Mad Men wrapped up the first half of its seventh season last weekend. I had a long conversation with the series creator, Matthew Weiner, who also co-wrote and directed the final episode, about, well . . . all sorts of things. Read on if you’re curious about Weiner’s thoughts on directing musicals, Stanley Kubrick, Mark Twain, computers, cave paintings, Neil Armstrong, and writing the very final episode of the series, which he just completed but which, alas, we will have to wait until next year to watch. Apologies in advance, however, dear reader: I forgot to ask about the symbolism of Ginsberg's nipple.

__ A lot of attention has rightly been paid to Robert Morse’s performance in, but I wanted to ask about directing it. As far as I know, you’ve never directed a musical number before, right?__

Matthew Weiner: Right!

*VF Hollywood:*There were a couple of really nice touches in [Bert Cooper’s musical number] (http://www.vanityfair.com/vf-hollywood/robert-morse-mad-men-dance), like the way, as Bert starts singing, a secretary crosses in front of him, just going about her business, like on a completely separate, normal plane from this fantasy that’s developing behind her.

I wanted the reality to be broken in a really gentle way. So I had the dancers crossing like they were just extras on the show and then Bobby singing the first piece a capella and then easing into the dancing and the music. Then at the end, there’s the moment of getting back to reality, when there’s another cross [right after the office door shuts on Bert at the end of his number]. I used to have a secretary cross and one of the writers from behind the monitor ran out to me and said it should be a guy. There was something about that man walking through it, and our sound crew really beefed up his footsteps, that really brought Don back to reality

There was also one particularly nice camera movement, where you dolly back as Bert and the dancers moved down the hallway. That was a nice little MGM moment.

I like using traditional form, because I don’t want the camera to distract. And when you do a musical number like this my feeling is, you want to see that somebody—especially, honestly, somebody Bobby’s age [83]—you want to see he’s really dancing. You don’t want it to be like cutting away to someone else’s hands when a character is supposed to be playing the piano.

There wasn’t that much real estate [on the set] but we wanted to have a little bit of a musical flourish [with the camerawork] because we figured this is in Don’s mind, and Don knows the [movie musical] form that he’s seeing. But I didn’t want to have streamers and top hats like that. I wanted it be very much in the world that we’re in, so just slightly pushing back to cover Robert, captured that. I don’t know if I first saw it in West Side Story—you remember them snapping their fingers and walking toward the camera?—but anything coming towards you in a dance number is very exciting.

Or Singin’ in the Rain. I always feel like the camera itself was dancing with Gene Kelly.

Oh, Singin’ in the Rain! My god, yes. But let’s not get out of control here. [Laughs] I’m at the tinker-toy version of that!

I want to talk about 2001: A Space Odyssey, which was referenced in the season’s fourth and fifth episodes. That’s probably my all-time favorite film, certainly the one I’m most obsessed with.