The Icepick Cometh

There's a throwaway shot in the opening episode of Generation Kill, which premiered on Sunday night on HBO, that establishes that These Are Not Your Father's Marines. With the sun setting on their encampment, two silhouetted Marines wearing boxing gloves throw some wild, leaping kicks at each other without ever throwing a punch.

The wide shot lasts for a mere few seconds as we transition from one scene to the next, but it's a telling few seconds — previous generation's warriors might climb into the base ring and go at it for a few rounds as a physical way of blowing off steam. Today's soldiers and Marines (and by extension, today's civilian 20-somethings) are bred on MMA and video games (and as we see in this episode too, irony and satire) and are more likely to engage in driveway boxing or backyard wrestling as they are a game of baseball on the base. As Mark Kriegel once wrote of this generation (he was talking about civilians), "These are the guys who made 300 a huge hit."

I don't know if it is too early to call it a profane version of Band of Brothers or merely the Marines version of The Wire, but after watching that premier episode for the third time, I am ready to be hooked again on another David Simon show, if only for the seven-episode arc of this miniseries adaption of Evan Wright's book.

But that transitional shot aside, I am hoping that the new HBO miniseries will go beyond the War is Hell and the They're Different Millennial/Gen X Soldier themes we've already seen in Iraq War (I and II)-related movies, like Three Kings (one of my favorites) and Jarhead. Those movies, to varying degrees, covered the nihilism apparently necessary in modern warriors, along with the misogyny, racism and homophobia which is presented at times as a coping mechanism in a World Gone Mad and also as something obviously deadly and seriously wrong (sometimes all in the same scene or in the same line of dialogue, though certainly not always or with all characters).

You never really saw any of this to the same degree in previous war movies about previous wars, with one notable exception that I can think of — Full Metal Jacket.

More to the point, and where I think and hope this new show is going, and as the Newark Star-Ledger's Alan Sepinwall has observed, Generation Kill's first episode is already setting up the David Simon theme of the individual vs. the institution which he explored for five seasons of The Wire — the futility of One vs. The Machine, the lack of Voice for the knowing rank-and-file vs. the obliviousness of management (even if this obliviousness is sometimes necessary).

This is all not to say that older warriors never used gallows humor or said things among themselves that they'd never say in public — shhhh, go into any locker room in the country, or for that matter, spend time in an all-male office.

And, as Sepinwall also noted, it's interesting getting thrown into a new show and being thoroughly confused and not understanding a thing about it for the first 30 minutes, and then still needing repeat viewings of the same episode to gain greater understanding. I used to enjoy mocking those who complained that the Baltimore world of The Wire was too dense and difficult to understand for novices, but I forgot how hard and yet how rewarding it can be discovering a new world on an intelligent TV show.

Other than the anomaly of the golden year of 2005, what else has this decade given us in film? You got the Lord of the Rings triology and Million Dollar Baby. And then …? The Departed was OK, but it ranks well below Scorsese's other stuff. What else you got? Studios sending out flicks like 21, last week's big money-maker, the film based on that allegedly fictional non-fiction book? (link to Boston Globe thanks to Gawker)

No, this is TV's decade. As I said before, this is decade that's given us great shows, almost all dramas, many of whom I haven't even had the chance to catch up and see yet: “The Wire,” “Mad Men,” “Deadwood,” “The Sopranos” (yes, I know it began in 1999), “Band of Brothers,” “The Shield,” “Rome,” “John Adams,” and even more populist stuff like “Rescue Me,” “Sex and the City,” “Entourage,” “Playmakers” and “Battlestar Galactica.” What else am I forgetting? (“Friday Night Lights,” perhaps, another one I haven't seen.) The jury may still be out on some of the network comedy items — I'm thinking the American “The Office” and “30 Rock” — but it's enough to offset the Reality Crap and make you want to invest in a good DVR.

Why is all this? Well, I'm developing a theory that we're seeing the rise of writers and producers (and especially writer/producers) and the decline of directors, or at least in the power structure. A writer can stretch his or her legs out better over the course of a 7- to 20-episode season than can be done in a 2- to 2½-hour flick.

Sensing this, younger actors with producing ambitions are turning to TV and away from movies. Whereas you have aging and powerful actors like Robert Redford and Tom Cruise turning out panned self-important would-be Oscar bait like Lions for Lambs, you have another set of actors like Denis Leary going for something else on TV. And that's not to say Denis Leary will ever have the chops to compete with a Redford or even (it pains me to write this) a Cruise. But can you see Tom Cruise making a TV series? He's a Movie Star. The only one I can think of capable of crossing over is Tom Hanks, and that's as a producer, not as an actor/producer.

