Speaker 1: This is Alec Baldwin and you're listening to here's the thing.
Speaker 1: Some critics called The Wire the greatest television show of
Speaker 1: all time. It ain't nothing like they make it out
Speaker 1: to be. The HBO series explored Baltimore's drug scene and
Speaker 1: the corruption of the city's social, governmental, and media institutions.
Speaker 1: How many years you're thinking we've been doing this same ship.
Speaker 1: Fans of The Wire seemed most attached to its authentic characters,
Speaker 1: people like Lieutenant Cedric Daniels, the Greek who smuggled drugs
Speaker 1: and humans, middle schooler Dukie Weims, drug kingpin, prop Joe.
Speaker 1: State your name for the record, Omar Devon Little and
Speaker 1: of course Omar, And what is your occupation occupation? What
Speaker 1: exactly do you do for a living? Mr? Little? A
Speaker 1: rip and run you arrives drug dealings. When you ask
Speaker 1: David Simon, the show's creator and my guest today, which
Speaker 1: character he loved writing most, he invariably answers Baltimore. Baltimore
Speaker 1: looms large in Simon's life. He got his start as
Speaker 1: a reporter for the Baltimore Sun. Simon wrote Homicide, A
Speaker 1: Year on the Killing Streets about his time spent with
Speaker 1: the Baltimore Police Homicide Unit, and then he created The
Speaker 1: Corner for HBO, a mini series based on his book
Speaker 1: about the open air drug market in West Baltimore. You
Speaker 1: might assume David Simon grew up in Baltimore in a
Speaker 1: family with a tradition of law enforcement. He didn't. He
Speaker 1: was raised in Washington, d c. In a family where
Speaker 1: the tradition was words. My father was a professional jew
Speaker 1: by which I mean he was the pure director for
Speaker 1: ben a Birth, which is like a Jewish service organization,
Speaker 1: and he did that for thirty years. Argument was a
Speaker 1: way of of communicating. I mean, rhetoric was prized in
Speaker 1: my household. Simon's father had wanted to be a journalist,
Speaker 1: he had studied it in college, but with a growing family,
Speaker 1: he opted for the security of public relations. His son, David,
Speaker 1: inherited his dad's passion for newsprint. You know, once he
Speaker 1: saw that I was interested in newspapers as a teenager,
Speaker 1: he was like throwing like Swope and Damon Runyon and like,
Speaker 1: you know, watch what he does here. And and then
Speaker 1: once I got involved with the son, he threw Mankan
Speaker 1: at me. And so I was reading old guys, you
Speaker 1: know who A kind of newspaper style that isn't even
Speaker 1: allowed anymore, you know, and so I'm not sure man
Speaker 1: can can get published. David Simon wrote for his high
Speaker 1: school paper in Bethesda, Maryland, and continued writing in college.
Speaker 1: I worked on the college paper at Maryland, and uh,
Speaker 1: I sort of wrote my way onto the Sun. Um.
Speaker 1: I was a stringer for a year and sort of
Speaker 1: paid thirty bucks a story. And I had so many
Speaker 1: buyolines that the unions have sort of had to formally complain.
Speaker 1: And so, you know, you gotta hire him if he's
Speaker 1: writing this much like a hundred violins. And the Metro
Speaker 1: editor told the union quietly, look, when he graduates, we're
Speaker 1: gonna hire him. So uh and they did. You know,
Speaker 1: I didn't have to do the three or four years
Speaker 1: in Rono or like a smaller market paper to get
Speaker 1: to a major Metro daily. I got lucky. And that's
Speaker 1: what were you writing those hundred by lines when you
Speaker 1: were at the school. I was still trying to get
Speaker 1: out of you know. By the time I finished editing
Speaker 1: the Diamondback, which was a broadsheet five days a week
Speaker 1: paper at Maryland, I had maybe sixty five credits. I
Speaker 1: failed out, so many times I was the editor, so
Speaker 1: I failed out two semesters in a row, just for last.
Speaker 1: You're a professional newspaperman who was hiding in a college basically,
Speaker 1: you know what. I try to say that to my father,
Speaker 1: but he had he pissed away the the Yeah, you know,
Speaker 1: I'm not sure he bought it. But um I got in.
Speaker 1: So I still had to get a degree. Even after
Speaker 1: I finished editing the paper. You know, I was. I
Speaker 1: was on a five year plus summer plan. But what
Speaker 1: do you write about? And while I was there, I
Speaker 1: became their stringer. I don't know that I was looking.
Speaker 1: You know. It wasn't like I had the world as
Speaker 1: my oyster and I could have chosen a day. As
Speaker 1: soon as I got hired at the Sun, it was like, understood,
Speaker 1: that's where I'm going, you know. But I didn't know
Speaker 1: Baltimore at all. I mean, I Baltimore was one of
Speaker 1: those places I drove through to go visit relatives in
Speaker 1: New York and you'd like drive that, you know, the
Speaker 1: Harvard Tunnel and auto graveyards and you know, rusting peers,
Speaker 1: and you'd think, you know, my god, you know, you
Speaker 1: take a wrong turn if you end up here, you know,
Speaker 1: but you began at the Sun in no later than that,
Speaker 1: So in any three, you started the Sun and you
Speaker 1: developing a very deep understanding of Baltimore slowly, I'd say
Speaker 1: the first few years, I was just trying to figure
Speaker 1: out how to do reporting. Um what'd you write about
Speaker 1: in the beginning? Well, the same thing I wrote about
Speaker 1: at the end. Uh. I never read the joke because
Speaker 1: I never got promoted. I was a police reporter. I
Speaker 1: started as a night police reporter, which was very reactive.
Speaker 1: You know, you come in at four pm and you
Speaker 1: leave it to you know what, it's all what happened yesterday,
Speaker 1: police said, police said, police said. And eventually I would
Speaker 1: have graduated to covering crime as an issue or the
Speaker 1: drug policy stuff as issues. But I never really got
Speaker 1: out of the crime game. Did your attitude towards the
Speaker 1: police and policing evolve over the time that you were
Speaker 1: the reporter? Yeah, I mean I learned to respect good
Speaker 1: policing and I still do. Um And eventually I learned that, UM,
Speaker 1: I had to move away from the singular point of
Speaker 1: view of the cops because it's very easy when you're
Speaker 1: a reporter in the beginning to embrace who's giving you information.
