"Mad Men" Creator Matthew Weiner's

"Mad Men" Creator Matthew Weiner's Reassuring Life Advice For Struggling Artists | Fast Company | Business + Innovation
28/07/2015 12:03
"MAD MEN" CREATOR MATTHEW WEINER'S

REASSURING LIFE ADVICE FOR STRUGGLING
ARTISTS
I remember studying Samuel Taylor Coleridge's poem "Kubla Khan" in high school.
According to Coleridge, upon waking from a deep, opium-induced reverie, he recalled
a vision and immediately wrote the 54 famous lines. But when we started doing the
poetic analysis, it became clear that there was no way this poem came out all at once.
It has this amazing structure. We learned from letters and notes that had been
discovered that it was likely Coleridge had not only worked on "Kubla Khan" for
several months, but that he also sent it to friends for feedback.
Artists frequently hide the steps that lead to their
masterpieces. They want their work and their
career to be shrouded in the mystery that it all
came out at once. Its called hiding the
brushstrokes, and those who do it are doing a
disservice to people who admire their work and
seek to emulate them. If you dont get to see the
notes, the rewrites, and the steps, its easy to look
at a finished product and be under the illusion
that it just came pouring out of someones head
like that. People who are young, or still struggling,
can get easily discouraged, because they cant do it
like they thought it was done. An artwork is a
finished product, and it should be, but I always
swore to myself that I would not hide my
brushstrokes.
Excerpted from Getting There: A Book of

Mentors, by Gillian Zoe Segal. Published
by Abrams Image. 2015 Gillian Zoe
Segal.
Writers were revered in my home and I wanted to be one since I was a kid, but when I
went to college, I could not get into a writing class. I went to Wesleyan, a very small
liberal arts school. The classes had only 12 to 15 people, and you had to submit writing
samples to get in. Mine, apparently, were just not good enough. I was rejected from
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every writing class. I ended up convincing an English teacher to do a one-on-one

independent poetry study with me. When I finished my thesis, I was extremely proud
and wanted others to see it. I gave it to a humanities professor and he invited me to
his house to read the work out loud. After the first poem, he told me to get out a pen
and take notes. He began, "The infantile use of . . . The puerile . . . The childish use of .
. . The clich awkwardness . . . " It was one humiliating cruelty after the next. And I
had to write these insults down myself. I literally went through hours of this, poem
after poem. He finally leaned over to me and said, "I think you know that you are not
a poet." I said, "I was not aware of that."
While being battered always hurts, an important survival mechanism Ive acquired
over the years is to both thrive on rejection and hold on to compliments. Rejection
enrages me, but that "Ill show you!" feeling is an extremely powerful motivator. Im
at a point now where Im afraid that if I lose it Ill stop working. On the flip side,
theres nothing like a meaningful compliment from someone you respect. In my youth
I was a miserable student and rarely did my homework. My fourth grade teacher once
pulled me aside and let me have it. She said, "Talking to you is like talking down the
drain; you dont hear anything. You think you are going to make it through the rest of
your life because you are charming. You think you dont have to do all the workbut
you do." I remember looking up at her after this tirade and saying, "You think Im
charming?"
After college, I attended film school at the University of
Southern California, where I finally started doing some
"Rejection enrages me, but that

"Ill show you!" feeling is an
extremely powerful motivator."
narrative writing. There were contests for the films that

the school would actually make, and my material was never selected. I finally said, "I
am going to make a documentary," and made one about the paparazzi. It stood out,
and I became known for my editing skills and sense of humor. Upon graduation, I set
up meetings everywhere in the hopes of getting a job. In three months I got nothing. I
couldnt even get a meeting with an agent.
So for the next three years I stayed home and wrote spec scripts. My friends had day
jobs, but I didnt. My wife, Linda, worked hard as an architect and supported us. I
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attempted to shop my material around, but nothing sold. I got very bitter, seeing
people I didnt think deserved it succeed. It was a dark time. Show business looked so
impenetrable that I eventually stopped writing. I began watching TV all day and lying
about it. My mother would call me to drive my brother-in-law to the airport. Thats
the kind of crap I was doing instead of being a writer. I felt like the most useless,
worthless person in the world.
Then one day I saw the low-budget movie Clerks. It inspired me to get off my ass and
make my own independent film: a small, quirky comedy where I played myselfa
failing screenwriter. I used my wife, my apartment, my carbasically everything I
could to finish the film. Making that movie was a transformational experience. It had
trouble getting into festivals and never sold, but I had set out to do something and
had gotten it done.
"It was my first paying job in
show business and I was 30."
A friend of mine from college had a pilot in the works

