David Simon of THE WIRE on African-American viewers, characters, directors and writers
The Wire is one of my favourite television shows ever , not only because so many episodes are directed by the superb Br. Ernest Dickerson, but because the writers have woven such a complex kente of American life, particularly the suffering that silenced people experience during the era of the so-called War on Drugs. Below is an excerpt from Slate's interview with series creator, writer and producer David Simon, whose insights into the world he depicts come from years of work as a Baltimore Sun crime reporter, and a year's "ride-along" with the Homicide unit (which formed the basis for his nonfiction masterpiece Homicide and the excellent Tom Fontana TV series of the same name, for which Simon also eventually worked as a writer and producer). "S late : Some of our readers have been offering up what amounts to a racialist critique of white, middle-class writers presuming to tell black ghetto stories. And in Slate 's "TV Club" on The Wire , Stev...