Walter White is staring at me. He doesnt like what he sees. Its just before midnight, and were facing off in the dusty shadows of an Albuquerque, New Mexico, parking lot, between rows of white trailers. You chicken? he asks, freshly razored scalp gleaming under a distant streetlight. You a scaredy-cat? Hes not even Walter now hes his alter ego, meth kingpin Heisenberg, and in his pitiless blue eyes, Im everything weak and human and in the way: I might as well be Jesse Pinkman, yo.
The moment passes, and he smiles under his sinister goatee. His eyes defrost. The spell breaks. Hes just Bryan Cranston, an avuncular 56-year-old actor at the end of another 13-hvaour day of playing what he calls the role of my life, the one thats won him three Emmys and counting. He emerged a couple of minutes ago from one of the production trailers, where he changed from Walters unstylish khakis, button-down and Clark Wallabee shoes into his own slim-fit dark jeans, leather high-top PF Flyers sneakers and polo shirt.
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Were heading to a bar about a mile away, and hes trying to goad me into taking a helmetless ride on the back of his Quadrophenia-ready silver Vespa scooter and in the process, giving me a taste of Walter Whites persuasive powers. Its started to rub off on me, he says, in his calming, actorly baritone. You know, its great to see how much you can intimidate just by lowering your voice and giving a stare. And its like, mostly people back off.
Breaking Bad is, at its core, a story of transformation unlike nearly every character in the history of television, Walter White is changing beyond recognition over the shows 62 episodes. Its less a character arc than a plunge down a moral elevator shaft. As show creator Vince Gilligan routinely puts it, Walt is going from Mr. Chips to Scarface from a meek, defeated high school chemistry teacher to a vicious criminal: Last season, he went so far as to poison a child. Bryan can pull off anything, says Aaron Paul, who plays Whites unlikely partner, the wounded-eyed hip-hop-damaged slacker Jesse Pinkman (the show is also an extended, bizarre buddy-movie riff). I mean, he does so many horrible things and yet the fans are still like, Yeah, Walt! Fucking poison that kid! Youre dying of cancer. I understand!'
Adds Gilligan, You can have a main character like Walter White or Tony Soprano or Don Draper, someone who does questionable things, but since they are the protagonist you cant help but see the world of the show more or less through their eyes. Sometimes I liken it almost to a Stockholm syndrome, where you as the viewer start to see things as they do, which is a danger when youre talking about a guy as warped as Walter White.
After Cranston accepted the role, he started asking people if there was a prior example of such a radical TV-character change and one friend came up with the only known example: Fonzie started out as a badass, says Cranston. And he became, like, Hey, Mrs. C. So this is the reverse Fonzie.
With its endless paranoia, Breaking Bad is like the frantic final minutes of Goodfellas stretched over six seasons of television. Its a desert fever dream about a doomed America though few nightmares have such clockworklike plot construction. Its tone is distinctly less naturalistic and its situations less plausible than other greatest-show-ever contenders (The Sopranos, Mad Men, The Wire). Were obsessed with coming up with moments that people wont soon forget, says Gilligan, who spent seven years as a writer for The X-Files. And sometimes they border on the operatic or perhaps on the hyperreal, if not surreal. Its all about showmanship.
Hes referring, presumably, to the image of Walts nemesis Gus Fring calmly adjusting his tie with half of his face blown off, or a purple, one-eyed stuffed animal diving into Walts swimming pool from a crashed plane, or a decapitated head strapped to a tortoise and rigged with explosives. Its the shows pulpy DNA and Gilligans twisted sense of humor that makes Breaking Bad so much deranged fun. The two shows share something, says X-Files creator Chris Carter, who had Gilligan write some of that shows funniest and weirdest episodes. They both start with outrageous concepts: an FBI agent chasing aliens and a high school chemistry teacher who becomes a meth dealer? Both outrageous. The meth is out there.
