All the Pieces Matter: The Inside Story of The Wire

by Jonathan Abrams

imperious,

DeAndre McCullough,

ennobling

unsated.

James Yoshimura,

It was Fontana who mentored Simon, telling him that a writer becomes a producer in order to protect his words.

Jeffrey Pratt Gordon,

condescension;

didactic.”

“The journey through this one case will ultimately bring viewers from wondering, in cop-show expectation, whether the bad guys will get caught, to wondering instead who the bad guys are and whether catching them means anything at all,”

The wiretap case never went forward. They did the raids. They made them push up the raids, so they could put some dope on the table. They weren’t similar in scope or history or anything, but Melvin was similar as an avatar to Avon [Barksdale]. And Stringer [Bell] was Lamont “Chin” Farmer. Chin only got seven years federal back when there was parole. So, Chin went and did two or three years and was out and Chin was really the mastermind. Chin was like command central and [Williams’s lieutenant Louis] “Cookie” Savage got like twenty. They all got it over separate charges, but they never did the overall conspiracy case because the prosecutors had been promoted out of it.

That seemed the right tonality for the show, the idea that for all of the elaborate police work, it just doesn’t matter. The critique of the drug war was everything can be replaced. Everything is endless. The dysfunction of this thing goes on.

Everybody has an expectation that much of American television is about redemption and about affirmation. We were trying to make a show that was basically an argument of dissent. It was political dissent. It was saying our systems are not functioning. Our policies are incorrect. We’re not going to find a way out of this unless we stand back and take stock and turn one hundred eighty degrees from what we’ve been doing, particularly in regard to the drug war and inequality that we were depicting.

Alexa L. Fogel

Many of the show’s actors remained blissfully unaware for some time that their roles had been sourced from real figures. It was months before Williams, for example, realized that a real Landsman existed. Simon preferred that the doppelgängers not meet their inspirations. “They were going to be who they were going to be and it can sometimes fuck an actor up,” Simon explained. “They start embracing things that you’re not writing. Better to have them be rock solid in who they think that character should be and chase that.”

gumption

That’s kind of how casting is sometimes. You go in one direction. You find out you’re on the wrong track or circumstance thwarts you, and you end up going in a different direction.

chagrin

She made it in a tone where it was a challenge, like, “You ain’t booked it yet.” I was like, “I’ll book it.” I was high on myself at that time. I was like, “All right. Let me go in.” I went in. It’s New York. You see the same black actors in all the auditions. It’s a small circle. I see all my boys, and everybody’s auditioning for this guy. His name is Bubbles. Someone’s chewing bubble gum. I was like, “That’s so fucking juvenile.” I spat my gum out.

Michael Ballhaus

Of course, I was very impressed by that story, because Michael Ballhaus was the cinematographer that German cinematographers looked up to. Everybody was aware of who Michael Ballhaus was.

The Panic in Needle Park, with Al Pacino.

I wasn’t trying to play the addiction. I was going to play the person.

The other story that he told was telling, because that was when I started to understand the mentality of what it is to be a cop. They had figured out that there was a dirty cop on the force. They raided the guy’s house. He was the first person on the guy. Apparently, the guy went to reach in his dresser, and he thought it was for a gun, and he said, “Please, reach for it, because I would love nothing more than to blow you away, because I fucking hate dirty cops.” That stuck with me, because not being a kid from the streets and not having grown up around law enforcement, I realized just how much there has to be underneath the surface, because that’s the world that you’re dealing with.

You have to have that level of savagery and ferocity that you have to be able to call up in an instant and be able to tame and put away in an instant.

Just WOW. This is beautifully put

“This guy’s pretty serious, because he knows who’s dangerous and who’s not at this point.”

This was the first show that I had booked, so I didn’t really understand the business side of these contracts at the time. I didn’t know at the time that, even though I was a series regular and I [had] signed the contract for five years, that they could actually kill me off at any time.

It closes some doors to us dramatically and it opens others.”

[William] Friedkin and The French Connection.

eavesdropping

In the meantime, we’re paying attention to The Sopranos and all this shit.” We got picked up, and it was off and running. It always felt like we weren’t the show that HBO was thinking about. We always felt like we were about to get canned.

When you got something that’s good and that no one else would ever do, I think you just take the leap.

Rembrandt

derelict

I like the idea that this was a serial, that it was stretched out over time and it gave the characters a lot of time to develop. It felt more like life. That’s one of the things I loved about it.

It was really hard working with an English actor and you’re both playing Americans. It feels a bit fake.

ballast

prescient

If you know Ed, you know that Ed don’t take no shit. You ain’t going to work. No, Ed don’t take no shit. She had to bow down and play her position, but when it was all said and done, before them cameras rolled, she came up behind me and patted my shoulder. She said, “Find a way to give us both what we want.” No pressure. No fucking pressure at all. All I know is when you go back and look at that scene where Omar says, “Omar don’t scare,” and you look in his eyes, whatever you see there, that is me trying to give them both what they felt they needed to see. I’ll never forget that.

I think it’s an example of one of the best displays of my acting in the whole series. I tell folks, “Study that if you want to study what intent is,” because everyone understood exactly what we were doing at every moment, even though we were using just that one word or [a] variation thereof.

If you want to be a good actor, dig into this and find out how to be better and even more fulfilled in this space by great actors giving nuggets of advice

omniscient

We were the hope. We were evidence that it’s possible. All of us, not just actors, but all of us who have come from those backgrounds, have acquired some level of success in the world. We are the hope for those who are struggling.

I remember him saying organizations can’t be reformed, but people can.

The things that reform systems are trauma. Great trauma. Nobody gives up status quo without being pushed to the wall. I believe that politically. The great reformations of society are the result of undue excess and undue cruelty.

The reason that you have the civil rights we do is that people were hanging from trees. That notion of the system [being] self-reforming without incredible outside pressure and without first [bringing] about incredible trauma through inhumanity or indifference—I find that to be really dubious. I’m arguing for reform. It’s not like I can say this and say we should throw up our hands and can’t try. Every day, you gotta get up. I’m saying this with the clarity of: there’s no choice but to try.

George Pelecanos

Kary Ant...

The Sweet F...

fortuitous

contemporary