10 Screenwriting Tips from Vince Gilligan on how he wrote Breaking Bad and Better Call Saul

you want to prove that you can speak in the voice of the characters contributing in the writer's room not not just sort of sitting there having a bad day a lot of this job is attitude what really excited me was the idea of going against that grain going against the mold so to speak of television and creating a character who was by his very definition designed to change my personal philosophy is if it's a coincidence that's ultimately bad for the main character then it's then it's then it's kosher then it's acceptable if it's a coincidence that's good for for that person for that protagonist then then it's lazy someone like us uh who for whatever reason actually did such a thing actually decided to to cook meth and because i was thinking instead i was thinking you know why why would someone like me or tom decide to do that and then i thought well you know you gotta you must need money and and one thing led to another and by the time the phone call was over uh that that moment of inspiration had had led to uh didn't have a name for him yet but led to that character who would eventually be known as walter white [Music] and before that in about 2004 i was talking to a buddy of mine a guy named tom schnauz who's one of our writer producer directors on better call saul and on and previously on breaking bad and around about 2004 we'd been out of work for two years x-files have been off the air since about 2002 and we're on the phone just bemoaning the fact that we we couldn't find another writing job uh that that was i was about to say that was near as good as the x-files we couldn't find a writing job at all it was kind of lean slim pickings uh at that point and i said you know what are we gonna do now and he said why don't we get a winnebago a caravan i guess in australia why don't we get a caravan and uh you know put a meth lab in the back of it and ride around america and see the sites and cook meth make some money so this is a documentary what was interesting is that in the moment he made that joke uh this sort of little eureka moment hit me uh because i'm a very boring law-abiding guy and and he is too despite his sense of humor and it it dawned on me as he was making this joke that would be an interesting character to write about someone like us uh who for whatever reason actually did such a thing actually decided to to cook meth and uh because i was thinking instead i was thinking you know why why would someone like me or tom decide to do that and then i thought well you know you gotta you gotta you must need money and and one thing led to another and by the time the phone call was over uh that that moment of inspiration had had led to uh i didn't have a name for him yet but led to that character who would eventually be known as walter white and that's very rare having that kind of uh you know for the writers in the audience i don't know how it is for you folks but in writing is is hard work and and you got to really you know keep your keep your uh pencil to the grindstone so to speak and but every now and then when that inspiration hits that's a wonderful thing um in terms of believability uh how do you write a show like breaking bad which revolves a lot around coincidence like uh characters meeting in certain places and still keep it believable there were there were some there were some there were some bitcoin there were a couple of big moments of coincidence uh the biggest one probably would you say i'm gonna guess would you say is when walt sat down at the bar next to g yeah that was a big moment and we talked a lot about that and my personal philosophy on that and i think some of these guys said that's that's kind of a big coincidence isn't it my personal philosophy is if it's a coincidence that's ultimately bad for the main character then it's then it's then it's kosher then it's acceptable if it's a coincidence that's good for for that person for that protagonist then then it's lazy but in that case it in in in short-term fashion it wound up moving walt's uh machinations a little further along but it also stole a big it led to him killing or allowing he didn't kill her but he allowed jane to die in the next scene jane jesse's girlfriend and therefore he lost a big chunk of his soul we talked a lot about that about what yeah coincidences i just i was intrigued at the idea of taking a a good man uh good you know the protagonist the the good guy and turning them into that was the part i left out in this pitch what really interested me aside from this character you know why would he do this thing and whatnot was it dawned on me that television of which i am a giant fan historically exists uh tv shows exist uh in a kind of a stasis world you know when you watch uh bart simpson for 30 years now on on the simpsons he never grows up he never becomes a different character than he is uh all the great tv shows uh in history uh it it's it it's helpful for the characters to not change because if they were to change you know you don't have that comfort of inviting them into your room week week upon week and not knowing what you're going to get it's better for marshall dillon to stay marshall dillon for 20 years on gun smoke and whatnot and what really excited me and this i think came a bit later than that phone call with my buddy what really excited me was the idea of going against that grain going against the mold so to speak of television and creating a character who was by his very definition designed to change uh and of course when you have a character who changes when that's your by design that's what your tv show is it it therefore becomes a finite tv show instead of uh well there's no infinite tv show but you want a tv show that can go on typically you want one that can go on indefinitely hence the the stasis that you you seek but i i figured you know i'm kind of lazy i don't want a show to go on 20 years if i get that lucky that's too much work let's do a finite tv show the good guy's going to turn into the bad guy and then and then it's all over so the kind of stuff we did on the x-files was the hard work the heavy lifting of of the job was we would sit in front of a cork board three feet by five feet with a big thing of thumbtacks and a big thing of index cards and a whole bunch of sharpie magic markers and we'd sit there and say okay what's the teaser what you know what what's we know we're doing an episode about aztec mummies so what's a teaser you know what's what's a really scary t and you build it brick by brick you know each card represents a a a plot beat not necessarily a scene but you know three or four six eight cards might represent one scene but each one of those cards is some indispensable plot beat of that scene and and you you break the story you build it in other words brick by brick index card by index card and and put it up there you know i wanted you know and it and and by the end of it you filled up this entire three foot by five foot cork board with a teaser and and and the the four act structure that we would do in the x-files which we also do in breaking bad teaser act i guess it's five acts if you count the teaser teaser act one act two act three act four and this whole this whole three foot by five foot board is filled with pinned up index cards by the time you're done most episodes of breaking bad are like a math formula they're