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ocho
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 Posted: Tue Jan 12, 2010 1:30 pm Post subject: HBO Series "Treme" from David Simon (The Wire) |
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The Wire is my favorite show of all time so I've been anticipating this project for some time. Here is the teaser trailer for the series which premieres in April. The show is about musicians in post-Katrina New Orleans.
LINK
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ocho
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| Posted: Tue Jan 12, 2010 1:31 pm Post subject: |
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Also, Wendell Pierce and Clark Peters are in the cast. Wire fans will remember them as Detective Bunk and Detective Lester Freamon.
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TACH
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| Posted: Tue Jan 12, 2010 1:37 pm Post subject: |
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| I'm looking forward to this... |
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rchanou
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| Posted: Tue Jan 12, 2010 1:37 pm Post subject: |
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| excellent! |
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kevin
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| Posted: Tue Jan 12, 2010 1:41 pm Post subject: |
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| Generation Kill and The Wire, from the same group of producers, are awesome series. I hope this one is too. |
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vanexelent
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| Posted: Tue Jan 12, 2010 1:41 pm Post subject: |
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| nice. |
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mbloves L.A.
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| Posted: Tue Jan 12, 2010 8:41 pm Post subject: |
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The wire is my favorite show of all time, anxiously waiting.
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Omar Little
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| Posted: Tue Jan 12, 2010 11:27 pm Post subject: |
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| ocho wrote: | | Also, Wendell Pierce and Clark Peters are in the cast. Wire fans will remember them as Detective Bunk and Detective Lester Freamon. |
Real wire fans don't need to be told this... 
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DaMuleRules
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| Posted: Tue Jan 12, 2010 11:36 pm Post subject: |
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| 24 wrote: | | ocho wrote: | | Also, Wendell Pierce and Clark Peters are in the cast. Wire fans will remember them as Detective Bunk and Detective Lester Freamon. |
Real wire fans don't need to be told this... |
Oh great. Bad enough that we have to read "real Lakers fans" stuff.
Now we have "real Wire fans" stuff.
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You thought God was an architect, now you know
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Omar Little
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| Posted: Wed Jan 13, 2010 12:11 am Post subject: |
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| DaMuleRules wrote: | | 24 wrote: | | ocho wrote: | | Also, Wendell Pierce and Clark Peters are in the cast. Wire fans will remember them as Detective Bunk and Detective Lester Freamon. |
Real wire fans don't need to be told this... |
Oh great. Bad enough that we have to read "real Lakers fans" stuff.
Now we have "real Wire fans" stuff.
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I dont think that's something a real stooge would say...
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ofwgkta
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| Posted: Wed Jan 13, 2010 9:59 am Post subject: |
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| I'm excited for Treme, as The Wire is my favorite series of all time as well. It's going to be weird seeing Bunk and Lester playing different roles, but great nonetheless. |
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kevin
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| Posted: Wed Jan 13, 2010 10:06 am Post subject: |
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| Bring back Omar, Kema, Prezbo, Bubbles, Lt Daniels, the gay captain and others! |
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ocho
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| Posted: Fri Jan 15, 2010 10:49 am Post subject: |
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HBO press release gives more details about Treme:
| Quote: | For Immediate Release
NEW HBO DRAMA SERIES TREME, CREATED AND EXECUTIVE PRODUCED BY DAVID SIMON AND ERIC OVERMYER, TO DEBUT IN APRIL
LOS ANGELES, Jan. 14, 2010 – The one-hour drama series TREME will launch its ten-episode first season on HBO in April, it was announced today by Sue Naegle, president, HBO Entertainment. From David Simon (“The Wire,” “Generation Kill,” “The Corner”) and Eric Overmyer (“Homicide,” “The Wire”), the show follows musicians, chefs, Mardi Gras Indians and ordinary New Orleanians as they try to rebuild their lives, their homes and their unique culture in the aftermath of the 2005 hurricane and levee failure that caused the near-death of an American city.
“New Orleans is a city which lives in the imagination of the whole world,” says Overmyer. “We wanted to capture something authentic about it, as its people struggle with the after effects of the greatest calamity to befall an American city in the history of this country.”
