Colin Hanks, Fred Savage, Ashley Greene and Kevin Pollak came together to celebrate “Mad Men” on Sunday night in downtown Los Angeles, staging a live reading of the drama’s very first season finale before screening the final episode at the Ace Hotel.
“I say we lock the doors and Matthew Weiner doesn’t get to leave until we get a few more seasons,” moderator Jason Reitman joked at the start of the program.
The episode, which was read with original cast members Jon Hamm, Elizabeth Moss and John Slattery was titled “The Wheel,” and included the now-legendary monologue from Hamm’s Don Draper, pitching an ad for the Kodak slide projector.
“We started live reading screenplays four years ago to honor the great writing of cinema history,” said director Jason Reitman, who stages similar readings of classic and cult movies with Film Independent.
“The kind of work that continues to inspire us… ‘The Apartment,’ ‘His Girl Friday,’ ‘Glengary Glenross,’ ‘Shampoo’… I put ‘Mad Men’ right up there with these classics and it’s a thrill to pay tribute to [head writer] Matthew Weiner as this important series comes to a close.”