A few weeks ago I had the opportunity to hear David Simon speak. Simon, creator of "The Wire" and "Treme" and writer of "Homicide" and "The Corner" is, along with Alan Moore, my favorite living author. As Simon spoke I took notes. Here are some quotes:
"We pretend to progress when there is no progress."
"It seemed like every year I was getting better at this." - On the crime beat.
"There was a need to walk away from the police as your central source of info." - On writing "The Corner."
"That guy's lazy." - Referring to the moderator's mention of a friend who couldn't understand the dialogue in "The Wire."
"'Ball Four' is a great book about America."
"'The Wire' came out of institutional scandals of self-preservation."
"Even a Baltimore cop knows, 'Bad shooting, throw a pistol down.'" - On the US not finding weapons of mass destruction.
"The great thing about HBO was getting away from the advertising."
"People would watch 'Law and Order' and see that every punch was pulled." - On network cop shows after "The Wire."
"You tell a story once it is a fool's errand to tell it again."
"The only person that's going to mug you in Alphabet City is some four-star restaurant." - On Manhattan.
"Eighty percent of us live in metro areas. We are an urban people... I live in Baltimore among real Americans."
"'Treme' is an argument for the American city."
"They're all 'The Glenn Miller Story.'" - On the music biopic.
"You're not martyrs. You butchered your own industry long before the internet showed up." - On newspapers.
"I feel a great deal of affection for journalism."
"'Clockers' is 'The Grapes of Wrath' in the late eighties in the ghetto."
"I didn't do anything well after, like, 7th grade."
"The ugliest part of writing is you're alone."
"'That shit's wrong' is the most terrifying thing you could say to me." - On writing.
Showing posts with label the wire. Show all posts
Showing posts with label the wire. Show all posts
Tuesday, November 23, 2010
Thursday, April 30, 2009
Simon on Moyers
Great interview (h/t to Michele Sabatier), as always, with David Simon:
BILL MOYERS: And yet, the drug war keeps getting crazier and crazier. From selling guns to Mexico's drug cartel, to cramming more people into prison, even though they haven't committed violent crimes. Why don't the policies change?
DAVID SIMON: Because there's no political capital in it. There really isn't. The fear of being called soft on crime, soft on drugs. The paranoia that's been induced.
Listen, if you could be Draconian and reduce drug use by locking people up, you might have an argument. But we are the jailing-est country on the planet right now. Two million people in prison. When I started as a police reporter, 33, 34 percent of the federal inmate population was violent offenders. Now it's like, seven to eight percent. So, we're locking up less violent people. More of them. The drugs are purer. They've not-- they haven't closed down a single drug corner that I know of in Baltimore for any length of time. It's not working. And by the way this is not a Republican/Democrat thing. Because a lot of the most Draconian stuff came out of the Clinton Administration. This guy trying to maneuver to the center, in order not to be perceived as Leftist by a Republican Congress.
...
The people most affected by this are black and brown and poor. It's the abandoned inner cores of our urban areas. And we don't, as we said before, economically, we don't need those people. The American economy doesn't need them. So, as long as they stay in their ghettos, and they only kill each other, we're willing to pay a police presence to keep them out of our America. And to let them fight over scraps, which is what the drug war, effectively, is. I don't think-- since we basically have become a market-based culture and it's what we know, and it's what's led us to this sad denouement, I think we're going to follow market-based logic, right to the bitter end.
BILL MOYERS: And yet, the drug war keeps getting crazier and crazier. From selling guns to Mexico's drug cartel, to cramming more people into prison, even though they haven't committed violent crimes. Why don't the policies change?
DAVID SIMON: Because there's no political capital in it. There really isn't. The fear of being called soft on crime, soft on drugs. The paranoia that's been induced.
Listen, if you could be Draconian and reduce drug use by locking people up, you might have an argument. But we are the jailing-est country on the planet right now. Two million people in prison. When I started as a police reporter, 33, 34 percent of the federal inmate population was violent offenders. Now it's like, seven to eight percent. So, we're locking up less violent people. More of them. The drugs are purer. They've not-- they haven't closed down a single drug corner that I know of in Baltimore for any length of time. It's not working. And by the way this is not a Republican/Democrat thing. Because a lot of the most Draconian stuff came out of the Clinton Administration. This guy trying to maneuver to the center, in order not to be perceived as Leftist by a Republican Congress.
...
The people most affected by this are black and brown and poor. It's the abandoned inner cores of our urban areas. And we don't, as we said before, economically, we don't need those people. The American economy doesn't need them. So, as long as they stay in their ghettos, and they only kill each other, we're willing to pay a police presence to keep them out of our America. And to let them fight over scraps, which is what the drug war, effectively, is. I don't think-- since we basically have become a market-based culture and it's what we know, and it's what's led us to this sad denouement, I think we're going to follow market-based logic, right to the bitter end.
Sunday, June 08, 2008
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)
