Basket of Kisses

Last year, Nathaniel of The Film Experience ran an outstanding series called Mad Men at the Movies. We are honored to re-run that series here (with his permission of course). You might find some out-of-date comments here because these were written a year ago.

I’m cheating with this next installment of “Mad Men at the Movies” which discusses neither a movie nor a television show, but a book. Since the classic book has fascinated multiple filmmakers, I’m allowing it to count. Mostly because I love the scene so much.

1.3 “Marriage of Figaro”
Lady Chatterley’s Lover. Scandalous!

Major film versions of D.H. Lawrence’s novel from France (1955), UK (1981) Italy (1989) and France again (2007). The property also generated spinoffs, comedies, and loose riffs in other countries.

Joan Holloway: You know girls, we’d be happy to bring you coffee. I was on my way over anyway. [pause] I have something of yours. Lady Chatterley’s Lover … I finished it last night.
Office Girl #1: Good to the last drop, right?
Joanie: I can see why it got banned.
Office Girl #2: You don’t have to be so shy about it, it’s literature.

[Distracted] That is a huge pocket book, Joan.
Joanie: Well, it’s got a change of clothing and a toothbrush in it.
Office Girl #2: Ahhh, a hope chest!

Office Girl #1: [offering book] Have you read this Peggy?
Joanie: I don’t think that’s a good idea. There’s uh…. this word in it a lot.
Peggy: I know the word, Joan.

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Jon and I spoke last Tuesday, November 3rd. He is fascinating to speak with; he is so intimate with this character in a way that is hard to imagine. Plus he’s just really, really cool. The voice is smooth, and deliberate and steadying. I was very much put at ease within the first few minutes.

Oh! And also? He spoke to me for so much longer than I expected him to. Extremely generous with his time.

Roberta Lipp: So, you know, as a fan, I want you to not be nervous.

Jon Hamm: Okay.

RL: You know, we’re very big, but, you know, just relax and be yourself.

JH: Can do!

RL: So what are you up to? Where are you right now? Are you making a movie?

JH: Yeah, I’m up in Boston right now shooting a film Ben Affleck is directing called The Town, and we are in like the last few weeks of that.

RL: So you went straight from wrapping to Boston; right? Like, you’ve been just not stopping?

JH: Yeah, I think it was kind of an error in judgment, I think, on my part because I was pretty beat by the end of the season and then went right into this. It was a lot of work.

RL: Yeah, I can’t imagine. So you got a few more weeks on that and then you’re going to relax?

JH: Well, I’ve got, you know, Thanksgiving and a couple weeks off, and then I’m going to go into another film that shoots up in Vancouver called Sucker Punch. It’s being directed by a guy named Zack Snyder who directed Watchmen.

RL: That sounds very cool.

JH: Yeah, I think so. I think it will be a good one.

RL: Congratulations just on everything.

JH: Well thank you.

RL: So we’re all freaking out; this is the greatest season. The last two episodes [the Gypsy and the Hobo and the Grownups] were haunting and really –I can’t even pretend to know where this thing is going, I haven’t guessed for weeks, and each episode doesn’t help; you know? It’s just amazing.

JH: Well, you know what, if I could continue by saying,it was sort of the theme and the watchword for the season would be change. And almost all of our characters’ lives; in their professional lives and in their personal lives certainly, we see a lot of things shift.
And, obviously, that’s being paralleled in the world around them, and in the culture around them shifting as well. We’re starting to see the beginnings of that change happen in the 60s in American culture. And, obviously with the events of the last episode with Kennedy’s assassination happening, that’s a pretty big watershed moment for a lot of people, and I think in retrospect for the culture at large.

RL: Yeah. You know, separately from each of the individual storylines, what people have been saying on our site is, “Oh, that’s what it felt like.” He really captured it.”

JH: Well, you know, I think obviously the closest thing that a lot of people have in their lives now is when 9/11 happened, and just sort of that bizarre feeling of what is happening and what is this and what does it all mean and what is the next day going to bring. And I think that there was certainly a parallel with those two situations, but maybe doesn’t have — because we obviously know the benefit of living four years afterwards. And of course you know everything will be all right and people will wake up in the morning, but it’s fundamentally shifted. And we know as people that live in the 21st century that this is only the first and one of many sort of really horrible seismic events to happen in this culture at this time and in a relatively short span. And so, you know, I think obviously there is a parallel between our — it’s disconcerting because we’ve had several, I think, serendipitous parallels politically with our show when we started season one we started in 1960 with the very contended and contentious election between Nixon and Kennedy, and then we’re coming out of an election of Kerry-Bush or Bush-Gore, and there was that whole sort of feeling where fully half of the country was dissatisfied with the results of the election. And then the second season with the Kennedy’s sort of descendant, we had Obama come in, and now it’s strangely similar in certain aspects. So we’ve been really kind of fortunate in having a secondary resonance that has happened with our show and in the culture at large, and I think that that’s enabled people to kind of keep relating personally. (more…)

When the Brits say that Guy McKendrick can’t work, Don says “I don’t know if that’s true.” which he says in Smoke Gets in Your Eyes.

When Sally wakes up screaming, and screams again at the sight of baby Gene, Betty says “I don’t even know what to say,” which is what she said when Don came home hours late in Marriage of Figaro.

I’ve been writing about how characters changed and stayed the same between Seasons 1 & 2. So let’s talk about Betty. Obviously Betty was angrier in Season 2, and we’ve spent many thousands of words on that subject, but I just thought of a lovely example.

Season 1: Marriage of Figaro, the Drapers throw a party. Roberta writes:

I love that Don and Betty are fine. Through the entire morning of the party, when it is so obvious to us, because we are culturally informed, that every time Betty mentions the cake or any other chore, (and later the movie camera), she is actually freaking out and really wants to lunge, she remains sweet and composed. And with every request from Betty, we know that Don is a pressure cooker. But he never shows it.

