Interview with David Simon of The Wire

Long interview over at Vice Magazine with David Simon, creator of The Wire:

Yes. Newspapers have less and less ambition and are demanding less and less of themselves as arbiters of what is actually important, of what our problems are and how we’re addressing them. The Wire was trying to say, at the end, “Look, if anything in the first four seasons struck a nerve with you, don’t think for a moment that anyone’s going to address themselves to it—least of all the watchdogs of society—because their teeth have been taken out.” They’ve done it to themselves. We had to say that last because ultimately we were saying: “This is the America you built and if you think the first alarm is ever going to go off in any sense, guess again.”

Well worth it.

Hat tip to Signal vs. Noise.

The Wire: 100 Greatest Quotes

Hat tip Wax.

Senator Clay Davis

Sheeeeeeeeeeeit.

The Internets: An Amazing Place

Been getting into this Twitter thing - it's actually kind of cool and surprisingly useful in a lot of ways. Less "having a bagel and juice now" updates than I previously thought. A lot of links, news, Q&As, etc; interesting social media.

But this in particular struck me as just one example of how the webernets changes things: I'm currently following Rainn Wilson ("Dwight") of The Office and he recently tweeted about new cast member Idris Elba ("Stringer Bell") from The Wire (which is awesome enough in its own right). I'm following String, man. Check out his (@driis) tweet from yesterday:

taping 6 episodes of the Office .. This ish is hilarious

Stringer MF Bell - now on the World Wide Intertubes!

Boom: Interview w/DJ Driis over at NPR. Great stuff - take a listen. Next week's ep is his first of six.

Life Imitating Art Imitating Life

In this Washington Post piece, David Simon (creator of HBO's The Wire) rails righteously against the Baltimore Police Department's questionable actions and the failure of the enervated Baltimore Sun to hold them to account.

In an American city, a police officer with the authority to take human life can now do so in the shadows, while his higher-ups can claim that this is necessary not to avoid public accountability, but to mitigate against a nonexistent wave of threats. And the last remaining daily newspaper in town no longer has the manpower, the expertise or the institutional memory to challenge any of it.

Read it. (And watch it, in case you haven't.)

Small Victories

Season 1 of The Wire is On Demand again. Score!

Observation #1: Is Ronnie the only woman in Baltimore? Why on earth is she in such high demand? I don't mean to knock the woman, but....come on guys.

Observation #2: The actor John Doman ("Rawls") excels at playing bastards, doesn't he? He had a stint as the kidnapper/molester in Mystic River as well as uber-evil head of uber-evil corporation Ultima National Resources on Damages (which is an excellent show that you're probably not watching).

Observation #3: The Wire alumni - all over the damn place. Everyone from Daniels to Chris to Sabotka to D'Angelo to Ms. Ronnie herself have been popping up on various TV shows recently - of which I've been watching far, far too much. Thanks, Hulu!

Five In Five

All five seasons of The Wire rapped up in five minutes, courtesy of Mad Skillz. Who else?



Thanks to the recently-affianced 0.5 2GD - Can't believe we made it!

P.S. We need two more for tree.

The Music of Murdaland: Tunes from The Wire

The Wire has excellent music. The show's opening sequence, paired with the theme song "Way Down in the Hole" by Tom Waits, is one of TV's best.



The show has a few other excellent tunes that struck me. "Way Down in the Hole" is performed by a different artist for each season; those seasons and their respective artists being:

Season One: The Blind Boys of Alabama
Season Two: Tom Waits
Season Three: The Neville Brothers
Season Four: DoMaJe (arranged and recorded specifically for the show by five Baltimore teenagers)
Season Five: Steve Earle (also a member of the cast, playing recovering heroin addict Walon to perfection)

It's tough, but I think the Blind Boys' version might be my favorite. Great tune.



Each season also has a closing montage and theme song. I remember the close to Season Two (maybe my favorite season) really hit me; I was pleased to find out it's "I Feel Alright" by none other than Steve Earle. It's got a great blue collar rocking sound to it. Guess I should check out some more of Earle's stuff, because I like what I've heard ("Copperhead Road" anyone?)



Another great tune is played during the fantastic wake scenes at Kavanagh's. Sergeant Jay Landsman's hilarious eulogies preface the sendoff of the departed officer with the inevitable "The Body Of An American" by The Pogues.



I imagine this would be a great song to carouse to while drinking Jameson. (Fun fact: Did you know that the character of Landsman is based on and named after the actual Jay Landsman, who plays a minor role in the show? The Wire is filled with these little snippets of trivia.)

As always, Wikipedia proved invaluable for the information used in this post.

Bodymore, Murdaland: The Wire Series Finale

I finally had the chance to watch the Season 5 finale last night. A fitting end to the best American television drama ever. The Wire felt so true to life - much of it seemed like a documentary. It portrayed Ugly America, from the gangbangers in the streets to the dirty cops to the corrupt politicians - everyone has an agenda, and everyone's out to score an extra buck at the expense of others.

There is redemption for some, but for the most part The Wire shows us how life in the streets works - politicians get elected and forget about their social programs; criminals are killed or incarcerated, only to be replaced by younger, more vicious participants in the drug trade; and the guilty and innocent alike suffer under the circle of misery that is a part of our America - otherwise an America of extraordinary wealth, opportunity, and promise.

The Wire will always be there to show us the tragic side of our great America. It is brutal in its honesty and indiscriminate in its blame for America's social ills. It is a true masterpiece.

