Vince Gilligan: I said as a joke one time on a panel, they said “What does it take to be a good show runner?” and I blurted out, “You need to be a cult leader.”
And as soon as I said it —I was joking, I was trying to get a laugh out of the audience— as soon as I said it, it felt right.
That sounds like a weird thing to say… but instead of the cult being about you, the cult has to be about the show. You have to be the high priest, or priestess. But you have to —what’s the word?— inculcate, is that the right word?
KCRW’s The Business: Like indoctrinate?
Vince Gilligan: Indoctrinate. You have to get everyone enthusiastic. Everyone from your writers, your director of photography, to your cast, absolutely your cast, every department head, every member of the crew, all your producers. You have to get everyone pulling the rope in the same direction.
And in that sense you have to be something of a cult leader, or a cheerleader. Cheerleader’s probably a more palatable term than cult leader.
KCRW: Well, I don’t know, Breaking Bad is pretty dark.
Vince Gilligan: But you gotta everybody sayin’, ‘I’ll bleed for this show!’”
Breaking Bad creator and show runner
Vince Gilligan on
KCRW’s The Business, interviewed by
Darby Maloney
August 20, 2012
