#I feel so bad for the cast for Simon for the staff/crew

[caliphoria17]

FUCK NETFLIX, MAN! FUCK YOUUU!!! 😭😭😭🤬🤬🤬

[artzychic27]

Idea: Actor AU commentary, but it’s for Monstrous Youths, where they talk about different aspects of the show like plots, character stuff, and of course, costumes and makeup! (Marc talking about how much he loves his moth wings, him and Reshma talk about maneuvering the extra limbs, Mylene, Mireille, and Lacey talk about how you simulate someone having vines, tar or flames for hair, the Buff Squad™️ talking about the fur on their arms is hot as hell and gets rank as fuck😅)

Chloé: *Rises from her sarcophagus* WHO DARES TO AWAKEN THE QUEEN- Ugh! Ew! There’s sand on my tongue!

Cast: *Laughing*

Director: *Laughs* Cut!

—

[Commentary]

Juleka: *Adjusting her fangs* I think what I like best about playing a vampire is that my wardrobe is the same as what I usually wear. That, and they don’t need to cake my face with a ton of makeup to give me that “undead” look.

Luka: I, on the other hand, require tons of makeup to truly make myself look like the living dead.

Juleka: And because you wanna feel pretty.

Luka: Jules… I am pretty.

—

[Commentary]

Marc: Reshma and I love being insect monsters.

Reshma: He’s an insect, I’m an arachnid. But, he’s right. It’s fun controlling the extra limbs, but also challenging.

Marc: For the longest time, we’ve been slapping the other cast members.

Reshma: I swear, we did not mean to do that!

—

[Commentary]

Kim: See, in order to play the role of the fearsome werewolf of DuPont School For Monstrous Youths, I spent the longest time observing the masters…

Max: And by that, he means he spent hours at a dog shelter playing with the puppies.

Kim: It’s called getting into character!

—

Adrien: Why don’t you just ask your dad?

Nino: Whenever I do, he always goes, “GRRRR! GRANDPA BAD!” *Coughs* God, that fucked my throat.

Adrien: *Burries his face in his hands and laughs* Drink some water, man!

Ismael: Ugh! I wanna go home!

Lila: The boy wants to go home! Enough with the bloopers! End the madness!

—

[Commentary]

Lila: Nath, Marc, and I cannot tell you how long it took us to master having wings. Mine are made of real feathers, and they’re pretty thick, so I had to work on my balance quite a bit.

Marc: Then, there are the harnesses that make it look we’re flying. Nathaniel screamed the first time.

Nathaniel: Because that harness broke and I was falling!

Lila: No, that was just… Flying downwards.

Nathaniel: Well, screw you.

—

[Commentary]

Simon: *Getting his makeup done* The crew did excellent work on my eye. It blinks whenever I do, and I can see through it. The only thing is that it gets kinda sweaty under there, and it gets all in my eyes, so my fake eye is just blinking non-stop.

—

[Commentary]

Alya: *Putting on a green bodysuit* My outfit’s a little… Complex. See, there’s this combination of the suit I’m wearing and transparent clothing to make it look like I’m a ghost with translucent skin

Mireille: The same is with me, only my clothes are not transparent.

—

Ondine: *Emerges from the pool, gasping for air*

Lacey: Ondine! What happened?

Ondine: I couldn’t breathe under there!

Rose: Why didn’t you just use the breathing tube?

Ondine: I couldn’t find the tube!

Staff member: My bad!

—

[Commentary]

Ondine: Things don’t always go according to plan on set. Some tails may come off, wings may not flap accordingly, and people trip on vines. What’s important is that we stay levelheaded, share a few laughs, and things go smoothly in the end.

Rose: And then we laugh at the bloopers.

Ondine: That, too.

—

[Commentary]

Lacey: Okay, okay! So, my fire hair?! It’s actual fire! There’s this non-burning fire that doesn’t even hurt, and it’s awesome!

Jean: Also terrifying.

Lacey: But also AWESOME!

Alix: Yeah, and speaking of hair… Those are real trained snakes. Because pops didn’t raise some coward who goes with the CGI option!

*The camera pans to Nathaniel*

Nathaniel: Hi. Yeah, uh… That actually is CGI. Alix tried the snake option for a minute, screamed, and then fainted. She just wants to sound badass.

—

[Commentary]

Zoé: I’d say the most difficult part about our characters are the bandages and vines.

Myléne: I’m always tripping on them during the days my characters forgets to trim them, and Chloé and Zoé often get tangled in their bandages.

Chloé: They’re like a fucking straitjacket!

—

Kagami: You will do well to listen, Félix. Stay away from my school. Stay away from Adrien. And stay away from me. *One of her horns falls off* … My horn fell off, didn’t it?

Félix: *Snickering* Yep. Wanna try that again?

Kagami: No, I want to wallow in shame. *Leaves*

Félix: Kagami! Come back! You were good! I was really intimidated!

*Meanwhile*

Cosette: Kagami, come on! It happens to all of us. You’re not the first one, really. Remember when I charged at Lucien and both of my horns just slipped off?

Aurore: Or when one of mine fell into the pool?

Kagami: I know, it’s just embarrassing. Right after I have the monologue of a lifetime.

Cosette: Yeah, that does kinda suck.

Aurore: Cosette!

Coaette: What? It’s true.

—

[Commentary]

Félix: Working with Lucien as the antagonists is great, just wonderful.

Lucien: Yes, I can’t get enough of playing the villain. There’s just something about it that draws me toward the role.

Félix: Same! And, you know, if there just so happens to be a villain musical number, then you can bet I’m going to give it my all. Hint. Hint.

Lucien: The writers looked at your notes; they said they’d think about it.

—

[Commentary]

Marinette: Having these buttons put on my eyes gave me flashbacks to when I watched Coraline!