Speaker 1: So if you're covering the courts, you know, you're listening
Speaker 1: to lawyers, and if you're covering the station house, the cops,
Speaker 1: you're going to. You know, it was much more accessible
Speaker 1: to go to the Western District and have their version
Speaker 1: of events than to go to the fourteen hundred block
Speaker 1: of Carrollton and talk to the neighbors who you know,
Speaker 1: didn't trust the Baltimore Sun to begin. I mean, it
Speaker 1: was a predominately black city and most of the crime
Speaker 1: was rooted in the in the black community. And so
Speaker 1: I'm a white guy who grew up in the suburbs,
Speaker 1: So I got almost no skill set when it comes
Speaker 1: to but you know, there's an awful lot you can
Speaker 1: accomplish by just coming back and showing you know, showing
Speaker 1: up is a little bit of the battle, and then
Speaker 1: being willing to ask a stupid question, when do you
Speaker 1: finish writing for the Sun? You stopped when up. Yeah,
Speaker 1: the paper was going in a bad direction. It was
Speaker 1: the beginning of what was happening in newspapers, but it
Speaker 1: was not. And you mentioned that there were limitations put
Speaker 1: on you in the work you were doing. What were
Speaker 1: those what they valued in journalism, I had very little
Speaker 1: regard for and what I valued um, I wasn't unable
Speaker 1: to convey to the importance of it to them. I
Speaker 1: mean we were speaking different languages. The guys who came
Speaker 1: in once we were brought up by the chains, and
Speaker 1: it wasn't that they wanted mediocre things. It was that
Speaker 1: they actually had deep ambitions, but they were sort of
Speaker 1: the prize culture ambitions. Five part series The Baltimore Sun
Speaker 1: has learned it's better if it's unsourced, even if the
Speaker 1: source would go on the record. It makes it sound
Speaker 1: like we did more work. I mean, there was like
Speaker 1: almost a formula, and I was much more interested in
Speaker 1: how the city actually works or doesn't work, and that
Speaker 1: stuff is complicated, and like if you're trying to slice
Speaker 1: off a five part series or three part series of
Speaker 1: outrage in order to win a prize, you have to
Speaker 1: discard the stuff that is maybe going the other way,
Speaker 1: or it makes the issue complicated. I mean, one of
Speaker 1: the editors that The Sun who became predominant when I
Speaker 1: when I knew it was time to leave. He'd won
Speaker 1: one a couple of Politzers in Phildelphia, and one of
Speaker 1: them was for and I'm sure they were very good stories,
Speaker 1: but but one of them was very literally it was
Speaker 1: the canine unit of the police department. The dogs are
Speaker 1: biting too many people. They're biting more people than in
Speaker 1: other cities. And I'm sure the series has its merits,
Speaker 1: but not everything is you know, the real issues facing
Speaker 1: American cities are and if we can just get the
Speaker 1: dogs to stuff by, you know, It's like I was
Speaker 1: much more interested in why isn't the drug word? Yeah? Yeah,
Speaker 1: like you know, why why are we doing the same
Speaker 1: things over and over again? And having lesson what did
Speaker 1: you think was wrong with Baltimore? What do you think
Speaker 1: we're Baltimore's biggest problems? Nothing that isn't wrong with most
Speaker 1: of the urban American policy at this point, which is
Speaker 1: but I mean one of the more more fundamental problems
Speaker 1: was they were committed to a national drug probably and
Speaker 1: that is just incredibly destructive. And now we would if
Speaker 1: you stop in ninety five you said this when you
Speaker 1: took the buy out from them, and then and then
Speaker 1: were you a television person, you would television and watcher
Speaker 1: you he did you end up? It was a mistake.
Speaker 1: It's really been a hilarious mistake. One of my dear
Speaker 1: friends who died while we were working on Tremay was
Speaker 1: David Mills, and we worked on the college paper together.
Speaker 1: And I remember being on a college paper and this
Speaker 1: is the time of Hill Street, Blues and st Elsewhere
Speaker 1: in those shows, and I could admire the craft of
Speaker 1: those shows and see that something sort of fresh was happening.
Speaker 1: But I was, you know, I was in my early twenties,
Speaker 1: and I wasn't hanging around to watch. I can never
Speaker 1: get in front of the television set on the right night,
Speaker 1: so I caught a little of it here and there.
Speaker 1: But David and we'd be rolling the paper at ten
Speaker 1: o'clock at night, and it's like, you know, we're just
Speaker 1: trying to get the pages out to get them printed,
Speaker 1: and David would like, go hold on, I gotta go
Speaker 1: watch Hill Street. And he'd go into the office and
Speaker 1: sit down with a little black and white TV and
Speaker 1: watch it as if it mattered. And we tease him
Speaker 1: and be like you, some people like Dave, the page
Speaker 1: isn't gonna roll about. Bless them, right, God blessed them.
Speaker 1: So I was not. I watched sports and I watched
Speaker 1: uh reruns a Bilco and Honeymooners with my dad. You know.
Speaker 1: It was like a sharing experience, you know, that's it.
Speaker 1: The newspapers had primacy in my house. It was just
Speaker 1: back when people got more than one paper, right, we
Speaker 1: got The Star Morning in an evening, Washington Star, Washington
Speaker 1: Post Times on Sundays. So when you leave the Sun,
Speaker 1: what do you do? Well? I had a bunch of
Speaker 1: opportunities there. I mean, I was working on a second book.
Speaker 1: I'd written a book called Homicide and when I was
Speaker 1: a reporter, and it was a nonfiction narrative of a
Speaker 1: year I spent in the homicid Haughton Mifflin once, I said,
Speaker 1: the police depart in Baltimore was letting me into the
Speaker 1: homicide unit for a year. That access sort of guaranteed
Speaker 1: that I was going to get some kind of advance
Speaker 1: that I could live on. Well, I researched the book,
Speaker 1: and so there was a little bit of an auction small,
Speaker 1: you know, enough that I got enough to live on
Speaker 1: and uh took a year's leave of absence from the
Speaker 1: paper when the unit wrote. The book came out in
Speaker 1: ninety one and Barry Levinson, the filmmaker from Baltimore, he
Speaker 1: bought it and he was looking to make a show
Speaker 1: at NBC and and they they made Homicide, and it
Speaker 1: was this weird step child. Because I was I went
Speaker 1: back to the Sun. I didn't think much of it. No, no,
Speaker 1: I mean I just sold him the book. And my
Speaker 1: brother Daniel did that show. That's right, of course, and
Speaker 1: we had we were gonna get there eventually. Yeah, so
Speaker 1: that this this this step child from my book is
Speaker 1: existing and I go back to being a reporter. Gail
Speaker 1: Matrix offered me the chance to write the pilot, and
Speaker 1: I said, maybe wisely, maybe not wisely, because I didn't
Speaker 1: know what the hell I would have been doing. I said,
Speaker 1: get somebody who knows what they're doing to do this.
Speaker 1: I'm a I'm a newspaperman. But maybe unwisely when I
Speaker 1: saw the per episode royalty that went to that guy,
Speaker 1: you know, and I said, once you have some scripts together,
Speaker 1: send me so I'll see the template. Maybe I'll try
Speaker 1: to write one in the head. Yeah, we wrote one
Speaker 1: late in first season, and it was so dark and
Speaker 1: so depressing that NBC wouldn't make it. The show starts
Speaker 1: starts running, and and I wrote this one script with
Speaker 1: David Mills, Like when when they gave me the assidement
Speaker 1: and they said, yeah, I take a script. I said, well,
Speaker 1: I don't know TV from Adam, but David loved this stuff,
Speaker 1: and so I called him up. He was at the
Speaker 1: Washington Post at the time. We've gone on to different newspapers,
Speaker 1: and I said, how you been, how's it going. We're
Speaker 1: gonna write a TV script. We got about two weeks
Speaker 1: and so we hold up and we turned this thing
Speaker 1: in and about half of it was our stuff. It
Speaker 1: turned out to be an episode that Robin Williams was in. Um,
Speaker 1: they cast Robin Williams in the sort of the lead
Speaker 1: guest part, and once they cast him, they had to
Speaker 1: like give him more scenes. Um. So, uh, some of
Speaker 1: our stuff got tossed, but about half of our stuff
Speaker 1: of it was probably our our pages. So I thought
Speaker 1: we'd failed miserably. You know, if you're half rewritten on
Speaker 1: a newspaper, if if half your story isn't your words,
Speaker 1: if the rewrite man had to come behind you for
Speaker 1: that much, you know, you screwed up. So I was
Speaker 1: sort of ashamed and like, well, okay, I guess we
Speaker 1: didn't do what they wanted. But they came back and
Speaker 1: offers us another script. And so at some point there's
Speaker 1: this buyout from my newspaper on the table, and the
Speaker 1: newspapers going in the direction I don't admire, and they
Speaker 1: offered me a job in that window. So I wrote
Speaker 1: two scripts in the course of like a month, one
Speaker 1: for NYPD Blue and one for Homicide, and I admired
Speaker 1: both shows and and and they were both very fair offers.
