Short Summary
Matt Weiner is lying when he says Mad Men is accurate with its portrayal of blacks in the 1960s and that there were no black people working in the Ad Industry in the early/mid/late 1960s. The facts show differently. Mad Black Men is a dramatic comedy that shows the alternate perspective of a few African Americans who live in a parallel universe where black people get genuine camera time and story lines.
We are raising money to help with achieving an authentic 1960s look on film.
Long Summary
My
name is Xavier Ruffin and I am a filmmaker, a writer, and a designer. I
developed the idea for Mad Black Men as a 3 minute sketch for a comedy show 2
years ago and some how it’s snowballed into an entire web series. Now what I
need is a little help to make sure the aesthetics of our pilot episode are
authentic early 1960s and up to par with its AMC counter part, Mad Men.
Mad
Black Men is a show about 3 black creatives and their struggles to in an
overwhelmingly white and racially insensitive advertising business while
balancing their own lives, set in the 1960s. The idea came to mind after all my
design colleagues fell in love with Mad Men, but I couldn’t get into it. I was
torn. The designer side of me loved the glamorization of my own profession.
However, the black guy side of me couldn’t get past the way African American
were portrait in the show and their lack of representation in the office. Many
fans of the show choose to accept Matthew Weiner’s version of the 1960s ad
industry as true but it isn’t. What I’d like to do is provide an alternate
storyline that includes the multitude of real black men and working in the
field as they interact with these fictional characters.
I
want to push the idea of minorities in advertising passed the tokenized and
trivial roles depicted in the first 5 seasons of Mad Men. I remember feeling
like the token black kid from the ghetto. The son of two struggling drug
addicts, I was homeless at an early age and my prospects looked slim. I owe my
escape from that token existence to someone who decided to introduce me to the
world of creativity as a profession.
This
opened the door to a seemingly endless amount of possibilities. Unfortunately
most of them were too expensive and impractical for me to afford. However, for
some reason, whenever I didn’t have the means to fund my own creativity I was
blessed to meet someone else who did. I’d cross paths with altruistic angel who
decided that believing in my dream was worth a few dollars from their pockets. So
now, I’m asking for help once again. However, this time the help isn’t for my
own mental escape or creative growth. The help is bigger than just me. This time
I need help paying forward what I owe to everyone who has supported me in the
past. I’ve been given an opportunity and a platform to share an alternate but
equally valid version of history that incorporates the marginalized black
figures of advertising in 1960s New York. Can you help an underprivileged black
boy from the nations most segregated city share a vision of diversity in
marketing?
Could
you help me make something super funny look freaking awesome?
What
We Need
We
were honored to be accepted into the inaugural Motionmakers Fund program done by
Dailymotion.com, the worlds second largest online video-sharing platform. They
have a viewership of over 110 million, so when we hit their front page we want
to do it right! Being a period piece our project will have a lot of money going
into getting the look right so we are raising additional funds for the
following:
- Set
Dressings
- Vintage
props (some of which we’ll be giving away in our perks)
- Costumes
- Hair
and Makeup
- Craft
Services
- Transportation
And some of the funds will also go to the
following to help with exposure”
- Promotional
Photos
- Online
Advertising for the premier of the pilot
The
Impact
The purpose of this project is to inform
people about the real life black and brown people working in the advertising
industry throughout the 1960s with a bit of humor. I like to call it the gummy
vitamin approach. Give people a little bit of what they need in a package they
can enjoy. What fans of Mad Men need is to know that Matt Weiner isn’t being
accurate with his portrait of blacks in Mad Men. They should have the
opportunity to be exposed to the number of noteworthy blacks working in the
industry and the type of lives they led.
Raising this money will help us create our
vision of the 1960s with accuracy and authenticity to help support what we know
is a great story.
Other
Ways You Can Help
If
your pockets are too thin to help us financially just spread the word about our
project. Tell all your friends about what we are trying to do. Follow us
twitter and retweet everything we say… EVERYTHING. Ok not everything but at least
most of it.
