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<span style="font-size:19.5pt;"><font face="Verdana">David Simon: 'Treme is a story about how American urban culture defines how we live'</font></span>

<span style="font-size:10.5pt;"><b><font face="Verdana">The creator of The Wire discusses Martin Amis, Baltimore accents and Treme, his upcoming TV show</font></b></span>

<span style="font-size:7.5pt;"><b><font face="Tahoma">Andrew Anthony, The Observer</font></b></span>

<span style="font-size:10.5pt;"><font face="Arial">Tell me about Treme, the show set in New Orleans you're currently producing.

It's a very different piece from The Wire. We're not trying to do a crime story or a political story. This is a story about culture and how American urban culture defines how we live. New Orleans is an extraordinary and unusual culture, but it comes from the same primal forces in American society of immigration and assimilation and non-assimilation and racism and post-racialism that really are the defining characteristics of this melting pot society. What is it about Americans that makes us Americans? The one thing we have unarguably given the world is African-American music. If you walk into a shebeen in South Africa, or whatever version of a bar they have in Kathmandu, if they have a jukebox, you're going to find some Michael Jackson, some Otis Redding, some John Coltrane. It has gone around the world. That is the essential American contribution to worldwide culture. The combination of African rhythms and the pentatonic scale and European instrumentation and arrangement. That collision of the two happened in a 12-square block area of a city called New Orleans that had a near-death experience in 2005.

What shape is New Orleans in now?

Before the storm, the city had the highest ratio population in America of natives, because nobody left. But people have not been able to get back. I would say only about two-thirds have returned. The housing stock is still diminished. The political infrastructure is still dysfunctional – it still has lots of crime problems. But the culture is resurgent and right now the city is ecstatic. Mardi Gras has just finished but also the Super Bowl has brought the city together. There was an allegiance over the Saints march to the Super Bowl that transcended all other arguments over race and class. How long that lasts is another thing. But right now the city's riding a peculiar high that's wonderful to be around.

There were plenty of in-jokes in The Wire, with local figures like the real police commissioner cast in an unlikely role. Do you get up to similar antics in Treme?

Yeah, we do. There are references to locals and some lines that only New Orleanians will get but they won't interfere with the contextual understanding of the scenes as a whole for viewers outside New Orleans. But for people in the music community and in the cuisine culture, these lines are going to be inside jokes. It's one way of saying that we want the show to be written from within rather than without. When you write from the inside, it creates a credibility for the piece for a whole. There were lines in Generation Kill that only a marine would laugh at.

Martin Amis was an early fan of yours. Do you reciprocate that interest?

Before I got together with my current wife, we were co-workers in prior relationships at the Baltimore Sun. One day she came back from interviewing Martin Amis and he had been reading Homicide in preparation for writing Night Train. To her, I'm the ink-stained schnook and she came up to my desk and said: "You're not going to believe this but I've just interviewed Martin Amis and he thinks you're the bee's knees." Because I was so ignorant, I said: "Who's Martin Amis?" She ran through his canon and I got nothing. And she goes, "Kingsley Amis's son?" And I go, "Who's Kingsley Amis?" Last year we went out to dinner with Martin – I've since read a lot of his books – and I told him that story by way of saying, "This is the ignorant unread ass I was and, look, she still married me!"

Your work pays a great deal of attention to authentic detail. It was surprising to discover, therefore, how many British and Irish actors you cast in The Wire.

Sometimes a guy comes in and nails a part in an evocative way and you think he can do it. And when you get a read like that, you hear the accent and the cultural differences and you say, "Well, can we get there?" That's what happened with Dominic [West], Idris [Elba] and Aidan [Gillen]. None of them was able to get a Baltimore accent. But none of the black or white actors from New York or LA was able to get a Baltimore accent. It's the toughest. There are people who tell me it is reminiscent of what you hear in Devon and Cornwall. I went to see War Horse in London last year. When the woman who played the Devon farm wife came out with her first line of dialogue, my son and I turned to each other and we both said: "She's from Baltimore."

Any compromising stories about Dominic West?

His first season in Baltimore seemed to suggest that bacchanalian feats would be legendary and the town would never be the same again. Then Dominic hooked up with his wife midway through our run, and he became as quiet and temperate as a church mouse. The thing is, Dominic is really smart and he hides it. There's a degree from Trinity College there and a lot of book learning and a lot of cultural points that do not elude him. He plays the Jack the Lad character, but he directed for us and he did a good job. I want to use him on Treme if we get a second season.

