John and Craig sit down with legendary writer, director and showrunner Vince Gilligan (Breaking Bad, Better Call Saul) to discuss his prolific career and how to make great television. Vince leads us through how he develops a premise, balancing creative surprises with rigorous planning, and his advice for up-and-coming showrunners.
We also discuss re-writing features before following up on the old dancing prospector archetype — only to discover it’s a character Vince has a long personal history with.
In our bonus segment for premium members, John, Craig and Vince get tired of re-runs and ask, which old TV shows do they want to re-boot?
Links:
- Vince Gilligan on IMDb
- Vince Gilligan plays a prospector on Community (S5 E9)
- Walter Houston’s dance in The Treasure of the Sierra Madre
- Dracula’s Kung-Fu Theatre
- Alien Tape
- Today Years Old on Twitter
- Robot Puppet Sings “A Thousand Miles” by Vanessa Carlton by Ben Howard on YouTube
- Get a Scriptnotes T-shirt!
- Check out the Inneresting Newsletter
- Gift a Scriptnotes Subscription or treat yourself to a premium subscription!
- Craig Mazin on Instagram
- John August on Twitter
- John on Instagram
- John on Mastodon
- Outro by Matt Davis (send us yours!)
- Scriptnotes is produced by Drew Marquardt and edited by Matthew Chilelli.
Email us at ask@johnaugust.com
You can download the episode here.
UPDATE 5-30-23: The transcript for this episode can be found here.