‘Breaking Bad‘ is a show packed to the gills with mystery and intrigue. But while the more interesting stuff served as the central focus of the show, some of the other little things got glossed over.
“As all you physicists know, a thrown, sliced pizza would come apart due to centrifugal force or angular momentum (or something like that).”
So how do you get around the fact that your pizza is clearly unsliced and still keep an iconic shot in the episode?
“We had a long discussion before we shot the pizza on the roof scene about whether or not the pizza should be sliced… no self-respecting pizza parlour sells an unsliced pizza. So we figured we needed to explain it (in the “They pass the savings on to you” scene), or else face our audience’s righteous wrath!”
So there you have it, folks. Everything is deliberate. Even pizza.
“Sure looked that way to me!”
Bob Odenkirk and Bryan Cranston really are great comedic performers, but the best on-set ad-lib came from behind the camera:
“The all-time best improv from Breaking Bad…the one that instantly springs to mind…was when, in the episode “Four Days Out,” Aaron Paul said the line “A robot?”
The credit for that line goes to Nick, our 1st AC. Just brilliant!”
The idea to turn Hank bad after he discovers the true identity of “WW” was at least floated by the writers:
“You know, every idea was fair game for discussion in the writers’ room. So the idea of Hank becoming a bad guy probably was floated at one point or another, but I couldn’t swear to it in a court of law. However, we wouldn’t have talked about it for long, because it just seemed to us that Hank was too much of a straight-arrow to go for that.”
Jesse, ultimately, winds up being happy beyond the end of the series, but that’s a conclusion that you as a viewer need to arrive at for yourself:
“It really is up to the individual viewer, however. There is no definitive answer, and it was left that way on purpose so that you guys could come up with the ending for Jesse that you saw fit. And for me, that ending was…ultimately…peace.”
And finally, this absolutely cracking piece of advice for any bourgeoning writer struggling to balance ambition and ability:
“I think the trick is to find inspiration from your own work. To be inspired by the act of writing and creating in and of itself, rather than to focus solely on some ambiguous “success” that may or may not come of it.
I know that’s easier said than done – we all want our work to be read and loved, and we all strive for fame and success. That’s only human nature, and to deny it would be disingenuous. Still, if we can learn to love the act of writing, and if we can appreciate and be proud of the work that we do — whether it sells or not — then we’ve truly achieved something profound. Something with deeper meaning.
Hang in there! If it were easy, everybody would be doing it.”
Now that we’ve got ‘Breaking Bad‘ ticked off, can we get a scientific exploration of all instances of pizza in major entertainment properties? Pls and thank you.
