THR presents what you need to know about the famous showrunner:
1. He is a former Jeopardy contestant. After graduating from USC film school, Weiner wrote scripts for two years without income. He
says, “The only money I made was being a contestant on
Jeopardy.
2. He does not approve of spoilers. Alessandra Stanley’s New York Times preview of the AMC drama’s fourth season was too revealing for the showrunner who said he was “shocked” by the number of spoilers in the 2010 piece, which disclosed the status of Don and Betty Draper’s relationship and key details about the employees of Sterling Cooper. Weiner said, “I was shocked – really shocked. I would love to have it known that this was done totally without my approval.”
3. He has a background in comedy. He briefly did stand-up comedy while an undergrad at Wesleyan University and his first feature script, What Do You Do All Day, is a semi-authobiographical comedy about a writer waiting for the phone to ring.
4. He worked on several shows before breaking out with Mad Men. Previous writing credits include The Sopranos, for which he won two Emmys as a producer, Becker (during which he wrote the Mad Men pilot), In-Laws and Fox’s Andy Richter Controls the Universe.
5. He insists that Mad Men is shot entirely on film. Weiner has been a film fan all of his life and will not shoot the show on video until technology catches up with film. He said in an interview with Kodak, “There’s nothing that competes with it. I can tell the difference, and until I can’t tell the difference (between film and video), I will stay with film.”