Alya: She screamed.

Marinette: I did!

—

[Commentary]

Denise: That fur… Is hot as fuck! I- no joke! My arms are soaked when I take those off!

Ivan: They have to be washed constantly, and no one wants that job.

Denise: Sometimes the others make jokes about burning them, and we are beginning to consider it, ‘cause those things are getting rank.

—

Jean: Hey, guys- Ghouls! I meant ghouls! Fuck!

Cast: *Laughing*

Jean: Fuck all these fucking monster words! I need coffee! *Dramatically tosses one end of his scarf over his shoulder and leaves*

Ismael: Say what you want. He was destined to be The Phantom.

—

[Commentary]

Sabrina: The groaning my character does is actually just me saying real sentences from the back of my throat. When I say, “Hello, my name is Sabrina,” people have to listen closely to hear it. I was originally going to groan, but then I thought, ‘Nah! Lemme have some fun with this!’

—

Rose: Real quick, I can’t find my femur.

Kim: What?

Rose: It was supposed to come off for one scene, and now I can’t find it.

Ismael: *Points to her thigh* Found it. Case solved!

Adrien: You’re a little shit, you know that?

Ismael: *Smirks* All a part of my charm.

@msweebyness @imsparky2002

[lunaajade]

Everything You Need to Know about “Shadow and Bone” on Netflix (*UPDATED: POSSIBLE LANGUAGE OF THORNS ADAPTATION INFO)

 Since it’s recently been confirmed that we’d be getting S&B content in a few days (finally!), I thought I’d compile and summarize as much info as I could to refresh everyone’s memories! Please spread the word/share this post to those who aren’t up to date! (I’ve seen some people online who are worried about how it’s going to turn out, and I’d like to be able to hopefully reassure those people)

Now, there’s a LOT of stuff, so there’s always the chance I missed/forgot something. This post will be split up into categories based on type of info, so here we go! I went back and listened to/watched both of the big live streams (NYCC and the S&B Charity Competition), went on the Grishaverse Reddit, etc. to find as much (extra/bonus) stuff as I could. (If I missed anything/got something wrong, please feel free to leave a comment!)

Update: A lot of people have been asking where it was confirmed we were getting content soon. I found out from one of the update accounts I follow.

Thanks for reading, everyone!

General/Key Info About the Show

-This first season will be adapting both “Shadow and Bone” and what has been dubbed a “Book 0″ (most likely meaning prequel/backstory/set-up) for “Six of Crows” -In relation to the above point, the timelines are being brought together for the show. (Normally in the books, the two series are set two years apart)(We don’t know how exactly or what this means for the story, but I have a really interesting theory that I thought up in relation to this, message me if you’d like to hear it.) -Leigh acknowledges and understands that some of us have doubts and are worried about the show, but she has publicly assured us (numerous times) of how much she loves the show and cast, how well she thinks the crew/writers did in bringing the Grishaverse to life, etc. See a later point below in the Facts/Tidbits section -The first season will have 8, one-hour long episodes -Alina has been made half Shu (half Asian) for the show! Leigh stated that was decided on after she and Eric had a lengthy discussion on Alina’s character. -The main cast (as in confirmed to be in all episodes) is comprised of Jessie Mei Li (as Alina), Archie Renaux (as Mal), Ben Barnes (as the Darkling), Freddy Carter (as Kaz), Amita Suman (as Inej), and Kit Young (as Jesper) -Wylan and Nikolai are NOT in the first season. (Nikolai didn’t appear until the second book, and Leigh confirmed that at this point in the story, the Crows had not met Wylan yet.) -Other cast members include Danielle Galligan (as Nina), Calahan Skogman (as Matthias), Daisy Head (as Genya), Sujaya Dasgupta (as Zoya), Luke Pasqualino (as David), Julian Kostov (as Fedyor), Simon Sears (as Ivan), Zoe Wanamaker (as Baghra), and more! -The Darkling will also be called “General Kirigan” in the show. From what we know, The Darkling will be the “enemy” to Ravka (so in essence, General Kirigan is his alias/fake persona (what he’ll most likely be referred to for most of the show), and no one knows that he’s actually their enemy. (Meaning it’ll most likely a super big moment when they learn their general was actually the Darkling in disguise)). -The show was shot on location in Budapest, Hungary. (And additional filming took place this past fall in Vancouver) -In order, the 8 episodes are titled the following: “A Searing Burst of Light”, “We’re All Someone’s Monster”, “The Making at the Heart of the World”, “Otkazat’sya”, “Show Me Who You Are”, “The Heart is An Arrow”, “The Unsea”, & “No Mourners”.

