In this exclusive interview with Breaking Bad Greece, Gordon Smith (writers' assistant on AMC's "Breaking Bad" & and one of the writers of "Better Call Saul") talks about his experiences on the show, his cooperation both with Vince Gilligan and Michelle MacLaren, his work "Chicks and Guns" and he even spills few details on the upcoming spin-off "Better Call Saul". Hit the jump below to read many more interesting stuff!
Q : When you first joined the show you started as a production assistant and you were soon promoted to writers' assistant and Vince Gilligan's executive assistant. Can you tell us your exact role in the writers' room? Also can you name one of your hardest assingments that the writers asked you to do?
A : Yes, I started as a P.A., then became Vince’s assistant Season Four, and then Vince’s assistant and writers’ assistant Season Five. So, my role changed over the years. By the end, I was in the writers’ room taking notes as the writers broke stories. As for difficult assignments, I’d say THAT was the most difficult one – my regular gig. As Writers’ Assistant, you have to try to keep up as story beats get pitched, amended, re-pitched, refined and keep the essentials so that it can be referred to later. It’s kinda tough to stay focused. Everything else – researching a topic or writing a scene for casting or whatever – that was all more fun. Jenn Carroll and I were a team, and while taking notes in the room was my domain and coordinating scripts was hers, everything else was shared fairly equally, so that tended to make side projects more collaborative and less a solo venture.
Q : You really wrote yourselves into a corner, sometimes. Like the one on the magnificent cliffhanger of episode 411 "Crawl Space" or the one on episode 306 "Sunset" in which Walt and Jesse were trapped inside the RV. How difficult was to get out of there both in production and in story-wise?
A : Every corner we painted ourselves into was a challenge, but to my mind, the “oh shit” moments — where there was some plot element that drove the characters into a crazy spot — those weren’t the hard ones to get out of. They were hard, yes, but in a certain way they were a question of plot mechanics. The ones I remember being hard, the ones the writers would really grapple with, were the emotional corners, where characters were at a crossroads with lots of choices available, like why Skyler would stay with Walt after certain turns or if Jesse would continue cooking after Drew Sharp’s death. Those things took a lot of finessing and discussion.
Q : One of my favourites lines of the show comes from episode 506 "Buyout" written by the very talented Gennifer Hutchison, who has written some of the most iconic lines of the show. This episode is an aftermath of Drew Sharp's murder. And one particular line which comes from Jesse sums up the entire show. The line was "Are we in the meth bussiness or the money bussiness?". To my perspective that line showed that in the beginning Walt started the meth bussiness for the shake of his family but ultimately this was just for his ego. Was it intentional? Or i just "read" the line wrong? What's your perspective on it?
A : I think that’s a good way to look at it. Certainly, at that point, we wanted to take Walt’s ostensible motivation – money – away from him. If it was about money, Jesse’s offering him a way to make plenty of it and be done! But even then, Walt can’t see himself for who he truly is. It takes several more shocks – the pile of money Skyler shows him, Hank’s death, exile to New Hampshire – to bring Walt to understand himself.
Q : Vince Gilligan always talked about how much he loved "The Godfather's" Trilogy and the TV show "MASH". Also he talked about how much he was influenced by them and especially by the finale of "MASH". Finally, i feel like the writers were very influenced by "The Sopranos" and "The Shield" Can you tell us any other references and inspirations of the show's?
A : There were a lot of fans of classic Westerns, especially Once Upon a Time in the West and The Searchers. Classic sci-fi shows like Star Trek and The Twilight Zone also got a lot of discussion.
Q : One of the things i loved about the show was its montages. How did you decide it's a good/fitting time for the story to drop a montage sequence?
A : You know, that was mostly dictated by where we were in the story. If it felt like a good time, we’d use one. Episode 508 “Gliding Over All” had several amazing montages because that was what the episode called for. That was really a double-whammy of goodness for montages: we had Moira Walley-Beckett who just wrote the hell out of them, and then the incredible Michelle MacLaren directing them. It was a master class on montages, in my opinion.
