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).

Mad Men's symbolism, Homefront's era

Season seven of Mad Men begins with a pitch. Freddy Rumsen, played by Joel Murray, looks straight into the camera. "Are you ready?" he says. "Because I want you to pay attention. This is the beginning of something. Do you have time to improve your life? Do you have exactly thirty seconds to hear from Accutron watches?" Over the course of six seasons, Mad Men has turned into a show about social and cultural transformation, about our continued obsession with the sixties, about consumerism and the collapsing nuclear family, about the decline of New York and the rise of Los Angeles. But the seventh season begins with a return to the original subject: advertising. And that is how we know Mad Men will end in tragedy. In Mad Men, advertising and tragedy are the same.

At the center of Mad Men has always been Don's gift for the campaign; his deep psychological problems, whatever they may be, fed his enormous talent. The nature of that talent was a fundamental mystery — clients paid for it, everybody else wanted to figure it out.

Unlike other advertising men onscreen, Don isn't Cary Grant's louche comedian in North by Northwest or Richard E. Grant's monster in How to Get Ahead in Advertising. The episode ends with Don literally out in the cold, overlooking a crumbling New York from his balcony. (The show's penchant for heavy-handed symbolism is becoming a bit too heavy.) This is the fate that was always waiting for him. This is the fate that awaits anyone who lives by figuring out the nature of the moment. Eventually, the moment passes. Source: www.esquire.com

When Homefront (ABC) co-creator and executive producer Lynn Marie Latham finished casting Kyle Chandler as Jeff Metcalf in her period piece, she instructed him to rent some Cary Grant movies from the '40s. "I wanted Kyle to get a feel for the language and style of those times," Latham says. "I also wanted him to get a sense of the timing of Cary Grant and that whole era, because he impressed me as someone who could play not only drama but playful humor."It wasn't really necessary. "Cary Grant, Jimmy Stewart, Clark Gable - there was a whole world there from the '40s that I grew up watching," says Chandler. "It opened up that world to play with inside my head, and it was one of the main things that made me interested in acting."

If Chandler already had a running start on capturing the Jeff that Latham had in mind, the pairing of his aspiring major leaguer with Tammy Lauren's sassy would-be actress, Ginger, demanded that the audience recognize them as a breakout TV couple. -"Playing a '40s-era leading man just comes naturally for Homefront's Kyle Chandler" - The Cincinnati Enquirer (1993)

Winning the Home Front: When peace finally dawned, the world awoke to lost innocence. A world-weary seriousness, further fueled by growing cold-war uncertainty, seeped into literature, music, and film, rivaling the flag-waving, stiff-upper-lip stoicism that dominated the home-front during the war. Though sanitized combat pictures and happy-go-lucky comedies were popular with post-war moviegoers, a new breed of darker, grittier films soon rivaled them at the box-office. Dubbed film noir for their shadowy imagery as well as the darkness of their plots and characters, these films reflected the cynicism and doubt that colored the post-war world. Soon, for every courageous Marine storming the beach on the silver screen, there was a hardboiled private eye stumbling through a grim city of shadows. Source: library.umkc.edu

Noiring L.A.: Double Indemnity, Black Dahlia, and the Fears of Postwar America: Los Angeles media saturated the public consciousness with lurid stories about The Black Dahlia case. Despite the fact the city witnessed only 70 to 80 murders a year, with five newspapers and the blare of the radio, the media promoted an image of Los Angeles that reinforced those of early film noir. Described in various accounts as imaginative, flighty, given to prevarication, and possibly a habitual liar, the unsupervised Hollywood hopeful symbolized the dangers of the postwar city and its corrupting influence. To be fair, these kinds of fears originated decades earlier as the nation's industrialization in the late 19th century spurred increasing immigration from abroad and internal migration to cities. With the rise of Hollywood in the 1920s and 1930s, along with the various industries that expanded in the same period, Los Angeles emerged as an entrepot for young women intent on living the California dream, away from the watchful eyes of patriarchal families. The discovery of her body in Leimert Park fit neatly into noir sensibilities. Source: www.kcet.org

Mia Kirshner at Showtime's farewell party for "The L Word" in West Hollywood, California

Mia Kirshner has been cast in a recurring role on Netflix's new psychological thriller. The actress - known for playing Elizabeth Short in The Black Dahlia and the self-absorbed Jenny Schecter in The L Word from 2004 to 2009 - becomes the latest star to join the original series from the creators of Damages.

