Wisdom from Mad Men Creator Matthew Weiner

Matthew Weiner, the creator and show runner of Mad Men, shares a few words of wisdom with us before this Sunday’s series finale. 

What was the last day like on set?

It was different for me than for the cast, because I was directing. So I knew that I had three months ahead of me in post production. And it’s always sad when the cast leaves. The cast and the crew are the exciting part of it, as the writers will attest to. It’s very emotional always when the sets get packed up. I tried to be the strong part of it. We’d get to the last shot for each person, they would come in and the actor would make a speech and I would make a speech about them. And we would have champagne for the first few, on the day before the last day, but on the last day we stopped doing the champagne because it was everybody’s last day and we realized we wouldn’t get any work done.

But there was a lot of laughing and a lot of crying and it’s kind of an unreal experience. You anticipate it kind of and expect what it might feel like, but you can’t really imagine.

Did anyone warn you about this?

A lot of people told me about the end. I lived through it with David Chase but I wasn’t there for the last day of The Sopranos, and I hadn’t been there as long. I heard from other showrunners, who said it was going to end many times. You’ll have your last editing session and your last mix or colouring session. You’ll say goodbye over and over again. Moving out of my office was the closest I felt to what the actors experienced that last day. It was pretty heavy. It was kind of sad. Like oh, I’m not doing this anymore. Writing the scripts, finishing the last draft of the finale…I couldn’t watch them taking the sets away. I couldn’t hande that.

“Maybe I have a warped sense of humour.”

Did you take anything?

Yes. We went out of our way — a lot of it’s going to museums and there will be an exhibit and stuff like that — but we made sure if people wanted things that they could have them. The weird thing is that most of this stuff is already antique, they’re artifacts from other people’s lives. So I’m sitting here in my office I have the bar from Roger’s last office, a big chrome thing, and sometimes I think, well I have this and it’s in all these shots, but whose was it? But you take some little things, props. I took Don’s Cleo, which we had made and he broke. And some of them we have doubles of. Jon Hamm did not ask for everything, but we made sure he got Don’s chair and I think he was happy to have it. Part of it is almost like graduating from college. That group of people will never be together again in that form.

Is Mad Men actually funny? Is it a comedy?

The amount of times that people told me about somebody peeing their pants in the office, I always laughed and they always laughed. But when we did it with Freddy Rumsen, it was really sad. On the other hand, Mrs Blankenship dying. That’s a person dying, but it’s really funny. Peggy stabbing her boyfriend: I always think these things are funny. Maybe I have a warped sense of humour.

Do you think that historical element is “important”?

To me, what you can do when you put something in a historical context is show viewers that the people they’re looking at aren’t saints, they had the same questions in their lives that people has always had. There’s a romantic part of us to…things are different, believe me. But there’s a romantic part of us that wants to go to the romantic version of the past.

Do you have any idea what you’re going to do next?

That was the other thing that all the show runners warned me about: they said be prepared to get asked that question a lot, and just know that nobody listens, they’re just being polite. I can tell you honestly I just don’t know. Talk about marinating. I’m resting on some level. I’m going back to my first love, which is eavesdropping.

What are you watching?

I’m catching up. I kept up with Breaking Bad. That was the only thing I watched during the show. It’s been really interesting, is all I can say. I do feel — and I don’t want to sound like a curmudgeon — but this Golden Age of TV thing, while very flattering, is really insulting to the history of television. It’s just crazy to think that…there’s always good stuff on TV and bad stuff on TV. The fun thing about this, though, is that people are really watching it and for whatever reason the Internet has meant that the conversation and the obsession is not embarrassing.

Is this the show that you always wanted to make?

Yes. One word answer. Absolutely.

I learned so much. And I never imagined that I would get to do so much. And we never….there were things we still didn’t get to put in the show. I wanted to end it before we exhausted the machinery that tells the story. There’s no coincidence that the end of the first season is about Don realizing he hasn’t spent any time with his family. I was luckier than Don, and I’m not him, thank god, but with this whole orchestra of characters there’s always a place to discuss what’s going on.