Visual artist and photographer Eli Rezkallah has turned the tables on some of the most nauseatingly-sexist (and 100% real) midcentury ads in his latest project, In a parallel universe.
He writes:
Last Thanksgiving, I overheard my uncles talk about how women are better off cooking, taking care of the kitchen, and fulfilling “their womanly duties”. Although I know that not all men think that way I was surprised to learn that some still do, so I went on to imagine a parallel universe, where roles are inverted and men are given a taste of their own sexist poison. “In a parallel universe” is a series of fictional images, recreated from real ads in the mad men era, that question modern day sexism: showing it through a humorous light to spark a conversation through role play - a conversation that we need to have, uncles.
Click on each image to enlarge and take note of the cat litter scooper used in place of a plastic kids shovel in one of the Leggs' ads!:
photos by Eli Rezkallah, used with permission
(Bored Panda) Read the rest
Lions Gate Entertainment is auctioning off a slew of screen-used props from Mad Men, including Don Draper's 1964 Imperial Crown Convertible. Less than 1,000 of this car were made and fewer than 200 are still around. Also in the Mad Men lot are the likes of Pete Campbell's Globe Bar Cart, Don's Ray Bans and copy of Dante's Inferno, clothing and, um, a bunch of fake grocery items from Betty's kitchen. The online auction commences June 1.
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Archilogic, an online architecture viewer/editor designed to be easier for laypersons to use and share from than Sketchup, is spectacular stuff... at least on a fast computer. You can upload plans and convert them to 3D, move and replace furniture, mess around with the layout, push the results to friends or real estate agents, and so on. Some of the demos posted to the company's blog are fascinating: exploring Don Draper's apartment in the first-person is eerily voyeuristic. An unbuilt Frank Lloyd Wright design is more majestic and less, well, sleazy.
Now do the Overlook Hotel! Read the rest
"Bottle episodes" are budget-saving episodes of TV series that are produced on-the-cheap, using as few sets, effects, and even actors as possible. The term came from "ship-in-a-bottle episodes" of the original Star Trek when the crew didn't leave the Enterprise. Read the rest
Fast Co interviews electronic musician RJD2 on how A Beautiful Mine ended up in the just-concluded TV show, and what he's got planned next: "I've always had this ethos of my career that is along the lines of you should try everything once even if it seems like a bad idea." Read the rest
In 1972 a man using the alias D.B. Cooper highjacked a commercial jet flying out of Portland, Oregon and jumped out with a parachute and $200,000 in cash. He was never seen again.
Two years ago, Lindsey Green posted a theory that Don Draper is D.B. Cooper. Since then, nothing has happened on the show that blows her theory.
Some observations and ideas (Spoiler alert):
Don Draper's real name is Richard "Dick" Whitman. He took the name of Lieutenant Don Draper who died in front of Whitman in the Korean war.
Draper's boss is Bert Cooper. Cooper died on the show. Draper will take the name B. Cooper, and add a D. for Don (or Draper) and give himself a new name: D.B. Cooper.
In the episode that aired Sunday, Don is sitting in a meeting and realizing his career has hit a dead end. He gazes longingly through the window at a jet.
The final season of Mad Men takes place in 1972, the same year of the D.B. Cooper incident.
Season 6's promo art (below) has more vague clues on it than
Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band.
Ben Collins of The Daily Beast asks an interesting question:
If [Mad Men creator Matt] Weiner learned that he got found out—that his legendary ending was spoiled by a particularly clever PR person in New York City — would he ever think of changing the ending? Would keeping it diminish the art? Would changing it? Could Green have had an effect on the end of the show?
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Grant Gould is probably most well known for his Star Wars trading card art and illustrating two Star Wars books, Draw Star Wars: The Clone Wars and Draw Star Wars: Rebels. He's also the creator of the original comic series Wolves of Odin and has done awesome art from just about every fantasy and scifi series out there (and even some pop culture characters too). Read the rest
Illo: Matt Haughey
Two scenes shot on LAX's mosaic-backed moving walkway, years apart: Pam Grier in the intro credits of Jackie Brown, and Jon Hamm as Don Draper in last night's season opener of Mad Men. Compare The Graduate.
