‘Mad Men' Director Jennifer Getzinger: Ask for What You Want and Ask Again
During the latest episode of 'What No One Tells You,' television director Jennifer Getzinger discussed her leap from script supervisor to director and how it only came about because of her own tenacity. For year, Getzinger worked as a script supervisor on shows like 'Strangers with Candy,' 'The Sopranos,' and 'Sex and the City.' Later, 'Mad Men' creator and showrunner Matthew Weiner brought Getzinger onto the project as script supervisor for the pilot, which was shot in New York. Though the show was picked up to series and Getzinger invited to be a part of it, she found out it would require a bit of a sacrifice on her part.
More from IndieWire
Bella Ramsey Wants 'The Last of Us' Fans to Watch Upcoming Indie Films Like They're 'Game of Thrones'
Dan Erickson on the 'Mesmerizing Dynamic' of 'Severance' Auteurs Ben Stiller and Jessica Lee Gagné
'The creator Matt Weiner said to me, 'Well we're going to go shoot the show in Los Angeles and I want my core team to come with me,'' she said. 'As a script supervisor, he wanted me to move to Los Angeles.'
Getzinger was 'open' to the idea of moving across the country, but only if Weiner would allow her to direct an episode of the show. It was a huge ask, but based on Weiner's value of her and her own desire to move to the next stage of her career, she saw an opportunity and took it.
'He said to me, 'Look I believe in you, I know you're moving towards this, I know you're ready to do this, but I can't promise you anything. All I can tell you is if you don't come, it will never happen,'' Getzinger told IndieWire's Future of Filmmaking. 'That was what made me move to Los Angeles.'
Sadly, Getzinger did not get to direct on the first season of 'Mad Men,' but when the show was renewed for a second season, her moment finally came.
'The producer called me and said, 'You know good news, we're going to get to do this again, bad news is we need a new script supervisor because you're going to be directing,'' said Getzinger. 'So that was my first shot at professional directing.'
Getzinger would go on to direct not only for 'Mad Men,' but on 'Orange is the New Black,' 'Westworld,' and most recently on the hit HBO series 'The Penguin.'
Watch a clip from her episode of 'What No One Tells You' below.
Want to find out more about Future of Filmmaking and 'What No One Tells You?' Visit our new Future of Filmmaking landing page and sign up for our weekly newsletter, 'In Development.'
Best of IndieWire
Nightmare Film Shoots: The 38 Most Grueling Films Ever Made, from 'Deliverance' to 'The Wages of Fear'
Quentin Tarantino's Favorite Movies: 65 Films the Director Wants You to See
The 19 Best Thrillers Streaming on Netflix in May, from 'Fair Play' to 'Emily the Criminal'
Hashtags
Try Our AI Features
Explore what Daily8 AI can do for you:
Comments
No comments yet...
Related Articles
New York Post
an hour ago
- New York Post
‘Weapons' review: The best horror movie of the summer
movie review WEAPONS Running time: 128 minutes. Rated R (strong bloody violence and grisly images, language throughout, some sexual content and drug use). In theaters. During this lazy summer of comatose sequels, nothing has been scarier to Hollywood than an original idea. So how sweet it is that one of the freshest and best movies of sweaty season is a brand new, freakily creative story from the horror genre. No cardboard IP here. But plenty of RIP. The sharp and explosive 'Weapons,' from 'Barbarian' writer-director Zach Cregger, is powered by a quality the big screen has all but surrendered to more riveting TV dramas: Unpredictability. Right from the spooky intro, in which we learn that 17 fifth graders from the same suburban classroom all mysteriously ran away from their homes at 2:17 a.m. one night and went missing, the plot unfolds in ways startling and twisty, disturbing and deceptive. The experience is akin to being blindfolded and thrown into a trunk — except fun! The film's main question: Where did all the kids go? 3 Julia Garner and Josh Brolin star in 'Weapons. AP Could their disappearance be a coordinated kidnapping, an act of God or perhaps an alien abduction? That's an intense problem to solve. One lost child in a film means high stakes, a ticking clock and big adult feelings. Multiply that by 17. Something feels off about the community from the start. There are hints of the rapturey HBO drama 'The Leftovers,' as well as the recent warped 'Longlegs' with Nicolas Cage and the not-so-recent 'Blair Witch Project.' Cregger adds a bit of 'It' and 'Stranger Things,' too, in the way the movie probes the dark crevices of a seemingly nice, sleepy town as young people confront pure evil. But who's to blame for the crime? 