Kater Gordon loses her job–REALLY?
Kater, who just won the Emmy for Meditations in an Emergency, is no longer working for Mad Men.
We think [Kater's] done a great job, particularly for someone whose career has progressed so quickly. Now, however, Matt has reluctantly decided that their relationship has reached its full potential.
I don’t get it.
Basket of Kisses: The unofficial blog of AMC's Mad Men. Where all the cool kids meet & greet to talk about Don Draper, Janie Bryant, Christina Hendricks, Jon Hamm, Matthew Weiner, & subtexty things.
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October 11th, 2009 at 7:49 am
Uh oh. Peggy trajectory.
October 11th, 2009 at 8:15 am
Kater really is responsible for some of the best episodes of MM ever, including what I think is the best episode of S3 so far. Shame to see her go like this.
October 11th, 2009 at 8:23 am
My guess is $$$. As a novice writer, she was probably making pennies — probably happy to have such a great opportunity. But then she wins the Emmy on her first go round, so she wants to re-negotiate her contract. Writing for a show like Mad Men had to have been a fantastic opportunity for her — a chance to build her resume, work her way up. What a hard choice. On the one hand, she's an unproven commodity, but on the other, she hits a grand slam home run her first time at bat. Can she sustain and build on her brilliance, or is she a one-hit wonder? You don't know. You have nothing else to judge her by. Maybe the show's budget just couldn't afford to pay her any more. What's a producer to do?
October 11th, 2009 at 8:34 am
Hope Matt wasn't as brutal to Kater as Don was to Peggy when Peggy wanted more.
October 11th, 2009 at 8:56 am
This has a bad stink to it. I'm sure we won't know what really happened, but something's not right.
October 11th, 2009 at 9:23 am
i don't want to get censored for commenting on this blog, so I'll comment on the other. Why is this a story? What does anyone know about the inner-workings of the show. Did someone ask MW or Kater? I'm sure she's the best writer ever in the world and her contribution was so huge– that he fired her.
October 11th, 2009 at 9:36 am
Monique–what? I don't understand your point. Why would you think that this is not a story?
October 11th, 2009 at 9:45 am
I'd like to know more. Was it a personality clash? Was it money? There are not enough literate writers in Hollywood to send one packing.
October 11th, 2009 at 9:45 am
How bout those comments below the story … harsh.
October 11th, 2009 at 9:50 am
She was his SECRETARY, and then she had her own office and a job most guys in Hollywood would've killed for! She wanted a raise, she wanted to write THAT episode. She should have put her head down and stopped asking for things!
October 11th, 2009 at 10:08 am
Dirk's right. There's nothing she's done that we can't live without.
October 11th, 2009 at 10:10 am
LOL. Truth is stranger than fiction. Peggy in season 4 — or maybe it's just the rest of season 3?
October 11th, 2009 at 10:18 am
There's really not enough information in this story to make any sort of educated guess as to what happened. It could be some garden variety creative or money disagreements, or it could be some creepy Letterman shit. There's just no way to know. Regardless, that statement from a show "insider" is just a bunch of vague nonsense.
October 11th, 2009 at 10:20 am
Monique, this is a blog that discusses everything about Mad Men: Subtext, motifs, trivia, amusing tidbits, and news reports. This is a news report.
If you have a problem with the kind of things chosen here as newsworthy, you are welcome to start your own blog that runs by your rules.
October 11th, 2009 at 10:35 am
This is truly surprising, disappointing and intriguing all at the same time.
The only upside I can see is that there will be another show with a doozy of a writer!
October 11th, 2009 at 11:22 am
Anyone who wants to look at IMdB for a few minutes will quickly discover that there has been a lot of turnover on the writing staff. Bridget Bedard, Tom Palmer, and Chris Provenzano from S1. From S2, Marti Noxon (iirc) has moved on to run another show. Rick Cleveland wrote a little and was a supervising producer in the first half of S2. Anyone who wants to speculate about why Kater Gordon is gone ought to take the general turnover rate into account.
October 11th, 2009 at 11:46 am
Karl, good point. Dahvi Waller, Cathryn Humphris, and Andrew Colville are all new this season.
October 11th, 2009 at 11:46 am
Karl, but were they FIRED 3 weeks after winning an Emmy for the show?
October 11th, 2009 at 12:08 pm
Breezy,
Obviously not. I mentioned it primarily because most people at Finke's were jumping to a particular speculation that did not account for an overall pattern (and that was perhaps unfairly demeaning to Kater Gordon). I'm not even saying that the overall turnover is not… intriguing. I'm just saying I am not shocked by the story.
October 11th, 2009 at 12:13 pm
I would also note that the writers (incl. Robin Veith) who have been with the show since S1 all seem to be people who have known or worked with Matt Weiner for years and years (as in before the pilot aired).
