In part 2 of our exclusive interview with Breaking Bad creator Vince Gilligan he reveals some more facts about the show including Jesse’s original ending and how Walter White was based on him…
By Trevor Dueck — Staff Writer
In Part One Vince Gilligan spoke a bit about how the show was pitched and the work that went into getting everything going. He surrounded himself with a very solid team of writers in Thomas Schnauz, Peter Gould, George Mastras, John Shiban, Sam Catlin, Moira Walley-Beckett, Patty Lin and Gennifer Hutchison. Vince has called it a murderers row of writers and contributors and has publicly said many times that the show would have never gotten off the ground without his team.
Most shows have an outline or schematic of what is going to happen, but ultimately each episode is written in a “war room” or writer’s room setting. Once the first season was moving forward, Vince Gilligan spent most of his time working with his team on making sure no details were missed and at the same time giving his team of writers and directors creative freedom in helping him tell the Walter White story. Luckily though there was one pitch in the writer’s room that didn’t go Gilligan’s way. Vince had pitched the idea of killing off Jesse in episode six of season one. Yes that’s right…Jesse was on the board as the first major Breaking Bad fatality.
So how was it all supposed to go down?
We didn’t nail it down completely but it would probably play out something along the lines of Tuco Salamanca killing Jesse. In fact just a side not we wanted to keep Tuco (Raymond Cruz) for more episodes but he had already committed to doing another show that he was under contract for. I remember pitching it as Jesse was going to die in some horrific cinematic manner. I don’t remember the details but I do remember that it was going to be unpleasant. For those that are writers you can understand that it was more of a schematic sequence where we needed Jesse long enough to properly send Walter on his way into the meth business and then he would have served his purpose and in a schematic sense we kill him off in dramatic fashion so that moment could be fuel for Walt to enact revenge which would propel the plot into season two. You realize though that once you start casting these parts and working with these actors you tend to become less schematic and only then you start to realize that first of all, if there is any justice in this world that this young actor is going to become a big star. Let’s take this wonderful opportunity we have to explore this character more fully and not worry about being to over mechanistic in the storytelling. That is what I love about television is the opportunity to explore these things together as a group and collaborators both in front and behind the camera.
So in the end, Jesse survived season one and probably a great choice because Aaron Paul put out Emmy worthy performances and became a face of the show. It was not just a story about Walter, because as you know, Jesse was along for the ride. So although the gruesome Jesse death scene didn’t materialize, there was still many other great scenes that Vince enjoyed in helping to create. (Spoiler Alert)
I would say the most memorable scene for me was the head on the tortoise… that was a fun one to shoot. I still have the head by the way. It’s the perfect life cast of the actor Danny Trejo and it’s at home but it smells kind of funky and it is really creepy to touch because it feels like real human skin. We lent the head out to a movie Danny was in because I guess they needed it for a scene where they were cutting off his head.
Anyway, for that sequence all of us writers were like this is great, a human head on a big deadly tortoise it will be iconic, let’s go for lunch. However, one of our writers George Mastras leaned back in his chair and said, ‘maybe the head should blow up.’ I was like George…for fuck sakes quite while you are a head. After we thought about it and we were like, you know what? George is right. We need to have the head blow up.
People from all over the world have enjoyed Breaking Bad with the last few episodes of the final season shattering rating records including the final episode getting 10.3 million viewers. What you can’t put a number on is how many people are downloading it illegally. We live in a piracy world and although you can get all the seasons on Netflix or iTunes, people still love themselves some torrents. Yet it is a catch twenty-two, would the show be as popular if people couldn’t download it? It’s a new television viewing world and a lot of people heard about the show through word of mouth – something Vince is okay with.
You can’t help but feel ambivalent. You can’t help but feel good and bad. I was in Ireland once for a film forum over there and the host asked how many people had seen Breaking Bad, and everyone in the room raised their hand. After the host asked how many people didn’t pay to see it or how many downloaded it illegally and every hand went up. There was a very funny Irish writer sitting with me on the panel and he said that people would ask him about piracy and asked him would he steal a Cadillac? And he said that if he could download it into his computer he would.