Other (Fun) Facts/Tidbits About the Show

-Upon seeing Jessie’s audition, Leigh loved her audition/portrayal of Alina so much that she apparently stated that she wanted her to play Alina or she’d be out of the project. She was sent five auditions to watch, Jessie’s was the third, and she said she didn’t bother watching the rest of them. -Leigh stated that she and Eric Heisserer (the creator of the show) said they were on the same page from the first meeting. All other past meetings with producers and companies about possible adaptations had left her with a bad feeling, but she said they’d had the same ideas about inclusion, story, staff, etc. She said she’s loved the respect he’s shown towards the work (and, in a way, to us the fans) -Netflix apparently also has the rights to adapt “The Language of Thorns” , though we’ve gotten no info on that adaptation yet. (UPDATE: I just watched a Leigh Bardugo event from Feb 2019 (a few weeks after the show was first announced, I think): As of  that day, she said that she thought that they were going to use LoT more for "texture” (IMO that might mean worldbuilding?) in the show. And I don’t know if she was talking about LoT specifically because she was very vague, but she said that there were certain things in the show that she thinks readers will be really excited about. Again, this was over a year ago, back when they were still in pre-production and stuff, so don’t take my word for it. Besides this, I couldn’t find anything else relating to a possible LoT adaptation. Maybe they’ll have the stories from LoT appear as actual folk tales told in the show, and that’s the “adaptation”? IDK. (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qpHnw8Ygw5c&t=1906s)) -Leigh is an exec. producer on the show! I’m no expert, so I don’t know how much say/power she had in the process, but she definitely had some. -There is a RAVKAN edition of the “Shadow and Bone” book that Leigh says makes a cameo in the show! -Jesper’s guns had custom etchings done on them by a Hungarian antique gunsmith! (And they were so good that Leigh and Eric said that it looked like it belonged in a museum--they were also described to be quite heavy!) -Eric Heisserer is the creator of the show, he is an award-winning writer, well known for “Arrival”, “Bird Box”, and more. (If I remember correctly, Leigh said that he’d reached out to her about making the show!) -A DeKappel painting (maybe the one owned by Van Eck?) was confirmed to be in the pilot episode. -Pekka Rollins and Tante Heleen have been confirmed to be in the first season, but their casting has (up to this point) not yet been revealed. -Bo Yul-Bayur is confirmed to be in the show! (Though Kuwei has not) -Leigh will have  a cameo in (I think) Episode 5! She will be wearing a Materialki kefta and will be opening a door, if I remember correctly. -A lot of the crew was also extremely passionate about the project and fans of the books -The “Lives of Saints” book that was published in October is an actual book/prop that is appearing in the show! -I’m personally fine with Mal, but Leigh says that Archie is going to change everyone’s minds with his portrayal! -The costume designer for the show is Wendy Partridge, known for her work on “Thor: The Dark World”, “Pompeii”, and more!  -The composer for the show is Joe Trapanese, known for composing for “The Greatest Showman”, “Straight Outta Compton”, “Lady and the Tramp”, and more! At the NYCC Grishaverse panel, they revealed a little bit of the score (”Grisha Theme”): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KFxIEbsHKJA 

Fun Cast/On Set Stories/Facts

-The cast all loves each other, and are all extremely passionate about this show, which is great! (Leigh said that on her second visit to the set, she heard them singing together) -Leigh says that Ben Barnes once snuck up behind her on her first day on set and scared her by whispering “Fine, make me your villain” -Freddy’s favorite Grishaverse book is “Six of Crows”, but most specifically the first line of chapter 2 (”Kaz Brekker didn’t need a reason.”) -Jessie would apparently come to set on some of her days off to support the cast and crew! -Sujaya has stated that her favorite Grishaverse character is Nikolai! (#Zoyalai) -Freddy has become famous/popular with the fandom, one of the reasons being because he often comments on posts/live streams asking something along the lines of “What was it like working with Freddy Carter? xoxo” -Danielle loves Nina and her journey in “King of Scars” -According to a Tweet, Freddy and Leigh said that there had been a scene with “a very pesky gate”--Freddy said that it “wouldn’t be proper to tweet the expletives [he] used that day” and that he thinks he “scarred” Amita and Eric. -Amita’s favorite thing about Inej is her silence, and her favorite Grishaverse book is “Six of Crows” (as of May, where we learned this during a live-stream, she said she’s read it three times and listened to the audiobook twice.) -There was a waffle truck on set on the last day of shooting! -Calahan says that if he could play any other Grishaverse character, he’d want to play Nikolai! -While she did work with the trainer to get more physically fit, Amita learned most of her knife techniques by herself! -Leigh said she cried a lot while on set! (She said there was one scene they were shooting that she has a very clear, vivid memory of writing many years back--based on the context of which she was talking about it, if I had to guess, I’d guess she’s describing the Winter Fete.) -Leigh also said that on one of her first days on set, it was funny/weird to see all the extras in First Army uniforms chilling on their phones, drinking coffee, etc. -One of Calahan’s favorite character dynamics in the books is the dynamic between Kaz and Matthias -There was a moment where Amita was fully in costume and doing amazing, graceful knife work, only to trip and fall when she’d finished. -Amita and Jessie and Sujaya were best friends on set. -Sujaya loved everything about playing Zoya. (Especially her confidence) -Leigh says one of her favorite props was Kaz’s cane, especially because of what it meant to her and the story. -If he could be any Grisha order, Calahan says he’d want to be a Corporalki -Calahan loves Matthias’s journey/arc. -Kit’s favorite Grishaverse book is “Crooked Kingdom”!

Links

-https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=X65iI1YXrbU (NYCC Grishaverse Panel) -https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KHou5rVs6o0 (S&B Talent Show Charity Live Stream ft. the S&B Cast!--the IG video got taken down because Archie deleted his IG account and switched to a new one) -https://www.netflix.com/title/80236319 (”Shadow and Bone” on Netflix!) -https://twitter.com/shadowandbone_ (Official “Shadow and Bone” Twitter!) -https://www.instagram.com/shadowandbone/?hl=en (Official “Shadow and Bone” Instagram!) -https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cRh-Pmbynww (Annoucement made by cast when filming wrapped! (can be found on the social media accounts, but here’s a link to YT)) -https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1bpY8uLtyB4 (A S&B Cast Crack video by HeartPhantom--it highlights a lot of the inside jokes and memes that we’ve gotten to witness among the cast, and also just generally shows off how hilariously chaotic everyone is (this cast is the definition of chaotic good, lol))

[vince-thrilligan]

'Breaking Bad' Returns: Aaron Paul and Vince Gilligan Take a TV Classic for a Spin in 'El Camino'

The Hollywood Reporter  |    by Rebecca Keegan   |   September 18, 2019

In their first interview about the new movie, star and creator reveal why they risked messing with their defining show ("Is there another story to tell?") and how they shot the hot Netflix project in near-total secrecy.

