Posts with tag DavidSimon
Posted Sep 18th 2008 1:05PM by Allison Waldman
Filed under: Cable/Satellite, Reality-Free

A week from now, HBO will probably be one of the big stories from the
Primetime Emmys thanks to the success of the
John Adams mini-series. But it's not sitting on that success, the premium cable net is banking on it.
HBO announced today a mini series based on the assassination of Abraham Lincoln called Manhunt. That news would be interesting enough because the series will deal with the 12 days after Lincoln was shot when the assassin, John Wilkes Booth, was on the run. However, the guys that HBO have tapped to work on
Manhunt are two of the best in television -- David Simon and Tom Fontana.
HBO knows Simon and Fontana's work really well. Simon was the creator of
The Wire and Fontana's brainchild was
Oz. This is also not a new collaboration. Fontana turned Simon's book,
Homicide: A Year on the Killing Streets, into the
Homicide: Life on the Streets TV series for NBC.
Continue reading HBO plans Lincoln assassination mini-series
Posted Dec 4th 2006 2:02PM by Michael Canfield
Filed under: Other Drama Shows, HBO, The Wire

While gearing up for
The Wire's fourth season finale this Sunday, I checked out
Slate's
long interview with David Simon. He's the Baltimore resident and former journalist who created the HBO series. Lots of good nuggets about the show, which Simon compares to a "66 hour movie." That's good news, as the show has done 50 episodes over its first four seasons, so evidently the fifth and final season will be super-sized to 16 episodes.
Continue reading Slate interviews The Wire creator David Simon
Posted Sep 9th 2006 7:17PM by Michael Canfield
Filed under: HBO, OpEd, Web, Celebrities, The Wire

Stand-up comic Patton Oswalt (
The King of Queens,
Comedians of Comedy,
Reno 911) has one of the better celebrity blogs I've found. Maybe that's because he mostly talks about comic books and bad road food, and has yet to format anything to look like poetry. His blog's pretty funny, the fact that he calls it his "spew" not withstanding.
Right now
he's begging his readers to tune into HBO Sunday night and watch
The Wire season 4. Like others have, Patton calls
The Wire the "best show ever on television." Here's the money quote : "
The Wire is one of the few times you'll watch TV and not feel like the people making TV think you're a fucking idiot."
Continue reading Patton Oswalt begs you to watch 'The Wire'
Posted Sep 7th 2006 7:28PM by Michael Canfield
Filed under: Other Drama Shows, HBO, Talent, Video, Web, The Wire

Two writers of
The Wire, co-creator David Simon and novelist Richard Price
spoke at the 92nd St Y in New York City last night. Here's a three-minute clip where Simon talks about his hesitation in approaching Price to write for a mere TV show. That's all fine; I found it informative, but the really priceless moment of the clip occurs in the last 30 seconds when Price talks about his own reaction to one of the most surprising developments from the end of last season.
Not only his reaction, but the reaction of a certain segment of the Baltimore population. YouTube also has a
few other good clips on
The Wire right now, including the two mini-documentaries HBO ran this summer in advance of the new season. (
Video clip below the jump.)
[Thanks to Andrew Krucoff for sending this along.]
Continue reading David Simon on writing The Wire -- VIDEO
Posted Aug 7th 2006 9:02AM by Bob Sassone
Filed under: Other Drama Shows, HBO, Premium Cable, TV on DVD, The Wire
I've never seen the show, but everything I've heard about the show - from people whose opinion I trust in these matters - rave about it. Every single review of the show uses the words "brilliant" and "great writing" and "great cast," and the writiers and directors on the show (including David Simon, who also worked on Homicide, and crime novelists George Pelecanos and Dennis Lehane) are an interesting bunch. So why doesn't the show get the same massive buzz that The Sopranos and Deadwood do?
The Star-Ledger's Alan Sepinwall has a long essay about what makes The Wire so great. It makes me want to watch the show (I guess it did its job), and that's a good thing, since it looks like a final, fifth season will depend on how many viewers tune in to the long-delayed fourth season, which starts September 10.