like a math problem and i always wondered if there was a really great faulty towers episode where they admitted like we started with the last scene and wrote backwards like how did how did he get how did basil faulty get to this scene and i and so i watch a lot of breaking bad episodes and there's the math formula where they get into some really stressful predicament the kind where you're like come on you know and then not only do they get out of it but it's believable and it's the only way they could have gotten out of it and that to me seems like are are you starting at the beginning and writing to that point are you fi are you getting to are you starting at the end and then going backwards and and kind of backtracking to get them out of it we did a little bit of everything in the five or six years were five years were doing this we did a little bit of everything i'm so glad that it felt that way uh i can i can i can tell you for a fact none of us in the writers room especially me were any kind of mathematical geniuses so i was doing an interview uh before we got out here a young lady was asking you know uh when with a couple times you know what can you name sometimes you wrote yourselves into into a real corner and uh the biggest one of all is walt buys this machine gun uh at this at the beginning of the 16th toronto 16 epis final 16 episodes we had no friggin clue what he was buying the machine gun for really and it was so in hindsight it was so stupid but i just thought it'd be cool hey buys a machine gun i we always what and then we'll figure it out later we'll figure it out oh my god we really did i'm not actually proud of that um i we would give all these ponderous interviews over the years to places like the writer's guild magazine or whatnot we believe in organic storytelling which which stems from flows from character does not flow from plot and and by the way i i really do believe in organic storytelling but every now and then we just go batshit and we'd put a machine gun in a trunk or the other time was you know walt jessie are in the rv and hank is uh is is got him in the junkyard dead scene i was thinking of that was one of the two i mentioned yeah yeah yeah so you really went through a detailed pitch of the pilot yeah yeah and then obviously you must have talked about where it was going from there did you have the full five-year plan in your head or no not at all i i i pitched in great detail as i say that first episode and and i hope that that would hook these these potential buyers and luckily it did and then when they said where's it go from there i i would say i would get very general at that point but i would say something that that we did abide by for the whole six years i would say this is a show about process it's a show about transformation it's a show about a guy willfully transforming himself from who he used to be to what he will become and what he will become if you give me the time to do it and i can't tell you right now how many years i think it should be but i what i want to do with this show is i want to take this mr chip's character and have him turn himself into into scarface and it was it was it was that general that was the pithy one-line sentence that i've probably said like balloons should drop for the sailing it's probably the millionth time but uh but it's it's that old cliche about it's good to have this one sentence pitch that people remember and i i i have to say this this one this one helped me out a great deal this was a good one sentence pitch for this show and we and we stuck by that uh self-imposed franchise we that's that's what that's what the show was thinking about your experiences in the writers room what is it that you think makes for a good staff writer this could sound terrible but i don't know how else to put it you really want to write in in the voice of the show it's not a time and a place at least at the beginning of your of your being hired it's not really the optimal time and place for you to express lots of individuality you really want to you want to prove that you can speak in the voice of the characters contributing in the writer's room not not just sort of sitting there having a bad a lot of this job is attitude if you're not already this person pretend to be but be someone that people want to spend 10 11 12 hours at a stretch with yeah one of the most important things in a tv writer's room is just it's just to keep the conversation going come up with dumb i'd not be afraid to come up with what you know is potentially a dumb idea because the dumb ideas i've seen it more times than i can count very often lead to the good idea and once you started as a teenager to write you know essays for school and stories but were they always people who've read your people who've come across your stuff said i read this script from me and i thought wow it's just on another level to what people do was your writing always of quality i i don't think so i [Laughter] i uh i think if you if you start with an enthusiasm towards something uh you you probably i mean i think i started off just uh writing this piss poorly as anyone but uh i think that uh uh you know try and try again you you keep you keep doing you keep at it you keep hammering away at it i i don't think my writing was anything special for for a great many years uh but but i i love doing it and i did it to the exclusion of of many other things that uh would have made me a more well-rounded person perhaps but um about selling the show how do you sell a show like this to a network you know you just um well i can i i i seem to hesitate i hesitate when you ask because i don't know how you do it except put like you do everything else put one foot in front of the other come up with something in this case that you really believe i really believed in this and then go and uh pitch it as best you can and let the chips fall where they may people are either going to buy it or they're not i i seem to be at that early stage as i said earlier i was i was worried perhaps too much about walt remaining sympathetic and so i i arrayed against him his brother-in-law who was by design everything that walt was not and he's kind of a hail fellow well-met frat boy kind of a as you say he's kind of an jock and and it and it makes it even more painful for walt that walt's own son seems to gravitate more toward his his fire pissing uncle than he does the old man you know and um but once once i got to know dean norris who who plays hank i started to realize how complex an individual he is and how interesting and how talented and multifaceted he is and some of those and my writers did as well and some of those complexities and facets uh made their way to the writing of the character and and the character became less of a less of a jerk and more of a interesting uh well-rounded individual that's that's what i love about this process of television production you you you roll with the punches sometimes your job is is taking lemons and turning them into lemonade you know sometimes actors suddenly become unavailable sometimes like at one point the house jesse pinkman lived in got sold out from under us and we could no longer shoot there you have to roll with these punches but but sometimes they make the show better you

Channel: Outstanding Screenplays

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Id: pQmbSlE6Ey0

Length: 15min 32sec (932 seconds)

Published: Thu Jul 08 2021