Q : There is a thin line between naiveness and denial. How did you manage to keep Hank so perfectly balanced ? & How challenging was to make Hank such a compelling character without making him look stupid?
A : Certainly, keeping Hank in the dark was difficult, but mostly because of something we refer to as Tom’s Law, named for writer Tom Schnauz. Tom’s Law, roughly, is that if the audience knows something, then they assume the characters know it, too. So, since the audience knows Walt is Heisenberg, it feels like Hank should know. But personally, I feel like in real life the fact that Walt was his close family member would make it more difficult for Hank to ever believe Walt was Heisenberg – not less. It’s difficult to believe bad things about the people we’re close to. Walt’s secret underworld identity only seems obvious, self-evident to the audience because they know it and aren’t Walt’s family. If they were in Hank’s shoes, I think most people would behave very similarly. They’d need definitive proof before the thought could even occur. Shy of that, and it’d just be an unthinkable thing.
Q : I imagine that these last 8 episodes were the hardest ones to break. But if you had to choose one episode of the entire show for the title of "the hardest one to break", which one would you choose?
A : Oh, that’s very hard to say. Some took longer, for sure. I hear legends from before my time on the show that 208, “Better Call Saul,” was very difficult to break. I might say 504 “Fifty-One” and 509 “Blood Money” took a ton of time and effort – again, not because of the plot, but because the emotional states of the characters were so tricky to get just right.
Q : Shows like "The Sopranos" & "The Shield" felt like that they explored the whole "antihero genre" and that there wasn't anything left unexplored. But then Breaking Bad came in and crashed the first two stories. That's one of the main reasons i believe Breaking Bad is the best show ever on TV. As a writer do you believe there is still something left unexplored on the "antihero story"?
Α : Sure! But that may just be the optimist in me. I think The Americans is working in very interesting anti-hero territory right now. It depends on how you think about what the heart of an anti-hero is, I guess. Is it a good person doing bad things? A person doing bad things for good reasons? The Shield was arguably a good person doing bad things for good reasons; The Sopranos was arguably a bad person doing bad things for bad reasons. Breaking Bad sort of flips things so that you have to kind of wonder if Walt is a good or bad person and if his reasons are good or bad. His actions certainly are bad, most of the time. But his motivations are harder to figure out. I think the fascination with anti-heroes is that they explore that relation between the doer and the deed: can you do bad things and be good? Are we defined by our actions or by our inner life? I think in that way, the anti-hero is a pretty deep well to plumb for material.
Q : Let's talk a bit about "Chicks and Guns" The wonderful scene that you and Jenn Carroll co-created for the DVDs' extras of season 5! I loved that scene because it showed us the backstory of Jesse getting the gun, How was the writing process like? Also can you tell us any other ideas that you thought it might have worked for this extra scene but in the end you left them out?
A : Thank you! Man, I wish we’d come up with a better title. That was always a working title and then it just kind of stuck. The process involved Jenn and I sitting around for hours and hours and trying to come up with pieces of story that we hadn’t seen. Mostly, if we hadn’t seen it, it wasn’t necessary and didn’t shed any new light—there aren’t a lot of cracks in the story where we could anchor a story. So we brainstormed, came up with a few, then pitched to Vince and he liked this one. We beat out the beats with Vince and then wrote it. It was a mini-version of the process in the room, basically. I think he liked another one that we developed into a set of webisodes, but unfortunately we ran out of time to shoot them. That one would have been fun. Walt and Jesse reminisce in 508 (I think) about running out of gas in the desert on a cook—basically, we had a story about Jesse walking to get gas and running into his father on the road. We thought it would have been a fun chance to bring Jesse’s father figures together.
Q : This scene was directed by the one and only Michelle MacLaren. How was it like working with her in one of your scripts?
