Glory Days of Madison Avenue Come Alive Again in New AMC Series Mad Men

Beverly Hills CA AMC tomorrow night will debut its first scripted drama series Mad Men and all I can say is there hasn39t been so much buzz about a new cable series during a TCA tour since the premiere of HBO39s The Sopranos way back in January 1999Mad Men is the latest addition to a rapidly growing list of high quality scripted dramas on cable that are redefining the expectations of viewers and critics alike As described by AMC executive vice president and general manager Charlie Collier it39s about quot196039s New York and the ruthlessly competitive men and women of Madison Avenue at the height of advertising39s power prestige and glamourquot It39s set largely in the fictional Sterling Cooper Advertising AgencyThe Sopranos was the talk of the 1999 winter TCA gathering because it premiered at the start of that tour Boosted at least in part by critics buzzing like mad among themselves in close quarters for days on end the show became an instant media supernova Mad Men seems poised to enjoy similar support and success It is one of the three programs that everyone at the Beverly Hilton has been talking about with unbridled enthusiasm since early last week when hundreds of television critics and reporters from all over the United States and Canada began assembling here for their annual summer session The other bigbuzz programs are Ken Burns39 epic documentary miniseries The War on PBS and Disney Channel39s feverishly anticipated High School Musical 2 the first because of its quality the second because it is part of a phenomenon bigger than all of usSignificantly praise for Mad Men here at TCA seems to be far eclipsing that for any of the new series set to debut on the broadcast networks this fall The timing of its premiere couldn39t be better AMC last Sunday presented a press conference with the cast and series creator and executive producer Matthew Wiener a former Sopranos writer followed by a lavish evening event at the legendary Friars39 Club in Beverly HillsquotIf I could have 10 percent of the interest in this show that The Sopranos had I would be happyquot Weiner told the press If that39s true when he reads tomorrow39s reviews he39ll be delirious The subject matter in Mad Men quothas been something that I39ve been interested in since high schoolquot Weiner said quotI love this period I was interested in advertising In a way it was some of the greatest entertainment in my lifequotWhat really happened is I reached a certain point in my life where I started thinking about myself as a man and where I was and what I was feelingquot Weiner continued quotI looked at men in the early 3960s men who were overpaid and drank too much and smoked too much and were glib and cynical and bit the hand that fed them all the time and showed up late and had no respect for authority and I thought 39These are my heroes39quotThe culture that I have been raised in is this sort of golden glory about the 3960squot Weiner said quotThat39s certainly the way that things have been memorialized with the election of JFK that it was a time of great innocence etc But if you look at a New Yorker magazine from April 1960 Psycho and The Apartment are being reviewed in therequot It was not he asserted quota particularly innocent societyquot That will be reflected in the showquotThere39s a lot of seduction in the show all this assgrabbing and stuff like that there39s talk about that but Sterling Cooper is not a frat housequot Weiner explained quotThere are actually rules and a lot of language that39s respected and achievement that39s respectedquotAsked why HBO didn39t snap up Mad Men Weiner recalled quotThey had the script from the day I started on The Sopranos and they were not interested They did not respond to it To tell you the truth I didn39t know what was going to happen with it When AMC comes to you and says 39We love your work We want to give you complete creative freedom We want to do quality We want to be involved with this show We want to do it right We want to spend the money We want to cast it with people that are not household names so that the world will believe that they are these characters We want to pay for music We want to pay for costumes39 you don39t really go home and say 39God I wish HBO would call39quotDon39t miss Mad Men tomorrow tonight It is truly the beginning of something special that everyone on Madison Avenue and elsewhere will be talking about

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Glory Days of Madison Avenue Come Alive Again in New AMC Series Mad Men

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Ed Martin

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Glory Days of Madison Avenue Come Alive Again in New AMC Series Mad Men

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