"The Wire" on HBO

you could probably still respond. i think the ad said they were filming up to the end of august

LOLZ at hurting gettin' wire hooked.
I've got 3 and 4 on DVD fer computer, hit me up.

From what I've read, it seems that the season 4 dvd set will be out around Christmas, a couple months before season 5 begins.

that is so awesome that bunny's deputy is the real life jay landsman. in homicide, landsman was just amazing -- the funniest fucker there was.

am0n maybe email me w/ the text of the ad before it got taken down if you have it, i only procrastinated because i don't have many photos i can submit but i'm sure i can dig something up.

i don't have the ad but check yr email

One thing that strikes me about a show is the degree of respect with which the drug business is treated - like finally someone recognizes that this is sophisticated organized crime and not just a bunch of dudes in skullcaps looking menacing on a corner.

I know that's a strange way to put it, but I always felt there was a huge disparity between the excessive respect lavished on the mafia and the condescension to black gangs.

Just read in the current Esquire that Steve Earle has a role this upcoming season.

he's been in it before, as a drug counselor

o whoa, he's *Waylon* - I knew that dude looked familiar

Did anyone see that Lance "Lt. Daniels" Reddick is going to have a recurring role as a villain on the next season of Lost? Kinda rad, especially since Lost and The Wire are going to be on more or less simultaneously, thus giving us a double dose of that guy.

i didn't realize that was earle. makes sense i guess since he was a notorious addict iirc

I think this was mentioned on the thread already but Earle recorded "Way Down In The Hole" for the Season 5 theme, too.

lance reddick as a villain sounds amazing

he was kinda the bad guy in "The Corner"

as long as there are no sex scenes a la wire season three we'll be ok

u know u loved it

http://www.lancereddick.com/actor/images_photos/Lance_Reddick_06.jpg

chronicles of reddick

2002 - appeared as the lead police officer in the music video for "'03 Bonnie & Clyde" by Jay-Z featuring Beyoncé Knowles.

ok alex i like you again after that

I'm through 11 now. Wake up Griggs! ;_;

Season 1 finished. 1am. Fuk. Should I start season 2?

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Fn6tq6IS3jg

reddick is a cop or fed in basically everything he's done.

except in oz, where he is a convicted criminal

oh shit, he was undercover on oz!

uh:

Having achieved notable success as an actor Lance is ready to make available to the public for the first time his musical offerings. To preview audio samples of Lances songs please click here.

This EP is a collection of smooth soothing vocals, sophisticated vocal stylings and intriguing lyrics that paint pictures in your mind. With this CD Lance Reddick accomplishes taking you out of your world and into the lives of the people in the stories he is singing about.
When listening to these songs you are just poised to do nothing but sit there and enjoy this stunning musical offering.. The quality of Lance's performance combined with the smooth beautiful jazz instrumentation puts the songs on this EP over the top.
These are songs you will want to listen to over and over again. If you’re a connoisseur of quality music, this is a must have for your collection.

well i AM a connoisseur of quality music

here's hoping second album called "reddickulous" with jay-z guest spot

idris elba on the decks

OMG Bodie listening to Garrison Keilor on the radio in Philly - ROFFLE

Daniels' music is terrible. :(

tick tock the clock is ticking ding ding

http://www.lancereddick.com/musician/images-photos/photos_08.jpg

wow, nazi reddick

omg

Dancin' swastikas.

Teaser for an interview in this month's Believer:

AUGUST 2007
David Simon
[CREATOR-WRITER-PRODUCER OF HBO’S THE WIRE]
“MY STANDARD FOR VERISIMILITUDE IS SIMPLE AND I CAME TO IT WHEN I STARTED TO WRITE PROSE NARRATIVE: FUCK THE AVERAGE READER.”
Some things television is good for:
Catharsis
Depicting the “other” America
Pissing off the mayor
Three or four years ago, I got an email from a friend in which he described The Wire as the best thing he’d ever seen on TV, “apart from Abigail’s Party.” Here was a recommendation designed to get anybody’s attention. No mention of The West Wing, or The Sopranos, or Curb Your Enthusiasm, or any of the other shibboleths of contemporary TV criticism; just a smart-aleck nod to Mike Leigh’s classic 1977 BBC play. It reeled me in, anyway, and I went out and bought a box set of the first series.

I’d never heard of the show. It’s not widely known or shown here in the U.K., although whenever a new season starts, you can always find a piece in a broadsheet paper calling it “the best programme you’ve never heard of,” and I didn’t know what to expect. What I got was something that bore no resemblance to Abigail’s Party, predictably, and very little resemblance to any other cop show. At one stage I was simultaneously hooked on The Wire and the BBC’s brilliant adaptation of Bleak House, and it struck me that Dickens serves as a useful point of comparison; David Simon and his team of writers (including George Pelecanos, Richard Price, Dennis Lehane) swoop from high to low, from the mayor’s office to the street corner—and the street-corner dealers are shown more empathy and compassion than anyone has mustered before. The hapless Bubbles, forever dragging behind him his shopping trolley full of stolen goods, is Baltimore’s answer to Joe the Crossing Sweeper.

