Eternally adventurous composer Dave Porter returns to discuss the ethos behind Vince Gilligan’s unexpected cinematic event, El Camino: A Breaking Bad Movie. A sonic architect of the highest caliber, Dave’s eccentric and wondrous musical stylings can be experienced in a mélange of cultural touchstones, including Breaking Bad, Better Call Saul, The Disaster Artist, Preacher, Flesh and Bone, and The Blacklist. His scores mirror the cadences of life, intensifying the sacred and profane with unconventionally treated multi-lateral instrumentation. He is the two-time winner of ASCAP’s peer-voted Composers’ Choice Award for ‘TV Composer of the Year’ in 2013 and 2018. In our exchange, Dave speaks on how he modernized musical hallmarks of the old West to support Jesse Pinkman’s fight for survival, and the familiar face from the Breaking Bad canon he was delighted to see revivified in El Camino. 

Could you share the first thoughts that crossed your mind when you learned that you would be participating in the creation of El Camino? Did you feel like you had unfinished business with Jesse Pinkman?

I was definitely surprised but excited to return to the world of Breaking Bad. I will always vividly remember sitting on the lawn at the Hollywood Forever Cemetery with all of the cast and crew to watch the Breaking Bad finale episode as it aired live and being overwhelmed by the feeling that an era of my professional life was ending. But in fact it didn’t — I’ve been fortunate enough to be a part of Better Call Saul since then, and so I’ve never really left the Breaking Bad universe. And now El Camino has brought it all around full circle. In terms of Jesse Pinkman, I don’t think I had any unfinished business with him, but once I had read the El Camino script, it was so satisfying to have that particular storyline taken a bit further, that now I couldn’t imagine it not being part of the Breaking Bad canon.

As you mentioned in our initial interview, Netflix had a pivotal role in the rapid expansion of global appreciation for Breaking Bad, so it seems fitting that they would be both patron and beneficiary of this cinematic venture. What were the distinct rewards of bringing the Breaking Bad franchise to the film medium, and how did that influence your compositional approach for El Camino? In your experience, was there a significant distinction between composing for this film versus the ongoing episodic structure of television serials like Breaking Bad and Better Call Saul?

Vince Gilligan set out to make a feature film, which is something we all had always talked about while we were making the series — wishing that our audience could see Breaking Bad on a big screen in a theatrical setting. I knew from the outset that I didn’t want to reinvent the wheel and suddenly score Breaking Bad in an unfamiliar way, but at the same time, I wanted to take advantage of the greatest gift that a film schedule has — which is time. Television schedules are notoriously brutal, and sometimes everyone just has to do the best one can given that constraint. But here, I had several months to both work with the score on my own and with fantastic musicians and also engage directly many times with Vince, which is a luxury we don’t generally have when working together in television. As a result, I think that while branching out in some new directions, the score for El Camino will feel familiar to Breaking Bad fans, but with added depth and polish.

In your preliminary discussions with Vince Gilligan regarding the film, can you explain how you envisioned a unique musical vernacular for El Camino that established its own identity while acknowledging the legacy of Breaking Bad?

Having that extra time allowed me to expand the sonic palette I always used in the series, which I felt was important. Because while we are certainly rooted in a Breaking Bad landscape that is very familiar, this is an entirely new story revolving around a character in Jesse who is now a very different person than when we knew him last. But I was very careful to make sure that any changes in orchestration were warranted and had a connection to the past. For example, even though it was an option to do so, I wasn’t interested in suddenly having it all performed by an orchestra. The sonic universe we’ve created is such a part of the series that a change that drastic would have felt forced. And also, I knew that there would be flashbacks to moments that we knew from the series, and I wanted to be sure that the new score would still connect seamlessly with the original.

El Camino is squarely focused on Jesse Pinkman and his post-modern Western quest for redemption and freedom. Throughout the film, Jesse experiences vivid flashbacks. Even beyond the grave, Walter White and the tragic, torturous events that ensued from their nefarious partnership remain as indelible as the scars inscribed on Jesse’s body. As the emotional illustrator of his remarkable odyssey, please describe the artistic license you enjoyed in the process.

