Vince Gilligan

From a young age, Vince Gilligan showed a strong interest in cinema. He and his best friend, the now renowned film editor and title designer Angus Wall, used to record small works of science fiction with a Super 8 camera. Angus’s mother, Jackie, always encouraged them with their projects and encouraged them to go to the movies and learn about the different genres of the Seventh Art. Vince would come to recognize that without her “I would not be where I am now.” The Gilligans soon realized that his son was talented, so no one was surprised when he went to New York to study film production.

While in college, he wrote the screenplay for Home Fries , which would later be made into a feature film starring Drew Barrymore and Luke Wilson . However, the cinema would not be the place where Vince would find success. His first big achievement was his work on The X-Files . Unconditional fan of the Chris Carter series , he sent a script to Fox that would later become the chapter “Soft Light”. Thus began a fruitful collaboration in which Gilligan wrote 29 episodes, in addition to producing more than 40. His great career on the small screen had begun.

On January 20, 2008, after many visits to different networks and multiple problems, and many hours of writing and filming, Vince watched as AMC premiered his own series: Breaking Bad . The story was based on the premise of turning an ordinary man into an evil character, or as Gilligan says, it consisted of transforming “Mr. Chips in Scarface”. It didn’t take long for viewers to get hooked on this drama full of scenes so powerful and dialogues so well constructed that they were capable of making Heisenberg himself attractive, the dark reverse of the innocent Walter White, a high school teacher with cancer. Critics were unanimous: Breaking Bad was considered one of the best television works in history.

With this series, Vince established his hallmark: a style in which literary excellence, with great soliloquies and conversations, goes hand in hand with a careful and completely original visual expression. Nadir shots, overhead, montages to the rhythm of the music… The range of audiovisual resources that Gilligan displays in his creations is on par with the best Hollywood filmmakers. Thus, this showrunner manages to address issues of deep human interest without giving up large audiences.

Better Call Saul , the Breaking Bad spin-off, only confirms what has been said: Vince Gilligan is one of the names of American television and has his own style that hooks the viewer. This time the protagonist of the series is Saul Goodman, a lawyer who wants to make his way in the business without resorting to the favors of his family. With this premise, his creator reintroduces us to the limits of morality through a character who, like Walter White, is completely anti-heroic. All of this, of course, without giving up the touches of humor so characteristic of this screenwriter.

In 2015, Vince released Battle Creek , a crime series that stars a pair of detectives who are completely opposed. Once again, violence, questionable morality and humor come together in the same creation. Vince has shown, like other showrunners of his generation, that the small screen is the perfect medium for great stories, those that open up to nuances, that delve into the psychology of the characters and explore their contradictions.