"Mr. Magoriium's Wonder Emporium. Two copies?"
"I'm not much of movies guy."
Walter White has endured a lot on his five seasons of Breaking Bad, from multiple attempts at murdering him to countless silent, spiteful dinners with his wife. But is being stuck in the middle of nowhere with nothing but a certain 2007 movie? That was kind of the implication of last Sunday's "Granite State," in which Walter White didn't really seem bothered by the idea of being left alone in a cabin for a month straight, but was not especially into the DVD options for him.
You'd think it would be hard for a TV show to poke fun at a movie like that-- after all, you never know who you'll work with next in Hollywood. As it turns out, Mr. Magorium's director totally agrees with Walt. TMZ, in a stroke of genius, caught up with director Zach Helm, and he did not mince words about how much he loathes his own film:
Having myself endured the ignominy of watching the Technicolor train-wreck that is 'Mr. Magorium's Wonder Emporium' multiple times every day for over a year, I can attest to it being the perfect Kafka-esque Hell for a character of such moral ambiguity as Walter White."
And he agrees that two copies of Mr. Magorium is way worse than one, or preferably zero: "That is exactly two more copies than are allowed in my house."
Helm's directorial debut was Magorium, and it's clear that, whatever he thought he was accomplishing on the film, it did not turn out the way he imagined. Since then he's taking on writing projects like the Patricia Highsmith adaptation Deep Water, which is now being directed by Adrian Lyne, and the remake of Jumanji you didn't ask for. Helm, like everyone else on the planet, was probably just psyched to find some kind of connection to Breaking Bad, and seems eager to move on from Mr. Magorium-- though now, thanks to Walter White, it's probably more popular than ever. Just check out this recent Amazon review from Lambert:
Just watched this for the 567th time. I think I finally get it. Can anyone recommend similar titles? Thank you.
Helm isn't the only person who got name-checked by this week's Breaking Bad and decided to play along. Andrew Ross Sorkin, the New York Times columnist who was "quoted" for an article about Grey Matter in "Granite State," went ahead and penned the actual column that the show quoted:
Little known except to a small cadre of industry insiders, the Schwartzes have been scrambling in recent weeks to keep a long-running secret from being revealed. Gray Matter’s stock has sunk over the last week as speculation has mounted that the company could be tied to a drug kingpin in Albuquerque who has made national headlines: Walter White, the former chemistry teacher turned international methamphetamine dealer known as “Heisenberg.”
Because, let's be honest-- we should all be so lucky as to be quoted on Breaking Bad, even if it involved insulting our only directorial effort in the process.
