AMC
Don Draper lived on hard drives for half a decade before anybody paid him any notice.
In 1999, Matthew Weiner, then an unfulfilled writer on CBS' Ted Danson sitcom Becker, spent his every off-hour doing research on the 1960s: what people wore, how they decorated their offices, what they ate and drank (and smoked, and drank some more).
Then, over six days in the spring of 2001, he sketched out his vision for a show about the staff of a boutique advertising agency - Sterling Cooper - and its stylishly debauched head pitchman. Nobody bought the script, but it landed Weiner a 45-minute call from David Chase, who hired him as a writer on HBO's The Sopranos.
Weiner's Madison Avenue opus sat in a drawer for another three years - until a cable network with zero experience in original scripted programming (formerly American Movie Classics) stepped in and self-financed a pilot. Today, nine years later, Mad Men, which on April 5 begins its final seven episodes, is a pop cultural The Wire Seasons 1-5 dvd australia phenomenon that not only has made stars out of its cast of unknowns - Jon Hamm, Christina Hendricks, January Jones, Vincent Kartheiser, Elisabeth Moss and John Slattery - but also transformed AMC into one of the most influential networks on the dial and set off cable TV's gold rush for scripted dramas.
Jamie Trueblood/AMCMatthew Weiner on set with Jon Hamm.
'WHO THE F- IS AMC?'
In 2001, Matthew Weiner writes his first Mad Men script, which goes nowhere until 2005, when AMC decides to shop for its first original scripted series.
Matthew Weiner (creator) I finished the script and sent it to my agents. They didn't read it for three or four months. (They're not my agents anymore.) I was advised not to send it anywhere because that was at a time when there were big overall deals for comedy writers. People would pay for the anticipation of what your project would be, and actually having one was going to hurt you. I kept trying to get into HBO, but I never got a meeting. And I met with FX, which Kevin Reilly was running at that time. He talked to me about making it into a half‑hour. Then people started talking to me about a feature. It was my manager's assistant who gave AMC the script. That's who they were pawned off on.
Rob Sorcher (former executive vp programming and production, AMC) I'd relocated to the East Coast, and I'm working at this network, AMC, that has a collection of shit-ass movies. It's like the lesser TCM, and I'm supposed to turn it into something. [What the network needed was] a show for cable operator retention. You want something that can't be replicated elsewhere - like aSopranos - because if you have a signature show, then you won't be dropped [by cable operators]. So your strategy becomes: Let's go for quality. But we have no money. So I hire Christina Wayne, who's never done a thing in her life in terms of an executive.
Christina Wayne (former senior vp scripted programming, AMC) Years earlier, I'd wanted to option Revolutionary Road [Richard Yates' novel about suburbia in the 1960s]. But I was a nobody screenwriter, and [Yates' estate] held out for bigger fish, which they got with Sam Mendes. So when I read [the Mad Men script], it resonated with me. This was a way to do Revolutionary Road, week in, week out. When we had lunch with Matt for the first time, I gave him the book. He called me after and said, "Thank God I'd never read this because I never would have written Mad Men."
Weiner [My agents] were like, "You're going to be coming off The Sopranos. I know you love this project, but don't go [to AMC]. It's really low status, no money, and even if they do it, they've never made a show before, and you don't want to be their first one."
Sorcher Every possible reason on paper why this should not work was cited: It's super slow, it's [about] advertising, everybody smokes, everybody's unlikable and it's period. We couldn't sell it.
Jeremy Elice (former vp original programming, AMC) We sent it out looking for potential partners and got some nice responses, but generally speaking it was, "Yeah, not for us," and "Who the f- is AMC?"
Wayne So we self-financed the whole thing ourselves. The pilot cost $3.3 million, and we did it in New York in the downtime when Sopranos was [on hiatus]. We used all of their crew.
JANUARY JONES AS