What I Learned Reading MAD MEN Pilot Script
The script opens with the protagonist, Don Draper talking with the busboy at the bar. He mentions busboy’s ‘Lucky Strikes’ and shows him his ‘Old Gold’s — starting the conversation (his own research) about the tobacco business.
First scene establishes the main drive of the screenplay — the tobacco client. Don Draper is an ad man. He has a meeting with the tobacco client. About the main conflict — they’re in the time when people start realizing that cigarettes are poisonous. And the ad men have problem. How do they sell a poisonous thing?
Stakes.
This isn’t a life or death situation though. They can lose a client, whatever right? No. It’s everything. Everything is at stake for them. We see how the pressure of this situation affects our protagonist. He blows a client, he loses his temper again and again. He hides it from others but we see it. He is scared… And that’s it. We relate to him.
Dialogue
They are catchy like ads. The first scene with the busboy almost runs as if it’s an ad on TV. It even has a slogan, more than one. “I love smoking.” “Ladies love their magazines.” The scenes gives us an understanding about the world and Don’s mind. He takes the world in as one big ad and creates more.
The script is mostly dialogue driven so you can’t see any unrelated line or beat. It’s all connected. It all represent something else. There is no line without subtext. They all want something secretly but say something else. This is the golden era of the secret desires. So we follow them with curiosity and excitement, line by line. I think we as new writers must take notes from this script about how to write dialogue and dialogue-driven scenes.
Characters
Creating seemingly shallow characters but at the same time show them as real people is hard, really hard. The script makes it seem so easy.
Characters represent something from the era. Successful creative ad executive Don Draper, young account executive Pete Campbell, a young girl who has dreams about the city Peggy Olson, and even they are not that shallow. They are our main characters. There is a bunch of people who are seemingly two dimensional and stereotypical. They represent something out the world we watch.
Don, our protagonist stands out among them for being someone deep and relatable. We want to know more about him.
Issues.
The script is really good for pointing out the issues of the era. But it doesn’t just say these things for the ethic reasons. It uses them as dramatic tools. Creates the world, draws a picture in our minds. Builds a frame and then discovers new territories in them. Black busboy in the first scene, the woman in the elevator and how the ad men treat her, Sterling asking a Jewish person to take to the meeting with the Jewish client, woman being a second grade person and sex object, gay Italian character acting like a straight person, German researcher, tons of stereotypical white men, and many more. This is how the characters see the world. And the script tests them. It throws them into situations they’re not familiar with.
The world is painted crystal clear for the show to explore and test. They show us the framework. We get familiar with the world and the characters we see. And we accord our expectations for it. They show us what and how to expect from the situations and the characters as how they see. And when they find themselves out of the frame we relate to how they feel because the show already established for us how they see the world. How their world collapsed for them. Without this, the script mostly doesn’t even work. But they do it so well that you don’t even notice. It’s a masterpiece.
MAD MEN Pilot (2006) Script [PDF]written by Matthew Weiner — for the educational purposes only.
