SHODAN LIVES
Notes and links from @colemanm.

George Pelecanos interviewed by the WSJ on their new culture blog, Speakeasy. He talks about his new novel The Way Home and his job as a writer on David Simon’s new post-Katrina series, Treme.

I read his novels The Night Gardener and Hard Revolution. Most of his work, or maybe all, is set in DC. He’s definitely got a knack for capturing the inner city experience, and I can see why Simon called on him (along with Boston and New York crime novelists Dennis Lehane and Richard Price) to write on The Wire.

Sepinwall is reviewing Sports Night and The Wire season 2 this summer.

I love it when people revisit great things from the past. I was never a massive Sports Night fan, but watching it while reading reviews and blog comments almost feels like revisiting it with a new group of people.

Also, Myles McNutt (another great TV writer) is watching and reviewing Deadwood, a show I still have not watched but would love to.

Interview with the creator of Scrubs and Spin City, Bill Lawrence:

You’re gonna be hard-pressed to be successful if you’re on a network and not partially owned by them, because they have no financial incentive to support you. The only creative changes I noticed… I tell everybody, but The Todd is not allowed to wear his thong anymore, because it’s the Disney company. Sorry man. So even like, in the Bahamas episode the other week, there’s a shot of him on the beach flexing, and they made us cut the shot in half. I’m like “Are you sure? This guy’s been in a thong 900 times.”

David Milch, interviewed by Salon.

On the lawlessness of Deadwood:

Oliver Wendell Holmes, in a study of the common law, said that the law develops out of society’s need to minimize the collateral consequences of the taking of revenge. What that means is, if I kill your horse, and you come and kill my horse and my family and burn down my house, the disruption to society of the collateral effects of the taking of revenge, which is justified, is such that society is gonna be disrupted. So what law does is say, “If you kill a horse, you will be subject to this much punishment.” To the extent that that stabilizes the process of taking of revenge, that’s how laws get developed.

David Chase, creator of The Sopranos, is developing a new HBO series to be called A Ribbon of Dreams. It will chronicle the birth and development of Hollywood and the movie industry.

The last Sopranos alum to do more television was Matt Weiner, creator of Mad Men. If chase can create a period piece (for HBO, no less) as well as Weiner has, it has a lot of promise. Who should he cast? Hopefully he won’t end up with “Sopranos Cast, Part II.”

Pretty fantastic roundtable about The Wire, including David Simon, Wendell “The Bunk” Pierce, Clarke “Freamon” Peters, Clark Johnson, Seth “Carver” Gilliam, and Richard Price.

The Museum of the Moving Image has a ton of talks and interviews with fascinating people. Here are a few others: PT Anderson & Daniel Day-Lewis, Brad Bird, Kenneth Branagh & Michael Caine (‘cause I love me some Michael Caine).