Vince Gilligan on how a 30-year-old X-Files episode links to Breaking Bad

That’s the phrase killer Robert Patrick Modell — nicknamed “Pusher” — utters over and over again from the back of the police car after being apprehended in one of the all-time classic X-Files episodes. “Cerulean blue. Cerulean makes me think of a breeze. A gentle breeze,” he continues, until a trance comes over the officer driving the car. The cop then drives straight in front of a huge blue moving truck, killing himself and freeing Modell.

So begins “Pusher,” the third-season episode widely considered one of The X-Files’ best episodes by fans and critics alike. A standalone “Monster-of-the-Week” episode, “Pusher” focuses on Robert Patrick Modell (Robert Wisden), a former retail clerk who gains the hypnotic ability to impose his will on others, which he often uses to force people to kill themselves. After his escape from the police, Agents Mulder (David Duchovny) and Scully (Gillian Anderson) are pulled into the case to apprehend him, and the episode becomes a tense cat-and-mouse game between Mulder and Modell.

Breaking Bad, Better Call Saul, and Pluribus creator and showrunner Vince Gilligan wrote “Pusher,” which was only his second episode for the series, and the second script he wrote for TV altogether. For the 30th anniversary of “Pusher,” Polygon spoke with Gilligan via Zoom to discuss the story, his memories from the set, and whether “Pusher” was an influence on Breaking Bad, which many X-Files fans have speculated about.

Polygon: “Pusher” was only your second episode of The X-Files. Do you remember what inspired it?

Vince Gilligan: It sounds like I'm being funny, but the best inspiration I can remember is, I was really scared about getting fired. I had done one episode, “Soft Light,” as a freelancer. Then I moved lock, stock, and barrel to Los Angeles. I drove out in my S-15 Jimmy from Powhatan County, Virginia to Los Angeles for this X-Files job in 1995, and within a week or two, I promptly came down with mononucleosis. I didn't come into work for weeks. I had it for six weeks, and I kept calling in every day and I showed [X-Files creator Chris Carter] a doctor's note and everything. I didn't want them thinking that they had hired this loser who couldn't even make it into the office.

I was really freaking out about getting fired. And luckily, Chris didn't fire me. I appreciated that very much. I don't remember where the idea for "Pusher" came from, except maybe it was just something you think about: willpower. What would life be like if you could impose your will upon other people? And how hard that is to do in real life, which is probably a good thing. What we don't need in this world are any more pushers. Although now, with the internet and social media, it's almost like we have all these pushers all over the internet, pushing, "Oh, buy these shoes," "Buy this particular kind of cologne," whatever. Thirty years later, it'd be called "Influencer" instead of "Pusher."

There's a story online claiming you handed the script to Chris Carter and said, "This is the best work I'm ever going to do for you." Is that true? And if you said it, do you think it remained true?

You know what? That's one of those nonsubmergeable memories I have of "Pusher." I did indeed say that after the episode aired. [Saying that while] turning in the script — before it's produced, before it's directed and acted by the actors and all of that — that would've been even dumber of me. But that was probably not my smartest statement I ever made.

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."

He didn't yell at me or anything. He said it very quietly and he was thoughtful about it, but I never forgot it. As it happens to all of us in life, I didn't know what I didn't know. I didn't know how many episodes of various shows I would have ahead of me. I didn't know how lucky I would turn out to be. And it seems like a shortsighted statement of a much more youthful Vince Gilligan when I was not quite 30.

Anything to say about Robert Wisden as Pusher?

I am sorry I didn't get to know him a little better. I remember Robert Wisden being a great guy. I think he did an absolutely fantastic job as 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. But Robert Wisden did a fantastic job.

Were you on set for "Pusher"?

Yeah, that was one of the best things about working for The X-Files. Chris wanted us on the set, advocating for our scripts and being there to answer questions from the director and actors. He put us to work there, and I just thought that was the way everyone did it. Then I got educated years later, hearing about other shows and other showrunners, some of whom zealously guarded the set from the writers, and never let them cast their shadow upon it. But Chris wanted us to go to the set, and back then, that meant flying from Los Angeles up to Vancouver, which is a great city. I wish I had gotten to know it better, but usually I was up there working.

Rob Bowman, who directed "Pusher," did a fantastic job. I learned an awful lot from him. For a while there, he directed every episode I wrote. He's a great director. 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. That's how they got that shot.

I've said this in many interviews and it bears repeating. This is what I love about this job: It's a collaborative medium. If you're a writer, you write the best script you can write, but then if you're lucky, then the actors make it better. The director makes it better. Mark Snow, God rest his soul, he made it better with the fantastic music he composed for "Pusher." The production designer, the DP, the costumes, everybody works together and makes something far better than you could have ever done just sitting in your office, tapping away on your keyboard.

That's the weird zero-sum game that the movies and TV shows feel like they're turning into with the cult of the showrunner. It's like, "Oh, the showrunner, they did it all themselves." No one ever does it all themselves. It's a collaborative medium. It took a whole bunch of people to build the Brooklyn Bridge, and they can all be equally proud of it. These folks made "Pusher" so much better, and I'm proud to have been a part of it.

Some people online have noticed a thematic similarity in "Pusher" and Breaking Bad, in that the main character is a small, frustrated man given a terminal diagnosis who then makes this dark turn. Did you recognize that when you were writing Breaking Bad? Do you have thoughts on it?

I've had some people point that out to me over the years, and it's funny, I'm kind of the last one to know. I'm the last one to figure things out. But when people have pointed it out to me, I've said, "By golly, you're right. There is a similarity." Yeah, I suppose there is on some level.

I think it's a natural thing that we all gravitate toward the idea of the underdog. Now, these two guys, Robert Patrick Modell and [Breaking Bad protagonist] Walter White — you never see Modell's character as an underdog. You only hear about it. You hear about him being not one of life's winners. But suddenly, in the twilight of his life, because of this medical condition he has, suddenly he has this great power. We only see him powerful.

With Walter White, we see him as kind of a put-upon underdog before we see him become the meth kingpin of the Southwest. But yeah, 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.

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The X-Files is available for streaming on Hulu, Disney Plus and Pluto TV.