Simon adds, “What happens in New Orleans matters. An ascendant society rebuilds its great cities.”
TREME begins in fall 2005, three months after Hurricane Katrina and the massive engineering failure in which flood control failed throughout New Orleans, flooding 80 percent of the city and displacing hundreds of thousands of residents. Fictional events depicted in the series will honor the actual chronology of political, economic and cultural events following the storm.
“As much as possible, we’re trying to show fealty to the post-Katrina history,” Overmyer notes. “New Orleanians have had their lives transformed by the storm and its aftermath, and we want to be careful in our presentation of that.”
Simon adds that viewers familiar with “The Wire,” the previous HBO drama on which he, Overmyer and fellow executive producer Nina Noble labored, should not expect a similar drama set in another city.
“In some fundamental ways,” he says, “TREME is centered on the ordinary lives of ordinary people. It is political only in the sense that ordinary people find themselves dealing with politics in their own lives. That said, New Orleanians – those who have been able to return, especially – are passionate about their city.”
The drama unfolds with Antoine Batiste, a smooth-talking trombonist who is struggling to make ends meet, earning cash with any gig he can get, including playing in funeral processions for his former neighbors. His ex-wife, LaDonna Batiste-Williams, owns a bar in the Central City neighborhood and splits her time between New Orleans and Baton Rouge, where her children and new husband have relocated. Concerned over the disappearance of her younger brother David, or Daymo, unseen since the storm, LaDonna has turned to a local civil rights attorney, the overburdened and underpaid Toni Bernette, for help. The government’s inconsistent and ineffectual response to the devastation has spurred Bernette’s husband Creighton, a university professor of English literature and an expert on local history, to become an increasingly outspoken critic of the institutional response.
Tremé resident Davis McAlary, a rebellious radio disc jockey, itinerant musician and general gadfly, is both chronicler of and participant in the city’s vibrant and varied musical culture, which simply refuses to be silent, even in the early months after the storm. His occasional partner, popular chef Janette Desautel, hopes to regain momentum for her small, newly re-opened neighborhood restaurant. Elsewhere in the city, displaced Mardi Gras Indian chief Albert Lambreaux returns to find his home destroyed and his tribe, the Guardians of the Flame, scattered, but Lambreaux is determined to rebuild. His son Delmond, an exile in New York playing modern jazz and looking beyond New Orleans for his future, is less sure of his native city’s future, while violinist Annie and her boyfriend Sonny, young street musicians living hand-to-mouth, seem wholly committed to the battered city.
As the story begins, more than half the population of New Orleans is elsewhere and much of the city is wrecked, muddied and caked in mold, while other neighborhoods remain viable. The tourists have yet to return, the money that follows them is scarce, and residents can take solace only in the fact that the city’s high levels of crime have migrated to Houston and Baton Rouge. And for those returning, housing is hard to come by, with many people waiting on insurance checks that may never arrive.
The ensemble cast of TREME includes Wendell Pierce (“The Wire,” HBO’s documentary “When the Levees Broke”) as Antoine Batiste; Khandi Alexander (“CSI: Miami,” HBO’s Emmy®-winning “The Corner”) as LaDonna Batiste-Williams; Clarke Peters (“Damages,” HBO’s “The Wire” and “The Corner”) as Albert Lambreaux; Rob Brown (“Stop-Loss,” “Finding Forrester”) as Delmond Lambreaux; Steve Zahn (“A Perfect Getaway,” “Sunshine Cleaning”) as Davis McAlary; Kim Dickens (HBO’s “Deadwood”) as Janette Desautel; Melissa Leo (“Homicide: Life on the Street”; Oscar® nominee for “Frozen River”) as Toni Bernette; John Goodman (“The Big Lebowski,” “O Brother, Where Art Thou?”) as Creighton Bernette; Michiel Huisman (“The Young Victoria”) as Sonny; and classical violinist Lucia Micarelli as Annie.
The series will also feature cameos by notable real-life New Orleanians, as well as the talents of many of its extraordinary musicians and other artists associated with the city’s music. Early episodes feature appearances by Allen Toussaint, Dr. John, Elvis Costello, Steve Earle, Kermit Ruffins, Donald Harrison Jr., Galactic, Trombone Shorty Andrews, Deacon John, and the Rebirth and Tremé Brass Bands.
