Hollywonk

Jon Hamm and Adam Scott’s Greatest Event in Television History has been revealed at last. It’s “one of the most exciting and expensive opening credit sequence remakes of our time … ” and an awesomely odd Hollywood satire that also features “certified bad boy” Paul Rudd, Gus Van Sant, Paul Scheer (who wrote it), Megan Mullally, Kathryn Hahn and Jeff Probst. Lance Bangs and Scott directed.

(via popculturebrain)

Reblogged from popculturebrain

bergopolis:

Screenwriter Frank Pierson died earlier today. He was a rare master of the craft. There won’t be a voice like his ever again. You will be missed, good sir.

In addition to the iconic Cool Hand Luke, Pierson also wrote Dog Day Afternoon and wrote and directed A Star Is Born. More recently, he wrote the “Signal 30” episode of Mad Men — the one with Pete Campbell’s dinner party.

Reblogged from bergopolis

Emmy Nominations: Some Drama Over Dramas, and Several Nice Surprises

Emmys The Emmy headlines are familiar: HBO dominates, much love for Mad Men, snubs and surprises. But there’s a new story point this year: For the first time, broadcast networks have been shut out of the the Best Drama category, as The Wrap and others reported.

Showtime’s new Homeland joined the drama category for the first time, as did PBS’ Downton Abbey, which moved over from the movie or miniseries category, where it competed last year. Breaking Bad returned to the category after not airing in the eligibility period last year. They bumped Dexter and The Good Wife, which were nominated last year. (Another drama nominated last year, Friday Night Lights, ended its run with that season.)

The exit of CBS’ The Good Wife from this year’s nominees made it a cable and public television sweep of the drama category.

FX’s American Horror Story, like Abbey, benefited from choosing its category wisely. It could have entered as a drama, but instead competed as a movie or miniseries — even though it will return for a second season.

There was also much love for some newcomers, as USA Today pointed out:

Most years we’re happy if even one new series can break into the Emmy mix - this year, Homeland (the worthy leader among new shows), Girls, Veep and their top stars all got nominated. There were also nods for such freshman-class actors as House of Lies’ Don Cheadle and New Girls’ Zooey Deschanel and Max Greenfield, along with such welcome-to-the-party nominees as Mayim Bialik (the first woman to get a nod for The Big Bang Theory), Nurse Jackie’s Merritt Wever and Breaking Bad’s Anna Gunn.

Find the full list of nominees at Emmys.com. Winners will be announced Sept. 23.

Matthew Weiner on How the "Mad Men" Writers' Room Works

DAVE ITZKOFF:: There’s a traditional model of television writing, where stories are pitched in the writers’ room, assigned to individual writers and then the scripts that come back get rewritten in the room. Is that how “Mad Men” operates?
MATTHEW WEINER:: No, no, it’s not like that at all. The outline comes out of the room. Maria and André [Jacquemetton] drive the train on that. I have story ideas, people have story ideas, we break the A, B and C stories. This is all the way “The Sopranos” did it. That’s the only way I knew to do it and we have our own version of it. We cut them into strips and we tape them into an outline of like 45 beats. Some of them we assign to a writer and they go off and write a draft. I see that draft, and if I have time, I give notes. Sometimes it’s like an audition. There are people who write a draft and it’s the end of it. You say, “I don’t think this is going to work out.” But whatever happens, eventually the script comes to me and I start fresh to some degree. And then I do a draft and that goes to the room. They give me their notes, I do another draft, I do another draft, I just keep doing. If I change less than 80 percent of it, I will leave their name on it, by themselves. Now, it’s unfair on some level, because I’m deciding what I change.
DAVE ITZKOFF:: Do you think that’s commonplace at other shows?
MATTHEW WEINER:: Everyone who has my job does this. They don’t usually put their names on it. It was important for my mental health, to see my name on there for work that I had done almost all of, in some cases. And I never understood it, why a person would want their name on a script if they didn’t write all of it. I would never want my name on something that I did not write most of. Part of television is you get rewritten. When I wrote for David Chase, I kept saying, “I’m going to write a script he can’t rewrite.” That was my mode. Not, “You’re just going to change it anyway.” So that’s the way it works here and I’m very open about it also, and not everybody is.

Reblogged from stayforthecredits