Savino Escapes His Second Death; This Time From A Knife

Christopher Clanton, the Baltimore based actor who played Savino Bratton on The Wire, was stabbed in the buttocks and chest at a social hall in Baltimore County. He's reportely doing well.

About 2 a.m., Baltimore County police rushed to Overlea Caterers Inc., in the 6800 block of Belair Road, and used pepper spray to disperse a crowd of about 30 people, several of whom were fighting, a police spokesman said.[...]

The actor, who lives in Northeast Baltimore, has had his own encounters with the law.

In August 2006, Clanton pleaded guilty in Baltimore Circuit Court to manufacturing, distributing and dispensing a controlled dangerous substance and other drug-related charges.

Brief reminder: Savino was killed by Omar outside the club during episode 7 of this final season. Full article here.

In other Baltimore-violence-related-news, it was a bloody weekend in the city with two murders and 3 other non-fatal shootings over the holiday weekend.

The Wire Dissapoints

My opinion may change after a few days, or upon a re-watch of the show and season, but for me the finale (written by Simon) was curious, almost un-Wire-like in ways. Most importantly, and it really should be important to the consistency of the show -- Where was McNulty's fall? Was it losing his job? That was it?

The first hour moved along at a quick, but logical pace, the last 30 minutes felt rushed and forced. Did it have to feel like that? Maybe. You have high hopes going into a series finale, especially for a show like The Wire, but perhaps the argument that I've always made about The Wire -- that unlike most other shows, it deserves to graded on the season more so than individual episodes -- holds true even for the series finale. I'm open to that, and as far as the season as a whole goes, I was pleased, much more than many other critics and non-Baltimore viewers (it's tough to find anyone in this city who watches the show and has a bad thing to say about it).

Here's the Sun's television critic on the finale who, legitimately points out that for as much as Simon enjoys repeating the Greek tragedy line about The Wire to whomever will listen, we didn't see much of it in this series finale.

The Wire Writers on War on Drugs, Jury Nullification

You can quibble with David Simon's view of America, and how we arrived at that place, but it's hard to argue with much he say on the Drug War. From a Time piece authored by the bulk of The Wire writing staff.

We write a television show. Measured against more thoughtful and meaningful occupations, this is not the best seat from which to argue public policy or social justice. Still, those viewers who followed The Wire — our HBO drama that tried to portray all sides of inner-city collapse, including the drug war, with as much detail and as little judgment as we could muster — tell us they've invested in the fates of our characters. They worry or grieve for Bubbles, Bodie or Wallace, certain that these characters are fictional yet knowing they are rooted in the reality of the other America, the one rarely acknowledged by anything so overt as a TV drama.[...]

Yet this war grinds on, flooding our prisons, devouring resources, turning city neighborhoods into free-fire zones. To what end? State and federal prisons are packed with victims of the drug conflict. A new report by the Pew Center shows that 1 of every 100 adults in the U.S. — and 1 in 15 black men over 18 — is currently incarcerated. That's the world's highest rate of imprisonment.

The drug war has ravaged law enforcement too. In cities where police agencies commit the most resources to arresting their way out of their drug problems, the arrest rates for violent crime — murder, rape, aggravated assault — have declined. In Baltimore, where we set The Wire, drug arrests have skyrocketed over the past three decades, yet in that same span, arrest rates for murder have gone from 80% and 90% to half that. Lost in an unwinnable drug war, a new generation of law officers is no longer capable of investigating crime properly, having learned only to make court pay by grabbing cheap, meaningless drug arrests off the nearest corner.

On jury nullification:

A long habit of not thinking a thing wrong, gives it a superficial appearance of being right," wrote Thomas Paine when he called for civil disobedience against monarchy — the flawed national policy of his day. In a similar spirit, we offer a small idea that is, perhaps, no small idea. It will not solve the drug problem, nor will it heal all civic wounds. It does not yet address questions of how the resources spent warring with our poor over drug use might be better spent on treatment or education or job training, or anything else that might begin to restore those places in America where the only economic engine remaining is the illegal drug economy. It doesn't resolve the myriad complexities that a retreat from war to sanity will require. All it does is open a range of intricate, paradoxical issues. But this is what we can do — and what we will do.

If asked to serve on a jury deliberating a violation of state or federal drug laws, we will vote to acquit, regardless of the evidence presented. Save for a prosecution in which acts of violence or intended violence are alleged, we will — to borrow Justice Harry Blackmun's manifesto against the death penalty — no longer tinker with the machinery of the drug war. No longer can we collaborate with a government that uses nonviolent drug offenses to fill prisons with its poorest, most damaged and most desperate citizens.

