Mad Men's theory (Jon Hamm), Kyle Chandler & Sheryl Lee (Twin Peaks), Capra's Lost Horizon

“Mad Men” launched its seventh and final season Sunday with “Time Zones,” an episode heavily laden with airplane imagery. When we first see Don Draper, he’s shaving in a plane’s lavatory before leggy wife Megan picks him up at the airport. “I fly a lot,” Don (Jon Hamm) later tells a TWA seat mate, played by guest star Neve Campbell (“Party of Five”). He and the lonely widow share a lengthy scene on a red-eye home to New York.


Back at Megan’s California pad, the TV plays the opening of Frank Capra’s 1937 film “Lost Horizon,” where plane crash survivors find themselves in the earthly paradise of Shangri La, a utopia that Don craves but can’t find in the real world.

Megan (Jessica Pare), who fell asleep on Don’s shoulder, wakes up and asks her husband what he’s watching. Don shuts off the television and acts like it’s nothing. But we know that nothing is nothing on “Mad Men,” a series that’s spawned more conspiracy theories than the Kennedy assassination. Creator Matthew Weiner, who wrote Sunday’s premiere, is notoriously deliberate when it comes to crafting the show. His penchant for detail and symbolism are catnip to obsessive fans who read between every line, scrutinize every frame and pick apart the show’s cryptic teasers, which are all about the airport this season.

In the spirit of wild speculation and over-analysis, I’ll feed the Internet another “Mad Men” theory: Don Draper dies in a plane crash. For a man who struggles mightily with duality, there would be a certain poetry to Don perishing 30,000 feet in the air, somewhere that’s neither here nor there — in limbo, where he’s lived much of his life. On a more literal note, it squares with the falling man image in the opening credits. Source: voices.suntimes.com

It turns out J.D. Salinger communicated cordially with several Hollywood producers during the peak of his career. Contrary to industry lore, the writer was also open to translating a few of his short stories to the bigscreen well after he published his magnum opus, “The Catcher in the Rye.” “The myth that he hated Hollywood and the movies is not true at all,” Salerno says. “He loved movies.” Salinger’s favorite picture was Frank Capra’s “Lost Horizon,” and his living room in Cornish, N.H., was a film aficionado’s den, with a projector and fresh popcorn, which he used to entertain his young amours. Source: variety.com

"Lost Horizon" first cut was nearly six hours long, and neither Capra nor the studio knew quite what to do about it. There was talk of releasing the film in two parts, but the idea was deemed impractical. Capra whittled it down to about three and a half hours for the first public preview at Santa Barbara's Granada Theatre (on November 22, 1936), but a disappointing reception led to more cuts and retakes, the last of which was shot on January 12, 1937.

Most of the exteriors on Stephen Goosson's lavish Shangri-La set, built on Columbia's Burbank Ranch smack up against the traffic and telephone poles of Hollywood Way, had to be shot at night, so that the background would not show (glass shots were used to create the illusion of a mountain setting).

Ronald Colman as Robert Conway and Jane Wyatt as Sondra in "Lost Horizon" (1937): Robert Conway's alacrity in accepting his role as head of the little kingdom in the original cut stemmed from his disenchantment with the inequity of Western society and its colonial life, but in the shortened versions seems to reflect merely a dislike for his culture's messiness and ungovernability One of the key artistic battlegrounds was the ending. In Hilton's book, Robert Conway turns his back on Shangri-La, becoming one of those who, in the author's memorable line, are "doomed to flee from wisdom and become a hero," but then changes his mind and sets out again to find it.

The preview version of the film ended with Conway struggling up a snowy hill as a glow on the horizon seems to guide him toward Shangri-La. That was deemed too indefinite a finale for a film with such doubtful box-office prospects, so Capra on January 12 shot another ending in which a haggard Conway finds Shangri-La, with Jane Wyatt beckoning him onward to the accompaniment of a montage of ringing bells.


That version was used in the film's opening engagements, but Riskin argued against such a soppy fade-out, and he and Capra prevailed on Columbia to let them recut it after the film had been playing for several weeks. The final ending dropped Wyatt and simply showed Conway looking toward Shangri-La, concluding with a shot of the lamasery and the orgasmic bell montage (a ringing bell would become Capra's trademark, ending several of his later pictures as well). Capra's problems with the editing of Lost Horizon were the subject of an expert postmortem that November by David 0. Selznick. -"Frank Capra: The Catastrophe of Success" (2011) by Joseph McBride

Capra was at the height of his game as a director with Lost Horizon. The film took more than two years to complete, and used what was (at the time) the largest set ever constructed in Hollywood. Ronald Colman is perfect as the world-worn English diplomat on a fast-track political career. Jane Wyatt is charming as his love interest and one of the caretakers of the valley. -Bill Hunt, The Digital Bits

