Most Difficult Decisions Made On Breaking Bad | Writers' Room Reunion | Breaking Bad

[Music] here we are with a reunion of one of the finest groups of writers who've ever written for television this is an incredible collection of writers who worked on Breaking Bad so thank you all for being here I want to start by going to the ending have any of you watched the finale sort of not right around the time that ended but since then and if so have your thoughts about the ending of the show evolved or changed since it actually went out there I watch it every day I have actually seen it have you guys seen it since because they have the marathons on AMC and I happen to catch not just the finale but quite a few of the episodes and we just I'm man I remember the pain leading up to the to the you know actually that whole season I have trouble watching do you yeah really it's a hard season what yeah there's not that there's fun in it but it's the joy is sort of God what's the story what joy there was oh well you need a story Wow yeah story wise it's it's painful yeah that is true I get asked a lot you know what would I change about it and I I was it's like sounds like a joke answer but I wish Jesse's teeth weren't so perfect I'm not even kidding I said it earlier a kid smokes meth and he gets living beautiful why would you want to really I couldn't that's if that's it then I think you're okay I think you're okay you know as a viewer let us have that let us have you know the damn beautiful man's beautiful news we didn't kill him in season one yeah we're gonna do that we're gonna kill him in season one we didn't that's true I remember being at the table and a tent and a bunch of the writers season one and you said Aaron come over here Aaron come over and Aaron came over he's holding his tray and you said this is how I remember it you said hey Aaron I just want you to know when I first thought about the first season I thought we were gonna kill you at the end of the first season but good news we love you so much we're not gonna kill you and Aaron you know he's an open book yes and and and so he looked so shocked and he like yeah yeah I thought that it was a routine that you guys had done before you were doing just as a joke I thought I was giving him a compliment to kill but then it became a routine Brian yeah yeah I don't really recall though ever like having a debate in the room about killing him did we I mean we always talked about how we thought that he was good like it it didn't it and it sort of precluded him actually dying yeah but I think I think I knew when I when we talked about yeah we're gonna kill him off I really think like you said Jenny it was before we really had a room convened and I just thought he was service purpose in a meat-and-potatoes logistical storytelling sense the character would would give Walt his entree into the business and then what do we need him for anymore let's kill him off and then you know it that'll give in season 2 an engine of drama - Walt saying I'm mad as hell and it'd be impetus for drama in season two for him to get revenge and the guys who killed off his partner but the kid was too good to kill yeah once the dailies came in there was no talking about killing Aaron because the chemistry between the two like between wall in there and really was like money in the bank so we were just like talking about we went them together more and more and I think is that I remember talking about how as you know as the show went on and they drifted in their own separate ways we were like kind of really miss getting you know Walt and Jesse back together and so we were like trying to you know really get them back together at all at times when it was like virtually impossible because we're their characters were we got scared right season for that they work too far right right right I was scared yeah I think there are shows that do that that think wow these characters are both so great why don't we have them support different arenas of the story but I think there's so much of Breaking Bad was not just their chemistry but what the story of Breaking Bad to some degree is what Walter White feels he can do and needs to do and primarily who's doing that - for at least the first part of the story for sure is is Jesse and he's kind of the moral bellwether of the thing we all saw that in the room when the dailies started coming in I again I just thought you know he'll serve his purpose and I'll be done I think it grew over the course this series where as the story kind of naturally progressed it came out more and more that Jesse did actually have this moral compass that you know he's not a good guy obviously because he's in this world but he does have sort of a stronger moral Center than what Walt was showing you know like the initial ideas are you gonna take this good guy and you're gonna make him bad and what Breaking Bad really was was oh he's this guy who always had this in him and it's him kind of realizing that and letting it come out whereas Jesse was a little bit the opposite like oh he's a bad guy no he's actually a good guy and that was coming out more and more of course he kept getting it wrong and you know and wall exploited those bad aspects of him you know it's so interesting I remember especially George was always worried this how I remember it was always where we were gonna let Jesse off easy yeah because jesse is a drug dealer he's he's a murderer he's a murderer yeah he becomes under Walt's tutelage and and and because we like the actor and the character so much the temptation was always to kind of soften the consequences for him and that's something I'm really proud of although it's one of the things I made that last season so bleak was that the consequences for him were just you know this is so hard torturing of Jesse Pinkman in that last season is really hard to watch in wrapping up the story there are so many different things you have to try to finish or bring to a place that feels right in terms of conclusions when did you know the fate of Walter the fate of each core character Skyler Jesse was that something you had to work out before the final season or you kind of felt like in your bones what it should be much earlier late in the game we went through every possible permutation with one thing I think we all said is we got to ask every question we got afloat every possibility and did we not them yeah yeah yeah I think we all knew that we TVs gonna live we talked about it but I think we all knew that it would not be a satisfying conclusion there I recall the one afternoon maybe it only lasted 30 minutes maybe last an hour where one of us said wouldn't