It's a good, strong piece. Read it here. Via Radley.

Wire Wins Top Award from WGA

The Wire picked up the award from best drama at the Writers Guild of America Awards. Good for them.

I still don't have a coherent opinion on the current season -- which usually wouldn't prevent me from blogging -- but in this case I want to feel out the season a bit more before I offer complaints or praise. All I'll say is that I think David Simon is stretching a bit in his final season, but it's still been a fun watch for me so far. You can't deny that Clark Johnson (who btw has been directing episodes since the beginning) has done a terrific job as the Sun's city editor bringing life to some of the otherwise boorish newsroom scenes. We'll see where the season takes us in its final episodes.

The Wire Blows Its Last Season

The first four seasons of The Wire were the best that television could offer. This season creator David Simon got too close to home and had too many bones to pick. He featured the Baltimore Sun, his former paper, and his anger toward the state of newspapers caused him to screw up the whole damn thing.

The Washington City Paper has the best critique of the show.

Season 5’s mistakes—clunky plotting, false parallels, confused motivations—are violations of the realism the show promised. And without a solid rooting in truth, The Wire doesn’t just have a bad season—it betrays its own intentions. David Simon broke a contract, changed the rules without warning. In his world, that’s something only the Wire-bad are supposed to do.

NPR's "Fresh Air" Taps The Wire

Have you ever sat in your car when you were already home because you couldn't tear yourself away from a great NPR story that was playing on the radio? I did that yesterday, when Terry Gross interviewed Clark Johnson, who directed the first two episodes of The Wire as well as its last one and plays a newspaper editor in this final season. That interview was great and full of surprises, such as the fact that Johnson's mother was a wealthy white New York socialite who went to Spence and was disowned because she married a black man.

I sidled up to my radio today at 3pm to hear Gross interview Michael K. Williams, who plays the most interesting character on the show, Omar. If you did not hear it live, you can hear it via the earlier link. One nuggest is how Michael Williams was at a Baltimore bar and saw the person who now plays Snoop. He couldn't tell if she was a young boy or a woman and kept staring at her, "in a rude way," he admits. He was so intrigued with her that he introduced her to the producers, who created the Snoop role just for her.

The Wa Post had a great profile of Snoop here.

Four years out of prison, age 24, Snoop wasn't living a life lined up along the straight and narrow. She was back in the game, peddling drugs, running with the rough boys, an undersize woman with an oversize swagger. Not much good was coming her way.

Until the night that Snoop spotted "Omar," the gay thug on the acclaimed HBO show "The Wire," at a club. Or maybe he spotted her. Accounts differ.

Well "Omar" just set the record straight. Go Terry Gross and NPR for keeping me within ten feet of my radio.

The Wire

Watched the season premier of The Wire. I'll hold off on my complete take until after Sunday; but I'll say that I'm satisfied with the opening episode, and look forward to seeing where they take the season.

It's available OnDemand for Comcast viewers.

The New Yorker Profiles David Simon

The New Yorker ran a profile on The Wire creator, David Simon. Warning: It's long.

“The Wire,” Simon often says, is a show about how contemporary American society—and, particularly, “raw, unencumbered capitalism”—devalues human beings. He told me, “Every single moment on the planet, from here on out, human beings are worth less. We are in a post-industrial age. We don’t need as many of us as we once did. So, if the first season was about devaluing the cops who knew their beats and the corner boys slinging drugs, then the second was about devaluing the longshoremen and their labor, the third about people who wanted to make changes in the city, and the fourth was about kids who were being prepared, badly, for an economy that no longer really needs them. And the fifth? It’s about the people who are supposed to be monitoring all this and sounding the alarm—the journalists. The newsroom I worked in had four hundred and fifty people. Now it’s got three hundred. Management says, ‘We have to do more with less.’ That’s the bullshit of bean counters who care only about the bottom line. You do less with less.”

I don't always agree with Simon's line of reasoning; although his full-frontal assault on the Drug War makes any of his other shit a lot easier to swallow. It's going to be interesting to see how he handles the newspaper business in this upcoming season. I'm not sure if he will take the right angle at the mostly self-inflicted wounds of the suffering industry; but I'm sure it will still be a hell of a watch. Full piece here.