“The disaster impacted people on every possible level – physically, emotionally, and spiritually,” says New Orleans native Wendell Pierce. “The only things people had to hang on to were the rich traditions we knew that survived the test of time before: our music, food and family, family that included anyone who decided to accept the challenge to return. We knew that America was, in the words of Martin Luther King, a ‘ten-day nation.’ We knew our plight wouldn't stay in the spotlight of the world long. But we are exercising our right of self-determination in the darkness with personal resolve. We are accessing the best of the human spirit and bringing light to this difficult time. That’s what TREME is about. We won't bow down.”
Longtime friends and collaborators since they both worked on the network drama “Homicide: Life on the Street,” Simon and Overmyer have wanted to make a series about New Orleans and its culture ever since they learned of each other’s affinity for the city. Overmyer has been a New Orleans resident for 20 years, while Simon has been a frequent visitor since the late 1980s.
“Neither one of us could figure out how to pitch it properly. The problem is that in order to convince anyone to let us depict New Orleans, you have to first explain it,” Simon says, adding, “And until Katrina, the only way to begin to explain it was to shoot the film.”
TREME is named for the Faubourg Tremé (an historic neighborhood just to the lakeside of the more celebrated French Quarter). Jazz itself was said to be born there, created by the slaves of Creole planters who were allowed to drum and chant on Sundays and market days in a public area that came to be known as Congo Square. It was in New Orleans that African rhythms and the pentatonic scale of flatted “blue” notes met European instrumentation and arrangements – a cross-cultural creation that transformed music on a worldwide scale.
The 80-minute pilot episode of TREME was directed by Agnieszka Holland (“The Wire,” “Cold Case”). Additional episodes are directed by Simon Cellan Jones (“Generation Kill”) as well as alumni of “The Wire,” including Jim McKay (HBO’s “In Treatment” and “Big Love”), Ernest Dickerson (“Burn Notice”), Anthony Hemingway (the upcoming film “Redtails”), Christine Moore (“CSI: NY”), Brad Anderson (“Fringe,” “The Machinist”) and Dan Attias (“Big Love,” “House”).
In addition to Simon and Overmyer, TREME is written by David Mills (HBO’s “The Corner” and “The Wire”) and George Pelecanos (“The Wire” and HBO’s upcoming miniseries “The Pacific”). Additional writers include New Orleans natives Lolis Elie (author and columnist for The New Orleans Times-Picayune) and Tom Piazza (author of the novel “City of Refuge” and “Why New Orleans Matters”).
Simon’s most recent HBO project, “Generation Kill,” debuted in July 2008. Based on the award-winning nonfiction book of the same name by journalist Evan Wright, it recounted the early weeks of the U.S. march into Iraq from the point of view of the officers and commanders who led the way to Baghdad. The New York Times called the miniseries “impeccable” and “searingly intense,” and USA Today praised it as “honest” and “painfully vivid.”
Finishing its five-season run in March 2008, “The Wire” examined a dystopic American city in which civic institutions and civic leadership could no longer recognize fundamental problems, much less address those problems. Daily Variety said of the Peabody Award-winning series, “When television history is written, little else will rival ‘The Wire’… extraordinary,” while San Francisco Chronicle hailed it as “a masterpiece” and Entertainment Weekly called the show “a staggering achievement.”
TREME was created by David Simon and Eric Overmyer; executive producers, David Simon, Nina K. Noble, Eric Overmyer, Carolyn Strauss; co-executive producer, David Mills; producer, Anthony Hemingway; directors, Agnieszka Holland, Jim McKay, Ernest Dickerson, Anthony Hemingway, Christine Moore, Brad Anderson, Simon Cellan Jones, Dan Attias; writers, David Simon, Eric Overmyer, David Mills, George Pelecanos, Lolis Elie, Tom Piazza. |
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hoopty
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| Posted: Fri Jan 15, 2010 2:29 pm Post subject: |
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Oh man this is good info. The Wire was only the best show on tv ever.
