nwp - mad men season 5

Marie (53:00): "Well, there's a lot of things that we look for. A good sample is really important, I don't want to discount that. But a sample, in our opinion, isn't really a good sample in everyone's opinion. To us, it has to be a well-written script that has to say something unusual that we haven't read before. We look for a certain level of feeling and emotion in the storytelling that's deeper than just, 'Well, I set up this problem here, and it's something everyone can relate to and we're going to solve it this way at the end.' We definitely look for people that have an interesting background. You know, when you're putting together a room you want different voices and you want people to bring their personal stories. At least on this show - actually all of the shows we've worked on, including "Star Trek" - you want people who-- you know, the story comes out of the writer's individual experience. It's 'write what you know.' So we always look for someone who's got a background that's different than the other writers on the show, someone who might have a different point of view, you know, someone who's not afraid to talk about the dirty secrets in their closet, or what hurts them, or what keeps them up at night." Andre: "Someone who's broken." "Yeah. (laughs) Andre always says that writers are the most damaged people, (54:07) and, you know, there's a fine line because you don't want someone who is so damaged that they can't function in a group. Because a big part of it is playing well with others. But we always look for people that, you know--" Matt: "And writing is more important than being broken. The intersection of those two things, you know - all the samples come from broken people, but only some of them can write." Marie: Right. Exactly. Andre: And only some of them can actually be in a room, and be adults in that room, and that's a very important quality. (54:40) ----- Matt (56:03): What I always resent is this sort of ivory tower proclamation-- depiction of us. All of the stuff that I stand up for - all the battles I have fought with the network and the studio, and won, were all about making the show more popular and more financially successful. And I've been right on a lot of them. And I didn't invent them. I was literally, like-- I remember saying to AMC "I've been in TV longer than you have, and this is the way HBO did it - I'm positive. This is what David Chase did. And keeping it a secret - not telling people that Don was married when we were promoting the pilot was going to mean that anybody who saw the pilot would go and tell people "Oh my God, I saw this amazing story." So, those are totally counterintuitive things, but I was on the Sopranos - I saw, like-- it takes a long time, but people really, really start to have a cult-like interest in it. And use yourself - don't try to second-guess the world. But rather than even talking about that... I think it's - Creative people, whether they like it or not, use their lives in their work. There's nowhere else to go. One of the great things about having 13 interesting people in there is that we've got 13 interesting lives. And we believe in the specific. So - the specific nature of, like, can I turn my experience with creating a TV show - can I turn my experience of being a staff writer into something that happens in the ad agency? Yeah. I mean, that's why I picked it. I've never worked in advertising, my father is a neuroscientist, I'm from Hancock Park, I'm Jewish - I mean, there's nothing that intersects with this show. And so what is great - and probably mysterious and intimidating to people on the outside - is that this is all made up. And the great thing about is that you're looking at our finished work, and it's a very arduous process that involves getting rid of a lot of crappy stuff. And you're hopefully seeing the best of what we have." (58:27)