David Simon’s Motivation To Write: A 10 Year Grudge

(Wikipedia) David Simon is known for his realistic dialogue and journalistic approach to writing. He says that authenticity is paramount and that he writes not with a general audience in mind but with the opinions of his subjects as his priority. He has described his extensive use of real anecdotes and characters in his writing as “stealing life”.

In a talk that Simon gave to a live audience in April, 2007 at the Creative Alliance’s storytelling series, Simon disclosed that he had started writing for revenge against John Carroll (journalist) and Bill Marimow, the two most senior editors at The Baltimore Sun when Simon was a reporter at the paper. Simon said he had watched Carroll and Marimow “single-handedly destroy” the newspaper and that he spent over ten years trying to get back at them.

Anything I’ve ever accomplished as a writer, as somebody doing TV, anything I’ve ever done in life, down to, like, cleaning up my room, has been accomplished because I was going to show people that they were fucked up, wrong, and that I was the fucking center of the universe and the sooner they got hip to that, the happier they would all be.

One of the actions Simon took was to name a character in The Wire after Marimow and make the character “a repellent police-department toady,” although Marimow is a Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist known for tough, well-documented investigations of the Philadelphia police. Carroll left the Baltimore Sun to become editor at the Los Angeles Times and resigned in 2005 after budget cuts were announced. “He stands up like a bleeping hero, takes a bullet,” said Simon. In 2006 Marimow was diagnosed with prostate cancer, something that Simon said “took the edge off” his grudge. Carroll and Marimow “were fuel for 10 years of my life. … And now, I got nothing,” Simon said. (via)

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I love that quote from David Simon… and I am listening to this podcast below, but wow, you take the creator of the best written show I’ve seen in ages, and you make one of the most boring interviews… they’re talking about Greek Mythology and Shakespeare and all of that. So far, I am 8 minutes into the interview, and the only good part about it is that there have been no spoilers. Check it out for yourself if you’re more evolved than I. LOL.

Hrmm, it just got better, I just found out from this interview that Barack Obama’s favorite character on The Wire is Omar aka ‘teh ghey’. Okay, I take back what I said… this is a great interview, it just started off slow, but hang in there and it gets really good! Kudos. I spoke too soon like I often do.

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Marc Steiner’s interview with ‘The Wire’ creator David Simon (March 2008)

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Permalink Posted in: interview, politics, quotes, show, tv Comments(0) June 30, 2009