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Proposition Joe, Omar Little, Jimmy McNulty and Bunk Moreland Babies!! See Them In 1962, 1986 & 2000!!
I am – Hercules!!
“The Wire” returns to HBO Jan. 6 (and HBO On Demand Dec. 31), but if you can’t wait for new scenes, Amazon.com for some reason has free low-rez (so low-rez they’re practically radio) flashbacks that depict several of the series’ most beloved characters.
Find all three scenes here!
Here's something HBO sent along Wednesday; David Simon's comments about the newspaper biz telegraphs the direction the series is headed.
For Immediate Release
Dec. 12, 2007
EXECUTIVE PRODUCERS DAVID SIMON AND NINA KOSTROFF NOBLE
TALK ABOUT THE FIFTH AND FINAL SEASON OF THE
PEABODY-WINNING DRAMA SERIES THE WIRE,
DEBUTING JAN. 6, EXCLUSIVELY ON HBO
The Peabody Award-winning drama series THE WIRE launches its ten-episode fifth and final season SUNDAY, JAN. 6 (9:00-10:00 p.m. ET/PT), exclusively on HBO. Last September, executive producers David Simon and Nina Kostroff Noble took a break from post-production on the new episodes to share their thoughts on the season.
Q: Now that THE WIRE is finally winding down, how do you feel?
DAVID SIMON: It's been six years of storytelling, and we've put in a lot of effort to create this universe, so to say goodbye is certainly bittersweet. But we got to say what we wanted to say, and it's time to tell other stories.
Q: Was the five-season arc something you had envisioned from the beginning, or was it a season-to-season process of developing the series?
DS: We had pretty much decided by the middle of the second season what we would like to cover in terms of this city we were slowly creating.
Q: In the beginning, did you have any idea the material would be so rich or diverse?
DS: Yes. I'd covered Baltimore [as a reporter] for a dozen years, and Ed Burns had policed it for 20, and taught in its schools for another seven, and we live here. We knew what was here - it was just a matter of convincing HBO to give us enough room.
Q: Can you summarize what THE WIRE is trying to say?
DS: I suppose that what we are trying to say, as a last consideration, is that if THE WIRE is at all correct in its portrayal of an American city, its problems and its inability to even fully acknowledge - much less attend to - its problems, then what exactly are we paying attention to? When the drug war went awry for generations, when the factories closed and the working class was hollowed out, when the police departments and the school systems all began critiquing themselves with fraudulent crime statistics and test scores, and when our political leaders exalted themselves with non-existent achievements, how exactly did we see ourselves?
Q: Do you think your depiction of Baltimore has had any effect on the life of the real Baltimore?
DS: Not at all. It's a television show, and as much as I would like people to pay attention, I don't have any illusions about the institutions or systems correcting themselves because we issued a critique.
Q: Why did you focus on the media, and more specifically, newspapers, for the fifth season?
DS: Newspapers, which for the duration of the American experiment have been the primary means of monitoring government and other imposed authority, are now being eviscerated nationwide. The people who once held us all to some basic account are being laid off, bought out and attrited from newsrooms. And newspaper managers - who have so much contempt for their own product that they give it away for free, misreading the internet as advertising for the product, when it was the product itself - they tell us they are going to do more with less. You do less with less, that's why they call it less.
It made sense to finish THE WIRE with this reflection on the state of the media, as all the other attendant problems of the American city depicted in the previous four seasons will not be solved until the depth and range of those problems is first acknowledged. And that won't happen without an intelligent, aggressive and well-funded press.
Q: THE WIRE is often hailed for its uncompromising depiction of timely issues, but that kind of praise doesn't necessarily convey how much fun the show can be.
DS: We think about the issues, of course, but we try not to be didactic. It's important first to let the characters breathe. The show is very confident in its own sense of story and its sense of character and its own sense of humor. It's a very funny show in many ways - sometimes in that "Dr. Strangelove" kind of way. If you walk in anybody's footsteps, you'll see that people have a way of laughing at the world, and at themselves.
Q: How do you think THE WIRE will be viewed five or ten years from now, as people continue to discover it on DVD?
DS: I think it will have a shelf life. It has survived by critical attention and by word of mouth. And I think that word of mouth will continue.
***
Q: Was it always your goal to do five seasons of THE WIRE?
NINA KOSTROFF NOBLE: That was always David's conception. While the original vision was to explore a different part of the city each season, the scope of the show has expanded each year. The characters from the Barksdale story [season one], for example, proved to be so compelling and interesting that they stayed with us through season three.
Q: What were some of the biggest logistical challenges?
NKN: With all the stories being interconnected, there was a lot of history to keep track of by season five. It became quite a juggling act! Once the story arcs were set, there weren't many changes you could make without unraveling the whole thing. Sometimes actors would request changes in certain scenes, but we didn't always have the flexibility to accommodate them.