It’s just one of those things. I won’t lie I wish all of those people had paid for it so I could get my .000003 cents per download or whatever is on Itunes. On the other hand it’s true, if piracy is what it takes to get a show like this to people around the world so be it. I wouldn’t say it was a necessary evil but I can’t hate it, I have to be ambivalent. I was in Vancouver on Granville Island and I went into a T-shirt store and I saw a shirt that said, “I am the one who knocks” and although it wasn’t licensed, the first thing I did was smile because I couldn’t believe how much this show was embedded within the zeitgeist. I don’t care how it got there. Piracy is a complex issue but I am just glad people watch the show and so whatever it takes…I’m fine with.
So as the evening came to a close there was a common question that needed to be asked. Who were the Breaking Bad characters based upon? Vince has spoken about this before but most of the characters were not based on anyone in particular. But Gilligan would use names of people he knew, for instance Holly who was Walter and Skylar’s baby girl was named after Vince’s longtime girlfriend Holly. Hank was also a name of an old friend and it was just a name Vince had always liked. That said, there was one character that was based on a real person.
The one character in the show that was based on someone was Walter. This is kind of embarrassing but I realized that Walt is me. Not Heisenberg, the less interesting version of Walter. When I first started writing about Walt I had just turned forty and I started to have a mid life crisis and was thinking about where I was at in life and what I could do to make my life more interesting and fulfilling.
Walt is a guy who lives in fear until he becomes Heisenberg and those seeds were planted in the very first episode. He was not a guy who was in the middle of his life; he was at the end of his life so he had to make hay while the sun was shining. That is something I find intriguing because I don’t live my life from a place of courage instead I usually live life from a place of neurosis and fear. I realize in hindsight what really intrigued me about his character is not that he broke bad or that he was a criminal; all of that is set dressing. What really interested me about this guy was that he went forward with courage.
Unfortunately he does bad things that none of us could get behind but what he does chose to do he does with courage and that is what intrigued me so much about his character. When I first pitched the idea to the studio I couldn’t put that into words, it took me four to five years thinking about this guy day in and day out to finally make that simple realization. Walter White is me. The major difference is that Walter destroys his life around him and blames others. That is something I don’t do. I have always taken responsibility for my actions.
Speaking of actions, when was the last time a director called action to end the series? It was not the final scene of the last episode. Instead they all had to meet in the desert for one last cook. (SPOILER ALERT)
The very last scene we shot was the flashback where Jesse and Walt are in the RV for their very first cook that we showed in the “Ozymandias” episode. The reason we did that was because we needed Walt to keep his beard on for the final episode, so we had to wait until we were done so Bryan Cranston could shave it off because he needed to be clean-shaven with a mustache. So the very last scene was all of us back in the desert with the RV. I wasn’t directing that episode so for the very last shoot I wasn’t needed at all so I got to just hang out and take pictures. At the end of shooting that sequence the good people at AMC opened up some bottles of champagne, everyone teared up, and hugged each other. It was a very touching moment that I won’t soon forget.
It’s a show that none of us will forget and as the curtain came down for the final episode last week many of us were left saying, “what do we watch now?” In some ways Vince Gilligan is in the same boat. Now what? How do you top Breaking Bad? It has been a surreal experience for the Richmond, Virginia native and although it has been six successful years at the helm of the greatest drama in television history, he claims that he hasn’t allowed the success get to his head.
I can’t put it into words. It’s hard to take it all in. When I first took this on I didn’t think it had a chance of getting past the first season. I did not foresee any of this coming. I wish I could describe this feeling with the right analogy and I should be able to because that is what I do for a living…write analogies. I don’t feel like I’m completely processing it. Even though I have had several months to process it I still can’t see the forest through the trees. But I thank everyone around the world for making this show a hit. We did this show for ourselves but we aren’t selfish because we did it for you as much as we did it for us because it’s fun to make people happy. It’s fun to satisfy people and I hope we did the ending right and stuck the landing so that we satisfy the people that got us to this place.
We are now left with reruns for millions more people to enjoy in the not-too-distant future. Vince Gilligan has already moved on from the show and is now focusing on a new project. Last week, CBS officially confirmed his next project, a detective-style drama entitled Battle Creek. The series, already greenlit for the 2014-2015 season, was first developed by Gilligan in 2002. CBS originally passed on the project, but it was revisited as network execs saw the success of Breaking Bad.
Every show has to end and in some ways it’s great to see someone like Vince Gilligan end it before it went down the same road as so many other great programs like Lost and Dexter where they over stay their welcome and the content becomes repetitive, unbelievable and boring. Instead we are left wanting more of Gilligan’s 99.1% pure blue sky.
