Mad Men is an American television drama series created by Matthew Weiner and produced by Lionsgate Television. The series aired on July 19, 2007, on the AMC cable network. After seven seasons and 92 episodes, the last episode of Mad Men was aired on May 17, 2015. Mad Men is set primarily in the 1960s, initially in the fictitious Sterling Cooper advertising agency on Madison Avenue in New York City, and later in the newly created company, Sterling Cooper Draper Pryce (later Sterling Cooper & Partners), is located nearby in the Time-Life Building, at 1271 Sixth Avenue. According to the pilot of the event, the phrase "madman" is a slang term coined in 1950 by advertisers working on Madison Avenue to call themselves, a claim that has since been debated.
The plot focuses on the agency business as well as the personal lives of the characters, regularly portraying the changing mood and social customs of the United States until the 1960s. The series began in March 1960 with season one and moved until November 1970 with the end of the seventh season. Don Draper (Jon Hamm) is the main focus in the series, initially as a talented creative director at Sterling Cooper and later founding partner at Sterling Cooper Draper Pryce, as are the people in his personal and professional life. Along the way, Mad Men received a broad critical recognition of his writing, acting, and authenticity; has won many awards, including 16 Emmys and five Golden Globes. The event is also the first basic cable series to receive an Emmy Award for an Exciting Drama Series, winning in each of its first four seasons. It is widely regarded as one of the greatest television series of all time.
Video Mad Men
Production
Conception
In 2000, while working as a staff writer for Becker, Matthew Weiner wrote the first draft as a specific script for a pilot who would later be called MadMe . Television producer David Chase recruited Weiner to work as a writer on his HBO series [The Sopranos] after reading a 2002 trial script. "It's very lively, and there's something new to say," Chase said. "Here is someone [Weiner] who has written stories about advertising in the 1960s, and looks at recent American history through the prism."
Weiner and his representatives in the Entertainment Industry and ICM tried to sell the trial manuscript to HBO, which expressed interest, but insisted that David Chase was named after an executive producer whom Chase refused, despite his enthusiasm for writing Weiner and his pilot script. HBO CEO Richard Plepler, who became a fan of the show and congratulated AMC for their success with it, who was later named on Mad Men as his greatest regret of his time at HBO, calling him "unforgivable" and connecting they do it for "pride".
Weiner then moved on to Showtime, which also passed. Lack of suitable network buyers, they filed a sales effort for many years later, when a Weiner talent manager at Weiner's team, Ira Liss, set up a series for AMC Development Vice President Christina Wayne. The Sopranos is finishing its last season, and the cable network happens to be entering the market for a new series programming. "The network is looking for a difference in launching its first original series," according to AMC Networks president Ed Carroll, "and we are betting that quality will win over mass appeal."
Influences
Weiner listed Alfred Hitchcock as a major influence on the visual style of the series, especially the North By Northwest film. He is also influenced by Wong Kar-wai's director in music, mise en scÃÆ'¨ne, and editorial style. Weiner noted in an interview that M * A * S * H ​​â € <â € < and Happy Days , two television shows were produced in the 1970s around 1950 , giving "a touchstone for culture" and a way to "remind people that they have misunderstandings about the past, the past." He also said that " Mad Men would be some kind of crisp, soapy version of The West Wing if it was not for The Sopranos ."
Pre-production
Tim Hunter, director of half a dozen episodes of the first two seasons of the event, is called "Mad Men" a very good show. " He says:
They have many production meetings during pre-production. On the day when the script came in, we all met for the first page turn, and Matt started telling us how he imagined it. Then there was the "tone" of the meeting a few days later in which Matt told us how he imagined it. And then there's a full-crew final production meeting in which Matt once again tells us how he imagined it...
Film creation and production design
The first episode was shot at Silvercup Studios in New York City and various locations around the city; the next episode was filmed at Los Angeles Center Studios. It is available in high definition to display on AMC HD and on the available video-on-demand services from various cable affiliates.