Fine. They’re fine. Betty may seethe inside, but even when Don comes home late and drunk, all she says is “I don’t know what to say.”

Season 2: A Night to Remember, the Drapers throw a party. Fix the fucking chair, Don. Never mind, I handled it.

Betty handles a difficult repair herself

I have been rewatching season 1 in order to fix the weird episode guides. (Look, I’m sorry about the episode guides. They seemed like a good idea at the time.) And what I’m suddenly seeing is, wow, season 2 is better than I thought.

This show got darker, sure, and we noticed that. And a few of the early episodes of s2 faltered”especially For Those Who Think Young. So all of us here at the Basket were worried about season 2, and kinda wanted s1 back.

But it also got way more sophisticated. The structural and mood sophistication of Marriage of Figaro”which we’ve written about again and again”was a foreshadowing of things to come. Maidenform, A Night to Remember”these are complicated. They use visual symmetry and motifs of color and mood and objects like they’re, hello, just used to it now. Like it’s not hard anymore.

I’m looking at the episode lists side-by-side. I can get all caught up in my deep love for the complex intricacies of many s1 episodes”certainly Babylon and Shoot, to name just two, are literary and elegant and bear repeat viewing. But I dunno. I’m actually coming around to the notion that s2 is better. There are season-long strains of threat and tension, notes that linger, fade, and return. Colors. Fears. Longings that play throughout the season, while never losing touch with the notion that each episode is not merely an episode, but a self-contained story, with a theme and a meaning, and also never forgetting that each character is an individual with a personal trajectory of his or her own.

I will never write that well. Never. I am a kid with a camera looking at Eisenstein. Or Salvatore looking at Rothko. There are gifts that are beyond mine, and in Mad Men they are on display.

Marriage of Figaro is, as I’ve said before, symmetrical. The other day I noticed another example of this: The city sequence is bookended by a train.

Remember, the episode is a Friday in the city, a Saturday in the ‘burbs.

Friday begins with Don on the train. He meets someone who knew him as Dick Whitman, Larry, who hands him a business card.

Friday ends with Don on the train. The conductor hands him a newspaper, and it exactly parallels the physical posture of Larry and the business card. Nothing else happens in that scene, it’s strictly there as a bookend.

And of course, season 1 is all about trains.

Marriage of Figaro: Rachel changes her clothes between her Sterling Cooper meeting and Don’s arrival at the store later that afternoon. Don remarks on it.

Meditations in an Emergency: Don arrives back at work and immediately notices Peggy’s new hair, which no one else had been able to put their finger on.

You can’t fake that shit. And it’s awesome consistency over two years!

Mad Men is renowned for its startling and stellar look at the period, for its commentary on society and humanity, and for its pristine writing and acting. The look of the show is so stunning, so seductive, it tugs you in.

But the element that kept me coming back is the structural twists.

I’m pretty good at TV. I’ve never taken a crack at writing a script, or even breaking down the mechanics on paper, but I have a strong instinct for how it works. I know what a pilot needs to accomplish, I recognize when things are ‘supposed’ to happen within an episode of television. If I’m watching Law & Order and the trial is resolved too early, my TV-body-clock tells me right away that we’ve got another turn in the story still to come. Good TV writing, even innovative TV writing, follows a formula.

And Matt Weiner says Fuck that noise. (This is not in any way an actual Matt Weiner quote.)

Smoke Gets in Your Eyes is brilliant. Perfection, as pilots go.

But the real surprises, for me, came in subsequent episodes. Unlike many, I was not hooked from the pilot. I was intrigued; I wanted to know more, but I was not convinced this show would deliver. I didn’t yet know what Mad Men was, but I was afraid that, despite how different it looked, it would wind up being ultimately quite conventional television.

In Smoke we meet the major players–an intriguing group of characters. And while we explore their worlds a bit, we see that the heart of the show beats from within the walls of Sterling Cooper.

Ladies Room opens with dinner, not at the office, but it is a business dinner. Nothing too strange here. The structural shocker of Ladies Room is not what you see, but what you don’t.

To introduce a major character like Pete Campbell, and then not to have him in your second episode is just ballsy. Who does this? (more…)

Perhaps we have overdone the discussion of Don’s adultery already, but there is something so deeply fascinating about his relationships with women.

In Marriage of Figaro, Don kisses Rachel on the roof of Menken’s and then says “I’m married.” Rachel asks him if this is something he does all the time, kissing women who aren’t his wife. Don says “Of course not.”

That “Of course not,” that resonates with me. I hear it in my head. When we’re discussing Don and his cheating, I hear “Of course not.”

Because he believes it. He had been with Midge that morning? The night before? And yet he believes, really believes that he doesn’t go around doing this.
And so we get to Bobbie. In Maidenform Bobbie tells Don he has a reputation, and Don? He still believes “Of course not.” It’s like he bathes in the Kanathos, and starts fresh. He doesn’t see the numbers, he doesn’t see it adding up.

I think if Bobbie asked him if he did this all the time, he’d have said “Of course not.”

screen shot by Marc Opperman, as seen on Flickr.com

As is common, this post was inspired by a previous Lipp sister post.

Just this morning I was reading an article and came across a quote about the economic crisis that said that “the needle was stuck in the groove.” And for a second I thought, Hmm, like a hypodermic needle? That’s kinda… sick. And then I remembered, Oh, yeah, record player needles! Anyone under the age of 30 would be thrown by that (okay, I’m 39.) Technological changes have an impact on the way we experience life. Just for fun, here’s a list of 60s gadgets and their modern equivalents that influenced our perceptions.

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