it be really ironic if Walt is the only one to survive this because it is does seem so obvious that Walt should expire at the end of the final episode but maybe he's the only one left alive maybe he still does have a death sentence but we go out on him alive maybe his whole family's been wiped out maybe everybody's gone at that point that would have been really dark yeah that would've been I think it's interesting in terms of what you were saying earlier about Jesse and like very early on thinking that he would serve the purpose would be for him to die I'm so glad that he telling them can I just say as a fan that would have been way too dark and I think that of course he did terrible things did he pay enough I don't know if I can answer that but I feel like he was someone who could potentially have a new lease on life does that make any sense yes there was the idea of redemption with Jesse whereas with Walt's Walt Redemption is kind of dying in a way you know like he had just gone too far wars with Jesse who's so broken he is so broken by the end but yeah that idea of like maybe he won't be so bad maybe he'll lean into the good aspects of his character now perhaps this just something TV critics do but I often think about what characters from shows that have gone out the error or up to now but do you ever think like I wonder what Jesse would have done we have like gone to be a landscaper or like what do you ever think about what what he would have done New Zealand you can paint the castles they're realistic no you know what I'm sorry just a quick answer to that question I think about where all these characters would have been not in the present so to speak but but if they hadn't made the decisions they made what would the alternate reality have been for Walter White what would the alternate reality have been for Jesse Pinkman I do find myself wondering that sometimes I wonder that a lot about Walt Jr and Skyler what would they have been because to some degree they were the people who had to pay for other people's choices right I mean obviously you know Skyler made choices too but those were much more reactive than the other people around her and I just sit there and I wonder that powerful scene where he says I liked it I was good at it at least he's no longer lying to himself or her but look at the life that she has in that moment he's taken everything from her I personally wanted a more vindictive Old Testament ending for Wallace you know for him to die among his equipment which like kind of lovingly caressing it you know was that something that took a lot of debate to arrive at like what's the right final scene and image there was a there was a debate about that and I there was one pitch that he would die ignominiously on a gurney in a hospital right pushed aside while life continued without him you know it was sort of it for the time being a sort of a John Doe kind of character I think the thinking behind that was that everything he wanted it seemed to me so much what he chase was a sense of status in a sense of importance and all of that and that it would have been a more grim burial for him to be sort of just tossed aside and there was the other pitch where he had crawled and hid shot crawled into a restaurant sort of a blood blood simple esque ending where he's underneath a Heuer monostable a table or a counter or something that maybe had the word Tempe Coe printed on it or something like that yes right we talked about where he bought his the the crib for Holly yeah yeah yeah we talked about it being V booth that he and Jesse sat in in points Romano's when we first when they first visited boys food yeah yeah so why did you reject those pitches Vince Gilligan whatwhat about what you actually went with well they don't write you mean it really was a group effort and it wasn't you know people thanked proud it was like this I was sitting there like this unless you know but it we all kind of just sort of go with your gut and if the funny thing is I too feel like Walter White gets a bit of a pass more than I would personally give him but my own mom my dear sweet 79 year old mom says to me I wish I wish she had lived at the end I wish she'd gotten away with it you know but it's funny and I try not to argue with folks but I agree with you what you said a minute ago but more people I run into more people who were sorry he died at the end this whole thing about gee is he really dead or not in a sense well it's your original hook of the show of him getting sick cooking doing something extreme for his family and I think a lot of people to the very end believed he did all this for his family even though there's in the episode he says I did it because I liked it there's still it's like when you're in it you'll just no no he did it for he wanted to get all that money together to support his family yeah it's interesting because the characters are like people at first you have this first impression and you tend to stay very locked into that for quite a while yeah that definitely happened I think four years while we were in the writing room city you know totally understanding no he's a selfish man who's doing it for other reasons the the world watching kept thinking it's for his family it's for his family the big one for me was what he does with Gretchen and Elliott and everybody's like oh well they deserved it they were so terrible to him and I'm like no actually watch this watch them very closely and he doesn't they don't really do anything to him but they're I mean I think it's the thing you identify with your hero and you know you're gonna defend them because you identify with them so there's that cognitive dissonance of like oh but I like them they're terrible you know but yeah the question anything always gives me feel like oh I hate them they're the worst like what did they do that was like one of those frequently debated and things in the room like it was almost like a thought experiment like how towhat bottom can you bring your leading character and not lose the audience I mean you let Jane die he poisoned the child you know they shot an innocent kid I mean there was so much and it was interesting because I think it was just it goes back to the pilot you just hooked the audience so much into this character that they too are rationalizing the same way that the main character rationalized there's a good reason for doing all this and this is all collateral damage and but we still want to root for this guy I found that we were amazed how people cuz we were just pulling our hair out thinking this guy's and the audience really rude for him and it was amazing yeah I think we kept ourselves