The Mind Behind "Mad Men"

Season Two of TV's hottest show ended with Betty pregnant and Don taking off for L.A. as Cuba took aim at the U.S. So where will Mad Men go next? Creator Matthew Weiner tells Rolling Stone about Season Three and the inspirations behind the show's twists and turns. Plus, check out the rest of the shows hitting the small screen during Cable's Bold Summer.

You've talked about how Season Two took place during this bubble of optimism and prosperity — that 1962 was Camelot. And then, during the season finale, the Cuban Missile Crisis bursts that bubble. Is this the beginning of some kind of great unraveling for Don and Betty?
Yeah, it was Camelot, but we didn't know it at the time. Here's what our cultural history has done with that year: Hairspray, Animal House and American Graffiti were all set in 1962. Our cultural history sees that year as this innocent time, right before the JFK assassination. Aside from the assassination, the Cuban Missile Crisis was the defining moment of the Sixties. There was a cultural realization of mortality. The response I got from people who saw the show, was that people remembered how overwhelming it was. I do a lot of revisionist history in the show where I go back and talk to people who were there. You find out that the individual experiences of what's going on in history are very different from the way history is told, to the point that people actually remember details wrong. It really was a time of panic. Some people responded to it like, "I don't care, there's nothing I can do about it." And other people were like, "Oh my God, we need more canned food." And some people were like, "The world's gonna end tomorrow, so let's just live it up." So for Don and Betty, it's like, here's this solar eclipse, the rules don't apply, so I'm going to finally tell the truth for this moment in time. And on a show like this where people never really get to talk to each other in a direct way, it was a great device.

How would you characterize how the culture of the Sixties changed after the Cuban Missile Crisis and JFK's assassination?
I'm still figuring that out. I'm not going to give a history lesson. I look at it like this: What are you going to say about what happened on September 11? We don't even know what impact it's had on us yet. All I know is that I expected everyone to be drawn back to the substance of life, and to cherish their existence, and instead we got a 10-year shopping boom. I guess at the end of the day, the historical perspective of the show is that September 11 was a devastating moment, but if you were going through a divorce at that time, that's what you're going to remember.

Right, like Betty in the season finale. The world is ending, and all she can think about is how she's going to deal with being pregnant.
Yeah, when she and Francine are in the beauty parlor, talking about getting an abortion, everyone else is talking about the Cuban Missile Crisis, and Betty's like, I don't care, I have a real problem. I think personal problems always supersede everything else. But I do feel like all of that helped her sleep with that man in that bar. She's pregnant, and for someone who's dealing with the reality of birth control back then, being pregnant actually makes her somewhat free. Her husband has cheated on her and now wants her back. And she's without her kids. And the world is coming to an end. And she's drunk. It's a perfect storm.