like what you are doing, it makes a difference to us the people who are pulling it off.
GateWorld: In addition to your work producing on Stargate, you were also an executive producer on Sanctuary. What challenges do genre series in general provide that you may not have in other programming?
NJS: You’re talking about the virtual …
GW: Be it virtual [sets] or just genre series [challenges] in general. In terms of the more effects necessary and …
NJS: Well, SG-1 was notoriously a big effects series. It was a bigger series. The budgets reflected that. We spent a lot more money on SG-1 than Sanctuary. Again, on the new show [Stargate Universe], our budgets are double what Sanctuary spends. It’s a different type of show. There is not a lot of action. There is not a lot of big effects. There are effects but nothing the same as a big action show, where you have a huge cast.
I’m not involved with Sanctuary any more. I’m not doing it. I got it going and did the first year. But, you know — sayanora. What’s fun for me more is getting them going and making sure it happens. Once you get the foundation of the project built. Usually, they roll along after that.
GW: You also mentioned in the Q & A that just happened a little bit earlier, that you are kind of stepping back now from SGU.
NJS: I’ve totally stepped back from SGU. I did last year as well. It’s really hard to do that. But when you have a new production team coming in, you have to let them go. I’d come in two or three days a week to the office and see if everything was going good. That was the agreement that I made with Brad. I said, “I’m at the end of the phone line here if you want.” I was fielding a lot a questions from the crew because it was my crew. So I was getting a lot of “Why are we doing this?” “It’s not the same when you’re not here.” And you know all the other things. You’ve got to watch that. You have to let the new guys come in and do what they’ve got to do.
GW: Obviously, there’s other things you want to do with your life. And other paths that you want to explore. But is there a certain sadness that goes along with kind of letting that go?
NJS: Totally! You go from working 15 hours a day with the same group of people [to not at all]. I was spending more time on the film set and with my crew than I was at home with my family. So it makes a difference.
Oh, there is definitely sadness. But I’m fortunate that I have a good life to go to. Like, we built a house up on the coast. And my affiliation with the water has always been something I have missed. I mean I get away on the boat on the weekends. And we had a cabin, and we taught all the kids how to water ski. And I still do a little diving and stuff, but I was really looking forward to getting back on the salt water.
Now I’m out every day. I’ve got more boats now than I had when I was making my living with boats. Not the same type of boat. I like fishing proms and crabs. And I do that and supply our whole neighborhood with fresh seafood. Which is kind of fun. I am going to do some other productions. But I don’t want to work 12 months out the year at it anymore. I would love to do an interesting project. And I am working on a couple of interesting projects but as far as actually going and getting into the grind of it — no.
GW: Life’s too short.
NJS: Well, it’s not [that] life’s too short. But I’ve seen a lot of my friends in this industry pass away a lot younger in life than they should have. I don’t want to be there. I really enjoy other aspects of the industry and it’s afforded me enough financial security that I can go and do a few things that I really want to do. We collect art. I can spend a whole day in an art gallery. And time goes by really quickly when you do that. So, I’m just enjoying getting out and doing some other things.
I do miss the crew. I miss that static energy you have from producing a show like Stargate. The spontaneous decisions that you have to make. Hopefully most of them are the right ones. I don’t miss the grind every day. Because it does get you down after a while. You go home every night and it takes you a couple of hours. You don’t just go home and go to bed. It takes you a couple of hours. Not every day, but some days. Especially when we were doing two shows at once. It was a bit of a deal.
GW: Forty episodes a year.
NJS: Forty episodes a year and it was kind of stressful.
I actually thought the SG-1/Atlantis back-to-back years were really fantastic. I loved Atlantis, but I felt it dropped off a lot when it had to stand on it’s own. The cross-overs between the two series’ were great. It’ll always be my fondest memories of Stargate. SG-1, followed by Atlantis. One awesome night.
Thanks for the interview. It’s interesting to hear from those who are so influential in producing the shows we love, but who keep a fairly low profile.
Interesting statement that SGU cost twice what Sanctuary did. That was the first season I’m assuming?
nice interview! i especially loved what he said about amanda and rick. :)
also interesting that he didn’t directly answer your question about the future of the franchise… :o :/
YAY! ^_^ I m happy
Well, no wonder that SyFy took Sanctuary over SGU, with similar ratings, Sanctuary must be much cheaper, what with SGU’s budget being twice what Sanctuary spends.
What’s really interesting is that the talk of budgets mentioned that the budget was defined in US dollars. That means that through the lifetime of SG1, the amount that could be gotten for the budget would have gone from a ratio of like 1.8:1 to around 1:1. And even with SGA it would have probably gone from 1.3 or so to 1:1. This means SGU would have been much, much more expensive from the beginning. So it’s ratings would have had to have been much better to be kept around since it didn’t have an established fanbase. I don’t know… Read more »
Thanks for this intervieuw. I think John Smith is a very nice man. I loved the intervieuw, and how he spoke about Rick and Amanda.I wish him all the best in what he is going to do now and that he now can enjoy his private life more as well.It looks likes that all from Stargate falls apart and even the magazine just ended wich is very sad. Looks like we loose it all.Well thats my personal feeling about it.Will it all be gone soon or do we get more of Stargate.I hope so. I also think that in this… Read more »