The expected ‘The city is our’ (HBO Max, from Monday, the 25th) is not exactly a sixth season of ‘The wire’, but it seems. From the outset, its creators are the father of that (David Simon) and one of its main screenwriters (the great crime novelist George Pelecanos). In addition, account Another Baltimore City-Based Police Corruption Story, where Simon has been making series for three decades: before ‘The wire’ there was the 90s series ‘Homicide’, based on the book he wrote after enjoying unlimited access to the Baltimore police homicide unit for a anus. “We have been working in the same place for many years now,” Simon explains to us in a virtual junket. “We have created a family. When we made ‘Homicide’, a kid came up to sniff during the filming of an episode directed by Kathy Bates. That same guy He is now forty years old and works now in our wardrobe department.”
Simon and Pelecanos, once again co-creators behind ‘The Deuce’, start here from a book by Justin Fenton, former reporter for the ‘Baltimore Sun’, the same newspaper in which former journalist Simon cut his teeth. Says the latter: “I had been reading Fenton’s articles on the scandal of the Baltimore Police Weapons Tracing Task Force. This man had become so immersed in the subject that it seemed obvious that he should do a book. I passed on the contact of my agent and he managed to do it and sell it. But my idea was not to do any series. At that time I had other things in mind, “such as perhaps ‘A dry run’, his long-awaited project about the participation of the Lincoln brigade in The spanish civil war.
Pelecanos continues explaining the genesis: “Curiously, Fenton’s manuscript came to me through HBO. They asked me if I wanted to do the series. I was interested, but only if I could count on David Simon and [la productora de ‘The wire’] Nina K. Noble, without whom I thought there would be no point in making a great Baltimore story. We ended up hooking up bill zorzi Y Ed Burnsalso writers of ‘The wire'”.
tricky cops
Together, the old allies knew how to take a strict journalistic investigation and turn it into a high-flying tragedy: that of a willful police cadet, Wayne Jenkins (Jon Bernthal), transmuted into the leader complex of the Special Weapons Tracking Force, a unit that was born to control the supply of weapons on the streets and that ended up mired in scandal. In 2017, a handful of its members were charged with racketeering, robbery, extortion, and false overtime.
“We don’t like to look for bad guys and good guys,” says Pelecanos. Jenkins had two faces: he could behave heroically during the protests over the death of Freddie Gray [de lesiones en la médula espinal mientras estaba bajo custodia policial] and later, that same night, break into a pharmacy and steal drugs to resell them on the street“.
The (better) actor Jon Bernthal He has always known how to give nuances to his tough guys (Shane in ‘The walking dead’, the Punisher) and here he perfectly captures that duality. Repeat after ‘The Williams Method’ with the director Reinaldo Marcus Green, who has opted for a more dynamic visual style than usual in Simon’s series. The filmmaker tells us in a separate interview: “Already in the first meeting I mentioned series like ‘True Detective’ or movies like ‘Hitman’. How could we elevate the genre? That was the question. And they let me do it. They knew what my references were in terms of visual language; that there would be more general shots, and zooms, and travelines with a dolly… Certainly elements not too common in his other series.”
A little seen myth
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If ‘The wire’ gained a reputation, but not an instant success, it was partly due to its visual rigor and anti-dramatism that separated it from other police series. Still today Simon wonders how the series could survive so long: “Honestly, I spent the whole time waiting for the cancellation. It didn’t get much recognition until it ended and people discovered it first on DVD and then on streaming.”. Pelecanos: “We were doing something typical of 1970s cinema, more than television. Our references were things like ‘serpico’ Y ‘The prince of the city’. If Sidney Lumet were alive right now, he would be doing TV, because that’s where the premises and adult themes have migrated“.
After the good experience, the two friends later met at ‘treme’, about creativity in post-Katrina New Orleans, and the never well-considered ‘The Deuce’, about the construction of the porn industry and its social costs and benefits. Simon explains the evolution of their working relationship as follows: “A lot has changed over time. George came to ‘The Wire’ as a script editor, but by ‘The Deuce’ he had already been involved in all the processes of the match”. Apparently, while they’re filming, David is the talkative cop and George is the quiet cop. “David talks all the time on the set -reports Pelecanos-. I don’t like to talk too much, so it’s going well for me”.