One day late in 2018, the phone of an Albuquerque, New Mexico, man named Frank Sandoval started ringing off the hook. Sandoval runs a local outfit that operates Breaking Bad-themed tours in an RV identical to the battered Fleetwood Bounder that served as a mobile meth lab for Bryan Cranston's Walter White and Aaron Paul's Jesse Pinkman on the Emmy-winning AMC show. Five years after Breaking Bad went off the air, the distinctive vehicle had — suddenly and mysteriously — reappeared in town outside a diner on a main road. "People were calling us and saying, 'Is that your RV up there?' " Sandoval says. "We'd heard rumors for years that they were shooting. But nobody we talked to ever knew anything." Sandoval asked around about the mystery RV and eventually came across a printed flyer explaining that a New Mexico tourism commercial was shooting in town. He figured that explained it.

Not quite.

In fact, Jesse and Walter's old RV was in Albuquerque that day, as were Breaking Bad creator Vince Gilligan and his cast and crew, engaged in a secret project. They were shooting El Camino: A Breaking Bad Movie, which will premiere Oct. 11 on Netflix and in theaters in 68 cities, including New York, Los Angeles, Chicago and Albuquerque, before it airs on AMC early next year. Netflix only just announced the project in August, after Gilligan had wrapped postproduction. That's because despite the Virginia-born writer's gentle Southern manner and almost pathological humility, Gilligan, 52, is a showman at heart, and he wants to lift the curtain at the last possible second. "I don't want to open my Christmas presents a week and a half before Christmas," Gilligan says, explaining his insistence on a covert production. Gilligan's producers say they had nothing to do with the tourism flyer, but they did use other means to keep the project hush-hush, including waiting until the last possible minute to share the script with crew, obscuring locations with trucks and screens and relying on a private jet to shuttle a key castmember in and out of Albuquerque without notice.

The two-hour feature film, which Gilligan wrote and directed over the past 18 months, is premiering six years after Breaking Bad ended with Walter dying and Jesse driving an El Camino to freedom from his imprisonment on an Aryan Brotherhood compound. (A trailer set to debut during the Emmys on Sept. 22 will offer a detailed peek.) The Netflix partnership fulfills a long-standing wish of Gilligan's for a Breaking Bad theatrical experience and follows the formative role the streaming company had in the series' success — Breaking Bad was the first cable show to benefit from a so-called Netflix boost.

El Camino centers on what happens to Jesse after he drives out of that compound covered in physical and psychological scars, and it features more than 10 familiar characters from the show. In deference to Gilligan's spoiler aversion, THR will name only two: fan favorites Skinny Pete (Charles Baker) and Badger (Matt L. Jones), the Beavis and Butt-Head of the greater Albuquerque meth community.

Returning to the world of Breaking Bad comes with some risk for Gilligan — during the course of its five-year run, the crime drama about a mild-mannered chemistry teacher who transforms into a ruthless drug kingpin came to exemplify a new, golden era of TV, engrossing critics and audiences with its dense, character-driven storytelling, winning 16 Emmys and delivering one of the most satisfying mic drops in the history of television with a finale that more than 10 million people watched on AMC. In the rarefied club of early Peak TV auteurs, including Mad Men's Matthew Weiner, The Wire's David Simon and The Sopranos' David Chase, Gilligan is the first to take a leap and make a film from his signature show (Chase's Sopranos movie is due next year).

There also is the danger of dwelling indefinitely in the world — however rich — that Gilligan created. Breaking Bad diehards already have the show's spinoff prequel, Better Call Saul, which just finished shooting its fifth season. "I'm hoping when the movie comes out, people won't say, 'Oh, man, this guy should've left well enough alone,' " Gilligan says in his first interview about the film. "Why did George Foreman keep coming out of retirement, you know?"

***

Gilligan works in a nondescript glass office building in Burbank with a view of a dry cleaner and a parking lot. This is the "fancy" office he reluctantly moved to before his team started making Better Call Saul — superstitious, he didn't want to vacate the derelict space deeper in the San Fernando Valley where they had made Breaking Bad, a building they shared with a private investigator, a music charity and an hoc threading business operating out of the women's bathroom. Also, for reasons no one can recall, there was a guy in the building who always wore a kilt. Gilligan, who lives on L.A.'s Westside with his longtime girlfriend, Holly Rice, chose the location because it was convenient not for him, but for his show's editor. When it came time to select offices there, he picked for himself the room that didn't have a window and housed a giant humming server.

His newer, comparatively luxurious space is decorated with Breaking Bad and Better Call Saul memorabilia — the special effects bust of Gus Fring's (Giancarlo Esposito) exploded head is next to Gilligan's desk, and bottles of Blue Ice Heisenberg vodka sit on a bookshelf. There also are model helicopters, tokens of Gilligan's other passion, aviation. At 50, he fulfilled a decades-long goal of obtaining his helicopter pilot's license. One of the locations in El Camino is a spot he used to glimpse while choppering with his flight instructor, 500 feet above the ground, en route from L.A. to Albuquerque. "When I'm flying a helicopter, I'm as happy as I ever get, which is not particularly happy, but still, as happy as I ever am," Gilligan says. "I'll never master it. It's one of those … Is that a Zen thing? When you have some sort of avocation that you're continually a beginner at. You're never going to perfect it. But in a weird way, that feels good, because you're never going to get tired of it either."

