The Muse Calliope
- Jun 12, 2014
- 2 min read
Vince Gilligan and Cormac McCarthy are my writing Idols.
If you did not know, one of Vince Gilligan's earliest writing gigs was with The X-Files, where he wrote epsidoes from the beginning of season 2 all the way till the end I believe. He is also the writer and creator of Breaking Bad, both shows rank very high on my all time favorites. Vince Gilligan has my TV preferences covered pretty well, but what about movies, books?
I read a lot of classics, but one thing that makes anything written by Cormac McCarthy strum my heart strings is how it tackles mortality. Death is something that truly fascinates me, although not in a creepy serial killer sort of way. An example of my fascination with it, is my love for the HBO series "Six Feet Under" in that its drama dealt with death in a way most shows don't dare approach. In a very similiar way, "The Walking Dead" tackles life, which occompanies death so well, don't you think?
In "Breaking Bad," the whole show started with the expectation that Walter would die. In "No Country for Old Men" Both our heroes deal very closely with death in their owns ways, Luella actually dying, and the Sheriff's soul sort of dies with his badge as he drifts off into the sunset of his retirement. "The Road" is tragic in its own ways, our beloved father of the story dying and leaving his son alone in the harsh new world, and "The Sunset Limited" is epic in its dialogue and it too is about death.
All of this strikes me so, because it is exactly the way I'd have done things. My mind works the same way in my writing process and in my emotional connection to the story. In Breaking Bad, he has to do die, in The Road, he has to die, in The Sunset Limited, he has to die, even in the beginning of "All the Pretty Horses" his father has to die.
Regardless, little else has effected me more or resonated with me on a level anywhere close to that of the works of Cormac McCarthy and Vince Gilligan. For that, I thank you.
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