Matt Weiner reveals what Mad Men is really about

Wesleyan University kicked off a fundraising drive last night with a talk by its most famous '87 alum --Matt Weiner. The event was held in the Directors Guild Theater which enabled the event to open with a luscious, big screen sampling of all 6 seasons --up until S604. (No preview clips, natch.)

Some of the things that Matt talked about in (warm, relaxed) conversation with Wesleyan’s' president--a meeting of minds he presumably never foresaw when he was (by his own admission) a lackluster student in Middletown:

1. He actually wanted to be a poet. He wrote poetry in college and did a poetry thesis senior year which he brought to a poetry professor for feedback. The professor's response: We both know you're not a poet, don't we? "Actually, I hadn't known that," Matt said. "But it helped me enormously."

2. After graduation, desperate to live in New York, Matt took a job with a friend's mother, an interior decorator, who basically hired him to "stand around and make sure the workers weren't stealing stuff." After a while, he decided to move back to LA, where he'd grown up. "Because one day, standing in a room being decorated, I realized I'd be doing the same thing the next year. And the next."

3. Matt is fascinated by the late 50s "which actually lasted through 1962." He felt the same vibe played out when he was in college in the 1980s-- revival of diners, jazz, fashions, etc. He is not so fascinated with the Boomer 60s when "everyone wore the same thing and shouted, in unison, 'I'm an individual!"

4. He chose to set the show in advertising because "that was the glamorous job of that era."

5. On Don Draper's character: "Don is a person from rural poverty who is acutely aware of the fact that he ran away from death, in an act of cowardice. He actually killed someone, by accident, but never took responsibility for it. He is very interested in self-preservation. Fear was instilled in him as a child, by a hobo who told him that death was going to come looking for him, and that he should 'keep moving.' That was where I started the series."

6. Another thing that inspired the Mad Men story was the conundrum of expectations for men at that time: "They were supposed to be great dads and great husbands and work for the Little League and the PTA...but they were also supposed to drink as much, smoke as much and get laid as much as possible."

7. He's grateful for the creative freedom AMC provides, including the freedom to not to have to spell everything out. Like sex scenes. "I'm more interested in "the just before" and "the just after."

8. Don Draper is not an anti-hero. "It disturbs me when people call him that. Don't people have to murder someone to be anti-heroes? Don has his own code, his own moral center. But it is totally situational. Like most of ours. And that is what the show is really about."

9. And speaking of personalized moral codes: "Pete is my Democrat. He's right about everything, but he's from a screwed up background. And I do believe that you are the sum of your experiences."

[SPOILERS ALERT: Proceed at your own caution, if you haven't seen Season 6.]

10. When asked about heroism in the show, he said: "It's Don's support of Peggy. It's Betty going into town after that violinist. Heroism to me is any time you overcome your own weaknesses, push your own boundaries."

11. On Themes. The theme of last season (#5) was Success. One of the themes of this season is: How are you perceived by other people? "When Betty Draper goes downtown, people there make assumptions about who she is based on her weight and her hair and the fact that she knows how to cook. She resents that. "

12. "The show is not judgmental about human behavior, and that makes people uncomfortable, I think."

13. Don can't love the people who love him. He begins to emotionally withdraw from Megan when he sees she can't accept his 50s lifestyle.

14. "1968 was probably the crappiest year in the history of America. I have new respect for people who were there." When asked about how this will impact his characters, he was characteristically evasive about details, but said, “Bad stuff's gonna happen."

15. A question from the audience: Do you believe people can change? Tellingly, Matt paused a long moment before answering, "Yes. But I believe wanting to change, is a change." And we see where Don gets his remarkable ability to finely slice and dice the meaning of words.

soho in slomo

Some days, don't you wish you could just shift the world's gears, ratchet down the speed of everything going on around you, so that you could take a long, leisurely, languorous LOOK. That's what artist James Nares lets us do, for however long you choose to sit in a darkened room at the Met, watching "Street", his breathtaking "motion art." (Video is an inadequate word.) Nares recorded 16 hours of footage of people on the streets of Manhattan, while wielding an HD camera usually used to record speeding objects like bullets or hummingbirds. Then, he slowed down source material and created an hour of New York street life as you've never seen it--slowwwwwwww. Like still photography, this art isolates objects, giving us opportunity--and encouragement--for a closer look at what we'd ordinarily miss--the mole on a face, the hand in a pocket, a plastic shopping bag breaking free from doorway. Watch a preview here, or, better yet, catch it at the Met which will screen it continuously through May 27.

betty!