Didnt know about Treme it'll be cool to see what they did with New Orleans...im officially excited |
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ocho
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| Posted: Thu Feb 04, 2010 1:42 pm Post subject: |
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David Simon on "Treme"
| Quote: | In his meeting with the critics, Simon delivered a mission statement for the show, providing a succinct answer to any of the critics wondering why he’s spending his post-“Wire” creative capital in New Orleans.
“New Orleans to me … it’s a triumph of American urban culture,” he said. “It’s the best an American city can be, and also the worst in a lot of ways. It has created a culture that has gone around the world. If you look at what our greatest export would be — culturally or politically or socially — from the American experiment, you’d have to put African-American music probably at the top of the list.
“You can be anywhere from Katmandu to Johannesburg and you walk into a bar and if they’re playing a tape machine they’ve got Michael Jackson or (John) Coltrane or Otis Redding or something (playing). That whole notion of African rhythms and the pentatonic scale meeting European instrumentation and arrangement comes from about 12 square blocks in New Orleans.
“So this is a city that’s essential in the American psyche, and yet we all witnessed the near-destruction of it. It was the closest thing to the destruction of an American city since the San Francisco earthquake. It’s coming back on its own terms as best as it can, with a lot of concern from some quarters, but a lot of indifference from much of the country. And that’s a fascinating story to me.
“In a way, ‘The Wire’ implied what was at stake with the American city, but ‘Treme’ is actually an examination of what it is — what living as disparate, different people compacted in an urban area can offer.” |
A handful of critics got a sneak peek at "Treme"
| Quote: | “I was concerned that it would be very dense and somewhat impenetrable to get into, because I found ‘The Wire’ to be that way initially, too,” said Rob Owen, critic for the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette. “However, my experience watching ‘Treme’ was not that. I found it easier to get into, and I don’t know if that’s because it seems there are more different worlds that we explore early on, as opposed to just a few. But I was not particularly lost.
“I felt a little bit like a cultural anthropologist watching the show, because there were all these new concepts being thrown at me, as someone who has never visited New Orleans or studied the culture at all.”
“What really surprised me about ‘Treme’ was that it was even more real than ‘The Wire,’ which I didn’t think was possible,” said Bill Brioux a Toronto-based freelance writer. “I felt like I was in the middle of that (episode-opening second-line) parade.
“What’s astounding is that these guys (Simon, Overmyer) who we all think are so smart, didn’t coast, that they’ve tried to do something harder (than ‘The Wire’). I loved it.”
“Goodman’s wonderful,” said Ellen Gray, critic for the Philadelphia Daily News. “Any time I see Melissa Leo on television, I’m a happy person.”
“I went in knowing there wasn’t going to be a ton to latch onto in the first episode,” said Alan Sepinwall, TV critic for The (New Jersey) Star-Ledger. “With ‘The Wire,’ they’re just sort of dropping you into this foreign country and saying, ‘We’ll explain everything later.’ I was expecting that kind of thing and that’s what I got. |
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DaMuleRules
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| Posted: Thu Feb 04, 2010 9:20 pm Post subject: |
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| 24 wrote: | | DaMuleRules wrote: | | 24 wrote: | | ocho wrote: | | Also, Wendell Pierce and Clark Peters are in the cast. Wire fans will remember them as Detective Bunk and Detective Lester Freamon. |
Real wire fans don't need to be told this... |
Oh great. Bad enough that we have to read "real Lakers fans" stuff.
Now we have "real Wire fans" stuff.
|
I dont think that's something a real stooge would say... |
You knucklehead . . . why I oughta . . .!
_________________
You thought God was an architect, now you know
He’s something like a pipe bomb ready to blow
And everything you built that’s all for show
goes up in flames
In 24 frames
Jason Isbell
Man, do those lyrics resonate right now |
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thedude1977
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| Posted: Thu Feb 04, 2010 9:36 pm Post subject: |
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| Funny, I just started re-watching The Wire from season 1 up this week. Thanks for the info. |
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vanexelent
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| Posted: Thu Feb 04, 2010 11:35 pm Post subject: |
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| Quote: | | “I was concerned that it would be very dense and somewhat impenetrable to get into, because I found ‘The Wire’ to be that way initially, too,” |
Dummy. |
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ocho
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| Posted: Fri Feb 05, 2010 6:55 am Post subject: |
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| vanexelent wrote: | | Quote: | | “I was concerned that it would be very dense and somewhat impenetrable to get into, because I found ‘The Wire’ to be that way initially, too,” |
Dummy. |
I know. I almost didn't want to post such a stupid viewpoint but I felt it was in the interest of fairness.
