BREAKING BAD - CHARACTER SOUND PALETTES
Music Supervision begins with the characters. We’ll meet with the writers and talk about the characters and where their stories were going and some of the circumstances that might be music appropriate. For Breaking Bad, we don’t use music to break bands and
promote album sales. Our edict is always to use music to support story and to
create a compelling contribution to the story telling experience. To draw the audience
into the moment, as opposed to allow music to distract them from it. At times we
do this in counterpoint, other times invisibly. Always staying true to the
characters, staying true to the culture that they come from, and always staying
true to the basic story of Breaking Bad its characters.
WALTER WHITE Bryan Cranston
We decided early on that Walt was not ‘a music guy’, although he may think he is. Walt’s curiosity about music probably ended right after his high school years, which leaves him stuck in the 1970s, and listening to artists like Boz Scaggs or Steely Dan. In a key moment for Walt, in Season 3, episode 2 (later titled “Caballo sin nombre”) we had him singing along to "A Horse with No Name" by America. There are not a lot of people that would consider that to be a cool song, but Walt thinks it's a cool song.
SKYLER WHITE Anna Gunn
Much like Walter, we always viewed Skyler as someone who never moved on from the music she liked in high school. She is a decade younger than Walt, leaving her in the 1980s pop world. This was a sound we explored occasionally at the White house, but with more frequency once Skyler took over managing a car wash in season four. A key moment was in the final episode of the first half of season five, when Hank realizes his brother-in-law is the criminal he’s been chasing all along. During a backyard BBQ, Skyler has Squeeze’s ‘Singles’ album playing and “Up The Junction” falls at a particularly resonant moment at the end of one episode and “If I Didn’t Love You” appears at the start of the next.
HANK SCHRADER Dean Norris
What we know about Hank is that he is macho and likely tied to regional music, listening to classic rock, country and blues. The very talented wardrobe folks put him into a Delbert McClinton concert shirt in one episode, and I think that captures his taste nicely.
We once put together a big list of music we thought that Hank might listen to. We never used any of it, but it helped us in the discovery of who Hank is and informed our sense of the regional music influences in Albuquerque. SAUL GOODMAN Bob Odenkirk
Because Saul is as much about his persona as he is about anything else, we got to use frequent visits to his desperate and sad law office waiting room to explore a never-ending loop of corny patriotic anthems and marching band numbers. We always thought of Saul’s waiting room as some inner circle of hell, with a most excruciating soundtrack to match.
GUS FRING Giancarlo Esposito
Figuring out music taste and personality for Gus Fring was a very interesting challenge. We don’t know much about him, and his enigmatic qualities were challenged in the two scenes where he invites first Walt, then later Jesse into his home. We decided that Gus is a very sophisticated and extremely well educated man, and also very proud of his Chilean roots. During these dinner sequences, we used our selections of latin jazz to both play as realistic background music as Gus is cooking, but also to surreptitiously amplify both Walt and Jesse’s nervousness around the man. Neither guest truly knew they would get home alive, and that’s a very fun line to walk with music.
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JESSE PINKMAN Aaron Paul
For Jesse music reflects his aspirational qualities. As Walt transforms as a character throughout the series, his music taste does not. With Jesse, however, we use music to show his development and the shifts in his circumstances. As we first meet Jesse Pinkman, he is a wanna-be gangster poseur. He listens to knuckle-head hip hop, which thankfully isn’t very expensive to license. In season two, Jesse falls in love with Jane and starts leaning more on Jamaican music and reggae, which is more attuned to his new-found sweetness. We got a chance to feature Yellowman, a wonderful 1980's dancehall artist. Merging both world we used a caribbean cover of Ol’ Dirty Bastard “Shimmy Shimmy Ya” while Jesse is bored at the superlab and goofing around. After Jane died and Jesse regressed, we took his music taste into darker territory. It became the party music for nihilists and druggie hanger-ons, and included aggressive hip hop, dubstep and other forms of electronic music.
WALT JR (FLYNN) RJ Mitte
Unfortunately we never really got a chance to explore the sound of Walt Jr. We only had a few moments to place music that reflects the quiet anger of a slightly depressed teenager.
MARIE SCHRADER Betsy Brandt
Although we found few opportunities to explore the sound of Marie, we did establish that for her music is simply for relaxation and ritual. Marie works as an X-ray technician at a doctor’s office and Vince felt that her music taste wouldn’t stray far from what she listens to every day at the office. Marie is pedantic in her rituals, and during a morning scene where she is leaving a message for Skyler, and carefully preparing her coffee sweetener, we found a perfectly bland but not unpleasant piece of muzak for her morning routine.
MIKE EHRMANTRAUT Jonathan Banks
We always viewed Mike as a minimalist, and as somebody who likes to have simple, practical things around him. He has no space in his life for music, because he has no space for emotional connections outside of those for his granddaughter.
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