With the contract up, is it possible for Matthew Weiner to just take Mad Men to another channel? Because this is ridiculous. AMC is demanding 2 additional minutes of advertising in each episode, a cut in the cast budget, and additional product placement. For one of the top 10 greatest shows of all time and a show that essentially created the new AMC, this is outrageous.
Does Matthew Weiner ever sleep?
On Tuesday, Grove Press, a publisher once known for daring fare like "Lady Chatterley's Lover" and "Tropic of Cancer," announced that it will release "Sterling's Gold: Wit & Wisdom of an Ad Man," a real book inspired by the autobiography that everyone's favorite silver fox wrote on "Mad Men."
Sadly, "Sterling's Gold" will not include any actual biography, which means no detailed reports of what really happened that night after Roger lured Joanie into a hotel room with a brand-new fur coat. But it will include 10 color photos from the show (we're hoping at least, say, 10 of them feature Joan) and a confessional introduction by "Mad Men" creator Matt Weiner, written in Sterling's voice.
"I'm not a writer," it says. "On some level, that's a point of pride because it steered me away from the cliche of autobiography. I had no desire to waste your and my time trying to turn a list of events into a campaign of triumph."
Like Wendell Jamieson, I increasingly find my drinking habits heavily influenced by the films I am watching. I first started noticing this in the last year as I've engaged in television series for the first time in a decade. I realized when watching Deadwood how much more straight whiskey I was drinking, sometimes backed with a beer, sometimes not. After finishing that show, I've moved on to Mad Men, which of course has spawned a whole literature on the nation's alcohol habits in the early 1960s. And while I haven't been drinking old-fashioneds like Don Draper, I have significantly increased my consumption of martinis and Manhattans, while my drinking of straight whiskey has declined just as much.
I like the idea of trying to match my alcohol with the movie. I can't be too exacting--after all, while I have a not small amount of alcohol in the house, I hardly have the money for everything. But I can be in the ballpark most of the time. Of course, when it's a movie I haven't watched before, I have to guess what the alcohol of choice will be. Last night, I watched Lukas Moodysson's fine film Together, about a Swedish commune in the early 70s. I figured that since they were Swedes, vodka would be the drink of choice. I was wrong (it was wine) but whatever. It's fun to guess.