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kevin
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| Posted: Fri Feb 05, 2010 7:14 am Post subject: |
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| ocho wrote: | | vanexelent wrote: | | Quote: | | “I was concerned that it would be very dense and somewhat impenetrable to get into, because I found ‘The Wire’ to be that way initially, too,” |
Dummy. |
I know. I almost didn't want to post such a stupid viewpoint but I felt it was in the interest of fairness. |
I've had a lot of people say that to me about The Wire. They can't really get into it or it being to heavy, so to speak.
Last edited by kevin on Fri Feb 05, 2010 8:32 am; edited 1 time in total |
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ocho
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| Posted: Fri Feb 05, 2010 7:52 am Post subject: |
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| kevin wrote: | | ocho wrote: | | vanexelent wrote: | | Quote: | | “I was concerned that it would be very dense and somewhat impenetrable to get into, because I found ‘The Wire’ to be that way initially, too,” |
Dummy. |
I know. I almost didn't want to post such a stupid viewpoint but I felt it was in the interest of fairness. |
I've had a lot of people say that too me about The Wire. They can't really get into it or it being to heavy, so to speak. |
It's true that The Wire isn't as easily digestible as other shows. I just think it's dumb to use that as a knock against it.
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ocho
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| Posted: Fri Feb 26, 2010 12:24 pm Post subject: |
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New interview with David Simon:
| Quote: | Tell me about Treme, the show set in New Orleans you're currently producing.
It's a very different piece from The Wire. We're not trying to do a crime story or a political story. This is a story about culture and how American urban culture defines how we live. New Orleans is an extraordinary and unusual culture, but it comes from the same primal forces in American society of immigration and assimilation and non-assimilation and racism and post-racialism that really are the defining characteristics of this melting pot society. What is it about Americans that makes us Americans? The one thing we have unarguably given the world is African-American music. If you walk into a shebeen in South Africa, or whatever version of a bar they have in Kathmandu, if they have a jukebox, you're going to find some Michael Jackson, some Otis Redding, some John Coltrane. It has gone around the world. That is the essential American contribution to worldwide culture. The combination of African rhythms and the pentatonic scale and European instrumentation and arrangement. That collision of the two happened in a 12-square block area of a city called New Orleans that had a near-death experience in 2005.
What shape is New Orleans in now?
Before the storm, the city had the highest ratio population in America of natives, because nobody left. But people have not been able to get back. I would say only about two-thirds have returned. The housing stock is still diminished. The political infrastructure is still dysfunctional – it still has lots of crime problems. But the culture is resurgent and right now the city is ecstatic. Mardi Gras has just finished but also the Super Bowl has brought the city together. There was an allegiance over the Saints march to the Super Bowl that transcended all other arguments over race and class. How long that lasts is another thing. But right now the city's riding a peculiar high that's wonderful to be around.
There were plenty of in-jokes in The Wire, with local figures like the real police commissioner cast in an unlikely role. Do you get up to similar antics in Treme?
Yeah, we do. There are references to locals and some lines that only New Orleanians will get but they won't interfere with the contextual understanding of the scenes as a whole for viewers outside New Orleans. But for people in the music community and in the cuisine culture, these lines are going to be inside jokes. It's one way of saying that we want the show to be written from within rather than without. When you write from the inside, it creates a credibility for the piece for a whole. There were lines in Generation Kill that only a marine would laugh at.
Martin Amis was an early fan of yours. Do you reciprocate that interest?
