El Camino was a pursuit born"> Continue Vince gilligan el camino Vince Gilligan will gladly concede that el camino"}" target="_blank">El Camino was a pursuit born of "greed." Since breaking bad"}" target="_blank">Breaking Bad ended, Gilligan had been looking for a way to work again with Aaron Paul, Jesse Plemons, Bryan Cranston, and the now-late, great Robert Forster, to name a few. Sometime around the AMC drama's 10th anniversary, he realized he might as well go for it. And he already had the perfect vehicle; he'd been pondering an epilogue about what happened to Breaking Bad's beloved, conflicted drug dealer Jesse Pinkman (Paul) ever since completing the script for the series finale. © Provided by TVGuide.com Aaron Paul, El Camino: A Breaking Bad Movie | Photo Credits: Netflix Breaking Bad's ending certainly left the door open for more of Jesse's story. Though it offered a satisfying conclusion to Walter White's (Cranston) narrative, with Walt dying on the floor of the white supremacists' meth lab after storming the compound and vanquishing his enemies, Jesse's fate was still largely uncertain. Walt had freed his former protégé from one prison, but would Jesse escape captivity only to be apprehended by police? Even if he did make a clean getaway, would he be forever traumatized by his time in Todd's (Plemons) torture chamber and the blood on his own hands? Six years after the series ended, Breaking Bad fans finally got answers thanks to El Camino, which picked up directly after the events of the Breaking Bad finale. The Netflix film showed audiences exactly how Jesse managed to dodge the police, say his goodbyes to the few people left in his life, and pursue a new life in Alaska. The conclusion of El Camino resembles Breaking Bad's final moments in that Jesse once again drives off into an unknown future. But the critical difference with, and significance of, El Camino is that it offers fans confirmation that this emotionally, mentally, and physically battered character can still have hope -- that his bold optimism, which was relentlessly tested throughout Breaking Bad, is still somehow intact. Breaking Bad may have centered on Walter White's fateful embrace of his Heisenberg alter ego, but the bleeding heart of the series was always Jesse, and El Camino offered fans the comforting proof that the character never gave up on his inner light, his love of boxes and beetles, or his chance at the last frontier. Gilligan, who wrote and directed the movie, might call El Camino a selfish pursuit. But while he's willing to entertain criticism that it wasn't a strictly necessary addition to the story of Breaking Bad, the movie brought him peace -- and it did the same for Jesse Pinkman fans. TV Guide spoke to Gilligan about what went into making El Camino: A Breaking Bad Movie, including finding its purpose, how the cast's talents influenced his writing, why it was so important to bring back Walter White, and more. Can you describe the moment when you decided that you actually wanted to make this movie? Vince Gilligan: I wish I could tell you an exact moment where the lightbulb went off ... As I was putting the finishing touches on the final script for Breaking Bad, [I remember thinking,] "Oh, so where did Jesse Pinkman get off to exactly? Driving away, screaming, letting out this sort of primal scream of pain and triumph. Where does he go next? Does he get caught around the corner? I hope not. How do you get away?" But I figured, well, that's all I have time for in my episode, but I wanted more of that. Add to that the fact that I love working with Aaron Paul. I love working with all the actors, but Aaron is a great example of who these folks are: They're brilliant, and they know their craft … and Aaron is just one of the sweetest, most lovely people I've ever met. I knew in these intervening years that I wanted to work with him again... It just was an idea I had in my head that built and built over the years until I thought to myself, "Why not? Why not do this now? I'm not getting any younger. So let's see if we can make a movie out of this." Did the fact that Better Call Saul was starting to catch up with the original timeline put any pressure on you? That they might introduce Walt and Jesse again? Gilligan: Not really. I talked to Peter Gould, who runs Better Call Saul. I talked to him and the writers before I got too far down the road on the script for El Camino... I kept them involved every step of the way. Because the last thing I'd want to do is mess up that show. That show is just -- I finally get to say this now because I'm not really that involved with it anymore -- it's just brilliant. And I would never want to mess it up. We see many emotional elements of Jesse in this movie. Why was it important to you to feature so many facets of him here? Gilligan: [Paul] can do anything. He can be screamingly funny. He can make you cry. He can be dramatic as all get-out. I just figured that would just be good storytelling to let the actor I knew was going to star in this have all the opportunities for drama and comedy that I could possibly, believably fit into this script. You know, the same with [the other actors]. Getting to work with Jesse Plemons again, that was just an absolute treat because man, is that guy good. And he can do it all, too. Todd can scare the living hell out of you... or he can make you laugh… Working with these actors at the top of their game, that's as good an answer as any I could give as to why I wanted to do it in the first place. And then as to why I had to fill the script as much as I could with moments like that, I just want to see these guys run. I want to see what they can do. Todd's flashbacks were so exquisite and very fun. How much did Jesse Plemons' particular talents influence your scripting for those scenes? Gilligan: Oh, immensely... When we hired Jesse way back when for Breaking Bad, I was just dimly aware of him as an actor. I heard how great a show Friday Night Lights was... And I've since discovered it, and everyone who said that was absolutely right... When we hired him, I thought, "Oh, this guy is really great." Just like everybody said. And then the more he was in the show, the more I realized, "Wow, this guy. What a find this guy is. Fantastic." Going into this, I knew just what this actor could do, and really it did influence the writing of the character. There's something about Todd. If he has no reason to kill you, he's actually very pleasant to be around... [laughs]. It's so odd. I think we've got enough monsters in real life right now, sometimes it makes you want to ask the question, "Why do you want to write about them?" But mainly it's an exorcism somehow. Maybe it's a cathartic thing, but writing about this guy is so much fun. Putting words in his mouth is so much fun because he's really not a sadist. He's just got an absolute screw loose. He's a sociopath. He's not sadistic. He doesn't enjoy people's pain, he just doesn't feel it. It doesn't dawn on him that he's hurting people so badly. It's just a byproduct of certain things that need to happen to keep his uncle happy, to keep the flow of methamphetamine, you know? Usually a character like him, there's some element of mustache twirling. There's some element of a character like him enjoying his evildom, evilness, whatever the proper terminology is. This guy, he's just sort of a likable schmo who happens to have no compunction about killing people when the time comes. That made it interesting and fresh for me, in terms of writing it. God forbid we ever run into any real Todds in real life, though. In El Camino, Jesse had this kind of skittishness anytime the subject of the cage came up, almost like a wounded animal. What kind of discussions did you have with Aaron Paul about that? Gilligan: You know, I'm not that great a director -- and I'm not being falsely modest -- so I don't know, I never had that myself, and people have always told me, "Oh, you should take some acting classes," and I know they're right … I'm just too self-conscious to do it. So what I do in place of that is I hire the best actors in existence and then I write it out in the script, as plainly as I can, what the character is thinking in this moment or that moment. If you were ever to read the script for El Camino -- or in fact any of the scripts that any of us have written for Better Call Saul or Breaking Bad -- you'd see that it's probably only one-third dialogue, and two-thirds scene direction..