Last week-end, at the Museum of Moving Image in Astoria, New York, has opened a new exhibition entirely dedicated to the series Mad Men. I have read about this few weeks ago, basically at the same time I found out about a trip I should have taken for my job in New York City. Great... if only the exhibition wouldn't started the day after my return to Europe! Very sad at first, my only consolation was that I knew I will be back in town in April (and the exhibition is on until June 14!). But, still, the idea that I was there and I couldn't see anything, was driving me nuts. To the point that I had the nerve of asking anybody I knew even vaguely related to the museum if, by any chance, I could sneak a peak of the exhibition before it was opened to the public. Well, since fortune favors the adventurous, I have actually found somebody that knew somebody and there I was, the day before the official opening, walking through the still-to-be-finished exhibition about Mad Men with Tomoko Kawamoto, the Public Information Manager of the museum (Santa Subito! Thank you so much!!!).
The exhibition features some incredible things for any fan of the series (I'm telling you, if you love Mad Men, you should buy a ticket to New York NOW!). These are some of the the gems that are on display: more than 25 iconic costumes (!!!), hundreds of props, advertising art, video clips, and personal notes and research material from his creator. Not to mention original interviews with Weiner and an installation of elements from the “writers’ room” where he and his team crafted story ideas and scripts for the series and, last but not least, large-scale sets of Don Draper’s office and the Drapers Kitchen!!! Have a look...
The Writers Room
The Drapers Kitchen in Ossining, NY
Don Draper's SC&P Office on Madison Avenue
I was so excited by what I was looking at, that my head couldn't stop spinning.
When we arrived to the "Dress Section" I almost had an heart attack...
This was the section dedicated to Betty Draper dresses:
And this, I'm sure you'll recognize it at the very first sight, is the famous "Zou Bisou Bisou" dress weared by Megan at Don's birthday party:
And in case you don't remember:
For those lucky ones who live in NY or are passing by this week, on Friday March 20 Matthew Weiner will be in conversation at the Museum for an "Inside Mad Men" session:
Furthermore, from March 14 until April 26, the Museum is programming "Required Viewing: Mad Men’s Movie Influences", a ten-film series featuring movies (among others: The Apartment by Billy Wilder, Les Bonnes Femmes by Claude Chabrol, The Americanization of Emily by Arthur Hiller but also Blue Velvet by David Lynch) that inspired the series. On March 20, Weiner himself will introduce The Apartment!
These days in New York, it was just impossible to escape Mad Men. The advertisement for the last season (that is approaching) was everywhere: on the walls, at the entrance of the underground, even on buses...
And I don't know about you, but I am personally drinking my tea at the office with a mug by Sterling, Cooper & Partners, just to be the most Mad Men girl around:
To tell you the truth, while we were touring the exhibition, Tomoko told me that this will be a non-photo exhibition. Pictures - sadly enough for all the fans - will not be allowed (the decision has not been made by the Museum but by the Mad Men's production). The pictures I have published here are part of the material for the Press, except for a couple that I was allowed to put on line. Thus said, when I found myself in the Drapers Kitchen, I couldn't resist, and I ask Tomoko to take a picture of me there... what can I tell you? I simply felt at home!
The series’ final seven episodes will air on AMC beginning Sunday, April 5.
The End of an era, apparently, but not of our love for this bunch of adorable Mad Men. Long live the Old Fashioned!
I'd like to thank Jeff Levine at the Whitney Museum and Jennifer Essen and Philippa Polskin at Ruder Finn for introducing me to Tomoko and making my visit possible! Thank you guys!!!
I never had in my whole life so many chances to hear interesting actors and film-makers talking in public about their work as in this 2011 (and we are just at the beginning of it!). Being not only a cinema buff but also a TV series freak, I was absolutely thrilled when I read that Matthew Weiner (Mad Men’s creator) was hosting a Master Class at the Forum des Images. I wrote down the date of the tickets sale with a BIG warning sign and I woke up very early one morning to buy it on line. I was right. When I recently stopped by at the Forum to pick up the ticket, they told me they were sold out in just 4 hours! Once at the theatre, I had a big surprise. Besides Mr. Weiner, two actors of the series were present: Christina Hendricks (the voluptuous office manager Joan Harris) and John Slattery (the irresistible Roger Sterling, one of the agency's partners), who both spoke briefly at the end of the event.
