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Here Are <em>Mad Men</em> Creator Matthew Weiner's First Notes On Don Draper

Jen Carlson

Published Mar 26, 2015

Modified Apr 3, 2015

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Jen Carlson

Published Mar 26, 2015

Modified Apr 3, 2015

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(Amy FInkel/Gothamist)

At the Mad Men exhibit currently housed inside of the Museum of the Moving Image in Queens, visitors are greeted by scraps of paper filled with Matthew Weiner's random notes. Framed on the wall, however, are three pieces of loose leaf paper holding a much less random set of ideas.

These pages are from 1992 or 1993, and feature the origins of Don Draper. These notes were originally for a screenplay called The Horseshoe, which of course never happened.

In these pages you'll find characteristics and storylines that have continued throughout Mad Men, and maybe a clue on how the show will end? Nah, Weiner would never allow that.

We transcribed them the best we could, given Weiner's handwriting. We are told the Museum has a full transcription, but are unable to share it. If that changes we'll update this post with some more filled-out copy.

PAGE 1

1:00 a.m. 8/18

As all things come and go, I got an idea the other day. My horoscope said I’d have a great one and although it had been a passing thought a few days before now, it was suddenly real.

I keep thinking about the tradition of writing, of artists. Poetry was a challenge (one which I did not fully or even partially meet) this one however stems back to film school when [name illegible] suggested that innovation, technically speaking, was meaningless, everything else in film had remained static.

Now, however when I work at the trend towards heavy plots, I can’t help but believe there is another way to do movies. I refuse to accept the presumption that the “product” precludes artistry. That simple “storytelling” is the magic bullet which audiences seek. People, I feel want to be whisked away yes but to where? They want to feel, that is the key. Most “artistry” is directed at the mind, while the remainder sits in the gut. The guts are Hollywood’s domain, filmmakers who deny this find they are offering sophisticated fare because it has “ideas.” Usually just intellectual shreds. But ideas moved through the gut through feeling->that is the cinema’s domain...

PAGE 2

Weiner used both sides of the paper on the first page, and the other side isn't shown, which means page 2 is missing.

PAGE 3

... lifetime and ultimately fails. He goes at his life anew after each mistake, but he cannot rectify his desire for adventure, indulgence, sensation and freedom with his ultimate promises of success, family, home and work.

My character has reached the end of a long circle which has been filled with spirals. He has fought his inner desires, to act on them would be suicide (he has fought this also) all the time embracing the promises of the post-depression America. He is raised with hope and an almost arrogant belief that anything can be achieved. He is apathetic about history and politics, he doesn’t even follow money. For him the great pleasures of sex + alcohol (the latter usually to deaden the lack of the former) work into his decisions on everything.

Sex is his out, booze is his tranquilizer which allows him to act on his desires and dampens the damage he does to others. He is capable of great cruelty, and his secret feelings, the ones we deny will be revealed in action. He will be brave and cunning, but he is ultimately scared because he runs from death ad family -> for him they are the same.

I have one month to complete ... I am 50 pages in, my character is still 12 years old and I don't know how the thing is going to end. In a way its just the beginning. His adult life was to be the focus for my story and yet as always, any questions ahead must be answered. thus his childhood became important. Perhaps too important.

Now my thoughts ... to his life. To the events that overlap in his adulthood. Surely if he leaves two families they should have some play in his future. Take his long lost brother, Adam. What becomes of him? His wife and daughter, then his second wife, already with children? His trip to Rome? California? Where do the pieces fall? Sequences must be combinations of time not merely single events. I have firmly established a few themes:

1) Death that follows all men
2) Men's insatiable sexual proclivities
3) Transience of family
4) Need for an enemy
5) Religious beliefs are transcended by [corporate? desperate?] realities
6) Time passes

A timeline is then sketched out:

(Gothamist)

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don draper

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Jen Carlson

Jen Carlson is a former WNYC and Gothamist editor.

Gothamist is funded by sponsors and member donations

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