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" Through June 14, New York City&amp;#039;s Museum of Moving Image is hosting an elaborate Mad Men exhibit featuring reconstructed sets, character costumes, and scribbled notes from creator Matthew Weiner&amp;#039;s writers&amp;#039; room. To dig even further into the period drama series, the museum asked Weiner to curate a screening series. &amp;quot;Required Viewing: Mad Men&amp;#039;s Movie Influences&amp;quot; includes &amp;quot;movies that made a deep impression on [Weiner] and were required viewing for people working on the show.&amp;quot; To be a Mad Men writer was to have these films pumping through your veins. Through the magic of streaming technology, you can hold yourself to the same standard. Here are seven films handpicked by Weiner, with explanations for each (courtesy of MoMI&amp;#039;s website). Don&amp;#039;t expect 1:1 homages; these films are the sausage meat. Weiner is the grinder. Mad Men wouldn&amp;#039;t be delicious without him.  Patterns (1956) The Gist: Twilight Zone was a huge influence on Mad Men, so it&amp;#039;s no surprise that series creator Rod Serling&amp;#039;s scathing portrayal of big business would ignite Weiner&amp;#039;s imagination as a kid. In Weiner&amp;#039;s Words: &amp;quot;I saw this film version as a child on sick day from middle school; it was originally written and produced for live television in 1955. Rod Serling ingeniously creates a boardroom passion play with a chilling first-person climax that I never forgot. We used it often over the life of the series to get a sense of the real offices and to see how virtue and ambition can clash when the older generation is pushed aside and ruthless business confronts humanity.&amp;quot; Where to Stream: Free on Amazon Instant Video.  Vertigo (1958) The Gist: The first of two Alfred Hitchcock films, Vertigo stars Jimmy Stewart as a detective suffering from severe acrophobia. With San Francisco as his backdrop, Hitchcock orchestrates nightmares through expert staging and photography, a tactic Mad Men applied to its inner-office exploits.  In Weiner&amp;#039;s Words: &amp;quot;Released to negative reviews, it now ranks for many as the greatest film ever made. I had not seen it before the show began, but finally caught it on a break after the first season. I was overwhelmed with its beauty, mystery, and obsessive detail. I remember watching the camera dolly-in on Kim Novak&amp;#039;s hair and thinking, &amp;#039;this is exactly what we are trying to do.&amp;#039; Vertigo feels like you are watching someone else&amp;#039;s dream.&amp;quot; Where to Stream: Rent on iTunes, Amazon, and YouTube.  North By Northwest (1959) The Gist: Hitchcock&amp;#039;s spy thriller is a cunning lesson in shot choices and direction. It&amp;#039;s not a blockbuster by today&amp;#039;s definition, but it&amp;#039;s precision maximizes the thrills. There&amp;#039;s a reason they teach that airplane scene in film schools. In Weiner&amp;#039;s Words: &amp;quot;This film became an important influence on the pilot because it was shot in New York City, right around the time the first episode takes place. While more overtly stylized than we wanted to imitate, we felt the low angles and contemporary feel were a useful reflection of our artistic mindset. I had studied the film in depth at USC film school and absorbed much of its &amp;quot;ordinary man in extraordinary circumstances&amp;quot; narrative drive. It is worth noting that Cary Grant is playing an Adman named Roger, who is forced to assume another man&amp;#039;s identity. Where to Stream: Rent on iTunes and Amazon.       The Apartment (1960) The Gist: Billy Wilder&amp;#039;s sad sack love story pairs tenderness with existential despair. Among the greatest &amp;quot;rom-coms&amp;quot; of all time because it demands heart and brains. In Weiner&amp;#039;s Words: &amp;quot;I had seen this for the first time in film school and was bowled over by the dynamic writing and the passive nature of its hero, Jack Lemmon&amp;#039;s C.C. Baxter. It is definitely a story of its times, firmly rooted in a Manhattan where seemingly regular men behave unscrupulously, and it completely engaged my imagination as a representation of office and sexual politics at the time. It blends humor and pathos effortlessly.&amp;quot; Where to Stream: Free on Netflix Watch Instantly.  Les Bonnes Femmes (1960) The Gist: &amp;quot;French New Wave&amp;quot; cinema was about stripping away what a movie was &amp;quot;supposed to look like&amp;quot; to reveal everything that it could be. Claude Chabrol&amp;#039;s rambling comitragedy is a pillar of the movement, following four Parisian women in the 1960s who just lived, man. In Weiner&amp;#039;s Words: &amp;quot;I first saw this in film school and shared it to help the production design of the pilot because it was shot in the streets of Paris, with little embellishment, at exactly the time we were trying to recreate. The thematic aspects were valuable as well, as the film tells the everyday story of four bored working women led astray by their romantic fantasies. My favorite sequence, a kind of postscript to the whole film, is particularly relevant to the series as it features an unknown woman looking right down the lens at the audience.&amp;quot; Where to Stream: Free on Amazon Instant Video.       The Americanization of Emily (1964) The Gist: Imagine Edge of Tomorrow without the alien invasion and Tom Cruise-patented action and you have something similar to this satirical D-Day movie starring James Garner, Julie Andrews, and James Coburn.  In Weiner&amp;#039;s Words: &amp;quot;I saw this first in film school and was taken immediately with Paddy Chayefsky&amp;#039;s ironic and rhythmic dialogue and by its deep anti-war sentiment, which was shocking because it was rarely discussed in the context of the allies in World War II. James Garner&amp;#039;s portrayal of Charlie, a callow and glib womanizer who has given up on humanity and is then forced into heroism, influenced our attempt to recreate the mid-century male mindset and its relationship to existential absurdity.&amp;quot; Where to Stream: Rent on iTunes and Amazon.  Blue Velvet (1987) The Gist: Weiner told us during Esquire.com&amp;#039;s extensive interview that David Lynch&amp;#039;s Twin Peaks was an influence on Mad Men&amp;#039;s surreal moments. Without Blue Velvet, Lynch&amp;#039;s neo-noir starring Kyle MacLachlan, there is no Twin Peaks, nor Mad Men. In Weiner&amp;#039;s Words: &amp;quot;Remarkably original for its time, this film had an impact on my generation that can&amp;#039;t be underestimated. I saw it as I was finishing college and applied to film school soon after. Indefinable in genre, Blue Velvet moves from murder mystery to film noir to black comedy to coming-of-age story, almost from scene to scene. With stylistic richness and psychological complexity, it celebrates the horror of the mundane and is filled with reference to a kitschy and ironic &amp;#039;50s&amp;#039; milieu. This incredible observation informed much of the 1980s and became an inspiration for the series and its attempt to equally revise our mythical perception of the period.&amp;quot; Where to Stream: Rent on iTunes and Amazon. "^^<http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema#string>
<http://www.esquire.com/entertainment/news/a33845/films-inspired-mad-men-streaming-netflix-amazon/>