'Mad Men' Has Its Moment By ALEX WITCHEL The New York Times June 22, 2008
Correction Appended Matthew Weiner stood on the set of his hit show, "Mad Men," ready for his close-up in extreme anxiety. He was watching the rehearsal of a scene that seemed fine to me, better than fine, but his staccato commentary was a scene in itself. "He should be standing," he said of an actor who was seated. "That should be on the table," he said of an accordion folder that an actress had placed on the floor. "They're overreacting, paying too much attention to each other." He heard himself and looked slightly sheepish. "You'll see it turn from theater to movie in the next take," he told me. "I want them not to pay too much attention to each other, so it feels real, more perfunctory. Not that TV thing." His smile was wry. "I'm very impatient." He should give himself a break. Everyone else has. "Mad Men," about the world of advertising on Madison Avenue set in New York in the early 1960s, languished for years after being rejected by HBO and Showtime before the unlikely AMC (formerly known as American Movie Classics) picked it up, making for its first scripted drama series. The show had its premiere last summer and won instant critical acclaim, a Peabody Award and the Golden Globe Award for best drama. Its second season begins July 27; the DVD set of the first season goes on sale July 1. Weiner (pronounced WHY-ner) is the creator and show-runner of "Mad Men," which means the original idea was his: he wrote the pilot; he writes every episode of every show (along with four other people); he's the executive producer who haggles for money (he says that his budget is $2.3 million per episode and that the average budget for a one-hour drama is $2.8 million); and he approves every actor, costume, hairstyle and prop. Though he has directed episodes, most of the time he holds a "tone meeting" with the director at which he essentially performs the entire show himself so it's perfectly clear how he wants it done. He is both ultimate authority and divine messenger, some peculiar hybrid of God and Edith Head. "I do not feel any guilt about saying that the show comes from my mind and that I'm a control freak," he told me. "I love to be surrounded by perfectionists, and part of the problem with perfectionism is that by nature, you're always failing." I recently spent three days on the "Mad Men" set, watching the people who work there, along with auditioning actors, most of whom are desperate to please Weiner, catch his eye, engage him. Rarely have I seen so many people beam so insistently at a human who's not a newborn. They're all expert practitioners of the current flavor of show-biz persona: the down-to-earth, up-with-people next-door neighbor who soft-sells his or her obsession with stardust and self-interest with chitchat about, say, the kids, the brilliantine smile buttressed by the unspoken prayer, "Don't write me out!" So, after working for 18 years, most recently as a writer and executive producer for "The Sopranos" (the episode in which Tony murders his nephew Christopher was his), Weiner, who is 42, has become an overnight success in a very particular, Hollywood way. He is suddenly a "genius," a meal ticket and the 800-pound gorilla in every room he's in. It is already show-business legend that he wrote the pilot of "Mad Men" in 1999 while working on the Ted Danson sitcom "Becker." In 2002, Weiner sent the pilot as a writing sample to David Chase, who created "The Sopranos," which is how he was hired. That HBO, under its previous leadership, passed on "Mad Men" while Weiner worked on its biggest hit, leaving the field open for the upstart AMC to reap the glory, is one of those stories that give underdogs of all breeds in this town a reason to get out of bed in the morning. ... http://www.nytimes.com/2008/06/22/magazine/22madmen-t.html ******************************* * POST TO [EMAIL PROTECTED] * ******************************* Medianews mailing list [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://lists.etskywarn.net/mailman/listinfo/medianews
