What work! Elegant, seductive and curiously timely given Mad Men’s return. After a day when most of the stuff you see and hear sounds verifiably insane and dangerously front-loaded, it feels almost like a wash to see an ad like this.
Not that today was like that. Today I had one of those meetings that actually yields something, with people who are smart and dry witted like vermouth, then got to travel home on a train, which is one of my most favourite things in the world to do. (They remind me of Amtrak trips down the coast with grandma.) So the last 24 hours were doubly awesome because I did those things and got to revisit this.
Mad Men's Jon Hamm (Don Draper) and Elisabeth Moss (Peggy Olson) sat with MIPCOM's news team yesterday for an interview at the Hotel Martinez. (Off-topic: Do you think they just dress like that now, out of habit?)
The interview was conducted by Reed MIDEM's James Martin, community manager of the conference parent's social strategy. Together they discuss whether things have changed since the '60s, if Moss and Hamm consider their work the equivalent of art-house cinema, and what they think of all those anonymous Twitter users posing as Mad Men characters. (Remember AMC's little freak-out over that?)
On the red carpet this week, Moss and Hamm talked to reporters about the impact of Mad Men. Hamm says the show isn't really about advertising at all (though it's done a great job of generating interest in its speckled history); it's about the human condition - the pulp of all great drama.
Moss said that the outfits also make a significant impression. "We didn't invent them," she emphasised, suggesting that maybe, in this frenetic atmosphere of excess, people were primed for the class and restraint that once manifested in fashion. (To be sure, AMC's tried profiting from users eager to refashion an identity through the lens of that period.)
Just for posterity, Hamm let me record him telling me what respect he has for ad men, then and now. (The vid sucks, buuuuuut I guess that's why that's not my job. :P )
That's a lot of puff-puff, and nice work by Whirled.
The drinking and smoking are integral to Mad Men, and not just because it's a gesture of fidelity to a period. There's a close association between creatives and artists. In those two camps, you've always got this tragic notion of burning on both ends: being constantly hopped up on something and doing your job anyway - maybe even needing the former for the latter.
Also, still fresh out of Cannes, I can attest that this attitude, this lifestyle, is still alive and well in the industry. (The hyperlinked post is about people discussing ways to quit, but that's also part of the mantle of smoking.) The world may have moved on, but the lone creative still gets something out of lighting one up. It's a legacy, nicotine-laced shackles of genius and suffering that bind us not just to Don Draper but to Mark Twain and Sartre.*
Back next week, ladies and gents. In the meantime, consider the merits of Mad Men penetrating Playboy and, uh, dolls that need breastfeeding. (Nice touch with the nipple flowers! -- but I guess this isn't really out-of-the-mold conditioning. Remember how excited you were when Technology™ brought us dolls that could piss?)
"There's funny captions right under the picture so you think the cat is talking."
Via. See ep 2 of "Digital Mad Men." Kinda reminds me of the GI Joe appropriations, except you don't have to be high to enjoy them, and being at work makes them all the more pleasurable.
Bring mutti and vati if you want. Everybody loves a trek down Memory Lane -- what do you think keeps VH1 in business? -- and Real Men and Women of Mad Ave. covers about 80 years' worth of crunchy nostalgia. Revisit Meowmix! M&Ms! Old-school Nike! Maybe even Snausages!
You'll also learn more about the secret lives of advertising's heroes, those engineers of my childhood and yours. Expect cameos from those still living, like legendary copywriter Phyllis Robinson; and old rogue Jerry Della Femina, whose Meowmix song and Joe Isuzu prototype still ring in my ears.
I'll be in the City from Sunday-Tuesday. I'm gonna try to catch part of OMMA, if only to abuse the finger-food; and I also look forward to swapping notes with Ric Kallaher, who mentioned he might check out the Wrath of Cannes.
He promised me zany pictures. And baby, I love me some zany pictures.