In any case, if Walter White or even his closest nonfictional analog wants you to get on a scooter without a helmet, you just do it. We chug along, and everything we pass feels like it could be on the show, probably because much of it is: We cruise Ron Peterson Firearms, Ace Cash Express, De Anza Motor Lodge (where Walter found out about the birth of his daughter) and Octopus Carwash (Walter and his wife, Skyler, bought a nearby franchise given a different name on the show to launder their drug money). Cranston takes a deep breath as we approach a traffic light. The blazing sun is long gone, and the air is cool and clean. Its a beautiful night, he says. The light turns green, and Cranston, who spent two years of the Seventies on an Easy Rider-style motorcycle trip, hits the gas. What could go wrong? he says, chuckling, as the pavement speeds by at an alarming rate.
Before this trip, Gilligan had offered some safety tips for Albuquerque, though he failed to account for this particular scenario: Put your sunscreen on. Youll get the hell burnt out of you there, and if you havent been out in high altitude in a while, youll wake up at night and gasp. Any time someone offers you a bottle of water, drink it. Theres no worse headache in the world than a dehydrated headache. He paused, and looked at me seriously: You could die out there! Then he laughed for a long time.
Cranston steers his Vespa safely to an Irish pub named ONiells, where were meeting Aaron Paul for drinks. Paul wrapped for the season tonight, and hes ready to celebrate later, were headed to the casino. Bryans being a pussy and wont come, says Paul, 32, who is wearing jeans and a green T-shirt with the word RENTAL on it (its from a line that reproduces shirts worn by rock stars in this case, Frank Zappa). You can quote me on that. Despite a 24-year age difference, Paul and Cranston are genuinely close theyre even planning a double date with Cranstons wife and Pauls fiancee to see Sigur Rs in L.A. in August.
Heads turn as we make our way toward the backyard patio, which would offer a mountain view if it wasnt so dark out. The sparse, college-y crowd murmurs, almost as one, Breaking Bad as far as the cast members can tell, every single resident of Albuquerque watches the show, which portrays the town as half suburban refuge, half methed-out hellhole.
But some people take it more personally than others: We order beers from a waitress, but a male staffer a beefy dude with sad eyes shows up with them instead. I love yalls show, he says, depositing our beers on the table (Paul told the waitress to bring me whatever you like but it has to be good; Cranston ordered a Guinness). But I dont watch it too much cause Im a recovered addict and I have nightmares. Ive been clean for five years. Yalls show shows a lot of truth of some things. Its a little sugarcoated, though.
If you dont mind me asking, clean from what? Paul asks.
The answer, it emerges, is crystal meth. Cranston asks him how he got clean.
I went to a Christian ministry that builds houses in Jurez and evangelized for about a year. I ate, slept and drank God. Rehab didnt work. It didnt work for me. You just meet better drug buddies you guys want a round of waters?
He returns later with our check. It was awesome meeting yall can I ask, did yall go to acting school to do this show?
I just learn off of him, says Paul.
I was sold into the business as a baby, says Cranston.
Hey, yo, I was just curious, man, the waiter replies. Yalls show shows a lot of truth.
They leave the guy a $20 tip though Cranston cant resist a bleak joke. Were giving him meth money, he says.
A week earlier, Gilligan is sitting in the middle seat of the middle row in a screening room ensconced in a Burbank studio lot, 800 miles west of Albuquerque. Hes wearing pale dad jeans, New Balance running shoes and a black T-shirt. He, too, could be safely cast as a high school chemistry teacher. Today, hes working on the sound for season fives second episode, and giving editing notes for episode three, even as he remotely supervises the production of episode seven, which is shooting in Albuquerque. Beneath his half-rimless glasses, his eyes are slightly bloodshot with exhaustion. Theyll show me photos of wardrobe that shoots tomorrow and Ill say, I dont like the guys boots, or whatever, and well try and find some others. Its wearying, but its never boring, because you get to be the Sun King a little. Theres 300 people out there, saying, What do you think of this? all day long, and then Ill be like Nero. Thumbs up or thumbs down.
