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The (Mad) Man - Part 2
In part two of our exclusive chat with creator of Mad Men, Matthew Weiner, we discuss how the show’s cinematic quality is achieved, including just how important production design is in creating the ambience of the smoke-filled, repressed living rooms and offices that the show’s characters inhabit.
Each episode feels as though it is a movie. How do you achieve this?
"I've always believed television is a combination of theatre and cinema. So there's a lot of the story that's moved along by dialogue which is satisfying and filled with conflict, and there's a lot of dramatic irony and subtext. The audience is drawn in by the fact that in 95% of the scenes, we know something that the characters don't. There's a lot of activity going on in someone's face in a silent, private moment. I think the show is cinematic in a sense that we take advantage of those moments like movies used to.
"Movies now have a whole different set of commercial restraints that I don't have; they're trying to get a much broader audience and trying to follow a formula. I'm doing my show in a much cheaper way and for a much smaller audience and it has had tremendous universal appeal."
A lot of people recognise that the show is really good and dramatic, but they also cling to the fashion and you know, the drinks.
"There's some wishful filming going on there. I do think that on some level there was a pornographic element to things like people having unprotected sex, the advent of the pill, eating steak and smoking without any fear of repercussion; it's not like no-one knew about that stuff, it was just more of a habit.
"In terms of production design, it was the golden age of design. What you were expected to be interested in intellectually and commercially had been dictated by the market place and it was a mass movement. But I think on a personal level sophistication and intellectual curiosity was actually a style, even in that repressed era.
"So I thought let's take some of that abstraction from this period, let's revel in what's beautiful about it. Let's revel in the continuum of the fact that when you're doing a period all eras exist at once. There are layers of time in one day in 1960 or ‘62 or ‘63. There are antiques, people dressing the way they did in high school, and listening to music from their childhood and listening to classical music, and all these things exist at once. I also always felt that a well appointed interior and the objects and material of our lives were a substance of storytelling that hadn't really been exploited.
"Even down to the fact that everyone says that it looks like a Douglas Sirk or a Hitchcock movie. I really feel that we see these things and emulate them. The people in the show watch these movies. Betty Draper has seen Vertigo or whatever. She has a romantic concept of drama, she has a standard of beauty, she's been told she looks like Grace Kelly her whole life. Why do you think she hasn't changed her hair? You know, she probably had that hairstyle from the ‘40s, or the ‘50s, when Grace Kelly was a bigger star than she is in 1963."
How did you research the period to achieve the level of accuracy evident in the production design of the show?
"I think we've done something new and different because our research is orientated very much towards primary source material, not how the media interpreted things, because no-one is aware of what's important while they're going through it.
"I embraced all of the incidental things that are usually removed in movies, the dirt and wrinkles and sweat stains and messy hair because I didn't want the show to be abstract or idealised."
Have you ever Mad Men'ed yourself? http://www.amctv.com/originals/madmen/madmenyourself/
"Yeah that was great. That woman was doing those drawings on her own for free. She was compelled to do it, she loved the show and she would put them up every week on her website (ww.nobodyssweetheart.com). I was introduced to her by one of the actors, Rich Sommer who plays Harry Crane. She's an improv comedian and also a graphic artist. He had her do his Christmas card and I got a Christmas card and then I found out she was doing these weekly on each episode. I had her make a calendar that I gave out as a gift based on these drawings, and then I introduced her to the network and they exploited her and paid for her to be part of the show. But I mean it was very graphically satisfying and I think at the same time it was great promotion for the show. That was very successful, I think we had about half a million people do that."
Check out Movie Extra http://mnc.tv/channel/movie-extra for info on the screening of Mad Men Season 3. Mad Men Seasons 1 & 2 are available on DVD now.
Picture Caption: Getty/David Livingston, Weiner at the Premiere Of AMC's "Mad Men" Season 3