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这是一段光鲜迷人的美国往事，发生在上世纪60年代初。艾森豪威尔的时代刚刚结束，美国上世纪50年代的经济繁荣达到顶点，60年代的动荡岁月还没有到来，一切貌似安稳而富庶。人们不再满足于温饱，而开始纵情于声色，消费主义蓬勃兴起。麦迪逊大道的广告人诱惑和操纵着整个国家的欲望和需求，他们推销香烟、口红、泻药，也推销总统。最早的一批雅皮士正在被酝酿出来，他们仍保留着老派的优雅，而属于新时期的种族平等、妇女解放，也正蓄势待发。
这部怀旧复古的剧集就像是一段美国上世纪六零年代的风情录，摩登且精致。里面的男人个个穿三件式西服，戴浅顶软呢帽，衬衫一般是法式袖口，还有袖扣做装饰。他们发型一丝不乱，时刻吐着氤氲的烟圈，手里轻摇盛着美酒的高脚杯。女人则涂着色泽冶艳的口红，金色的头发做成梦露的式样，连身的大蓬蓬裙藏满她们渴望挣脱男人钳制的欲望。
上世纪的六十年代是个奇妙的年代，中国人自己的记忆里满是绿军装、毛主席语录、上山下乡，而世界的另一端则完全是另外一番模样……
——Eva
Matthew Weiner stood on the set of his hit show, Mad Men, ready for his 1)close-up
in extreme anxiety. He was watching the rehearsal of a scene that seemed fine to me, better than fine, but his 2)staccato commentary was a scene in itself.
“He should be standing,” he said of an actor who was seated. “That should be on the table,” he said of an 3)accordion folder that an actress had placed on the floor. “They’re overreacting,
paying too much attention to each other.” He heard himself and looked slightly 4)sheepish. “You’ll see it turn from theater to movie in the next take,” he told me. “I want them not to pay too much attention to each other, so it feels real, more 5)perfunctory. Not that TV thing.” His smile was 6)wry. “I’m very impatient.”
Mad Men, about the world of advertising on Madison Avenue set in New York in the early 1960s, 7)languished for years after being rejected by HBO and Showtime before the 8)unlikely 9)AMC picked it up. The show had its premiere last summer and won instant critical acclaim, and the Golden Globe Award for best drama.
Weiner’s achievements with Mad Men are plentiful, starting with the storytelling. Setting it in the early 1960s, on the 10)cusp between the repression and conformity of the cold war and
11)McCarthy-era 1950s and the yet-to-unfold social and cultural upheavals of the 60s, allows Weiner an arc of character growth that is 12)staggering in its possibilities. It also gives him the opportunity to mine the 13)Rat Pack romance of that period, when the wreaths of cigarette smoke, the fog of too many martinis—whether exhilarating or nauseating—and the 14)silhouettes specific to 15)bullet bras only heightened the 16)headiness of the dream that all men might one day become James Bond or, at the very least, key holders to the local Playboy Club.
Deepening the tension between that fantasy and reality, Weiner has put Sterling Cooper, the fictional ad agency that employs the show’s characters, on the 17)old-school, 18)WASP side of the equation, letting them revel in their racism, sexism and 19)anti-Semitism. It was during that period that the creative revolution in advertising was taking off at agencies, where Jews and some women held leadership positions. When contemplating a new account, Draper asks his boss, Roger Sterling, “What do women want?” “Who cares?” is his answer.
When a Jewish department-store heiress comes to the agency in search of a fresh approach for her business, Sterling tries to find someone Jewish in the company to include in the meeting. “Have we ever hired any Jews?” he asks Draper. “Not 20)on my watch,” Draper says,
before adding, “You want me to run down to the 21)deli and grab somebody?”
Weiner chose advertising as a subject, he said, because “it’s a great way to talk about the image we have of ourselves, versus who we really are. And admen were the rock stars of that era, creative, cocky, anti-authority. They made a lot of money, and they lived hard.” It’s the universality more than the period that’s the 22)hook, of course. The people on this show struggle with the same 23)backbiting co-workers, unhappy marriages and ongoing search for the meaning of life that we do now. We’d like to think that things were simpler then, but what’s hard now has always been hard.
But as Arthur Gelb, a former managing editor of The New York Times, who was the paper’s chief cultural correspondent in the early ’60s, points out: “New York then was still to some extent a segregated city. It was glamorous, but it was glamorous for white people. You rarely, if ever, saw blacks in Times Square.”
