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  • Breaking Bad’s Tom Schnauz Talks Writing, Directing, and “Better Call Saul” – PART 2

    image_04Alright, friends, let’s not waste any time here. Diving right back into the second half of my and Adam’s interview with Breaking Bad writer/director/producer Tom Schnauz!

    VIKTOR HERRMANN: About the end [of the series], this is just a little aside, but do you know whose idea it was to use “Baby Blue” as the outro song?

    TOM SCHNAUZ: I’ll say with 96% certainty that it was Vince. He used to come in a lot of times and say “Here, I heard this on the radio.” Certainly the… holy moly, I’m drawing a complete blank. The song we used in 508.

    VH: “Crystal Blue Persuasion”?

    TS: Yeah, that was definitely a song Vince had been wanting to use for a long time. So I’m pretty sure “Baby Blue” was the same, too.

    VH: What did it feel like when you finished the “Buried” script and you realized this was the last Breaking Bad script you would ever write?

    TS: It was pretty depressing. [laughs] I gotta say, it was really, really tough. It was a very strange time for me. My own father passed away from cancer right in the middle of filming, and that episode is dedicated to him. There was a sadness to the Breaking Bad family breaking up, but I was going through my own thing with my own family, so maybe I would have been more emotionally torn by Breaking Bad ending if I didn’t have this other stuff going on in my life that was devastating.

    VH: I don’t think anyone could blame you for that. So, now, you are in a way, still writing the characters. Now that you’ve been in the Better Call Saul writers’ room for a while, how has the idea of what the show would be like changed from what you thought it would be like before you got into the room?

    TS: I don’t know if I had a clear idea. I think some part of me knew it was going to be, kind of carrying on the tradition of Breaking Bad, that same feeling. I think if you had asked me before we started, I may have said that this is going to be a more comedic version of the show. But part of me probably knew, inside, that it was going to have that same mix of drama.

    We are attacking this just like our Breaking Bad episodes. We wonder where the character’s head is at and go from there. We don’t try to think “What’s the big comedic set piece?” or “What’s the funny thing we’re going to do?”, we do it from an emotional “What does our character need” type of thing and go from there. If it’s funny, great. Bob Odenkirk is incredibly funny and I think even the serious scenes, he’s going to find, you know, the little flash of humor here and there.

    VH: So far, is Better Call Saul as serialized as Breaking Bad or is each episode more of its own thing?

    TS: I’ll say it’s just as serialized at this point. We’re only five episodes in, but I mean, we’re just doing the kind of writing we know how to do. Which is serialized, following the character and his development.

    The interesting thing is, you know, this is a prequel to Breaking Bad, of course, Mike Ehrmantraut’s coming back… so we’re in this really interesting situation where we know where the characters are going so instead of having this freedom of letting a character, you know, go off wherever it needs to go, we sort of know where we have to end up. So it’s like we’re fitting these puzzle pieces into this space.

    We’ve created the start point, and we know the end point. We’re really trying to maneuver within the reality and history that we already have.

    VH: Has that been challenging? Have you found something maybe you’d like to do but it would conflict with the Breaking Bad continuity?

    TS: I think so, I think there’s been a couple of times where we’ve been like, “Oh, this is good!” and then someone will say, “Well, you know what, in episode 208, when Saul’s introduced, he says this and that”, and we’re like, “Oh, shit.” [laughs]

    You know, we have what we’ve established with Mike and his granddaughter, Kaylee, and Kaylee’s mom, and what that situation is. We’re trying to explore why is mom there but not dad? We’re exploring that a little bit. I don’t want to say too much without spoiling things.

    VH: Of course. When we e-mailed, you mentioned you were working on your first Saul outline. I’m assuming I can answer this question myself based on what you said, but are the Saul outlines so far just as detailed as those legendary Breaking Bad outlines that none of the fans have ever gotten to see?