3 Seventeen kids in a single classroom mysteriously go missing. AP The angry locals believe it's the teacher Justine (Julia Garner). They vandalize her car and stalk her. But the cops can't find any evidence to implicate the pithy, secretive woman. Just one little boy in the class didn't vanish — Alex (Cary Christopher, a 2025 Child of the Corn). He's gotta know something, right? Our final answer is peculiar and outlandish — frightening, oddly funny, eccentric, spine-tingling, grotesque and ultimately sad. To arrive there, Cregger has built a puzzle that's told in chapters, each devoted to a different character. One belongs to Josh Brolin as a dogged parent, and another goes to Austin Abrams' comedic Anthony, a burnout drug dealer who could be friends with someone named Silent Bob. Alden Ehrenreich, a great actor who hasn't been around much lately, plays a troubled cop. And Amy Madigan does a delicate dance as Aunt Gladys. 3 'Weapons' is told in chapters, each devoted to a different character. AP Garner, who exudes an energy that suggests she might pick a fight with somebody at the grocery store, fuels that sinister Main Street, USA, vibe with her enigmatic 'Ozark' persona. The vicious actress is herself a weapon. Most of the grown-ups here are deeply and engrossingly flawed: self-interested addicts, weirdos and brutes. In their own odd way, they each help the tale reach its satisfying conclusion, even if many of them don't make it to the credits. No real hero emerges until the last 10 minutes. This year, many movies have been boring, flabby, unnecessary, nostalgic, dumb, cheap or a burrito bowl of all of the above. But I was never less than superglued to 'Weapons.' Clever Cregger proves, as Ryan Coogler did with 'Sinners' back in the spring, that horror not only often has the most blood — it's got the most guts.
Yahoo
an hour ago
- Yahoo
Laura Loomer testified that Bill Maher's joke about her sleeping with Trump torpedoed her chance at White House job
MAGA extremist Laura Loomer recently testified in her $150 million defamation lawsuit against Bill Maher that the HBO star's joke about her sleeping with Donald Trump ended up costing her a position at the White House because of the 'media frenzy' it created. Loomer, the self-annointed Trump 'loyalty' enforcer whose influence with the president has seemingly risen in recent months, sat down for a deposition last week with HBO's attorney. And, as Puck reported, it quickly became 'every bit as unhinged as one might expect.' The lawsuit, which Loomer filed in October of last year, centers on a September 2024 episode of Real Time where the comic suggested that Loomer's sudden ascendance in Trump's orbit was due to the two of them engaging in a sexual liaison. 'I think maybe Laura Loomer's in an arranged relationship to affect the election because she's very close to Trump. She's 31, looks like his type,' Maher quipped. 'We did an editorial here a few years ago… it was basically, who's Trump f***ing? Because I said, you know, it's not nobody. He's been a dog for too long, and it's not Melania. I think we may have our answer this week. I think it might be Laura Loomer.' In her complaint, Loomer alleges that she was subjected to 'unjustified ridicule, embarrassment, loss of reputation and professional opportunity, as well as being damaged financially' by the joke, adding that the comments were 'false, malicious and defamatory.' She also claimed that Maher denied her request for a public apology and an invitation on his show to 'mitigate prior and any further damage.' Maher's joke, meanwhile, came days after Loomer accompanied the then-candidate to a presidential debate and events commemorating the 9/11 attacks, prompting concerns from advisers and allies about her unofficial campaign role. During the final days of the campaign, he would publicly distance himself from her, all while promising his aides that he'd stop regularly inviting her on his flights. During her deposition, which was briefly on the public docket last week before being sealed by Magistrate Judge Philip Lammens, Loomer looked to make the case that she would currently be working in the White House if it weren't for Maher. Throughout the questioning from attorney Kate Bolger, Loomer boasted about her increasing clout with the president, stating that he first became impressed with her adversarial 'reporting' on GOP presidential rival Ron DeSantis in 2023. Loomer noted that she would soon be invited to Mar-a-Lago and that Trump told Susie Wiles, his current White House chief of staff, to immediately hire her. Instead, Loomer stated, that didn't happen because the news was leaked to the New York Times, which reported that her hiring 'would cause a backlash, given her history of inflammatory statements and her embrace of the Republican Party's fringes.' The Times later appended the story to point out its reporting had 'ignited a firestorm' among the MAGA base and resulted in Trump backing off. Still, according to Loomer, she continued to enjoy access in Trumpworld and estimated that she'd visited Mar-a-Lago at least '20,30 times,' flew around with Trump, and submitted a resume for an administration job. She also recalled that on the flight to Trump's debate with Kamala Harris in Philadelphia, she showed him what she said was a police report after he asked if the rumors about Haitian immigrants in Ohio were real, leading to the infamous 'eating dogs' moment. Bolger, meanwhile, pressed Loomer on why she was so certain it was Maher's joke – which came days after the debate – that doomed her job prospects with the president. 