[laughs]

You know.

Uh, but, uh, eventually, I, you know, I cannot complain about LA.

It was ultimately very good to me, and, uh, made some really good friends along the way.

And, uh, two of those, uh, friends of mine ... are people that I had worked with on some other things.

Uh, one, uh, wonderful guy named Tom Villano, who's a music editor who I'd worked on an indie film with, and, uh, another guy you, you all should know, Thomas Golubic, who's our music- Mm-hmm ... supervisor- Mm-hmm ... uh, all this time.

Yeah.

Right.

Don't we pay you more than that? Can't you get something better?

Uh, the, I, I see your sensibility and, and the point you're trying to make and I, and it, yes, there, there's definitely some, some truth to that.

I think, first of all, you know, this is, this is tough stuff, right? In a, uh, 20 seconds to encapsulate, uh, something that's been stirring around in Vince's brain for a better part of years and years and years, right? And, and trying to, uh, say all the things that we wanna say in that period of time, and most importantly, you know, set the tone and, and, and put our audience in the, that head space, uh, that receptive head space that we want them to be in as the show begins.

So we spent months on it, in truth.

Not all the time.

[laughs] We had a lot of other things going on at the same time.

But, um, we definitely spent months on it, and we had a lot of conversations about it, and we worked our way through a lot of possibilities, for sure.

Oh, wow.

Um, as far as the vocals, what led you to that direction?

Yeah, the vocals, I think, are a really important part of the score, for sure, and, and probably the first thing that came up when we started talking about what might work for the music.

And this is going back to, you know, very early conversations with Vince Gilligan and our writers, uh, when they were still figuring out what the show was gonna be.

But there was a, there was this sense, I think, that, um, we wanted to really hammer home the humanity of our story, uh, both of our individual main characters, uh, but also, you know, our, our, our foil here, our, our, our enemy, our zombies, if you were, the others, as we call them, uh, are not your typical scary, uh, you know, one-dimensional thing.

Uh, they have a lot of, they have a lot to say that's human about them, too.

Uh, so I think that was, uh, the initial thinking behind it, and then when we started really working on the music, I think I was inspired a lot by, um, what, what I would call sort of my New York 19, late 1970s vibe for the choir, a very New York minimalist sensibility.

You know, a little Steve Reich, a little Philip Glass.

How did you get there?

Yes.

But, but it was, it was tricky, because Walt's state of mind is, as always, complex.

Mm-hmm.

And, and, and sometimes I find something that works that I think helps the story, and other times it, everything a- about what we're seeing, the, is, is already so clear and wonderfully done that it doesn't need any help.

How do you start that process for yourself? Where do you break it into pieces and then sort of stitch it back together?

And this is one of the... huge benefits of working on a show like this, the way we've always worked, where I don't get involved with writing until the picture is close to where it's going to be.

Finally, it's not going to shift seismically, hopefully, right? But when I start working, which is a great gift, and again, the gift of time, which isn't always true on a lot of projects that we work on.

And the truth is these scenes have an inherent rhythm to them always.

It starts with you guys.

It starts with the writing.

It starts on the script.

Oh, sure.

Yes.

Yeah.

Oh.

[laughs] Aw.

It checks in the mail.

Bob, do you not go through hair, um, hair and makeup or not? [laughs]

That's so cool

... we should, uh, give a shout-out here to our amazing mixers, Jeffrey and Eric, 'cause we spent an awful lot of time on this, uh, opening segment with all the music and sound effects and general mayhem to get it all sounding terrific.

Yeah.

This is one of the few times I can remember where we pick up right after the credits where we left off right before them, and to have the score keep, sort of keep the momentum rolling right through here.

... you wanna speak a little bit to that?

Uh, yeah, I mean, obviously this is an action-packed episode, and, uh, the, we're reaching the culmination point in a lot of our various storylines.

Uh, the scene we just passed with, uh, with Hank, Dean Norris's character there obviously turning a page, and, uh, and we have the consequences of that action, which, uh, take place in the fourth act of this episode, which is, uh, has a lot of music in it.

Well, I think that makes-

The performances are so strong here.

One of the best things about writing music for this show is that we almost never have to add music just to add music sake, or to help, uh, with any kind of these types of-

[laughs]

Leaving lots of, leaving lots of airspace for, uh, for music here.

We, uh, had the luxury here, we use music very sparingly on the show, but when we do use it, we try to make the most of it.

And, uh, for these guys, had the luxury of creating a, a palette of sounds that, uh, we could reintroduce with them throughout this season.

And, uh, I think the show, it was enriched because of that.

Another great opportunity to bring back the music here for our cousins, and, uh, showcase them a bit here.

Obviously, they're enormously important players this season.

And, uh, as I often do, we used, uh, both organic and electronic sounds, um, in the score that we write for Breaking Bad.