"Smoke Gets in Your Eyes" is the series premiere of the American period drama television series Mad Men. It first aired on July 19, 2007 in the United States on AMC and was written by creator Matthew Weiner and directed by Alan Taylor. "Smoke Gets in Your Eyes" was budgeted at US$3 million. Production for the episode took place in New York City and Los Angeles.
Weiner conceived of the script in 2000 while working as a writer for the television sitcom Becker. Before writing the pilot episode, he studied American literature and cinema of the 1950s and 1960s to get a perspective on American culture during that period. Weiner sent the script to The Sopranos creator David Chase, who recruited Weiner to work with him on The Sopranos. Weiner shelved the project for seven years to focus on Chase's program; interest for Mad Men did not surface until the conclusion of The Sopranos final season.
According to the Nielsen Media Research, the episode attained a rating of 1.4 (1.2 million households) upon initial airing.
Plot In March 1960, Don Draper (Jon Hamm), creative director at Madison Avenue advertising agency Sterling Cooper, struggles to advertise cigarettes amid rising health concerns and laws prohibiting health claims in cigarette advertising. He seeks advice, including from his girlfriend Midge Daniels (Rosemarie DeWitt), but rejects research from Sterling Cooper suggesting people are driven to smoking by a collective "death wish".
Peggy Olson (Elisabeth Moss) begins a new job as Don's secretary, with office manager Joan Holloway (Christina Hendricks) advising her to use her sex appeal to men to get ahead. After junior account executive Pete Campbell (Vincent Kartheiser) sexually harasses her, Don reprimands him. Peggy later undergoes a vaginal exam arranged by Joan to obtain Enovid, which, at the time, was only prescribed to married women with their husband's consent.
Meanwhile, Don and his superior Roger Sterling (John Slattery) meet Rachel Menken (Maggie Siff) about her department store, but their pitch falls flat. Offended by their ideas and tactics, Rachel criticizes the agency's lack of innovation, prompting Don to leave. A meeting with Lucky Strike falters as Don struggles to pitch, and Pete suggests the "death wish" idea, which he found snooping through Don's garbage but the idea is rejected. As the clients prepare to leave, Don salvages the meeting with the slogan "It’s toasted!" Afterwards, he rebukes Pete, and later turns down Peggy’s flirtatious attempt to thank him, recognizing she felt obligated to respond to men in this manner.
Don meets Rachel for drinks to make amends for their meeting and challenges her naïve view of love: feeling a connection to Don, she agrees to give Sterling Cooper another chance. Pete, dejected after being rejected by a woman during his bachelor party, shows up drunk at Peggy's apartment; she lets him in. Later, Don returns home to his wife Betty Draper (January Jones) and checks in on their two children.
Production Conception Creator Matthew Weiner conceived the script for "Smoke Gets in Your Eyes" in 2000, while he was working as a writer for the sitcom Becker. The first draft of the episode was written as a spec script and was titled "The Division". Two years later, Weiner sent the script to David Chase, the creator of The Sopranos, although Weiner's agents insisted that he not proceed with his plans. Chase later recruited him upon first glance. "It was what you're always hoping to see," he recalled. "It was lively and it had something new to say. Here was someone who had written a story about advertising in the 1960s, and was looking at recent American history through that prism." Weiner set the pilot script aside for the next seven years to focus on The Sopranos. Neither HBO nor Showtime expressed interest in the project until the commencement of The Sopranos final season. During that time, AMC began looking into the television market for new programming. "The network was looking for distinction in launching its first original series," according to AMC Networks president Ed Carroll, "and we took a bet that quality would win out over formulaic mass appeal."
Prior to writing the pilot episode, Weiner studied American culture during the 1950s and 1960s, analyzing literary works such as The Feminine Mystique (1963) and Sex and the Single Girl (1962) while viewing such films as The Apartment (1960) and A Guide for the Married Man (1967). He continued his endeavors when the series' concept began to materialize, as he received a copy of Richard Yates' novel Revolutionary Road (1962) from the executives of AMC. Weiner discussed the look of Mad Men with production designer Bob Shaw and cinematographer Phil Abraham, who Weiner had previously collaborated with in The Sopranos. Abraham wanted to establish a more genuine approach to portraying society in the 1960s, rather than "simply referencing the period as seen in movies of that time. We wanted to be more genuine than that. Movies were an influence." In evoking historical accuracy of elements such as architecture and graphic design, Abraham sought inspiration from the buildings designed by the architecture firm Skidmore, Owings and Merrill. He said, "We noticed that in all the Skidmore, Owings & Merrill designs of contemporary buildings, the ceiling—the overhead grid of lights—was a strong graphic element in all the office spaces. In one design we loved, the whole ceiling was like a lightbox. It was a time of high modernism, and we embraced the notion of presenting the world in that way. These were new work spaces—sleek, not stuffy."