The authors, including Weiner, collected volumes of research in the period in which Mad Men went so as to make most aspects of the series - including detailed set designs, costume designs, and props - historically accurate, generating styles authentic visuals that garner critical acclaim. In a scene featuring smoking, Weiner stated: "Doing this show without smoking is just a joke, it must be clean and it's fake." Each episode has a budget of between US $ 2-2.5 million; pilot episode budget of more than $ 3 million.
Robert Morse plays a role in Bertram Cooper's senior partner role; Morse starred in two 1967 films about amoral businessmen, Guides for Married Men (1967), a source of inspiration for Weiner, and How to Succeed in Business without Really Trying (1967) in which Morse re-created his role from the Broadway play of 1961 with the same name (and itself based on a satirical novel by former executives at the now defunct New York ad agency, Benton & Bowles, Inc.).
Weiner collaborated with cinematographer Phil Abraham and production designer Robert Shaw (who works on pilots only) and Dan Bishop to develop a visual style that is "more influenced by cinema than television". Alan Taylor, a veteran director of The Sopranos, directed the pilot and also helped set the series visual tone. To convey the "air of mystery" around Don Draper, Taylor tends to shoot from behind him or framing it partly obscured. Many scenes mounted on Sterling Cooper shot lower than-eyeline to enter the ceiling into the frame composition; this reflects the photography, graphic design, and architecture of the period. Alan felt that neither the steadicam nor the handheld camera would match the "visual grammar of the time, and that aesthetics did not fit their classical approach" - hence, the device was designed practically for puppet work.
Financial
According to Miller Tabak Company 2011 estimates published at Barron's, Lions Gate Entertainment received approximately $ 2.71 million from AMC for each episode, slightly less than $ 2.84 million per episode cost to produce.
In March 2011, after negotiations between network and series makers, AMC took the Mad Men for the fifth season, which aired on March 25, 2012. Weiner reportedly signed a $ 30 million contract, which will keep him at the helm show for three more seasons. A few weeks later, a Marie Claire interview with January Jones was published, recording the limits of financial success when it came to the actors: "We were not paid very much on the show and it was well documented.On the other hand, when you do a television, you have a fixed salary every week, so that's good. "
Miller Tabak analyst David Joyce writes that sales from home videos and iTunes can reach $ 100 million in revenue during the expected performance for seven years, with international syndication sales bringing in an extra $ 700,000 per episode. That does not include the $ 71 to $ 100 million estimated from the Netflix video streaming deal announced in April 2011.
Episode credits and title order
The opening title sequence displays a credit superimposed over the animated graphic of a businessman who falls from a height, surrounded by a skyscraper with reflections of advertising posters and billboards, accompanied by a brief editing of the instrumental "A Beautiful Mine" by RJD2. The businessman appears as a black-and-white silhouette. The titles, created by the Imaginary Forces production house, pay homage to the full opening title of skyscraper graphic designer Saul Bass to Alfred Hitchcock's North by Northwest (1959) and the falling male film poster for Vertigo (1958); Weiner has incorporated Hitchcock as the main influence on the visual style of this series. David Carbonara compiled the original score for this series. Mad Men - Original Score Vol. 1 was released on January 13, 2009.
In the 2010 edition of TV Guide , the event's opening sequence was ranked No. 1. 9 on the top 10 list of TV top credits, selected by readers.
At the end of almost all episodes, the show fades into black or breaks pieces into black as a period music, or a theme by composer David Carbonara series, playing during the final credits; at least one episode ends with a quiet or ambient sound. Some episodes have ended with popular music recently, or with diegetic songs that dissolve in credit music. The Beatles endorsed the use of "Tomorrow Never Knows" for the episode of Season 5 "Lady Lazarus", and the same song used to cover the credits. This marked a rare example where the band licensed their music to the television series. Lionsgate, who produced Mad Men , paid $ 250,000 for the use of the song in the episode. Bob Dylan "Do not Think Twice It's All Right" ends the last episode of Season 1.
