The Mind Behind "Mad Men"

So much of Mad Men is about growing up, how that's all about what our relationships are to our parents and our children. Kindergarten and play dates have existed for a long time, but as wealthy people started raising their own children more, and as children didn't have to work all of the time, there was a shift to modernity that included a greater focus on child-rearing. It was huge in Victorian times. Even with the waves of infant mortality, there's Halloween and birthday parties and all of this stuff as children become more of a focus. By the early Sixties there was so much more attention that was allowed to be paid to children. They were the main focus on television, commercially, with the Doctor Spock books. And all of the child-rearing focus that went on in the United States was a really big part of the rebellion of the late Sixties.

That's interesting for Peggy, who gives up her baby and goes back to work. In that speech she gives in the season finale, she talks about losing a part of herself, but I don't think she's talking about the baby.
You know, that scene was something that my wife wrote, and when she gave it to me I thought, Don is going to say this when he's in California. And then I thought, no, it's female, Betty's going to say this before Don comes back to her. And then I thought, no, Peggy's going to say this. The thing about loss, yeah, it has nothing to do with the baby. Peggy had once been so in love with Pete — you look at the first season and she pulls his postcard off the door. But he treated her very badly and she had to deal with this baby the whole time on her own. So when he comes to her and tells her he loves her, that time for that had passed.

You know my original intention with Peggy was to tell this story about this woman gaining weight at work. And that stress of that, but also how it meant that she wouldn't be sexualized, so that she wouldn't have to deal with that shit — she could be one of the guys. And now the second season, she's ready to be one of the guys, but she's also got this horrible scar of having that baby.

Tell me about the Mad Men logo. I have this theory about Don's silhouette: you see him from the back, and he has his arm over the chair. And then you see him in one episode watching a foreign movie in that position, and it made me think, This is a show about watching people play roles, like in a movie.
Alan Taylor, who shot the pilot, his opening scene was the back of Don's head. I'm not sure if it was Wong Kar Wai who influenced him or what, but Alan Taylor is really into the backs of people's heads, even more than the fronts of their heads. The graphics people who did the opening titles, they're the ones who said this is the image. It's the iconography of Movie Hero or Leading Man, but Don Draper is a disaster inside. And that's what that pose was about and that's what the show was about. You'll notice that in "The Jet Set" when Don's figuring out who he really is out in California, there's a shot that's a mirror image of that iconography, except Don is naked, sitting on the couch.