53507, (Part 11)
Posted by ZooTown74, Mon Sep-10-07 02:11 PM
>HR: Oh, okay. Uh, David, why did you make, uh, Kima and Omar, gay?
DS: You know, we sort of looked at the world and said, well, you know, let’s say a random 10 percent of… we’re basically trying to build a city of Baltimore. Um, we need to represent everybody, and where in these two universes – cause it was first season and we’re dealing with the drug culture and the police department – where can people be openly gay? Well, you can’t be openly gay, if you’re male, as part of one of the organized drug crews. Uh, they’re too homophobic. You can’t be openly gay in the police department, it’s too homophobic if you’re male. But there are plenty of lesbians who were openly gay in the Baltimore police department, some of whom I knew. Um, the stigma wasn’t the same if you were a woman, so that, that was applicable to Kima’s character. And, uh, since Omar was basically a free agent, um, he could…
* laughter *
DS: … he could, he could basically follow his own code. He was answerable to nobody. Um, and so it seemed entirely appropriate to do that. However, at times, I’ve been… I’ve introduced one of the guys who was sort of the, um, the basis, the real-life basis for one… for Omar, the real guy who is… who is still out and about, and he insists that I always say that he’s not gay.
* laughter *
DS: So, human empathy, apparently… he, he loves Omar, he loves the character, but he just insists I always say that, so apparently, human empathy only goes so far, you know, but…
HR: Well, there is a lot of homophobia in the US, we just had this incident—
DS: It just seemed like a natural thing to do…
HR: Yeah.
DS: I mean, we have another character who’s seemingly closeted (Rawls), and that would be typical of his station in life. But it’s just… you know, we’re just… we’re trying to organically include the whole world. We’re not… there’s no “statement” here (that) we’re trying to make, in any… other than to depict the world
HR: Yeah.
DS: But, you raised something about uh, not understanding the dialogue. Um, and I think that’s also true for the use of, uh, vernacular, cop vernacular, street vernacu.. uh, the drug trade’s vernacular. Every profession has its own interior dial… the port guys would speak in ways that, you wouldn’t understand the line the moment you heard it. It might make sense half an episode later, or maybe two episodes later, or maybe it never made sense. Maybe there were some lines that got past viewers. That’s a lot like life. And one of the things that I found crippling when I was writing for network television was the need to explain everything the moment you say it. The need for the dreaded exposition to come out and ruin good writing…
HR: What do you mean? Give us an example.
DS: Well, uh, you know, a very simple example was when I was writing for television, you needed to use the first and last name of a character when you introduced them in that very scene. Even though in real life it’s often hard to get people’s names, particularly on the street, you know. You usually don’t even get a given name, you get a street name. So, the idea that everybody would be talking about Joe Doakes, from the moment Joe Doakes is introduced in the script, was sort of an absurdity. No conversation ever happens like that in real life. But in order for people to follow this thing, in 12-minute installments between commercials where they’re going to go to the bathroom and get something to eat and come back and miss 2 minutes, you gotta explain everything. Or… or, you use an acronym, or some vernacular, like, uh… there’s a beautiful poetry in the way everybody in their jobs, whether it’s on a film set, or, uh… a dock, or a police precinct, the way we all talk about our jobs. Baltimore police officers used to use the phrase, “10-7” to describe somebody who’s dead. “10-7” is the police code for “out of service,” meaning, “I can’t make that call, I’m out of service.” When they say, “He’s 10-7,” you can… there’s like a… there’s a poetry to the cynicism. Well, that works if you just have them say, “Guy,” you know, “Guy rolled a 7,” or, “A guy’s 10-7,” and then they just keep talking. If they then pause to say, “That means he’s dead…”
* laughter *
DS: You know, you’ve just destroyed any… you know… and so, when, when characters would speak in the street vernac… you know, we were basically… you know, we trust our actors to convey, um, nuance. We’re giving them scripts that are nuanced and we trust them to embrace that, you know, all the way down the line. And if people don’t understand every line, it’s okay, you know? That’s… that’s something that prose writing really has over film, which is, the writer trusts when you pick up a book that, if you’ve read 15 pages in you’re not going to throw it down because you didn’t understand something immediately. You’ll keep going until… if, you know, if you paid the money for the book you’re probably finish it on its own terms. Television has never had that, uh, confidence in the way it’s written. And people have never had that confidence in the ability of actors to convey that kind of nuance. And we just decided, look, it’s 58 minutes, let’s trust them to stay in their seats. You know. That… that’s really the tri… that’s the only trick in our bag of tricks that I’m amazed more people, at least in cable, don’t embrace.
* applause *
HR: So we’re not going to see subtitles on The Wire, is what you’re saying here.
DS: Um, I think they have them on the DVDs. There are training wheels if you want to watch it that way.
* laughter *
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