going because we did elevate Jesse and we did elevate the other characters and we sympathize with the other characters because as Walt was going down this path who their lives were changing and transforming in so many different ways as well I find so fascinating like a lesson in the psychology of audiences and yeah well it's also a testament to to Brian in the sense that right he was able to capture this sort of everyman slub who's sort of down on his luck and and that's so cemented in your first impression of him yeah and then there are so many opportunities for a lesser act or even just a different actor to sort of put a little sinister spin on it or a little glint in his eye and about like this is the real part of me and he was always so disciplined you just always felt that what was really able to convince himself of the rightness of his actions to the very end and it just came through and in performance I'm just a journey for Brian yeah I remember on the episode where he kills Mike and Brian the man who was the character of Walt and had been protecting the character fastidiously repeating the lie of the character in order to play the character and he was in a moral crisis as a person and an actor and the man who played Walter White when he killed Mike and I watched Brian go through that where he couldn't protect the character anymore yeah and he had to start accepting the darkness within and it was it was very hard yeah yeah yeah and you both Moira and Sam had an interesting possible insight maybe we can find out but because you two were actress before you were even screen right and then you were playwrights as well I mean because it did you did you feel like you know in terms of that it made more sense or I could understand but the type of acting that Bryan Cranston was doing and the type of I was more a fan than a fellow yeah craftsman I mean certainly is someone who's writing about the show for its whole run it was a little scary sometimes to encounter that pushback in really put forth the argument he's a bad person and he's inflicting damage on others and he's making a conscious choice to do that there were so many cool moments in the show and there was you know the kind of like the Heisenberg of it all I understood why people identified with the cool badass nature of the character but did it ever give you pause to just feel like we need to somehow balance this out obviously we saw him do a lot of bad things you have such an actor who's so sympathetic on some core level did it ever weird you out that response to the show like that people were being too excited about the coolness of it still does and especially the Skyler back yeah yeah yeah well what's interesting is sort of the big you know one of the big quotes everybody is is that I'm the one who knocks and it's presented as it's like super badass like I'm the danger I'm the one who knocks but if you think about the scene it's him bullying his wife because she's made him feel small and lesser then he's not you know telling it to the man he's not actually doing anything heroic and and it's interesting because people are like oh yeah he's great Skylar's the worst and so it definitely plays into that whole thing and it was always I think hard for us to negotiate that because the only way people are gonna like Skylar in a lot of ways for us was like if she started going along with what Walt was doing but that would have been a betrayal of the character and so we would talk about this how do we turn it so people understand like he is the bad guy and she's the good guy and it's like you have to be kind of true to those characters we actually did talk about stuff like that a lot and what we can do without it that scene and and the further irony is in that scene it's like that great line of Casablanca you know you remind me of a man is desperately trying to convince himself something that he doesn't believe Walt is trying to convince himself when he says I'm the one who knocks of something that he in that particular moment somewhere deep inside knows not to be true yeah so a toxic male narcissist harms people around him and there are Nazis I have no idea what that reminds me but how is it that Breaking Bad predicted everything that we're going through now I feel like please don't tell us we're responsible for him art tends to reflect the culture in a lot of ways you know and it's not like we woke up last year and suddenly everything was terrible like things had been building for a while and I don't think there was never the intention of like we're gonna mirror these things but it just I don't know that stuff just kind of and because we grow up in the society we live in the society it's gonna come through in that art I worked in a show table did as well Jenny was there as well the lone gunman like a year and a half before the Twin Towers came down we had a scene where the lone gunman stopped the bad guys from flying a plane into the World Trade Center you know weird weird happenstance but I think that part of the reason that the story of Walter White was so powerful because it was a man who felt diminished he felt like there was something that was his due that he wasn't getting and I think that we're seeing that play out in all kinds of spheres and that desire to not just gather power but abused it and a tale as old as time yeah you always very much resisted Walt as a metaphor for a time in a place or this is America and he represents this it was always Walt is a singular person who just happens to be in this environment he didn't represent anything else other than all the nuances of this particular character but in hindsight yeah you can make all those conclusions and stuff like that but we we never talked about that or use that as a way to break story we're talking about one man we're not talking about the the American health care system we're not talking about that's I have to say that before we started taping you said something very wise I thought which actually I think I've thought about it from time to time over the years once it's out there in the world it's not ours I don't argue with anyone who tells me I think waltz still alive or I think it's about the failed American health care system or I think is this or that it's whatever you want it to be we don't own it anymore we owned it if we ever did for a very brief finite window of time and then it left the writers room in it and it went out to the world in our relationship with it changes over time because we watched the pilot and I'm not the person I was ten years ago and televisions changed so our relationship can change with it over time as well one thing that's