Forgive me, non-Mad Men fans, I have to talk about...Betty! [spoiler alert for those who haven't yet seen last night's S6 premiere)

First shock to me that the writers left her plus-size. (Does one of them have a grudge against her?) I thought for sure that her added weight, a (brilliant) cover for pregnancy during shooting last season--so she wouldn't have to walk around behind laundry baskets--would have been done away with, now that a cover's not necessary. Or is it? Are Xander's days as an only child numbered?

And then--the hair! Is her Marilyn-to-Jackie move an attempt to spice up her marriage? Clearly she's NOT good at pillow talk, given her awkward attempt to turn on a distracted, straight-edge husband by initiating role play using fantasy--of all things--child molesting! Or perhaps it's an attempt to prove to the world (and herself) that there's more to her than a strung-out druggie on St. Mark's assumes. Speaking of which--didn't that scene make you just want to reach into the screen and tell her to buy the building, it'll be worth millions someday!?

OK, now back to our regularly scheduled programming...

hollywood casting call for brands

An article in Forbes just tipped us off to the next (and apparently well-funded) era in product placement: a torrent of brand names appearing on the sets of your favorite film or TV show. Expect to see logos anywhere there's a "free" space in a scene: on park benches, classroom chalkboards, walls behind comedian monologues. And, as happens today in broadcasted sporting events, the ads can made specific to audience. Thanks, Nielsen! Check out the video that just helped win $4.5M investment for MirriAd, a UK-based culprit, er, company that is "working to perfect the art of placing billboards, advertisements and even truck-sized products in your favorite television shows and films."

social media life of pi

I (finally!) saw Life of Pi last night in all its multi-dimensional glory and it occurs to me that the story can offer a few parallels to managers newly trying to steward brands across unfamiliar seas of social media.

1. Facebook = The Tiger
Facebook is still the biggest, baddest social media animal on the planet, 750 million voices strong and a beast that anybody doing social communications must learn how to feed without losing one’s metaphorical arm.

Here's a helpful guide to the care and feeding of Facebook for business. But be warned. The Tiger doesn’t wake up the same animal every day. It goes through constant changes which you have to stay alert to or pretty soon you’ll be dead in the water. The rise of Facebook’s promoted posts is a new way the medium is asserting its territorial dominance. And have you noticed that Facebook has just unceremoniously swiped the hashtag idea from Twitter?

2. Twitter = The Hyena
The number two in social media’s primal hierarchy, 250 million monthly users strong. Like the hyena, it communicates in short bursts. (Tweets are 140 charcters) But the bursts can gather forbmidable force when replicated (retweeted) in number. Here's a guide to best practices.

3. Pinterest = The Orangutan
This site is mother of all social media start-ups, the fastest-growing web service in history. It was launched in 2010 and now has 85.5 million visitors a month. Use is heavily weighted female. They've just grown analytics. Here's tips from a power-user. Taming advice for business users here and here.

4. Tumblr = The Zebra with the broken leg
Tumblr is a micro-blog. A constrained space, but you can do a lot with it. It started out as a photo posting site and has since expanded into video. Here are the founders talking about it and how it's expanded over the last 5 years. A lot of brands have figured out how to make it work for them. More examples here.

5. Instagram = The Cock
There’s been a lot of crowing about Instagram since it was introduced in late 2010. What's more, it just got devoured by the Tiger. Here's some tips for putting it to work for business. 

6. Vine = Meerkats
SXSWi was overrun with enthusiasm for this new mobile app from Twitter. Content is 6 second videos. Brands are already coming up with creative uses. Here's a few more.

book launch!

I was thrilled to launch the novel this week at a party with themed napkins and real mead from the fictional company formed by the protagonist and her husband.  Transmedia fans: check out other web content "created by" the book's characters in an out-of-the-box epiblog for Making It. [Spoilers alert]

photo by Kate Johnson

once upon a transmedia table

When my millennial daughter set the table for a candlelit dinner with her boyfriend, she didn't open a box of beeswax, she reached for her phone. This, to me, is the essence of what transmedia is. And why it's the future (or present) of storytelling. We've raised an audience who doesn't think that virtual worlds=fiction and nonvirtual world=reality. They think in terms of experiencing the world in all its natural and technological dimensions. No wonder the longest lines at SXWi were for digital storytelling sessions.