"The Wire" on HBO

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.

I'm up to Season 2 episode 5, btw. I think that makes 17 episodes in about 10 days.

u slow

please refrain from the periodic hurting updates

the fuck do you care

I'm not feeling season two as much as of about halfway through but there's enough to keep me interested. My main problem is that the dockworkers are just not as engaging as Barksdale's people. I don't know if it's just a function of the fact that they're a bunch of depressed, sporadically employed drunks, or whether the writers just don't have as much affection for them, although I feel like it's the latter. The whole "back together again" police detail plot is also a bit contrived. Still better than watching anything else.

the "getting the band back together" bit of season 2 was the lowpoint of the series, but also necessary, since season 1 was basically an extended pilot. they've sort of had to end each season like it was the last, you know?

I wish they brought back Mahoney and Hightower. That jerk Mauser just won't let go.

ziggy sobotka is engaging

Yeah, he's a good character. His son is unwatchably annoying, even though I know he's supposed to be annoying on some level. The nephew also leaves me a bit cold. The port cop is likeable - she's obviously going to be the surprise "real police after all" character.

ziggy is the son. frank is the father.

ah fuk. Pre-coffee posting.

she's obviously going to be the surprise "real police after all" character

watch the show, smart guy

"I don't know if it's just a function of the fact that they're a bunch of depressed, sporadically employed drunks, or whether the writers just don't have as much affection for them, although I feel like it's the latter."

I thought they were really engaging and I think the writers have a lot of affection and sympathy for them!

yeah i still dont get why people are so down on season 2 or the dock workers in general

I wasn't into the dock characters at first just because it was so different, but I ended up loving season 2 (agreed re: the getting the old team back together thing, it almost felt like a comic book-style reset).

I like season 2 but I think they could've done some slightly more interesting things to address Baltimore's depressed post-industrial workforce. I mean, I think the decline of Bethlehem Steel had a bigger impact on Baltimore's working class than the docks, but that'd probably be harder to work into a show about cops and criminals.

Simon said in an interview I heard that he thought about other aspect's of Baltimore industry but went with the docks partly for aesthetic reasons.

I don't mean to be overly down on the dock workers or S2 - I like them fine but it's just a slight letdown from S1.

ziggy actor is going to be one of the leads in 'generation kill'

I think someone said it upthread a ways, but season two really is just a big ol' tangent. Which is audacious, I think. I mean, you do get some big picture stuff, you meet Prop Joe, that kind of thing, but by and large it's ott.

ott???

off the topic

the topic is baltimore

saw ziggy on 2nd ave last nite

there was an awesome bit on gawker a while back about ziggy not only preventing a rape from happening in his bldg's vestibule but chasing the rapist down and beating him with a 2'x4' or something because he hates people who disrespect women.

yeah so awes. i think theres an article linked ot or excerpted upthread. almost makes up for the auto-erotic asphyxiation in that larry clark shitbomb.

ott doesn't mean off the topic

i reaaally wish i hadnt seen that scene

OTT = OVER THE TOP JERKIES

I DONT KNOW MY OTT FROM MY TRU DATS

I've been using it to mean off the topic for a long time. I'm surprised no one called me on it. I must have been writing some weird sentences.

IT STANDS FOR OMGLOLWTF JERX

OT

PITCHFORK'S OTT

I think that season two kind of was a tangent (the dockworker stuff, anyway), at least insofar as it isn't that deeply intertwined with the rest of the series as a whole. It would be a different story if, for instance, we were still following characters within the Polish community and we saw how their lives were affected by the events that make up the main thrust of the series. I guess that one could argue that the tangential nature was intentional, depending on how segregated Baltimore really is and how little interaction there generally is between those communities.