RichardH
One of the Regulars
- Messages
- 252
- Location
- Bergen, Norway
I'd take those stories with a huge grain of salt. You know how people like to spice things up a little for the sake of a good story. How many times haven't we heard; Guy #1 "Man, yesterdays party was aaawesome!" Gut #2 "Wait until you hear MY story, it was even more crazy and decadent than anybody could imagine!" and so forth.Exaggeration?
I knew some of the guys who worked in newspapers and in media companies in London in the mid-late 60s.
They all had bars in their offices and smoked like chimneys: 80-100 a cigarettes a day.
They'd start drinking vodka or cognac as soon as they arrived at work and get through at a bottle a day at least.
They'd work until lunch, go to the pub, drink more, then sleep in their offices until around 9pm, then they would start work again and go through until 3 or 4 in the morning. Then they'd go into Soho to a club for a drink before they went home (or at least went somewhere).
I really don't see much exaggeration in Mad Men. Compared with some of the stories I've heard, I thought it was actually quite tame.
Some of this London media culture was captured in Keith Waterhouse's play "Jeffrey Bernard is Unwell" "The play's title refers to the magazine's habit of printing a one-line apology on a blank page when he was too drunk or hung-over to produce the required copy"
Come to think of it, I also knew many people who worked in media in the 80s and 90s (indeed, I worked in it myself). Only the drug changed. So much cocaine was being taken it's hard to fathom how anything got done. I knew one company that used to DHL/courier pounds of the stuff across town to its other branch in 35mm film cans. I remember speaking to one producer who had no idea that it was Thursday because he had been awake since Monday.
The biggest exaggeration in Mad Men is that there's no way the guys who live these kinds of lives look like Roger Sterling and Don Draper. All the guys I knew ended up looking like Charles Bukowski!