15 minute read
BETTER CALL SAUL
Bob Odenkirk as Jimmy McGill/Saul Goodman in Better Call Saul. Photo: Ursula Coyote
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BETTER CALL SAUL IS A SPIN-OFF SERIES FROM BREAKING BAD, A PREQUEL THAT TELLS THE ORIGIN STORY OF BREAKING BAD’S HAPLESS LAWYER, SAUL GOODMAN. THE YEAR 2022 SEES ITS SIXTH AND FINAL SEASON AIR ON US NETWORK AMC AND THE GLOBAL STREAMER NETFLIX. BOTH SERIES USED THE BIG, WIDE, HIGH BACKDROPS OF NEW MEXICO AS A CRUCIAL CHARACTER IN THEIR STORIES. JULIAN NEWBY SPOKE TO PEOPLE WHO WORKED ACROSS BOTH SHOWS
THE VINCE Gilligan creation Breaking Bad (2008-13) was arguably one of the main triggers for a whole new raft of high-profle TV dramas, designed to give competing platforms a chance in a fourishing, but overcrowded, global marketplace.
The show didn’t have an easy path to begin with; HBO, Showtime and FX, said ‘No thank you’, and it was finally picked up by AMC, where the first two or three seasons enjoyed a healthy cult status.
Many argue it was Netfix that pushed the show and its stars into the mainstream — AMC says differently. Turn that story around and it could also be argued that it was Breaking Bad that gave Netfix its frst big boost, the show’s clifhangers encouraging binge-watching by viewers keen to know what happens next — ‘binge-watching’, a term not used widely when Breaking Bad frst appeared on AMC, on January 20, 2008.
The series’ success also encouraged the creation of more Netflix originals, placing the rights to future such fagship series frmly in the streamer’s hands.
So, from cult to mainstream to prequel — and a movie too. As with Kelsey Grammer’s Frasier (1993-2004), Bob Odenkirk’s Saul Goodman didn’t seem to everyone to be the obvious spin-of star — until it happened. As Odenkirk said towards the end of Breaking Bad: “For four years I was a part-timer. My character popped up here and there and I was pretty sure Saul was going to get knocked of at any moment. He would have been the perfect character to take out: big enough to matter, not big enough to change the core story. Every time I was sent a script, I looked for Saul’s death scene. But it never came.”
And here we now are, at the sixth and fnal season of Better Call Saul (2015-22). Viewers will miss the comic but complex lawyer and the ridiculously dangerous and unlikely scrapes he gets himself into — and Odenkirk, cast and crew will miss Albuquerque, the New Mexico city that both series made their home.
It can be said that Breaking Bad and, later, Better Call Saul, put Albuquerque on the map; the tourist’s map at least. Filmmakers have long enjoyed shooting in and around the city, but the two series have created a whole new appeal to the area, for ‘set-jetters’ keen to retrace the steps of the characters that made these two series into global hits.
Former X-Files (1993-2018) writer Gilligan had originally planned to set Breaking Bad in Riverside, California. Producer Sony suggested switching to New Mexico, primarily because of the financial incentives available there. New Mexico’s incentives package includes a 25% to 35% Refundable Film Production Tax Credit.
But it soon became about more than just money. “Vince got on board immediately,” executive producer of both series, Melissa Bernstein, says of the decision to move. “He felt like New Mexico really lent itself to the production of a modern-day western and the dominance of beige in the palette of the setting matched up well with Walter White’s journey.” And it was a natural choice for the season’s prequel, too: “Albuquerque really developed into a character in Breaking Bad so it wouldn’t have felt right to set the follow-up anywhere else,” Bernstein adds.
Cyndy McCrossen scouted for both series before taking on the role of film liaison officer at the Albuquerque Film Ofce. “Bob Odenkirk always mentions the amazing skies in New Mexico as being one of his favourite things about working here,” McCrossen says. “The show really took time to treat the location as its own character in the show. And as a scout, I always felt that the locations were on equal standing with all the other elements of the series. Both shows used signature time-lapse photography to call out the beautiful skies and landscapes of Albuquerque. Anecdotally it seems that international audiences loved seeing the high-desert locations, too. It really sets a sense of time and place that is bigger than our human stories and keeps all the crazy human drama in perspective.”