been kind of a pet theory of mine and you can tell me if I'm totally wrong which people like to tell that to critics but I really think of season three obviously it's the midpoint in terms of the seasons but to me it felt like a real turning point you added some series regulars you added people who were within waltz world but kind of occupy different places in the story and had different things to do and first of all do you think it was a turning point and second of all what were you guys thinking about as you headed into that there's a way to think of this is in a very global way like you know we're gonna introduce these characters we're gonna do this we're gonna do that most decisions we make it's all solving a problem in that moment yeah it's all solving a problem in that moment you know Walt and Jesse are trying to sell meth and one of their guys gets arrested what happens who's the lawyer Bob Odenkirk isn't available to clean up after Jay after Jane is killed so we introduced his character Mike and Jonathan banks was available so it's a lot of the things that seem like they're part of a master plan if there's a master plan it's just trying to stay true to the characters and to the world that we're in and this one things I learned from the show was not to get too devoted to the big ideas a master plan of how what's what each season is going to be about is to track the characters on a moment-by-moment basis to understand where their heads are at as Vince would always say that was always when we got stuck Vince would say where's Walt's head at where's where's Jesse's head at and that was always that was always the prelude to the breaks through him all it because when you said that it's usually because we had gotten attached to some big plan or some big set-piece scene that we thought had to be there but the characters didn't want to do what we wanted to do and so in my mind anyway when we came in every day it wasn't about putting markers down and saying okay episode 8 this is gonna happen 9 is this is gonna happen it was about what happens next yeah what happens max isn't very organic except when it wasn't bouncing cars yeah like trying to back into that bouncing car that's right Oh God yeah when rachel is when Tuco gets killed yeah yeah like we had a couple of those like we started in a corner always like the brain oh we were organic and our storytelling and we did try just as Peter said with distress well Dean Boone was also something that we just loved Sam could probably talk I was at t o blowin and the death of Gus and we knew that we want to bill to have Zoe did today when Gus was gonna die and whether he should because he was such a fantastic character but I think that we loved the idea this the idea of like putting a bomb on tio and yeah season three or four that's a big boom when we had visitors to the room he would say take that car down everybody would I visited the writers rooms and all the boards were turned around I'm like I wouldn't understand that yeah that's true I would imagine there were ideas or story elements or even moment by moment decisions that caused a lot of debate amongst gee like what were some of the things that you would look back and you're like man we couldn't decide on this we really had a lot of creative arguments let's put it that way I remember one time when they were all against me mo so I mean the one time I was about to say is that Jane Jane that was a big one Jane choking to death on her own vomit and Walt not stopping it from happening I think my first thought was let's just have Walt give her a hot dose of heroin and actively murder her and everyone remember it's one of those things you're like pitching to the window to move to you know not complete omission I'm just watching like his we're ended up but moved to him seeing her choke and actually like turning her cheek so that she would actually aspirate so that she was on her back yeah as opposed to and then ultimately we landed that just complete he just watches it and doesn't actually do an active no intervention and these guys were right by the way because that my first instinct would have been any viewer the show knows he did get just that bad but he got that bad later that was only it was too would have been too soon and these guys were right and that's why he packed really smart people around you and you know enough to if enough people tell you you're drunk you need to sit out that's the whole trick to this job I was so mad when he did that I was mad when he I was like disabled yeah yeah I mean to me you can say oh well then he later do you know turned a machine gun on a bunch of people but I mean to me that chain moment was really hard for me as a viewer of the show it was really like do I want to keep following this guy because he's clearly willing to put his own needs before those of innocent people I mean obviously Jane had her issues but that to me the passivity of it it's still not okay you know and like him just standing there no no you're right she's not any less of a murderer but you know I love drew close to me I was actually again I was watching this marathon recently over the holidays and my girlfriend Holly said we had to do it because Holly doesn't just because well her point was I mean she didn't she was horrified by two issues were you but her take on it was he loves Jesse he doesn't love Jane Jess is important to him jesse is going to die from heroin sooner or later if he doesn't if something big doesn't change the way she read it watching it again and again is what you said a little while ago you watch it with fresh eyes every time you see anything that just this show but because you're a different person but you know her take on it was Jesse's more important to me than Jane is and Jane is gonna get by the way you know there's all the nuances of Jessie kind of got Jane back on drugs but nonetheless here's where they are Jane is the person who introduces a heroine and this is gonna end badly so maybe God or fate or the universe has taken a hand here where they're starting to choke although if you watch the scene real closely he doesn't do it on purpose but he's shaking Jessie trying to wake him up and that action inadvertently is what flops her over under her back oh yeah watch it real close to see also I mean it doesn't excuse it but it's also it's another case for Cranston bails you out in the sense that like on his face as he's doing this the toll the the moral acknowledgement of what he's doing as opposed to and another performance it's sort of like oh well it's not a pretty thing but I had it but it's just like you can see that a part of Walt is dying in