Mad Men - Creating Bertram Cooper (Paley Center)

Actor Robert Morse (Bertram Cooper) talks about his experience on Broadway in "How to Succeed in Business Without Really Trying." Series creator/executive producer Matthew Weiner discusses why he chose Morse for the role of Bert.

Category:

Entertainment

Tags:

• Robert Morse
• Matthew Weiner
• Bertram Cooper
• How to Succeed
• AMC

[bonomo012]

I wanted to hear more about why Cooper has the Japanese and Ayn Rand fetishes.  Really that is why I clicked on the video.

Still fun

[ericbono]

First ever reaction to a youtube comment (they are usually so unbelievably idiotic): had not noticed the Ayn Rand fetish. Makes sense. Bert Cooper is a modernist....

[psychicriver]

I love Bert Cooper! You think he's so aloof, yet he's perhaps the sharpest man in the company. Oh, and his eccentricities (and everyone else's reactions) are so funny.

[SagaciousSilence]

Well he's a Modernist... well, I guess that's good enough!

[mobile513]

@giantsean

Of course, I forgot to note that., but I was thinking of them as both part of the same 18th century Orientalism trend where artists and intellectuals were fascinated with this generalized idea of the "Far East". I've always imagined Burt's parents, or one of their "eccentric" friends was a follower of it and passed it on to him at a young age.

[mobile513]

@beepandbop

Yeah, you said what I did in a lot less words. I feel silly.

[giantsean]

Except that Sun Tzu was Chinese

[mjl1621]

One of the brilliant things that Ayn Rand pointed out is that without individualism, there is no collectivism, because collectivism is built on the achievement of individuals.

[beepandbop]

@bonomo012 he's a right leaning, libertarian guy, that's why he likes Ayn Rand.

As far as the Japanese go, conservative peeps tend to admire the Japanese martial and competitive culture.

[mobile513]

@bonomo012

Oops, part 1s at the top. I don't think he has ties to the Japanese people themselves, it's all about Sun Tzu. An admirable, clever guy for him to learn from, no more or less, and he's thus interested in the period. Maybe he feels kinship to their pure, logical warrior mentality. How he got into it, who knows. Again, maybe modern art, or maybe he knew some Japanese immigrants, and maybe they were in the camps. It's unlikely to come up otherwise though, no one talked about it then.

[mobile513]

Mad Men's all about people facing challenges to convention, with an eye toward the future.

By reading Rand it says a lot about Coop. He doesn't have delusions of Christian piety or pseudo scientific ideas of race or gender clouding his judgment like tycoons of the past. He doesn't care who you are, or where you're from, he's, no pun intended, objective.

His interests are also another tip of the hat to future trends; Ayn Rand, atheism, globalization, even a bit of metro-sexuality.

[bonomo012]

@mobile513 I think what I meant was what is Matt Weiner was trying to say by linking Rand and Sterling Cooper like this.

The Japanese bit seemed curious as he lived through Pearl Harbor and any Japanese-American adults Cooper would know probably got sent to an internment camp during the war. I have always wanted to see someone make a comment about that.