Even though the “Breaking Bad” spin-off “Better Call Saul” has been delayed until 2015, AMC had already scheduled a panel for the Television Critics Association. So Vince Gilligan still met with the TCA, though with no footage from “Better Call Saul” to show, and he gave us a lot of info about the spinoff.
Of course, with such a hot panel, we only got to ask one actual question, which we will present at the top, but as a member of the TCA we were there to report every question from our fellow journalists.
CraveOnline: If you weren’t such a highly anticipated show, the news of delaying the launch might not have been quite as big news, but at what point did you know you weren’t going to make the original date? And did it have anything to do with how much pressure is on this and expectations?
Vince Gilligan: I’m going to take full responsibility for this and tell you the true story of this thing, which is that we could have made the deadline, but I am slow as mud as a TV writer. I always have been. It was my big fear when I got the job on “The X Files.” I had been writing movie scripts, and I didn’t know if I could write at a TV pace.
I still feel I’m very slow for television. We had a pace, thanks to AMC and Sony, on “Breaking Bad” that was deliciously stately for television, and it was nothing that they wanted. I think I can speak for them it’s nothing any studio or network would want, but we have a way of doing things that is slower than most TV shows. And I think we averaged three weeks per episode just breaking episodes.
We did on “Breaking Bad,” and low and behold, not a big surprise to me, we’re doing the same thing with “Better Call Saul” because we want to think everything through, and we feel that that pays dividends because, with “Breaking Bad,” people say, “That seemed pretty that seemed to knit together pretty well.” That and the largest factor for that being the case is because we had, thankfully thanks to AMC and Sony, we had time to think everything through.
So here we are doing it again, and I think we could have made November, but the bigger point is could we have made our 13 coming in at the same time with Season 2. And AMC was very gracious to us and did not push us to say, “You’ve got figure out a new way to do this job.” Because, A, they’re good folks who were understanding of our process and, B, I think they also know we only know the one way to do it.
So they were very understanding, and that is the entire reason we got we pushed for this show, and it’s also the entire reason our final 16 episodes of “Breaking Bad” were broken up eight and eight. It was not some kind of it was there was no desire on anybody’s part to sort of elongate it artificially. It was me saying to AMC and Sony, “I think we can do this in the time allotted.” And they were very understanding, and we were all kind of biting our nails over it. Luckily, it worked out very well for “Breaking Bad.” So that’s what you’re seeing here, and they’ve been good to us, which is why we like working with them.
Did you lose access to certain actors like Dean Norris because they’re on other shows?
Well, I’m sure there are actors and there are some of them, we can’t name names because we don’t want to give too much away, but there are some probably, if we thought about it, we know we couldn’t get them now and there’s others who we haven’t looked into and we don’t know whether they’re available or not, but the best way to answer it I guess, suffice it to say that we’re having fun telling the story. We’re having fun finding ways to make it completely new and fresh. We’re also having fun finding ways to loop it back to 62 episodes of “Breaking Bad.” With that in mind, we’re taking it on a case by case, actor by actor basis.
Have you talked about Bryan Cranston directing an episode, and does it make any sense to have Walter White appear?
If it makes sense, we’ll do it. If it doesn’t make sense, we won’t. I’d love to have him as a director. He’s an Emmy nominated director. We’d be happy to have him in any capacity because he’s a great guy. He’s first and foremost a wonderful human being. Everybody says that in this business, but it really is true. He’s a great guy. He’s always a pleasure and a joy to have around. They all were, so if we can find ways, selfishly, to have them around in any capacity, we’ll do it. Character-wise, who knows? Maybe there’s a way to do it.
Will Emmy night be the first time you’re all together again?
First time in a while, first time in over a year I think. I did see Bryan in All the Way. He did great.
How hard do you have to work to figure out where you’re going to tell something traditionally and where you’re going to break the mold?
Oh, it’s very hard. It’s like reinventing the wheel. You sit there and you get six real smart people around you and you sit there and stare at the ceiling all day long and say, “What’s a different kind of wheel?” It’s hard. And you don’t do it every time out. Sometimes there’s the one right and proper and fitting and satisfying way to do it. Sometimes you can “reinvent the wheel” to a fault and you can say, “Well, we’re going to do what’s different to almost a nihilistic degree.” Sometimes if you can satisfy the audience, that’s a pretty obvious thought but so be it. Sometimes reinventing the wheel is not the most intelligent way to go.
“Breaking Bad” owed so much to western with the cinematography and landscape. Are you keeping that visual palette?
Another reason I love having Peter [Gould] as a part of it is he used to teach this stuff at USC. He is even more interested in the visual stuff than I am, if possible. He came into this project with a great idea both of frame grabs from classic movies like Bertolucci’s The Conformist. We talked about a lot of Kubrick.
Yes, the short answer is it’s the same way important to us, and it’s important to us that this not look like a carbon copy of “Breaking Bad.” I was thinking that as I was directing the first episode. Peter was always thinking about that as well and really thinking about it. He’s directing the final episode of this first season. As we were talking about, it’s hard to reinvent the wheel. There’s only so many places you can put a camera to tell a story because ultimately every story is about this. Having said that, we’re doing our damnedest to make it as different as possible and we’re not shooting on film anymore.
How limited are you by “Breaking Bad” as a series and where Saul goes there by the end of “Breaking Bad” and just by where you’ve already written yourself?
That’s a damn good question. It’s a challenge. It’s a leap of faith or stupidity into the unknown. I thought it was going to be kind of easy going forward, “Ah, we know who this guy is.” We don’t really know we didn’t really know who this guy is at all when you think about it. He was a really interesting supporting character, and suddenly Peter and I have taken long, long walks around Burbank, our old “Breaking Bad” writers’ offices, saying, “No, wait a minute, how does this work?”
So it’s a very interesting process, and there are certain limits that you have obviously identified yourself. We know where this guy is going. We can’t, for instance, in the first episode have him lose an arm or an eye or something like that. Well, maybe so. He could have a glass eye. We’re breaking episode eight out of 10, 10 being the first season order. And it’s challenging, but it’s fun. It’s like being really into this Rubik’s Cube you’re trying to solve. Although having said that, I’ve never actually solved one in my life.