Friday Night Lights star Kyle Chandler, Mad Men actress Linda Cardellini and Oscar winner Sissy Spacek were previously cast.

Meanwhile, Revolution's Waleed Zuaiter has signed up for the role of Major Eckhardt, an authority figure having an affair with Cardellini's character, reports Deadline. The untitled show will focus on a family torn apart by secrets after the black sheep oldest brother returns home. Source: www.digitalspy.co.uk

Kyle Chandler was a surprise Emmy winner for best actor for the last season of Texas football drama "Friday Night Lights," blocking odds-on favorites among his fellow nominees. "I knew for a fact I would not be standing here. I did not write anything and now I'm starting to worry," said Chandler, who beat out frontrunners Jon Hamm of "Mad Men" and Steve Buscemi of "Boardwalk Empire." Source: wonderwall.msn.com

Rob Lowe's 'Love Life' tidbits, Kyle Chandler: Lowe's rival in 'The Lyons Den'

“There’s this unbelievable bias and prejudice against quote-unquote good-looking people, that they can’t be in pain or they can’t have rough lives or be deep or interesting.” —Rob Lowe on the Problems With Being Pretty Source: www.nytimes.com

Rob Lowe’s second memoir, 'Love Life,' is more notable for what isn’t there than what is. For instance, there’s no mention in the just-published book of the infamous sex tape he filmed with an underage teen, the nanny lawsuits, or if he ever got anything in return for sending a nude photo of himself wrapped in a toy snake to Andy Warhol.

What Rob Lowe, now 50, does want you to know, however, is that he’s older and wiser and loves his family — especially his wife, Sheryl — very, very much. At times, he seems a little bit like his character Chris Traeger from 'Parks and Recreation': buoyantly optimistic with a belief that hard work and dedication are the ultimate determinants for success. Still, there are plenty of anecdotes from the 259-page memoir that Lowe fans will enjoy, including why he turned down 'Grey's Anatomy' and behind-the-scenes tales from the set of the short-lived 'Lyons Den'.

1. In order to fit in with the other kids, a teenage Rob Lowe bought a pipe and pretended to smoke pot. It was his first real attempt at acting.

2. He learned that a “young, successful actress” he was dating was also sleeping with Warren Beatty ... from Warren Beatty.

Lowe, who was about to break out with 'The Outsiders,' was being cuckolded by someone far more famous than he was at the time. This unnamed young love interest apparently reminded Beatty of his onetime sweetheart Natalie Wood ... who had been cuckolding a pre–Splendor in the Grass–fame Beatty by simultaneously sleeping with Frank Sinatra. Oh, the parallels!

3. Being a regular at Lakers games informed Lowe’s “transgendered Bee Gee” look in Behind the Candelabra. Lowe based his look on shiny, plastic-looking guys he used to see courtside. It was such a success that, during the shoot, Matt Damon couldn’t look at him without busting a gut.

4. After Jewel filmed a kissing scene with Rob in The Lyons’ Den, she wiped the back of her hands across her lips in disgust. After seeing Jewel’s performance in Ang Lee’s Ride With the Devil, he convinced the studio to hire her as a love interest for a four-episode arc in The Lyons’ Den, his flailing NBC legal drama. However, when shooting a climactic make-out scene, Jewel brought her boyfriend, an iconic rodeo champ, to the set, and kept trying to get out of macking with Lowe. She eventually acquiesced, but not without a public display of discomfort.