Gilligan is, to say the least, known for his attention to detail or as one crew member puts it, with fondness, hes a complete and total control freak. Everyone tends to cite the example of the toenail polish Skyler wore in a season-three scene where she consummates an affair with her ill-fated boss, Ted we see her feet in a close-up on the heated floors of his bathroom. Gilligan spent at least half an hour pondering the color Anna Gunn, who plays Skyler, thinks it may have taken considerably longer. If my toes were vixen red, as opposed to a more hesitant pink, that would mean something different, she says. He knew exactly what he wanted those toes to say, and at first youre like, Wow, that is really detailed. But, you know, I get it.
Not long ago, Gilligan and Holly Rice, his longtime girlfriend, were renovating their bathroom, and everything looked fine to Rice. In about five minutes, Vince pointed out probably 10 tiles that needed to be adjusted, she recalls. I told him Im surprised he didnt become a watchmaker.
Gilligan and his team, including music director Thomas Golubic and composer Dave Porter, just sat and watched all of episode two in silence on an enormous screen as he scribbled slanted notes on a yellow legal pad. Now, hes delivering his notes to them in his Southern drawl (part Slim Pickens, part Bill Clinton), which he claims has softened since he left Virginia for Hollywood in the Nineties. Great job as always, he says, before starting a list of changes that will take as long to deliver as it did to watch the entire episode. First, he praises and then gently eliminates an entire piece of music that Porter wrote, an ominous swell that signals Jesses unease as he ponders the absence of a poisonous cigarette from last season. It tells the audience how to feel emotionally, which is not something we like to do on this show, he tells me later.
Theres much more: various doors close too loudly or too softly; you can hear birds chirping in one scene (When I hear birds, it just makes everything feel like its happy); a bed creak sounds vaguely farty; two characters are discussing killing people far too loudly. His final note relates to a creepy sex scene between Walt and Skyler. When Walt pulls off his underpants, I dont hear anything, he says. More underpants peeling off!
At one point, someone says that most people wont notice any of this, that theyre unlikely to have the kind of astounding sound system thats in this room. I dont give a shit, Gilligan says. Someday everyones gonna hear it like this thats all I care about. (People think Im nicer than I am, he says later. I fake it pretty well.)
Breaking for dinner, Gilligan and I head off to another, empty soundstage to talk. He pours us each a shot or so of Makers Mark, and he picks at a pile of fried stuff that he identifies as corn fritters. I dont eat that well, he says. I dont sleep that well. And I probably, you know, drink a little more than I used to just to help me sleep. I mean, thats another reason this show probably does need to come to an end. (When Cranston became a producer on Breaking Bad last season, he made it his mission to protect Vince from himself which means leaving him out of as many minor decisions as possible.)
Gilligan, 45, grew up in a small Virginia town his mom was a teacher, his dad an insurance adjuster. From the moment he saw Star Wars, he knew what he wanted to do with his life: make movies. His initial love was special effects. I wanted to build my own version of C-3PO or R2-D2. All through high school I was staying at home on weekends making spaceships and movies in my basement and molding my own face in plaster with the help of my little brother, he says. I never went to my prom. I was doing all that shit instead. I had a very stunted social life in high school, but I guess it paid dividends.
He wasnt a cool, goth-y nerd instead, he was the kind who made his own Spock uniform out of a sweatshirt, complete with Starfleet emblem, and then actually wore the thing to high school. It was a cool school, and I base that on the fact that no one ever actually beat me up. I was begging for it, man! Someone should have kicked my ass. He pauses. Just kidding.
He also was playing Dungeons & Dragons, reading lots of Kurt Vonnegut and Ray Bradbury, and setting off little bombs in his backyard that could be heard throughout the neighborhood the kind of stuff theyd put a bag over your head and send you to Guantnamo Bay for now. He got into NYUs film school with an application that included a film hed made called Henaissance which told the tale of a man who slowly turned into a chicken. Always that theme of transformation! he says.