    TS: Yeah, they’re the same. I think the first outline we did, for the first episode, was 17 pages, [laughs] which is a good sized outline for us. My outline I tried to keep a little more conservative. Right now it’s a 12 page outline. We carded them exactly the same – actually that reminds me I should take pictures of these boards before they disappear – so eventually on Twitter, after they air, I can post them. We’re pretty detailed.

    ADAM GREENE: Tom, do you find it more preferable to write or to direct?

    TS: Oh, I love directing. I’ve only gotten to do it the one time, except for when I was back at college. Preferable? You know, I need to do it some more before I can give you a straight answer. I mean, I love writing and I think the hardest part is the writing, getting that right.

    I feel like when you’re directing you have a lot of people supporting you. A lot of departments and a lot of very skilled people doing things, contributing ideas. The writing is a little more solitary, even though we have our core group who we break the story with, it just feels harder to break a story and get it right. Certainly all the heavy lifting’s been done, so when it comes time to direct, I’m not going to say it’s easy… but I had fun directing, for sure.

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    AG: A question about Walt’s character: he has two sides, the everyday normal Walt, and the conniving, evil Walt. How do you effectively ride that line between his Jekyll and Hyde?

    TS: So much of that is credited to Bryan. We were lucky to have an actor who, you could write down the subtext of what we want to say as writers without having dialogue there, and he, through a squint of his eyes, we get what’s going on in his head. So when he’s saying one thing you know he means another.

    AG: Was there anything in particular that comes to mind that you learned working with the cast and crew? Whenever I get onto a new set, or start a new project, I always seem to gain from someone something that I didn’t have before, and I just wondered if something rubbed off on you that might influence your future projects?

    TS: Yeah, it’s just being open to everybody’s ideas. Like I said, I drew storyboards for everything, but I didn’t stick to them rigidly. They were more of a guide into going in and having a feeling of what I wanted to do, but a lot of times Michael Slovis would come in and say “Hey, look at this” and it would be much better than what I originally drew. And Bryan would have a thought about the way a line should be read.

    It’s just… always being open to everybody else’s ideas. I learned that in the writers’ room too. The most effective writers’ rooms are the ones where you feel completely safe. You get into a writers’ room where there’s one person who’s judgmental, it is completely damaging. It just shuts down creativity and people don’t want to say things because they think they’re going to get made fun of. That is something I luckily learned very early on, that you cannot, you cannot have that personality or be that personality in a writers’ room.

    You want to be free to say the worst idea ever and not be laughed out of the room, because you never know what good thing is going to come out of it.

    AG: My final question, and then I want to wrap up, because you’ve been so generous with your time. Do you have any advice for writers that are trying to get into the business while also trying to maintain their voice?

    TS: Yeah, I always hate giving this answer cause it sounds like… bullshit, a lot of the time. [laughs] So much of this business depends on luck and timing, and so what you have to do as a writer is to keep writing and keep generating products, keep churning out ideas, and creating scripts that make you happy. Make yourself happy, that is.

    I think early on, one of my first screenplays was, “Oh, what is the public going to love? What am I going to sell?” And it was just a disaster, it went nowhere. Finally, the script that I had optioned was one that I was just like, “Screw it, I’m gonna write a script for myself, I’m somehow going to get the money together, and I’m going to make this film myself.” And once I started writing to make myself happy, I think that’s when things gelled for me as a writer, and then, fortunately, it just fell into the right hands at the right time.

    This was back in 1995, I wrote, again, my first feature screenplay that was really for myself. The screenplay never got made, but it got me in the door with an agent and a producer, and it got the ball rolling for me when I started thinking “Yes, I can do this for a living” so I think what you have to do is keep trying to write things that make you happy, things that you are proud of. And then, the unfortunate thing is that you need to keep shooting those bullets out there until one lands in the right hands.

    Again, if it’s something you really want to do, and you keep trying and going for it, you gotta hope that your script lands in the person that is looking for that particular kind of thing at that moment. A lot of times you can have a really well written script, and it’s just gonna, you know, cross the desk of people who either A.) don’t have good taste, or B.) they’re just not looking for that thing at that moment. You know, you wrote a quiet little dramatic independent film, and they’re looking for an action comedy. But there is somebody out there looking for the thing you have written, so you gotta keep, you know, putting that arrow in the bow and keep shooting until it lands in the right spot. I think persistence is what it takes.