Q: On the other hand, maintaining consistency in the characters and story lines has made the show more believable.
NKN: I think that's where the integrity of the show comes from. David and I believe that all these characters exist out there somewhere in the world once we've introduced them. There's a florist in season two who turns up again in season five.
Q: The diversity of the characters has been a noteworthy feature of the series as well.
NKN: One of the most interesting things to me is how far-reaching the impact of the show has been. Because of the different characters and story lines, different groups have related to THE WIRE in different ways. We've been covered in everything from hip-hop magazines to education publications.
Q: What were the high points of working on THE WIRE?
NKN: There's so many things I enjoyed about working on the show. I really liked reading a script, filming it and then seeing the finished product, seeing the magic in the performances. The best thing about my job is going to work every day and not knowing what's going to happen. During this last season, we usually had two units shooting at the same time, which was quite a challenge, but we had a team of incredibly committed people that were always willing to go the extra mile. We've all worked just as hard on bad shows, so it gave everyone a sense of accomplishment to be involved in something we could be proud of. I feel tremendously proud of the work we've done.
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ULTIMATE!!
Dec. 12, 2007
EXECUTIVE PRODUCERS DAVID SIMON AND NINA KOSTROFF NOBLE
TALK ABOUT THE FIFTH AND FINAL SEASON OF THE
PEABODY-WINNING DRAMA SERIES THE WIRE,
DEBUTING JAN. 6, EXCLUSIVELY ON HBO
The Peabody Award-winning drama series THE WIRE launches its ten-episode fifth and final season SUNDAY, JAN. 6 (9:00-10:00 p.m. ET/PT), exclusively on HBO. Last September, executive producers David Simon and Nina Kostroff Noble took a break from post-production on the new episodes to share their thoughts on the season.
Q: Now that THE WIRE is finally winding down, how do you feel?
DAVID SIMON: It's been six years of storytelling, and we've put in a lot of effort to create this universe, so to say goodbye is certainly bittersweet. But we got to say what we wanted to say, and it's time to tell other stories.
Q: Was the five-season arc something you had envisioned from the beginning, or was it a season-to-season process of developing the series?
DS: We had pretty much decided by the middle of the second season what we would like to cover in terms of this city we were slowly creating.
Q: In the beginning, did you have any idea the material would be so rich or diverse?
DS: Yes. I'd covered Baltimore [as a reporter] for a dozen years, and Ed Burns had policed it for 20, and taught in its schools for another seven, and we live here. We knew what was here - it was just a matter of convincing HBO to give us enough room.
Q: Can you summarize what THE WIRE is trying to say?
DS: I suppose that what we are trying to say, as a last consideration, is that if THE WIRE is at all correct in its portrayal of an American city, its problems and its inability to even fully acknowledge - much less attend to - its problems, then what exactly are we paying attention to? When the drug war went awry for generations, when the factories closed and the working class was hollowed out, when the police departments and the school systems all began critiquing themselves with fraudulent crime statistics and test scores, and when our political leaders exalted themselves with non-existent achievements, how exactly did we see ourselves?
Q: Do you think your depiction of Baltimore has had any effect on the life of the real Baltimore?
DS: Not at all. It's a television show, and as much as I would like people to pay attention, I don't have any illusions about the institutions or systems correcting themselves because we issued a critique.
Q: Why did you focus on the media, and more specifically, newspapers, for the fifth season?
DS: Newspapers, which for the duration of the American experiment have been the primary means of monitoring government and other imposed authority, are now being eviscerated nationwide. The people who once held us all to some basic account are being laid off, bought out and attrited from newsrooms. And newspaper managers - who have so much contempt for their own product that they give it away for free, misreading the internet as advertising for the product, when it was the product itself - they tell us they are going to do more with less. You do less with less, that's why they call it less.
It made sense to finish THE WIRE with this reflection on the state of the media, as all the other attendant problems of the American city depicted in the previous four seasons will not be solved until the depth and range of those problems is first acknowledged. And that won't happen without an intelligent, aggressive and well-funded press.
Q: THE WIRE is often hailed for its uncompromising depiction of timely issues, but that kind of praise doesn't necessarily convey how much fun the show can be.
DS: We think about the issues, of course, but we try not to be didactic. It's important first to let the characters breathe. The show is very confident in its own sense of story and its sense of character and its own sense of humor. It's a very funny show in many ways - sometimes in that "Dr. Strangelove" kind of way. If you walk in anybody's footsteps, you'll see that people have a way of laughing at the world, and at themselves.
Q: How do you think THE WIRE will be viewed five or ten years from now, as people continue to discover it on DVD?
DS: I think it will have a shelf life. It has survived by critical attention and by word of mouth. And I think that word of mouth will continue.
