"Made Men" creator Matthew Weiner (pictured, holding Emmy Award) is saying a long goodbye to his landmark series; Lauren Bon, the artist behind Metabolic Studio, looks at water and the drought through a creative lens; HBO's "Veep" is back, and so is Tony Hale as the president's personal assistant.
Can art have a role in dealing with California's drought?
Solving California’s water woes will inevitably require intense conservation efforts.
But can art have a role in dealing with the drought?
Artist Lauren Bon and members of her Metabolic Studio certainly think so. Currently on view at the Hammer Museum, Bon’s exhibit, The Catch, immerses museum-goers in water — without getting them wet. Bon uses sound and light reflections to replicate waves, ripples that cascade over a draped white sheet.
The Catch is only one facet of Bon’s colossal project, Bending the River Back into the City, which includes building a functioning water wheel along the L.A. River.
Outside her downtown studio, which sits adjacent to the river, Bon explains the ambitious scope of Bending the River Back Into the City:
“Next May, a robotic piece of construction equipment would be placed in the pit here adjacent to the Metabolic Studio. And it would go underneath a tunnel built underneath the railway tracks. It will pierce a small hole, about a foot big in the concrete jacket of the L.A. River. What that will allow is water that’s been held by the dam to enter a pressurized system that will go under the railway and be picked up by a water wheel from 30 feet below ground to 30 feet above ground, cleaned and redistributed to a network to be known as The Delta of Mt. Whitney, as an homage to one of our sources of water in the Eastern Sierra.”
If tunneling under train tracks and redirecting the L.A. River sound like ambitious engineering undertakings, they are. But Bon says that doesn’t mean what she and her Metabolic Studio are doing is any less a work of art.
“It’s definitely a project that has a conceptual bent,” Bon says. “The idea is to bend the L.A. River back into the city, because we must use every drop of water that is passing through it ... That’s how it transcends being simply an engineering project into being a conceptual artwork which talks about the larger picture and where we’re living and how we’re living in it.”
An integral part of Bon’s conceptual work for the project is its sound design. Bon’s team of artists includes what she calls the Sonics Division, a group of musicians who create the project’s audible elements.
“We play together every Thursday night to the L.A. River,” Bon says. “It’s part of our way of re-activating what we call wastewater back into something that we are treating like precious material.”
This is where Bon’s project really gets conceptual. Bon’s Sonics Division includes what she calls "Sirens" — singers who vocally conjure the river. Dani Lunn is a principal Siren.
“I find it to be an incredible spiritual experience,” says Lunn, “singing to the river rather than singing for entertainment or some kind of response. It’s much more of an offering.”
But there’s one more unavoidable aspect of Bon’s huge water project: government.
Tunneling under train tracks and redirecting the L.A. River requires the cooperation of local, state and federal authorities.
“Art has mysterious transformational properties,” Bon says. “So what I would like to be able to celebrate is the pace at which the federal, state and local authorities embrace the idea of piercing the L.A. River jacket and bringing the L.A. River into the city — and that another city really is possible.”
"The Catch" is is on view at the Hammer Museum until May 10. To learn more about the current exhibit and the rest of the project, "Bending the River Back into the City," visit the Metabolic Studio website.
Tony Hale breaks down his character from 'Veep'
“Veep” makes its return to HBO on April 12. The political satire follows now-President Selina Meyer — played by Julia Louis-Dreyfus — as her staff fumbles through awkward situations in the White House.
Tony Hale won last year’s Emmy for Best Supporting Actor for his work on the show. He plays the uncomfortable yet dedicated personal assistant to the President. The Frame spoke with Tony Hale about comparing his role from "Arrested Development" and "Veep," what he brings to his characters and why he loves going to auditions.
Matthew Weiner says he pushed himself to 'go deeper' writing 'Mad Men'
The beloved AMC show "Mad Men" is headed toward its series finale, with just six episodes left. The series, which centered on a Madison Avenue ad agency during the 1960s, bids adieu after seven seasons.
The show changed the way we think and talk about advertising, midday cocktails and extramarital affairs. And it played a critical role in today's renaissance of great television.
"Mad Men" was created by Matthew Weiner, who spoke with The Frame's John Horn as part of his farewell tour.
Interview Highlights
Clearly the show has a broad reach. Were you always able, outside of Twitter and Facebook, to isolate yourself from the critical reaction to the show? Or did you want to hear what people were saying about it? And if so, did you ever let that affect the way you approached a season?
Matthew Weiner: No, I never let it affect the way I approached the season. And I have more than a morbid curiosity about what people think.
On the one hand, the best of the [comments] are people showing off their writing, and like, the recappers are trying to write the most poetic version of a recap they’ve ever done. [But,] some people need a lesson on a book report.
It’s very demoralizing a lot of times. It’s so critical. I’m so sensitive to criticism anyway. And usually, there’s nothing I can do about it anyway, so I don’t respond to it; but it immediately puts you on the defensive.
You’re immediately being accused of a crime and you’re not allowed to testify in your own defense because your show was your testimony. [laughs] So what are you going to say?
But there are comments…there [is] frequently this stream of vitriol, of like, ‘Why are you writing about this,’ or, ‘who cares?’ or whatever. And you’re kind of like, ‘I didn’t ask you to do it.’
All of this is to say, you have a curiosity about it. It’s like a review.
In the broader history of the show itself — in life — was there a moment where you overheard people talking about your show, and you realized it had become part of the cultural conversation?
Weiner: When the show was very first on, my interaction with the audience, because I was working all the time, was very limited.
I really knew people were watching it because the writers’ strike happened right after we went off the air, and I started being on the picket line and would have writers coming up to me like, ‘You did that show? I love that show,’ or whatever.
Then, you know, we went off the air the first season, around Labor Day, I think. And I had a prediction that I considered to be a measure of success, which is, if some man dressed as Joan at Halloween, I’d know we had made it — and that happened. Someone sent me a picture of that in New York City. And I was like, ‘You’ve poked through into a very important part of the culture.’
Novelists often say at the beginning of writing a book that they don’t know where a character is going until the book is written, that the characters kind of find their own way, and it’s sometimes a real surprise to the author. Is there an equivalent with "Mad Men"?
Weiner: Nobody wrote their own story, because it’s too much effort. There’s a bunch of writers in there and we do it an episode at a time, and there’s 92 [total] hours of [the show].
I wish. We used to joke that it writes itself whenever a line seemed appropriate, but it doesn’t write itself.
The surprise was going on this long. And the surprise was taking into account, when you’re making little decisions all along the way, what that means for the character in the long-term.
When you turn in a script on someone else’s show, and you have a good showrunner, and you’ve turned in your first draft, they want it to be better in certain ways. They want it to be like certain things they’ve given you notes on.
But, David Chase [creator and showrunner of ‘The Sopranos’] and the good bosses that I’ve had would write things like, ‘go deeper.’
If you keep that in mind, and I’ve given that note to other people too, if you start to understand what that really means…it’s not just about rejecting ideas, it’s not just about not following the cliché, it’s not just about seeing things in a binary way and flipping it on its head. It’s literally about, ‘Well, what is that person really thinking? Let’s say that they have their whole life, and a lot of stuff we don’t even know about that’s coming into play at this moment. What can you do?’
I have always pushed myself, and the writers have always pushed me, and each other, and I push the writers to be that way. And it shows in the show. It shows right down to the actors' understanding.
Check out part 2 of our interview with Matthew Weiner, talking the show's legacy and his own sense of loss saying goodbye to the show's cast and crew.