Speaker 1: Tom Fontana said, I'll teach you how to do this,
Speaker 1: and you're gonna want to learn how to actually produce. Yes,
Speaker 1: he kept that promise with a Vengeance pretty much everything.
Speaker 1: One of the most successful TV writers you know, and
Speaker 1: I mean in the end, Tom was as good as
Speaker 1: his word in the sense of at first, all you're
Speaker 1: doing is writing, and you're just moving scenes, and you're
Speaker 1: you know, filling in, you know, but eventually set coverage
Speaker 1: and protecting the writing when it's on set and shooting, well,
Speaker 1: you want to make sure that you're getting the intention
Speaker 1: of the scene, because merely because it's a script doesn't
Speaker 1: mean it's it's it's headed for anywhere good. You have
Speaker 1: to protect it all at the same time giving the
Speaker 1: actors and the director a chance two make it their
Speaker 1: own as well. But you have to keep the core
Speaker 1: value of what the story is. And I've come to
Speaker 1: believe that, you know, if you have a good crew,
Speaker 1: if you have good actors, everybody's kind of a well
Speaker 1: sharpened tool, and if they know their business, they're doing
Speaker 1: exactly what they're supposed to do. But somebody has to
Speaker 1: look out for story as a whole and protect story
Speaker 1: as a whole, particularly in an intricate drama. That's some
Speaker 1: sets I've been on. The actors are better at keeping
Speaker 1: their eye on the story as a whole than the
Speaker 1: writers themselves. I've not found that, but that may be
Speaker 1: something that you and I were going to differ on
Speaker 1: to the end of time. Everybody has to settle for
Speaker 1: at certain points for eighty five or nine or even
Speaker 1: eight percent of your intention. As you go into the
Speaker 1: day's work, there comes that moment where you're fighting to
Speaker 1: get six and then then there's trouble then that it
Speaker 1: has to be resolved because that's not enough. But I mean,
Speaker 1: I think in some ways you have to leave room
Speaker 1: for everybody to be creative and and that it's that's
Speaker 1: a real thinks. I learned that. And then you know
Speaker 1: somewhere at about a year and a half, I was
Speaker 1: summoned to New York to sit by the Avid and
Speaker 1: watch what Tom did when he cut. And that was
Speaker 1: another education. You know, at a certain point you get
Speaker 1: sent to casting. You know there's a whole skill set
Speaker 1: of shore running that And when did that end? When
Speaker 1: did you walk away from Hamish? Homicide ended in so
Speaker 1: as homicide is winding down and you either sense that
Speaker 1: it's going to end, or didn't end abruptly, or you
Speaker 1: kind of knew it was coming. They I took the
Speaker 1: job with homicide, thinking I'll do this while I was
Speaker 1: working on a very complicated manuscript of of my second book,
Speaker 1: which was about a drug The year spent on the
Speaker 1: Drug Corner was a follow up to Homisi Corner. Yeah,
Speaker 1: a drug corner in West Bontimore. So were you was
Speaker 1: the wire something that you were cooking up while you
Speaker 1: were developing and or shooting and or posting and or
Speaker 1: debuting the Corner. A lot of people think the Wire
Speaker 1: came in the wake of the Sopranos, But when we
Speaker 1: wrote the Wire scripts for the first seas and we
Speaker 1: hadn't seen the Sopranos, we were we were writing in
Speaker 1: the absence of the Sprans. We were writing in the
Speaker 1: shadow of oz. Oz was the first time that HBO
Speaker 1: had ventured into this. Hey, we'll put it on TV
Speaker 1: and you've never seen it before on TV territory. So
Speaker 1: that was when I saw the pilot of ALS. I
Speaker 1: went to Tom and said, you know, you could do
Speaker 1: a show about a drug corner. And for reasons that
Speaker 1: you know are elusive to me. Now, Tom and Barry
Speaker 1: were joined at the hip, and Barry didn't want to
Speaker 1: do the corner. Uh, you know, he didn't want to
Speaker 1: send it up for series. I think Tom wanted to.
Speaker 1: But you know it was and I think to give
Speaker 1: that end up being a good thing for you. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I mean it ended up. Tom said a piece of
Speaker 1: it to Tom. Right at the time, I was like, oh,
Speaker 1: now I gotta walk into a room with an HBO
Speaker 1: without Yeah, but what happened Tom set the meeting up.
Speaker 1: What happened, Well, I got in the room and they
Speaker 1: had already read the book, which was a miracle by
Speaker 1: l A standards. You know, there wasn't a memo. Yeah,
Speaker 1: two or three people in the room had actually read
Speaker 1: the book, and I was trying to sell them the wire. Finally,
Speaker 1: Karrie and Tholis, who was the head of mini series
Speaker 1: at the time, said we just want you to do
Speaker 1: the book. Can you just do the book as the
Speaker 1: book is as a mini and I said, okay, you
Speaker 1: know better than nothing. So I was in the mini
Speaker 1: series business. The only caveat they had was, we happen
Speaker 1: to notice you're not black and you're a co writer
Speaker 1: who's ed Burn's former police detective on the corner. He's
Speaker 1: not black either. Can you get a black you know?
Speaker 1: Do you know any and I said, wow, there's this
Speaker 1: to get a black guy in here? Yeah? Can we
Speaker 1: can we make a marriage? Would you do well? I said,
Speaker 1: I said, you know, I thought. They said, well, you
Speaker 1: know I am. I know this guy, David Curtis Hall
Speaker 1: came sprinting a producer. I had Dave Mills in my pocket.