At NYU, he finally had a drink or two, went on a few dates. He also sold the very first full-length screenplay he ever wrote, Home Fries, which became a middling Drew Barrymore movie. I basically made the mistake of thinking, Man. Im in,' he says. Its all gonna be just gravy from here on out. I dont even have to work that hard, and Im making more money optioning scripts than I ever dreamed.' Taking well-meaning advice that moving to California would ruin his distinct regional perspective, he bought a house 45 minutes outside of Richmond, Virginia and promptly began to stagnate.
He was less in danger of breaking bad than breaking fat. It was like The Shining, especially in the winter. I got snowed in once or twice, and if I had been more of a self-starter it would have been great, cause I would have gotten all kinds of work done. I could write all day long if I chose to. But instead I chose to play video games and eat Cheetos and waste time all day. He wrote a couple of other movies including what eventually became the Will Smith vehicle Hancock but studios butchered them, and the offers stopped coming. It was the X-Files gig that saved him.
He spent seven productive years on the show, and also co-created The Lone Gunman, a failed spinoff. His career stalled out again though he always had Sony executives anxious to hear his next idea and its hard not to see autobiography in the unfulfilled promise of Walter White, who went from Nobel Prize-level work to teaching high school.
But he still cant believe that anyone bought the idea for Breaking Bad in the first place. A show about a middle-aged man dying of cancer, cooking crystal meth I keep thinking about The Producers, and Springtime for Hitler. In hindsight I dont know if you could come up with a worse idea on paper for a TV show than Breaking Bad, unless youre actually trying to fail.
Back in Albuquerque, Aaron Paul approaches a craps table and pulls out a thick wad of hundreds, which will be slightly thicker before the night is through, thanks to his apparently endless stock of good luck. Hi, Aaron, says the dealer. Paul is a regular here at Sandia Casino, a massive mountainside resort whose nods to Pueblo culture mostly means halfheartedly trying to make marble floors and columns look like theyre made out of adobe.
I love this casino, says Paul, who loves gambling in general. I was making a really good living playing online poker. I could have retired from acting. His habit has never quite gotten out of hand. I definitely went through my phases. I wouldnt consider myself a crazy gambling addict. I think at one point maybe I was. I definitely lost a lot more than I had ever wanted to lose. And then I took a break and I knew what my limit was, and now Ill come to the casino and Ill have a limit.
Its karaoke night over at the bar, and we watch a gentleman in hunting pants and a visor who strongly resembles Larry the Cable Guy butcher Ice Ice Baby. Paul quickly decides we should take part: We should do that Beatles song love, love, love. It starts with, like all we need is love. Whatever that songs called. I manage to persuade him to do Twist and Shout instead, and he commits, barking the lyrics death-metal style, eyes blazing as a group of a dozen or so elderly patrons gather on the polished-wood dance floor to boogie to our performance with unsettling enthusiasm. (The next day, someone shows Cranston an iPhone video of it. Thats a lot of screaming, he says.)
As we take our seats, tattooed guys in Ed Hardy-style T-shirts with skulls on them start approaching Paul, who is ceaselessly gracious, even when the same guys come by more than once. They take pictures with him, pitch parts for themselves, suggest that he cook them some blue meth, and say Jesse Pinkman-ish things like, Theres no flash on this bitch. Youre a cool motherfucker, man, says one fan. Youre not all stuck-up.
Paul is definitely not stuck-up. Though his distinct speaking voice its nasality and slight overemphasis of every other word is reminiscent of Jesse Pinkman, his startling pale-blue eyes radiate openness, and he comes off as almost impossibly sweet as he enthuses over his relationship with his fiancee, Lauren: They had their first kiss on the Ferris wheel at Coachella; they have tattoos of each others electrocardiograms. I tell her we should have, like, 12 kids. Lets just do it. Lets start a compound.