that moment as well never mustache twirling you know and you know where the was just a seduction of the audience constantly that I I always felt that the I still find this is that so the scenes have so much more emotional impact that I'm expecting that scenes one of them another one was when when Jesse sees Andrea getting shot and I remember I remember what I really had no idea when I wrote that one I had no idea what Aaron was gonna do exactly and then what he did was so shocking and so raw it went it went way beyond anything I want a picture yeah Errol yeah absolutely and and so it's one of the wonderful things about yeah because we spent so much time talking about these things we try never be cold about them but it has a different impact once once the cast gets a hold of it I was angry when I watched that episode because I was on my honeymoon and so I was like watching it on my a laptop and I got really mad at us when Andrea yeah I did because I guess you know when you're in it and you're doing it you always have a little bit of that distance from the story because you know every possibility that you discussed you know what we chose and you kind of have to separate yourself in a way because otherwise you'll get like emotionally overwhelmed but watching it as a viewer I was so I was like devastating on this bed and my honey my honey perfectly crying and mad at us the same time so yeah just the way it played and yeah it was really sorry wow what a story and now is a good a time as any to say and it's been hinted at already but it's you know again riff on what Peters saying I couldn't be more proud of that writing of the right of the work all of us did but that only gets you so far if it hadn't been for Bryan Cranston if it hadn't been for Aaron Paul and Anna Gunn and Dean Norris and Betsy Brandt RJ Mitte Giancarlo Esposito Jonathan banks this whole crew Bob Odenkirk now once you get started you can't leave oh yeah I mean you know I don't think we'd have been invited here to do this today and again it all starts in this case really with that number one on the call sheet Brian it was such a minefield to play this character so many potential pitfalls and traps and if he had mustache twirled or if he had you know the big thing I was worried about from the get-go is it actors are only human beings you know like the rest of us you don't really want to be disliked you don't really want to be actors sometimes historically tend to whether they realize it or not soften their character their approach their character if they're playing it for years on end because they don't want to be unliked and I've sort of feared cuz I said to Brian early on with it's this guy this guy's really gonna get dark yeah and he was like bring it on man he never faltered he was fearless not just being physically naked or physically unattractive or wearing his tighty whitey didn't none of that stuff fazed him but he didn't care if the whole world hated him and weirdly enough because of that I think the world embraced him even when he did his character did the worst conceivable things but I have to tell all of you that Ozymandias is probably the most devastating hour of TV I've ever seen in it a good way but it destroyed me no less a human being it was incredible a lot of my friends were critics and I'm sure you've seen people saying this it's one of the best hours of television ever made so thanks that's not all it was but in the braking as always a group effort but then more or rote just to live in hell out of the episode just wrote a great great hour I got lucky because it was the episode where we paid off so many things where we destroyed so much where plot points that we have been building towards combusted escalated you know we knew that it was going to be a massive episode in terms of event and you would luckily it worked the to you the first to write an episode together working with Ryan Johnson that episode so brilliantly yeah all of them all three did but man he just crushed it what was it like working with him but Ryan yeah he's a blast he's a maniac he's a brainiac he's he knows exactly what he wants and he you know has his little notebook where he stick-figure draws all his shots and you know there's nothing that he hasn't thought of and he was the one who came up with that incredible moment in Ozymandias out in the desert after Hank is killed mercilessly by Jack and Walt's hands are tied behind his back and he falls in slow motion his whole side by Falls and his face lands on the cracked earth Ryan had the art department and VFX guys designed like these puzzle pieces that we covered in dirt that were flipped by a trigger so that when they were together like this on the ground and when Walt's face hit they disassembled just a quarter of an inch and a puff of smoke of dust one so that it was as if you know the man was shattering the very earth upon which she so because of all his cumulative actions which brings us to the title of it Ozymandias statue in the desert yeah we talked about that in that final season as being an excellent metaphor yeah great poem it's interesting to this so much of the show visually and in thematically that the wide open spaces these vistas but in Ozymandias there's that scene which is the most intimate scene but it's a scene of violence where he says you know we're a family yeah and that's my fight that's such a mm-hmm it's such a distillation of those specific people but it was so powerfully staged a mean was it exactly how you envisioned it in your mind is that how the Ryan and the cast brought it to life or was it pretty much yeah it was really uh miraculously just as we had imagined it does he say it twice and the second time his voice cracks yeah it's quieter it's like he sort of blurts it out like it's obvious and then he says it again almost to reassure himself as it's all crumbling in front of him and Walter Jr's staving him off and calling the police and Skylar's babies crying and he's cut and he just can't believe that any of this has transpired and it's the same knife he used several seasons before spent all night by the window looking at hoping to Co was not gonna show up but that was all he had to defend the family with and then those little things are things I'm really proud of are little things that we dropped in that we connected season after season that might not pay off for years that we always circle back to and you designed Rian Johnson in house mantis you designed a chessboard for him right I think Moira texted me and said can you can you create a scenario where the king is trapped and I just took it back to my chess board of it and send it to them I