A : Amazing. She’s an incredible director and wonderful person. This was a long scene and we had one day to bang it out, and Michelle just killed it. I’m really hoping against hope that at some point I’ll write something worthy of Michelle directing it, but I’m glad that I had this chance! Also, I should give props to our fantastic editor, Trevor Baker. He was our Post Production Coordinator, and he’s a great guy and super-talented dude.
Q : How was it like working on Breaking Bad and especially with Vince Gilligan?
A : I got unbelievably lucky and I’m well aware of that. It’s the kind of luck that makes you really scared for the future because, I mean, how often do you get hit by lightning? It’s a family of folks who I think the world of—passionate, talented, smart. Just great people, all around, many of whom are now among my nearest and dearest friends. That all starts with Vince, who’s been a boss and mentor to me and tons more people. He really tries as much as he can to show his gratitude for people’s work. It makes everyone way more invested in the final product. I think most people felt proud to work on the show because even though Vince was such a driving creative force, he encouraged people to put their best creative foot forward, too. I got opportunities I never would have gotten anywhere else, ever. I’ll never be able to repay the debt I have to Vince. As I say, I’m very very lucky.
Q : Let's talk a bit about Better Call Saul. A lot of folks from Breaking Bad came back. Will you be in it? If so, can you tell us any hints about what the show may look like on its premiere on November?
A : I’ll be writing on Saul, I’m happy to say. Jenn will be assuming sole Vince duties, which have become massive in the last couple years. She’s a talent on the rise and will be running Hollywood in a couple years, no doubt. Peter Gould and Vince will be running it, with Gennifer Hutchison and Tom Schnauz writing and producing, so yes, a lot of the writing team is coming onto Saul. I’m padding this answer because, unfortunately, there’s not much I can tease about the show: it’s an hour-long show, and will be a prequel focusing on the years before Saul met Walter White. Other than that I either can’t say or I don’t know – we’re mid-way through breaking the first season and there’s a lot of things we don’t know just yet!
Q : Gennifer Hutchison started on the as writers' assistant just like you and then became one of the best writers of the show. What's your future goal in the industry?
A : Yes, I started as a P.A., then became Vince’s assistant Season Four, and then Vince’s assistant and writers’ assistant Season Five. So, my role changed over the years. By the end, I was in the writers’ room taking notes as the writers broke stories. As for difficult assignments, I’d say THAT was the most difficult one – my regular gig. As Writers’ Assistant, you have to try to keep up as story beats get pitched, amended, re-pitched, refined and keep the essentials so that it can be referred to later. It’s kinda tough to stay focused. Everything else – researching a topic or writing a scene for casting or whatever – that was all more fun. Jenn Carroll and I were a team, and while taking notes in the room was my domain and coordinating scripts was hers, everything else was shared fairly equally, so that tended to make side projects more collaborative and less a solo venture.
Q : You really wrote yourselves into a corner, sometimes. Like the one on the magnificent cliffhanger of episode 411 "Crawl Space" or the one on episode 306 "Sunset" in which Walt and Jesse were trapped inside the RV. How difficult was to get out of there both in production and in story-wise?
A : Every corner we painted ourselves into was a challenge, but to my mind, the “oh shit” moments — where there was some plot element that drove the characters into a crazy spot — those weren’t the hard ones to get out of. They were hard, yes, but in a certain way they were a question of plot mechanics. The ones I remember being hard, the ones the writers would really grapple with, were the emotional corners, where characters were at a crossroads with lots of choices available, like why Skyler would stay with Walt after certain turns or if Jesse would continue cooking after Drew Sharp’s death. Those things took a lot of finessing and discussion.
Q : One of my favourites lines of the show comes from episode 506 "Buyout" written by the very talented Gennifer Hutchison, who has written some of the most iconic lines of the show. This episode is an aftermath of Drew Sharp's murder. And one particular line which comes from Jesse sums up the entire show. The line was "Are we in the meth bussiness or the money bussiness?". To my perspective that line showed that in the beginning Walt started the meth bussiness for the shake of his family but ultimately this was just for his ego. Was it intentional? Or i just "read" the line wrong? What's your perspective on it?