The Wire Round Up

You still have a few months to wait until the new, and final season of The Wire premiers in January, (and a whole lot longer for Deadwood) but to help tide you over 'till then I've dug up a few Wire related links. Enjoy

Creator David Simon spoke at Johns Hopkins the other day, participating in a symposium that centered around the theme "Renewing American Culture." As he put it, "I prefer to focus on it's collapse."

He also offered a strong indictment of the drug trade - one of the central themes of his work - calling it "the worst subversion of our judicial system you could possibly have."

"Your chance of being the victim of violence in this city if you're white is no different than Omaha, Neb.," he said. "There are two Americas."

"There's no politician that has the courage to do what needs to be done to get rid of these draconian drug laws," he added.

'I don't mind nasty roles'. Aidan Gillian, or Mayor Carcetti, a man cut from the same cloth as Rob.

And don't forget, season 4 will be released on DVD December 4th.

Farewell to The Wire as Final Episode is Shot

This past Friday the final episode of the final season of The Wire was shot. The program was a realistic exploration of desperate inner city life. "Gritty" is the term most often used to describe it, and that is apt as desperate inner city life is gritty at best. To make the series real, it pulled half of its cast from the street.

This past season, season four, was mesmerizing and scary. Its most compelling character, Snoop [pictured above], was also its most terrifying. A braided, small androgynous lesbian, she was an assassin for a drug ring. One of the best and most daring tv moments was when Snoop was in Home Depot checking out nail guns, and not for home repair. The Wa Post did a profile of her in March. In short, the actress did time for killing a 16 year-old and is only 24 herself. So The Wire put people on tv who were really scary, and not actors.

I defer to Rob in terms of the positive or negative influence of The Wire on the Baltimore economy. The Balto Sun claims that the tv show pumps about $17 million into the Balto economy per year. I am more skeptical, as I think that people who don't know Balto think of The Wire when they think of Charm City and thus do not want to go there. I spent nine unhappy months in Balto (sorry, Rob) and when I mention that to friends they all say, "Yeah, it must have been so The Wire."

Who Dies in the Upcoming Wire Season?

Looks like someone -- most likely a cop -- dies in the upcoming final season of The Wire. Yes, I understand that this might not be news that characters will die in a police drama, but hey, I'm just passing along the gossip.

Side note: Bars in the city are starting to go smoke-free on their own now, in anticipation of the ban in the new year. Break us in early I guess. What a horrible idea.

Wait...Craigslist isn't Just for Whores?

Via Baltimore Crime:

Extra Needed Sat. 7/28 ASAP for HBO's "The Wire"

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Reply to: job-383445577@craigslist.org
Date: 2007-07-27, 4:23PM EDT


HBO THE WIRE NEEDS ASAP
FOR SAT. 7/28/07 NON UNION NUDE CORPSES

1 FEMALE 2 MALE- AGE 18-70
$125.00 FOR THE SHOT
PLEASE REPLY WITH A NON NUDE PHOTO, ALL CONTACT NUMBERS. MUST BE AVAILABLE ALL DAY SAT 7/28/07
AND NO PROBLEM WITH PLAYING A NUDE CORPSE.

SHAMOSFISHER@GMAIL.COM
OR CALL 410-558-0400

IF YOU HAVE BEEN ESTABLISHED IN THE WIRE..PLEASE DO NOT REPLY-NEW FACES PLEASE

A few days too late for any Washington-Baltimore area TtP readers. But if you are between 18-70 and would still like to play a nude corpse, it's called Sundays at my house.

HBO Dominates the Emmys...

with one notable exception. Don't ask me how I remember, but a while back I punched out a The Wire post, complaining about the lack of professional recognition that the show gets, especially for what one could call a progressive show in many ways. Not too many shows are a majority-minority cast, and afford black actors the chance to play roles that they would normally not get to play. Couple that with the realistic depiction of poor, urban life in America which has a tough time finding room on prime time television in between sitcom A) which depicts the American husband and provider as a retarded oaf, constantly belittled by his wife -- or, sitcom B) which depicts the American husband and provider as a retarded oaf, constantly belittled by his wife. I would be remiss not to mention the plentiful dramatic choices such as CSI: Miami, CSI: Las Vegas, and CSI: New York.