Tom was very handy throughout this whole adventure copy because Tom drew the Walt Whitman sketch mm-hmm I did do that right the actual prop that you see on screen was read by mr. Strauss while we were in the room breaking in episode yeah he had it twice he did it the first time on a yellow legal pad that's true I could talk about that episode forever that's gonna be our next reunion but the whole legacy of Breaking Bad I mean I feel like it just happened it's such an incredibly vital time for TV and I think through no you know genius of our own it was just good luck well there were a lot of people I think who came up around the same time and wanted to sort of start really like playing with certain conventions and certain things but one of TV's big go twos is let's let's tack on another season how about we get to a hundred that was kind of the world you can you know a lot of you I think a lot of us came up in but you only did 62 right 62 episodes did you kind of know when it was over did you all have a sense that like we have to wrap it up after five seasons as opposed to trying to drag it out we didn't know an exact number but I knew from the get-go I mean I had come from the x-files and actually a couple of us did come from which is still going yeah and I'm so glad it is I have such fond memories of that show but I also have a memory of somewhere around season 6 or season 7 or the x-files I was enjoying myself immensely and I was not online but suddenly I'm hearing anecdotally from people who were online wait a minute people are kind of over this thing you know the world's moving on here and I just I what we went through in the x-files me personally I could have gone 10 seasons I could have been there forever I was enjoying it so much but suddenly you look up for me to desk you look around and you hear people say yeah that sure used to be good I used to watch that is that still in the air I just I don't speak for myself I did not want that to happen with this thing I didn't know how many episodes none of us did exactly I just knew I wanted to leave the party early with people wanting more I mean a perfect we'll leave it at exactly the microsecond that's perfect but failing that which is pretty easy to fail better to leave too soon than leave too late that was the lesson from my personal time on the x-files I learned and I just I was phobic about overstay our welcome because we had been so lucky some it was it was lucky was hard work who's been surrounded by brilliant people not just this group and all the folks in front of the camera behind it to squander the best luck had ever had none of us wanted to screw up this fantastic good fortune we had had by staying too late by over doing it much like I've already done this answer by right over over explaining overstaying your welcome there was a day I remember where you came in and the question was how much more story do we have how much more story do have and I was in the x-files well I think we can go on forever I love it here so but then we discuss you know just won't go to prison is there a prison show is there a season where he's in prison is really is there this the trial Walter why we pitched all pitched all this stuff real excited and and Vince come nodded and thought about it and then the next thing we knew he said there's I think we're gonna do whatever it was two more two more seasons 60 60 more yeah and I don't think I don't want to put words in your mouth I don't think there was a there wasn't a plan that 16 is exactly the right number it was just it was a it was a kind of a yeah thumbnail shot in the dark yeah did that shot in the dark turned out being feeling like the right number yeah because we wrote to it I mean it honestly if it had been 18 we would have written to it if it had been 14 we would have written to it we're stuck and need it more I think AMC probably would have allowed us to do a couple more episodes if we felt like we couldn't wrap the story up in that 16 so but 16 turned out to be just right yeah and I'm old enough to remember when she's in onesie and tune it's like will even be coming back and then my season five I was like oh yeah Breaking Bad is taking over the culture it was huge it was very I mean just lucky timing with Netflix and people being able to hear about the show and catch up in a very fast rate I mean people were binge watching just at the right moment just as we were going into our final season for the weirdest parallel to Breaking Bad you know at that time that it hitting up I think the first couple seasons two or three seasons hit Netflix around the same time Netflix didn't have a ton of or even any originals at the time and also Downton Abbey I'm fully convinced that there are a few shows there's a bunch of shows around that time that because Netflix wasn't pushing their own originals necessarily and people wanted to catch up because they were hearing good things you bear that distinction with Downton Abbey and I think that's good company to be just you know guess VOD hitting when it did but I have to say and I always want to add this I don't want ever mention Netflix without mentioning AMC because AMC took a chance on this show when no one else would they had the courage of their convictions and their conviction was this was a worthwhile endeavor and they stuck with it as you just said a minute ago during the dark times when I mean we're getting about as many viewers as there is like the test pattern you know for like sunrise semester or whatever early days nobody was watching this thing the strike happened then the strike a strike one of the strikes yeah yeah and I remember it being a really dodgy Tom of weather you know some shows didn't come back from the strike no we worked right up to midnight we did right to the strike deadline I remember that and your episode was that's right yeah I didn't understand at the time because it was my first season of any television show that I remember that was the morning before the strike and you finally read the script there Mike my script friend and you called me up and said thank you man it was not intended to be a season ender no that was a lot of the reasons why I had worked as a season ender was due to the great shooting and post-production that kind of gave that last scene a feeling an open-ended feeling and it was very I think this is fair to say it was very different from what would have happened if we'd had the full the full season the strike was a terrible time for everybody and the industry it was tough I mean it was necessary but it was tough but it was it was like the best single stroke of good luck I feel like I ever personally