Basket of Kisses

I’ve been corresponding with Rich Sommer for close to a year. Deb and I started this Mad Men blog; he’s got this charming blog, it was a whole blog thing. What you get from reading Rich’s blog is, this is a nice guy. This is a nice guy whose life just went from really good to Please, if this is a dream, may I never wake up from it. Lovely wife, beautiful baby, and the job of a lifetime.

So Rich and I have sort of ‘known’ each other for all this time, but had never spoken. This long-awaited interview/conversation took place the first week of November. A few weeks later he was back in New York City and Deborah and I met him, but at the time of this phone call, I didn’t know that was coming. Anyway, it is no surprise that Rich and I spoke for quite awhile, and that the conversation vacillated between formal interview and lots of off-topic, off-the-record yakking. I’ve been working on rolling it together as thoroughly as possible.

RKL: So, thank you for doing this. Yay!
RS: Absolutely! I’m sorry it’s taken so long.
RKL: It’s fine. You guys have been busy.
RS: Yeah, a little bit.
RKL: It’s very good stuff. Congratulations on everything. Saturday Night Live being quite a culmination.
RS: Thanks! Yeah it’s been pretty uh…it’s been pretty weird. It’s been pretty fun.
RKL: I met with Elisabeth the other night and she explained how she was the last minute fill-in, as you know, and she was somewhat disappointed that she didn’t get to see herself portrayed.

Elisabeth was called in at the last minute to play Peggy in the Mad Men sketch, because Amy Poehler went and had her baby that day.

RS: Yeah. That was obviously a pretty unique experience. But getting to be on the show is, I mean c’mon! That’s pretty amazing too.
RKL: Yeah. It’s Saturday Night Live.
RS: Yeah. It’s an institution.

Rich writes about seeing himself portrayed on SNL here.

RKL: About Mr. Crane. The first thing I want to know about him is how did his marriage get repaired? What do you think went down? (more…)

Deborah and I saw Elisabeth Moss on Broadway in Speed-the-Plow and met with her backstage after the performance. She was just a love, and invited us to come back another time for a proper interview.

What is hard to capture in these interviews is the enthusiasm. Everything out of Elisabeth’s mouth has an excitement and a sense of wonder and a lot of love.

RKL: So how was performing on Saturday Night Live?

EM: It was pretty awesome. I got the text [message] just before my matinee, around 1:45, from my friend Casey who’s a cast member. I knew Amy [Poehler] was gonna play Peggy…

RKL: Which is brilliant!

EM: … which is awesome enough. And I still am a little disappointed that I didn’t actually get to see her rendition of Peggy; that would have been fun.

RKL: Right. Rich [Sommer] just wrote about how that was just the greatest thing he’s ever experienced.

EM: Oh, I’m sure. So I got a text from her saying Amy just went into labor, can you come tonight, and I called her and I said absolutely. I went over in between my performances, and rehearsed a couple of times. They wrote a new joke for me because now it was like a guest appearing. So Seth Meyers wrote me a great joke. It was crazy. I wasn’t even nervous because I was like in shock. And then the great thing was that, during rehearsal, the SNL cast members kept looking around and being like, This is so cool, it’s like stepping into your favorite tv show. Because they’ve got the set and there are both of the Johns [Hamm and Slattery] and I was there. And I would just look back and be like, Are you kidding me? I’m on SNL! What are you talking about?!

RKL: That’s great; that’s amazing. That’s so amazing.

EM: Yeah, and it was weird because I’m kind of in a Peggy costume and I’ve got the bangs and a ponytail and there’s Jon and then John. And yet there are SNL cast members. It was very surreal.

RKL: And there’s the house [live audience].

EM: Yeah, so it was kind of like shooting Mad Men but not. It was very strange.

RKL: Like a dream. Like you’re in a Mad Men dream.

EM: It was like one of those weird dreams that you have where you’re like, It was so weird I dreamt that we were shooting Mad Men but we were shooting it with SNL cast members.

RKL: Well congratulations, that’s very cool, and fun.

EM: Thank you.

RKL: So. Mad Men. Because, omigod, the finale was as satisfying as everyone had indicated and certainly your story was stunning.

EM: Oh good! I’m so glad.