Gilligan first started ruminating on the story that would ultimately become El Camino before he finished making Breaking Bad. "I didn't really tell anybody about it, because I wasn't sure I would ever do anything with it," he says. "But I started thinking to myself, 'What happened to Jesse?' You see him driving away. And to my mind, he went off to a happy ending. But as the years progressed, I thought, 'What did that ending — let's just call it an ending, neither happy, nor sad — what did it look like?' " It was while planning events in 2018 to celebrate the 10th anniversary of the premiere of Breaking Bad that Gilligan first told his inner circle he had an idea to revisit Jesse, perhaps a five-minute short film, he mused to his longtime producer, Melissa Bernstein. "He just started letting his mind run over that," Bernstein says. "And he started to realize, 'I have a lot to say about this.' "

Gilligan, who wrote the feature films Wilder Napalm (1993) and Home Fries (1998) as well as some unproduced feature scripts, found his comfort zone as a writer in the collaborative, deadline-oriented environment of TV while on the staff of The X-Files. "I was the laziest writer in creation," Gilligan says. "I'd piddle around. It took me two years to write a first draft of a movie script in the early '90s, just because I had no one holding a gun to my head. I just didn't have that work ethic. Working in TV changed everything for me." But on El Camino, Gilligan returned to the solitary lifestyle of a feature writer. "I had been working with excellent writers now for well over a decade, and I'd forgotten what it was like to write something by myself, and it was daunting," Gilligan says. "Suddenly I'm trying to write this and thinking, 'God, I really could use a writers room about now.' " Gilligan outlined the story using note cards, his usual method, and then began on his first draft at his time-share in the Bahamas.

As a business philosophy, Gilligan is a believer in the idea that you "dance with the girl that brung ya," and at a time when many other top showrunners are managing multiple productions and seeking nine-figure deals at streamers, he has remained at Breaking Bad and Better Call Saul studio Sony Pictures Television, re-upping with the company last year in a three-year, mid-eight-figure overall pact that includes his work on El Camino. When Gilligan told executives there about his idea for a Breaking Bad movie, "We all just fell silent in the room," says SPT co-president Chris Parnell. "It was one of the moments when you think to yourself, 'Did I just hear that? Is that something he genuinely wants to do?' " Together with his agent, ICM Partners' Chris Silbermann, Gilligan quietly walked the script into just a handful of offices in Hollywood before deciding to partner with Netflix, as well as AMC. Both companies represented a crucial part in Breaking Bad's history, AMC for picking up the show after FX passed on it and Netflix for building it into the binge TV era's first true streaming/cable hybrid hit.

In 2010, Breaking Bad was at a crossroads: With the show averaging about 1.5 million viewers a season despite being a critics' darling, AMC informed Sony and Gilligan that the series could end with season three. When Sony began shopping Breaking Bad to competitors — quickly finding a taker for two more seasons at FX — AMC reversed course. Netflix, meanwhile, was aggressively licensing shows for its nascent streaming service, and content chief Ted Sarandos made a syndication deal with Sony for Breaking Bad. Originally, the arrangement was for the series to start streaming on Netflix after its fourth season finished on AMC, but, with the show's future uncertain, Sony accelerated the plan, and new fans began discovering and bingeing Breaking Bad on Netflix in time to catch some of the fourth season and all of the fifth and final season on AMC. When season five premiered in 2013, the audience had more than doubled from its previous outing. "We felt that it was a virtuous cycle, where we were introducing the show to new fans, who were then going and experiencing new episodes on AMC, and then when we would launch a new season, we would again see another wave of new folks coming," says Netflix vp original content Cindy Holland. Since news of the movie broke in August, Holland says, viewership of Breaking Bad on Netflix is up, some from rewatchers and some from newcomers to the series. "We were a natural home for the movie," Holland says. "It wasn't a really long conversation. It was a simple, 'Yes, please.' "

Netflix also brought the theatrical component, which was crucial to Gilligan. "Every time we'd put out a new season of Breaking Bad, we would have a premiere in a big movie theater," Gilligan says. "We would watch this quote-unquote television show. I mean, I guess quotations aren't needed. It is absolutely a television show. But we would have this wonderful, very limited, one-time opportunity to watch our television show on a big screen with giant stereo speakers thumping, the image filling 40 feet across. I always thought, 'This thing, it looks like a movie. It doesn't look like a show.' I really want to be able to share that with fans." As with its other theatrical releases, Netflix will exhibit the film in independent theaters for a very limited period.

The secrecy on the project extends to the budget, which all interviewed decline to disclose beyond saying that it is significantly higher than what Gilligan had ever worked with on the show, including the $6 million for an episode in the final season. Gilligan's producers Bernstein and Diane Mercer went to great lengths to keep the film under wraps during production, shrouding locations from onlookers' view, covertly ferrying key castmembers to the set and warning crewmembers to be discreet around town. "Don't be sitting on a barstool somewhere and talk about the project you're working on, because God only knows who's sitting next to you" was the mantra, Gilligan says.

The movie, which plays like a coda to the series, is thick with details that will tickle the superfan base, which is its true intended audience, Gilligan says. One that only the most devoted may pick up on is a key address at the corner of Holly and Arroz streets — a wink to Gilligan's girlfriend (arroz is rice in Spanish). "If, after 12 years, you haven't watched Breaking Bad, you're probably not going to start now," Gilligan says. "If you do, I hope that this movie would still be engaging on some level, but there's no doubt in my mind that you won't get as much enjoyment out of it. We don't slow down to explain things to a non-Breaking Bad audience. I thought early on in the writing of the script, 'Maybe there's a way to have my cake and eat it too. Maybe there's a way to explain things to the audience.' If there was a way to do that, it eluded me."

Breaking Bad was particularly cinematic television, with its wide-angle shots of the stark New Mexico landscape, expressive lighting and deliberate pacing. At one point during the series, Gilligan and his cinematographer, Michael Slovis, made an unsuccessful pitch to Sony and AMC to shoot Breaking Bad in the CinemaScope format that Sergio Leone had used to shoot Clint Eastwood's Dollars Trilogy. On El Camino, Gilligan got his wish — Better Caul Saul DP Marshall Adams shot the movie on the ARRI Alexa 65 camera used for The Revenant and in a 2.39 wide-screen format that seems designed to showcase a gunslinger's squint across the desert.

