The Process

What I love most about Mad Men is how it opens up a creative process, one that's driven by a business pressure, and the way people, who might have a profound resentment towards each other, manage to cooperate creatively.

This was what surprised me most when I started as a software engineer. My liberal arts education had taught me how to work hard, to sling code, and how to be creative, but never how to work with a group to be creative.

A fascinating alchemy happens when makers, whose ideas come in a bursty flow, sit down together to brainstorming and critique each other's ideas, always veering away and arcing back toward some goal.

So many unnamed skills come into play. You've got to learn to hold your tongue even though you've got a great idea: wait for the moment to spring it. You've got to credit the ideas that others bring, without pandering (even while chomping at the bit with your own big idea). And when ideas aren't flowing, you've got to be ready to prime the pump with whatever strains you've got—to play around with the farty ideas that surface in the group.

Mad Men makes drama out of this. I can't name another TV show or movie that does. And it's utterly fascinating to watch; other dramatists are missing a trick here.

Comments

[David Jacobs]

Project Runway too.

[ezra]

OK, let me check it out.

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