Speaker 1: I mean, we've been friends since college. So I said,
Speaker 1: I know this guy Mills. You know. Literally, they thought
Speaker 1: for the credibility of the series, you needed to have
Speaker 1: an African American. I don't think they'll deny it to
Speaker 1: this day. And they were nervous about presenting depictions of
Speaker 1: African Americans that were rooted in the in the underclass
Speaker 1: and probably very smartly, so right, and I don't blame them,
Speaker 1: you know, to television, you know. So who did you
Speaker 1: get again? Who was your Dave Mills? The guy from
Speaker 1: Calm He was Dave Mills is black, so um Dave Mills,
Speaker 1: and I said, And I walked out of the HBO building,
Speaker 1: you know, into Century City and I basically I got
Speaker 1: on my cell phone. I said, Dave, what are you
Speaker 1: doing for the next year? Dave, I need a black
Speaker 1: guy get over there. And he said, what do you
Speaker 1: mean what am I doing? I think he was on
Speaker 1: L A Law. He was, he was were doing episodes
Speaker 1: for L A Law at the time. That's fine. And
Speaker 1: I said, well, you're writing a miniseries based on the
Speaker 1: Corner and he goes, I am. I said yeah, and
Speaker 1: he goes, how did that come up? And I told him,
Speaker 1: you know, he was laughing his ass off. He said,
Speaker 1: all right, this is this will be good. So I
Speaker 1: ended up doing that and then I thought it was
Speaker 1: six it was six hours and it did okay. I mean,
Speaker 1: nobody watched it. Who you know, it's it's the underclass
Speaker 1: and it's America. You know, it's not like not like
Speaker 1: people were dying for it. I thought we did very
Speaker 1: well with it, was very true to the book. It
Speaker 1: was very honest with the book, which I cared about.
Speaker 1: So both projects, so those are linked to books. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and I'm thinking now I'm gonna go back and write
Speaker 1: another book, which you know, believe me, if my book editor,
Speaker 1: God bless him, John Sterling is listening right now, he's
Speaker 1: just you know, he just spit out a couple of teeth.
Speaker 1: But um, I'm thinking, I'm going back to books, and
Speaker 1: I'm gonna go to a newspaper and I'm gonna I'm
Speaker 1: going back to gonna go back period. Yeah, I'm going
Speaker 1: back and now the windows you know, now that I
Speaker 1: finished The Corner and Homicides over, it's a nice skill
Speaker 1: set to have learned. But I'm not looking for for
Speaker 1: I'm looking to go back and then the favorite words.
Speaker 1: I like. I like reporting, I love reporting, I like
Speaker 1: I like actually the time spent even on a fictional story,
Speaker 1: the time spent an interest. There's something about you, not
Speaker 1: that you have the answer that you like it a
Speaker 1: little less, Uh, Glitzie, were you getting kind of fatigued
Speaker 1: by that? And the East Coast guy and and I
Speaker 1: will tell a story on myself and George Palcanno is
Speaker 1: one of the novelist writers, a good friend of mine.
Speaker 1: We're we're in l A for UH. I think we're
Speaker 1: going to UH some meetings and and maybe an awards there.
Speaker 1: I'm in l A usually six days a year for meetings.
Speaker 1: George wanted to go to the I Vys. We got
Speaker 1: a reservation at the ivy, and of course we were
Speaker 1: down on the sidewalk for forty five minutes, you know, waiting,
Speaker 1: and then the beautiful hostess comes down and looks around
Speaker 1: and says, after they've taken every you know, every other
Speaker 1: you know actor and says, Pelican party, Pelican party. You know,
Speaker 1: I turned it, George, I said, we don't belong here.
Speaker 1: They just sat Ruth Westimer before us. Let's go home.
Speaker 1: I have very little patience for that stuff, not because
Speaker 1: it sounds arrogant, sounds like, oh, he's such a down
Speaker 1: to earth, you know, the Baltimore under his fingernails, and
Speaker 1: you know, you go out there and you realize it's
Speaker 1: not for everybody, No, it really is not. And and listen,
Speaker 1: there's a lot to love about the entertainment industry, especially
Speaker 1: when it goes well, and nobody's throwing the money back.
Speaker 1: When when the residual checks come to your mailbox, you
Speaker 1: don't throw them out on the ground and discuss thank you. Yeah,
Speaker 1: no one know what ever says no thank you. But
Speaker 1: I was supposed to write towards argument, like the stuff
Speaker 1: was supposed to be about something. Was it in the corner? Yeah? Yeah,
Speaker 1: I mean it was, and you were gonna go write
Speaker 1: another book about I think the next one was supposed
Speaker 1: to be. In my head, I wanted to do the
Speaker 1: working class. It was what what we what we canabalized
Speaker 1: for season two of The Wire. First I had asked um,
Speaker 1: I've made some quiet inquiries about going to beth Steel,
Speaker 1: the steel plant which was still sort of operating a
Speaker 1: skeleton shift um in Baltimore, but very big steel plant,
Speaker 1: and also the GM factory about whether they'd let me
Speaker 1: work in the line. You know, I can't help it.
Speaker 1: I'm from a different planet, which is journalism, and what
Speaker 1: I'm really interested in it even in making film, even
Speaker 1: as a filmmaker, is is the argument that can come
Speaker 1: as a result of the narrative. I certainly don't know you,
Speaker 1: but judging from your work Homicide and The Wire, and trema.
Speaker 1: You seem like someone who comes from a you know,
Speaker 1: a comfortable middle class existence and and and an educated background.
Speaker 1: The plight of the poor or something that gnaws at you. Correct,
Speaker 1: I'm interested in the story that has political import um
Speaker 1: and and that can say something fresh and worthy of argument.
Speaker 1: I'm not sure I ever sort of saw it as
Speaker 1: being socialism. Yeah. Well, and yet I would say my
Speaker 1: politics are to the left of the Democratic Party. I'm
Speaker 1: probably what in Europe would be called the democratic socialist.
Speaker 1: But having said that, I think I was very fair
Speaker 1: as a reporter. You know, some of poverty is about
Speaker 1: personal responsibility, and some of it is not. Some of
Speaker 1: it is systemic and a result of societal forces that
Speaker 1: are profound, and you can't ignore either. And I think
Speaker 1: the reporting in the corner and also some of the
Speaker 1: implications of the wire. People I know who liked the
Speaker 1: wire loved the wire. Well, it would, but that that
Speaker 1: came very late in the run, and it came as
Speaker 1: a result of things that I don't think we anticipated
Speaker 1: what you're uh, sort of power watching through whole seasons
Speaker 1: at a time, you know, once on demand and DVD
Speaker 1: sets became those things. Yeah, we were still locked into
Speaker 1: the Man and we hope they watched it on Sunday
Speaker 1: nights or in the rewatches. When we first came on
Speaker 1: the air, all that other, all the other platforms didn't exist,
Speaker 1: so we didn't know that it would have a long tail.
Speaker 1: And at the time, it was really about begging to
Speaker 1: let us finish the narrative. How many seasons of The
Speaker 1: Wire did you do? Uh? Five? How many episodes? Uh? Sixty?
Speaker 1: What did you learn before? I mean, and even though
Speaker 1: the collaboration with Tom in particular and with Barry was
Speaker 1: a good one. Now this is your house and this
Speaker 1: is your thing, the Wire is you and what did
Speaker 1: you what was your personal touch you wanted to put out?
Speaker 1: What were things you wanted to do that you weren't
Speaker 1: able to do before? I thought Homicide was an exceptionally
Speaker 1: good show, really well acted, and you know, well there
Speaker 1: was a TV drama nonetheless, whereas most people agree that
Speaker 1: The Wire was something that was much more bristled with authenticity.
