Mad Men Withdrawal: City Slickers vs. Bumpkins
Posted by KAT in Green Acres, Mad Men, The Beverly HillbilliesNovember 30th, 2009, 03:54 PM
Ah, Mad Men, I still feel the lack!
I just finished reading The Daily Beast’s second Mad Men Postmortem - an interview with show creator Matthew Weiner. I particularly liked the bit of color he gave about the John Deere accident episode, “Guy Walks Into an Advertising Agency“:
There was a lot of focus on rural America at that time. It probably climaxes the next year when The Beverly Hillbillies comes on the air but Hootenanny and Hee Haw… that whole thing was a big part of commercial television for sure. John Deere had an ad that was like Green Acres, a city slicker on his new sit-down tractor. I loved the idea of telling a story about the fact the people who were from the country have perspective and respect for this machinery and the city slickers get drunk and then it’s just some stupid lawnmower and that they were going to come face to face with the fact that they had contempt for the country. I don’t know if any of that comes across but I tried to thematically and dramatically express that in the way that the British treat the Americans, which is basically that they’re a bunch of bumpkins, but at the same time they’re using their talents because they obviously knew how to do it better than them…
They really do put a lot of thought into each detail, don’t they? I wish I could watch the show with Matthew Weiner commentary on each week.
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