And the great series of this decade has had the net effect of raising the bar for all other dramas, even the overtly action-oriented popcorn ones. You can't just have “The Sarah Connor Chronicles” or even “24” and have them always blowing shit up — well, you can, but you've got to at least attempt to make it so the characters have a little more depth behind them, more than you'd find in a 90-minute action flick. This goes especially for the rich supporting characters that help carry a long narrative arc.

This is, of course, not counting the low-end of the spectrum on TV — your American Idols, your reality shows, etc. But the low-brow was the balancing end of movies, too. For every Godfather, Goodfellas, Pulp Fiction and Unforgiven you had your Home Alones and your 8mm's ("Hello, Machine. I'm a big fan of your work").

As it was, the Writers Strike could have been worse for viewers than it turned out to be — and why the Studios, who must know the balance of power is swinging, were lucky it ended as relatively quickly as it did. A few months was more than enough time for the writers to get their points across. If it wasn't for HBO with “The Wire” and “John Adams,” think about how much deeper the void there would have been, and may still be as other shows are just now getting back into new episodes, with the re-start of others pushed back.

Meanwhile, the new auteur age of film ushered in by the ’70s crop of Coppola, Spielberg and Scorsese is, like the Baby Boomers, aging and declining in its influence, Munich and Coppola's wine aside. In fact, other than Munich, Spielberg's greatest impact this decade may well be in his influence on “Band of Brothers” and “John Adams.”

Which brings me to my recent post on “John Adams.” If this is the kind of show that gets panned by critics, then TV is doing something good, because not only is it better than any of the other movies out there, it does takes the dramatic approach that film cannot — the novelistic approach. It's like this year's criticism of “The Wire.” Even in what many considered was an off-year for the final season of the series, it was still the best thing on any screen.

Think I've seen “The Wire” series finale four times now (thanks to HBO's repeated showings). I've already discussed my thoughts, and I've got at least one or two others percolating that I may or may not get to.

One digression: After the third time I watched the montage at the end of this episode, for the life of me, it got me to thinking about the montage that came at the end of Boogie Nights, which used "God Only Knows" by the Beach Boys as its music. Maybe because it was late when I was watching “The Wire” re-run, but after Rawls got his promotion to State Police super, I could've sworn the next shot would've been of The Colonel getting the beat down by his prison-cell roommate ("shut up, Colonel!"). Or maybe it was wishful thinking that Rawls would someday still get his just desserts.

But on a serious note, “The Wire's” last montage was one of the many things I loved about that final episode, and bringing back the Blind Boys of Alabama's version of "Way Down in the Hole" was note-perfect. That was one of the first songs I picked up when I began my iTunes account (that, and the Ryan Adams tune from the opening credits of Old School and the Black Flag version of "Louie, Louie" from the same flick — an odd trifecta, I know). I'm glad this montage used the full (or nearly full) version of "Way Down in the Hole" (when it's used as a credit-sequence opener, the song is necessarily truncated); it's such a perfect song, and it was the perfect way to punctuate the end of the series, segueing from McNulty on the expressway to the drug dealers to the politicians to Dukie to the newsroom to the prison yard in slow motion to the empty Season 1 sofa in the Pit to the Ports to that great rapid-fire sequence of real-life Baltimore residents to suddenly close back on McNulty.

Any other great movie- or season-ending montages? (not sure if the end of Animal House counts.)

For the record, I liked the other montage songs that closed the previous four seasons — they're on “The Wire” soundtrack, which I got last month and have been listening to almost non-stop since.

I think "The Wire" is affirming of people's basic humanity, and an argument that even though it may be futile to rebel, it's the only alternative if you want to salvage anything that remotely resembles human dignity.

Random thoughts on the series finale of The Wire

(Warning: spoilers ahead).

Best line of the night:
You think it needed doing, I guess it did.

OK, critics come out and adore something, then the minute too many people adore it, they turn on their heels to bash it so that they look like they're apart from the pack. The rest of the pack follows.

The Wire and this season? Sure (here's the latest critic, who hasn't updated in two episodes; and don't get me started on the Slate guys).

Now, also, it's Obama after Hilary's own version of Super Tuesday, when her ability to laugh at herself on SNL put her over the top and revived her flagging campaign.

Follow the pack. But look like you're not. And we're wondering why the news industry is failing.

Terry Gross, at least, is keeping the faith.