The show’s design, the almost 24)fetishistically accurate sets and costumes, has been lauded from the start. But Weiner is 25)wary of 26)deifying the visual. “The design is not the star of the show,” he said as he led me through the
offices of Sterling Cooper. “I don’t want to be distracted by it”, he said. “People have old things and new things, and as someone who loves the period, it’s very hard to resist the idea of getting the perfect 1960 everything, but I want it to feel like a slice of life.”
Richard Plepler, co-president of HBO, who took over programming in June 2007, told me, “Mad Men is a magnificent show, and the only problem with it is it’s not on HBO.”
马修·维纳站在他那部热门剧集——《广告狂人》的片场，心情焦灼，准备好要拍一个特写镜头。他正在盯某场戏的彩排，那场戏在我看来演得还不错，应该说不止“不错”了，而维纳不时插话点评这一幕，本身亦很有看头。
“他应该是站着的，”他说到那位正坐着的男演员。“那东西应该放在桌子上”他指的是女演员之前放在地板上的一个折子式文件夹。“他们演过了头，太注意对方了”，他的声音很小，而且他看起来有点局促不安。“在下个镜头里，你会看到从舞台剧式的夸张转变为电影式的自然写实，”他告诉我说，“我要他们别太注意对方，这样才会感觉真实，更能表现那种敷衍的态度。不是电视剧那一套。”他的笑容乖张，“我这人很没耐性的。”
《广告狂人》的背景设定在上个世纪六十年代早期的纽约，这部有关麦迪逊大道上广告业界的剧集，HBO和Showtime电视台都不买账，被冷落数年后倒是被前景并不乐观的AMC电视台捡了回来。这部戏去年夏天首播，随即赢得了评论界的赞誉以及金球奖最佳剧集奖。
维纳制作的《广告狂人》，成功在于多方面，首先是叙述故事的手法。二十世纪五十年代，冷战格局加上麦卡锡时代，专制压抑、千人一面，而一场场社会和文化大变革则在六十年代即将上演。《广告狂人》的故事发生在六十年代早期，正处于两者的过渡期，这给维纳提供了一个空间，让剧中人物有着各种惊人的发展转变。同时，这也给他提供了挖掘那个年代“鼠帮式”浪漫的机会。彼时缭绕的烟圈，过量的马提尼氤氲的酒气——喝得高也好喝到吐也罢——还有那“子弹胸罩”特有的剪影，这一切让人更迷醉于那美梦——幻想所有男人某天都能变成詹姆士·邦德，或者至少能自如出入当地的“花花公子”俱乐部。
斯特林·库伯这家虚构的广告公司在雇用剧中的角色时站在老派、白人特权的立场上，完全沉湎在种族主义、性别歧视和反犹太主义的园囿中，维纳如此设定，为的是激化幻想和现实间的矛盾。广告界的创意革命正是在那个时代开始在各广告公司里萌芽，而犹太人和一些女性在这些公司里担当了领导职位。德雷珀在为一个新的广告文案苦思冥想时问他的老板罗杰·斯特林，“女人需要些什么？”“谁管呢？”他回答道。
一名犹太裔的百货公司女继承人来到这家广告公司，为她的生意寻求新的突破口。这时，斯特林想在公司里找一个犹太人职员来一起跟客户面谈。他问德雷珀：“我们曾经雇用过犹太人吗？”“据我所知，没有，” 德雷珀回答说，随后又加了一句，“要不要我到楼下熟食店给你抓个上来呀？”
维纳说，他选择广告界作为题材是因为“这能很好地表现出我们是怎样看自己的，而我们真实的自己又是怎样的。广告人是那个年代的明星，他们新点子多，心高气傲且反权威。他们赚得盆满钵满，但也苟且生存。”当然了，吸引观众的不止是那个年代的独有氛围，更主要的是人们普遍面对的那些永恒话题。剧中人物和我们现在的人一样，同样有一群勾心斗角的同事，同样在不幸的婚姻中挣扎，同样在不断地寻求人生的意义。我们想当然地认为以前的生活会简单一点，但其实，现在让我们痛苦的，以前也同样恼人。
然而，六十年代初《纽约时报》的首席文化记者，后来曾任该报执行编辑的亚瑟·格布指出：“当时的纽约在某种程度上仍是一个种族隔离的城市。这个城市光鲜迷人，但只是对白人而言。在时代广场，你基本看不到黑人。”
开播伊始，大家对该剧的美术设计赞誉有加（几近还原当年的场景和服装，可谓偏执至极）。但维纳却时刻提防将视觉效果奉若神明。“场景和服装的设计并不是这部剧的亮点，”他边说边领着我穿过斯特林·库伯公司的办公间，“我不想因此受到牵制”，他说道，“大家总有些旧的东西，也有新的东西，对于醉心那个年代的人来说，的确会很执著要求每件东西都精确还原六十年代的样子，但我还是想让它感觉起来像生活的一个生动片断。”
2007年6月份接管制作部门的HBO联合执行长理查德·布莱勒告诉我说：“《广告狂人》是一部杰出的剧集，什么都好，唯一不好的是没在HBO台放。”
这部怀旧复古的剧集就像是一段美国上世纪六零年代的风情录，摩登且精致。里面的男人个个穿三件式西服，戴浅顶软呢帽，衬衫一般是法式袖口，还有袖扣做装饰。他们发型一丝不乱，时刻吐着氤氲的烟圈，手里轻摇盛着美酒的高脚杯。女人则涂着色泽冶艳的口红，金色的头发做成梦露的式样，连身的大蓬蓬裙藏满她们渴望挣脱男人钳制的欲望。
上世纪的六十年代是个奇妙的年代，中国人自己的记忆里满是绿军装、毛主席语录、上山下乡，而世界的另一端则完全是另外一番模样……
——Eva
Matthew Weiner stood on the set of his hit show, Mad Men, ready for his 1)close-up
in extreme anxiety. He was watching the rehearsal of a scene that seemed fine to me, better than fine, but his 2)staccato commentary was a scene in itself.