October 11th, 2009 at 12:19 pm
She didn't have a contract.
Whatever she's gonna do, it won't be more screenwriting.
October 11th, 2009 at 12:22 pm
Frank, I don't think that's true.
October 11th, 2009 at 12:27 pm
I get Peggy vibes from Kater's story too. Awww. I'm very sad to hear this. I loved 'Meditations' and 'The Fog'. Does anyone know how old Kater is? She looks so young!
October 11th, 2009 at 12:30 pm
It could simply be that she disagreed with Matt about a character arc or something, yet if so, why not just say that? What's with all this "relationship" talk? That's just weird.
Ugh, I don't want to know if MW is actually like Don Draper. Or worse, Pete. I thought that because he was willing to expose this kind of behavior on his show, and hire women, he was somehow immune to it. Maybe this will all go away and I can go back to living in my fantasy world. Please, no scandals, oh please.
Maybe they want us to fantasize a scandal because press of any kind gets ratings.
October 11th, 2009 at 12:35 pm
coop, Frank, Roberta: crazy kids!
Definitely more to this than meets the eye.
We could always call J.T. Dolan (fictional writer of the fictional film-within-a-TV-show Cleaver, from The Sopranos) to fill out the writing staff. Trouble is, Christopher Moltisanti already beat the guy up with his own writing award, and then shot him.
You know, people think writing is easy. But it's one darned thing after another: how do I start this story? Why the hell won't this client turn around my copy edits on time? What if he shoots me in the head?
I hope Kater is leaving for her own good reasons (I'd almost put money on her having something else in the works), and not due to a corporate shakeup. I also hope that all is well for our showrunner and the rest of the writing staff of Mad Men.
That said, I have no personal opinion on the subject of turnovers. Aside from preferring apple to cherry.
October 11th, 2009 at 12:52 pm
Post-Emmy "hometown girl makes good" article:
http://hamptonroads.com/2009/09/emmy-winner-has-t...
October 11th, 2009 at 12:56 pm
#22 Roberta – meant as a joke. What isn't funny is the timing and circumstances of this announcement. "the relationship has reached its full potential" sounds disturbing. Fired for creative differences or let go over contractual disagreements (i.e. Money) would make sense to the outside world.
Either way, I wish her luck.
October 11th, 2009 at 1:18 pm
"that there has been a lot of turnover on the writing staff."
That's interesting for a show like this…
October 11th, 2009 at 1:21 pm
From Alex Witchel's June 22, 2008 profile in The New York Times Sunday Magazine:
… If he wore a mood ring it would shatter; he can vacillate in seconds from whopping anxiety and insecurity to fierce determination, thorny to sunny and back again. His energy varies, from motionless intensity to almost antic animation. When he writes "Mad Men," he doesn’t sit down and start typing. After a lifetime spent struggling as a student, he has learned to rely on his ear. He creates the show by speaking it out loud, every part.
… If I said something critical about the show, he took it as personally as if I had insulted his wife. If I praised something, he melted. When he melts, he is delightful — warm, funny and open — before forcing himself shut again. …
… [Quoting Weiner:] "But when I wrote the 'Mad Men' pilot seven years ago, I dictated it to Robin Veith, who is now a writer here. I wanted someone to be there so I would have to show up. I can write a huge amount that way if I have a good outline. Then I rewrite. That’s when I sit at the computer." …
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/06/22/magazine/22madm...
October 11th, 2009 at 2:08 pm
I hope and pray this is was a clean and mutual parting, not something messy. Otherwise, it's life imitating art imitating life imitating art.
Stunning on one level, and quite possibly fascinating on another.
Again, I hope this is not something with a strong negative undercurrent.
October 11th, 2009 at 3:56 pm
The Fog was excellent, so I hope Ms Gordon finds some more work. She's a great writer. I really hope this was just a money/contract dispute and not anything dodgy.
October 11th, 2009 at 4:49 pm
BTW, Finke has updated her story.
October 11th, 2009 at 5:00 pm
I thought 'The Fog' was dreadful. And I think everyone is reading WAY too much into this.
October 11th, 2009 at 5:45 pm
This show needs more MALE writers.
October 11th, 2009 at 6:03 pm
If Kater's departure is not a fluke occurrence, if this is part of a pattern of high turnover on the show, then I would guess it didn't have much to do with her personally. My hunch is that they have a limited budget and don't pay their writers (other than Weiner) much over Guild minimum. And a writer like Kater who didn't have a "producer" credit probably got paid only for the episodes she wrote, over what she was making as an assistant; she didn't have a lucrative staff-writer/producer job. It would make sense that now that she has an award in her hands, she was wanting more than that. Now that she has credit like Mad Men, and especially an Emmy winner, she can angle for a higher-paying job on another show. But yeah, the Peggy parallel is kind of eerie.
October 12th, 2009 at 12:34 am
#34 Why?
