MONDAY
E-mail a friendMatthew Weiner
airdate September 18, 2009
Matthew Weiner has been described as one of the most creative forces in 21st century TV drama. He's been the scribe for numerous shows, including Becker and The Sopranos, which he also exec-produced. After the HBO hit ended its run, Weiner revisited a spec script he'd written years earlier, which became AMC's award-winning Mad Men—the first basic-cable series to win an outstanding drama Emmy. He also wrote, directed and financed (with his winnings as a Jeopardy contestant) an indie feature. He has an MFA from USC's film school.
Emmy-winning writer reflects on the rejection he faced, as well as the support he received, in creating Mad Men. (2:26)
Full interview. (12:01)
Matthew Weiner
Tavis: Matthew Weiner is a four-time Emmy Award-winning writer and producer who gained wide acclaim for his work on The Sopranos. He now serves as the creator and executive producer of TV's most talked-about and critically acclaimed, Mad Men. The show is now in its third season on AMC. Here now a scene from Mad Men.
[Clip]
Tavis: Provocative.
Matthew Weiner: Yeah (laughter).
Tavis: I've been amazed watching this series now in this third season at the way you have weaved in the critical issues of the day, the events of the day, into the story line of the show.
Weiner: Well, it's hard, you know, because I didn't want the show to be a history lesson necessarily and I didn't want it to be about now to some degree.
One of the most interesting things just as a writer - apart from all the actual events at that time and a lot did change, my original inspiration in doing the show was to like start with people in 1960 and see what it was like to get there, I guess, especially adults at that time. If you've lived through the Great Depression and you see the social upheavals of the 60s, you're kind of like, "So what? You know, here it comes again." And it does go like that, it really does.
But one of the most interesting things as a writer is really seeing how people experience history, how they experience what is going on in their everyday life. Is it just a reference? Some people read the paper, some people don't. Some gigantic event may have happened in the economy. You know, the recession may be officially over right now and we don't know it, but a year from now we're going to say, "Remember that thing that happened, you know, on September 18? That was it."
So you don't want to be preachy and you also want to be true to the people and this world that they're in is a very specific world. So I try and have some events come in and different things come in at different times, but I don't want it to be like, well, here's the big event, here's the big event, you know.
Tavis: The recession may be over if you're on Wall Street, but not if you're on Main Street or the side street, but I digress on that. That's another show for another time. You just tweaked me on that. That said -
Weiner: - oh, please. That's what this season's about. A lot of it is about all that short-term thinking.
Tavis: Tell me more, since you're on that.
Weiner: Well, you know, a lot of the season is about the company was acquired. Sterling Cooper was bought by this British company because one of the characters was going into a divorce and needed money really fast (laughter), so they sold the company.
But I've just been fascinated by living through, you know, a gold rush for some people. The increasing inequality is one thing, but then business always seemed when I was growing up to be based on - their attitude was an attitude of arrogance and, you know, taking care of people to some degree. You know, we're businessmen and we know how to do this.
Now it's all about crying and whining about how hard it is and any excuse to downsize, to cut their balance sheets while the economy is contracting. You're looking at it. They made so much money in the last 15 years with government that you're kind of like, you know, as Don says it, "There are gonna be fat years and there are gonna be lean years. Why don't you put some corn away?"
Tavis: Those who are fans of the show - if you read anything about the show, whether you're a fan or not, you know this part of the story, which is that this show was turned down not once, but twice. Got turned down a couple of times by some major outlets.
Weiner: It was turned down pretty much everywhere. That's fair to say.
Tavis: Yeah (laughter). I was trying to be nice and say a couple of times.
Weiner: You know what? If you don't have the stomach for this, you can't do this. You have to be the kind of person who thrives on rejection to do my job (laughter).
Tavis: And that's why I'm sitting here and that's why you're sitting there (laughter). But I raise that because the one thing I've always wanted to ask you - I mean, I celebrate the fact that you got it on after all those no's, but what was it about what you had done that made you think that you had something that could work?
The only thing that really matters is what does Matthew think? Does Matthew believe that he can sell this, that this is a good product, and if you believe that, you keep pushing and pushing and pushing and eventually somebody gets it? But what did you know or believe you had?
Weiner: Well, it's a weird thing looking back. It's such an interesting question because you're looking back and you're like "If I'd known it was gonna take five years" - I now wrote it nine years ago - "if I'd known it was gonna take five years when I was pushing, I didn't." I kept thinking it was gonna happen tomorrow and you go through cycles. Anyone who - I did believe in it because I thought it was really entertaining and I felt very proud of it.
I was sort of - you know, I'm hard on myself and I wouldn't say that I'm modest, but I'm definitely hard on myself. I gave it to my agents and I was like, "I think this is the best thing I've ever done." I thought it was related to a different time period, I thought it had a lot going for it just entertainment-wise. That's really what I am, an entertainer. But it would be a lie to say that I did not give up on it plenty and I have an amazing support system.
My wife was like, you know, "This is really good" and my representatives had a lot of faith in it. I showed it to a few writers, many of whom I work with now. Just four or five people were the audience for the show. I gave them the script and they were so encouraging and when I would talk to them - I was on The Sopranos, you know. It got me my job on The Sopranos, which is plenty. It was my writing sample. But they were always like, "What are you doing with that? What are you doing with that?"
I will not lie to you. I carried it around in my bag and, if you and I had sat next to each other on an airplane and enough time had passed, I'm that guy, by the way, on the airplane (laughter).
Tavis: (Laughter) Hey, take a look at this.
Weiner: Exactly. You always want to sit next to a beautiful woman, but it's me asking you to read my script (laughter).