Crew
In addition to creating the series, Matthew Weiner is a performance runner, chief author, and executive producer; he contributes to every episode - writing or writing scripts, incorporating roles, and approving costumes and designing designs. He is best known for being selective about all aspects of the series, and promotes a high degree of confidentiality surrounding production details. Tom Palmer served as a co-executive producer and co-author in the first season. Scott Hornbacher (later executive producer), Todd London, Lisa Albert, Andre Jacquemetton, and Maria Jacquemetton were producers in the first season. Palmer, Albert, Andre Jacquemetton, and Maria Jacquemetton were also writers in the first season. Bridget Bedard, Chris Provenzano, and assistant writer Robin Veith completed the first season writing team.
Lisa Albert, Andre Jacquemetton and Maria Jacquemetton returned as supervisor producers for the second season. Veith also returned and was promoted to a staff writer. Hornbacher replaced Palmer as co-executive producer for the second season. Producer consultants David Isaacs, Marti Noxon, Rick Cleveland, and Jane Anderson joined the crew for the second season. Weiner, Albert, Andre Jacquemetton, Maria Jacquemetton, Veith, Noxon, Cleveland, and Anderson are the authors for the second season. New assistant writer Kater Gordon is another writer this season. Isaacs, Cleveland and Anderson left the crew at the end of the second season.
Albert remained a watchdog producer for the third season but Andre Jacquemetton and Maria Jacquemetton became consultant producers. Hornbacher was promoted again, this time to executive producer. Veith returns as a story editor and Gordon becomes a staff writer. Noxon remains a consultant producer and joins a new consulting producer, Frank Pierson. Dahvi Waller joins the crew as a co-producer. Weiner, Albert, Andre Jacquemetton, Maria Jacquemetton, Veith, Noxon, and Waller are all writers for the third season. New authors' assistant Erin Levy, executive story editor Cathryn Humphris, script co-ordinator Brett Johnson and freelance writer Andrew Colville completed the writing staff of the third season.
Alan Taylor, Phil Abraham, Jennifer Getzinger, Lesli Linka Glatter, Tim Hunter, Andrew Bernstein, and Michael Uppendahl are regular directors for this series. Matthew Weiner directs each season finale. Players John Slattery, Jared Harris and Jon Hamm also directed the episode.
In the third season, seven of the nine authors for the show were women, in contrast to the 2006 Writers Guild of America statistics showing male authors outnumbered female writers by 2 to 1. As Maria Jacquemetton noted:
We have a writing staff dominated by women from their early 20s to 50s - and many female department heads and directors. [Show maker] Matt Weiner and [executive producer] Scott Hornbacher hire people they believe in, based on their talents and experiences. "Can you catch this world? Can you bring a good story?"
Maps Mad Men
Transmission and character
Mad Men describes parts of American society and culture in the 1960s, highlighting the habits of smoking, drinking, sexism, feminism, adultery, homophobia, antisemitism and racism. The themes of alienation, social mobility and cruelty also support the tone of the show. MSNBC notes that the series "remain largely disconnected from the outside world, so that political and cultural trends at that time are illustrated through people and their lives, not broad arguments, sweeping." Creator Matthew Weiner calls the series of science fiction in the past, the reason that just as science fiction uses the future world to discuss issues of concern to us today, MadMis uses the past to discuss issues of concern to us today we are not talking openly.
According to Weiner, he chose the 1960s because "every time I will try and find something interesting that I want to do, it happens in 1960. It will make you think if you look at the year in the almanac, and not just the elections [of JFK].It came out in March of 1960, it's really what I want to be around.... It's the biggest change in the whole world Seriously, it's just amazing... especially if you see a movie from the 50's. accepted to talk about this idea that teenagers have sex, which they have done, of course, since antiquity, there are all movies like Blue Denim , and Peyton Place .. [T] The central tension in every film that does not happen on the battlefield is about a girl who is pregnant, so suddenly the whole problem [of pregnancy] has been removed from society.. That's what I was interested in in 1960. "
Identity and memory
Television commentators have recorded a series study on personal identity. This theme explored the most honestly through Don Draper's identity fraud during the Korean War, in which he took the names of other soldiers to leave the war. Tim Goodman sees identity as the main theme of the show, calling Don Draper "a man who has lived a long time in lies, built to be a loner, and for three seasons we have seen him carry this existential anxiety through his own fabled life of creation."
