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No characters will be smoking in new '60s drama "Pan Am"
By James Brady RyanAugust 8th, 2011, 10:45 amComments (16)
ABC's late attempt to hop on the Mad Men bandwagon, Pan Am — which is not to be confused with NBC's late attempt to hop on the Mad Men bandwagon, The Playboy Club* — has already hit a big snag in the historical realism department: after pressure from ABC-Disney, the producers have announced that none of the characters in the show will be smoking. From EW:
“It’s understandable,” Executive Producer Tommy Schlamme told EW. “It’s an enormous impressionable element. It’s the one revisionist cheat.” Some background actors will be seen holding cigarettes on and off the planes, Schlamme said, but not the stars when the drama debuts Sept. 25.
Schlamme noted that he faced the same restrictions when he produced Life on Mars for ABC in 2008. It was a cop show based in the ’70s when cigarettes were commonplace on the job but Schlamme couldn’t have his cops huffing and puffing because of limitations set forth by the network.
Jeez, ABC, don't you know that all the cool networks smoke? Setting that aside, this directive from the higher-ups is so asinine. I'm sure they have some sort of rationale about not wanting to "glamorize" cigarettes for younger audiences — kids these days love their period dramas on ABC about the Coffee, Tea or Me? gals — but unless they also take out the casual sexism and racism, the sleeping around, and the copious quaffing of booze... You know what, never mind. They've probably removed those, as well. In related news, producers also announced that all main characters would have Dell™ Inspiron™ laptops and that Kety Perry will guest star in episode three as Katy Perry.
*I like how the broadcast networks' big plan to steal some of that Mad Men magic seems to boil down to "How can we be historical, but make sure the women are always in sexy outfits?" Coming soon: the CBS '60s drama Bikinis of 1962.
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Commentarium (16 Comments)
Will they also have the "revisionist cheat" regarding the pervasive racism of the 60s?
..and crazy sexism..or is that ok?
I imagine the show will be "addressing" both in equally unsatisfactory and pat ways. (Of course, the show could surprise me and actually confront these issues in well thought out, nuanced story lines. But I'll believe that when I see it.)
I'm ok with the sexism, as long as it's directed to conservative women with "crazy eyes."
Love these shows. That's is when women were women and men were men! Ladies who can't find "a good man" have no one to blame but their feminist cohorts.
So... I'm thinking you didn't really "get" Mad Men. Or did you miss the whole, Peggy being the best person in the show and Draper alienating everyone but whatever secretary he's fucking at the moment in an attempt to be less lonely and empty a human being?
Hey, hah, we could use a man like Herbert Hoover again!!
Don't feed the trolls.
Why not? You're welcome to post here.
The Playboy one seemed to be more like "Gossip Girl but with a reason for men to tune in" than "Mad Men but awful". I mean, the ads are all "sex! violence! mystery!" which... is perhaps the opposite of "understated character drama."
*sighs* I hope they realize that without the smoking and the alcohol, they might as well set this thing in the modern day. It just won't be the same.
There's irony in here somewhere, given that the market demand for cigarettes, particularly amongst women, was largely orchestrated by product placement in mass media. So now we're harking for the good ol days? If a show's chops rely on the ability of its cast to draw on method gestural ticks involving cigarettes (themselves pastiches of 1950s Hollywood smokers) then its already on pretty thin ice.
Do you have family members from this era at all, sir? If so, please review old photobooks (and for god's sake, call your grandma!). Smoking wasn't just a "pastiche of 1950s Hollywood smoker), it was a real and pervasive cultural thing. If you intend to do a realistic period piece, you should probably try to.. you know, be realistic.
Ta muchly, but you missed the point. Of course people smoked, and how, in the 60s. However, the way John Hamm and the rest smoke on Mad Men is theatrical smoking from the golden age. Mad Men *does* have a credible reason for including smoking as it's addressed directly in the story lines and not merely period detail to give the art directory a 'gasm. Put it this way, a really well plotted drama about say, the Bay of Pigs, would still be a good drama if Kennedy and the other kids in the war room weren't mired in a pall of cigarette smoke.
I would watch "Bikinis of 1962."
There's nothing like the reielf of finding what you're looking for.