Written Interview: Vince Gilligan, Matthew Weiner, David Milch
For all you cable TV fans, a special sit-down interview from GQ with Vince Gilligan [“Breaking Bad”], David Milch [“Deadwood”], and Matthew Weiner [“Mad Men”]. Excerpt:
GQ: I think we’ve all gotten used to the idea that television has evolved into its own distinct art form over the past ten years or so, rather than just movies on a small screen.
Matthew Weiner: Seeing movie people trying to get into TV now who don’t understand that is very interesting.
GQ: What’s the mistake they make?
Matthew Weiner: It’s a different genre. It’s literally comparing a short story to a poem. Or a play.
GQ: Nowadays nobody would struggle with feeling inferior for working in television instead of movies, the way someone like The Sopranos’ David Chase once did, right?
Matthew Weiner: Oh, there’s still a hierarchy. Forgetting about remuneration and public adulation, there’s still a hierarchy in terms of the writer’s Olympic Dream. I have to warn you, journalism won’t be on this list.
GQ: Thank you for that.
Matthew Weiner: It would start with poetry, then go theater, novel, then film, and then TV, then maybe radio.
GQ: Why is that still true, when it’s obvious that some of the best work is being done on TV?
Vince Gilligan: It takes time. It started out when movies were the movies and TV was this bastard stepchild.
David Milch: The symbol retains its hold long after the substance which the symbol is supposed to represent has lost its real basis. Look. [pulls a stack of scratch-off lottery tickets from his pocket] I just stopped and got gas, so, like an idiot, I bought a bunch of scratch-offs.
[He distributes the tickets. Feverish scratching ensues and continues throughout lunch.]
Matthew Weiner: If we win, what happens?
David Milch: You keep the money. Please do. What I’m trying to illustrate is that none of us, thank goodness, needs $10. And yet we willingly submit to the hold the symbol has on us, associated with luck. In the same way, the mystique of the film writer holds long after the substance — in which films were a more powerful medium. That’s not true anymore, but the symbol still has its own autonomous reality.
Matthew Weiner: Part of it is just about scarcity. You can see Jon Hamm thirteen times a year, and you can see Brad Pitt twice. That in itself creates a magic and a hierarchy.
GQ: And yet, Vince, you’ve said that Breaking Bad instantly came to you as a TV show, not as a movie.
Vince Gilligan: Well, if it had been the 1970s, absolutely it would have been a movie, and I would have had to forgo a lot of fun story, because I would have had to fit it all in two hours. That’s the first question: Is this two hours’ worth of story or a hundred hours’ worth of story? And in all honesty, I’ve written movies that have been made, and the process has not been as satisfying as writing for television.
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