Through the answers to the questions made by Olivier Joyard, journalist of the Inrockuptibles, Weiner retraced his career and the amazing history of the TV series that changed his (and many others) life. Weiner explained that after some cinema studies, he became one of the numerous unemployed screen writers in Los Angeles and he remained so for 5 long years (helped to survive by his wife, an architect). In 2000 he wrote the pilot of Mad Men and tried to sell it to some networks. David Chase from HBO, the creator and executive producer of The Sopranos, happened to read it and he was so impressed by the script that he immediately offered a job to Weiner. This is how he became a writer and producer for the last three seasons of the series. Quite well known after this job, Weiner tried again to have Mad Men produced by HBO or Showtime, but they both refused. Apparently, they were very scared by the fact that the series was a period drama. They didn’t believe audience could be interested to follow week after week the life of a bunch of guys from a Madison Avenue advertisement agency in the ‘60s. Plus, no film stars were involved in it. In the end, it was the small and inexperienced AMC who accepted to produce the show and ask Weiner a complete series of 13 episodes. He then called a group of people he has loved to work with on the Sopranos and… well, the rest is history. Listening to Weiner talking about all this, I suddenly realized that the most important thing you should have to succeed in the show business is stubbornness, and a good dose of self-confidence. Weiner doesn’t look like an easy kind of guy: he looks like a man who can be very upset if he doesn’t get exactly what he wants, the way he wants it. He probably must be very tough to work with. He is taking care of every single detail of Mad Men and he believes so much in his plot, his characters and his talent, that in the end he managed to have things exactly as he conceived them (including music and costumes).
You can see, you can feel how proud he is of himself and of what he has achieved, you can even perceive a bit of revenge spirit in him, and who can possibly blame him? Mad Men, the series nobody wanted to produce, is now a world phenomenon, the TV show that has received more awards in TV history, the TV show that gave to all the actors involved (completely unknown at the time of the first season) the status of film stars, and to Weiner the status of genial writer. Weiner is so passionate and accurate about the story he wants to share with his audience, that the audience rewarded him. I think this is the secret of Mad Men’s universal success. Weiner also talked about his references for the series, especially a bunch of European movies. Two were the titles he quoted: Les Bonnes Femmes by Claude Chabrol ("The interesting thing about this movie is that all these women's dreams… crashed, in the end, and I loved it!") and La notte by Michelangelo Antonioni (note of the blogger: this is also Zazie’s favourite Italian movie!): "I wanted to make an entire episode somehow based upon the movie, and showing images from it, but it was impossible to understand who had the rights and so I had to give up. But Draper go to see the movie at a certain point of the show!". I don't even want to imagine the episode he could have written about it... who's got the rights of La Notte, for heaven's sake?
Les Bonnes Femmes by Claude Chabrol
La Notte by Michelangelo Antonioni
Weiner could have talked for hours about his job, I think nobody in the theatre would have complained about it. People went nuts when Ms. Hendricks and Mr. Slattery were asked to join the conversation, and we had the right to a nice chat about Weiner's relationship with actors and the importance of their contributions to the show. Funny note: Slattery's wife was in the audience too, and she is actually the actress who plays his first wife, Mona, in the show. Well, it's really a Mad Men world! At the moment of the questions from the audience, a girl told Weiner: "You know, everybody is nostalgic about the ‘60s, but looking at the series and at the women’s conditions, I am actually happy of living in this time". Yes, sure. But they were dressed so much better, honey!
Durante l'inverno del 1955, Alfred Hitchcock venne a lavorare a Joinville, allo studio Saint-Maurice, per la post-sincronizzazione di Caccia al Ladro, di cui aveva girato gli esterni sulla Costa Azzurra. Il mio amico Claude Chabrol ed io decidemmo di andare ad intervistarlo per i Cahiers du Cinéma. Avevamo preso in prestito un magnetofono per registrare questa conversazione, che volevamo lunga, precisa, fedele.