October 12th, 2009 at 1:12 am
Please keep in mind that Nikki Finke is not always the most reliable source of information, and really, all one can do is speculate. Her column is generally very dramatic, not so much factual. Creative jobs always have the potential of blowing up or otherwise ending abruptly. It isn't all that shocking to me and seems very personal/none of our business. It is just part of being a writer.
And in regard to #8 " There are not enough literate writers in Hollywood to send one packing."
Yes, there are. Just look where Matt Weiner started. After all, who would have believed that someone who wrote derivative sitcoms could create something like Mad Men? Sorry, I just hate statements like that, where people make assumptions and put the blame on the wrong party entirely.
October 12th, 2009 at 1:14 am
# 34 – empirically speaking, the facts say otherwise. (Emmy wins etc..)
October 12th, 2009 at 6:51 am
My guess: The AMC cast is pretty poorly paid. Jon Hamm makes the same amount per episode that Kate Gosselin does on her silly reality TV show- $75K. Imagine what the writers are making. She probably wanted a raise for upcoming seasons. Well, it's not like she didn't earn it. Meditations and The Fog are brilliant episodes of superb writing. Maybe she asked to be head writer? As an Emmy award winner who clearly gets the characters, that's not out of the realm of possibility.
We may never know for sure but it sounds to me like someone felt she overreached and told her to cool her jets. And she responded by taking her show on the road.
It happens.
I hope someone snaps her up. Maybe she'd be better off on HBO or Showtime or someplace that also appreciates and showcases good writing. There's a bit of a drought right now. We could use some relief.
October 12th, 2009 at 8:35 am
Word has it that not only did Weiner let Kater Gordon go, but he let his other former writer’s assistant-turned-staff writer, Robin Veith go too. Sounds like this is a “fire everyone in the room†kind of situation. It probably does not have anything to do with anyone’s talent or anything else.
October 12th, 2009 at 8:39 am
As riverdaughter mention Jon Hamm's salary, I suppose it's worth noting that his contract — and others — are up now (unlike Matt's. which was a two-year deal). So the show may be looking at some budgetary issues.
October 12th, 2009 at 8:47 am
People still following this thread should take note of this update from Nikki Finke's column:
"UPDATE: A prominent female writer (she asked not to be identified) knows both Kater Gordon and Matthew Weiner and sets the record straight for me: "'As a female writer who has worked with many strong showrunners, I have to say that any 'Letterman' talk on today's thread about Kater Gordon really disgusts me. The same kind of talk followed me and my success. So you see, you can't win. If you're young and female, you'll always be suspect. Success or failure, it can't be because you've actually got the goods. I feel compelled to come to both Kater and Matt's defense on this one. Kater was a fantastic writer's assistant, the best. She totally got the show and deserved the break she got. There was NOTHING illicit in her relationship with Matt. I believe Kater will go on to great success, if she so desires, and their parting of the ways was amicable.'"
The actual update is here:
http://www.deadline.com/hollywood/recent-emmy-win...
October 12th, 2009 at 8:50 am
Late to the party, but @ Monique R @ #7, everything but everything that concerns Mad Men is discussed and dissected to the nth degree. While I don't speak for the gorgeous and talented Lipp Sisters, it's what the Basket is all about. I've mostly been lurking these past few months, but read everything.
*sniff* I got nowhere else to go to reveal my utter obsession with this show without facing ridicule and disdain!
October 12th, 2009 at 11:04 am
After reading all these comments and the NFinke story, I thought the most interesting and relevant and insightful piece was the link to to Post-Emmy interview where MW looks really putoff when Jon Hamm is asked a question about the show and not him:
http://twi.cc/Tvst
I also think there's probably a little bit of truth in all that's said here — a combination of money, power, control and egomania all contributed to Ms. Gordon's leaving and the general rapid turnover.
In the end, though, WHO CARES? All they owe us, the viewer, is quality entertainment. Doesn't matter who writes it, directs it, stars in it — the only thing they owe us is their absolute best. The moment that stops, then we all leave.
Matt: Maybe you're a prick. I have no idea. But keep up the good work. You're nailing it, and this is the best season yet, so far.
October 12th, 2009 at 5:49 pm
Hey, gladvertising, your abbreviated link took me here:
http://www.pbs.org/moyers/journal/10092009/transc...
Oops! Was this it?
http://www.imdb.com/video/hulu/vi1417216537/
October 12th, 2009 at 6:56 pm
Wow. Looks like Robin Veith has quit too.
http://www.deadline.com/hollywood/recent-emmy-win...
October 12th, 2009 at 7:29 pm
Two writers within a week. Interesting.
October 12th, 2009 at 8:13 pm
Not Robin too!