5. Ryan Murphy wanted Lowe to star in Nip/Tuck. Over lunch after the fact, Murphy told Lowe that he’d written the part of Dr. Christian Troy with Lowe in mind. But since Ryan Murphy wasn’t yet “Ryan Murphy,” Lowe’s agents never even showed him the script.

6. CBS honcho Les Moonves talked Rob Lowe out of taking the lead role in Grey’s Anatomy. In 2004, Lowe was deciding between headlining CBS drama Dr. Vegas and taking the part of Dr. Derek Shepherd on Grey’s Anatomy (which would eventually be taken by Patrick Dempsey). Even though Lowe thought that Grey’s had the better script, he listened to Moonves, who was arguing that ABC hadn’t launched a successful new drama in more than a decade and that Grey’s wouldn’t be any different. Dr. Vegas lasted one season.

7. Rashida Jones calls him a “benevolent narcissist.” Well, it's better than “benevolent dictator.”

8. He went on a date with Madonna at the Palladium in New York. Madonna had just released Like a Virgin and he had just wrapped up St. Elmo’s Fire. They were sitting in the VIP area when she said she wanted to go dance in the crowd. Rob thought she was nuts and didn’t go. She told him, “I’m just not going to let success fuck up my fun.” Source: www.vulture.com

THE LYON'S DEN: "At the time NBC was the best network on TV. I felt like home after so many years on 'The West Wing'. So I read 'The Lyon's Den' and jumped on board. We set out to find a cast of great actors. I read with everyone we saw, culled the field down to two or three finalists for each role and selected them to bring before the studio; my criteria were clear: I want actors who can actually act, I don't want everyone to look like a model and above all [I want] charisma. Our final cast was: Kyle Chandler, Elizabeth Mitchell, David Krumholtz, Matt Craven and James Pickens Jr.

So on the last day, I invited my office rival, the future coach of 'Friday Night Lights', Kyle Chandler, to a final showdown. In it, he confronted me about secretly being on antipsychotic meds and my involvement in my mentor's death. I walked toward him with a smile, blithely confessed to the murder, then stabbed him to death with my steak knife. I then finished my meal, walked to the office balcony and committed suicide by throwing myself off. End of series." -"Love Life" (2014) by Rob Lowe

Following the demise of "Early Edition," Kyle Chandler tried his hand at other series, though none survived more than a season. He played Joan Cusack's love interest in the sitcom "What About Joan" (ABC, 2001) and worked against type as a heel lawyer in the Rob Lowe courtroom drama "The Lyon's Den" (NBC, 2003-04) named Grant Rashton who had an illicit love affair with Ariel Saxon (Elizabeth Mitchell).


Clip of Rob Lowe, Kyle Chandler and Elizabeth Mitchell in the 2nd episode of the 2003 show Lyon's Den.

Veronica Mars: An Original Mystery, Screwball & Noir Connection, Early Edition

Released earlier this month, the Veronica Mars movie was written and directed by show creator Rob Thomas (who also co-created another cult favorite series, Party Down). In the film, Veronica (played again by Kristen Bell) returns to her hometown of Neptune, California, years after the show’s conclusion to investigate a murder that her former flame, Logan Echolls (Jason Dohring), is accused of.

But while fans (or “Marshmallows”) eagerly wait to see if Veronica Mars will be getting the sequel treatment, they can already find out what happens next to the beloved private investigator. Picking up almost three months after the events of the movie, 'Veronica Mars: The Thousand Dollar Tan Line' (Amazon) is the first installment in an all-new original mystery book series. Co-written by Thomas and author Jennifer Graham, the novel finds Veronica back in Neptune, this time trying to solve a missing person’s case. And when a second girl with unexpected ties to Veronica’s past goes missing too, it’s up to Veronica to uncover the truth surrounding one of her most personal cases yet.

