LIGHTNING IN A BOTTLE
Creating a book on the ‘most influential’ show from television’s new Golden Age was a great privilege — and one of the most challenging projects I’ve taken on. Taschen wasn’t out for a money grab, but a brand builder, so the bar was pretty high on this labor-of-love. My ad agency stint from ’98–O5 won me the gig, and made watching and editing doubly resonant.
Mad Men was drowned in accolades, not only for its seductive depiction of Midcentury glamour — in fashion, interior design, and bygone lifestyles — but because Matt Weiner and Co. delivered some of the most finely crafted plotting, dialog, and character develoment in any medium. The show clearly needed more than just a picture book.
The limited edition, signed by Matt Weiner, also includes the complete scripts for all 92 episodes in seven volumes, nearly 4,000 pages in total.
Determining how to best distill more than 72 hours of tightly scripted, highly crafted television into a book — even with 1,OOO pages — proved as daunting as it sounds. And the show’s quality made it feel so important to do justice to the show and all the talented people who created it.
There weren’t many examples of books that approached what I envisioned this book should be. Taschen’s own single-film exploration of Billy Wilder’s Some Like It Hot and their Archives series (particularly the initial Stanley Kubrick volume) established the framework: everything in front of the camera ‘letterboxed’ against black; behind-the-scenes against white.
Stanley Kubrick outlined the thornier problem as well, and offered a way to solve it: by setting the bar really, really high (one of the few serious attempts at this type of editorial film-to-book translation I could discover). to capture the essence of the show, I just needed to rise to Kubrick’s expectations. No problem!
There weren’t many examples of books that approached what I envisioned this book should be. Taschen’s own single-film exploration of Billy Wilder’s Some Like It Hot and their Archives series (particularly the initial Stanley Kubrick volume) established the framework: everything in front of the camera ‘letterboxed’ against black; behind-the-scenes against white.
Stanley Kubrick outlined the thornier problem as well, and offered a way to solve it: by setting the bar really, really high (one of the few serious attempts at this type of editorial film-to-book translation I could discover). to capture the essence of the show, I just needed to rise to Kubrick’s expectations. No problem!
Knowing what to do and how to do it is a great starting point, but the task was still enormous. Unlike Kubrick’s single movie adaptation, fitting a multi-season TV series into a book — even two volumes spanning more than 1,OOO pages — required an exacting editorial lens to capture the show’s essentials:
– Memorable moments/scenes, including dialog, transitions and juxtapositions.
– Character development, ensuring including everything crucial to their arc.
– Visually stunning imagery, showcasing the sets, costumes, events and moments that inspired viewers worldwide.
It was our great fortune that Matt Weiner made himself available at key milestones — not only giving one of his most in-depth interviews as an exclusive for the book, but offering consistent insight, and arbitrating during the always-painful process of cutting to page count — even as each new season’s production was ramping up.
– Memorable moments/scenes, including dialog, transitions and juxtapositions.
– Character development, ensuring including everything crucial to their arc.
– Visually stunning imagery, showcasing the sets, costumes, events and moments that inspired viewers worldwide.
It was our great fortune that Matt Weiner made himself available at key milestones — not only giving one of his most in-depth interviews as an exclusive for the book, but offering consistent insight, and arbitrating during the always-painful process of cutting to page count — even as each new season’s production was ramping up.
The Man in the Gray Flannel Suit may or may not have been an influence on Don Draper, but Mad Men brought new attention to the Sixties: we repackaged Taschen’s All-American Ads with a more focused editorial approach, covering the decade’s key developments, much like the show, as witnessed from the corner offices on Madison Avenue.
Unlike the detective work often required to find those old chestnuts, ‘never-before-seen images and artifacts,’ access to the archives of a major ongoing production proved more like drinking from a firehose — with hundreds of thousands of unit photographs, all the special photography from each season, and personal photos generously offered by cast and crew to choose from.
Writers and lead creatives gave interviews to supplement the behind-the-scenes throughline, in Matt Weiner’s own words. While this ‘exclusive new content’ is a major selling point for fans of the show, there was less ground broken from a design or editorial perspective.
I learned early on that it is crucial a book’s contents satisfy not only the target consumer looking for the ‘greatest hits,’ but the deep cuts which will surprise even industry insiders — often superfans themselves. One of the best parts of my job is that deep dive. Even if I can’t become an expert on a given subject, it’s very satisfying.
Writers and lead creatives gave interviews to supplement the behind-the-scenes throughline, in Matt Weiner’s own words. While this ‘exclusive new content’ is a major selling point for fans of the show, there was less ground broken from a design or editorial perspective.
I learned early on that it is crucial a book’s contents satisfy not only the target consumer looking for the ‘greatest hits,’ but the deep cuts which will surprise even industry insiders — often superfans themselves. One of the best parts of my job is that deep dive. Even if I can’t become an expert on a given subject, it’s very satisfying.