- Warning: There are major spoilers ahead for “El Camino: A Breaking Bad Movie.”
- Since the “Breaking Bad” sequel was released on Netflix, the stars have shared details about the making of the movie.
- For example, Bryan Cranston wore a bald cap and visual effects were used to adjust the size of his head.
- The movie was also originally three hours long.
- Visit Insider’s homepage for more stories.
Six years after AMC’s “Breaking Bad” came to an end, Netflix released a film sequel centered on Aaron Paul’s character, Jesse Pinkman, following his escape at the end of the series.
The two-hour movie came out on the streaming service on Friday. Since then, the stars and writer-director Vince Gilligan have spoken in interviews about how “El Camino: A Breaking Bad Movie” came together.
Here are seven things you didn’t know about the making of the film.
The movie was originally three hours long.
"[Netflix] probably would've given me three hours if I had asked for it," Gilligan told Entertainment Weekly. "But you gotta know when to fold 'em, and you've got to know when to end your movie, and you don't want to overstay your welcome."
Paul also told Collider that 30% of the movie was cut because Gilligan "didn't want to bore people." He also said that it was minor scenes that were scrapped, and some moments were condensed.
Bryan Cranston wore a bald cap and visual effects were used to make his head smaller in his flashback scene.
Cranston, who had a full head of hair at the time for his role as anchorman Howard Beale in the Broadway adaptation of "Network," only had 36 hours to film his big cameo. He wore a bald cap to resemble Walter White again, but his head shape didn't quite match with his previous look
"We also had to get a little digital (effects) help to shrink Bryan's head so it didn't look bulbous with the bald cap on," Gilligan told USA Today.
Read more: How the biggest cameo in Netflix's 'Breaking Bad' movie was kept a secret
The RV in the flashback was borrowed from a real-life Albuquerque tour company.
The original RV that functioned as Walt and Jesse's mobile meth-making lab was crushed to pieces during season three, episode six ("Sunset"). With the help of junkyard owner Old Joe, the vehicle was destroyed just as DEA agent Hank Schrader (Walt's brother-in-law) closed in on Walt and Jesse.
In order to bring back the RV for "El Camino," the crew got permission to use the tour company's replica. To keep the movie a secret, they told people that they were filming a commercial for the tour.
"We were handing out brochures for his organization to any curious onlookers who happened by," Gilligan told Entertainment Weekly.
Jesse got shot during his fight with Neil at Kandy Mobile Welding, but the moment didn't make it into the final cut of the movie.
During the scene, Jesse had a shootout with Neil, who refused to give him $1,800 so he could pay Ed and leave town. With two guns stolen from his parents' home, Jesse killed Neil and let his friends escape.
He was seemingly unscathed from the wild west-style fight, but Gilligan told Vulture that "in the original script, and the version we filmed, he actually gets shot through the side, and then goes off and recuperates with help from Ed."
"When the Blu-ray comes out, we'll have that as a deleted scene," he added.
Jesse Plemons improvised the "honk the horn" gesture during the scene when Todd Alquist drove out to the desert to bury a body
In the film, Jesse stuffed Todd in the back of his car and drove them out to the desert to bury Sonia, a maid who discovered that Todd had stacks of drug money hidden in his apartment's encyclopedias. She was killed because of the revelation.
While driving, Todd sang "Sharing the Night Together" and made the arm gesture at a truck zooming by. The action seemed perfectly in line with the bizarre character, and it was all Plemons' idea.
"That was not scripted," Gilligan told Vulture. "When he did it, I was riding in this big giant truck that tows the car that Jesse [Plemons] is pretending to be driving. I'm watching on a monitor, it's cold outside so you're bundled up, and I'm huddled next to my director of photography and script supervisor."
Gilligan said that when Plemons did the "honk the horn" move while singing, he "almost fell out of the truck" from his laughter.
"He nailed it in one take," the director said. "It was such a thing of beauty. And our camera operator, thank God, he can contain his laughter, because he operated it perfectly."
The first thing Gilligan wrote for the movie was the letter from Jesse to Brock, but he cut it from the script.
At the end of the movie, Jesse gave Ed a letter to send to Brock Cantillo, the son of his late girlfriend Andrea and the only person he wanted to say goodbye to before starting his new life.
Fans didn't get to see what Jesse wrote to Brock, but Gilligan initially planned to reveal the contents.
"Originally the voiceover of that letter was how the movie ended - just driving through Alaska and you could hear what was inside of that letter," Paul, who "swore that he would never" share the letter's message, told Entertainment Weekly.
He added: "It's heartbreaking, it's beautiful, just honest. But Vince just thought, 'You know what? Maybe it's best left unknown.' And we don't need it. He was right. But I love knowing what was in the letter."
Paul lied and told people that he was filming an "indie passion project," and they believed him.
Paul told Time that it was "incredibly easy" to keep the movie a secret.
"On the weekends, when my wife, my baby girl and I would be running around town, people would come up to me and ask what I'm doing there," he said. "I would say, 'I'm just doing this indie passion project.'
"And that was it: no one questioned it, not one time," the actor continued. "We never had any people trying to sneak around any photos of the sets."
Read more: THEN AND NOW: The cast of 'Breaking Bad' 11 years later