“He should be standing,” he said of an actor who was seated. “That should be on the table,” he said of an 3)accordion folder that an actress had placed on the floor. “They’re overreacting,
paying too much attention to each other.” He heard himself and looked slightly 4)sheepish. “You’ll see it turn from theater to movie in the next take,” he told me. “I want them not to pay too much attention to each other, so it feels real, more 5)perfunctory. Not that TV thing.” His smile was 6)wry. “I’m very impatient.”
Mad Men, about the world of advertising on Madison Avenue set in New York in the early 1960s, 7)languished for years after being rejected by HBO and Showtime before the 8)unlikely 9)AMC picked it up. The show had its premiere last summer and won instant critical acclaim, and the Golden Globe Award for best drama.
Weiner’s achievements with Mad Men are plentiful, starting with the storytelling. Setting it in the early 1960s, on the 10)cusp between the repression and conformity of the cold war and
11)McCarthy-era 1950s and the yet-to-unfold social and cultural upheavals of the 60s, allows Weiner an arc of character growth that is 12)staggering in its possibilities. It also gives him the opportunity to mine the 13)Rat Pack romance of that period, when the wreaths of cigarette smoke, the fog of too many martinis—whether exhilarating or nauseating—and the 14)silhouettes specific to 15)bullet bras only heightened the 16)headiness of the dream that all men might one day become James Bond or, at the very least, key holders to the local Playboy Club.
Deepening the tension between that fantasy and reality, Weiner has put Sterling Cooper, the fictional ad agency that employs the show’s characters, on the 17)old-school, 18)WASP side of the equation, letting them revel in their racism, sexism and 19)anti-Semitism. It was during that period that the creative revolution in advertising was taking off at agencies, where Jews and some women held leadership positions. When contemplating a new account, Draper asks his boss, Roger Sterling, “What do women want?” “Who cares?” is his answer.
When a Jewish department-store heiress comes to the agency in search of a fresh approach for her business, Sterling tries to find someone Jewish in the company to include in the meeting. “Have we ever hired any Jews?” he asks Draper. “Not 20)on my watch,” Draper says,
before adding, “You want me to run down to the 21)deli and grab somebody?”
Weiner chose advertising as a subject, he said, because “it’s a great way to talk about the image we have of ourselves, versus who we really are. And admen were the rock stars of that era, creative, cocky, anti-authority. They made a lot of money, and they lived hard.” It’s the universality more than the period that’s the 22)hook, of course. The people on this show struggle with the same 23)backbiting co-workers, unhappy marriages and ongoing search for the meaning of life that we do now. We’d like to think that things were simpler then, but what’s hard now has always been hard.
But as Arthur Gelb, a former managing editor of The New York Times, who was the paper’s chief cultural correspondent in the early ’60s, points out: “New York then was still to some extent a segregated city. It was glamorous, but it was glamorous for white people. You rarely, if ever, saw blacks in Times Square.”
The show’s design, the almost 24)fetishistically accurate sets and costumes, has been lauded from the start. But Weiner is 25)wary of 26)deifying the visual. “The design is not the star of the show,” he said as he led me through the
offices of Sterling Cooper. “I don’t want to be distracted by it”, he said. “People have old things and new things, and as someone who loves the period, it’s very hard to resist the idea of getting the perfect 1960 everything, but I want it to feel like a slice of life.”