C'era poca luce nell'auditorio dove lavorava Hitchcock, mentre sullo schermo sfilava senza interruzione una breve scena del film che mostrava Cary Grant e Brigitte Auber mentre guidano un motoscafo. Nell'oscurità, Chabrol ed io ci presentiamo ad Hitchcock il quale ci chiede di andare ad aspettarlo al bar del teatro di posa, dall'altra parte del cortile. Usciamo, abbagliati dalla luce del giorno e commentando con l'entusiasmo dei veri fanatici del cinema le immagini di Hitchcock di cui abbiamo appena visto una primizia, ci dirigiamo dritto verso il bar che si trova là, a quindici metri. Senza rendercene conto scavalchiamo tutti e due con lo stesso passo il sottile bordo di una grande vasca gelata, dello stesso colore grigio del bitume del cortile. Il ghiaccio scricchiola subito e ci ritroviamo nell'acqua fino al petto, inebetiti. Domando a Chabrol: "E il magnetofono?". Alza lentamente il braccio sinistro e tira fuori dal'acqua l'apparecchio tutto gocciolante. Come in un film di Hitchcock la situazione era senza via di uscita: la lieve pendenza della vasca concava ci rendeva impossibile raggiungere il bordo senza scivolare di nuovo. Ci sarebbe stato bisogno della mano caritatevole di un passante per tirarci fuori di là. Finalmente usciamo e una costumista, che crediamo piena di compassione, ci trascina verso un camerino dove possiamo spogliarci e far asciugare i vestiti. Mentra raggiungiamo il camerino ci dice: "Ebbene, i miei poveri ragazzi, siete delle comparse del Rififi? - No signora, siamo giornalisti. - Allora, in questo caso, non posso occuparmi di voi!"
E' quindi tremando nei nostri abiti ancora inzuppati che ci presentiamo di nuovo a Hitchcock qualche minuto più tardi. Ci guardò senza fare commenti sul nostro stato e volle proporci un nuovo appuntamento per la sera stessa all'Hotel Plaza Athénée.
L'anno dopo, quando tornò a Parigi, ci individuò immediatamente in mezzo ad un gruppo di giornalisti parigini e ci disse: "Signori, penso a voi due ogni volta che vedo dei cubetti di ghiaccio che si urtano in un bicchiere di whisky!"
François Truffaut, Il Cinema secondo Hitchcock
Ho sempre adorato questa storia su Truffaut e Chabrol.
Perché mi sembra di vederli: tutti infervorati per aver visto due immagini di un nuovo film di Hitchcock, tutti presi a commentare una semplice sequenza, al punto da non accorgersi di stare finendo in una vasca d'acqua gelata. C'è tutto un mondo, in questa caduta.
Chabrol non era il mio regista preferito della Nouvelle Vague, ma ho amato moltissimo alcuni suoi film e l'ho sempre trovato di una simpatia e di una intelligenza rare (leggere una sua intervista era un piacere infinito). Mi è capitato di pensare a lui diverse volte, negli ultimi tempi. Lo avevo infatti trovato adorabile nel film di Sfar su Serge Gainsbourg: nel breve cameo del produttore a cui il musicista propone di lanciare Je t'aime moi non plus, Chabrol sfoggia tutta la sua irresistibile ironia. Poi mi era capitato di leggere in una rivista di cinema francese un dialogo tra lui e il giovane regista Americano James Gray, che è un suo fan sfegatato, e sono rimasta impressionata dall'umiltà di Chabrol e dal profondo interesse nei confronti del cinema di oggi. Un ottantenne che in realtà di anni sembrava averne 20, talmente era evidente il piacere che ancora gli dava vedere, fare e parlare di cinema.
Infine, in una lunga intervista dei Cahiers du Cinéma a Matthew Weiner, il creatore della serie Tv Mad Men, ad una domanda sugli evidenti riferimenti cinematografici della serie ai film di Douglas Sirk, lo sceneggiatore spiazza tutti rispondendo: "Ma, veramente, il film che è stato più determinante nella scrittura di Mad Men è Les Bonne Femmes di Claude Chabrol".
Che dire? Chabrol è morto, ma il tintinnìo di quel cubetto di ghiaccio, si sentirà ancora a lungo.