Gilligan is perfectionistic in a way that television schedules rarely have time to indulge. El Camino proceeded at an even more leisurely pace than his shows. Instead of shooting six to eight pages a day as Gilligan had on Breaking Bad, he shot one and a half to three. Most of the 50-day shoot happened in the same Albuquerque locations where Breaking Bad is set, but the larger budget meant he was able to take advantage of some picturesque out-of-state locations, too. "This is my first movie as a director, and I have to say, it made me want some more of that," says Gilligan, who has directed five episodes each of Breaking Bad and Better Call Saul and two of The X-Files. "You truly have time to get things right. It feels very decadent."

***

Returning to the character of Jesse Pinkman for El Camino was an unexpected career twist. While making Breaking Bad, Paul had grown as an actor under Cranston's tutelage and shed some fatiguing habits. "The first couple years were really torturous for me," Paul says. Often, after shooting had wrapped for the day, "I found myself in dark alleys in Albuquerque, New Mexico, at 3 in the morning, just to try to get more information, which was not a good thing. I just didn't want to mess it up, and so I stayed in that guy's skin, but I learned from Bryan it's OK to shake it off and wash up at the end of the night and just have time for yourself." When the finale aired, Paul says, "I really loved Jesse. I knew him better than anyone, but it was a big weight off of my shoulders to hang up the cleats and walk away. I thought it was goodbye, and I was OK with that." 
In early 2018, while Paul was in New York shooting The Path, Gilligan called him and shared that he had written a movie about Jesse. "I'm like everybody else on the planet — I think Vince and the rest of the writers really nailed the landing with the ending of Breaking Bad, and why mess with that?" Paul recalls thinking. "But it's Vince we're talking about. I would follow Vince into a fire. That's how much I trust the man. I would do anything that he asked me to." (Gilligan inspires a fierce loyalty, and most of his colleagues have been with him for years, starting with Mark Johnson, who discovered Gilligan while judging a screenwriting competition in 1988 and has served as a producer on Breaking Bad, Better Call Saul and El Camino.) Within months of answering Gilligan's call, Paul was back in Albuquerque's dark alleys, bearded and in scar makeup. "It was so easy for me to just jump into where Jesse's at mentally, emotionally, because I lived and breathed everything he went through and then some, and so, honestly, it felt like a part of me had gone through that as well," Paul says. "All I had to do was just memorize these words and then play them out when they yelled 'action.' "

***

Gilligan, too, grew up, in a sense, on Breaking Bad, and he has a wistfulness about how it has shaped his life over the last 11 years. "I'm about 25 to 30 years older than I was when I started," he says. "Yeah, I'm just worn out. I mean, part of what excited me about doing this was it was a movie, a closed-ended story of about two hours. If I was starting now, I'm not sure I'd have the intestinal fortitude to fight all the fights and expend all the energy."

Gilligan is not ready for retirement — not at all — but when he looks ahead to life after Better Call Saul, he sees something outside the universe of characters that have become his trademark creation. He plans to make another show after Better Call Saul ends, but what exactly that will be and where it will air, he doesn't know. "Personally, I'd love to figure out something different, which at this point would be, God, not another antihero," Gilligan says. "Is there something else I can do? Is there another story I can tell? But I've got to tell you, it's harder to write a really engaging good guy than it is a really engaging bad guy."

[annhens93x]

Pumping Iron at 40: The Classic Bodybuilding Movie

Getty Images / Keystone / Staff

It’s hard to overstate the impact of director George Butler’s 1977 documentary Pumping Iron, not just on bodybuilding, but on society. For one thing, it introduced the world to pre-Conan Arnold Schwarzenegger, whose incredible success might not have been possible without his breakout performance as himself in P.I.

Then there’s the mainstreaming of gyms that can be traced to the  lm’s release. Beginning in the late 1970s and well into the ’80s, the health club industry saw massive growth, with chains popping up throughout the U.S., then the world, and with them, a surge in gym memberships. Pumping Iron is the reason many of us, myself included, got into working out in the first place, so it’s with great pleasure that I wish George, Arnold, and the rest of the film’s cast and crew a happy 40th anniversary.

PUMPING IRON:

The film that almost wasn’t.

With the exception of the brothers Weider, few people have had as much of an influence on the popularization of bodybuilding as George Butler. As the engine that conceived, directed, and then brought the film Pumping Iron to theaters 40 years ago, Butler has given bodybuilding fans the world over a visual touchstone that still serves as everything from historical reference to motivational guide to celluloid bible.

M&F: What was your  first professional experience with bodybuilding?

George Butler: Charles Gaines was assigned by Sports Illustrated to write an article on a bodybuilding contest for the July ’72 issue. He asked me to take the photographs.

What was the contest?

It was the Mr. East Coast, which was held in Holyoke, MA, and was won by a wonderful bodybuilder named Leon Brown.

Were you familiar with bodybuilding at the time, or was it a new experience for you?

I had grown up in Jamaica and the West Indies, and I used to work out in a gym in Jamaica, and bodybuilding was a big sport down there. I saw my first bodybuilding exhibit actually at a political rally in a church in Savanna-la-Mar, Jamaica.

SEE ALSO: Arnold's Anniversary Workout at Muscle Beach

How did that come about?

A friend of mine was running for parliament in Jamaica, and he had a political rally in the parish church, and part of his rally included a bodybuilding exhibition with a guy named Samson. The power went out in the middle of it, so they lit it with kerosene flares.

After the Sports Illustrated article came the book. I understand that you faced a few obstacles in attempting to get it published. Hadn’t Doubleday given you an advance to do the book?

