Points On The Package

An older interview with Michael K. Williams, who gives us some interesting insight into how the writers and Williams created and protected the character of Omar Little. Williams comes up with a great quote about the series:

If you look at the way things have always ended at the end of the season, they never wrap up all the conclusions in a nice little ball and give it to you within your hour, which you expect with the normal television dramas. You can always expect that, by the end of the hour, the bad guy’s gonna get caught, the good guy’s gonna prevail, hunky dory. Doesn’t work that way with The Wire, man. Sometimes the bad guy gets away, sometimes the good guy gets killed, and sometimes the gray guy just stays gray.

Another nod to Wire fans, courtesy Law & Order: Special Victims Unit: In Underbelly, we get to see Michael K. Williams (Omar) exercise his range and play a far less honourable hood, and there was also a “hey!” moment when Julito “Namond” McCullum appeared from the back of a jail cell. The Law & Order casting directors know quality performances when they see them!

It is all about one’s reputation. And with yet another poorly-reviewed film to his name, Idris Elba’s reputation is starting to slide with the fanboys. (Turns out I wasn’t the only one to catch that anything-for-a-buck theme in his NY Times interview.)

Witness this punchy dialogue written by AV Club commentator “Scum Devil”:

Soulless Hollywood Producer: Hey I have a big budget dumb action movie and I think…
Idris Elba’s Agent: Yeah were in.
Soulless Hollywood Producer: Ok. It’s about a team of…
Idris Elba’s Agent: Hey I already said he’ll do it.
Soulless Hollywood Producer: I know it may be a little cheesy but…
Idris Elba’s Agent: I don’t think you understand MOTHERFUCKER. Get the check UPSed to my office by Friday and he’s yours.
Soulless Hollywood Producer: But theres a rectum shotgun scene and I just want to make sure…
Idris Elba’s Agent: Listen do you want him or not because I got Michael Bay on the line and he needs a token black guy to play random soldier #2 so are we making a deal or what?

I’m through Episode 2 of Tremé* and the gears are slowly starting to turn. Common to all David Simon shows, these molasses starts always build into a tension-filled series with a crackerjack finale, so I wasn’t worried about the meandering nature of Episode 1.

Wire fans shouldn’t need any more prodding to tune in, but as added bonuses, the Simon alumni keep appearing suddenly, eliciting cheers of delight from me. Tonight, I huzzah-ed at the sight of Anwan (Slim Charles) Glover, though this was followed by a boo when it became clear he wasn’t a new addition to the cast – I miss his basso profundo voice and head-movement punctuation.

Speaking of head movements, did anybody else enjoy the nod to Wire viewers when *SPOILER ALERT* (highlight to read) Lester killed that guy in the vacant? *END SPOILER*

The stellar cast of Steve Zahn, Melissa Leo, John Goodman, Khandi Alexander and Wendell (Bunk) Pierce is increasingly surrounded by equally-stellar secondary players, and the scenes are interspersed with musical performances that – in a just world – would singlehandedly repopulate New Orleans, both with tourists and the Katrina-induced musician diaspora.

Next week is Episode 3, by which I expect to be fully invested. Wire fans, if you haven’t yet immersed yourself in Tremé, get in while the getting’s good.

*Apologies for the apparently unnecessary accent, but I spent months assuming it was pronounced like “extreme” without the “ex”, and am trying to reinforce my memory.

The New York Times has a piece on Idris Elba, known to you and me as Stringer Bell. Sadly, he sounds just as money-driven as String was, though his focus is on box office business instead of heroin.

Despite dismal reviews, that thriller [Obsessed] — about a married man whose life goes to pieces when an unhinged temp stalks his family — opened at No. 1 at the box office a year ago, driven by Mr. Elba and his co-star Beyoncé Knowles. “ ‘Obsessed’ elevated my presence; I got chased by TMZ!” he said, amazed at his brush with the celebrity-industrial complex. “Latino audiences had never paid attention to me before, and suddenly I have that audience. You become a bit more viable in other markets.”

The nugget of an image not exploited by the reporter is that Elba was shooting in Glasgow last year. Stringer making his way in the notoriously violent Glesga is a whole ‘nother series – one I’d dearly love to watch.

New York Magazine has written a profile of David Simon, in which his prickliness is on full display, but so too is the devotion of his cast, crew and fans. (Quality work excuses a lot of personality defects.)

“Well, when I first met David, his social skills left a lot to be desired,” [Clarke] Peters says in his deep voice, smiling. “For whatever reason: Some people are nervous, regardless of their genius. I felt I could do nothing to please this cat.” Peters was closer to Simon’s nurturing co-producer, Robert Colesberry. But since Colesberry’s death, of heart disease, in 2004, Simon has dropped his guard—and Peters has come to respect him as a creative force. “He puts his head above the parapet to be shot down, and I stand with him. He makes me feel like an actor on a mission.”

Tom Fontana puts it another way. “Before I hired him on Homicide, when he was a reporter defending truth, justice, and the Baltimore homicide unit, anything he thought I did wrong on that subject was an insult,” he says. “He would be in my office and in my face and very prickly. But over time I came to love him for it. And when he got downsized, he came to me and he said—he said, ‘I want to make TV.’ And then he was my bitch. You just have to wait long enough.”

Just as exciting as the news of Treme (which I haven’t yet been able to watch) is the hint that Simon and Tom Fontana are working on a movie about the Lincoln assassination. I’m a Civil War buff who’s been deeply disappointed with most of the movies made about the conflict, so I have high hopes for this. It’ll also be nice to see Simon back on his home turf of Maryland, albeit a Maryland 150 years older than the one his characters usually inhabit.

Terrific review of the series (to Season 4) by The American Prospect

Over four seasons of intricate and nuanced television, its creator David Simon (author of the bestselling nonfiction crime classic Homicide) has stood the cozy fables of TV crime shows on their head. The Wire bursts at its seams with walking contradictions and unexpected reversals. A gay Robin Hood who robs drug dealers. A brilliant cop consumed by his own congenital hatred of authority. A junkie snitch who sees the streets more clearly, through his narcotic haze, than the cops or the dealers.

The world of The Wire is also a place where drug kingpins follow codes of conduct that include a “Sunday Truce” as they murder government witnesses, competitors, and innocent bystanders with near impunity. It’s a place where slow and stagnant policy bureaucracy — and petty office politics — can be just as lethal as a handgun. The Wire, in sum, is Law and Disorder: It captures, unremittingly, precisely why we feel so uneasy about our own cities, even as the statistics try to reassure us. (In Simon’s West Baltimore neighborhoods, those statistics exist largely to be altered — or “juked” — for political effect.)

http://www.prospect.org/cs/articles?article=bodymore_murdaland

This ESPN piece about a heartbroken father whose 17 year old, football-star son was gunned down in LA bizarrely turns into a Wire summary halfway through. While I see the writer’s point, I’m not sure there wasn’t enough drama in the original story that he couldn’t just have stuck with that.

http://sports.espn.go.com/espn/print?id=3289490&type=story

Snoop and – wait for it – Anthony Bourdain talk mainly intelligibly about her dark past and bright future (a reality show?!) over some crabcakes and other Baltimore specialties.