had the timing of it because the show was it was being shot without benefit of seeing anybody's reaction to it and I was ready to throw with the kitchen sink into the writing process for the final it would have been nine episodes instead of seven the curtail buzz attract but I was as ready to kill Hank at the end of the season I was ready to have Walt get found out by the world I would have just the show wouldn't go try to get it some notice to try to get some make some noise with the presser yeah yeah it was the temptations that was a temptation to have a grand finale your first season out so they're like oh my god can't wait till next season and so so you would have had a dragon you're saying I've had like ice dragons I mean George is right the trick to that one of the many tricks to the job of all of us to working together on a TV show is you want to be only as interesting as you absolutely have to be which is to say you don't want to throw the kitchen sink at it because then you know to use yet another metaphor you're burning the candle at both ends plot-wise what do you have left and for season two what do you have in reserves what's in the storeroom so I think a lot of shows make that mistake especially now that there are more shows people have to stand out so you have to go bigger and bigger and bigger and I think at that point then you lose the specificity of the characters yeah and their moral or emotional dilemmas but again I mean a lot of people make that mistake cuz it's a very easy mistake to make I was all set to make it I would have my furthest rate coming along you know we got lucky at so many points along the way I'd look back and I feel like you got a finite reserve of luck in your life and I really feel like I can't believe I'm still alive because I use that every bit of it as a writer or creative person what do you feel like and look for everyone to answer this if they can what do you feel like you brought forward from the Breaking Bad experience into your career as an artist and writer and all the different creative hats that you wear so let's start with you Sam I mean it's learned so much being on this I mean look 99% of what I know about writing in television I learned through events and working on the show I feel the same way yeah I mean I remember when I first saw the pilot or something like that that it felt like a great premise and it felt like a great revenge fantasy the middle class man and it it seemed very clear to me that like oh yeah this sort of middle class guy gets to be a drug dealer and all but then I was so impressed by the process the love of detail the love of the moment-to-moment that you know that Vince just held us all to account to which is just like what what what's interesting about this next moment at some moment that you're setting up are teeing up and stuff like that in terms of storytelling hiring great people and letting them do their jobs but I mean to me it's just it's just mostly like it's just this cloud of what I'm not doing in my life that when when I you know it's like what would Vince do what would work I'm Breaking Bad as I go I'm not doing that he taught me shame for me what I carry forward I really feel like I sounded like I learned everything that I know about writing and crafting story and character from Vince and from this experience in the room and what I have taken moving forward is the love the obsession of excruciating detail and a love of breaking story organically as opposed to whatever that language is that I don't speak which is a story beast or AC story runner it doesn't mean anything if you don't know where the characters heads are at and if you don't know why they're motivating to do the things that they do and if you're not willing to sit there and suffer through the intimate excruciating conversations that get to the heart of the matter so that's that's what I'm carrying forward into my work that I do now that kind of attention to detail and craft and character and always remembering why you're telling the story or telling you not trying to impose anything on it from the outside yeah what they said plus there's so much that we could say I mean it was I'd say one of the things I learned the value of a safe room and the fact that we could all sit in that room and say what was on our minds and maybe pitch 50 terrible ideas to the one great one that meant an awful lot and the fact that Vince was always willing to pursue any Avenue any avenue that you bring up he he almost never said let's not go there let's let's let's look through the consequences of this idea and to really spend the time to think about what these people would do in real life the another thing that I learned him we could go on forever is to look backwards instead of looking forwards in other words the more we went on the more I realized that some of the ideas that we got most excited about were looking back at things that were already in the story one example is in the pilot you see that Walt contributed to work that won the Nobel Prize and you said well how did this happen and the more times you can come up with questions about the characters little little things or what was that character doing when they were off screen how did this person get like this we see two chicken brothers in the point of hermanos logo who's the other chicken brother right and just stuff like that just to really go back through the world and take it all very seriously instead of grasping for the thing the low-hanging fruit oh this will be exciting let's have this happen and it's a certain dogged quality just follow every idea to its logical conclusion and sometimes that was incredibly frustrating because sometimes I would have the feeling in the room this is this particular idea is never gonna happen it's not gonna work sometimes I was right and sometimes I was completely wrong so I think there's a certain openness that that I learned from Breaking Bad trust trustee trust that you know I think that that's something that's you know having written about television for a long time that when people feel free to throw out ideas and explore them and there's a sense of trust and camaraderie like that that tends to produce a better show I think doesn't it crazy well it was felt like I got undue credit for that it's it's not for being a nice guy or anything it's just why would you shut people down if they're you're paying them to be there and give you their best and then say I was stupid we're not doing that when people do that to me I'm gonna stop talking you know yes there are people who do that mmm doesn't sound like you've been one of them though yeah you know what