Vincent Kartheiser - Mad Men

[Bryan]

Vincent Kartheiser interview with GIANT Magazine


"The Scanner: What’s been the biggest difference between making Angel and Mad Men?
Kartheiser: There was a real sense on Angel that people were just doing a job. The grips, the DP, even the directors would kind of just show up, do their job and go home. On Mad Men, people really love the show and it means something to them. Every DP we’ve had has worked their ass off, we see directors we won’t be working with for two weeks walking around the set setting up shots and all of the actors come in prepared. People really care about this project. Not to say we didn’t care about Angel, but there was a sense we could do no wrong. We had our audience and regardless of what we did, we were going to keep that audience. On Mad Men we also have Matthew Weiner on set all the time whereas Joss [Whedon] was hardly ever on Angel. I think Joss was doing Firefly at that point and was in love with his next project. I had a friend who filmed a few episodes in the first season of Angel and said everyone was invested and there was crazy energy, so maybe I just came into it late. I let them know right off the bat that some of the choices they were making [about Conner] were wrong. I showed up to play that character and I had a lot of ideas. And they didn’t like any of those ideas. That’s okay, I’m in the business of having my ideas rejected. But after about 7 or 8 episodes of coming in with ideas and realizing it just didn’t matter, I became really complacent and jaded and angry at the project. I felt like it wasn’t a collaboration, that the people I was working with didn’t care to take risks. Some actors were able to find risks in there. If you look at Amy Acker, she just did an incredible job; she came onto that show with a developed character and stayed with it. She took a big risk and succeeded and I admired that."

http://www.giantmag.com/2007/09/dvds/mad-man-talks/

[jerkstore]

Interesting article. He confirms what I suspected about Whedon neglecting ATS for his shiny new toy.

[Penny Century]

I'm not sure AtS' decline was so much about Whedon -- whose strengths as a writer and showrunner are equaled if not eclipsed by his weaknesses -- as it was about the loss of David Greenwalt, who curbed the worst of Whedon's excesses and knew how to keep a series on track even as it was taking new risks. Without Greenie, the whole pack of them (Whedon and his pet Minear included) devolved completely into the lazy, careless genius-cultists they'd been trying to become all along. When you have a fandom as willing to huff your farts and call them perfume as Little Joe's generally is, you need a strong counterbalance just to keep from becoming an asshole for a living. No such presence after Greenie.

[Morrigan]

There really is nothing to add to that