-My favorite crime writer is probably Ed Brubaker. He and Sean Philips put out a comic called Criminal that I re-read half a dozen times while working on Veronica. It’s not a mystery per se, but it is pure pulpy noir in the very best sense–full of antiheroes, bad decisions, lost causes, tortured pasts, haunting secrets, and grit, grit, grit. Anyone who’s into Veronica‘s darker genre nods should absolutely check it out. I also re-read a lot of classic hardboiled and noir material while I was working on the book–Raymond Chandler, Patricia Highsmith, Dashiell Hammett, Chester Himes, Micky Spillane. I wanted to make sure the cynical, hard-edged element of those writers took up some residence in my prose. And I’m a Gillian Flynn fan, too.

-If you were a private investigator, what’s the first mystery you’d try to solve?

-This question runs the risk of exposing me as a total ghoul, because I am a little bit obsessed with famous unsolved murders. Zodiac, the Boy in the Box, the Black Dahlia, the Axeman of New Orleans, the Cleveland Torso murders. The obvious Whitechapel legacy. But morbid curiosity aside, I’d like to believe I’d also put my skills towards exposing corruption and inequality. Neptune is a convenient microcosm, but there are a lot of Sheriff Lambs in the world. Source: popbytes.com

"Noir images, motifs, and characterizations appeared superimposed on the comedies. The clever and conniving woman in screwball was actually a comical sister of the self-serving seductress in noir. The screwball male, when portrayed as the object of the female's intentions, was oftentimes as hapless a figure as the doomed noir protagonist. There was a similarity in the complexity of plot construction. It became apparent that an undercurrent of cynicism ran like a continuum from the screwball comedies of the 1930s directly into the noir films of the 1940s. In 'Screwball Comedy: A Genre of Madcap Romance', Wes D. Gehring offers: In many ways -particularly female domination- screwball comedy of the 1930s and early 1940s anticipates the more sinister woman-as-predator film noir movies of the 1940s. One might even call screwball comedy an upbeat flipside of noir. In fact, the quasi-screwball comedy 'Thin Man' series might be seen as a bridge between the two genres, especially with the original novel being penned by Dashiell Hammett, also author of 'The Maltese Falcon' (1941), which became an early noir prototype." -"Screwball Comedy and Film Noir: Unexpected Connections" (2012) by Thomas C. Renzi

Screwball Comedies of the 1930's and 40's: "It Happened One Night" (1934) - The first true screwball comedy. The ultimate cover-up of a lovemaking scene in a romantic comedy occurs when the Walls of Jericho come down by choice of Gable and Colbert once the plot resolves in Ellie being freed of her marriage and knowing Peter wasn't out to get the reward money Ellie's father had out in finding her. Peter doesn't want the money and also confesses his love for Ellie. Let's also not forget the scene where Claudette Colbert shows her leg along a country road in order to get someone to stop and give her and Gable's character a lift. Even Colbert considered it a bit saucy doing that at the time (and it was all Frank Capra's idea!)--but showing leg fell within the Hays Code acceptability. Source: voices.yahoo.com

At times, "Early Edition" (1996-2000) is like a fairly tale. There is a certain sense of whimsy in the story, a sense of irony. People used to say Capra-esque. When asked how he would respond if he knew the newspaper headlines a day in advance, Kyle Chandler says with a smile: "The first thing I'd do is go to a convenience store and get a tall fountain drink and fill out some lotto tickets. And then... I would help people. I would like to believe that anyone with even the smallest conscience would want to help someone if they had access to the information that my character has." -The Free Lance Star ('Early Edition Delivers Moral Dilemma') & Insider Magazine (1996)

Kyle Chandler: "I enjoy the screwball comedy when it presents itself. I like opposites. When it's a serious scene, I like to find the comedy. We have very good writers [in 'Early Edition']. And the mixture of comedy and drama, it's a dream for me as an actor." -TVGen / Yahoo! Chat Session with Kyle Chandler and Alex Taub (1998)