Does Bob Odenkirk Know His Lines?

Variety

Actor Bob Odenkirk sits down and tries to guess lines from his biggest movies and television shows. He looks back on playing Saul Goodman in "Breaking Bad" and "Better Call Saul," what he learned from writing on Saturday Night Live, and his very first movie.

Transcript

00:00Lightning bolts shoot from my fingertips!

00:02Who would say that?

00:04Craziness.

00:04Mother f**k.

00:12You two suck at peddling meth.

00:14Well that one's easy.

00:16Breaking Bad.

00:18You two suck at peddling meth.

00:20Period.

00:21Each year Vince Gilligan would make these challenge coins.

00:26It has writing on it and designs on it

00:29that are just a memento of that group effort.

00:32I was in the second, third, fourth, fifth, sixth season.

00:35Playing Saul in Breaking Bad taught me that

00:37if you're gonna lie down with dogs you're gonna get fleas.

00:40You know Saul in Breaking Bad was kind of more fun to watch

00:44than a lot of other characters because he wasn't gonna die.

00:48Or at least he thought he wasn't.

00:49He felt he was outside of the sights

00:52of the cartel and the enemies.

00:54In the end he became in just as much danger as anybody.

00:58But for a great deal of my time there,

01:00Saul was a funny character who made jokes all he wanted

01:04because he wasn't scared.

01:07Have you ever seen us steal machinery before?

01:14Have you ever seen us steal machinery before?

01:16Have you ever seen us steal machinery before?

01:20This was a joy to do this.

01:22Of course it's a drama, but a light comedy drama.

01:26I love working with Bruce Stern who's a great cinema presence

01:29and a great guy.

01:30A joy to talk to and know.

01:31Bruce and I talked before I did Broadway with Glenn Gary Glenn Ross

01:35and he gave me great encouragement in taking that role on.

01:38I wrote down everything he said and I had it in my dressing room right there

01:44where I could read it every day.

01:45It's amazing when you get to work with Hollywood legends.

01:50You can't conceive of what I'm capable of.

01:52I'm so far beyond you.

01:54I'm like a god in human clothing.

01:55Lightning bolts shoot from my fingertips.

01:59That is from Better Call Saul.

02:01A great scene.

02:02And hey actors, can you imagine being given a monologue like this to do?

02:07On film?

02:08Come on.

02:09I did nothing to deserve this kind of writing.

02:11Lightning bolts shoot from my fingertips.

02:14Great drama and great fun and great character and great energy and great craziness.

02:29Craziness.

02:30The first scene that I did in Breaking Bad, when Saul has Walter White in his office,

02:36somewhere after half an hour, 40 minutes of shooting, the director yelled cut and one

02:43of the cameramen said, can I get a job on the sequel?

02:47And everyone laughed because I guess everyone was thinking this character is pretty great,

02:51pretty fun to see.

02:52From that point on, it was a joke that are they going to make a sequel with Saul?

02:58And every year, one time a year, Vince Gilligan would pull me aside somewhere and say, what

03:04do you think about that?

03:05Do you think there could be a show in Saul?

03:07And every time he'd ask me, I'd say, I have no idea.

03:11Hopefully you know that.

03:13And if you want to write that, I'll do it.

03:15It really wasn't until the finale of Breaking Bad, I'm going to say a year after, that Vince

03:22Gilligan and Peter Gould, who wrote the first episode that featured Saul, called Better Call Saul.

03:28They took me to lunch at the Chateau Marmont, famous Hollywood place, and said, we're thinking

03:34about creating that show.

03:36And what do you think?

03:37I said, first of all, you're going to have to make him likable.

03:40Saul isn't sort of fun on his own.

03:42He's fun in the context of Breaking Bad.

03:45And the other thing I said to them was, and don't forget, I'm 50 years old.

03:50So please don't write him as a 30-year-old, because I'm not 30.

03:54And of course, then they went and wrote him as like 30.

03:59They had to CGI the bags from under my eyes in like three scenes on Better Call Saul.

04:04So it's been a real effort on my part to get people to see me as the age that I actually

04:08am.

04:09Now that's in there.

04:11Don't just look at each other.

04:13That's from one of the best sketches we ever did on Mr. Show, The Audition.

04:17Now that's in there.

04:18Yes.

04:19Don't just look at each other.

04:20Yes.

04:21Exactly when we did it.

04:22When it comes to the writing of Mr. Show, these sketches like The Audition, Lie Detector,

04:28Talk Show at Sea, they're kind of perfect sketches as far as like classical sketch construction.

