Mad Men’s creator bids farewell
FOR SEVEN seasons US drama series Mad Men has been exalted and derided – for the most part, the former – and has drastically reshaped the lives of the men and women who work at the fictional 1960s-era New York ad agency Sterling Cooper.
Chief among them, the deeply flawed, complex Don Draper (Jon Hamm), whose fall from a great height serves not only as the artistically powerful opening title sequence for the series, but also as a metaphor for the broader narrative of the show’s 90-odd episodes.
For series creator Matt Weiner, one of the first rock star showrunners of the post- Sopranos generation, saying goodbye to Mad Men’s world, and in particular it’s awry anti-hero, has been a difficult journey.
Last December, as the final scenes were filmed and production began to shut down, Weiner went from working in the nerve centre of a vast production, surrounded by staff around the clock, to a solitary figure, packing up alone, but for his assistant, and a close friend who came in to help him. ‘‘That was terrible and totally unexpected, no-one warned me,’’ Weiner reveals.‘‘Seven years in this office and all the incredible things that had happened in this office. I had written almost the entire thing in there, I had had all of my meetings in there. I had famous people come and meet with me. I slept in there plenty.
‘‘I went to that office in charge of this multimillion-dollar business with hundreds of employees and left with a box and my laptop, so that was horrible, but amazing,’’ he adds. ‘‘Then I went home and my family had to deal with that and me being around more and following them around and being in their business.’’
The show’s enduring message, he says, is that ‘‘things change and then they change back’’. The series was also, he adds, part of re-starting a conversation about gender. When he was out pitching the series, it was a ‘‘a post-feminist environment . . . [and people] had no idea how bad it was’’.
‘‘There’s laws against it, but it hasn’t changed at all,’’ Weiner says. ‘‘The most stunning thing to me is the economic inequality . . . I think racism, sexism, all these things stem from it. There’s not enough and the people at the top have too much and they have engineered everything to give the illusion that there is mobility and then not let it happen.’’
Once the show’s 1960s-era sets were darkened for the last time, Weiner souvenired one
prop from each of the key locations and characters: Don Draper’s Cleo Award, Roger Sterling’s bar, Peggy’s stapler. ‘‘I might have that fake Heisman Trophy that was in Pete’s office,’’ he adds. ‘‘Little things from everybody.’’
Plus, he adds, he has taken every business card ever made for the show. ‘‘I don’t know what I’m gonna do with it, but I’ve got ’em,’’ he laughs.
‘‘I am a materialist in the most traditional form in that I believe that objects have power and I love design.’’
Much tougher, he says, was working with the post-production team on the series’ final hours, minutes and moments.
‘‘I enjoy post-production because it’s a chance to rewrite a little bit, you rewrite the show when you’re editing it,’’ he says. ‘‘I’m not a monster, I’m emotional in these situations, but I had to get it together.
‘‘But when I saw the editor’s cut of the last episode, I lost it. Part of it was fatigue. Part of it was realising I was never gonna see another one. Ever.’’
Mad Men, Tuesday, 8.45pm TV2 Terence Howard stars in this new, 12-part drama about a successful music business patriarch who has to choose one of his three sons to take over when he dies. ‘‘It doesn’t really matter if hiphop is your musical genre of choice, because the beat this deliciously entertaining show grooves to echoes the more traditional and timeless rhythms of grand soap operas,’’ wrote US TV Guide’s Matt Roush. Thursday, 8.30pm The Zone Matt Dillon, Carla Gugino and Toby Jones star in this 10-part mystery series based on the popular books by Blake Crouch about a secret service agent who goes to Idaho’s Wayward Pines, in search of two missing federal agents. ‘‘Eerie, atmospheric and compelling,’’ wrote Denver Post’s Joanne Ostrow.