    If I can give any bit of advice, keep trying, if it’s something you really want to do, keep going for it until you get your script in the eyes of the person who is looking for it.

    VH: That’s great, I don’t think that was a bullshit answer at all.

    TS: [laughs] I hate using the word “luck”. It sounds like bullshit, but luck is… as a concept for right moment, right time, or needing the planets to align, or whatever that other bullshit stuff is. [laughs] I don’t believe in the mystical things but you just gotta wait for the right things to align.

  • Why the Writing of Breaking Bad is So Good

    Before we start, I have one word for you: SPOILERS.

    There. Let’s begin.

    Every screenwriter, aspiring or otherwise, knows the immense surge of inspiration that can come after watching a great film. It’s jet fuel. It propels us to keep working, to keep striving to make our own storytelling measure up. A great piece of filmmaking can be a better lesson than the most acclaimed college course on the planet. Which leads me to Breaking Bad.

    Breaking Bad isn’t just television. It’s filmmaking of the highest possible caliber. For screenwriters, it’s a goldmine (or money-stuffed barrel) of lessons on great storytelling. Though, if you’re only paying attention to the finished product, you might get a whole set of lessons that are, well, frankly… wrong.

    I’m not gonna lie, I’m a little worried that right now, somewhere, screenwriters and Hollywood execs are shouting “Make it darker!” Or perhaps, “Give it more ‘holy crap’ moments!”

    Yes, Breaking Bad is a very successful series (though it’s important to remember that it wasn’t for the majority of its life on the air). Yes, Breaking Bad is dark. Yes, Breaking Bad is chalk full of “holy crap” moments. But that’s not why it’s good.

    What makes it good, at least in this humble writer’s opinion, is the absolute honesty with which Vince Gilligan and his writing staff treat their characters and the world they inhabit.

    The Breaking Bad writers don’t shove those “holy crap” moments into the middle of the story just to get a rise out of the audience. They carefully earn every one. A guy opening his door and getting shot is dramatic, absolutely. But when the character who opens his door is Gale — perhaps as innocent as a meth-cook can be — and the character who shoots him is Jesse — someone totally aversive to murder – the drama is a hundred fold.

    Drama that good only lies at the end of a long road. One covered with too much coffee, tears and heads banged against keyboard. But there’s really good drama at the end!

    The first step on said road is to ask: “Where is the character’s head at?” It’s something the Breaking Bad writers refer to constantly as the starting point for their discussions. What does each character want at that very moment? What do they fear? What are they willing to do to get what they want? Just as importantly, what are they NOT willing to do?

    When these questions are answered, a character is formed. Then, telling the story becomes a matter of asking: “What would this character do in this situation?” If you’re honest, you get good drama. Breaking Bad writers often talk about having great ideas for scenes or story beats that would fall by the wayside, simply because that’s not where the characters wanted to go.

    A favorite example of mine is Drew Sharp, the boy on the motorbike whom Todd shoots dead. About halfway through “breaking” (meaning, plotting out the story beat by beat) the first eight episodes of Season 5, the writers had a general idea for where the series was going. The plan was for Walt to retire and Jesse to take over as Albuquerque’s new kingpin. Then Todd shot Drew Sharp.

    From that moment on, everything changed. The writers knew there was just no way Jesse would let that slide. There was just no way he would stay in the meth business. So he quit. The writers didn’t lock themselves into their original plan, they let the characters lead the way.

    I was curious if Todd was a character created out of necessity – aka, someone to shoot Drew Sharp – so I asked Breaking Bad writer and producer Thomas Schnauz. The answer was no: Todd came first, and Drew Sharp was a pretty last minute addition. Who knows what the writers’ original plan for Todd was, but it just goes to show their willingness to throw away their plans and let the story come naturally.

