Live Chat

Dry M mentioned the live chat from last week in the 2 minutes thread, here's a basic rundown of what went on:

On how many days of rehearsals they get before shooting, John Slattery answered they only run through each scene once or twice, so 0 days.

The infamous zipper performance: One of the writers saw a guy do that, so they wrote it in. Joel Murray apparently picked it right up, and what you hear is the real thing.

6 Month Leave is the one they believe they will be submitting for the Emmys.

John Slattery and Joel Murray did the commentary for the dvd for 6 Month Leave.

Everyone probably has heard this by now but if not, it's fake ciggs they smoke.

Someone asked about mirroring between characters, mainly between Peggy and Don, and mentioned some see the same thing with Betty and Pete. Matt Weiner said the mirroring is deliberate, but there's none intentional between Betty and Pete.

John Slattery was asked about Desperate Housewives, he said it was temporary knowing that he would be shooting Mad Men.

As far as clothing trends with the characters, Matt Weiner had an interesting answer:
If we are on the air long enough, I hope to get our characters into the next trends. But I can say that most people don't go with styles or fads. They dress the way they did whenever in their life they looked the best. That's usually high school or right after college.

The last two here are a little obscure but I was lucky enough to get 2 of mine answered.
For those like myself who absolutley love the photography in the show, I asked if they purposely often shoot upward with Don from a lower angle to emphasize his alpha male status and to make the viewer look up to Don. Matt Weiner say they made the decision of a lot of lower angles during the pilot, but to emphasise the celings and the scenery. So that was pretty interesting.

The second, and this is obscure probably only to me, is I'm in suburban Philly and asked given I've caught a number of PA/Philly/Jersey Shore references if he has ties here in the Philly area. When Don suggests to Betty to tell the kids he's in Philadelphia at the William Penn (Inn), that's real close to me, that was kinda weird. Anyway, M.W. said he lived here when younger, so if anyone out there is from from here and caught some things over the two seasons, you weren't hearing things. It's one of those ultimately pointless but kinda neat things.