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BREAKING BAD


Jay

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Funny this thread should be ressurected now, as I've just started to watch through BREAKING BAD again (second time) on Netflix. Such a great show. BUT.....I have a hard time reconciling the whimsical, happy-go-lucky portrayal of Saul when we've seen a far more nuanced and toned-down version in BETTER CALL SAUL. I wonder if they'll be able to solve that 'personality transition' at the end of BETTER CALL SAUL.

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A little bit of that, yes, but there are also other parts that seem more tied to his actual personality. It makes sense, of course, because when Gilligan & co. wrote the character, they had no idea there would be this big backstory show about him years later.

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This week they finally released the Insider podcast for the movie, and it turns out there was two of them, one recorded before the movie premiered and one just last week.  It ended up being really good they did two episodes for the movie because there was a ton of interesting information in both episodes that they never could have contained in one.

 

Here are just some highlights of what I learned:

 

  • They shot the film digitally, on a fancy camera (the Alexa 65 IIRC) that is more sophisticated than the digital cameras they use for BCS (BB was of course shot on film)
  • Todd's apartment was a set designed from scratch to exactly fill the 2.39:1 frame for that amazing overhead shot of Jesse searching the place for the cash.  And in that shot, the person is always Aaron Paul, no doubles were used.  They basically had the camera record for 90 minutes straight while Vince constantly told him new areas to search and move around, etc.  The final shot is only 7 seconds!
  • Vince wrote the entire movie himself, no writer's room was involved.  As an example of the difference, he mentioned that in the early drafts Jesse was being followed around by the "ghost" of Uncle Jack (not literally a ghost, but like a memory of him), who would encourage him to do bad things (ie "that guy saw your face, kill him").  He mentioned that in a writer's room, the looks on everyone's face would have told him this was a bad idea within an hour, but writing the entire thing by himself at his house led to the Jack scenes being in the script for weeks until he pulled them out.
  • The first rough cut came in at 2 hours, 45 minutes.  Many entire scenes got dropped for the final cut.  They hope to have a lengthy deleted scene reel on the blu ray.  Two major scenes they mentioned were a much longer scene with Jane, and a lengthy scene showing the SWAT team raiding Badger and Skinny Pete's place after Jesse has driven off.
  • That commercial that showed Skinny Pete being interrogated?  It wasn't a deleted scene from the film; It was shot by people at Netflix, months after the film had wrapped!  Vince said they consulted with him about it, but that he didn't write it.
  • They had 36 hours to fly in Bryan Cranston and fly him back out, since he was doing a play in New York 6 days a week at the time.  They used new bald cap technology and filmed the scene in a real diner in the city since they wouldn't have had time to drive him too far from the airport.  Outside the windows in the real life cafe are city buildings, which wouldn't have fit the in-story location the diner was supposed to be at, so they had to hang giant green screens outside all the windows.  So this whole sequence has the most visual effects in the whole film, because not only is everything out the windows replaced, but they digitally shrunk Cranston's head in every shot because the bald cap gave him an "alien head" look.

That's all I can think of for now, but there was tons of other interesting stuff too!

 

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I watched it around the same time. I barely remember it, but I know afterward I had a general feeling of..."Huh." I don't think it made much of an impact on me the way either show has.

 

Then again, both shows took more than an hour or two to fully establish themselves as excellent entertainment, so maybe this team and this universe just work better in the long form of a series than as single films.

 

I'm rewatching Breaking Bad right now; I should rewatch El Camino afterward.

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In retrospect, I actually think El Camino was quite bad. 

 

I honestly can't remember how it ended, how the Breaking Bad story ended for Jesse's character. So for me, my lasting memory is indeed of Jesse, driving into the darkness at the end of the original series. It's better that way. 

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  • 1 year later...
On 23/02/2020 at 4:58 PM, Jay said:

The first rough cut came in at 2 hours, 45 minutes.  Many entire scenes got dropped for the final cut.  They hope to have a lengthy deleted scene reel on the blu ray.  Two major scenes they mentioned were a much longer scene with Jane, and a lengthy scene showing the SWAT team raiding Badger and Skinny Pete's place after Jesse has driven off.

 

The 15 minute deleted scenes reel is on youtube now

 

 

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  • 2 months later...
23 minutes ago, bruce marshall said:

The same fans who hate the last season of GOT love how BB ended up .

Proving my point that plot  logic has nothing to do with reactions; it's all about giving  the fans

what they want.

 

No, it's about execution. BB was executed well; GOT was not (at the end, at least).

 

Yavar

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4 hours ago, Yavar Moradi said:

 

No, it's about execution. BB was executed well; GOT was not (at the end, at least).

 

Yavar

So, you admit there was no logic or credibility in how BB played out?

 

Btw A much better denouement would have seen the FBI guy tracking down Walt and trying to nail him.

Instead, they killed him off and had Walt engage in a series of totally unbelievable adventures.

But, it was always a pulp melodrama, so that's fine.

Still, I was and Still am a fan of the show!😁

But, fans treat the show as if it's high art " greatest show of all time".

NonsenseNonsense!

GOT was art!

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I really liked season 15 although changing the setting for most of the show to Ireland helped freshen things up.

 

But yes generally it's still very funny. It's nowhere near the doldrums a show could be in by this point.

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27 minutes ago, Koray Savas said:

Is this show still funny?

 

Oh yes

 

And it's been 18 years!

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Yea they only do eight 22 minute episodes every 16 months these days 

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