Excellent extended interview between Indiewire‘s Peter Labuza and Michael Slovis, director of photography for Breaking Bad. The show is already very cinematic with a film-like look, but this little exchange was a surprise:
[Show creator Vince Gilligan] said, “If you want to know where I’m coming from, and where my sensibilities lie, you should watch ‘The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly,'” which I’m incredibly familiar with and love as well.
Vince loves that movie so much that he and I, between seasons three and four, made a pitch to Sony and AMC to shoot the series in widescreen like a Leone movie, in 2.35 or what would be called Cinemascope. We wanted to do the whole series in that size frame. The two of us were arguing, saying, “If you want to be noticed, if you want people to see what’s going on, we’ll be the first! Everybody will see!” But they didn’t let us do it.
Breaking Bad in 2.35? The implications of that on TV would have been huge.