I was in college - Carnegie Mellon, which is one of the reasons Pittsburgh was appealing to me - and I personally feel that whole world of what we used to call "college radio" is a big part of what kept me sane through a period where I stopped dating, I felt like a freak, I felt like no girl would like me. You know, a very adolescent response to losing my hair. I turned to obsessing about The Replacements and The Smiths and R.E.M. and getting further into The Velvet Underground. People who, in my sheltered suburban life, I knew of, but didn't know fully.
Greg MottolaWe didn't want to make it a parody of Don Draper[in Keeping Up With the Joneses] but we did arrive on this idea that there's a side of Jon Hamm that opens up that would like him to stop living as a professional liar.
Greg MottolaBrian Eno records and music became a huge obsession of mine in college, in a way that a pop song can provide solace. I don't know if it's shallow or silly, but it meant so much to me.
Greg MottolaI talked about the summer of 1985, when I worked at an amusement park on Long Island, the kind of place where someone would pull a knife on you if they wanted a better prize than you were giving them. You found a lot of used needles beside the cotton-candy cart at the end of the night. It was a pretty white-trash, scary place. It was one in a series of terrible jobs I've had, coming from not much money and having no particularly resourceful skills. And at one point one of my friends, a writer on the show, Jenny Konner, said, "You should write about that."
Greg MottolaI was in college - Carnegie Mellon, which is one of the reasons Pittsburgh was appealing to me - and I personally feel that whole world of what we used to call "college radio" is a big part of what kept me sane through a period where I stopped dating, I felt like a freak, I felt like no girl would like me. You know, a very adolescent response to losing my hair. I turned to obsessing about The Replacements and The Smiths and R.E.M. and getting further into The Velvet Underground. People who, in my sheltered suburban life, I knew of, but didn't know fully.
Greg Mottola