Speaker 1: The dialogue. Well, I mean, what the Wire had going
Speaker 1: for it was there was nobody to appease. There were
Speaker 1: no you know, there was nobody looking over your show.
Speaker 1: I remember when we pulled we had good numbers. We
Speaker 1: had okay numbers first season, we had even better number
Speaker 1: second season, and then third season the numbers though that
Speaker 1: was the first season the NFL started programming Sunday night football,
Speaker 1: So thank you, thank you, and then and then and
Speaker 1: then Desperate Housewives Chanel. So we were getting the crap
Speaker 1: kicked out of us. And I remember calling Caroline, thinking, man,
Speaker 1: they may cancel us. And I said, you know, what
Speaker 1: was the number last Sunday? And she read it back
Speaker 1: to me and I said, she said, I said, oh, man,
Speaker 1: and she goes, oh, come on, it's a cute little number.
Speaker 1: I don't want you thinking about numbers. That's astonishing. That's astonishing.
Speaker 1: So what did you want to do differently than they?
Speaker 1: What were some things you thought? I guess, yeah, that
Speaker 1: was where we got in on this. And I think
Speaker 1: the one thing I wanted to do is I looked
Speaker 1: upon homicides being twenty two. It was like a collection
Speaker 1: of short stories. You know, whenever I compare stuff to books,
Speaker 1: people think I'm saying, oh, the wires as good as
Speaker 1: Moby Dick or and I'm never saying that. I'm always
Speaker 1: just using books. As you know. Okay, homicide was dubliners.
Speaker 1: You know, it's all connected, but it's it's James Joyce's dubliners.
Speaker 1: These these delicately connected stories about a place and an
Speaker 1: ethos and and and you know, twenty two separate stories,
Speaker 1: and there's some storylines continue, but each story, you know,
Speaker 1: there's a fresh theme for each. It was short story writing,
Speaker 1: um in in a television sense, and I really wanted
Speaker 1: to see what would happen if you sort of apply
Speaker 1: the logic of a novel and so, like you like,
Speaker 1: stuff that happens in the first couple of chapters might
Speaker 1: stay relevant or or have the old style of TV,
Speaker 1: which is what we don't have now, which is now
Speaker 1: everybody wants a one off? Why are these police procedurals
Speaker 1: like n c I S and everything is so popular
Speaker 1: because you watch one episode and it's all, oh listen, yeah,
Speaker 1: I was. I was. I'm not sure that it doesn't
Speaker 1: present its own level of problems, but I have to say,
Speaker 1: you know, um, but it plays well into the binge
Speaker 1: viewing thing where if you're if you're gonna connect everything
Speaker 1: like a novel, and I can sit down on an
Speaker 1: afternoon and I can watch three hours of your show
Speaker 1: in retrospect. You have to have a certain number of
Speaker 1: viewers get to the end and start talking about it
Speaker 1: and say you gotta put them, you gotta go get
Speaker 1: the box that you gotta go watch all these um
Speaker 1: I look at these TV things as being a chance
Speaker 1: to have a discussion about something more than I wish
Speaker 1: these two characters would get together. I wish that, you know,
Speaker 1: I wish that he wouldn't have gotten killed. You know,
Speaker 1: I understand that the viewers experienced it that way, and
Speaker 1: they're not wrong. But man, if all you're doing is
Speaker 1: being entertaining, then I've sort of, you know, I don't know.
Speaker 1: I don't know that I can sort of like look
Speaker 1: sort of the ghost of my father in the eye
Speaker 1: at night and say, you know that leaving newspapers was
Speaker 1: that I'm anything but a apostate. In fact, David Simon
Speaker 1: has become increasingly vocal in his opinions about our country's
Speaker 1: drug war. He said he hoped the wire would move
Speaker 1: quote from the entertainment pages to the op eds unquote.
Speaker 1: Last year, Simon appeared in the House I Live in,
Speaker 1: Eugene Jarecki's documentary about drug policy in the US. We
Speaker 1: Are the jailingest country on the planet beyond Saudi Arabia,
Speaker 1: North Korea or China. Nobody jels the population that there
Speaker 1: ain't that we do, and yet drugs are purer than
Speaker 1: ever before, they're more available, there are younger and younger
Speaker 1: kids willing to sell them. It'd be one thing it
Speaker 1: was draconian and it worked. But it's draconian and it
Speaker 1: does work, and it just leads to war. Talk about
Speaker 1: Jarecki and how you met him, well, one of the
Speaker 1: things that the wire was clearly intended as is a
Speaker 1: critique of the drug war and drug probition. So I've
Speaker 1: been I spoke very bluntly about what I thought had
Speaker 1: gone wrong with the drug war, and at some point,
Speaker 1: you know, when people would call me and they'd say
Speaker 1: the magic words, which is, you know, I mean I'm
Speaker 1: doing a story or I'm doing a documentary I'm doing
Speaker 1: Can I interview you about the drug war? I always
Speaker 1: say yes, And in fact, in all the public speaking
Speaker 1: I do, I always come back to one of my
Speaker 1: fundamental arguments, which is that if you're if you're an
Speaker 1: American citizen and you believe in any kind of democratic ideal, uh,
Speaker 1: you might want to seriously consider jury nullification. If you're
Speaker 1: picked on a jury for a non violent drug offense
Speaker 1: of being one of those Americans who are you know,
Speaker 1: being you know, refusing to put another American in jail
Speaker 1: over drug prohibition, you're not helping solve the problem, um,
Speaker 1: and you're leading to it InCAR sort of American problem. Yeah,
Speaker 1: you're feeding the problem since I don't think there's any
Speaker 1: political leadership that's going to get there in advance of
Speaker 1: actual popular sentiment. I think it's very much like, for example,
Speaker 1: gay rights. You know, I think by the time the
Speaker 1: politicians line up, change is already inevitable. And so I
Speaker 1: think the drug war is the same thing. And that's
Speaker 1: how prohibition finally fell on its ass, which was that
Speaker 1: they couldn't find twelve Americans to put a thirteenth in
Speaker 1: jail for making bathub jail. So I always take the
Speaker 1: gig and I always argue for jury nullification, and it's
Speaker 1: happening in places like Baltimore. In a minute, David Simon
Speaker 1: and I reminisce about our worst Hollywood pitch meetings involving
Speaker 1: Abercrombie and Fitch models and the origins of the Chesapeake Bay,
Speaker 1: and I realized once again, I'm in the wrong place.
Speaker 1: This is Alec Baldwin, and you're listening to here's the thing,
Speaker 1: this is Alec Baldwin. The city of Baltimore is still
Speaker 1: a character in David Simon's life. He and his wife,
Speaker 1: writer Laura Lippman, lived there with their three year old daughter.
Speaker 1: He also has a nineteen year old son, but Baltimore
Speaker 1: no longer takes center stage in his work. Simon produced
Speaker 1: Generation Kill, an HBO series about the invasion of Iraq,
Speaker 1: and is working on the fourth and final season of Tremay,
Speaker 1: also for HBO, a drama that follows a neighborhood in
Speaker 1: New Orleans as it struggles to rebuild after Hurricane Katrina.