Tavis: What do you make of the fact - to your earlier point, you slid right by this, but it was your writing sample submitted to The Sopranos that got you hired on The Sopranos that ends up being rejected by the same network that aired The Sopranos and now here you are with 16 nominations this Sunday.
Weiner: You know, it's a kind of vindication. I won't lie about that. You know, I was writing a half-hour comedy when I wrote this and I had no idea that there was a chance to get on The Sopranos with it. I wanted them to send it to David Chase because he was at HBO and I thought that's who I wrote it for, for HBO.
And then when I got there, when David hired me, he said, "Come out and write the show," which I didn't think, you know, I was at all qualified for on some level, but it turned out to be very similar to what I was doing. He gave it to them and they just have a different agenda. I don't want that job. I don't want that job of having to pick what's the next hot thing, but I was surprised. It was kind of a strange situation because David was a big supporter of it.
Even at the point of when I first started working there, he said, "Even if I fire you, I'm gonna help you make this show," which is a really mixed message to get (laughter). But it was at a certain point where I couldn't really even ask him what was going on about it anymore because this is a man who made HBO a billion dollars. I think it was what it was. But nobody knows. Who knew?
It's got so much going against it. It's a period piece, it was all about smoking and required smoking, it was politically incorrect, it was not really a straight drama. It had a lot of comedy in it. It was really, you know, there's nothing - I knew that it was a genre, that it was a throw-back. In the 50s and 60s, there were a ton of shows and movies that were, you know, boardroom stories like that.
Tavis: But the clothes are great (laughter).
Weiner: Yeah, they are. I will not pretend. I work with amazing people.
Tavis: The costuming is nice. A few days ago, as a matter of fact, we had a guest on this program with a new documentary about advertising and I referenced your show in my conversation with him knowing that you and I were gonna talk today.
Weiner: This is Art & Copy?
Tavis: Yeah.
Weiner: I haven't seen it yet. I'm going to see it.
Tavis: Exactly. We just had a conversation about that. What's your sense of why your story set in an ad agency back in the day works? Why an ad agency as a vehicle?
Weiner: Advertising is a consumable product and everybody knows about it and everybody wonders how it works and they have a lot of preconceptions about it. I don't think, on some level, that they believe it's created by human beings. There was the image of who we are. People think that it's created in these places, but it's really reflected. They're not trying to turn us into something. They're trying to say, "What do you want? What is your aspiration? What are you afraid of? You're worried about bad breath, you're worried that your car is ugly, I'm gonna make you feel like a better person."
To me, interested in issues of identity which is really what this show is about and socializing and secrets and just the internal life versus the external life, what's going on in your head versus what you have to deal with every day in the world, how we lie to ourselves, all that just seems to be a great sort of backdrop to have this kind of world that's based on this artifice, you know. But who knows? I mean, advertising has changed so much. It's really kind of in a crisis right now.
Tavis: Yeah. That's what Art & Copy is all about, in part, I should say. Speaking of how much advertising has changed, I think I was just reading yesterday or the day before somewhere that, in New York City, they're thinking about now doing a smoking ban everywhere, not just inside, but outside as well, so maybe a flat smoking ban throughout the city of New York.
I thought about that relative to our conversation because, obviously, there's so much smoking that goes in your series. So speaking of how things have changed, as a creator, what do you make of the fact that here is a series just, you know, based 30 or 40 years ago that's all about smoking in part and we live in a world now where we're trying to do away with smoking pretty much everywhere.
Weiner: It's a tough call, you know. I think we know from prohibition that, when you try and get rid of something that is an addiction, it's really, really tough to do. But socially, it's a great idea. I mean, you know, there's a historical fact about the fact that Hitler was very much against smoking and they had a big program that the Third Reich was not gonna have any smoking.
Roosevelt, of course, was a chain smoker and I think died of emphysema. It was one of the things that he died of, or pneumonia. You're sort of looking and saying, "Why are we on the wrong side of this thing?" Young people watch the show and they're like, "Why's there so much smoking?" I was like, "That was like that until the 80s or the 90s."
Tavis: They don't get that (laughter).
Weiner: They don't understand that. It's literally part of life like eating, like is it gonna be one day you're not allowed to drink soda inside? That's really what it was like. I don't know how you enforce a ban like that, but I think eliminating tobacco from our collective lives wouldn't be a bad thing. I'm surprised at the vigilance of it, though, I have to say.
Tavis: Every time we get a chance to talk, which isn't too often, but every now and then, I always learn something from you. Seriously, I'm stuck now on this vision of Hitler doing everything he could to exterminate an entire group of people, but he was opposed to smoking.
Weiner: Oh, yeah.
Tavis: I'm like, "Okay, go figure."
Weiner: I had a thing in the show about it where Cooper says to Roger, to John Slattery's character, Robert Morse says to Roger, "Well, you smoke too much." And he tells the story, which is true, that Hitler brought - you know, the Munich pact where basically the British gave everything away? It's always like, "Remember Munich, remember Munich."
He took Neville Chamberlain who was the British Prime Minister into a palace where there was no smoking and the guy was a heavy smoker. They said that Chamberlain caved on everything because he just wanted to go outside and have a cigarette (laughter). That's what I heard.
Tavis: (Laughter) Stuff you learn. Only on PBS do you learn good information like this. Anyway, his name, of course, Matthew Weiner. You see it in the credits every week. Mad Men, now in its third season on AMC, up for a whole bunch - 16, in fact - Emmys this Sunday. Good luck.
Weiner: Oh, it's a pleasure to be here.
Tavis: Nice to have you here, Matthew.
Weiner: Thanks for inviting me.
Tavis: Tell the boys I said hello.
Weiner: I will, definitely. They'll love it.
Back to September 18, 2009