I say this because the basic response to that was, "are you crazy? Everyone goes on and on about how great The Wire is, both critics and viewers." True, The Wire is in a sense a smash with the critics, both professionals and losers with blogs. However, it is never recognized by its peers, or by the Academy. The show has won a surprisingly few number of awards. How is that? Now, the only non-cynic response to the question is that it isn't a good show. The writing is poor, the acting is stiff, the costuming and set design blow, etc. Go ahead, try and make that argument, but I think if David Simon introduced a global warming subplot to this upcoming season -- maybe have Marlo trade his Escalade in for a Prius -- the Hollywood culture would feel more at ease with the subject manner being discussed.

I know that's a bit snarky and simple, but I do think a show like The Wire can create a certain amount of uncomfortableness in viewers and I know that if I really cared about issues like global warming and the environment, I would shy away from anything that made me think hard about problems much more serious and closer to home than melting sea caps. You know, might make me feel like I'm shallow and only care about the sexy, but unimportant social issues.

So yeah, The Wire wasn't nominated for anything, but HBO did get 17 total nominations, "dominating" all networks. They deserve it, but so does The Wire.

The Wire Documentary

I can't find anything about this on the web, but I'll ask around here if anyone knows anything...From Charlie Booker's Guardian blog: [emphasis mine]

Cease wailing, rain-lashed scumsacks, and gasp at my jet-set lifestyle. I've just returned from a bracing whistle-stop tour of Baltimore - or, more specifically, the most impoverished, crime-blighted corners of Baltimore - where we were shooting a documentary about the drama serial The Wire (which is largely set on said corners).

To a wuss like me, it was an industrial-strength eye-opener: boarded-up windows, needles in the grass, crack vials littering the pavement and open-air drug markets aplenty. A staggering corpse of a neighbourhood, so ravaged and despairing that each time you spot a dead rat (roughly every 10 minutes), you assume it committed suicide.

Whole thing here. Via The Corner.

P.S. By here, I mean Baltimore. But if you happen to know anything about it, let me know.

Wire Update

The Wire sure does seem to like my neighborhood. I have a few guesses as to why, but in all truthfulness, most are probably wrong. **What I do know is that Season three's plot focused a great deal on the tearing down of crime ridden, high-rise housing projects and the subsequent building (on the same land) of low-cost individual housing units, which happenes to be literally right next door to me. "Hamsterdam" -- please correct me if I'm wrong -- was based on a section of W. Hamburg St which also happens to not be too far away from my own borderline area of West Baltimore.

The trend seems to be continuing as both me and friends have run into numerous on-location shootings in the last week or so. I came close yesterday on the way back from work, to driving through one closed road and onto the set. Would have been a fun way to make the local news.

I had a point with all this though. Kinda falls in the Things are Always Getting Better category. The Wire is a television drama, I understand that. But from talking to friends not familiar with Baltimore (and some who are) I have come to understand that the reputation of Baltimore is somewhere between Haiti and Detroit. As one friend in DC calls the city, the "chic Detroit". I'm always stuck saying, "It's really not that bad. Some really bad areas like all cities, but it's got character and cheap property."

Sometimes it is important to keep in mind that in spite of the tough odds that our politicians and policies have given Baltimore, a lot of sections are improving. My neighborhood has become a much more hospitable place in the last few years. Even in just the last year, we have had restaurants and a bookstore move in, taking up previously uninhabited storefronts. I see a lot more people just like me in the mornings, getting in their cars and driving to a shitty job. The obvious disclaimer is that I don't live in the heart of West Baltimore where it really does look like a 3rd world war-zone. There are still lots of areas like that in this city, and the fact is that our political men-in-charge have done a lot to put them in that condition, and there's a lot we could do (like say, re-examine our drug policy) to vastly improve the situation for those who live in those dilapidated communities. That being said, I don't live in the nicest section of the city either, and it's nice to see it getting..well, getting nicer. Believe me, it becomes awfully tiring to be so pessimistic about the future of a city(-ies) that it is refreshing to have a moment when you look around and say, "Hey, it's actually getting better on this corner."

Slow day, good one to get a rant in, but I promise to be back to my curmudgeon self tomorrow.

**[Ironically, what they did build there follows a similar thread throughout the city in areas undergoing -- or in areas that they hope to stimulate -- gentrification. They build these massive garage town-homes and sell them for 2-4 times the average price of a row-home in that particular neighborhood. Sometimes the real-estate effort works, sometimes it doesn't. It seems to be a quickie way to re-brand a neighborhood with negligiable long-term effects. Just my opinion.]

