September 22, 2015
By Eddie Pipkin
I was a big fan of the AMC series Mad Men, which focused on the characters in a Madison Avenue advertising agency during the 1960’s. One of the most discussed and beloved aspects of the show was the way it captured the vibe of that era–how it looked and sounded–the language, the fashions, the style. It was the singular vision of one creative mind, Matthew Weiner, and as the show reached the conclusion of its multi-season run a couple of months ago, Weiner and the show he brought to such exquisite life were the subject of a long profile by James Poniewosik of Time Magazine.
One of the passages from the article focused on Weiner’s legendary attention to the most miniscule of details:
It’s partly about verisimilitude, yes. Weiner, and thus his staff, are fixated on nailing the details to a granular level. There aren’t just vintage Selectric typewriters on set: If you see a stack of typewritten pages on a desk, those have been typed—not printed on a computer, but typed, even the pages stacked underneath. The theory is: Even if the audience never sees it, the actors will. The Rolodexes are filled with actual vintage cards with KLondike-5-style numbers. (The production department has been an excellent customer for L.A.’s vintage shops, not to mention Craigslist and eBay.) When fruit bowls were stocked, Weiner vetted the apples and bananas—because the fruit at the time was smaller than today’s hypertrophied produce. Actresses were discouraged from working out too intensely, because the 1960s had some meat on its bones.
It is an attentiveness that seems almost over-the-top, yet in ministry as in Emmy Award winning entertainment, our attention to detail can make a major difference in what people co