Gilligan shares those feelings: “When I think of Albuquerque, I think of clouds, just those beautiful floating cumulus clouds. The skies. These are skies you just don’t see in Southern California,” he says.
On set: Raymond Cruz as drug lord Tuco Salamanca with Bob Odenkirk as Jimmy/Saul in Better Call Saul, season one. Photo: Lewis Jacobs/Netfix
I WAS PRETTY SURE
“You really get the depth and the sense of scale in the desert in Albuquerque. On days when I’m out there on the set, the frst thing I do is look out the window. If it’s a day with no clouds, I get really upset! I think about the Sandias [mountains] and about this great city that I’ve grown to love."
So, Breaking Bad was a hit; Albuquerque was the natural home of all the characters that had grown together during the series; cast and crew had gone native — so to continue with the prequel was really a no-brainer.
“When we were shooting the final season of Breaking Bad there were little whifs, you know, whifs of a new project coming, some kind of a spin-of — you get a little gossip but nothing ofcial,” Breaking Bad location manager from season four, Christian Diaz de Bedoya, says. “And then we heard from Melissa that it looks like we are going to do a spin-of and it’s going to be about Saul. So, they kind of kept us on our toes, but said ‘Look, try not to go anywhere!’”
Diagnosed with terminal cancer, highschool chemistry teacher Walter White sets about building a meth factory inside an RV to help pay for his medical bills. His wife Skylar (Anna Gunn), a writer of short stories — whose brother Hank (Dean Norris) is a cop — learning of his misdemeanours, takes on a book-keeping job at a local car wash to help him launder his dirty money. Meanwhile partner in crime, his former chemistry student Jesse Pinkman (Aaron Paul), slowly becomes torn between his loyalty to White — and the money they are making — and his need to do right thing.
As things get out of hand, they seek legal help — and a bit more. They hire strip-mall lawyer Saul Goodman, who soon becomes too involved in their schemes. To help launder Walt's drug money, Saul uses the website White’s son set up for donors to contribute to Walt's chemotherapy, to make the drug money look like small donations from contributors. Saul also helps Jesse anonymously to buy his aunt's house back from his parents, using his share of the drug money. Saul digs himself deeper and deeper into this multi-layered life of crime and ends up leaving town and taking on a new identity.
Launched in February 2015, Better Call Saul follows the travails of aspiring lawyer Jimmy McGill who, with his lawyer genius brother always in the background, is struggling to make a career for himself.
Albuquerque is as important as ever in this prequel series. Wide skies, deserts and mountains serve to contrast with Jimmy’s feelings of smallness and desperation in the face of the problems he’s putting on himself. Incongruous buildings in the middle of nowhere reflect his sense of helplessness and isolation, always reminding us that it’s not only the innate badness of some human beings that can overwhelm us, but that our environment can too.
“When I interviewed for the job, I had watched previous seasons of Breaking Bad and I knew that Vince and crew really liked to get these big, wide, beautiful shots,” Diaz de Bedoya says. “So I knew that was always going to be a big part of the aesthetic of the show. And I defnitely scouted locations where we could really open it up. Get big, get wide, get high.”
“New Mexico is the hottest and coldest place I have ever been,” Bernstein says. “The altitude, hot-air balloons, monsoon season, propensity for lightning and so much more, definitely kept us on our toes. We moved a handful of scenes inside when the weather wouldn’t co-operate. The schedule would endure changes, but we did our best to preserve the integrity of the script and New Mexico, definitely, provided more opportunities than limitations.”
“We had to fnd environments for all these characters that hadn’t been introduced in Breaking Bad,” Diaz de Bedoya says. “Like Lalo Salamanca — nephew of drug lord Hector Slamanca — his hacienda, his operation, his world. And also we were re-visiting some of the Breaking Bad elements of it all. What was so great about Better Call Saul is that I was able to come in with new inspiration. "That was a really big push for myself and my department. You know, you start fnding these other creative worlds, loca-
Giancarlo Esposito as Gus Fring — legit businessman and local do-gooder on the outside and ruthless drug baron when the locals aren’t looking — in Better Call Saul, season three. Photo: Michele K. Short
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tions that hadn’t been claimed yet. And in that process, Vince and Peter [co-writer Peter Gould], even though they may have had something in mind, we’d always bring something to the table and they’d say: ‘Oh this is much better than we had anticipated, let’s go with that’.”