A : I think that’s a good way to look at it. Certainly, at that point, we wanted to take Walt’s ostensible motivation – money – away from him. If it was about money, Jesse’s offering him a way to make plenty of it and be done! But even then, Walt can’t see himself for who he truly is. It takes several more shocks – the pile of money Skyler shows him, Hank’s death, exile to New Hampshire – to bring Walt to understand himself.
Q : Vince Gilligan always talked about how much he loved "The Godfather's" Trilogy and the TV show "MASH". Also he talked about how much he was influenced by them and especially by the finale of "MASH". Finally, i feel like the writers were very influenced by "The Sopranos" and "The Shield" Can you tell us any other references and inspirations of the show's?
A : There were a lot of fans of classic Westerns, especially Once Upon a Time in the West and The Searchers. Classic sci-fi shows like Star Trek and The Twilight Zone also got a lot of discussion.
Q : One of the things i loved about the show was its montages. How did you decide it's a good/fitting time for the story to drop a montage sequence?
A : You know, that was mostly dictated by where we were in the story. If it felt like a good time, we’d use one. Episode 508 “Gliding Over All” had several amazing montages because that was what the episode called for. That was really a double-whammy of goodness for montages: we had Moira Walley-Beckett who just wrote the hell out of them, and then the incredible Michelle MacLaren directing them. It was a master class on montages, in my opinion.
Q : There is a thin line between naiveness and denial. How did you manage to keep Hank so perfectly balanced ? & How challenging was to make Hank such a compelling character without making him look stupid?
A : Certainly, keeping Hank in the dark was difficult, but mostly because of something we refer to as Tom’s Law, named for writer Tom Schnauz. Tom’s Law, roughly, is that if the audience knows something, then they assume the characters know it, too. So, since the audience knows Walt is Heisenberg, it feels like Hank should know. But personally, I feel like in real life the fact that Walt was his close family member would make it more difficult for Hank to ever believe Walt was Heisenberg – not less. It’s difficult to believe bad things about the people we’re close to. Walt’s secret underworld identity only seems obvious, self-evident to the audience because they know it and aren’t Walt’s family. If they were in Hank’s shoes, I think most people would behave very similarly. They’d need definitive proof before the thought could even occur. Shy of that, and it’d just be an unthinkable thing.
Q : I imagine that these last 8 episodes were the hardest ones to break. But if you had to choose one episode of the entire show for the title of "the hardest one to break", which one would you choose?
A : Oh, that’s very hard to say. Some took longer, for sure. I hear legends from before my time on the show that 208, “Better Call Saul,” was very difficult to break. I might say 504 “Fifty-One” and 509 “Blood Money” took a ton of time and effort – again, not because of the plot, but because the emotional states of the characters were so tricky to get just right.
Q : Shows like "The Sopranos" & "The Shield" felt like that they explored the whole "antihero genre" and that there wasn't anything left unexplored. But then Breaking Bad came in and crashed the first two stories. That's one of the main reasons i believe Breaking Bad is the best show ever on TV. As a writer do you believe there is still something left unexplored on the "antihero story"?
Α : Sure! But that may just be the optimist in me. I think The Americans is working in very interesting anti-hero territory right now. It depends on how you think about what the heart of an anti-hero is, I guess. Is it a good person doing bad things? A person doing bad things for good reasons? The Shield was arguably a good person doing bad things for good reasons; The Sopranos was arguably a bad person doing bad things for bad reasons. Breaking Bad sort of flips things so that you have to kind of wonder if Walt is a good or bad person and if his reasons are good or bad. His actions certainly are bad, most of the time. But his motivations are harder to figure out. I think the fascination with anti-heroes is that they explore that relation between the doer and the deed: can you do bad things and be good? Are we defined by our actions or by our inner life? I think in that way, the anti-hero is a pretty deep well to plumb for material.