    Breaking Episodes – How Breaking Bad writers organize rock solid scenes.

    Famous amongst fans of the Breaking Bad writers are the index card filled cork boards. When breaking each episode, the writers would work together to plan out every single beat of the story in extensive detail. They would write out beats on 3×5 index cards and pin them to a cork board. All together, an episode would average somewhere around 60-65 cards. That’s a lot of plot, and a lot of detail. But it ensures that every episode has a rock solid structure, then, when an individual writer goes off to work on an episode’s script, they get to “do a little jazz”, as writer Peter Gould puts it.

    Each writer creates the dialogue, embellishes the scenes and puts their unique stamp on their individual episodes. They get to do this with confidence, because they know most of the heavy lifting has already been done by the group. But the work and time put into that heavy lifting cannot be ignored. Especially when the writers write themselves into a corner, something which, let’s be honest, they tend to do with frequency.

    Midway through Season 3, Walt and Jesse are trapped in the RV with Hank looming outside like a hungry shark. It’s a moment that pins the audience to the edge of their couches and makes them wonder “Just how are Walt and Jesse going to get out of this?”

    Well, believe it or not, the writers had to ask themselves the same thing.

    They often reference this moment as an example of just how painful the writing process can be. It took hours upon hours of thinking, of talking and coming up with plenty of bad ideas until a Breaking Bad worthy solution was thought up: A fake phone call to Hank telling him something horrible had happened to Marie.

    Made for some damn good drama, didn’t it?

    I came upon a similar roadblock recently while working on a screenplay. Well into the climactic scene, my protagonist was ready to unleash her master plan and defeat the bad guy. Ta-da! The sun shines high and everyone cheers. Feel good film of the year. Then something dawned on me (I like to call it logic), and I realized that there was no way the bad guy wouldn’t anticipate the protagonist’s plan. So he did, and he turned it on its head.

    And I had no idea what she was going to do.

    At that point, I wanted to shut my laptop off, go get lunch and convince myself the solution would come easier after some heavy procrastination. Then I remembered Hank outside the RV, and I realized that if I didn’t have any clue how the protagonist was going to get out of her plight, chances are the audience wouldn’t either.

    So I kept working. There was a lot of staring at the screen, a lot of start and stop writing, and so much thinking I ought to have paid tuition. The bad ideas came first. And man, oh, man, was there a lot of them. But finally, after what felt like three days in the desert, I came up with a solution. The scene – and as a result, the screenplay – is ten times better because of it.

    What allowed me to make it better is the inspiration I’ve derived from the Breaking Bad writers. The lessons countless hours of watching the show and closely analyzing it have taught me. Chief amongst which is: HONESTY.

    There’s an index card with “Where’s Walt’s head at?” taped on the wall next to my desk. It’s a constant reminder to always stay true to my characters. I must look at the thing a thousand times a day, and every time, it fills me with inspiration and an immediate self awareness if what I’m currently working on isn’t treating the characters with honesty.

    So, next time you’re writing a script and you feel the biting urge to make it darker, just because Breaking Bad is dark AND good, stop. Take your hands off the keyboard, put the pencil down (yes, I know there’s at least one of you still left) and remind yourself that Breaking Bad isn’t good because it’s dark. It’s good because it’s honest.

    —–

    PS: For anyone interested in studying the craft behind Breaking Bad further, I cannot recommend the “Breaking Bad Insider Podcast” more highly. Hosted by Kelley Dixon, one of the show’s editors, and Vince Gilligan himself, the podcast discusses every episode from Season 2 till the finale in glorious, extensive detail. Guests such as other writers, directors, cast and crew members are always present, and the amount of insight one can get about the making of the show is simply unmatched. Do yourself a favor and start listening.

    Also, most of the Breaking Bad writers are on Twitter. In particular, Thomas Schnauz and Moira Walley-Beckett are quite active and will often take the time to answer questions. As is the writers’ assistant, Gordon Smith, who provides a different view of the process.