Right. We did the entire book and turned the manuscript in to Sandy Richardson, who was editor in chief at Doubleday, and he wrote us a letter saying, “I want my money back. No one will ever read this book, and no one will ever be interested in Arnold Schwarzenegger.”

So then you shopped it around in New York?

Yeah. We ended up at Simon & Schuster.

That was in ’74?

Late ’74.

And was it a success?

Yes. It made The New York Times Best Sellers list.

How many editions have there been?

I think about 20 printings.

SEE ALSO: The Golden Era of Bodybuilding

Your book is what inspired me to take up bodybuilding. When I was about 10, I remember thumbing through a copy in a department store and coming to the picture of Arnold with a topless girl on his shoulders, and I thought, “That’s what I want to be.”

Well, bear in mind that the woman on his shoulders was the top woman bodybuilder at the time. I took those photos for a Playboy article, and Arnold was supposed to be the male bodybuilder, and Heidi was supposed to be the female bodybuilder.

So after the book comes the movie. What was it like trying to bring the  film to the screen? Was Charles involved?

Charles decided he didn’t want to be involved in the movie. Pretty much everyone deserted by this point.

Did you have funding at this stage?

Well, funding came in very erratically and with great difficulty. I actually went to 3,000 people one by one to  finance the  film.

3,000?!

Yeah, it’s really true. I’m not exaggerating.

So you then went out and shot some footage?

We shot a test  film, and I screened it in New York for 100 investors, and [actress] Laura Linney’s father [playwright Romulus Linney] got up and said, “George, if you ever make a movie about Arnold Schwarzenegger, you’ll be laughed off 42nd Street.”

That kind of negative attitude still astounds me.

What you’ve got to understand is that back in the early ’70s, bodybuilding was the least glamorous sport in the world. The prevailing view was that it was purely homosexual, that body- builders were totally uncoordinated, that when they grew older their muscles would turn to fat, and that they had no intelligence whatsoever. Charles Gaines said that it was like trying to promote midget wrestling. It was so tawdry...everyone we knew was laughing at us.

How big a crew did you have for the filming?

Well, the way I shoot  films, my crews expand and contract. For instance, when I was shooting at Lou [Ferrigno]’s gym in Brooklyn, it was really just half a dozen people. When we were shooting at Gold’s Gym, we had a bigger operation. It was probably 12 people, which included the cinematographer, gaffer, the assistants, and me, and some electricians, etc. Basically I’m very proud of the fact that I’ve always worked with a small crew. When we were filming in South Africa at the contest, we were running about six cameras, and with South African assistants we probably had 30 people.

It’s amazing not only how far bodybuilding has risen since then but how far it seems to have fallen at that time. Back in the ’40s and ’50s, guys like Charles Atlas and Steve Reeves didn’t portray that image. 

Yeah, but there were limited pockets of bodybuilding. If you look at Charles Atlas, he wasn’t really much of a bodybuilder, and Steve Reeves made it in the movies and was very handsome. Look at it this way: Arnold Schwarzenegger arrived in America in 1968, and when we met him in 1972, the Mr. Olympia contest was held in a tiny little auditorium in Brooklyn and the prize money was something like $1,000 and only Arnold and Franco were making it as professional bodybuilders. Everyone else had another job. Leon Brown worked at a Laundromat in Staten Island.

I know that Steve Michalik was a graphic artist.

Steve had to have a full-time day job, and he was Mr. America. It was a joke it was so bad.

It feels like a larger production, though, especially the competition scenes in which you go from backstage to the audience’s perspective to onstage. What kind of a budget did you have?

I raised $400,000 to make the movie.

Amazing that you could  film for so long on such a small budget. You shot for about three or four months, I figure.

Yeah.

And so when Pumping Iron was released, was it straight to the art houses, or did it have a wide release?

Actually it began at the Plaza Theatre, which was a regular movie theater in New York, and it broke every box office record there was at the theater.

Were the reviews generally positive? Are there any memorable stories related to the  film’s release?

Oh, yeah. Well, it got fabulous reviews, and through a friend I got Jacqueline Onassis to come to a lunch for Arnold and that sent people through the roof. And I put Arnold before that in the Whitney Museum and in a ballet studio, and I got Jamie Wyeth to paint him.

Now, I remember the movie from PBS. It was before VCRs, so I used to run to the TV with my audio tape recorder and tape the audio for later listening. When did PBS start airing it? Probably, I would say, in late ’77. So pretty soon after the release.

Well, it was released in January ’77. So probably in October/November, it went on PBS. Even that was exasperating. The distributor, which was a company called Cinema 5, which was like the Miramax of its day, sold Pumping Iron to PBS for 30 grand. About a week later, ABC came to me, and Tony Thomopoulos, the president, asked me if he could buy it. I said, “Well, how much?” and he said, “$1,000,000.”

And by that time it was too late?

Yeah.

Now among the bodybuilding set, there is a lot of speculation concerning a few of the scenes in Pumping Iron. I’ve talked to others who have wondered if some of the  film is documentary or maybe a little bit of the guys acting for the camera. One case in particular that everyone talks about is the “missing T-shirt/crusher scene” and the on-screen friction between Ken Waller and Mike Katz. How much of that was real?

The only tricky thing involved there is that Waller evidently stole Katz’s T-shirt because we got on  film Katz saying, “Where’s my T-shirt? I bet Waller took it.” And so we  filmed the before after.

With him tossing the football around with Robby and Roger talking about how he was going to do it?

Exactly.

What about Arnold? He told so many great stories that are still debated, like whether he really missed his father’s funeral (as he states in the film).

That’s true. He did not go to his father’s funeral.

And when he made his analogy of a pump feeling like an orgasm, did he clear that with you  first or was it just extemporaneous?

No, that was extemporaneous.

Were there any things that didn’t make it to the screen that were great, funny, or remarkable?

[Laughing] Thousands of things.

Any that you can share?