the interesting thing about this job there's no one right way to do it and that's one of the many things I love about it there's no one right way to do it but you know as for me I mean what did I learn I'm learning everything I mean I I mean I wouldn't have been able to have the base knowledge to do this job if I hadn't been on the x-files for seven years but I still felt so far behind the eight ball when I got the job I didn't couldn't believe they were gonna let me direct the pilot I just fear drove me every every minute of every day fear drove me but I learned so much from these folks I remember that time George I remember we had the DEA agent that were the head is on the tortoise this is what I was remembered we had the head on the tortoise and we had come up with that as a group in the in the in the room and I was I literally said we can go home early today cuz this is like the coolest image it was arrived at you know with the with the hive mind and we got the head and the tortoise and I literally said let's go home early this was great and then George says and then he touches the head in the head blows up and I said man now you've gone too far that's just let's just go let's stop for a while I hit while we're ahead like what that's too far that's genius just I learned that I helped I think I knew it already but I had it proven to me time and time again that when you are surrounded by people who are smarter than you are anything's possible just so long as you keep listening to him never quit while you're ahead and you know I'll bring it up and storm out of this that joke Jennifer what was well I was really lucky because this was my first writing job you know I started as an assistant then started writing in season three and then came on full-time in season four so kind of my entire you know growth like growing as a writer when you're finding your voice happened on the show and I'm very very lucky and sense so specifically the stuff that really resonated for me is the idea that everything kind of comes from character when people ask me about rain they're like oh well how do you figure out your theme and I never think of theme because I just it's about well what's the story I'm talking about this character and where does that lead them and then those themes come out because it's like whatever that character is looking for that ends up being your theme so just as we said always grounding it in character that's gonna inform plot themes even your settings sometimes like all that stuff and then personally it sort of taught me to trust my own voice you know because coming in as the new kid even though I had been on the show I was the new writer so you kind of you want to prove yourself but you also don't want to step on toes and you're also kind of confused as to what your voice might be and just being empowered by Vince and the rest of the writers who are all very generous with me because there are rooms where a new person coming in especially when who's come up could be treated as you know maybe a little bit of a threat or not as nurtured by the staff and so having all those people believe in me and support me and while I was still kind of getting my feet was really helpful and it made me trust myself more so that was probably the most valuable thing I got out of the show I surprisingly learned nothing George I think the thing you come away with is when I first started out writing was worrying about what does the audience want what is the big thing that they're gonna love I think when you have a collection of people that you really trust you just don't even think don't worry about that it's just as long as everybody we always got worked very hard to get everybody on the same page of is this the idea to go with is this the character direction is this trust the group you're with and then don't even worry about what the audience reaction is cuz I think as long as we trusted each other everything else worked out which I guess is a good prelude because I was gonna say you don't trust your audience because we paid such attention to the details you know every moment I feel like to us on-screen was like a precious moment and infusing every moment with what the emotion and not just sort of putting and filling in the pieces of the puzzle to tell the story which is hard enough but you know if you're gonna take five seconds of screams time you better be sure that there's an emotion there and it may be very very subtle and in most cases it is but trust the audience is gonna pick up on that because audiences do and to me I felt like that was like both before and after Breaking Bad you find this tendency to like well yeah I'm just not gonna get that I can understand go for the big thing or the the obvious way and I think what Vince taught was really to focus on just telling something that is has an emotional content and the audience will pick up on where you are and so just that that kind of attention that exacting attention to detail I wish more people took that note if you will because I think that there's a tendency now and TV to kind of just expand not just the running time but just kind of like luxuriate and whatever time you have and it's I just think that one of the things I appreciate about Breaking Bad is how there was such an attention to the craft into every moment and how each moment built on each other and it was it all felt very uh time well-spent sounds like making it and watching it it was I'm feel so lucky to be part of it I just man I'm getting misted not literally but kind of feeling kind of misty about just the fact that it's you know it was so painful but those guys will tell you the half the time to be right it was so in eyesight the paint of a guy that worked with a director I worked with in the x-files Rob Bowman used to say the pain fades but the glory remains and then that there really is true I mean it's all I remembers how great it was I don't remember all the pain yeah I don't think we can leave on a better note than that so thank you all so much thank you awesome thanks [Music] you [Music]

Channel: Breaking Bad & Better Call Saul

Views: 274,088

Keywords: Breaking Bad, Walter White, Bryan Cranston, New Mexico, Anna Gunn, RJ Mitte, Aaron Paul, Dean Norris, Betsy Brandt, Bob Odenkirk, Jonathan Banks, Jesse Pinkman, Official Trailer, Heisenberg, Vince Gilligan, Sony Pictures Entertainment, Breaking Bad full episodes, Breaking Bad season one, Breaking Bad clips, Breaking Bad funny moments, Breaking Bad bloopers, watch Breaking Bad online, Breaking Bad streaming, Writers’ Room Reunion

Id: YzvVdJmwIeo

Length: 55min 25sec (3325 seconds)

Published: Wed Feb 28 2018