And it was August - it was murderously hot. The difference between where we would shoot on Breaking Bad, still on To’Hajiilee property, the distance was another hour drive, so by the time we would get to the location, door-to-door it was another two hours. It’s enormous, hundreds and thousands of acres, maybe close to a million. This is so hard.” You have to understand, we were shooting on the wonderful To’Hajiilee Indian Reservation, which we have shot on before, so somebody reading this might say, “What’s he complaining about? They shot on that very same reservation on the pilot episode of Breaking Bad! What’s the difference?” Well, the difference was that To’Hajiilee is about the size of Rhode Island. And the anticipation was, “This is insane. How much of what ended up so difficult and taking so much time was anticipatable issues and how much was sorta force majeure, un-anticipatable stuff? 'TV's Top 5': 'Better Call Saul' Bosses on Season 5 and What's Next I’ve gotta get in the proper headspace here.” Man, it was tough, but I’m proud of it. He kept saying, “Bring it on, man! The more uncomfortable the better. He’s a weirdo and bless him for that, because it makes my job a lot easier. Bob Odenkirk enjoys privation and discomfort. Never a peep of complaint, especially from Bob. I’m so proud of it and I’m mostly proud of the magnificent job the crew did. I’m not exaggerating, this was the hardest directing I’ve ever done. I went from the best day of directing of my life, in a desert, to the worst stretch of weeks and months or however frigging long this thing took. But other than that, it was just pure hell. The only overlap is that I was working with another two magnificent actors - obviously Bob Odenkirk and Jonathan Banks. It was the single best day of directing I ever had.Ĭut to being on the set of this episode. This was before the phrase “social distancing” existed, but there was enough room out there that I wasn’t blowing smoke at anyone’s face. I was working with these two magnificent actors - Aaron Paul, obviously, and Jesse Plemons. I arrived on the set in a helicopter and then I had this wonderful day. This is the difference between movies and TV, by the way. And, by the way, can I say that all the desert stuff in El Camino, it feels like a lot of desert stuff, but that was the best day I ever had in my life - the one really big desert day we had on El Camino. Having just spent as much time in the desert as you did on El Camino, was there any part of you that maybe craved a two-people-sitting-inside-in-air-conditioning episode? They are actually trying to kill me here.” So that’s how I came to it. If it doesn’t kill you, it’s gonna break your heart.” And then when I finally read it, I said, “Oh my God. It’s like the Heartbreak Ridge of episodes.
It’s a two-hander with these two guys.” And I said, “That’s fantastic,” and they said, “Yeah, but it’s big. And then they finally started saying, “Well, it’s Mike and Jimmy. I would look at Gordon Smith, who wrote the episode, and I would say, “Is he just messing with me?,” and Gordon just would sit there with his arms crossed, as usual, just stoic, and then just shake his head slowly and emphatically. So I laughed the first few times he said it, and then I started to get nervous. It’s gonna be big!” And then I would work out of the same office that they use on Better Call Saul when I was working on the movie, so I would run into these guys a lot, and every time I would walk by the writers room I would say, “How’s my episode?” and he’d get this devilish grin on his face and he’d say, “Oh, it gets bigger every day.” You’re doing episode number eight” and I said, “Great! What can you tell me about it?” He says, “Oh, it’s gonna be big. He knew I could direct an episode and I told Melissa Bernstein the dates I was able to do it, which were dates based on me finishing up postproduction on El Camino. Basically I would see him for months leading up to them giving me the script for the episode and he said, “OK. I lay all of that at the feet of Peter Gould. So you come into the season knowing you were going to be able to direct one episode. Those two definitely do distance themselves, that’s for sure.
MOVIE WITH LOTS OF SNAKES IN THE DESERR TV
It’s gotten to the point where I cringe when I see characters making too much contact on TV shows, so congratulations on directing what may be TV’s first true social distancing episode. Stay tuned for a breakdown of several key moments coming Tuesday morning. This first part of the interview is mostly spoiler-free, discussing the conditions and complications that made the shoot so difficult. Gilligan got on the phone with The Hollywood Report last week for an in-depth chat about “Bagman.”
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