are you crazy?
Bryan Cranston mentioned that he asked you a bunch of questions about the flash-forward. When he asked, "Why am I back?" you told him, "To protect someone." Is that an answer that you're gonna stick with?Worth reading the full Q&A at RS.
I wouldn't shy away from sticking with that, just because it's been in print, but we really are – we're questioning everything at this point. It doesn't give me great pause to have that out there. But having said that, we're not, at this point, afraid to change it, either. Our prime directive here – our mandate – is to make the ending as satisfying and as dramatic as possible. To that end, we've got a lot of good ideas, I feel, but any minute that a better idea comes along, we'll jettison the good idea for the better idea, no matter where it may take us. So could go either way. Could wind up being exactly that, or could be something different.
Judgment day arrives next summer when AMC will air the show's final block of eight episodes. Naturally, Gilligan wouldn't reveal much about what's coming. The writers have been talking about the series finale since November but gathered face to face to break down the story only in early August.
So far, they have the broad strokes of the ending but still have "the blanks to fill in," he said.
"We've got some ideas for the last eight episodes that frankly trouble me and worry me," he said. "I worry the audience won't stay on board with some of them. But this show demands dramatic moments and moments of shock and surprise and showmanship, and I want to carry that through to the bitter end — if indeed it is a bitter end."
At NYU... [Vince Gilligan] 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. I'm in,'" he says. "'It's all gonna be just gravy from here on out. I don't even have to work that hard, and I'm 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.In the same article, on BREAKING BAD ending...
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 it's 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 can't 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 don't know if you could come up with a worse idea on paper for a TV show than Breaking Bad, unless you're actually trying to fail."
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 don't want it to be! You'd rather be Clint Eastwood than Orson Welles. You'd rather be doing some of your best work toward the end than at the beginning of it. Though, shit, I'd take Orson Welles in a New York minute!"
"M. Alice Highload", a.k.a "Crypt Orchid", a.k.a. "The Ghost of the Future"
