In the summer of 2012, Mad Men creator Matthew Weiner used his downtime to direct his first movie, Are You Here, a sort-of comedy, mostly bleak drama about the complexities of male friendship. It stars Zach Galifianakis as an off-the-grid loner and Owen Wilson as his ladies'-man weatherman best friend, who are brought back together when the former's father dies, setting off a chain of events that leads to dealing with self-medication, mental health, maturity, and how to keep their bond intact from childhood into their 40s. Prior to the movie's August 22 release date and just two months after wrapping the filming of his iconic AMC show Mad Men, we spoke with Weiner about the film, what he took from the Mad Men set, which cast member was the hardest to bid farewell, the problem with ordering Old-Fashioneds, and why he predicts the finale is destined for mixed reviews.

ESQUIRE.COM: This must be quite the summer for you, between finishing Mad Men and having this movie come out.

MATTHEW WEINER: It's the fulfillment of dreams and also super-emotional. It's very exciting to have the movie come out, it's been a long time in the making, and the timing is a good distraction, although I'm still in the middle of post-production on the show. Ending the show was a huge thing in my life.

ESQ: In other interviews you've talked about the theme of the film as the myth of male friendship and how it usually breaks down over time. What have your personal experiences been with that?

MW: I went to an all-boys high school and I had a lot of male friends in my life, then I had friends in college, of course. I got married and my wife became my best friend, which is the way you want it, but people sort of fell away from my life. I realized that some of them still had their friendships together as you see in the movies — this idealized, almost wish fulfillment of male friendships — and for me it was something very much part of the past and kind of a mystery to me how it worked. What was that bond? I wanted to investigate that and took these two characters. Their friendship is both the best thing in their lives and it's a liability because it's allowing them to keep from moving on and accepting the choices of adulthood, allowing them to stay in their current pattern of, for Owen's character, self-medication with women and drugs and alcohol, and for Zach's character, he is someone in need of help for his mental illness, and he's being indulged and supported through his cycles by his friend. You're sort of saying, "Well, the fun part is they must have a blast together." The movie starts off with a feeling of these two guys living their life like they're in a stoner comedy, but you see that they're just avoiding the next stage in life. In the end, I hope you realize that the friendship is the most essential and valuable part of their life, they can be there for each other and face the compromises of accepting adulthood.

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ESQ: And you wrote this about 10 years ago?

MW: Yeah, actually the timeline goes like this: I wrote the pilot for Mad Men about 14 years ago and it got me my job on The Sopranos about two or three years later. Then, between my first two seasons on The Sopranos, I wrote the movie, and then it was another two years before I got to write the second episode of Mad Men. As far as I knew, I was never going to make Mad Men.

ESQ: How did the script change over those 10 years? That's a long time for friendships to change, especially when you have this career and a family.

MW: Right. "How are you going to hold on to it?" Well, the weirdest thing with friends, the way you measure it is if you go without communicating for months at a time, you can sit down and within five seconds be right where you were. I know it's a cliché, but quality not quantity, and that bond will not disintegrate. It does need to be tended to but it won't go away. It's amazing, though — I'm here in New York where my best friend from college lives, and we see each other twice a year and we're right where we were and a lot of it's unspoken.

ESQ: So many filmmakers are getting into TV, like Steven Soderbergh with his Cinemax show The Knick. You're going the opposite direction now.

The road has been paved for a mixed review, no matter what.

MW: They're distinct businesses, in a way. I'm always motivated by "What is the story?" Certain stories lend themselves to movies and certain stories lend themselves to TV. It is interesting that a movie like this would've been a studio movie as recently as 10 or 15 years ago. The chance to tell personal, language-specific, culturally specific stories is really flourishing on TV and I think it's just the nature of movies and international demands that you need to get a much bigger audience. TV is more like independent film was. The forms of adult drama and certain kinds of sophisticated comedy, there's no room for them in the tentpole movie universe. Creatively, I just feel lucky that anyone ever wanted to make Mad Men. The Sopranos paved the way for everyone by being a tremendous artistic and commercial success.

