The Writer’s Guild Awards were held on February 15th, and all your favorite Hollywood scribes came together to give awards for the best writing in TV and movies this past year.
During the event, Breaking Bad and Better Call Saul creator Vince Gilligan received the WGA honorary Paddy Chayefsky Laurel For Television Writing Achievement, and in his speech, he took on the current climate in the world.
While being known for creating one of the greatest antagonists in TV history, in Walter White, Gilligan asked people to focus on heroes right now.
He said, “We are living in an era where bad guys, the real-life kind, are running the market. Bad guys who make their own rules. Bad guys who, no matter what they tell you, are only out for themselves. Who am I talking about? Well, this is Hollywood, so guess,” He said. “But here’s the weird irony in our profoundly divided country, everybody seems to agree on one thing; there are too many real-life bad guys. It’s just we’re living in different realities, so we’ve all got different lists.”
In that sentiment, he also included a call to action for writers.
Gilligan continued, “As a writer speaking to a room full of writers, I have a proposal. It certainly won’t fix everything, but maybe it’s a start. I say we write more good guys. For decades, we’ve made the villains too sexy. I really think that when we create characters as indelible as Michael Corleone, Hannibal Lecter, Darth Vader, or Tony Soprano, viewers everywhere, all over the world, they pay attention and say, ‘Those dudes are badass, I want to be that cool’. When that happens, that’s when bad guys stop being the cautionary tales that they were intended to be. They [instead] become aspirational. So maybe what the world needs now are some good old fashioned, greatest generation types who give more than they take.”
I think this is an interesting take. I often feel like the mood in Hollywood dictates a lot of what gets greenlit. For instance, your medical dramas may not have gotten picked during COVID, but they definitely had heat after.
Or how in a post-9/11 world we wanted more Reh-Reh America stuff, and then later, people were more influenced by the aftermath.
Well, both of Trump’s terms are kind of like that. During the first, I remember a burst of movies and shows about social issues. Right now, I think execs are trying to figure out how to market to both sides but also want lighter, good-guy stuff.
Now, I would caution anyone against writing about trends. but what Gilligan is saying here is not to do that.
What he’s saying is that great characters last a lifetime, and we’ve had a lot of bad guys enter the cultural lexicon in the last decade or more.
Maybe it’s time for the era of the good guys?
Let me know what you think in the comments.
Author: Jason Hellerman
This article comes from No Film School and can be read on the original site.
