#I need more TV from Vince Gillian oh my GOD

[chewwytwee]

Finished better call Saul.

[nickblaine]

bruce miller on character deaths

with all the talk of Nick dying, i thought i’d bring back this relevant podcast Bruce Miller did where he discusses his distaste for shocking character deaths— and for easy reference, i transcribed it! it’s not perfect, but i did my best to streamline the dialogue so it’s at least cohesive.

feel free to quote from this, i’d just appreciate being credited since transcribing this sort of spoken conversation is a very tedious task.

the podcast is here and the part about character deaths is from 10:15 - 14:51. i do advise you listen to it instead of just reading it, because inflection adds more context.

Well, the other famous thing of course from the pilot is the idea that Julianna Margulies’ character was going to die. Famously, that was the original plan, and in some ways they kinda just leave it hanging at the end of the pilot. But, you know, you hear about that from time to time— actually I was just at Comic-con last week and Vince Gillian mentioned that they were going to kill Jesse off after season one of Breaking Bad. So this happens often where—

Yeah we often make terrible, terrible decisions. We try desperately— scratching like— to spin around like a dog on, you know, pavement, on a slippery floor.

Yeah. But like— sometimes it works, sometimes you come back and you say thank god we veered left.

But also, thank god we told that story about them. Because oftentimes the story at the beginning where they have a brush with death ends up – in Nurse Hathaway’s case, the character on ER – kind of defining her, for years and years and years, and really making her a very interesting character. I think that the lesson I would take from that is that, when she— as you said it’s this great cliffhanger in the show, in ER, in the pilot, when Nurse Hathaway comes in and you don’t know what’s going to happen to her. And it seems simple, but the thing that always says to me is: this is the beginning of a series. This is the beginning of something, not the end of something. And so you feel like stories are either leading you up to an intriguing second story or cut off halfway through where— this is an intriguing story and it really does feel like – she did such an excellent job, Hathaway and, you know, Juliana Margulies – and you wanted to know what that relationship was going to be like. And so you really feel like, oh, what I got out of it was a really interesting introduction to a character, and then— but that story is still interesting to me. And I think once you watch the pilot – which is pretty long, it was 90 minutes – you really get a sense of her, and her and George Clooney together. And I think once you get that chemistry, you’re kind of like, well why would we— what are we gonna find that’s better? Are we gonna go out and look for somebody?

But I’ve been on lots of shows where you kill off a character, or you think you're going to kill off a character in the pilot. And then once you watch it you’re like, you know, I need that person. Why should I just replace them? Why don’t I make them survive?

Yeah, yeah, and I imagine it’s a combination of the actor just like, pulling off an amazing performance but also realizing this character is key, and maybe there was a reason why you wanted to kill them off, because they’re so interesting that it would’ve been the most shocking thing to do— was to kill off this great character and stab yourself in the foot.

Yeah, exactly. And I think that it is another lesson you learn from watching Bochco shows, a lot of times he doesn’t kill people, he just sends them away. And they go off to take— like most people disappear in your life, not because they unfortunately drop dead, but because they go off to do something else, somewhere out of your orbit and— I always liked that in shows like Herskovitz and Zwick and Winnie Holzman where they wouldn’t, you know, killing a character— I always feel like killing characters kind of— it’s the end to something, and it’s not really— yeah people die in your world but I don’t know necessarily that people should die more in your world on TV. It just starts to feel unusually heavy handed.

And do you think— I mean we’ve gone through so many years of these sort of darker shows, and shows that used killing characters as a plot point, that the audience is a little more immune to it. It’s harder to shock them now than it was ten years ago.

Yeah. I think you’re absolutely right, it’s harder to surprise them. I mean, I hear commentary on my show and all they’re doing is saying “okay well this person is probably gonna die, this person is probably gonna die, and this person is probably gonna die” and you understand that that’s coming from a dramatic education, not from a world education. You know, I don’t think most people look around at the people in their lives and go “ah this person’s gonna die and this person’s gonna die” but they expect that kind of heightened drama in a place like Gilead or in an emergency room, it’s not so unusual to have people die, so it makes a little bit more sense. But often times, you’re right, the character who’s killed in the pilot was someone who has either been written as an interesting character or portrayed as an interesting character— and you made the right decision, they were essential to the pilot and they’ll be just as essential in the second episode. And you’re just going to have to replace them with someone who gives you that vibe if you don’t bring that person back.