Gawker notes that "Not only is the Sterling Cooper Draper Pryce agent in the business spinning them - or at least warping the truth - to sell the product, but the main character, Don Draper, is built on a lie.Just like one of his campaigns, his whole identity is a sweet fabrication, sort of candy yarn that spins out of chance, satire, and direct lies. "
Ruth Franklin, author of the New Republic, says: "The method of the show is to take us behind the branding screen of American icons - Lucky Strike cigarettes, Hilton hotel, Life cereal - to show us how the product itself created, but how the image is 'very sexy... so magical' dreamed. "He goes on to say that" In this way, we are all Don Drapers, obsessed with selling a picture rather than tending to what lies beneath it. fatal is his lack of psychological awareness: He at that time perfectly conforms to American desires and is completely unrelated to his own character. " One reviewer said that "Identity is a key theme in Mad Men, and no one really looks like anyone, each filled with ambitions that fail and frustrated dreams, nothing more than Don Draper The cabinets, gradually revealed during Seasons 1 and 2, are filled with the proverbial framework. "
Gender and sexuality
Mad Men has provoked many discussions about sexism, politics and sexual relations. The show presents a workplace culture where men - regardless of marital status - often enter into sexual relations with other women, where it is assumed that female employees are sexually available to their male superiors, and where jokes about the wishes of dying wives are notified by the husband in ahead of their own wives. Most of the main characters have gone astray outside of their marriage. Marie Wilson, in an op-ed for The Washington Post, said it was "difficult and painful to look at ways in which women and men are related to each other and with power." This is painful because of the behavior this is not so far past as we think.Our daughters constantly get the message that power still comes through strong people.And unfortunately being beautiful is still a quality that can keep you on the stairs - though it still wins' t bring you upstairs. "
The Los Angeles Times says that "sexism, in particular, is almost suffocating, and not the most unpleasant to look at, but it is a force that fights the struggles of the most attractive female characters, and the opposition that defines them. daily misogyny and degrading behavior - the shrinking housewife reports to her husband, the ad lady cut off from the wheeled hours and deals - gives her purpose and character. "In Salon, Nelle Engoron argues that while Mad Men apparently illuminated the gender issue, his male character escaped "Scottish free" for their drinking and adultery, while female characters were often punished.
Aviva Dove-Viebahn writes that "Mad Men" straddles the line between nuanced depictions of how sexism and the life of patriarchal forms, career and social interaction in the 1960s and the glorified rendering of the 'fast-paced, chauvinistic world of 1960 "And Melissa Witkowski, writing for The Guardian, argues that Peggy's power was damaged because the show" strongly implies that no woman has ever been a copywriter at Sterling Cooper before Peggy, but her promotional circumstances imply that this is only because no woman has ever shown talent in front of a man before, "suggesting that Peggy's career path is less similar to successful ad stories, time ladies like Mary Wells Lawrence and Jean Wade Rindlaub.
Alcoholism
ABC News notes that "as the show progressed through the 1960s, Matthew Weiner's series creators did not refrain from describing the world of liquor-filled offices, warm lunches, and supper-soaked dinners." One incident in Season 2 found advertising executive Freddy Rumsen sent to rehab after passing urine on himself. During the fourth season Don Draper starts to realize he has a big problem in drinking. ABC News cites an addiction specialist who says that "over the past decade alcoholism has been fully understood as a disease, but in the sixties, bad behavior from heavy drinking could be considered 'macho' and even romantic, rather than as compulsive alcohol use even though there was adverse consequences. "One reviewer referred to the fourth season as" an intoxicating story about an excessive hangover "when Don Draper's character struggled with his addiction to alcohol.
Jerry Della Femina's advertising executive says about the show, "if anything, it's not seeded.There's a lot of drinking.Three-martini lunch is the norm... while we're still looking at the menu, the third one will arrive.. The only thing that saving us are clients and agents that we will drink back as much as we do... Bottles in the desk drawer are not an exception but the rules are ".