October 14th, 2009 at 8:46 pm
I think the best writers for this show are people who have some sense of this history…either they lived through it…or their parents did…or they've immersed themselves in history and old television shows…there are errors where clearly a young writer inserted the word "amazing" or hinted that Sally might be gay….clear errors in terms of period authenticity. I vote for more older women writers, please.
October 16th, 2009 at 5:51 pm
It turns out that Kater is a local, (Virginia Beach, VA), gal.
The local paper, (Virginian Pilot), ran this article.
After Emmy, ‘Mad Men’ writer with local ties is off the show
http://hamptonroads.com/2009/10/after-emmy-mad-men-writer-local-ties-show
By Will Harris
Correspondent
A month ago, former Virginia Beach resident Kater Gordon was onstage at the Emmy Awards broadcast, helping to accept an award for writing on the AMC hit “Mad Men.”
As she looked forward to the airing Sunday of another “Mad Man” episode she had written, things took a dramatic turn.
Columnist Nikki Finke reported this week on the Web site DeadlineHolly
woodDaily.com that Gordon is no longer a member of the series’ writing staff. Neither Gordon nor AMC were available for comment at press time. A Baltimore Sun TV writer reported this week that another writer, Robin Veith, had also left the show. Veith, like Gordon, had been an assistant to the show’s creator, Matthew Weiner, before being promoted.
In a phone interview with Gordon conducted before the news broke, she seemed optimistic about the program – she co-wrote Sunday night’s “The Color Blue” episode – and the future.
Gordon gave primary thanks for her “Mad Men” success to creator Weiner, with whom she shared her Emmy win, and his co-executive producer, Scott Hornbacher.
“I just appreciate that they had the faith in me and gave me the opportunity. All of the writers in the ‘Mad Men’ writers room are really, really brilliant, so I feel like I was sort of in graduate school with the best professors,
having Matt as the head of the department.”
Gordon, 27, worked in New York as a production assistant on films and TV before joining “Mad Men,” a dark drama about a Madison Avenue advertising firm set in the early 1960s. She won the Emmy for Outstanding Writing for a Drama Series, with Weiner, for the episode “Meditations in an Emergency,” in which Betty Draper has a one-night stand to punish her husband for his dalliances. In that same episode, Peggy tells co-worker Pete that she had his baby and gave it up for adoption, and business maneuverings send honcho Duck Phillips reeling – all with the Cuban missile crisis looming in the background.
Gordon, who graduated from First Colonial High School in 2000, worked for “Mad Men” executive producer Scott Hornbacher and also babysat Weiner’s four children during the show’s first season. After putting the kids to bed, she watched screenings of Emmy-nominated shows and discussed them with Weiner. She quickly moved up to writers’ assistant, then staff writer.
The infamous writers strike gave her an opportunity. “I got to know him and his family a little bit during that hiatus period, and when we came back, Matt and Scott presented me with the opportunity to see if I would want to be his writer’s assistant,” she explained. “So I moved over to do that job, and towards the end of the season, he asked if I would co-write the finale with him.”
Although Gordon hadn’t had any practical experience in writing for television when she started at “Mad Men,” she believed that her experience in theater helped her immeasurably in grasping the concept.
“I was fortunate to be a part of the theater department at First Colonial High School,” she said. “Nancy Curtis was great, so I feel like at a very early age I was sort of thrown into wonderful stories and learning how to tell those stories. And at U.Va., you get a very broad-based theater education, so I was able to take part in all aspects of theater and learn how every design element helps tell a story.”
As for actually telling a story through the written word, however, that came about more by happenstance than design. “I was an English major in college, so that was definitely a part of it, but I don’t think I ever really planned on focusing on the writing,” Gordon said.
“I sort of fell into it with ‘Mad Men.’ Sometimes it just happens that way. It was something that I was always interested in and dabbled in, but this was my first real opportunity. I’ve been very, very fortunate.”
“When you deal with
theater, no matter what you’re doing, whether you’re designing the lights or the costumes or being a performer, so much of it is script analysis that it’s kind of like taking a screenwriting class,” Gordon said.
“You’re breaking it down and seeing what the beats are and seeing what influences what. Also, if you read Shakespeare or any of the plays by the great authors, you can’t help but absorb some of that and see how they do it. And to be in a room with Matthew Weiner, taking dictation from him? It’s the opportunity of a lifetime to get to sit with his brain for a little bit.”
New York magazine asked “Mad Men” actor Vincent Kartheiser about this week’s shake-up.
“I love Kater Gordon,” said the actor, who plays Pete Campbell. “And I think Kater is going to have a really amazing career as a writer, and she’s not going to have a hard time finding work. She’s got great ideas, and we loved working with her. And we’ll miss her. But we trust Matthew, and he’s doing what he needs to do to tell the story.
“Maybe next season he’s just going to go in a different direction, and he just needs someone to fill a different void in the room.”
Will Harris, nonstoppop@cox.net