Rejuvenated

I'm back after a well-deserved day of rest. Blog365 has been enjoyable thus far, although tough at times. But quality and frequency of content is what my vast readership has come to expect; how can I disappoint? I don't have time for a big entry today, but I do have a few items of note:

• Had a new biz meeting on the Cape yesterday to which I drove a Zipcar, specifically a Ford Escape. First time I've used Zipcar - a pretty awesome service! (Not a huge fan of the Escape, however - the gas/brake were a bit touchy. Then again I've driven once prior in the past 14 months.)
• I thought this week's ep. of LOST was great, but I am an unabashed fanboy at this point. They could do an entire episode of Hurley going grocery shopping and I'd be riveted. Very cool consciousness time-travel, and the way they did it was pretty effective. One thing I like about the show, which my Mom actually pointed out, was that it "felt like I was watching a different show," i.e. there are so many storylines that each week can feel like an entirely different experience. Some might say this goes too far from the main plot of the show; I like the multitudinous plot lines and loose ends.
  
• Very lucky girl
• Pics of Pickin' Tuesday unleashed in the Globe by way of She Who Was Once a Blogger; also, it's a recommended $7 donation nowadays. Inflation's a bitch.
• Hellooo Beth Lauck!
• Absolutely loving reading this
• Went home last night to recover from a fairly hectic week, do laundry, and have a delicious breakfast this morning courtesy of Mom - pancakes and bacon. And I seem to have acquired several foodstuffs for my own kitchen before I headed back to the No. End.
• The most recent episode of The Wire was just incredible. I won't go into details because I know there are several readers who would kill me if I revealed spoilers, but it was one of the tightest, most emotionally-charged eps yet. This show doesn't let up. It will be bittersweet once it's over.
• Hat tip to my Mom for sending me this link. An interesting, if not entirely surprising article (I work in marketing). What is fascinating to me is not that the brain can influence our perceptions per se, but how strong this influence can be. Pretty amazing stuff. And did that $5 bottle really taste the best? Perhaps my long-standing affinity for boxed vino is no longer just a quaint idiosyncrasy of my otherwise cosmopolitan palate.
  
• Tonight I'm off to Dr. Raven & Mr. O'Connor's luxurious abode for Rock Band and some HTFO. Looking forward to it.
• I can't believe I'm actually saying this, but I cannot wait for the primaries this upcoming Tuesday. Go'Bama!
• Actually I guess this was pretty sizable, relatively.
  

The Wire: Writing a City

Make no mistake, David Simon is doing something bold, ambitious, and remarkable in his five-season HBO drama The Wire. The show is a veritable novel onscreen; Simon is building the narrative of a city quite literally from the ground up. From the street-level war on drugs in the First Season through the loss of blue-collar livelihood in Season Two; to the political machine in Season Three; to the deplorable state of the public school system and the Baltimore youth in Season Four; to the current, final season's emphasis on the role of the media in reporting on society's moral failings. For Simon, an ex-reporter at The Baltimore Sun, this is social commentary that is also a very personal story. This post was inspired by this over at Wax Banks' humble abode, along with the following great pieces:

An excellent, lengthy New Yorker piece on the show which has several tidbits revealing just how true-to-life The Wire is.

Another fairly lengthy Columbia Journalism Review piece which does a good job providing both sides of the debate of the media's role - i.e. Simon vs. his old Sun bosses.

Simon in Esquire talking about what journalism means to him, and what is happening to ink-and-paper media in this country.

Interesting pieces all, providing some background, legitimacy, and even a bit of criticism of Simon's moral quest. I will blatantly rip off Wax here by quoting, as he does, the closing of the CJR piece, because really, it's just so damn perfect:

Simon, like [current Sun editor Tim] Franklin, wants his portrayal of Baltimore to be judged against the future, but his idea of the future is darker. The Wire, he says, is about the decline of the American empire. It might have sprung from a journalistic impulse, but he says he has moved beyond simple reportage. “Consider it a big op-ed piece,” said Simon, “and consider it to be dissent. What I saw happen with the drug war, a series of political elections, and vague attempts at reform in Baltimore….What I saw happen to the Port of Baltimore, and what I saw happen to the Baltimore Sun—I think it’s all of a piece.” Should his premonition of the American empire’s future—more gated communities and more of a police state—come to pass and were someone to say he didn’t know it was coming, Simon said, it will at least be possible to pull The Wire off the shelf and say, “‘Don’t say you didn’t know this was coming. Because they made a fucking TV show out of it.’” 

Read it all. And enjoy the remainder of The Wire.

The Wire, Like the Game, Is Real

I happened to be reading the Arts section of this Sunday's Boston Globe when I came across an article about the Season Five premiere of The Wire on Home Box Office. I didn't realize that the premiere was this Sunday! Luckily I discovered this twenty minutes beforehand, so I was all prepared to take in Marlo, McNulty, Bubbles and the rest of the crew in the gritty, bloodstained streets of doped-up Baltimore.

I won't get into big plot points, but they crammed a lot of storyline beginnings into the season premiere. Of course we're back to typical Baltimore - corrupt politicians and cops trying to maintain control over a spiking crime rate due to violent drug dealers who are sometimes little worse than the so-called "good guys." It looks like the theme for this season will be the media, appearing in the guise of the journalists at the fictional Baltimore Sun.

I'm really psyched it's back for a final season. It remains to be seen how well they do with Season Five, but The Wire could finish up its run as possibly the best TV drama ever.