***
Q: Was it always your goal to do five seasons of THE WIRE?
NINA KOSTROFF NOBLE: That was always David's conception. While the original vision was to explore a different part of the city each season, the scope of the show has expanded each year. The characters from the Barksdale story [season one], for example, proved to be so compelling and interesting that they stayed with us through season three.
Q: What were some of the biggest logistical challenges?
NKN: With all the stories being interconnected, there was a lot of history to keep track of by season five. It became quite a juggling act! Once the story arcs were set, there weren't many changes you could make without unraveling the whole thing. Sometimes actors would request changes in certain scenes, but we didn't always have the flexibility to accommodate them.
Q: On the other hand, maintaining consistency in the characters and story lines has made the show more believable.
NKN: I think that's where the integrity of the show comes from. David and I believe that all these characters exist out there somewhere in the world once we've introduced them. There's a florist in season two who turns up again in season five.
Q: The diversity of the characters has been a noteworthy feature of the series as well.
NKN: One of the most interesting things to me is how far-reaching the impact of the show has been. Because of the different characters and story lines, different groups have related to THE WIRE in different ways. We've been covered in everything from hip-hop magazines to education publications.
Q: What were the high points of working on THE WIRE?
NKN: There's so many things I enjoyed about working on the show. I really liked reading a script, filming it and then seeing the finished product, seeing the magic in the performances. The best thing about my job is going to work every day and not knowing what's going to happen. During this last season, we usually had two units shooting at the same time, which was quite a challenge, but we had a team of incredibly committed people that were always willing to go the extra mile. We've all worked just as hard on bad shows, so it gave everyone a sense of accomplishment to be involved in something we could be proud of. I feel tremendously proud of the work we've done.
-
+ Expand All
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I Am Likable And Capable
-
Sucks that this is the last season. This show is complex, challenging and too smart for the Emmy voters.
-
and should be sold on street corners by young kids who send you around the corner to pick it up...
-
Best show ever. Rewatching Season 4 now to get ready for January...
-
In the last TB, I even asked you to thank me and you didn't ::sad panda::
Seriously though, that Omar clip is fucking sweet. They are all great in fact. -
Damn straight there's shelf life. This show isn't just TV, it's indelible artwork.
-
Just finishing up the last couple of episodes of season 4. Love the scene where Bunk and Lester are in the bar and Bunk is talking about JLO and her husband "How's skinny litle Pedro gonna fill up that great big thing?" hilarious!
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Love this show, best ever
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...that this show is watched by so few, while american idol is the #1 show on tv. little wonder why the problems presented by the wire will forever go unsolved.
-
My admiration for "The Wire" knows no bounds, and Executor has provided one of the most apt and succinct characterizations of the show I have seen - "beautifully tragic". January 6 can't come soon enough for me.
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These mini-prequels could have been cooler but so what, I love this show dammit!
-
Anyone who loves this show (and there should be many) needs to read David Simon's books HOMICIDE: A YEAR ON THE KILLING STREETS and THE CORNER (authored with Ed Burns). These books inspired the shows Homicide, The Wire and The Corner and you will recognize much of the material and see where certain scenes in the shows actually came from. The documentaries on the season 4 dvds as special features are amazing too. The reason why this show doesn't get American Idol-like ratings is because as the creators say, people either don't want to know these truths or are completely ignorant that they even exist. The reasons these cities are falling further into chaos is because like the show, people are afraid to see the real world. When a show like this get American Idol-like ratings, the world will be different because that is when people will acknowledge it.
-
Watching new episodes of this show is going to be like watching "Bender's Big Score." I'm going to be filled with a rare and childlike joy just for the fact that this world and these characters are alive again. How many other shows can you say THAT about? It truly is transcendental television.
I hope to hell that they go out with a bang and leave us satisfied that five seasons was enough. I want to look back and say "God damn it, The Wire was a masterpiece" rather than "god damn it, I can't believe there's never going to be more Wire." -
With their schedule and budget they manage to make 'The Wire' a more engrossing watch than just about any movie released in the same year as whatever season happens to be on. That not only says something awesome about how damn good 'The Wire' is but also it says something damn depressing about how 'even more good' movies 'could' be given their huge budget and production time per minute on screen. In an ideal world most tv shows would be at least half as good as The Wire and most Movies would be better.
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"We've got to run this like a business" - Stringer Bell
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Avon's here, motherfuckas!
-
Dec 17, 2007 10:35:00 AM CST
"You took $16 dollars from a man on his way home from work"
by kentucky colonel
CLICK
Now give it back.
Omar is the greatest thing since Ham on Rye! -
I said it--EVER, bitches.
-
sucked major ass. A depressing ending to a great show. Ricky Gervais should be kicked in the nuts...HARD. That is all.
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