Matt Haughey carefully spliced stills from the two scenes together to create this exquisite composite. It's unsettling, yet intriguing, to see the two stars with their impassive public don't-bother-me faces appearing to stand before one another. The walkway hidden from view, it could be anywhere in abstract LAXspace.
But I prefer an alternate explanation, where the context of the automatic walkway is assumed: Don has turned around in order to travel backwards while chatting up Jackie, but Jackie is having none of his bullshit.
(For context, here's video of the mosaic and walkway.) Read the rest
I post this not just because it's the cast of AMC's Mad Men performing Rick Astley's famous Rick-rolling anthem one word at a time, but also because of the sheer man hours spent looking for each word in the lyrics being said at any point during the show's first four seasons -- which, if every episode is about 42 minutes, amounts to about 36 and a half hours of Mad Men -- and then editing them all together, to music, in order to create the appearance of an assembled song. Please, bask in appreciation of YouTube user Buchan39's efforts. Quick update 9/5: Wasn't sure yesterday if the video was created for or by standup comedian Richard Sandling -- it was, indeed, created by the comedian himself. (Thanks, Pete!) Read the rest
Apparently, leaving the company does not mean leaving the show. Mad Men creator Matthew Weiner says that even though Elisabeth Moss's Peggy Olsen has found greener pastures at their competition, it doesn't mean we won't be seeing her again. Well, that's good news! Maybe she'll even stick around for the seventh season, by the end of which she might have Sterling Cooper Draper (Harris) running scared (or into the ground).
Weiner confirmed that Moss was definitely still going to be a part of the show, though he wasn't sure yet how much. While the show's fifth season showcased a major turning point in Peggy's life and career, now that she's taken that turn, someone else will probably take the spotlight. (Maybe Megan Draper (Jessica Pare)? Just kidding. She may have actually been the spotlight last season.) But we certainly haven't seen the last of her. Weiner compared the whisperings of a departure to the same rumors he heard when January Jones' character divorced Jon Hamm's:
“Everyone was like, ‘I guess January Jones is off the show,’ and I was like, ‘Why would she be?’ I never understood that.”
“When people leave Sterling Cooper, sometimes it is the end for [the character],” Weiner allows. “But I will spoil that one tiny piece of anticipation and tell people that Elisabeth will be showing up to work.”
So, good! Because who doesn't want to see Peggy take over the 1960s advertising world? I think the bigger question for Ms. Olsen is who is going to try to stop her, and how much fun will it be to watch them fail? Read the rest
What was is like to be gay during the 1960s on Madison Avenue? David Leddick (who was worldwide creative director for Revlon at Grey Advertising and international creative director for L'Oreal at McCann-Erickson) wrote an entertaining essay for Huffington Post about his personal experience of being a gay mad man.
After I left BBDO, a friend told me he'd overheard comments about me in the elevator, along the lines of, "So, they were in a lot of trouble here when the queer that was writing all the great stuff left. But then they found another queer who could write just as fancifully."
When I finally hit Hockaday Associates, a small agency specializing in high-end fashion, furniture, cosmetics, and the like, it was a different world.
All the art directors were gay, and all the account executives were women. The agency president was in fact a Miss Hockaday, and she had her own take on the 1960s. Everyone really dressed to the nines. Everyone was good-looking, and there was wall-to-wall green carpeting in the foyer. A lady with a cart served tea every afternoon at 4 o'clock. Clients came in and were overwhelmed by the chic and wonder of it all. We were famous in the advertising world because Miss Hockaday dropped the Elizabeth Arden account. After Miss Arden kept her waiting for an hour for a meeting, Miss Hockaday swept in and said, "Miss Arden, you are a tyrant. We do not want to have this account," and swept out.
Can we please have more scenes like this on Mad Men?
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At Grantland, a great piece by Andy Greenwald on comics, science fiction, "otherness," and Mad Men Season 5: "The Silver Surfer didn’t come alone, and neither did Michael Ginsberg. Both served as harbingers for leggy, purple-mini-skirted giants who possessed the ability to unmake worlds. One was called Galactus. The other is married to Don Draper." Read the rest