Richard Plepler, co-president of HBO, who took over programming in June 2007, told me, “Mad Men is a magnificent show, and the only problem with it is it’s not on HBO.”
马修·维纳站在他那部热门剧集——《广告狂人》的片场，心情焦灼，准备好要拍一个特写镜头。他正在盯某场戏的彩排，那场戏在我看来演得还不错，应该说不止“不错”了，而维纳不时插话点评这一幕，本身亦很有看头。
“他应该是站着的，”他说到那位正坐着的男演员。“那东西应该放在桌子上”他指的是女演员之前放在地板上的一个折子式文件夹。“他们演过了头，太注意对方了”，他的声音很小，而且他看起来有点局促不安。“在下个镜头里，你会看到从舞台剧式的夸张转变为电影式的自然写实，”他告诉我说，“我要他们别太注意对方，这样才会感觉真实，更能表现那种敷衍的态度。不是电视剧那一套。”他的笑容乖张，“我这人很没耐性的。”
《广告狂人》的背景设定在上个世纪六十年代早期的纽约，这部有关麦迪逊大道上广告业界的剧集，HBO和Showtime电视台都不买账，被冷落数年后倒是被前景并不乐观的AMC电视台捡了回来。这部戏去年夏天首播，随即赢得了评论界的赞誉以及金球奖最佳剧集奖。
维纳制作的《广告狂人》，成功在于多方面，首先是叙述故事的手法。二十世纪五十年代，冷战格局加上麦卡锡时代，专制压抑、千人一面，而一场场社会和文化大变革则在六十年代即将上演。《广告狂人》的故事发生在六十年代早期，正处于两者的过渡期，这给维纳提供了一个空间，让剧中人物有着各种惊人的发展转变。同时，这也给他提供了挖掘那个年代“鼠帮式”浪漫的机会。彼时缭绕的烟圈，过量的马提尼氤氲的酒气——喝得高也好喝到吐也罢——还有那“子弹胸罩”特有的剪影，这一切让人更迷醉于那美梦——幻想所有男人某天都能变成詹姆士·邦德，或者至少能自如出入当地的“花花公子”俱乐部。
斯特林·库伯这家虚构的广告公司在雇用剧中的角色时站在老派、白人特权的立场上，完全沉湎在种族主义、性别歧视和反犹太主义的园囿中，维纳如此设定，为的是激化幻想和现实间的矛盾。广告界的创意革命正是在那个时代开始在各广告公司里萌芽，而犹太人和一些女性在这些公司里担当了领导职位。德雷珀在为一个新的广告文案苦思冥想时问他的老板罗杰·斯特林，“女人需要些什么？”“谁管呢？”他回答道。
一名犹太裔的百货公司女继承人来到这家广告公司，为她的生意寻求新的突破口。这时，斯特林想在公司里找一个犹太人职员来一起跟客户面谈。他问德雷珀：“我们曾经雇用过犹太人吗？”“据我所知，没有，” 德雷珀回答说，随后又加了一句，“要不要我到楼下熟食店给你抓个上来呀？”
维纳说，他选择广告界作为题材是因为“这能很好地表现出我们是怎样看自己的，而我们真实的自己又是怎样的。广告人是那个年代的明星，他们新点子多，心高气傲且反权威。他们赚得盆满钵满，但也苟且生存。”当然了，吸引观众的不止是那个年代的独有氛围，更主要的是人们普遍面对的那些永恒话题。剧中人物和我们现在的人一样，同样有一群勾心斗角的同事，同样在不幸的婚姻中挣扎，同样在不断地寻求人生的意义。我们想当然地认为以前的生活会简单一点，但其实，现在让我们痛苦的，以前也同样恼人。
然而，六十年代初《纽约时报》的首席文化记者，后来曾任该报执行编辑的亚瑟·格布指出：“当时的纽约在某种程度上仍是一个种族隔离的城市。这个城市光鲜迷人，但只是对白人而言。在时代广场，你基本看不到黑人。”
开播伊始，大家对该剧的美术设计赞誉有加（几近还原当年的场景和服装，可谓偏执至极）。但维纳却时刻提防将视觉效果奉若神明。“场景和服装的设计并不是这部剧的亮点，”他边说边领着我穿过斯特林·库伯公司的办公间，“我不想因此受到牵制”，他说道，“大家总有些旧的东西，也有新的东西，对于醉心那个年代的人来说，的确会很执著要求每件东西都精确还原六十年代的样子，但我还是想让它感觉起来像生活的一个生动片断。”
2007年6月份接管制作部门的HBO联合执行长理查德·布莱勒告诉我说：“《广告狂人》是一部杰出的剧集，什么都好，唯一不好的是没在HBO台放。”