As time passes, we are cruising through the 30th anniversary of The X-Files season 3. 3X17: Pusher first aired on February 23 1996 and it was only the first episode written by Vince Gilligan as a staff writer, after he was recruited with the freelance 2X23: Soft Light. Pusher remains not only one of Gilligan’s best episodes, but one of the most memorable episodes of the show’s history. Gilligan was recently interviewed on Polygon: read him talk about how he thought he would get fired, how television is a collaborative medium, his appreciation of Robert Wisden and Rob Bowman, and more. Some highlights:
Thirty years later, it’d be called “Influencer” instead of “Pusher.”
After the episode aired, I was so proud of it. I did indeed — in the office on Monday morning, I’m pretty sure I said to Chris, “That’s the best I can do for you. That’s as good as it gets.” And I’ll never forget his reaction. He looked at me very seriously, and he said very quietly, “You shouldn’t say stuff like that, and I very much hope that’s not true, because this job, for all of us, is about getting better with every script.”
Robert Patrick Modell. The middle name, by the way, is named for my brother Patrick. I don’t know where Modell came from. I think I just liked the sound of it. I always felt like a bad guy has got to have three names, like Lee Harvey Oswald.
I remember the truck gag, with the shot of the truck hitting the camera. I said to him, “How are you going to get this? Because you want it to be really badass.” He says, “I’ve got a way.” They bought a mirror and put it on a wooden frame and they put it in the middle of the road, 45 degrees to the camera and to the truck — the truck and the camera were at 90 degrees from each other. The stunt driver blasted this big semi-truck right into the mirror and just drove right through it, smashed the shit out of it. The camera was 30 feet away, safe off on the side of the road.
[On similarities between Modell and Walter White] I guess there are similarities. I am kind of the last one to figure these things out. They usually have to be told to me.