Counterculture
The Los Angeles Times argues that Mad Men excels in "the story of a character who struggles to achieve personal liberation in nervous years before the onset of a full cultural war." One reviewer is very excited that the fourth season, through Peggy, brings "the introduction to Counterculture (Andy Warhol as the King of Pop and Band Leader), with all the loud music, pass-by, underground films so present at them times, Peggy's visit to the attic , with a photo editor of Life Magazine, puts it right in the center of a fascinating creativity that is rampant underground and also rebels against the mainstream. " The Huffington Post focuses on one scene where "Peggy joined her new beatnik friends in the lobby while Pete stayed behind with SCDP partners to enjoy... the newly captured $ 6 million account.When they started the opposite trajectory, the cameras remained in their knowing glances. This is where we find the emotional truth. " Racism
Critics argue that post-race beliefs complicate performances by simply visualizing colored people in the workplace and rarely in their homes or from their point of view. Some authors argue that the show distorts history by not displaying a black adman, and shows successful real-time African-American advertising executives who started in the 1960s like Clarence Holte, Georg Olden, and Caroline Robinson Jones. Latoya Peterson, writing on Double X's 'Slate' , argues that Mad Men has ignored racial issues.
Slate author Tanner Colby praised the race race and Madison Avenue as an accurate history, especially the storyline in the third season episode "The Fog" in which Pete Campbell's idea to market certain products especially to African Americans hit by the company. Slate also referred to the fourth season episode of "The Beautiful Girls", in which Peggy Olson suggested Harry Belafonte as the spokesperson for Fillmore Auto, after Fillmore Auto faced a boycott for not hiring black employees and the Don shot down. idea. Colby also pointed to an exhibit published in the 1963 edition of Ad Age that revealed that "out of more than 20,000 employees, the report identified only 25 blacks working in any professional or creative capacity, that is, noncleris or custodian. "Colby wrote," Mad Men is not a coward for avoiding racing, on the contrary it is brave to be honest about the coward Madison Avenue. "
Smoking
Cigarette smoking, more common in the United States in the 1960s than it is now, is featured throughout the series; many characters can be seen smoking several times during the episode. In trials, representatives from Lucky Strike cigarettes came to Sterling Cooper looking for a new advertising campaign after the Reader's Digest report that smoking would cause illness, including lung cancer. Talk about smoking that is harmful to health and physical appearance is usually ignored or ignored. In the fourth season, after Lucky Strike dismissed Sterling Cooper Draper Pryce as his advertising agency, Draper wrote an advertisement on The New York Times titled "Why I Stop Tobacco", announcing SCDP's refusal to take a tobacco account. The finale found the agency in talks with the American Cancer Society. In the second episode of the serial back, Betty Draper was diagnosed with terminal lung cancer, after being described as a heavy smoker throughout the series. The perpetrators smoke herbal cigarettes, not tobacco cigarettes; Matthew Weiner said in an interview with The New York Times that the reason is that "you do not want actors to smoke real cigarettes, they get nervous and nervous, I'm already in a location where people throw up. they smoke very much ".
Reception
Critical response
Mad Men has been highly praised since its premiere, and is usually included in the criticism list of the biggest television show ever produced. The American Film Institute chose it as one of the 10 best television series of 2007, 2008, 2009, 2010 and 2012 (after airing no episodes during 2011) and was named the best television show of 2007 by the Television Critics Association and several national publications, including Chicago Tribune , The New York Times , Pittsburgh Post-Gazette , TIME Magazine , and TV Guide. On the Metacritic review collecting website, the first season scored 77/100; second season scored 88/100; third season scored 87/100; fourth season scored 92/100; the fifth season scored 89/100; the sixth season scored 88/100; seventh season, part one gets value 85/100; and the seventh season, part two scored 83/100. It is ranked 21st in the 2013 TV Guide's list of the 60 best TV series ever, and Writers Guild of America named it the seventh in the list of 101 best shows written in television history. Rob Sheffield of Rolling Stone named Mad Men "the greatest TV drama of all time".
