The Times‘s City Room blog had a post earlier this week that I found fascinating, from a writer’s perspective. It concerned the season debut of Mad Men; specifically, a scene in which ad execs from Young & Rubicam dump water on civil rights protestors. In reaction to this indignity, one of the protestors says, “And they call us savages.”
Many critics found the line clunky, but the words were taken verbatim from the Times report about the real-life 1966 incident that the scene mimics. About this particular line of dialogue, the show’s creator, Matt Weiner, said, “His story was such that I thought it inviolable.”
Now, Weiner has created one of the most critically acclaimed shows of our era, while I have written three as-yet unpublished novels and way too many words about Edgardo Alfonzo. However, I have to raise a slight objection to this line of thinking. Because as far as I’m concerned, when it comes to writing, nothing is “inviolable.”