MM@M: Charlie Chaplin and The Sad Clown.

Previously on Mad Men @ the Movies: 4.1 Live From Times Square 4.2 Sixties Sweethearts 4.3 Catherine Deneuve & Gamera, 4.4 Jean Seberg, 4.5 Hayley Mills & David McCallum

Before we begin, a hearty congrats to Mad Men team for their third Emmy. Confetti thrown.

Episode 4.6 "Waldorf Stories"
In this episode, Don and Roger continue their downward spirals (it seems to be the long arc plot of Season 4) drinking way too much and imbibing too much awards show adulation (Don wins a Clio) or nostalgia (Roger continually reminisces). Meanwhile Peggy and Peter are on the rise, choosing pragmatism and hard work over their individual personal discomfort. The older characters tripping themselves up and the younger characters changing and rising is definitely the long arc of Season 4.

The only character chatting up the movies this week was Roger Sterling (John Slattery).

Roger: Charlie Chaplin was very lonely. That Tramp -- too much of a sad sack. Laurel and Hardy - they're much better. Except Hardy was so mean to Laurel. I hated that.


Why am I talking about silent movies?

Caroline (his secretary, taking dictation): I suppose as part of the chapter on your childhood?

Roger: That part of my book is getting bigger and bigger. Why is that?

Oh Roger. Who exactly is the sad clown? Clue: It's not Chaplin though he was that, yes.

That Roger is talking about 1920s movies and wonders why aloud, is one clue that he's having difficulty focusing on work or even the present tense aka 1965. The flashback heavy nature of the episode, in which we suddenly realize that Joan & Roger go way way back (intriguing -- was she even working in the office yet?), is the other.

Best Moment
Peggy (Elisabeth Moss) strips off her clothes in a hotel room as challenge to her sexist faux-nudist co-worker. "I can work like this. Let's get liberated."

Finally, you have to love the choreography of the finale, which threads Don & Peggy's storylines together and also has a movie joke. Don lost his advertising award during his very own Lost Weekend. Here's his resigned banter with his secretary Miss Blankenship (Randee Heller, yes, that's The Karate Kid's mom).

Draper: Call the Pen and Pencil and see if someone found my award.
Blankenship: What's the category?
Draper: Best Actress.

Ha! Don hates her so much.

But the staging is as funny as the joke.


Draper actually enters the office (blink and you'll miss him) during Peggy's story punchline in which she mocks her co-worker after their nude encounter (she's talking about a "little" change in the ad) but her hand gesture and the eyeline from art director Rizzo to her implicates Don Draper. He keeps getting emasculating this season.

Best Actress. Heh.

Other References in this Episode
(TV) Peyton Place, The Flintstones (Celebrities) The Pope, Red Skelton (Literature) A Tale of Two Cities, Noah's Ark, Playboy (Politics) The Daisy Ad, The Klu Klux Klan, The Temperance Movement

Of Note
Show creator Matthew Weiner on why his actors come up empty at the Emmys. This was recorded before Sunday night's awards in which all of the actors lost again.



Further reading
For diehard Mad Men fans who can't read enough.

• Shitty First Drafts "Why Betty Draper Matters" This is a smart read about housewives in the 1960s. I'm within the small minority who is fascinated (even when appalled) by the former Mrs. Don Draper so I heartily approve.
• Tom & Lorenzo The cast on the cover of Rolling Stone.
• Rolling Stone a beauteous on set photo gallery from Rolling Stone.
  
• Antenna The waning value of masculine detachment.
  
• Fast Company actors as spokespersons for brands blurs MM's boundaries
  
• Antenna "You're Not Going to Kill This Account" on actual and revisionist history alike.
  
• Scanners "...From Twin Peaks" a must read for David Lynch fans.
• TV Guide Sal will be coming back to the show in some way (!) Cameo or otherwise?
  
• Norsk Film Institute Mad Men at the Movies gets its own screening series in Norway. Unfortunately I am not thanked, involved, or flown over for it. Jeg gråter.
  

Tilda Swinton's 8½: Will You Dance Along Next Saturday?

You may have heard about this already but it took me days to process. For just when it seem liked Tilda Swinton had scaled all available Mt. Awesome peaks, she went and invented a new way to be awesome. Her latest project is named after Federico Fellini's masterpiece and it's way cooler than any other derivative thereof.

<--- This isn't a new photo of Tilda but I feel certain that Federico Fellini would endorse it.

Here's the description of the 8½ Foundation from the official site

What great movies would you give to a child on their 8½ birthday?
8½ is a great age to fall in love with cinema, and so the 8½ Foundation aims to give all children an 8½th birthday, glimpses into new worlds and cultures, into magic and the heights imagination can take you to.

The Foundation is holding a flash-mob style kick off on June 26th in Edinburgh where Tilda (and anyone else who shows up) will perform a Laurel & Hardy dance. No joke. Here's the dance. You're supposed to learn it beforehand.

The instructions

On Saturday 26 June 2010 at 10:45, come rain or shine, we’re gonna meet at Festival Square, Lothian Road, Edinburgh. At exactly 11:00, music will start – The Avalon Boy’s ditty “At the Ball”. It’s a song from Laurel and Hardy’s funniest film Way Out West. In the film, Stan and Ollie do a wee dance, one of the most charming, amusing musical numbers in cinema history.

In tribute to Stan and Ollie, and to dancing in public and in unabashed celebration of doing something as a group and looking like dafties…when the music starts, we will put down our newspapers and do the Laurel and Hardy dance.

I don't have the funds to fly to Edinburgh next weekend but I think I'll learn the dance and do it in my living room at 5:45 AM EST 06/26 for my Tilda across the Atlantic. If any readers want to join me take a picture so we can all pretend we did it together. I either have to do this or convert my apartment into a Shrine to Swinton for the purposes of daily worship. For what actress is more deserving of such devotion?

P.S. I Am Love (Io sono l'amore) opens today. It's grand. And Tilda wears the loveliest things in it. See it.