Q : Let's talk a bit about "Chicks and Guns" The wonderful scene that you and Jenn Carroll co-created for the DVDs' extras of season 5! I loved that scene because it showed us the backstory of Jesse getting the gun, How was the writing process like? Also can you tell us any other ideas that you thought it might have worked for this extra scene but in the end you left them out?
A : Thank you! Man, I wish we’d come up with a better title. That was always a working title and then it just kind of stuck. The process involved Jenn and I sitting around for hours and hours and trying to come up with pieces of story that we hadn’t seen. Mostly, if we hadn’t seen it, it wasn’t necessary and didn’t shed any new light—there aren’t a lot of cracks in the story where we could anchor a story. So we brainstormed, came up with a few, then pitched to Vince and he liked this one. We beat out the beats with Vince and then wrote it. It was a mini-version of the process in the room, basically. I think he liked another one that we developed into a set of webisodes, but unfortunately we ran out of time to shoot them. That one would have been fun. Walt and Jesse reminisce in 508 (I think) about running out of gas in the desert on a cook—basically, we had a story about Jesse walking to get gas and running into his father on the road. We thought it would have been a fun chance to bring Jesse’s father figures together.
Q : This scene was directed by the one and only Michelle MacLaren. How was it like working with her in one of your scripts?
A : Amazing. She’s an incredible director and wonderful person. This was a long scene and we had one day to bang it out, and Michelle just killed it. I’m really hoping against hope that at some point I’ll write something worthy of Michelle directing it, but I’m glad that I had this chance! Also, I should give props to our fantastic editor, Trevor Baker. He was our Post Production Coordinator, and he’s a great guy and super-talented dude.
Q : How was it like working on Breaking Bad and especially with Vince Gilligan?
A : I got unbelievably lucky and I’m well aware of that. It’s the kind of luck that makes you really scared for the future because, I mean, how often do you get hit by lightning? It’s a family of folks who I think the world of—passionate, talented, smart. Just great people, all around, many of whom are now among my nearest and dearest friends. That all starts with Vince, who’s been a boss and mentor to me and tons more people. He really tries as much as he can to show his gratitude for people’s work. It makes everyone way more invested in the final product. I think most people felt proud to work on the show because even though Vince was such a driving creative force, he encouraged people to put their best creative foot forward, too. I got opportunities I never would have gotten anywhere else, ever. I’ll never be able to repay the debt I have to Vince. As I say, I’m very very lucky.
Q : Let's talk a bit about Better Call Saul. A lot of folks from Breaking Bad came back. Will you be in it? If so, can you tell us any hints about what the show may look like on its premiere on November?
A : I’ll be writing on Saul, I’m happy to say. Jenn will be assuming sole Vince duties, which have become massive in the last couple years. She’s a talent on the rise and will be running Hollywood in a couple years, no doubt. Peter Gould and Vince will be running it, with Gennifer Hutchison and Tom Schnauz writing and producing, so yes, a lot of the writing team is coming onto Saul. I’m padding this answer because, unfortunately, there’s not much I can tease about the show: it’s an hour-long show, and will be a prequel focusing on the years before Saul met Walter White. Other than that I either can’t say or I don’t know – we’re mid-way through breaking the first season and there’s a lot of things we don’t know just yet!
Q : Gennifer Hutchison started on the as writers' assistant just like you and then became one of the best writers of the show. What's your future goal in the industry?
A : Oh yeah, Genny’s amazing. If I grow up to be half the writer she is, I’ll be happy. And if I had half her success, I’d have a pretty great career! My goal is the same as probably everyone who has the dream of working in the industry: write on good shows and hopefully get the chance one day to make one of my own. Right now, I’m doing the first part of that, so I can’t complain even a little.
Follow Gordon Smith on Twitter : @amorteamore
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