August 6, 2009
Shark Week and Mad Men
BY: suzannah
Since it’s Shark Week, I want to take this opportunity to remind you about our new shark campaign PSAs featuring January Jones. Filmed and photographed in the Bahamas, January reminds you that humans kill tens of millions of sharks every year and that you should be scared for sharks, not of them.Now allow me to take off my sensible conservationist cap and put on my fangirl pillbox hat and point your attention to the new, sprawling Vanity Fair feature on Mad Men, starring January and the hunky Jon Hamm. “Don and Betty’s Paradise Lost” features all the kinds of behind-the-scenes chatter that fans of meticulous drama feast on, plus luscious set photography by Annie Leibovitz. Despite the title, the story is really about obsessive-genius show creator Matthew Weiner. Did you know that he carried around a script of the pilot in his briefcase for four years, and that he had to go to the men’s room and cry after Elisabeth Moss read for the role of Peggy? And that January was the other finalist for Peggy, and he liked her so much he wrote extra scenes for Betty, who only had a couple lines in the first episode, so that she could film them as a test? And that the show’s composer used the same theme – Nikolai Rimsky-Korsakov’s ‘Song of India’ from his opera Sadko – both in episodes 201 and 211 when Don sees or is reminded of Betty? If you’re interested in that level of minutiae, this is the definitive Mad Men article for you.The show premieres its third season on August 16. Expect to see a lot more of January Jones doing the press rounds, and hopefully we’ll hear more about Oceana’s shark campaign in the process.