ESQ: What challenges or bonuses did setting the movie in the present give you? Mad Men is set in an era that doesn't allow for characters getting professional help or admitting their vulnerabilities in the same way.

MW: Having characters speak their mind, it's not a part of Mad Men. Mad Men is a show about secrets and the diplomacy and manners that are impressed on by the culture. Part of the story of Mad Men is that disappearing — Don saying something as simple as "I was raised that it was not polite to talk about yourself." That is not part of our culture right now. So you think when everyone is allowed to say what's on their mind, does that mean they're really in touch with their feelings, or that they're not deluding themselves? Has that ever changed?

ESQ: About Mad Men: How much pressure are you feeling about the reception to the upcoming ending?

The road has been paved for a mixed review, no matter what.

MW: The road has been paved for a mixed review, no matter what. I do what I've always done on the show and rely on the people around me. The actors, the writers, and my wife all liked it, so that's all I can go on at this point. I hate to say this — obviously ending the entire series is significantly more pressure — but it's been that way every year. I never knew if the show was coming back for most of the series, so we treated every episode 13 like it was the end. It's very bittersweet and high pressure. "Did we stick the landing?"

ESQ: But it's not over. Sooner rather than later, you'll see everyone for awards shows, premieres, parties, and press for the final season, so your reunion is coming up quickly.

MW: Yeah. Despite all that emotion, there has been this little safety net. The people at Breaking Bad, Lost, everybody told us this, too, what a safety net it is to not be off the air yet. We all know that, whatever splitting the season meant, the true ending of the show hasn't happened yet. So yes, it will be a reunion and then after the last episode airs, that's going to be interesting.

ESQ: Christina Hendricks said that she and the rest of the cast took home a bunch of props and souvenirs from the set. What did you take?

MW: Oh my God, I took too much home from the set. I would have taken everything! It's my favorite period. I had emotional attachments to everything. One of the specifics — I took Don's Clio, the one he broke upon his desk. I have to admit, I took something from almost everybody's set. I took Roger's bar. Roger's bar is the happiest bar on the show, so I always thought that would be nice.

ESQ: Speaking of, as the show has gone on, has your taste in cocktails changed?

MW: [Laughs] I don't know if the show is responsible, but I have to say that ordering an Old-Fashioned, which was always my favorite drink, used to be a lot less of a wait. It's gotten to the point where the drink science has been elevated to the point that if you order an Old-Fashioned, you might not get your drink for a good 15 minutes after they burn something on top of it and shake it and change glasses, muddle and everything. It never used to be that way, so I've kind of moved into simpler drinks, a bit more Don Draper: "Give me something brown with ice in it." That's just impatience [laughs].

ESQ: As filming of the show ended, did you take many private moments on the set to really let it sink in or savor the moment?

MW: It's funny, I directed the last two episodes and there was a lot of that. There was a lot of the family sort of being torn apart in a terrible way and at the same time, you're trying to make the schedule, shoot a script, tell the story, not let the emotions of reality get in. When somebody says goodbye in a scene, it's not just "goodbye" when it's the last day of shooting. You've got to get over that. Certain things, like Kiernan [Shipka], Sally Draper, I've know this girl since she was 6 and seeing her there and her parents on her last day... I'm getting emotional just thinking about it. It wasn't her first job, but it was certainly her biggest job so far. That was one of those where it's like you're a writer, a dad, a friend, a friend to her parents, a co-worker, an artist she's inspired. All of that overlapping was probably the hardest for me. It's weird because it's all frozen in film. Part of it is also my oldest son, who's on the show. [Marten Weiner, who plays Draper neighbor Glen] is going away to college at the end of the summer, so I've got a lot of stuff to deal with. He was like, "Dad, I'm graduating high school and you're ending the show. We're both kind of going through the same experience," and I was like, "Yeah, but you've got a job next year." [Laughs]

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