Before I got together with my current wife, we were co-workers in prior relationships at the Baltimore Sun. One day she came back from interviewing Martin Amis and he had been reading Homicide in preparation for writing Night Train. To her, I'm the ink-stained schnook and she came up to my desk and said: "You're not going to believe this but I've just interviewed Martin Amis and he thinks you're the bee's knees." Because I was so ignorant, I said: "Who's Martin Amis?" She ran through his canon and I got nothing. And she goes, "Kingsley Amis's son?" And I go, "Who's Kingsley Amis?" Last year we went out to dinner with Martin – I've since read a lot of his books – and I told him that story by way of saying, "This is the ignorant unread ass I was and, look, she still married me!"
Your work pays a great deal of attention to authentic detail. It was surprising to discover, therefore, how many British and Irish actors you cast in The Wire.
Sometimes a guy comes in and nails a part in an evocative way and you think he can do it. And when you get a read like that, you hear the accent and the cultural differences and you say, "Well, can we get there?" That's what happened with Dominic [West], Idris [Elba] and Aidan [Gillen]. None of them was able to get a Baltimore accent. But none of the black or white actors from New York or LA was able to get a Baltimore accent. It's the toughest. There are people who tell me it is reminiscent of what you hear in Devon and Cornwall. I went to see War Horse in London last year. When the woman who played the Devon farm wife came out with her first line of dialogue, my son and I turned to each other and we both said: "She's from Baltimore."
Any compromising stories about Dominic West?
His first season in Baltimore seemed to suggest that bacchanalian feats would be legendary and the town would never be the same again. Then Dominic hooked up with his wife midway through our run, and he became as quiet and temperate as a church mouse. The thing is, Dominic is really smart and he hides it. There's a degree from Trinity College there and a lot of book learning and a lot of cultural points that do not elude him. He plays the Jack the Lad character, but he directed for us and he did a good job. I want to use him on Treme if we get a second season.
How do you think Obama is doing?
I'm a little disappointed, but actually what I'm most disappointed in is the Democratic leadership in the Congress. This new administration's own inexperience, coupled with some really ineffectual law-making, have conspired to grind the body politic to a halt. The money interests have managed once again to make us inert.
You've gone from the desert to a flood, a biblical transition. What's next up, pestilence?
Yeah, or frogs, or vermin, or death of the first-born. The next project, in terms of producing, is this mini-series based on the assassination of Abraham Lincoln in 1865. It was an act of terrorism in war time that shocked the entire nation and it resulted in some very rational immediate reaction on the part of the government and then some other things that were irrational and destructive, right down to military tribunals. It has a lot of parallels to the 9/11 moment. |
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vanexelent
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| Posted: Fri Feb 26, 2010 3:00 pm Post subject: |
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| ocho wrote: | New interview with David Simon:
| Quote: | Tell me about Treme, the show set in New Orleans you're currently producing.
It's a very different piece from The Wire. We're not trying to do a crime story or a political story. This is a story about culture and how American urban culture defines how we live. New Orleans is an extraordinary and unusual culture, but it comes from the same primal forces in American society of immigration and assimilation and non-assimilation and racism and post-racialism that really are the defining characteristics of this melting pot society. What is it about Americans that makes us Americans? The one thing we have unarguably given the world is African-American music. If you walk into a shebeen in South Africa, or whatever version of a bar they have in Kathmandu, if they have a jukebox, you're going to find some Michael Jackson, some Otis Redding, some John Coltrane. It has gone around the world. That is the essential American contribution to worldwide culture. The combination of African rhythms and the pentatonic scale and European instrumentation and arrangement. That collision of the two happened in a 12-square block area of a city called New Orleans that had a near-death experience in 2005.
What shape is New Orleans in now?
Before the storm, the city had the highest ratio population in America of natives, because nobody left. But people have not been able to get back. I would say only about two-thirds have returned. The housing stock is still diminished. The political infrastructure is still dysfunctional – it still has lots of crime problems. But the culture is resurgent and right now the city is ecstatic. Mardi Gras has just finished but also the Super Bowl has brought the city together. There was an allegiance over the Saints march to the Super Bowl that transcended all other arguments over race and class. How long that lasts is another thing. But right now the city's riding a peculiar high that's wonderful to be around.
There were plenty of in-jokes in The Wire, with local figures like the real police commissioner cast in an unlikely role. Do you get up to similar antics in Treme?