that needed punch-up. Punch-up is a bunch of comedy
writers sitting around the room making a script funnier. I didnt even know there was
such a job, but I got to drive onto the Warner Bros. lot and sit in this room with all
these professional writers. It turned out that I was pretty good at it. Everything I said
was included in the script, and that felt great. The showrunner came up to me
afterwards and offered me $600 if I could stay through the end of the pilot. I was like,
"Oh, my God. Yes. Ill be here." I wouldve done it for free just to be able to drive onto
the lot again. That show quickly went off the air, but word had gotten out that I was
funny. Another showrunner took me to lunch and hired me for his show. One job
leads to another, but you have to start somewhere. It was my first paying job in show
business and I was 30.
Comedy hours are longliterally 14-hour days, sometimes seven days a week. But I
always wanted to create my own show, so I started researching my "advertising
project" (Mad Men) in my spare time. It was like having a mistress. I worked on it at
night or during my off-hours when I was not with my family. I paid people to do
research, inundated myself with material, and even hired a writers assistant to
dictate to because I was too tired to type (it also freed my imagination). When I
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finished the script, I felt like it was something special.

I sent it off to my agent and pitched it to everyone I could. I literally carried it in my
bag wherever I went in case I ran into someone who might be useful. I wasnt able to
get meetings at the big networks, but I pitched it to small production companies.
From them, I heard things like, "You dont know what youre doing." "Are you aware
of how uncommercial this is?" "Are you pulling our leg?" But, honestly, the most
stinging responses I heard were along the lines of, "This is one of the most beautiful,
well-executed, exciting things Ive ever read, but Im afraid that we just dont do this
kind of show." Those comments made me feel as if I were alone in the universe.
One person my agent sent Mad Men to was David Chase, the creator of The Sopranos.
All I wanted was for him to read it and maybe godfather it into HBO, but he liked it so
much he decided to hire me. He said, "Even if I fire you, Im going to help you make
this." And he actually gave it to HBO, but they passed because they didnt want to do a
period piece.
Behind the scenes of Mad Men, season 2, Christina Hendricks and Matt WeinerPhoto: Carin Baer, courtesy
of AMC
Obviously, I continued to pitch Mad Men everywhere. Showtime, Lionsgate, Sony, FX

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all of them passed. Mad Men had been bouncing around town for about four years
and nobody wants something that has been rejected by everybody.
But then along came AMC. They were trying to make a splash and wanted to do
something new. They were also interested in making a show they wanted to watch,
which is really the secret of success in everything artistic. They basically said, "We
love this thing and want to do it." I was so excitedbut at that time no one thought
AMC was, in showbiz terms, a "somebody." Everybody felt sorry for me. I cant even
tell you the pity I got. It was as if I were taking my project and screening it in
someones basement. No one even knew that channel. But AMC gave me complete
creative control and all I remember thinking was, Im going to live my dream.
It took seven years from the time I wrote Mad Men until it finally got on the screen. I
lived every day with that script as if it were going to happen tomorrow. Thats the faith
you have to have.
Hollywood is tough, but I do believe that if you are truly
talented, get your material out there, put up with the
"You cant set a clock for

yourself. If you do, you are not a
writer."
rejection, and dont set a time limit for yourself, someone

will notice you.
The most defeatist thing I hear is, "Im going to give it a couple of years." You cant set
a clock for yourself. If you do, you are not a writer. You should want it so badly that
you dont have a choice. You have to commit for the long haul. Theres no shame in
being a starving artist. Get a day job, but dont get too good at it. It will take you away
from your writing.
The greatest regret I have is that, early in my career, I showed myself such cruelty for
not having accomplished anything significant. I spent so much time trying to write,
but was paralyzed by how behind I felt. Many years later I realized that if I had
written only a couple of pages a day, I wouldve written 500 pages at the end of a year
(and thats not even working weekends). Any contribution you make on a daily basis
is fantastic. I still happen to write almost everything at once, but I now cut myself
slack on all of the thinking and procrastination time I use. I know that its all part of
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my creative process.
Excerpted from Getting There: A Book of Mentors, by Gillian Zoe Segal. Published
by Abrams Image. 2015 Gillian Zoe Segal.
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"Mad Men" Creator Matthew Weiner's Reassuring Life Advice For Struggling Artists | Fast Company | Business + Innovation