Matthew Weiner, The Art of Screenwriting No. 4

May 25, 2014 12:05 PM

Fourth in a series on screen writing in the Paris Review, an interview with Matthew Weiner, creator of Mad Men.
posted by ShooBoo (3 comments total)

That was great! Thanks.
posted by hamandcheese at 12:38 PM on May 25, 2014 [2 favorites]

This is good:

You know in Reds, when they’re interviewing the witnesses, and Henry Miller says, People today think they invented fucking? That kind of thing. The old people you’re looking at, they may have been more carnal than we are—drunker, less responsible, more violent. So many of those film noirs are about how soldiers reintegrate themselves into society. The private detective is haunted by the shadow of having killed people in the war. Don’t even get me started on The Best Years of Our Lives. The move to the suburbs, the privacy, the conservatism of the fifties—that’s all being driven by guys who, for two years, had not gone to the bathroom in privacy. I’m not the first TV person to be puzzled and fascinated by the fifties. The two biggest shows of the seventies are M*A*S*H and Happy Days. Obviously that moment is some sort of touchstone for culture. Is Hawkeye not related to Don Draper? He’s an alcoholic Boy Scout who behaves badly all the time. I just wanted to go back and look again.

posted by migurski at 2:23 PM on May 25, 2014 [3 favorites]

Excellent. Hmm, would a one word "excellent" have been a vernacular sentence in the 50s? I think I'll start back in watching MM, it grabbed me for a while then didn't. Hoping for a Peggy spin off where she is the first female CEO that gets launched into outer space.
posted by sammyo at 4:43 AM on May 26, 2014