Family values come naturally to Paul, who grew up in small-town Idaho, the son of a Baptist minister. His parents were, and are, loving and supportive, albeit with some strict rules. Like, I wasnt allowed to watch The Simpsons, he says. My dad being the minister, each week during youth group, I would have to memorize certain Scriptures. A lot of people are religious and they havent read, you know, the Bible. Ive read the Bible front and back numerous times, and its just so out there, its like reading a sciencefiction novel. Paul isnt sure exactly what he believes now: Do I know exactly what is out there? No. But do I believe if you do something bad that youre gonna burn in hell forever? Not just a thousand years, but for trillions of years? Absolutely not. But what about Walter White doesnt he deserve to go to hell? Youd want to believe that. But, I dont know.
It took Paul a while to move past his upbringing, even after he moved to Hollywood alone at 17 following an early high school graduation (he worked multiple jobs back in Idaho to fund the move, including gigs as two different radio mascots, one a giant tookie bird, the other a giant frog dressed as Garth Brooks). I didnt curse until I was in my twenties, he says. He also lost his virginity at what he considers a late age, but asks me not to print that story.
Though the character he plays leads people to assume Paul is constantly high, hes never had a drug problem. He did have a meth-addict girlfriend years back, which informs his performance. It went from coke and then it escalated to meth. Meth is the one that grabbed, like, nails-deep into her soul and slowly just ripped it out. She was this beautiful being, turned to this hollow shell.
He has been known to smoke weed. The first time I actually felt it, it was around Halloween time, and I ate an entire bowl of Reeses Pieces and I couldnt stop laughing. It was incredible, he says. Now I rarely smoke. He has a medicalmarijuana card, though, which he says he actually uses for medicinal purposes: If I go to the dentist, Ill get an eighth. I am against pills. I dont even take Advil. I think pot 100 percent should be legalized.
Jesse Pinkman wasnt even supposed to survive the first season, but Pauls performance made it inconceivable to kill him. Says Cranston, I was amazed that Aaron could make this guy who is a high school dropout, a drug abuser, a drug pusher, into a guy you really care about. Its a testament to him.
Unlike Cranston, who continues to work with acting coaches to this day, Paul is an untrained, purely instinctual actor who has nevertheless won an Emmy. So its not surprising that his representatives see him as a potential major movie star. I keep battling my reps, saying I am a character actor, says Paul, who is in talks with HBO about starring in a post-Breaking Bad show called The Missionary. I have no interest in being a superbig star. I want to have some private life.
When Bryan Cranston was a young boy, he watched his father get eaten by a giant grasshopper. Cranstons parents met in an acting class in 1948, and they both worked for years in show business, with highly inconsistent results. Like pre-Heisenberg Walter, they were often downwardly mobile one year, theyd get a swimming pool, and then find themselves without the money to fill it the next summer, or theyd trade in a new car for an older one. Cranstons dad, Joe, spent years chasing the dream of being a movie star, and instead ended up with TV parts and small roles in B pictures, such as Beginning of the End, the grasshopper-attack film. I learned not to try to achieve some plateau, like stardom, Cranston says, sitting on the couch in the White-family living room. My father was reaching for that brass ring, and if you fall short, then you must think, Well, I failed. So my goal was to be able to make my living in my adult life exclusively as an actor. Thats my victory.
The Whites house is flooded with daylight, but were not actually in a house, and its not actually daylight. Were in the middle of a vast, warehouselike studio on the edge of town that holds most of the sets for Breaking Bads best-known interiors. Wandering around can be highly disorienting: The inside of Saul Goodmans law office, with its hilariously huge Bill of Rights backdrop, is just a few feet away from the interior of the Whites car wash, which is in turn right by their house. The exteriors, of course, are shot at an actual house in Albuquerque, which this set is designed to match precisely. Its uncanny in its detail, though a close inspection reveals some questionable choices: Would Walt really have read the Star Trek novels on the bookshelf or for that matter, the novelization of the 1979 Disney film The Black Hole? (The answer is no: I learn that Gilligan is chagrined that I noticed: Theyre going to look into fixing that.)