Yeah, we do. There are references to locals and some lines that only New Orleanians will get but they won't interfere with the contextual understanding of the scenes as a whole for viewers outside New Orleans. But for people in the music community and in the cuisine culture, these lines are going to be inside jokes. It's one way of saying that we want the show to be written from within rather than without. When you write from the inside, it creates a credibility for the piece for a whole. There were lines in Generation Kill that only a marine would laugh at.
Martin Amis was an early fan of yours. Do you reciprocate that interest?
Before I got together with my current wife, we were co-workers in prior relationships at the Baltimore Sun. One day she came back from interviewing Martin Amis and he had been reading Homicide in preparation for writing Night Train. To her, I'm the ink-stained schnook and she came up to my desk and said: "You're not going to believe this but I've just interviewed Martin Amis and he thinks you're the bee's knees." Because I was so ignorant, I said: "Who's Martin Amis?" She ran through his canon and I got nothing. And she goes, "Kingsley Amis's son?" And I go, "Who's Kingsley Amis?" Last year we went out to dinner with Martin – I've since read a lot of his books – and I told him that story by way of saying, "This is the ignorant unread ass I was and, look, she still married me!"
Your work pays a great deal of attention to authentic detail. It was surprising to discover, therefore, how many British and Irish actors you cast in The Wire.
Sometimes a guy comes in and nails a part in an evocative way and you think he can do it. And when you get a read like that, you hear the accent and the cultural differences and you say, "Well, can we get there?" That's what happened with Dominic [West], Idris [Elba] and Aidan [Gillen]. None of them was able to get a Baltimore accent. But none of the black or white actors from New York or LA was able to get a Baltimore accent. It's the toughest. There are people who tell me it is reminiscent of what you hear in Devon and Cornwall. I went to see War Horse in London last year. When the woman who played the Devon farm wife came out with her first line of dialogue, my son and I turned to each other and we both said: "She's from Baltimore."
Any compromising stories about Dominic West?
His first season in Baltimore seemed to suggest that bacchanalian feats would be legendary and the town would never be the same again. Then Dominic hooked up with his wife midway through our run, and he became as quiet and temperate as a church mouse. The thing is, Dominic is really smart and he hides it. There's a degree from Trinity College there and a lot of book learning and a lot of cultural points that do not elude him. He plays the Jack the Lad character, but he directed for us and he did a good job. I want to use him on Treme if we get a second season.
How do you think Obama is doing?
I'm a little disappointed, but actually what I'm most disappointed in is the Democratic leadership in the Congress. This new administration's own inexperience, coupled with some really ineffectual law-making, have conspired to grind the body politic to a halt. The money interests have managed once again to make us inert.
You've gone from the desert to a flood, a biblical transition. What's next up, pestilence?
Yeah, or frogs, or vermin, or death of the first-born. The next project, in terms of producing, is this mini-series based on the assassination of Abraham Lincoln in 1865. It was an act of terrorism in war time that shocked the entire nation and it resulted in some very rational immediate reaction on the part of the government and then some other things that were irrational and destructive, right down to military tribunals. It has a lot of parallels to the 9/11 moment. |
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Good read. Thanks.
Now we have to look forward to the Lincoln mini-series also.
Simon should inspire local artists to create series' in the vein of The Wire and Treme (assuming it's going to be good) about their respective cities. Every city has a story. Maybe not as violent and harsh as Baltimore or as unique as NO, but they all have stories. I think Detroit would be an amazing backdrop for a Simon-like project. |
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Socks
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Joined: 01 Feb 2006
Posts: 10761
Location: Bay Area, CA
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| Posted: Fri Feb 26, 2010 3:03 pm Post subject: |
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| Quote: | Any compromising stories about Dominic West?
His first season in Baltimore seemed to suggest that bacchanalian feats would be legendary and the town would never be the same again. |
That was just Dominic West getting into character. |
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evanshall
Starting Rotation
Joined: 21 Feb 2008
Posts: 182
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| Posted: Fri Feb 26, 2010 10:48 pm Post subject: |
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I just started watching The Wire on DVD and I'm hooked. I'm halfway through season 3.
does anyone know the name of the black actress that avon hooks up with at the club? I googled but couldn't figure it out. She's a freaking goddess. |
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