The most obvious way that the film differs from the original series is that it follows just one story… Jesse’s. While working on the series, we were always jumping back and forth between many interwoven storylines that featured lots of amazing characters, all headed in their own directions. But El Camino presented a chance to really be laser-focused on one arc — and as a result, really delve deeply into it. This honestly led to more opportunities for me to score Jesse’s thoughts and actions than I ever had during the series. It gave me time to explore the suffering he endured, and his determination to survive, and even the hopefulness that his character had always brought to Breaking Bad. And again, always focused squarely on Jesse. Fans will quickly notice that there aren’t any references to the original Breaking Bad theme. Why? Because that theme was all about the journey of Walter White and would have felt out of place in a story about Jesse.

Jesse’s prolonged search for the hidden loot at neo-Nazi captor, Todd’s apartment was visually rendered in nuanced multi-screen mosaics. Can you detail your methods to musically convey the registers of feeling and complexity at work in this sequence?

Just as it often was in Breaking Bad, in El Camino, money is the key to survival… but it never comes easily. We took great care over the course of the film, through the use of both score and source music, to slowly increase the pace and urgency of Jesse’s need for that money, which of course, pushes him in directions he never imagined having to go.

Can you explain the stylistic choices you employed to build anticipation leading up to the ‘High Noon at Midnight’ showdown at the welding facility?

El Camino is, of course, a modern Western, as were many elements of the original Breaking Bad series. And the standoff you reference was the clearest example of that, as well as a tentpole moment of the film. I wanted to do my best to heighten the tension in a way that was very spare — a nod to the very Westerns that we’re paying homage to, but do it in a musically modern way. The backbone of that cue was a solo cello that was played through a guitar amp and then manipulated digitally, along with a massive 7-foot wide giant gong drum that is featured throughout the Jesse Pinkman vs. Neil Kandy storyline.

Classic getaway cars play a critical role in the storytelling of El Camino. The namesake of the movie clearly references Todd’s vehicle that Jesse uses to escape from the Brotherhood compound in both the Breaking Bad series finale and the commencement of this film. As El Camino progresses, Jesse is gifted a Pontiac Fiero. How did you interpret the symbolism of iconic cars and transportation in your score?

We do love our cars in the world of Breaking Bad and Better Call Saul, and those choices are anything but random. Our sound design team also puts an enormous amount of effort into how they all sound, so your question would probably be best posed to them — but I will say that over the years the interiors of cars, and characters alone in thought in their cars, has always proven to be fertile ground for exploring characters through score. And of course, to take the Western analogy to another step, cars are just newer incarnations of horses, right?

As Jesse rides into his Alaskan future, his mind wanders to melancholic yet affectionate memories of Jane. Her shocking death catalyzed the deterioration of Walt and Jesse’s relationship. How did her presence in the closing scenes condition your musical choices?

When I first saw an early cut of El Camino, nothing made me happier than to see Jane — and perhaps none of the faces from Breaking Bad’s past were more important than hers — which I imagine is why Vince saved her appearance for the very end. As you point out, Jane’s death was an absolutely critical moment when Walt and Jesse’s path could have diverged… but Walt would not allow that. The piece of music that I wrote for her death in the series will always be a personal favorite, and it was creatively interesting to try to turn the feeling of that cue inside out into something that would guide Jesse toward his new life — wistful, definitely still uncertain, but with hope.

A great many creatives and individuals affiliated with the Breaking Bad franchise have expressed gratitude for the opportunity to contribute to this exceptionally popular, high-quality undertaking. How has your own journey been impacted, and how have you personally evolved through your extended engagement with this suite of interlocking multi-faceted projects?

While I had been a working composer for many years before I started on Breaking Bad, there is no question that the scale of its success and since then Better Call Saul and El Camino have brought my music to many more ears than I ever imagined. I am enormously grateful for that, not only for the doors it has opened in my career but for that very rare opportunity to get to work with the same tremendous group of talented people for so many years. We work so well together and push each other every year to new heights, and it is unquestionably why I’ve been able to become the composer that I am today.

Interviewer | Ruby Gartenberg
Research, Copy, Layout | Ruby Gartenberg
Editing | Alex Sicular, Ruby Gartenberg

Extending gratitude to Dave Porter and White Bear PR.