Casting
Jon Hamm was cast as Don Draper, the central character of the series. Hamm, who was relatively unknown at the time, competed with 80 other actors in the auditioning process. Weiner proclaimed that Hamm accurately portrayed the character, saying that he was "the only person who really had this great mix of empathy and masculinity and intelligence. Both Don and Jon have an inner life. So long as you have that kind of depth in a human being, people will root for him [...] Jon walked out of the room and I said, 'That guy has lived.'" Hamm admitted that he felt that he had a considerable disadvantage compared to his peers and initially believed Thomas Jane would acquire the role. "I started, literally, on the very, very bottom," he iterated. "I couldn't have had less heat on me. Nobody knew who I was. The casting directors didn't know who I was. I wasn't on anybody's lists. The funny thing was, I think they went to Thomas Jane for it, and they were told that Thomas Jane does not do television." Hamm went through seven auditions; his last one took place at the Hotel Gansevoort in the Meatpacking District of New York City. "When we were riding down on the elevator, the woman in charge of whatever the decision-making process was told me, 'You got the job.'"
John Slattery, who was later cast as Roger Sterling, originally auditioned to portray Don Draper. Slattery felt Don was the show's biggest draw and was disappointed upon hearing of his character's sparse screen time. He recalled, "I really did prepare the thing and went in and I worked hard on it and then read for Don and they actually gave me adjustments and I went and I did it again. And then they sort of said, 'Well, look, here's the deal. We have a guy. The reason we asked you to come in and read for Draper is because we didn't think that you'd come in a read for Roger because there wasn't that much Roger in the script.'" During production of "Smoke Gets in Your Eyes," Slattery admitted he was unsure of whether to continue working on Mad Men. "I was on the fence a little bit, even while shooting it. And I think Matt finally was like, 'Look man, we're not jerking you around here. We're serious about this and I've really thought this out. I promise you this will be a great character and it will be a big part of the show.'"
Producers of Mad Men approached January Jones to portray Betty Draper, Don's wife and the mother of their two children. Jones avouched that portraying the character would give the audience an opportunity to see a dark side of her nature. She initially auditioned for the role of Peggy Olson, which was later given to fellow cast member Elisabeth Moss. "It got down between Elisabeth Moss and myself, and it was obviously more suited to her, but Matthew had said, you know, there's this other role, of the wife." Jones signed a seven-year contract with the show, although her character originally had two lines in "Smoke Gets in Your Eyes." Weiner eventually edited the script to accommodate her desires. "It's such a testament to his ability," Jones stated. "He just took something out of thin air, which makes me think now that he had to have had an idea that the wife was going to be part of the show, because I kind of took the job with the promise that Betty would be a part of the show. When you sign a seven-year contract, you want to make sure you're in the show." Christina Hendricks was brought in to play Joan Holloway, the office manager and head of Sterling Cooper's secretarial pool. While Hendricks had previously made recurring appearances on ER before being on Mad Men, her acting career had been largely inactive, and Hendricks' agent urged her not to participate in the project. "They said to me, 'AMC [...] doesn't have any other big shows—why would you do this instead of taking something that's a better bet?' I said, 'Look, I've gone with the one that's the better bet in the past—let's go with the really good script this time.'"
"Smoke Gets in Your Eyes" features guest appearances from several actors and actresses, including Rosemarie DeWitt (as Midge) and Maggie Siff (as Rachel Menken). DeWitt was given a recurring role in the season as Don's mistress, which lasted for six episodes. She initially felt out of place while playing out her character. DeWitt stated, "They were at the end of casting, and hadn't found the right Midge yet. Originally they had a scene where she opens the door wearing a red kimono, and I remember thinking 'I'm not that', so I wasn't sure I was right for the part. Maybe the fact that I wasn't this 'vamp' is what made Matt Weiner give me a shot." Prior to working on Mad Men, Siff mainly worked in theatre and performing arts.
Filming "Smoke Gets in Your Eyes" was budgeted at US$3 million, slightly more than the US$2–2.5 million budgeted in typical Mad Men episodes. The pilot episode began filming on April 20, 2006, and was mostly shot at various locations in and around New York City including the Silvercup Studios, where principal photography lasted for two days. Several scenes were also shot at a historic 130 West 57th Street art studio owned by artist Adam Van Doren that was previously occupied by Childe Hassam and Charles Baskerville. Most of the production crew were previously part of The Sopranos. After filming concluded in New York, production moved to the Los Angeles Center Studios. Abraham collaborated with an entirely different production crew from the one in New York. According to Abraham, Los Angeles contained a continuity that was related to the show. "Once we moved to L.A., there was a continuity of style that came from Alan and me, and that was important to Matt [Weiner]."