Cranston is far from a Method actor he is able to sit around between scenes, singing snatches of songs (todays is Please Come to Boston, an obscurity by Dave Loggins), teasing his castmates, greeting visitors, and then step in front of the cameras and reach into the darkest depths of his character. He just fuckin puts on the black hat and hes Heisenberg, says Dean Norris, who plays Walters brother-in-law Hank, the burly DEA agent. Hes not one of these guys who spends the whole day in the corner going, Im Heisenberg. Im Heisenberg. Im Heisenberg. He just does it. He is a capital-A actor.
For Cranston, Walter Whites rage is very real and much of it comes from his problems with his parents, who divorced when he was young. Their house was soon foreclosed on, leaving him and his siblings to live with their grandparents. There was no money, he says later that night, sitting at a rooftop hotel bar downtown, as Frank Sinatra plays in the background. There was alcohol abuse. And there were broken lives. There were two broken people. It was ugly. I didnt see my father for 10 years.
I have some anger issues, he says. Comes from dealing with parental issues. Sometimes it comes out when hes exercising. Ill go running, and Ill feel like I feel right now, fine. And Ill start running, and its MOTHERFUCKER, grah! Its like a demon was stuck in there somewhere and escaped. Other than that, he has an easier time accessing his emotions as an actor than in daily life. I look at my wife, and shes so emotional, she cant hold it in, he says. She is beautifully honest, and I marvel at women. If theres another life for me, I would like to experience that as a woman, because I want to see what thats like.
As a teenager, Cranston was deeply confused about his future, so he followed in the footsteps of his brother, who had joined a police-academy youth group that gave kids a chance to travel. It put Cranston on a path to becoming a police officer, which he moved away from forever at age 19 when his pursuit of girls led him to an acting class. I said, Women. This is what I want to master. This is where I want to be. And, yeah, so the hormones of a 19-year-old boy basically dictated the projection of where I was going to go as an adult. Amazing.
The police group did have other benefits after I tell Cranston that Paul regretted sharing his virginity-loss story, he offers to top it: When Cranston was 16, he and his fellow teen police explorers spent six weeks in Europe. Amsterdam was a particular revelation. Beer is a nickel, and the hookers are cheap it was 24 guilders, which I think was $8, to get laid. Were all writing home to our parents for more money, Were having such a good time, Mom and Dad! Please send more money! We promise to pay you back! Weve got to protect the citizens from the hookers!'
After working blue-collar jobs loading crates on the graveyard shift stands out vividly he spent two years on a motorcycle trip with his brother that sounds movie-worthy in itself (they would hook up with carnivals or bus tables for money, traveling from town to town). He fell into a starter marriage, but realized he wasnt ready to settle down, and began pursuing acting: His big break came with a soap-opera role when he was 26. He wasnt actually famous until he got the role of Hal the goofy dad on Malcolm in the Middle at age 42, so he never went wild with success. Pot was the only drug Ive ever done, he says. It just makes me sleepy.
Hes had therapy in part to deal with his childhood issues, and dabbled in self-help in the Eighties. I did take a Scientology class, he says. A friend of mine was a Scientologist, and he told me about a course and I took it. It was really good. But he left it there. I just check it out. Im not addictive. He still sees a therapist in L.A. from time to time, when I feel edgy or anxiety-ridden. And he and his wife of 20-plus years see a couples counselor when necessary. The deal with my wife is that if either of us feel like we want to go, the other cannot raise an objection.
He has trouble naming the worst thing hes ever done. Maybe a little petty theft, and in any case he gave back the money. Then he comes up with another thing: He was kind of a selfish lover as a young man. Once I started focusing on giving pleasure as opposed to just demanding it and wanting it, the overall experience, as far as sex is concerned, was far enhanced.
