I do see the world in pretty dark terms. I find it colder and scarier the older I get.
TV is designed to keep characters in place for years on end. The best example is 'M*A*S*H:' You have a three-year police action in Korea, and they stretched that out to eleven seasons. It was a great show, but when you think about it, a weird unreality overtakes a television series. You see the actors age, and yet the characters don't.
We shot 'Breaking Bad' on film; we capture 'Better Call Saul' digitally. In the shooting of 'Breaking Bad,' we would have this steady, handheld, cinema verite sort of look, so we purposely went the opposite way with 'Better Call Saul' - locked in the cameras and made the movements smoother and more mechanical.
'Better Call Saul' gets surprisingly dark.
'Breaking Bad'... the beauty of it is, some people are always going to love 'Breaking Bad' more. But I run into people every day now who say 'Better Call Saul' is their favorite of the two. I love hearing that. I don't know where I fall personally on that scale, that continuum - I try not to choose.
Our rational, realistic goals for 'Better Call Saul' were simply that it wouldn't suck, and it wouldn't embarrass us. It didn't rise much higher than that, to be honest.
