Mad Men's Ending, Movie Stars' Masculinity

How to End ‘Mad Men’? Matthew Weiner Gives Final Season Sneak Peek - One positive development during the writing process has been the presence of legendary Chinatown screenwriter Robert Towne, who joined Weiner’s team as a “sage advisor” late last year. “It’s like running a baseball team and someone says Babe Ruth wants to come one day a week and show people how to hit,” Weiner said. “He makes me work harder because I’m always trying to impress him. All of us are. You also know that if Robert Towne likes what you’re doing, then it’s probably good.” Weiner couldn't help but sounding a little sad when discussing the end of a series he's spent the last seven years of his life obsessing over.

“It’s hard for me not to imagine these characters anymore,” he said. “The loss is something I can’t really think about.” Source: www.thedailybeast.com

On whether the late ‘60s era is more challenging to portray: A lot of reasons that I started the show in 1960 was because it was so much the height of the ‘50s. I felt that there was a sort of constricted social environment based on manners that we’ve watched disintegrate and erode throughout the decade. The weirdest thing about getting to the late ‘60s is that it feels more like today. Other than saying “groovy” once in a while… there is not, in either watching the movies, or reading books, or reading interviews, or watching the news, it does not feel even slightly anachronistic. There is nothing to laugh at by the time you’re in the late ‘60s. It is very similar to right now, with the exception of technology.

The very first season someone said, ‘What’s Don Draper gonna think about Woodstock?’ Don Draper grew up in rural poverty during the Great Depression. I don’t know that this is going to be a particularly impressive event for him. He’s going to be happy that the music’s good, maybe. Source: tv.blog.imdb.net

Sam Shepard has been cast as Kyle Chandler's father in an upcoming Netflix drama. The still-untitled show, from Damages creators Todd A. Kessler, Daniel Zelman, and Glenn Kessler, is about a family of adult siblings whose secrets resurface when their black-sheep brother returns. Shepard will play the dad; Sissy Spacek will play the mom; and Chandler, Linda Cardellini, Norbert Leo Butz, and Ben Mendelsohn will play the kids, with Mendelsohn as said black sheep. Source: www.vulture.com

"In A Lonely Place" (1950) directed by Nicholas Ray, points not only to the emerging culture of psychology but also the emerging dramatic structure of middlebrow teleplays and an increased fascination with Method acting in Broadway and in Hollywood. This juxtaposition between the social necessity of self-presentation and the theatricality of acting as illustrated by Bogart's various mirror performances of Dixon Steele, suggests the continuing psycho-dramatic power of noir to explore, as Jay P. Telotte notes: "how film's seeming depths link up only with a false surface and can deprive us of any real experience of depth." According to James Gilbert, the preoccupation with masculinity in the 1950s in the US was particularly intense "because the period followed wartime self-confidence based upon the sacrifice and heroism of ordinary men." -"Post-World War II Masculinities in British and American Literature and Culture" (2013) by Stefan Horlacher and Kevin Floyd

If a movie actor, though, is someone who works in quick closeup detail, then a movie star is someone who creates a persona roomy enough to contain dozens of different roles. "High Sierra" and "The Maltese Falcon" had shown off Bogart the Actor; now "Casablanca" would confirm Bogart the Star.

Michael Curtiz' movie is first a metaphor for its age; set during the days before Pearl Harbor, it has Bogart representing a still uncommitted America, the desperate refugees in his club as symbols of every overrun country. "High Sierra" had given Bogie a stubborn sense of purpose; "The Maltese Falcon," a personal code. "Casablanca," though, added romantic self-sacrifice. It created a character who stuck his neck out "for nobody," who was "no good at being noble" — and yet who did risk, and was noble, when it counted. Who would eventually drop the cynical mask of indifference and do what was necessary, for the greater good. And it was that final heroic piece that turned Bogart into Bogie, and a true Hollywood icon. Source: www.nj.com

Kyle Chandler as Gary Hobson in "Everybody Goes To Rick's" episode from "Early Edition" (2000): Gary wakes up to get the newspaper and finds himself living in the past. It is 1929 and he is in an early business in the location of McGinty's. Gary tries to prevent the St Valentine's Day Massacre. "Everybody Comes to Rick's" was an American play written by Murray Burnett and Joan Allison in 1940, featuring the Cafe Americain in Casablanca owned by Rick Blaine. Eventually, Rick helps an idealistic Czech resistance fighter escape with the woman Rick loves. It was bought by Warner Brothers for $20,000. It was adapted for the movie "Casablanca" (1942), starring Humphrey Bogart as Rick Blaine.

Kyle Chandler: I don't place upon myself, "Oh, I'm going to be a movie star now." I don't even know what a movie star truly is, other than a movie star is someone in all the tabloids, and he's a great actor because he's a movie star!!! I don't know that I want to be a movie star in that sense. But if I can keep working with folks like this, and carry on in my career, and still have a family, and move on, I'll keep rolling along with the hits. There are some careers that I look at, but it's mostly for the longevity and the variety of work. I'm still learning. Each one of these is an acting class to me. I've got a long road to go. Source: www.aintitcool.com