We talked via email. A couple of weeks later, we met in London—David Simon is making a show about the war in Iraq with my next-door neighbor. (Really. He’s really making a show about the war in Iraq, and the producer literally lives next door.) We talked a lot about sports and music.

—Nick Hornby

*

NICK HORNBY: Every time I think, Man, I’d love to write for The Wire, I quickly realize that I wouldn’t know my True dats from my narcos. Did you know all that before you started? Do you get input from those who might be more familiar with the idiom?

DAVID SIMON: My standard for verisimilitude is simple and I came to it when I started to write prose narrative: fuck the average reader. I was always told to write for the average reader in my newspaper life. The average reader, as they meant it, was some suburban white subscriber with two-point-whatever kids and three-point-whatever cars and a dog and a cat and lawn furniture. He knows nothing and he needs everything explained to him right away, so that exposition becomes this incredible, story-killing burden. Fuck him. Fuck him to hell.

Beginning with Homicide, the book, I decided to write for the people living the event, the people in that very world. I would reserve some of the exposition, assuming the reader/viewer knew more than he did, or could, with a sensible amount of effort, hang around long enough to figure it out. I also realized—and this was more important to me—that I would consider the book or film a failure if people in these worlds took in my story and felt that I did not get their existence, that I had not captured their world in any way that they would respect.

Make no mistake—with journalism, this doesn’t mean I want the subjects to agree with every page. Sometimes the adversarial nature of what I am saying requires that I write what the subjects will not like, in terms of content. But in terms of dialogue, vernacular, description, tone—I want a homicide detective, or a drug slinger, or a longshoreman, or a politician anywhere in America to sit up and say, Whoa, that’s how my day is. That’s my goal. It derives not from pride or ambition or any writerly vanity, but from fear. Absolute fear. Like many writers, I live every day with the vague nightmare that at some point, someone more knowledgeable than myself is going to sit up and pen a massive screed indicating exactly where my work is shallow and fraudulent and rooted in lame, half-assed assumptions. I see myself labeled a writer, and I get good reviews, and I have the same doubts buried, latent, even after my successes. I suspect many, many writers feel this way. I think it is rooted in the absolute arrogance that comes with standing up at the community campfire and declaring, essentially, that we have the best story that ought to be told next and that people should fucking listen. Storytelling and storytellers are rooted in pay-attention-to-me onanism. Listen to this! I’m from Baltimore and I’ve got some shit you fucking need to see, people! Put down that CSI shit and pay some heed, motherfuckers! I’m gonna tell it best, and most authentic, and coolest, and… I mean, presenting yourself as the village griot is done, for me, with no more writerly credential than a dozen years as a police reporter in Baltimore and a C-average bachelor’s degree in general studies from a large state university. On paper, why me? But I have a feeling every good writer, regardless of background, doubts his own voice just a little, and his own right to have that voice heard. It’s the simple effrontery of the thing. Who died and made me Storyteller?

oh fucking nick hornby! he was on a tv show here talking about his love for 'the wire'... only he wasn't. ALL he came up with was that other cop shows are formulaic and 'the wire' isn't.

nick hornby writing for 'the wire' would be the funniest and worst shit ever.

which is especially stupid because The Wire *is* kind of formulaic, but in the best sense - I mean it does break with the typical pattern of police shows, but it also relies on a lot of tried and true dramatic devices and its plot moves in a very systematic way that's not exactly a complete reinvention.

But who cares about Hornby, David Simon is great in that bit of interview.

Every time I think, Man, I’d love to write for The Wire, I quickly realize that I wouldn’t know my True dats from my narcos.

yeah exactly. t. s. eliot said that, or something like it -- the best stuff kind of builds on traditions, it doesn't just come from nowhere, genre can be an enriching thing. and with all the 'homicide: lots' connections...

xpost

My standard for verisimilitude is simple and I came to it when I started to write prose narrative: fuck the average reader.

That statement alone is a triumphant moment for humanity.

A TRUE DAT IS WHEN YOU AGREE A NARCO IS A DRUG POLICE THERE NOW GO WRITE 4 WIRE

Fuck him. Fuck him to hell.

LULZ

the funny thing about that quote is that he's basically talking about hornby

Admittedly he's also buttering up his fans who DO get the show - making them feel extra smart, like any good cult show does. I did feel sort of proud of myself for being able to explain the redevelopment zone scheme to an otherwise very bright friend who didn't get it.

i so do not get The Believer's affection for hornby. ug.