'Other than Bill Maher, can you name a single human being on all of Planet Earth that believes what Bill Maher said?' Bolger asked, prompting Loomer to respond: 'It's up for interpretation.' Loomer went on to say that Trump campaign manager Chris LaCivita would later tell her she wasn't welcome back on Trump's plane because of the 'media frenzy' the HBO host's joke had sparked. Elsewhere in the deposition, Bolger brought up the lengthy history of inflammatory commentary from Loomer, a self-described 'proud Islamophobe' who has made numerous accusations about the personal lives of other prominent political figures. This could have potentially been an effort to establish that Maher's one-off line about Loomer wouldn't have done any meaningful reputational damage to the far-right provocateur. That did lead Loomer to bring up her ongoing feud with fellow MAGA firebrand Marjorie Taylor Greene, whom Loomer accused of being 'very jealous of me' and not well-liked by Trump's staff. Naturally, a sitdown with Loomer wouldn't be complete without a nasty swipe, which Bolger received when the plaintiff took aim at her past representation of Disney in the ABC News lawsuit that was settled with Trump. 'I'm not going to be gaslit by a Democratic lawyer who represents fake news media,' Loomer fumed. While Loomer may not have a White House job, and the six-figure salary that comes with it, she has been patting herself on the back lately over the amount of influence she supposedly wields with the president. Claiming to have played an outsized role in the abrupt firings of more than a dozen high-ranking administration officials over what she says is insufficient loyalty to the president, who she has repeatedly declared her 'love' for, Loomer recently joked that one of her friends now calls her 'Trump's Rasputin.'
Yahoo
2 hours ago
- Yahoo
‘Last Week Tonight with John Oliver' director Paul Pennolino has to ‘land the plane on the Hudson' each week
'I've been making my bones in late night comedy for a long, long time now,' reflects Last Week Tonight with John Oliver director Paul Pennolino, who started out as a page working for David Letterman. He adds, 'That was before the internet and cell phones and cable news channels. We're now in the squabble culture.' Watch our full interview above with Pennolino joining our Gold Derby "Meet the Experts" directors panel. Pennolino has worked on the HBO variety series since 2016. In what seems like a precarious time for late night franchises, the director explains, 'My job is to execute content and not opine on stuff like that. Although I will say, I think this broadcast is unlike any other. It is really smart and has evolved into a space where we can spend 40 minutes talking about an issue. I think it has a heck of a role. You know, my goddaughter, who's a student in college, actually watched the show in their classroom.' More from Gold Derby TV Directors roundtable: 'Adolescence,' 'Last Week Tonight with John Oliver,' 'The Pitt,' 'Super/Man: The Christopher Reeve Story' 'Super/Man: The Christopher Reeve Story' director Ian Bonhôte learned that 'strength lies in you' This year, Pennolino has received his ninth Emmy nomination. It's his eighth for working with Oliver in the variety series directing category. However the director has never won. On pulling together an episode of the show, he says, 'I care about the people I work for. I've known a lot of them for four decades. My job is when the inevitable bird strike is going to happen, I have to land the plane on the Hudson. Inevitably sometimes things will go wrong. Technology is not perfect. I feel like my role is to get it right and be in line with the comedic tone of the jokes within the headline.' While Pennolino is still waiting to win this big award, Last Week has been an Emmy darling. It has won either the award for Best Scripted Variety Series or Best Variety Talk Series for the past nine years. Pennolino admits, 'I don't think I've ever worked with a talent that worked this hard and was committed to the message. You gotta be consistent and you have to have your habits. And I certainly have my rituals. And John isn't just sitting at a desk reading a teleprompter. It's performative. Sometimes, very rarely, I'll have to go to his dressing room before the show to give him a note. I'll walk by and he's in that office reading and pacing and performing that script in his own head. He's almost whispering it.' This article and video are presented by HBO Max. Best of Gold Derby 'Australian Survivor vs. The World' premiere date and cast photos: 'King' George Mladenov, Cirie Fields, Parvati Shallow … 'Five new life forms from distant planets': Everything to know about 'Alien: Earth' as new trailer drops Everything to know about 'The Pitt' Season 2, including the departure of Tracy Ifeachor's Dr. Collins Click here to read the full article. Solve the daily Crossword