Speaker 1: Simon says working on Tremay made it and clearer to
Speaker 1: him what works and what doesn't in television. Two things
Speaker 1: are still the great currency. And even in this golden
Speaker 1: age of television sex and violence, if you have hot
Speaker 1: people hooking up, then you've got one. Then you're spending
Speaker 1: one currency. And if you have to turn to the
Speaker 1: next page, and if you if you're blowing ship up
Speaker 1: and killing people, then you've got something else going for you. Well.
Speaker 1: The wire Um was what it was about, and it
Speaker 1: was something we wanted to tell a story about, but
Speaker 1: clearly it was it had the currency of being a
Speaker 1: gangster story underneath. Uh, you know, at least on the surface,
Speaker 1: that's what it was. It was a crime story and
Speaker 1: the corner was that and Generation Kill had Marines blowing
Speaker 1: shut up. You know, there have been very few television
Speaker 1: shows that that embraced the idea of real human beings
Speaker 1: on a real human scale. It's really hard to do.
Speaker 1: It's hard to keep people interested. I'm not saying Tram
Speaker 1: may succeeded in any grand way, because I think it's
Speaker 1: been a very quiet show and it has I'm hoping
Speaker 1: it will stand for what it is and people will
Speaker 1: find it. But we were not interested in being hyperbolic
Speaker 1: with the show. You know, we weren't interested in tarding
Speaker 1: it up, and we weren't interested in the violence that
Speaker 1: there is in the show. Is actually corresponds to the
Speaker 1: dynamic of violence in the city of New Orleans and
Speaker 1: and not more. It's really a show about the role
Speaker 1: of culture in bringing a city back and what it
Speaker 1: means to be live in a pluralistic society that is
Speaker 1: capable of creating pluralistic culture, which is what what better
Speaker 1: form for it than American music, roots music, jazz, blues whatever.
Speaker 1: You know, how many shows can you name that that
Speaker 1: are really you know, I mean maybe like the first
Speaker 1: couple of seasons of Northern Exposure or these shows that
Speaker 1: basically are are our studies of place and time and character.
Speaker 1: And you know, there there are people who at the
Speaker 1: moment they realized that you're not gonna that you know,
Speaker 1: no vampire is going to show up or or nobody's
Speaker 1: gonna be fucking you know, it's like waiter check please,
Speaker 1: you know. So, um, I never want to do one
Speaker 1: more pitch that I have to do in life that
Speaker 1: there are those meetings. I mean, I'm I'm I'm in
Speaker 1: this little cocoon of HBO, and I hope they take
Speaker 1: something that I'm interested in and we'll say yeah, but
Speaker 1: you know, it's not even worth talking about. I mean,
Speaker 1: you don't know how many things I don't know. I
Speaker 1: don't want to pick your brains, but I'm just saying,
Speaker 1: do you have it's not worth you know, until something
Speaker 1: gets a green light, it's just really not worth. But
Speaker 1: but I can tell you that, um, I did do
Speaker 1: the round Robin of like, I have an idea that
Speaker 1: I really care about, and I went to like all
Speaker 1: the little meetings with the production development companies and and
Speaker 1: you know, I remember telling one that very delicate true
Speaker 1: story of Baltimore that I really wanted to do as
Speaker 1: a small movie. Uh. And I remember having one meeting
Speaker 1: after another. In the last last time I actually uttered
Speaker 1: anything about it was I was at this movie over
Speaker 1: in one of the lots and at this meeting, and uh,
Speaker 1: they listen really intently, and I'm like laying it out
Speaker 1: with the character instrick. And then then this happened, and
Speaker 1: I knew this guy, and when he died, and you know,
Speaker 1: I'm bleeding out, and you know that they listened patiently
Speaker 1: for twenty five minutes, after which the guy says to me,
Speaker 1: have you ever thought about where the Chesapeake Bay came
Speaker 1: from here from Baltimore? I said, the Chesapeake Bay? He said, yeah,
Speaker 1: you know where the Chesapeake Bay came from. I said, well,
Speaker 1: it's kind of this long estuary. I think it was
Speaker 1: sort of where they think there's probably a meteor strike,
Speaker 1: you know, it's that sort of that's right. And I
Speaker 1: remember looking at him going and that's the story a
Speaker 1: meteor strike, and he nodded firmly, and I left thinking,
Speaker 1: what an idiot. You know, I can't believe I just wasted,
Speaker 1: you know, half an hour and there on a freaking
Speaker 1: more on cancel all the meetings. I'm just going home
Speaker 1: like the other studios all had meteor movies and this
Speaker 1: guy and I realized once again I'm in the wrong place.
Speaker 1: People sitting at a crab shack saying the meteors coming
Speaker 1: and got their bibs on a very sentimental and romantic
Speaker 1: Remember I was in a meeting one two years ago.
Speaker 1: This is many years ago, the mid nineties, and I thought, oh,
Speaker 1: the movie business is such a drag. It's so painful,
Speaker 1: and I was really had this crisis of faith. And
Speaker 1: I go to this meeting with some pretty big people
Speaker 1: of Morner Brothers Television and I say to this guy, um,
Speaker 1: you guys, what do you want to do? I said, well,
Speaker 1: I have an idea for a television show. I said,
Speaker 1: I want to I want to refurbish the FBI, the
Speaker 1: old Quinn Martin. I want to do the FBI and
Speaker 1: I wanted to be and I want to put together
Speaker 1: the most elite team of actors I can think of
Speaker 1: the greatest actors that I admire today. It's me and
Speaker 1: Andre Brauer and Treat Williams. And I had this list
Speaker 1: of all these really tough guys that seemed like FBI guys.
Speaker 1: I could throw a punch and shoot a gun and
Speaker 1: they just don't even move. And as a joke, as
Speaker 1: a complete joke, I said, or I'm like the Michael
Speaker 1: Conrad character in Hill Street Blues. I come up and
Speaker 1: do the the shape up in the morning and it's
Speaker 1: me and like six Abercrombie and Fitch models are my staff.
Speaker 1: And I sit there and say be careful out there,
Speaker 1: and they go out and have like crimes, and you know,
Speaker 1: every episode ends with every every episode ends with like
Speaker 1: like Team America and like two plastic looking gorgeous of
Speaker 1: people having sex. And the guy literally when he was
Speaker 1: now that show, I want to man, I mean, I'm
Speaker 1: not kidding. With an ounce of iron, he goes out
Speaker 1: that I want to make it. That's a great idea.
Speaker 1: Signed that one up. He let's do that FBI. So um.
Speaker 1: But one last thing, you have a child who's nineteen.
Speaker 1: What's he doing now? He's a college what's he Uh?
Speaker 1: He's a freshman, so I think he started, you know,
Speaker 1: because he got the bug. What bugs? No, he's actually
Speaker 1: a musician. He plays a jazz piano in a very
Speaker 1: high He hasn't even started yet and he wants to
Speaker 1: go back. Yeah, that's right, he um. So far that
Speaker 1: hasn't happened. Now the young daughter is a performer, or
Speaker 1: what's that like of you? Because I'm in the same boat.