Yeah. I’ve got Louie saying on  film, “All I want to be is the Hulk,” and this was several years before he became the Hulk.

Amazing. Now you’ve got four main protagonists in the  film, and each one was pretty different from the others. I’d like to get your thoughts on each. What was your impression of Mike Katz?

I adored him. He was authentic, and he always wore his heart on his sleeve, so you could tell on his face what was going on in his mind. The most amazing thing I know about Mike Katz is that he was a high school teacher. We  filmed him at his high school, and I watched him playing touch football, and he began on the zero yard line, and he ran 100 yards down the  field. There were a lot of good high school athletes there, and no one could touch him. I mean he went so fast, and he was so agile. You’ve got to remember, this was a guy who played track, hockey, and football. Three sports, All-American in college. You know, he was a New York Jets lineman, and I’m pretty sure he could have played professional hockey or could have thrown the discus or something like that. I mean, he’s an astonishing athlete and a great human being.

I’ve had the opportunity to speak with him and found him to be a thoughtful and considerate person.

He’s a  fine human being.

What was it like shooting the scenes with Lou Ferrigno and his dad?

Well, when you make a  film like Pumping Iron, you’ve got to put a good story together, and I had a keen insight into Louie’s relationship with his father. I knew that he was the perfect bodybuilder to set up as the guy who could, or might, knock off Arnold. And the contrast was perfect. Louie worked out in a small, dark gym in Brooklyn that was actually R&J Health Studio, which was owned by a man named Julie Levine. And Gold’s Gym in California was the exact opposite. Louie would work out in these tiny little rooms with one person around him and his father, and Arnold would work out in a gym in California that had its doors open, was wide open, right on the beach. And it was light and airy, and Louie’s was dark. Louie was dark and brooding. Arnold was blond and big and beachy and stuff  like that. But both men are sons of policemen. I found that very interesting, and I’m sure Arnold subconsciously registered that. So the  film set up this wonderful contest between these two men, and of course Louie was 6'5" and he’s a giant, really. But here’s something interesting not many people know. Nik Cohn wrote a movie called Saturday Night Fever. He wrote the screenplay for it, and the whole Italian family, John Travolta’s family, is modeled on Louie and his family.

You’re kidding! Actually, I can see it. Like the scene in which Louie’s family is sitting around the kitchen table...

Yes! It’s all John Travolta’s family. With his sister and brother and the Catholic Church and everything else. It was modeled on them in Pumping Iron.

That’s too funny! Moving on to Franco. He seemed like a lot of fun to be around.

I was always very fond of Franco. It was my idea to go to Sardinia and  film there. That’s when we were really doing seat-of-the-pants  filmmaking because three of us went to Sardinia: myself, Bob Fiore, and his girlfriend, who was Marshall McLuhan’s daughter. I did sound and lighting, and Bob did lighting and camera work, and we were able to do key scenes for the movie in Sardinia with literally a two-man crew. And it worked. And we got stopped by the police in the mountains. It was very exciting stuff  because Franco’s mother and father were real shepherds, and I’m not even convinced any other Americans had been to his village before us. It was way, way up in the mountains in Sardinia, and it was so remote, and it was so high up that there was still ice in June on the lakes. At one point Franco chopped a hole in the ice and caught some trout, which he served us for lunch. On another occasion Franco’s family put me in the only available bedroom, which was his sisters’ room. Five of his sisters were going to sleep in the room with me, so this was quite wonderful. Then I realized Franco’s father was sitting right outside the window at the foot of my bed, watching me all night long.

How long were you in Sardinia?

Probably a week.

That’s fun footage. The movie is so international, and it’s amazing how you did it on such a small budget with such a small crew and yet it’s this globe-hopping excursion. Well, we filmed in Los Angeles, San Francisco, Montreal. We  filmed at the Whitney Museum in New York. We  filmed in Connecticut. We  filmed in Massachusetts. We  filmed in Paris, and we  filmed in South Africa.

Now I’d be hard-pressed to figure out exactly which scenes were shot where.

Well, where Franco blows up the hot-water bottle is in Massachusetts. Mike Katz was  filmed in Connecticut. The movie actually opens in San Francisco.

Is that the ballet scene?

The ballet scene was New York City. That was another location I forgot to mention. It was shot in Joanne Woodward’s dance studio in Manhattan.

Another interesting tidbit. Turning now to Arnold. We all know that he is this self-made man. What was your impression of him? Did he just seem like a guy who was born to be successful?

Yeah, well, the reason I made the film was because I thought he was very charismatic and interesting and smart. But initially, when I met him, he had been in America four years and virtually nothing had happened. You know, he wasn’t in other movies. We were the first people outside of bodybuilding to interview him.

Yeah, he did Hercules in New York and then kind of laid dormant for awhile.

Hercules Goes Bananas.

With Arnold Stang.

[Laughing] Yeah. And even his voice had to be redubbed in that movie.

That’s probably the best aspect of it: the overdubbed voice.

And I’ll tell you another little sidebar. When I was trying to get Pumping Iron going, I was very short on money. So I went to this lab in New York, and I had just come back from shooting the initial part of the  film. I asked them if they’d give me some credit, which is the kind of thing they normally do when you get going on a movie. This was a place called DuArt Film Lab, and the owner of it was someone named Irwin Young. So I went in with my hat in my hand and asked him if he would give me $15,000 worth of credit. He said, “Tell me what you’re doing,” and I said, “Well I’m making a movie about bodybuilding.” Then he said, “Does it have anything to do with Arnold Schwarzenegger?” and I said, “Yes.” So he said, “Forget it. I won’t give you any credit. I had a movie in here called Hercules in New York, and they never paid a bill, and they owe me 30 grand.”

That’s a riot! What a coincidence.

[Laughing] It was an unfortunate one.

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