As a drama, Lost Horizon relies on many of the conventions of the period: a man of action (Conway), a fugitive swindler (Barnard), a terminal cynic (Gloria), a buffoon (Lovett), an impulsive young man (George), a femme fatale (Sondra)… all the essential personalities for creating or continuing a castaway society. Rooted in the romantic action novel of the late nineteenth century, Hilton’s story raids the supernatural elements of Rider-Haggard’s She, or even H.G. Wells’ The Time Machine. -Lawrence Russell, Culture Court

"It is commonly assumed that Conway reaches Shangri-La in the film's last moments, or at least has reached a point where the entrance to the valley is in view- as indicated by an editing trope (Conway glancing off, followed by a shot of the railed archway seen earlier) commonly understood as representing a character's gaze and its object. However, when Conway experiences this vision, he is depicted as standing on a glacier. Even if we assume that Conway knows where he is (near in fact to Shangri-La), however there is no way of taking the point-of-view shot here literally, given its represented dimension. Any nearby glacier would be far below the archway entrance; Conway's "view" of the archway must be taken (at best) as a memory sparked by proximity. [So] the Shangri-La Conway "sees" in this last shot is, as if literally, his shadow, his projection, a memory that always walks on before him." -"Another Frank Capra" (1994) by Leland Poague

Silencio’s library features some of David Lynch’s favorite books: Crime & Punishment by Fyodor Dostoevsky, The Metamorphosis by Franz Kafka, The Art Spirit by Robert Henri, Name Above The Title by Frank Capra, and Anonymous Photographs by Robert Flynn Johnson. Source: welcometotwinpeaks.com

Laura Palmer’s murder was a MacGuffin of sorts: It was intended merely as an introduction to Twin Peaks. And that town itself represented a sort of thwarted and idealized past, one stuck in the facade of the 1950s, a great society that prided itself on its saddle shoes and fitted angora sweaters, where unspeakable acts occurred behind closed doors. What the show did was take the viewer inside the conscious and subconscious minds of those quirky denizens, giving us a saintly hero in the form of Cooper who would be tempted again and again with the easy lures of lust, power, and complacency.

[Sheryl Lee as Laura Palmer] Teenagers investigated the murder of their peers, biker gangs squared off as torch singers swayed in the half-darkness at boozy backwater bars, femme fatales ran their red lacquered nails over the backs of their oblivious lovers. Twin Peaks took our collective desires and dreams and ran them through the dark prism of classic film noir. It’s Laura’s best friend, Donna Hayward (Lara Flynn Boyle) who says it best: “It’s like I’m having the most beautiful dream… and the most terrible nightmare, all at once.” Source: www.buzzfeed.com

Sheryl Lee as Angelica Chaste and Kyle Chandler as Tony Greco in "Angel's Dance" (1999) directed by David L. Corley

Crazy like a fox, Angel (Sheryl Lee) proves a worthy adversary for Rossellini (James Belushi) and a dangerous love interest for Tony (Kyle Chandler). Yes, it's yet another darkly comic romp about philosophical hitmen set somewhere between Quentin Tarantino-ville and David Lynch country. Amusingly, Angel's insanity gives her an advantage... In this existential comedy of manners, merrily enacted by Belushi and Lee, murder becomes her emancipation. Source: movies.tvguide.com


Sheryl Lee and Kyle Chandler in an erotic scene from "Angel's Dance" (1999). "Sheryl Lee is game as usual, though director David L. Corley’s script could have lavished far more detail and invention on what turns out to be a rather abrupt, one-dimensional transition to La Femme Nikita (complete with spike heels and blond wig). A more droll actor than Belushi might have better exploited potential of film’s most original character conceit, though guru-of-mayhem Rosellini still provides some eccentric laughs. Kyle Chandler is appropriately broody." Source: variety.com

Kyle Chandler: "As an actor, I'm able to play all the characters of life."

"I'm not gay, and I'm not a superhero. I'm able to leave Don Draper at work. I'm quite dissimilar from him in real life." -Jon Hamm

"I had this dream of intense love. I know it sounds corny, but I bought a bottle of wine and some candles, went to her place, and told her I couldn't live without her." -Kyle Chandler on proposing her wife Kathryn.

"I don't need to be married, but I feel married. I have a lady, she's a great lady. I love her a lot, she loves me. We're on the same page. Whenever that day happens when we're not on the same page we'll move forward with it." -Jon Hamm (on his long-term relationship with Jennifer Westfeldt since 1998).