HBO Takes Full First Season of David Simon's "Tremé" Series

HBO to produce full season of "Treme".

Yay!

Gads, I hope this is as good as The Wire. I know they've done their homework, and they've got the right consultants and advisors, and that many of the people involved are New Orleanian bred and born.

Shooting Tremé

From the Sunday NY Times Media and Advertising section, "A Disaster Still Raw, Years Later," by David Carr. Much of the column is constituted of an interview with David Simon. A pull, below, the content of which matters all more with the stupidities of the Jindal Gang doing its best to wreck whatever progress has been managed so far:

The emergency has passed, but the crisis remains, abetted by feckless municipal
leadership and a national attention span that is measured in days, if not
minutes. Some events require not just recollection, however, but endless
examination.
The lessons of Katrina and those of the financial collapse that
now commands our attention seem remarkably similar: warnings went unheeded,
hubris obscured the dimensions of a tragedy, and an effective response came too
late. To those who were here after the flood, the epic ruination of an American
city is still something that does not seem real. But it was.
And real is a
specialty of Mr. Simon. During a panel discussion at the Tennessee Williams/New
Orleans Literary Festival the weekend before, Mr. Simon called the decline of
American journalism “heartbreaking.” But you get the feeling that he’s still in
the same business, working with a different and much larger pencil. “The way
people here talk is like gold laying in the street,” he suggested, his voice
filled with wonder.
If the show is picked up this spring, Mr. Simon’s crew
could start shooting the rest of the first season as soon as this summer. But
nothing is going to happen until November — beginning shooting any time before
that would be to go into the teeth of the hurricane season, and the insurance
cost would be prohibitive. New Orleans is a place where vulnerability is a way
of life.

More "Tremé" & Wendell (da Bunk) Pierce

Rainy and chilly today. An excellent day to stay in, read the papers, workout, write and make a week's worth of stock.

Two packages of drumsticks, seven per package (the Cantonese Lucky 7) purchased yesterday in the Chinatown Deluxe meat market for about 3 dollars/ A single box of 8 packets of non-sodium chicken bouillon now costs $2.99. I got the most aromatic bunch of parsley in the now Wong Chow, previously named Shing Hing, produce market for $.50, some bludgeon carrots for $.65, three enormous Spanish onions for $.60 and some lemons for $1.00, plus some herb medley brought from New Orleans, to make my own stock. The apartment is aromatic now, in a good way. Toward the end I may add some wine. This stock will be the basis for a mushroom medley-greens-chili-sweet-pork-and-tofu soup.

In the Sunday NY Times art section.

It includes a terrific photo of Pierce in his Tremé character as trombonist, Antoine Batiste, who is still not reunited with his family in the months post Katrina and the Levees' Massive Failure.

Then the London Times provides instruction in how to watch The Wire, now that all five seasons have been acquired by 'normal telly,' i.e. BBC2. However, from this perspective, this advice seems strange, considering the sorts of series that British television regularly runs.

Viewers are advised to " ... concentrate on the most popular characters, such as Omar and Bubbles, at the outset ..." and " ... switch on the subtitles for the hard of hearing until you get a grasp of things."

But I've viewed the entire series twice, discussed it in detail with close professional writing friends, some of whom are on staff as script writers for other popular television programs, and by now have met some of the principals, so I've maybe I've forgotten what The Wire seemed like initally? Still, among the great delights provided by this series is finding out who these characters are on your own, the dawning realization that your first impressions can and do change as you get familiar with people on the screen, just as happens in your daily life.