Mad Men is to advertising execs what Goodfellas was to every two-bit parking meter robber in Queens with a cousin in the mob: a vision of how edgy they might have been, in a different time. [NYT]

Mad Men creator Matthew Weiner wrote the pilot episode of his show about 1960s advertising execs way back in 1999, only to have it rejected by pretty much every cable outfit in the world. But now that it's a gigantic, critic-worshipped hit on AMC, he's not about to let anyone muck it up. "Matthew Weiner stood on the set of his hit show, 'Mad Men,' ready for his close-up in extreme anxiety. He was watching the rehearsal of a scene that seemed fine to me, better than fine, but his staccato commentary was a scene in itself. 'He should be standing,' he said of an actor who was seated. 'That should be on the table,' he said of an accordion folder that an actress had placed on the floor. 'They're overreacting, paying too much attention to each other.' He heard himself and looked slightly sheepish. 'You'll see it turn from theater to movie in the next take,' he told me. "I want them not to pay too much attention to each other, so it feels real, more perfunctory. Not that TV thing.' His smile was wry. 'I'm very impatient.'"

Here's the best entertainment piece you'll read all weekend: Alex Witchel's New York Times Magazine profile of Matthew Weiner, the creator of Mad Men, a brilliant drama on AMC entering its second season that does to the 60's advertising industry what Boeing Boeing tried to do to the 60's airline industry. Lots of sex, booze, smoking, shellacked hair, and modular furniture, but also some of the smartest scriptwriting on television. Whether or not Weiner stays true to the nature of jingle-and-tagline executives as they formerly existed (the secretaries' breasts are right out of the John Currin catalog) is almost besides the point once you hear him describe a plot motive:

Lionsgate, the plucky indie studio who mined the untold box office potential of film franchises featuring a creepy marionette on a tricycle and an equally creepy actor in grandma drag, has forged its own side deal with the WGA:

Where did Hearst president Cathie Black pick up her steely ways? Why from "mad man" USA Today founder Al Neuharth of course! (She said it, we didn't.) In a November interview at the 92 St. Y with New York Post gossip Liz Smith, Black dishes about being a career woman and her early days with Neuharth. One gem? Neuharth kept his employees alert by keeping the office temp at 55°. "All you could think about was how damn cold you were," Black says. Watching employees hobble around on frostbitten toes is fun times! Watch the video after the jump. [92YBlog]

Despite the flaccid-sounding acronym, there's nothing namby-pamby about the SAG awards—the greatest honor Hollywood's thespians can bestow upon each other (besides, of course, the Oscars, the Backstage Westies, and the Craigslist Jobs: TV/Film/Video Awards). Jeanne Tripplehorn and Terrence Howard announced this year's nominees early this morning to an enraptured crowd of before-hours cleaning crew and building security at the Pacific Design Center:

· Viacom CEO Philippe Dauman prepares for the jilting DreamWorks partners David Geffen and Steven Spielberg may inflict upon Paramount, calling their potential departure for a new studio venture "completely immaterial" to his company's happiness and inviting the pair to "go ahead and fuck whoever you want, you disloyal little tramps, see if I care! My heart will go on!" [Variety]
· Jimmy Kimmel will host the AMAs* for an amazing fourth time. [*the American Music Awards, more popularly known as the "Retarded Grammies."] [THR]
· Happy news: AMC is about to pick up the awesome Mad Men for a second season, the network's tribute to the drinking—Scotch-in-the-office, secretary-banging heyday of the 1960s advertising world. [Variety]
· Eddie Haskell is mad as hell at SAG over undisbursed foreign Beaver residuals and not going to take it anymore [THR]
· It's Matthew McConaughey's Hollywood, and we're all just living in it: Jennifer Garner is in negotiations to star opposite a "charmingly womanzing" McConaughey in New Line's Ghosts of Girlfriends Past, and McConaughey takes Owen Wilson's place in Tropic Thunder, from which Wilson recently withdrew due to, um, "creative differences" or something. [Variety, Variety]