Dukie, breakin’ it down.
(click for proper effect)
YouTube - The Wire Season 1 Opening & Intro
This classic never gets old.
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.
Jason Kottke posted a link to several scripts from episodes of The Wire, along with a copy of the pitch document David Simon sent to HBO to create the show. The overview section is interesting because it demonstrates that the extreme depth of The Wire that was the main reason for its creation. The show’s analysis of each component of the American City was always intended to be broken down on a season by season basis: S1 = The Streets, S2 = The Working Class, et cetera.
This makes me wonder how much other serial story-driven productions are thought out beforehand and have a good grasp on their intent. I would be willing to bet that the Lost pitch didn’t get past episode 10 or 11 with any kind of explanation or direction.
(Pardon the crappy MediaFire hosting links for the scripts. I’ve reposted the pitch PDF to my own host so it’s easier…)
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).
(spoilery, obviously)
Interview with Clark Johnson. Johnson plays Augustus Haynes, city desk editor of the Baltimore Sun, on season 5 of The Wire.
He starred in Homicide: Life on the Street, as well as The Wire. I’m interested in watching some Homicide… I’m almost finished with David Simon’s book upon which the series was based, Homicide: A Year on the Killing Streets.
One on one with the one and only Omar Little.
About the scar…
“It was my 25th birthday, I was in a bar, shit got hot, drinking, then words got exchanged and bottom line, there was more of them then there was of me, dudes had razors in their mouths and I got cut. Wrong place, wrong time basically. Wrong drink. That definitely woke me up. That definitely was a life altering experience. I almost died that night.”
“David Simon has said that, when working on the book Homicide: A Year on the Killing Streets, Jay Landsman and he discussed the possibility that homicide detectives would be able to communicate solely through the word “fuck”. Years later, in this episode, he fulfilled this fantasy by having Bunk and McNulty successfully work a crime scene, communicating only through that word.” (link)
One of the classic scenes of American television (watch it here).
The Believer has another interview with David Simon about where he’s going with the 5th season of The Wire.
“MY STANDARD FOR VERISIMILITUDE IS SIMPLE AND I CAME TO IT WHEN I STARTED TO WRITE PROSE NARRATIVE: FUCK THE AVERAGE READER.” -David Simon