RKL: What do you want to say about it before I poke?
(more…)

• Alison Brie sings Santa Baby.
• Jon Hamm is one of the sexiest men alive (we knew that).
• Forbes interviews AMC head Charlie Collier about Mad Men and other stuff.
• Jon Hamm, whom we previously reported is one of GQ’s Men of the Year, attended GQ’s Man of the Year party with a bunch of other hot celebs:
  

  “I’m man shopping. This is like a man mall and I’m shopping for the best one I can find,” joked [Kathy] Griffin

  The LA Times also blogged the GQ party.

• He’s everywhere! He’s one of In Style’s “Sexy Stars.”

(more…)

This past Monday I had the pleasure and privilege of attending a special Mad Men symposium sponsored by the University of Southern California’s School of Cinematic Arts. For those of you not paying attention, that’s where Matthew Weiner received his MFA, and no doubt learned to craft such enthralling stories. This event was part of a classroom lecture series geared primarily toward film and television students at USC, but as a notorious gatecrasher I felt it was my duty to at least try and wheedle my way in. Fortunately, I didn’t have to try too hard as there were spaces available for the general public. All I had to do was flash a smile, show my driver’s license, and VIOLA! Happy happy joy joy…
(more…)

• This is straightforward: If You’re Not Watching Mad Men, You’re Crazy.
• City Beat of Cincinatti compares Mad Men to the Dark Knight. Which is cool. h/t to Basketcase Peter G.
• The Atlantic has the most amazing contemplation of Mad Men:
  

  There’s a “Is it all worth it” quality to Mad Men which I love–like you’re cheering for Betty to move up, and yet at the same time you’re thinking, “Move up into what?” Into puking into office garbage cans?

  Definitely read the whole thing.

• Variety ponders the influence of the critics on Emmy voters, using Mad Men as their prime example.
• 411mania’s McGuffin DVD Review takes on Mad Men season 1, loves the series and the DVDs, and offers their top ten moments of season 1:

(more…)

Slate’s Troy Patterson has an early review of Season 2 that kind of gets it perfectly and kind of maybe doesn’t. Very mild spoilers about early scenes.

Per Ad Rants, here’s ad agency Red Tettemer’s new site design, with a Mad Men facelift.

Here’s an amusing blog in the Portland Mercury News entitled Mad Men Is Wrecking My Marriage.

Basketcase Amanda B found us a couple of stories. Here’s the Metro giveaway paper on the set tour. Being a New York paper, it uses the word “tchotchke.”

…and here’s New York Magazine, with a thoughtful profile of Elisabeth Moss and Peggy Olson:

(more…)

This AP photo (Matt Sayles / AP/ July 9, 2008) from the TCA press tour cracked my shit up (I, uh, touched it up a bit):

Sorry to be posting like, every hour this weekend. This half-hour special on AMC is really fun. It’s showing at all kinds of odd times throughout the month. I was sure I also read that, starting tomorrow, you could watch it on AMC.com, but now I can’t find that in writing.

It’s nicely grouped clips, and discussion with the cast (Hamm, Slattery and Kartheiser on the boys’ side (literally), and Moss, Jones and Hendricks on the girls’. And then Weiner finally chimes in.

This manages to be a very exciting promo piece with minimal spoilage.

At The Envelope (the awards-centric section of the LA Times), Tom O’Neill compiles a roundup of nomination predictions. This is a discussion of which shows, among the top ten favorites already selected, will get one of the five nominations for Best Dramatic series. Polling five TV critics, and offering his own predictions, only three shows get unanimous agreement: Mad Men, House, and Damages.

At the Salt Lake Tribune, Vince Horiuchi discusses his own ballot.

Never has my hand been more sure than when marking a check next to “Mad Men,” AMC’s sterling first entry into original programming.

Variety interviews Jon Hamm, as part of a series on Emmy contenders.

…and our commenter kartheiser_grl hooked us up with another Variety article, this one about John Slattery and Vincent Kartheiser, focused on actors in Emmy contention for supporting roles.

Unbelievable, really.

Yesterday, May 3rd, was Christina Hendricks. (And it was a big one and I missed it!)

Today, May 4th, Deborah Lipp.

Tomorrow, May 5th, Vincent Kartheiser.

Three of the greatest pouts in all of show business.

Kisses to all.