“Write script after script and never give up.”
Maria Jacquemetton
Two of the writer/producers on Mad Men are the husband-and-wife team Andre and Maria Jacquemetton. They’ve both won three Primetime Emmy Awards for their work on Mad Men. I found a Q&A of them and thought you’d find it interesting how they got started in the industry and eventually got to work with Mad Men creator Matthew Weiner.
“We met when we were both assistants at Paramount… At the time, we were aspiring writers doing day jobs to pay the bills, and writing at night and on weekends. … It took ten years for us to actually be able to collaborate and get a paycheck as writers…Matthew Weiner was in a writing group with us when we were all struggling writers. We’d meet at Stir Crazy, a coffee shop on Melrose Avenue, and exchange pages — well, mostly we exchanged gossip about the industry. Eventually, we all ended up working on shows, but stayed in contact, reading each other’s work and giving encouragement. He wrote Mad Men as a spec pilot when he was on Becker and we were working on Star Trek: Enterprise on the Paramount lot. We loved it and told him if he ever got this going we would love to work on it. About six years later he gave us the good news.”
AMC Q&A with Andre and Maria Jacquemetton
Did you catch that? Ten years of writing before they got paid to write together. (And it took Weiner six years to get Mad Men off the ground after writing the spec script.) Takes a little time sometimes. And in Maria’s case, that came after her earning a Master’s in Film Production at Boston College. Before Mad Men, Maria was also the head of the writing program at The Vancouver Film School.
[…] “Write script after script and never give up.” Maria Jacquemetton Two of the writer/producers on Mad Men is the husband-and-wife team Andre and Maria Jacquemetton. They’ve both won three Primetime Emmy Awards for their work on Mad Men. I found a Q&A of them and thought you’d find it interesting how they got started in […] Original Source… […]
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You guys are going in the wrong direction. Way too much personal interplay and not nearly enough business. The way accounts were handled was what got the show as far as it did. No need for Don’s worthless wife, Sterlings LSD trips, and the fact that nobody is doing a damn thing to advance the firm except Peggy and she has been relegated to having sex in a movie theater. Go back to what worked. Don was THE man in that industry. Not anymore. Sterling was the party guy that the major accounts loved to be with. And give Peggy a chance. Keep going this way and you will not make the end of the year.