A reviewer of the New York Times called the series a breakthrough to "enjoy the not-so-distant past." Regarding Season 3, Matthew Gilbert of The Boston Globe writes "this is a really beautiful vision, yellow in the early 1960s" and adds "detail with 1950s-era fixtures sufficient to look like the original Camelot. "
The San Francisco Chronicle calls Mad Men stylish, visually captures [...] adult introspection drama and the discomfort of modernity in the male world. "
A Chicago Sun-Times reviewer describes this series as "an un-sentimental depiction of the complexity of the" whole person "who acts with the more appropriate 1960's courtesy that has been lost from America, while also playing as a sycophant and roughly defame subordinates. "The reactions in Entertainment Weekly are similar, noting how in the period in which Mad Men was happening," playing is part of the job, sexual mockery has not been harassment, and America is free of self-doubt, guilt and inter-cultural confusion. "The Los Angeles Times said the show has found" a strange and beautiful space between nostalgia and political correctness. " The event also received critical acclaim for its historical accuracy - notably gender depiction and racial bias, sexual dynamics in the workplace, and high prevalence of smoking and drinking.
The Washington Post agrees with most other reviews in relation to Mad Men's visual style , but does not like the so-called "flagging" of the storyline. A review of the first season DVD set in Mark Greif's London Review of Books is much less praised. Greif claimed that the series was "an unpleasant little entry in the Now We Know Better genre" because the cast was a series of historical stereotypes that failed to do anything but "congratulate the present." In a February 2011 review of the first four seasons of the show, critic Daniel Mendelsohn wrote a critical review called Drama's "Mad Men" drama with aspirations to treat 'social and historical' issues - his performances were somewhat melodramatic from the dramatic. "
Ratings
The premiere screening at 10:00 pm on July 19, 2007, was higher than any other original AMC series at the time, and reached a rating of 1.4 households, with 1.2 million households and 1.65 million total viewers. The number for the first season premiere more than doubled for a heavily promoted second-season premiere, which received 2.06 million viewers. A large drop in views for episodes after the second season premiere prompted concerns from some television critics. However, 1.75 million people saw the end of the second season, which rose 20% above season 2 averages, and significantly more than 926,000 people saw the end of the first season. The cumulative audience for the episode is 2.9 million viewers, when two re-broadcasts at 11:00 and 1:00 are being considered.
The premiere season premiere, aired Aug. 16, 2009, gained 2.8 million views on the first launch, and 0.78 million with 11: 00 and 1:00 in the morning. In 2009, Mad Men came second in the top 10 primetime top-time list, with 57.7% in viewership, second only to last season Battlestar Galactica .
Inaugural premieres of the fourth season received 2.9 million viewers, and rose five percent from the rankings for debut season 3 and rose 61 percent from the third season average, and became the most watched episode in AMC's history until the fifth season premiere, and then, the premiere series of The Walking Dead and Better Call Saul .
The fifth season premiere, "A Little Kiss", was the most watched episode of Mad Men all the time to date, receiving 3.54 million viewers and 1.6 million viewers in an 18-49 demographic. Before the fifth season, Mad Men has never reached above 1.0 in 18-49 demographics. Charlie Collier, president of AMC, said that "For each of the five Mad Men of the season, Matthew Weiner and his team have been making beautifully told stories and each season, a larger audience has responded, an achievement which is rare, will be more proud of this program, brilliant writers, players and crew, and the entire team on each side of the camera. "The fifth season festival," The Phantom ", was watched by 2.7 million viewers, i> Mad Men until the final of the series aired on May 19, 2015. In 2012, the series came second in the list of primetime Top 10 TV shows favored by the team, with a 127% gain on viewers.
On April 7, 2013, the sixth season aired to 3.37 million viewers, and 1.1 adults 18-49. It's down from the fifth season premiere, but up from the fifth season finals. The sixth season finals on June 23, 2013, attracted 2.69 million total viewers, and reached 0.9 adults with demographics of 18-49; equivalent to the end of the fifth season. This helps bring the average season to 2.49 million viewers, down just slightly from the five-season average.
The first part of the seventh season, entitled "The Beginning", aired on April 13, 2014, and garnered 2.27 million total viewers and 0.8 adults 18-49. It fell 48 percent on viewership and 38 percent in adults 18-49 from its premier sixth season, and dropped from the sixth season finals. The first part of season seven was concluded on May 25, 2014, to 1.94 million viewers and 0.7 adults with an 18-49 rating, down in both of these seasons
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