Speaker 1: I got a seventeen and a half year old daughter
Speaker 1: and a baby coming. How's fatherhood for you? Well? Part two? Okay,
Speaker 1: let's be let's be honest. Do you feel it when
Speaker 1: you have to get up off the floor. It's easy
Speaker 1: to get down there and play with you when they're
Speaker 1: two years old, But you know, it's different than it
Speaker 1: was when I in my thirties and now I'm now
Speaker 1: in my early fifties, and when I get down on
Speaker 1: the floor, it's like get the Derek to get me
Speaker 1: up because you feel it in the knees all of
Speaker 1: a sudden. It's like, man, you you don't realize you
Speaker 1: can actually lay there and watch Mary Poppins over and
Speaker 1: over again. You're fine, right? My wife says that I
Speaker 1: think very very aptly that um, when when you're younger
Speaker 1: and you're parenting, you can go without sleep, you can
Speaker 1: be physically exhausted. You have work. Yeah, yeah, you have
Speaker 1: stamina you didn't know you have because you're young. When
Speaker 1: you're older, hopefully if things have gone a little bit
Speaker 1: right and you're an older parent, you've got enough money
Speaker 1: so that you can there's there's somebody there to help
Speaker 1: you with six or five or four hours of childcare
Speaker 1: a day. Because man, I definitely feel like I'm in
Speaker 1: my fifties so well as my friend Michael Lally, the
Speaker 1: poet said to me, who had a son later in
Speaker 1: his life, he said, it's great. I said, you had
Speaker 1: a kid. You were like right around my age. He
Speaker 1: said yes, I said that was it. Has it been
Speaker 1: every you hope it would be? He said, yes, it's great.
Speaker 1: It changed my life and reprioritize my life. I'm really
Speaker 1: I was so ready for fatherhood. I think I'm a
Speaker 1: good dad. I have a great relationship with my son.
Speaker 1: He said. There's only one thing I I remind people
Speaker 1: who are my age to keep in mind, and that is,
Speaker 1: when your kid goes to college, make sure that they
Speaker 1: attend a university where the commencement is held at a
Speaker 1: wheelchair accessible facility. That's the Oh nothing I remember, and
Speaker 1: I'm trying to keep that in mind. I fear the
Speaker 1: future in some respects. But on the other hand, you know,
Speaker 1: once once you go across the threshold, I know no
Speaker 1: giving it back, and I wouldn't if I could. Well,
Speaker 1: my last question for you is you because to me,
Speaker 1: the wire was about an authenticity which is often missing
Speaker 1: from television drama, which you know, they've got their formula,
Speaker 1: they've got their eatings and everything. They they've got their
Speaker 1: recipe that works for them, but yours speaks to makes
Speaker 1: me think you're ripe to make movies? Do you ever
Speaker 1: want to make movies? Well, the writer's not you know,
Speaker 1: get the writer off the set. You know. It's the
Speaker 1: reason they had that the writers in charge in television
Speaker 1: in drama anyway, is the need for continuity, the need
Speaker 1: for character continuity. You know, you can't fire the Son
Speaker 1: of a Bitch because episode eleven follows from episode ten,
Speaker 1: you know. And so I've had a few bites of
Speaker 1: the apple and I've written some things that you know,
Speaker 1: and I think, listen, it's also I'm not saying that
Speaker 1: what if they gave you the script, and you know
Speaker 1: we're in the age of the fully realized writer director.
Speaker 1: Everywhere I turn around, they say, you know, Evans going
Speaker 1: to be directing the script. I know what I'm not
Speaker 1: good at and and you don't want to I see
Speaker 1: shot compasses. I mean I would do a very pedestrian
Speaker 1: job of directing. I understand how to turn the camera around.
Speaker 1: I understand like what you need to leave with in
Speaker 1: order to have coverage. But the really creative and elegant
Speaker 1: directors I've worked with, they have a skill set that
Speaker 1: I don't have. It's very interesting for you, and I
Speaker 1: feel the same way. I really respect it when when
Speaker 1: they didn't care enough right when they right when they
Speaker 1: when they I understand what I'm watching a performance that
Speaker 1: isn't working because it's not getting the intention of the
Speaker 1: seen or because I don't leave in something either the
Speaker 1: background or the actor, or if something's not working, I
Speaker 1: know it's not working, but how to solve the problem. Sometimes, Um,
Speaker 1: you know, I can be diagnostic, I can't be prescriptive
Speaker 1: when it comes to a camera. I would watch some
Speaker 1: of the greatest cinematographers and I would say, truly that
Speaker 1: probably the most gratifying part of my film work was
Speaker 1: to be around these highly gifted, monastic men. I but
Speaker 1: the first time I showed up, you know, like one
Speaker 1: minute I was a rewrite man and crime reporter for
Speaker 1: the One More Sun, and the next moment I was
Speaker 1: working for this show homicide and my paychecks were coming
Speaker 1: from NBC. And I go to set for the first
Speaker 1: day and I'm looking around and I don't even know
Speaker 1: what stupid question to ask. And it was like three
Speaker 1: weeks into going to set and seeing them do it
Speaker 1: that at some point I said, you know, what's what's
Speaker 1: boots over there? You know, the guy's name is Booth?
Speaker 1: I said, what's he doing turning that knob next to
Speaker 1: the camera, and H Henry Broumel actually remember, turned to
Speaker 1: me and said, he's focusing the camera. I looked at
Speaker 1: him like, I said, you mean the guy who focuses
Speaker 1: the camera, isn't the guy looking through the camera. How
Speaker 1: does that work? Like you know, that can't possibly work.
Speaker 1: People are unprepared for how collaborative film, right exactly, and
Speaker 1: so respect the depths, you know, and I do, which
Speaker 1: is to say, I kind of want to have the
Speaker 1: story turn out. I don't want to put my name
Speaker 1: on something where the story, you know, you went in
Speaker 1: with the script you believed in and you came out
Speaker 1: with dreck. But at the same time, so I kind
Speaker 1: of don't want to relinquish control, but I have to
Speaker 1: acknowledge features is very difficult doing the television series doing
Speaker 1: thirty Rock, where we shot, you know, a hundred and
Speaker 1: twenty something episodes. We were there hour after hour after hour.
Speaker 1: My version of so Long as you Know was they'd
Speaker 1: say to me, do you mind if we move the camera.
Speaker 1: We're going to move the camera over here, so when
Speaker 1: you turn, we need you to lean on your left leg.
Speaker 1: And I would look at them. I mean, I did
Speaker 1: it a thousand times. I say, I really don't care
Speaker 1: what you do because change in this moment. I'm gonna
Speaker 1: stand here and say this line. Oh you want me
Speaker 1: to lean on my left leg? Great, that's my why
Speaker 1: I really don't care. I don't know. I don't have
Speaker 1: anybody hits the market. I have to admit it. But
Speaker 1: you know I watched that show. I have to say
Speaker 1: I am a fan of that show. My wife turned
Speaker 1: me onto it years ago, and it's just the reason
Speaker 1: that that show is so unique in terms of comedy
Speaker 1: is it It does something that you haven't seen since,
Speaker 1: like the Howard Hawks comedies. And it's funny. But it's
Speaker 1: operating at a speed that I would call his girl
Speaker 1: Friday speed the lines, rapid fire, don't wait, yeah, don't wait,
Speaker 1: don't wait. It's like, you know, we're not waiting for
Speaker 1: the laughter. We all kind of huddled up at one point.