04:37And they are the hardest thing to write.

04:39We had incredible freedom on Mr. Show.

04:41Everything that I learned at SNL that I never got to use when I wrote on SNL, I used to make

04:47Mr. Show.

04:48At SNL, it was very easy, especially for young writers, to get their ideas shot down very quickly

04:54by older writers.

04:55When I went to Mr. Show and I was in charge over there with David Cross, I sort of made

05:00it a rule that you don't shoot anything down.

05:03You have to talk about everything, you have to fully understand the writer's idea before

05:08you let it go.

05:10So it was a good thing to learn what not to do from Saturday Night Live.

05:14David Cross and I have made a documentary that's going to come out in a few months.

05:20We climbed Machu Picchu together and we documented it.

05:23It's really about a lifelong friendship and in the trenches of showbiz.

05:29The power, the costumes, the mythic struggles.

05:31No idea.

05:34Ah, The Incredibles 2.

05:36The powers, the costumes, the mythic struggles.

05:40Winston down.

05:41You can call me Win.

05:42I think he's similar to Saw.

05:43They are similar guys.

05:45The guy in Incredibles 2 is like an agent type guy, a mogul.

05:50And the whole gesturing and the kind of bigness of his presence is kind of a sleight of hand

05:59little move when you're trying to just get people to agree with you, whatever you're saying.

06:05Animation is a blast and you can do all kinds of variations on your lines and then they pick

06:09the one that they like.

06:10Give me the goddamn kitty cat bracelet, motherfucker.

06:15Who would say that?

06:17Nobody won.

06:18Give me the goddamn kitty cat bracelet, motherfucker.

06:23And I'm telling you what I love about this, the rage in this line and how ragefully I say

06:29it.

06:30It's every dad who's exhausted after a day at a park and the most precious thing to his

06:36daughter or son is lost in the cushions of the car.

06:41And he can't find that goddamn thing and the baby or the child is crying and he's losing

06:46his mind with rage.

06:48And it's not appropriate rage, but it just builds up in you.

06:53Life is a series of demands on you when you're a parent.

06:58It's great to be able to do a movie where you let it explode and you get that angry about

07:04something so minor.

07:06I do believe that the two Nobody films, actually the first half of each of them, is really more

07:13living in the real world-ish.

07:14As far as I know, the characters are not in the John Wick universe at all, ever.

07:20I do think the John Wick universe is a different plane of existence.

07:25While it's true that the endings of Nobody 1 and Nobody 2 are close to the John Wick universe,

07:33they are magical places where people can shoot a knife out of the air.

07:38That kind of magical stuff only happens in the cinema and in certain mythical, really, realms.

07:46My Little Women.

07:50That's from the movie Little Women.

07:51My Little Women.

07:55When I played Father March in the story, in real life, Bronson Alcott is a fascinating

08:02person who you can read about.

08:04There's a great book that's about Louisa and her dad.

08:09And I read that book before I played him.

08:11He encouraged his girls to become whatever they wanted to be.

08:17And they made a big deal about Bronson Alcott and how he built a desk for Louisa to write

08:22on.

08:23So encouraging a girl to write was already kind of like, you're out of your mind.

08:28So I went to the house where the Alcott's lived.

08:31It's still there in Concord, Massachusetts.

08:33I'm sorry to have to report to you.

08:35It's about 12 inches wide.

08:37It's a little piece of wood around this post in her little bedroom.

08:44And I kind of was underwhelmed.

08:46But it's still a big deal that he did it.

08:50And here we go.

08:51Hey, are you those two guys who have their TV show in Aurora?

08:56That's right.

08:57That's from Wayne's World 2.

08:58Hey, are you those two guys who have their TV show in Aurora?

09:02Wayne's World?

09:03Wayne's World.

09:04Wayne's World.

09:05I played a super nerd alongside my good friend Robert Smigel.

09:09And of course, we were friends with Mike Myers.

09:11Mike and I both got hired at Saturday Night Live.

09:14He as a performer, myself as a writer, within like two weeks of each other.

09:19We didn't write or work together much at SNL.

09:22And that's partly because Mike really worked on his own.

09:25But I liked Mike.

09:26He liked me.

09:27He came to see my one-man show.

09:29He knew I had aspirations to perform.

09:32He gave me this kick-ass prized role in his sequel to Wayne's World.

09:38There was a man who just gave up her or write a career that I really loved.

09:46When you put it in the ax hours, I really loved him.

09:48For the first time, I would say he did not enjoy everything at first, and I didn't realize it.

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