A Mad Man’s Pencil: Blackwing and Mad Men

A Mad Man’s Pencil: Blackwing and Mad Men

Imagine you are a fly on the wall of an office building on New York City’s Madison Avenue. A man in a green argyle sweater and pleated brown pants sits on an upholstered Scandinavian-style couch with wooden arms against the office’s back wall. The couch is simple, but not cheap, much like the rest of the furniture in the office. Soft light from a tall lamp in the corner of the room bounces off of the wood paneled walls, making the space feel smaller than it already is.

The man is writing frantically. As he scribbles on his notepad, the scratching sound of graphite against paper is the only audible noise in the room. Outside, New York City is alive and moving, screaming for the attention of anyone who will give it. Inside the office, however, the only things that are worthy of this man’s attention are the notebook and pencil he holds in his hands. The notebook is a Moleskine reporters pad, and the pencil is an Eberhard Faber Blackwing. The year is 1963.

The director yells “Cut!,” and suddenly, it’s the year 2010. As the man rises from the couch, a prop assistant comes to greet him. He takes the notebook and pencil from the man’s hands and inspects them.  He turns them over in his hands delicately, making sure not to do anything that could strip them of their power to suspend disbelief. When he is finished, he sets them in a container with the other props, where they wait until they are called upon again to transport the man on the couch back to 1963.

One of the many reasons AMC’s Mad Men is one of the most critically acclaimed and frequently watched shows on cable is the team behind the show’s attention to detail. Last year, the Eberhard Faber Blackwing made a cameo in the Emmy Award winning drama, not because it is one of the best pencils in the world, but because every detail in Mad Men, from the furniture and fashion, to the writing utensils, must fit into the 1960’s New York City that the viewer is being asked to believe.

Despite the show’s success and attention to detail, Mad Men fans will have to wait until early 2012 for the show’s fifth season to start, a full seventeen months or more after the last episode of the fourth season aired on October 17, 2010. Numerous online news sources report that the delay was due to negotiations that occurred between the show’s lead writer and creator, Matthew Weiner, the network AMC and the studio Lionsgate TV. The issues stem from AMC’s desire to cut two minutes of show time from every episode to allow for more commercials and the network’s desire to make the show’s product placement more visible.

We understand Weiner’s position here. Two minutes may not seem like much, but when the two minutes that are cut contain as much detail as any two minutes found in the average Mad Men episode does, two minutes starts to seem a lot more important. The entire scene outlined at the start of this article would have taken much less than two minutes of screen time, and the entire scene, along with its period specific details and homage to the EF Blackwing, could easily be cut if two minutes needed to be shaved off of the script and other scenes proved to be more relevant to the story being told.

Furthermore, making the product placement in the show more visible may further detract from this detail oriented series. While product placement is inevitable in any show and has been present in Mad Men since season one, making the product placement more transparent may shift the focus during the setup a scene away from convincing the viewer that they are watching a story unfold in the 1960’s and towards convincing the viewer to purchase a product.

Both of the ideas that were being pushed by the studio could easily weaken the show’s ability to convince viewers that world they are watching is real. In a show in which every little detail matters, two minutes can contain an entire vault of information and a well placed product could occupy the space formerly reserved for a well placed prop that would have added to the story being told rather than adding to the wallet of the show’s advertisers. Matthew Weiner was not fighting for something trivial or unimportant, he was fighting for the integrity of a show he has fought hard to create. He is fighting for the details.

After months of negotiations, a deal was finally reached that allows the season premiere and season finale to run the full 47 minutes Weiner was fighting for. The remainder of the season’s episodes, however, will be cut to the 45-minute mark. If you want the full 47 minutes of  detail in every episode, you will have to wait until season five is released on DVD, where every episode will run the full 47 minutes. Luckily for us viewers, this deal also ensures that Mad Men will stay on the air for another three seasons, giving us plenty of time to see what Weiner has in store.

What do you think Pencils.com readers? Has Matthew Weiner established himself as the best writer on television? Has he earned the right (no pun intended) to command additional airtime? Does a detail as small as a Blackwing pencil help authenticate the show? Let us know what you think in the comments section below!