By Robert Goldrich
LOS ANGELES --When the first season of Mad Men won six Emmy Awards–including Best Drama and Best Writing For A Drama Series–in 2008, the temptation was to think of the show as an overnight success. After all, it seemingly came out of nowhere to become the first basic cable series to garner the Best Drama Emmy, and has since had repeat wins of that honor in ’09 and ’10. Yet while the series has blazed a trail, it’s been a long and winding path as touched upon by its creator/producer Matthew Weiner during a session on Mad Men at The Hollywood Reporter/Billboard Film & TV Music Conference last week in Los Angeles.
Weiner noted that he wrote the pilot 10 years ago while he was maintaining a full-time writing job on a sitcom. The Mad Men pilot became a creative means of expression and part of his dream to one day be in charge of a show as its creator. Weiner put much of his spare time into the project, noting that it had been an obsession, “my drug habit, my mistress.” This obsession pre-dated his putting pen to paper for Mad Men. Weiner shared that he bought a wristwatch three years before writing the pilot. He had the watch in mind for a character in the show (presumably that worn by the star ad man Don Draper character).
Weiner laughingly described himself back then as “delusional…buying a watch for a fictitious character.”
Among the first 20 or so people to read the pilot script was Weiner’s fellow panelist at the Film & TV Music Conference, composer David Carbonara. “He was my audience,” said Weiner of Carbonara who went on to score the pilot seven years after receiving that initial script.
Weiner values Carbonara’s contributions to the pilot and the ongoing series (which just wrapped season four), citing a scene in the Mad Men pilot: “Don [Draper] looks at his Purple Heart–and David, you have this thing with the Chinese flute and bombs blowing up in the background,” said Weiner. “It’s a really complicated cue that’s telling the audience, ‘You are going to be in this man’s head.’ He’s having a private moment and the music is going to let you experience that.”
Weiner also recalled a musical cue in the second episode for the Betty Draper character. He remembered thinking, ‘Oh, my God, Betty has music, and it’s melancholy and it’s got these little bells and all the shit that I love.”
Prior to Mad Men, Weiner enjoyed a tenure (’04-’07) on The Sopranos which saw him serve as a writer and eventually an exec producer as well on the show. He concluded his Sopranos duty on a Friday and embarked on Mad Men the next Monday once AMC committed to the project. He said this was the first pilot AMC had ever made (production house on the pilot was @radical.media) and it was after seeing the pilot that Lionsgate bought the show.
Thus far Weiner has turned out 52 episodes of Mad Men over four seasons. He sees a parallel between ad-makers and television series creators/writers/producers. “The advertising business is very similar to the TV show business,” he said, citing the shared bond of “a creative person who is on some level making compromises.” Weiner credited the ad industry with being “one of the few places where a creative person can make money,” adding that the inherent clash of accounts vs. creative and art vs. commerce bring another interesting dimension to the 1960s’ workplace in Mad Men.
“Overnight Success” Has Been More Than A Decade In The Making For Meghann Fahy and Eve Hewson
Meghann Fahy and Eve Hewson, two of the stars of Netflix's whodunit "The Perfect Couple," have news for you if you want to call them breakouts: They've been working in this business for more than a decade.
Fahy made her TV debut in 2009 in an episode of "Gossip Girl." Hewson's first big film role was in 2011's "This Must Be the Place." They do concede, however, that it's recent TV roles — "The White Lotus" for Fahy and "Bad Sisters" for Hewson — that have led to new frontiers of opportunity.
Susanne Bier, who directed "The Perfect Couple," says both Fahy and Hewson are "going to be big stars."
"They certainly have proper, profound star quality, Both of them in very different ways," Bier says. "Both are incredibly creative, incredibly smart, and also have a impressive insight as to who they are. You can be a great actor or actress and not necessarily really know who you are yourself. And they do."
Hewson, 33, whose dad is U2 front man Bono, may have grown up in a famous family but she's now in demand in her own right. She will next be seen in a second season of "Bad Sisters, " out in November. She's in Noah Baumbach's next film, alongside Adam Sandler, George Clooney and Riley Keough. She's also been cast in Steven Spielberg's next production and is set to star opposite Murray Bartlett in a racing series for Hulu.
Fahy, 34, is in production on a limited series with Julianne Moore and Milly Alcock called "Sirens," written by Molly Smith Metzler ("Maid") for Netflix. She also has two films in the can with Josh O'Connor ("The Crown," "Challengers") and Brandon Sklenar ("It Ends With Us").
The two actors spoke candidly about this phase of their careers. This interview has been condensed for clarity and... Read More