While this was clearly a love affair between cast, crew and New Mexico, nobody is going to pretend that this is always the easiest place to shoot.
“We get heavy summer monsoon rains that can catch you unaware,” McCrossen says. “One August while filming night scenes at Mike’s house [Michael Mckean who plays Jimmy’s brother Chuck], the thunder was clapping again and again overhead. You didn’t even have time to reset the lightning detectors. The rain was coming down so fast and hard it was flooding over the sidewalks in a matter of minutes. The crew had to wrap up equipment as best they could and leave everything with the security guards and walk away till the next day. It was nuts! Crews need a wide range of wardrobe available for all they might face. The desert is harsh. Medics are kept busy in the summer, keeping the crew safe from heat stroke and sunburn. We are even required to have snake wranglers on set to chase away rattlesnakes when flming on remote sites.”
One of the biggest problems faced during the combined 12 seasons of both series was nothing to do with the choice of location. “During the fnal season Bob had a heart attack. On stage,” Diaz de Bedoya says. “Yeah, he was actually dead on the scene. He was given CPR and rushed to hospital and overall, he came out OK. But it was a very frightening moment for everybody because it happened right there on stage. And with all of that we only stopped production for one week. We shut down for a week, we reorganised some of the shooting schedule and continued to shoot with all the other characters — shooting scenes that didn’t involve him. We had scheduled work for him so that he could take some time of actually. That was right around the time that thing happened. So that worked out, but it was pretty crazy.”
Both series have drawn new tourism to the area. Because while we are all used to New York, Chicago, LA, Washington and Miami — all perfect backdrops for gangs, criminals, corrupt politicians and the law-enforcement agents who bring them to justice — Albuquerque is relatively new to TV crime series. “It felt like Albuquerque was a bit of the beaten path for most folks when Breaking Bad came on to the scene,” Bernstein says. “But over the years a Breaking Bad/Better Call Saul cottage industry seems to have taken hold. Home-grown location tours and souvenir shops are expanding the experience for the many tourists who have made Albuquerque a destination, often expressly to walk in Walt’s and Saul’s shoes. I’ve seen families, friends, bachelor parties, artists, writers — all on the path of that adventure.”
Cast and crew also ensured that their presence there for 12 seasons was a positive for the community and not just tourists. “We defnitely tried to fnd ways to invest in the community over the years, through employment opportunities, fund-raising drives, educational events, and donations to many worthy causes serving the community,” Bernstein says. “Bob Odenkirk, Rhea Seehorn and many of the actors would perform improv as well, with a local company. We are still engaged with the city to fnd ways to leave a mark so it’s very much an ongoing conversation.”
“There can be tensions in neighbourhoods during productions,” McCrossen says. “It’s like the circus comes to town and lands right on your doorstep. Despite that, in general, the citizens of Albuquerque are very receptive to flm crews. The Film Ofce works hard to have reasonable oversight of film crews while in neighbourhoods, so that residents receive adequate notifcation and clear explanations of what to expect. There is a Code of Conduct that each production must sign of on. And as a series, this show knew they had to be good guests if they wanted to return.” She adds: “Producers often provided late-night coffee or ice-cream trucks, which was fun for the neighbourhoods. And the cast has been very involved in charity and non-proft events.”
And if the productions have finally gone, some cast and crew are remaining. “Bob Odenkirk, Vince Gilligan, Aaron Paul, Dean Norris and others have purchased homes here,” McCrossen says. “This show was amazing in how it really developed a crew that was as tight as a family. That comes from having a 12-season franchise in town. The State of New Mexico actually created a Breaking Bad incentive of an additional 5% for series that flm here. Series can be bread-andbutter for a crew and town as the show camps out for multiple seasons. This particular production was amazing in how it cultivated crew talent and moved up team members from within. The Albuquerque Film Ofce will deeply miss having such creative partners and cheerleaders for flm in New Mexico.”
So does McCrossen think the franchise has gone forever? “We are so looking forward to having the creative team develop a new storyline that can be flmed here in New Mexico. One can always hope, right? We are collectively, eternally grateful for the spotlight these shows have shared with Albuquerque.”
Bob Odenkirk on the run, on set for Better Call Saul season one. Photo: Ursula Coyote/Netfix. S1