Snoop Profile

I haven't run into the sets yet, but the cast and crew of The Wire is starting to pop-up around town more so than usual; leaving me to believe that they have, or are very close to beginning the on-site filming for the 5th and final season of the show. The Washington Post also has a long, and glowing profile of Felicia "Snoop" Pearson in today's paper.

I would love to go on about The Wire, or Snoop, but I'm still trying to figure out exactly how and why I came into work today and what a 200lb tranny was doing next to me in bed this morning. Well I know what she was doing in bed with me, I'm just unclear on what the cost was. It's important, I budget things. Like sex with trannys. It's called being responsible.

You can just read the piece here.

Simon Interview

Your monthly Wire fix comes in the form of a Slate interview with creator and co-writer David Simon. It's one of the more comprehensive interviews that I've seen with Simon and covers everything from the Drug War to Baltimore politics and more. It's a little long, and not just because Slate decides to use about 1/10th of a page for the actual text of an article. Seriously, how much shit can they cram around the content? Some excerpts below.

On the possibility of new ideas winning out over Drug War and the current catch and release program in Baltimore that has been successful in arresting 1 out of 6 residents in the city.

Simon: No, I don't. Not within the current political structure. I haven't met any politicians with that kind of courage. I wasn't fond of his performance as mayor, but Kurt Schmoke's merest suggestion that we discuss drug decriminalization was very brave. The idea that we would address this issue as a matter of effective social policy! He was pilloried. It destroyed what remained of his political career. He was a prophet without honor in his own city. People, especially people from outside the city, want to say that Schmoke was soft on drugs.
[snip]
Martin O'Malley has arrested so many Baltimoreans that the ACLU and other civil rights leaders have rightly, to my mind, questioned the constitutionality of the city police department's arrest policy. When we finish filming at 1 in the morning, it's even odds that one of the African-African members of the cast and crew will be detained. My first assistant director was arrested, dumped unceremoniously at central booking, and ultimately released after seeing a court commissioner. The charge against him was never brought into court. This is common in Baltimore under the current administration. Other members of my crew have suffered similar indignities. And it hasn't reduced crime significantly. That's not how you reduce crime.

More, on the popularity and credibility of the show.

I don't know how popular The Wire is on the Upper West Side of New York or Westwood or Des Moines. But I know that in West Baltimore, Omar can't get to the set, because we have people going nuts. Or Stringer Bell or Prop Joe. The show has an allegiance in that community. That's its own answer not that it's popular, but that it's credible. I was just on 92Q, the hip-hop station. The call came in with someone who said, why did you kill Stringer Bell when the real Stringer Bell is still alive? And I said, oh, you mean Mr. Reed? I explained that Reed was not the real Stringer, but that we mix and match stories. But there we were, talking intimately about the history of West Baltimore drug trade as if we were talking about baseball. If it was as lamely white and unnuanced as some people claim, we'd have been found out a long time ago.

Full interview here.

A 6th Season for The Wire?

Not sure if I believe this or not....but a credible blog, Baltimore Crime, claims to have "inside information" and reports that The Wire has been renewed for a 6th season. Never mind the show was just picked up for its 5th season a few months ago and that production on that 5th season hasn't even begun yet. And for that matter, just put aside the fact that creator David Simon said that the magic number for The Wire is 5 seasons and he wouldn't do a 6th season, only a book or two to wrap the story lines up if he needed to. Still though, if it turns out to be true it's good to hear.

BTW, it's nice to see from last week's episode that soon to be former Gov. Bob Ehrlich has found a new day job.

Ahh... You Can Smell It In The Air

Late summer/early fall is a good time. The peak of the marijuana harvest season is upon us, complete with idiotic media coverage of it (god save the deer). State and local decriminalization efforts across the nation are in full swing, with lots of media commentary highlighting the potential death and destruction that will follow legalizing the possession of a few grams of pot.

Not to be forgotten amidst all this drug hype, the fourth season of HBO’s The Wire premiered this past Sunday. The show, set and filmed in my hometown of Baltimore, takes an uncompromising look at the consequences of the drug war at the citywide level. The show doesn’t seem to get much press outside of Baltimore, which is crazy because it has much of what is missing from mainstream television, including a majority African-American cast, a consequential lesbian character and a thoughtful examination of the forgotten “under-classes.”

Is it the best all-around show on television? I think so. But what does my opinion count for? After all, my DVR is out of space; full after a weekend-long marathon of the second-best show on television, Breaking up with Shannen Dorherty.

The Wire creator David Simon talks to Reason here. And, from the Examiner, efforts to get it back for a fifth and final season here.