>HR: Uh, but you know, but uh, seriously though, uh, I’ve heard you say that you think one of the tragedies of much of television is there’s a timidity of out-provocation, that people are fearful of provoking audiences. And, if I’ve paraphrased you correctly, how would this show be provocative?

DS (to EB): Why don’t you handle that?

* laughter *

EB: How’s the show provocative?

HR: Did you intend to provoke audiences. Is there anything… any components of this show intended to provoke audiences…

EB: Um…

HR: … to rub them the wrong way. To make them edgy.

* laughter *

EB (to SS): “Racially charged.”

* laughter *

CS: Well, I mean, I would say… just from our…

HR: Bear with me on this one…

CS (to EB): I mean, not to speak for you, but…

EB: No, go ahead.

CS: … but I think presenting, uh, the world with all of its futility, I think, is… is fairly provocative in a TV landscape that usually wants neat and tidy endings and, um, some sort of assurances about where the future is.

ED: And there’s not a lot of shows that really speak truth to power. Really, you know, about the powers that are influencing, uh, politics in our cities and in our world. And there’s a lot of that in the show.

RW: We simply don’t want to see how complacent we’ve become as a society…

DS: Yeah.

RW: … so, it just points out when we… this show just lays it out. And it just… if you feel guilty, and you feel rubbed the wrong way, then that’s the life you’re living. You know.

AR: A lot of people—

DS: And the incredible thing is, we’re still described as a cop show. As (the show’s on) HBO, it’s just, it’s got dirty words and, you know, that’s it.

HR: So what’s wrong with that?

DS: Well, I mean, I gotta say, you know, like the third season, we were very careful to build in a metaphor… the entire third season was a metaphor for the Iraq War. Uh, from the towers coming down at the beginning, in the teaser of the first episode, to, uh, Avon having committed to a war, uh, against an insurgency he underestimated, uh, for corners that are ultimately meaningless. Um, you know, we…

AR: Mmm…

* appaluse *

DS: You know, I won’t explain to you who was Wolfowitz and who was, uh, Cheney, but…. But, but…

* laughter *

DS: But I will say to you that nobody got it. You know, nobody got it. Um, it was, you know… at every seminar I did like these, I kept like, throwing it out there, hoping that some… it was, you know, in some ways, unless you, you know… television’s so unsubtle, or at least the perception of it is so unsubtle, that, unless you… unless you, you know… I mean, the guy who’s got it right is Jon Stewart, you know. You really have to make it, like, put it on display as the mockery of where we’re going and say, you know, I’m now going to make a joke about the absolute absurdity of this. Short of that, I’m not sure that… that there’s a television drama that… um, that people will… follow to anything other than, “Did they get the bad guy, or did the two people I like get together and have sex.”

WP: I would disagree with you, because I think our audience got it. Because that’s why they watch.

HR (to audience): How many people got (the Iraq War metaphor)?

* scant applause *

DS: I don’t know…

HR: Some people got it.

DS: … a lot of ‘em watch because they hope Stringer’s not really dead.

* laughter *

WP: That’s true. I just think that, you know, audiences are so tired of the formula, you know? And, um, I remember being accosted by this woman in Penn Station in Baltimore. Uh, a black financier from… investment banker, who said, you know, “I hate your show because, you know, I just turn it on, and there’s some ragheads selling drugs, and all of that, and, you know, it just upsets me. And it disturbs me to no end.” And I said, “Good. Thank you.” Because if you ever lose the ability to be offended, and if you look at the hour and at the end of the hour, you think we’re not in a state of crisis, then we haven’t done our job. That’s how I feel. Because…

* applause *

WP: … you know, we look at our cities, and we look at what’s happening, and people wanna sugarcoat it and kinda avoid, you know, what’s really happening, you know? And I tell people all the time, if it disturbs you when you watch The Wire, good.

HR: I think I call that provocative.

WP: And that’s what I was…

HR: Yeah.

DS (to WP): I thought you were going to tell the story of the other woman who accosted you in the…

* laughter *

WP: Oh, no, no, no.

HR: That’s afterward.

DS: That goes back to the gay thing.

HR: Shh…

* laughter *

WP: I’m not going to tell that story.

DS: I’m going to tell it right now.

HR: Okay…

DS: In the Atlanta airport, he had a woman come up to him…

* laughter *

WP: No, you ain’t gonna tell that story…

DS: I’m telling it. A woman came up to him and said, “I love your character, I love how he acts, I love it… he’s so real, you know. I just don’t understand why you need to sleep with that white detective.”

* laughter *

WP: I asked her, “What are you talking about?,” and she said, “Well, you have that one scene where you said, ‘Yeah, it’s like the first time I fucked you I made sure I was easy.’” I said, “Well, no, that was kinda like… like a joke…”

(WP hangs head)

* laughter *

WP: Ever since then, David has put in some sexual innuendo between Bunk and McNutty…

* laughter *

WP: … every show….

* laughter *

WP: … then I get a call from my mother going, “Why you have to…”

* laughter *

WP: … “What’s with the pink shirt?”

* laughter *

DS: Every few episodes we honor that woman in the airport.

* laughter *

DS: We throw one out to her.

* laughter *

MKW: Try a kiss scene then see what your mother says, right?

WP: Oh, I know.

* laughter *
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