How do you think Obama is doing?

I'm a little disappointed, but actually what I'm most disappointed in is the Democratic leadership in the Congress. This new administration's own inexperience, coupled with some really ineffectual law-making, have conspired to grind the body politic to a halt. The money interests have managed once again to make us inert.

You've gone from the desert to a flood, a biblical transition. What's next up, pestilence?

Yeah, or frogs, or vermin, or death of the first-born. The next project, in terms of producing, is this mini-series based on the assassination of Abraham Lincoln in 1865. It was an act of terrorism in war time that shocked the entire nation and it resulted in some very rational immediate reaction on the part of the government and then some other things that were irrational and destructive, right down to military tribunals. It has a lot of parallels to the 9/11 moment.

Interview by Andrew Anthony

The Corner, by David Simon and Ed Burns, is published by Canongate, £8.99. To order a copy with free UK p&p, go to observer.co.uk/bookshop or call 0330 333 6847</font></span>

<span style="font-size:10.5pt;"><b><font face="Verdana">http://www.guardian.co.uk/media/2010/feb/21/david-simon-interview-wire-treme</font></b></span></p>

Edited February 21, 201015 yr by Sylph

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I can't wait. I'm so excited about this show.

8 more days, can't wait to see what it will be like.

I never watched The Wire, but seeing as how it's probably one of, if not the most, critically acclaimed series of this decade, I think I'll give this show a shot.

Edited April 3, 201015 yr by Amello

Watched it. I have, unfortunately, never watched Simon's other works. (I know it's something I really should get around to)

Seeing John Goodman again is like replacing a hole in my life. He's just so good.

I wonder what's up with restaurateur's home that she won't talk about it?

Steve Zahn's character was my favourite so far. Though I loved the Black woman with the missing son as well. I remember her from somewhere, but I have no clue where at the moment.

I wouldn't say I am in love with the show, but I'll definitely watch the next episodes and keep with it.

I wonder what's up with restaurateur's home that she won't talk about it?

I think it's just badly damaged from the storm and she didn't want to get into it because it depressed her.

John Goodman has found a role that suits him well. I loved the way his wife totally lost her cool at the end, after being the voice of reason during most of the show.

I was very excited for this and it did not disappoint.

I am very intrigued about the missing person Donna (I believe that's her name but I might be completely off!) is trying to find, but I think it's her brother and not her son. Anyway, lots of fun moments, great writing, great acting and the music really took you on a trip. 1 and 20 mins was probably a bit too much but I am definitely coming back.

I was very excited for this and it did not disappoint.

I am very intrigued about the missing person Donna (I believe that's her name but I might be completely off!) is trying to find, but I think it's her brother and not her son. Anyway, lots of fun moments, great writing, great acting and the music really took you on a trip. 1 and 20 mins was probably a bit too much but I am definitely coming back.

The 1/20 minutes was only for the premiere, I think. The rest of the season will be 50-60 minutes.

Was it her brother? Oops. LOL

<span style="font-size:10.5pt;">HBO Renews “Treme” After First Episode

In a leap of faith, HBO has renewed its new drama series "Treme" after a single episode.

The second-season pickup of the show from "The Wire" team David Simon and Eric Overmeyer comes after the first-season premiere Sunday night. Across two airings, the show drew a fairly modest 1.4 million viewers. The final season of Simon's "The Wire" averaged 890,000 for premiere episodes.

HBO president Michael Lombardo said the network is so pleased with "Treme" that a pickup was inevitable.

"We would have picked up this show last week," Lombardo said. "We've seen the first nine episodes; it's as strong as any show we've seen. Much like 'The Wire,' the audience is so passionate and so invested. We're about servicing our subscriber base, and I believe that people will become addicted to this show. We have to be a place where this kind of excellence is given space to continue."

"Treme" chronicles life in New Orleans in the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina and will resume production this fall. Season 2 will debut next spring -- about the time another project, "Game of Thrones," will be ready to hit the air.

Lombardo confirmed that the "Thrones" pilots had some reshoots but assured that the show's quality is high.

"It looks beautiful, the compelling scripts are just fantastic, we're doing reshoots but nothing major," he said. "The show is there."

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Edited April 14, 201015 yr by Sylph

Good... I'm very interested to see how it evolves. I would just love having to watch a really great series.

Btw, do we know how many episodes this season is going to have? They mention the "first 9" so does that mean the first 9 out of 12 or the first 9 in general, then moving on to Season 2?

