Heather, the Totality (Weiner) - Author Bio

Author Bio
• Birth—June 29, 1965
• Raised—Los Angeles, California, USA
• Education—B.A., Weslyan University; M.A., University of Southern California
• Awards—9 Emmies; 3 Golden Globes
• Currently—lives in Los Angeles, California


Matthew Weiner is an American writer, director and producer. He is the creator of the AMC television drama series Mad Men, which premiered in 2007 and ended in 2015. He is also noted for his work on the HBO drama series The Sopranos, on which he served as a writer and producer during the show's fifth and sixth seasons (2004; 2006–2007). He directed the comedy film Are You Here in 2013, marking his filmmaking debut.

Weiner has received nine Primetime Emmy Awards for his work on Mad Men and The Sopranos, winning seven for Mad Men, as well as three Golden Globe Awards for Mad Men. In 2011, Weiner was included in Time's annual "Time 100" as one of the "Most Influential People in the World." In 2011, The Atlantic named him one of 21 "Brave Thinkers."

Early life and education
Weiner was born in 1965 in Baltimore, to a Jewish family but grew up in Los Angeles. His father was a medical researcher and chair of the neurology department at University of Southern California. His mother graduated from law school but never practiced. He enrolled in the College of Letters at Wesleyan University, studying literature, philosophy, and history and earned an MFA from the University of Southern California School of Cinema and Television.

Career
Weiner described the start of his career as a "dark time. Show business looked so impenetrable that I eventually stopped writing." During this time, his wife financially supported them with her work as an architect. He began his screenwriting career writing for the short-lived Fox sitcom Party Girl (1996), then as a writer and producer on The Naked Truth and Andy Richter Controls the Universe. Weiner wrote the pilot of Mad Men in 1999 as a spec script while working as a writer on Becker. The Sopranos creator and executive producer David Chase offered Weiner a job as a writer for the series after being impressed by his Mad Men script.

Weiner served as a supervising producer for the fifth season of The Sopranos (2004), a co-executive producer for the first part of the sixth season (2006), and an executive producer for the second part of the sixth season (2007). He has sole or joint credit for 12 episodes overall, including the Primetime Emmy Award-nominated episodes "Unidentified Black Males" (co-written with Terence Winter) and "Kennedy and Heidi" (co-written with David Chase).

In addition to writing and producing, he acted in two Soprano episodes, "Two Tonys" and "Stage 5" as fictional mafia expert Manny Safier, author of The Wise Guide to Wise Guys, on TV news broadcasts within the show.

Weiner also spent a hiatus between two seasons teaching at his alma mater, the University of Southern California School of Cinema-Television (now School of Cinematic Arts), where he taught an undergraduate screenwriting class on Feature Rewriting during the Fall 2004 semester.

During his time on The Sopranos Weiner began looking for a network to produce Mad Men. HBO, Showtime, and FX passed on the project. Weiner eventually pitched the series to AMC, which had never produced an original dramatic television series. They picked up the show, ordering a full 13-episode season, and Mad Men premiered on July 19, 2007, six weeks after The Sopranos concluded. Weiner served as showrunner, an executive producer, and head writer of Mad Men throughout its seven seasons. Mad Men has received considerable critical acclaim and has won four Golden Globe Awards and fifteen Primetime Emmy Awards.

In 2017, Weiner pubished his debut novel, Heather, the Totality, a noir thriller.

Personal life
Weiner is married to architect Linda Brettler. One of his four sons, Marten Holden Weiner, played the recurring role of Glen Bishop on Mad Men. (FromWikipedia. Retrieved 11/16/2017.)