The most important performance of Cranstons life turned out to be on a sixth-year episode of The X-Files, in which he played a creepy bigot who was the victim of a Navy experiment that meant he would die if he ever stopped driving at a certain speed. The episode was written by Vince Gilligan, who never forgot how impressed he was by Cranstons ability to make a vile character seem sympathetic he didnt let six years of Malcolm in the Middle dissuade him from pushing for Cranston as Breaking Bads star. But Sony and AMC were not convinced I was the guy, because Walter White wasnt Hal from Malcolm in the Middle, says Cranston, who heard that Steve Zahn was up for the role instead. He let it be known that he had an offer for another pilot from Fox (he wouldve been playing a doctor), and hes convinced thats what made the execs pull the trigger.
Still, Cranston says, If Steve Zahn did Walter, wed go, Oh, my God. Steve Zahn is the guy! Can you imagine anybody but Steve Zahn doing it? And you wouldnt be able to.
Theres a beat-up roadside pay phone just outside one of this seasons locations in downtown Albuquerque, and Aaron Paul has taken to tweeting its number out to fans, answering their calls between scenes. On an airless late afternoon, hes taking a call at that booth and making up endings for the show. Jesse dies in the finale, he says, squinting in the searing sunshine. Dont tell anyone. He gets his head caught in an RV door and it gets ripped off. Then Walt melts his body and uses it in a formula for a new kind of crystal meth. He also decides to be a cannibal and eats the body.
After a while, Paul says goodbye, and claps his hands with glee. The guy was like, Really? No! I thought Jesse would die a more epic death than that. With only eight episodes left they start filming again in November or December everyone is thinking about the end. No one knows exactly what that will be even Gilligan, whos impressed to hear that Mad Men showrunner Matthew Weiner already knows what his own shows final image will be. We try to be Bobby Fischer, playing chess, he says. We try to think as many moves ahead as we can. But, sometimes, that can be a trap, because the best kind of storytelling is very organic. At the beginning of season four, the writers had one index card up on their board: It said ding, boom. They knew that they wanted Hector Salamanca to kill Gus Fring, but they werent sure how they would get there.
The final season, one presumes, will return to the flash-forward future seen at the beginning of this seasons first episode in which an exiled Walt returns to Albuquerque, heavily armed. Filming that scene was perhaps the only time Cranston asked for information that wasnt in the script. I asked Vince several specific questions. I said, Am I alone? And he goes, Yeah. I said, Why am I coming back to Albuquerque? He said, Youre coming back because you need to protect someone. And I went, OK. Is the cancer back? He didnt quite answer that. He said, Possibly.'
Gilligan is anxious about the ending and not just because of his desire to live up to fans expectations. I fear for the day when this is over, says Gilligan. I honestly fear that this will be the highlight of my career. And you dont want it to be! Youd rather be Clint Eastwood than Orson Welles. Youd rather be doing some of your best work toward the end than at the beginning of it. Though, shit, Id take Orson Welles in a New York minute!
Many of the actors have their own hopes, or at least fears. If Jesse does end up dying, says Paul, I hope its not him getting shot in the back. I hope he goes out guns blazing! Dean Norris is hoping for a big showdown with Walt, which seems highly likely (if you have a DEA agent brother-in-law above the mantelpiece, he should probably go off in the third act). And Bob Odenkirk just wants Saul Goodman to survive, so he has a chance at the spinoff show that Gilligan has at least half-seriously suggested.
For a long time, Cranston expected Walt to die at the end a reasonable prediction for a character with terminal cancer. But then I started rethinking it, and I thought it wouldnt surprise me if the guy who is creating all this crap, the toxic avenger himself, lives. It wouldnt surprise me at all. The guy who should die, doesnt!
If theres one thing no ones expecting, its a happy ending. This isnt going to be a fairy tale, Paul says, sipping his beer across from Cranston at the Irish bar. But I know there will be a time where Im not ever going to get to zip on this skin again, and I love Jesse so much. I really do.
Cranston breaks the solemnity: For me, at the end of this, he says, I just cant wait to get away from all these assholes.
Hes just saying that cause hes hurting deep, deep inside, Paul replies.
Cranston smiles, looking absolutely nothing like Walter White. No, he says. Im not.
This story is from the August 16th, 2012 issue of Rolling Stone.
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