Speaker 1: I mean it was unspoken, but we said, we really
Speaker 1: have to play this fast, right, and it's slow down
Speaker 1: it it's it has the same level of of rapid
Speaker 1: fire banter as any as the best sort of carry
Speaker 1: Grant Rosalind Russell type. You know, the speed at which
Speaker 1: team is good. Well, it really works and it's unique.
Speaker 1: There's so much that is is so much more careful
Speaker 1: and languid, and so is to my taste, less funny.
Speaker 1: Just I like it to be fair. I look forward
Speaker 1: to seeing what you do next. I can't wait. Let
Speaker 1: me think that movie thing I think you can make,
Speaker 1: you know, listen, may be back to you about that.
Speaker 1: I got a proposal for about Yeah. I got an idea.
Speaker 1: Tell your son to go to film school and the
Speaker 1: director is your son, and he wouldn't dare touch your script.
Speaker 1: Believe me that he'd be out of the will in
Speaker 1: two years. I mean, that's a that's a recipe for
Speaker 1: At some point I was working on my wife is
Speaker 1: a novelist. And at some point George Paulcanos, the guy
Speaker 1: I worked with routinely, We're looking at a project and
Speaker 1: he says, you know, we really need a good, strong
Speaker 1: female writer. And I said, you know, why don't you
Speaker 1: ask Laura to come into the writer's room on this?
Speaker 1: And I said, you know, why don't you just call
Speaker 1: the lawyer now you want? You know, I'm gonna be
Speaker 1: in the writer's room. You know, George, you know how
Speaker 1: badly we treat each other. You know, can you imagine
Speaker 1: trying to do this with somebody? You know? And uh,
Speaker 1: he's been persistent, but like that, you know, there has
Speaker 1: to be something. There has to be some you know,
Speaker 1: every child should go off and find their own joy
Speaker 1: and they should not be burdened by and and you
Speaker 1: know he can he can play felonious monk to death.
Speaker 1: And he's nineteen. I said that I can't figure out how,
Speaker 1: how what how he's doing his quarters seventeen and a half.
Speaker 1: And and you try to explain this to them, and
Speaker 1: it's all right. I say, I say, you're gonna turn
Speaker 1: around at my age and you're gonna be realized that
Speaker 1: you postponed doing certain things to be happy. And I
Speaker 1: say to my daughter, now, I said, you don't postpone
Speaker 1: that journey or that consideration of what makes you happy,
Speaker 1: because because I'm doing this, and it doesn't always make
Speaker 1: me happy. When I'm doing in this business, it's a job.
Speaker 1: Sometimes it does well. The trick in this business is
Speaker 1: knowing when you're no longer at least if you're if
Speaker 1: you're operating as a writer. This may not be, but
Speaker 1: I think it's probably true for an actor too, But
Speaker 1: when you're no longer doing work, that is that the
Speaker 1: journey itself is interesting. And when you're doing work, that is,
Speaker 1: you're saying either the same thing that you've already said before,
Speaker 1: or you're saying the same thing to no purpose, like well, okay,
Speaker 1: this is this is what they're paying me for today.
Speaker 1: It's like that's the point at which you know it's
Speaker 1: time to do something else. And it's like the one
Speaker 1: thing that David Mills told me and he died. You know,
Speaker 1: a guy who I wrote my first script with came
Speaker 1: with me on Trema was producer and Tremay and he
Speaker 1: he died of of an aneurism before the show came out.
Speaker 1: It was on set collapsed. I mean, I missed him
Speaker 1: to this day. But he's he told me something. He said,
Speaker 1: he goes the only reason that you're he he went
Speaker 1: out to l a full bour and tried to get
Speaker 1: a network show development deals and he went through the
Speaker 1: whole route. He's the amazing thing is and he told me,
Speaker 1: don't lose this is you are okay if they come
Speaker 1: to you and say that, you know, it's all been
Speaker 1: very nice, but nobody watches your ship and and we're
Speaker 1: we're gonna go somewhere else, and you know, we're done
Speaker 1: with you. And it's like at no point, like you know,
Speaker 1: if somebody has a hit with a courtroom show, everyone's
Speaker 1: running around trying to figure out how to do a
Speaker 1: courtroom show. If everyone is a medical show, because you're
Speaker 1: the only guy in this freaking end street, that basically
Speaker 1: is okay if they throw you off, if the plate
Speaker 1: spins and you fall off the plate. And I've always
Speaker 1: had that in the back of my pockets, like the
Speaker 1: wandering Jew of you know, I got a bag packed
Speaker 1: when when there's no longer a place for what I'm
Speaker 1: trying to do. It's okay. It sounds like in one
Speaker 1: sense that a show business career. And I mean, although
Speaker 1: the shows were not you know, you're not, uh, these
Speaker 1: television shows haven't been these juggernauts, let's say, like would
Speaker 1: not by any means no, but but but no but
Speaker 1: but that aside, I mean, but I'm saying that doesn't matter.
Speaker 1: I mean that they've been very well regarded and very
Speaker 1: well respected people to people, but I love the wire.
Speaker 1: It's like hashish to them. I mean, they love this
Speaker 1: thing and been for you. You have this. It seems
Speaker 1: very healthy attitude because this was all an accident anyway, right,
Speaker 1: I feel like I'm on borrowed time since the moment
Speaker 1: I got into this industry. This is not where you
Speaker 1: were sailing your ship to beginning, And I feel I
Speaker 1: feel the guilt of an apostate who has had a
Speaker 1: marvelous run, you know, since he left the religion. So
Speaker 1: I'm it's okay. If if HBO were to come to
Speaker 1: me and say we're never making another hour with you,
Speaker 1: and you know, and you know, good luck and God bless,
Speaker 1: I'd still cross the street to give him a hug
Speaker 1: if I saw him coming the other way three years later,
Speaker 1: and if I never worked. It's like this has been
Speaker 1: something that was totally unexpected, that it happened at a
Speaker 1: time where newspapers were collapsing all around me. It was
Speaker 1: just fortuitous, you know, because there was a part of
Speaker 1: me that was really torn when this started happening. To
Speaker 1: this day, I missed reporting. So it's okay whatever happens.
Speaker 1: There are a lot of people in this industry that,
Speaker 1: you know, staying on top at any cost, and and
Speaker 1: they'll find themselves telling stories they don't actually care about
Speaker 1: because that's the story that somebody else wants. And that,
Speaker 1: to me is like a journey to hell. So and
Speaker 1: I can see how it happens. And let's face it,
Speaker 1: you know, there's a lot of money in this industry,
Speaker 1: so it can happen. But man, the only thing healthy
Speaker 1: he said, He said, you've got a lot of unhealthy
Speaker 1: ship in your head, Dave. But the one thing said was,
Speaker 1: you know, is that you're okay if it ends. M h.
Speaker 1: It's highly unlikely that end is coming anytime soon. But
Speaker 1: until David Simon creates his next series, fans will have
Speaker 1: to settle for rescreening episodes from their boxed sets. This
Speaker 1: is Alec Baldwin and you're listening to Here's the Thing.