Good... I'm very interested to see how it evolves. I would just love having to watch a really great series.

Btw, do we know how many episodes this season is going to have? They mention the "first 9" so does that mean the first 9 out of 12 or the first 9 in general, then moving on to Season 2?

I'm pretty sure there's 10 episodes in the first season.

I'm pretty sure there's 10 episodes in the first season.

OK that sounds like a good number. Thanks!

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<span style="font-size:19.5pt;"><font face="Verdana">Katrina gets The Wire treatment</font></span>

<span style="font-size:13.5pt;"><b><font face="Verdana">The pilot of Treme, David Simon’s new television creation set in New Orleans, suggests he can keep up his run of hits</font></b></span>

<span style="font-size:7.5pt;"><b><font face="Tahoma"> Chris Ayres</font></b></span>

<span style="font-size:10.5pt;">David Simon’s latest creation began on the American cable network HBO this week and was a media event of rare magnitude, prompting the kind of punditry usually reserved only for products beginning with the letter “i”. Yet, in spite of the 5,000-word blog postings and the fawning headlines, the big question is can Simon, who became known as the Shakespeare of American TV after the success of The Wire, keep up his run of critical hits? To judge by initial reaction to the 80-minute pilot episode of Treme (pronounced ‘treh-MAY’), the answer is almost certainly yes. Nevertheless, those who find Simon’s work too impenetrable and/or pretentious — he once described The Wire as “a Greek tragedy in which the postmodern institutions are the Olympian forces” — aren’t likely to be converted. As one blogger put it: “The only thing I felt more strongly than boredom was irritation.”

Named after one of the oldest districts in New Orleans, Treme follows the lives of several fictional Big Easy residents three months after Hurricane Katrina: there’s a hard-up trombonist (Wendell Pierce), a Puck-like jazz enthusiast and DJ (Steve Zahn), a civil rights lawyer (Melissa Leo), a hot-tempered professor (John Goodman) and a displaced Mardi Gras Indian chief (Clarke Peters).

As with The Wire, the plot arrives so slowly that you might not notice it’s there, and the dialogue rarely helps. Yet the camerawork makes the ravaged streets of New Orleans look exquisite, and it’s hard to think of any other TV show that integrates music and cuisine so well. The pilot episode’s closing scene, in which a Mardi Gras Indian chief dressed in full orange regalia dances his way up an obliterated street to beg a neighbour for help, is nothing short of a work of art.

Although Simon isn’t from New Orleans, his co-creator, Eric Overmyer, lives part time in the city and the script is so full of insider references to, say, Hubig’s bakery, that it sometimes feels as though you could be watching Travel Channel.

However, for all its beauty, without the criminal element of The Wire, it will be interesting to see if Treme’s ratings hold. In its favour is the show’s avoidance of any Hollywood-style political condescension. In fact, if anyone gets the blame for the Katrina disaster in the pilot episode, it’s not the Bush Administration or the hapless Federal Emergency Management Agency, but the Army Corps of Engineers, which had decades to fix the city’s levees before Katrina struck.

“It’s a man-made catastrophe,” as John Goodman’s hot-headed character, Creighton Bernette, repeatedly exclaims. “It’s a federal f***-up of epic proportions.”

If there’s one moment in the pilot episode that doesn’t feel sincere, it’s when Bernette finds himself making this argument on the swollen banks of Lake Pontchartrain to a British TV reporter. With disapponting predictability the Englishman is cast as a tweed-suited, supercilious buffoon. “Given that it’s all gone pear shaped, why should the American taxpayer foot the bill to fix New Orleans?” he sneers.

“Because great nations rebuild their great cities,” comes Bernette’s reply.

When the Brit counters with an argument that the city’s music has “rather seen its day” and that its cuisine is “provincial” and “typically American—too fat, too rich”, Bernette grabs his microphone and throws it into the swamp behind him, shouting, “You f***in’ limey vulture motherf***er!”

The irony in all this, of course, is that it wasn’t the British press that needed to be convinced of the case for salvaging New Orleans from the mud: it was the United States itself. Perhaps that’s a truth still too uncomfortable to face.</span>

<span style="font-size:7.5pt;"><b><font face="Tahoma">http://entertainment.timesonline.co.uk/tol/arts_and_entertainment/tv_and_radio/article7098250.ece</font></b></span></p>

very much in love with this show. I'm really anticipating everything building up for the end. more please