This I don't get. Why the hell not just write a fictional novel based on real people, instead of writing a fake non-fiction version of it and get caught? In other words, why not just say up front its made-up, or better yet, label it as fiction and don't say anything at all. That's essentially why Hemingway did with "The Sun Also Rises" and kind of what David Simon and his gang does with The Wire. In fact, Hemingway and his publisher had the opposite concerns — that the characters and plot points in his Roman a clef would be too easily identifiable with real events and real people, who might be easily offended by his portrayal.

Is the label "memoir" so powerful in our times? Are we so caught up in Reality TV and real events that to label something fiction devalues it immediately? Well, how valuable are these fake memoirs now?

Update, 3/10/08 —NPR made the valid point over the weekend that fiction is difficult, and is judged as much by writing style as it is by plot. Non-fiction memoirs, on the other hand, are not judged as much by writing style. In other words, a shitty writer can make up for shitty writing by claiming something is true (i.e., it's a true story by an amateur, so forgive the shitty prose); as a novelist, however, you need some style, as well as a good yarn.

Esquire magazine is trying it, but labeling it as fiction. In their case, it just seems like a bad idea, but at least they're calling it fiction up front.

This one was worth sharing, from a Columbia professor who is an expert on gang life. I know, I know. I'm not one to praise the world of academia, especially a professor of the drug trade. But his books sound interesting, and well-researched and I'd give him a chance. I've heard of him before, and he seems to be the real deal, as crazy as that sounds for an academic.

It's been the decade of Quality television — “The Wire,” “The Sopranos,” “Mad Men,” “Rescue Me,” and many others I want to see but haven't like “Deadwood” and “The Shield.” It has gotten to the point where the good TV series have replaced the novel.

This comes back to David Simon and the critics calling “The Wire” a "novel for television." But think on it — the best series today require a similar commitment by the viewer that novels required of their readers. And if you were to add up the time it takes to watch one season of these series, it probably amounts to the same amount of time it takes to read a great novel.

And it is not just the interchanging subplots and story lines, but in their ability to tell mature stories with conflicting, often tortured and sometimes unsavory heroes. Even something as seemingly middlebrow as “Playmakers” (ESPN's one-season dramatic gem on pro football), “Entourage” and the final seasons of “Sex and the City” (great as lighter fare), or “Lost” and “24” (never saw them, but were once recommended before declining into parodies of themselves) have told involving storylines that cut across and over several episodes, sometimes several seasons, and require work on the part of the viewer to remain engaged. That required work does not often make for easy viewing, but it does make for rewarding viewing.

Maybe it's a failing of the current climate of pop culture. Quick: name the best novel (hell, any novel) released this decade that does not contain “Harry Potter” in its title. This, too, with the Rise of the giant chain book stores in the last 10 years.

And to be sure, the rise in dramatic television this decade has dove-tailed, unfortunately, with the rise of some of the worst fast-food crap ever released on TV, like every reality show, new game show, and some of the worst sitcom ideas ever conceived.

Chalk it up to the rise of cable. I always thought it was funny that Time Warner always counter-advertised against satellite TV by using the (now old) argument that you'd lose your local network channels if you switched to the dish. That's a problem? When was the last time you saw something good on one of the major networks? You can say “24” or “Lost” or “Alias.” Those are anomalies, and I've watched one episode out of those three series. I can barely watch sports on the network channels, and that's with the sound off.

Esquire magazine long since slid into irrelevancy, but David Simon's article in the March edition (and online) could practically double as my manifesto:

At the very edge of being rendered irrelevant by the arrival of the Internet — at the precise moment when their very product would be threatened by technology — newspapers will not be intent on increasing and deepening their coverage of their cities, their nation, the world. They will be instead in the hands of out-of-town moneymen offering unfeeling and unequivocal fealty to stockholders and the share price.

As has been blogged elsewhere, Barack Obama told the Las Vegas Sun two weeks ago that "The Wire" is his favorite TV show and his favorite character is Omar Little, the gay stick-up artist with the facial scar, sawed-off shotgun and Wild-West duster who robs drug dealers and disdains swearing.

Here is the story. The audio clip with Obama talking about Omar is the third one listed. I've also added NPR's interview on "Fresh Air" with Michael K. Williams, who portrays Omar. He not only talks with Terry Gross about "The Wire" and how he got that distinctive facial scar, but also his pre-Wire work as a background dancer(!) in Madonna videos.

This is what we should be seeing more of in our newspapers. This is the other America that you see in "The Wire."

http://www.dailygazette.com/news/2008/jan/26/0126_homeless/

Lot of backlash against David Simon's vision of the Baltimore Sun in the final season of The Wire. A lot of it is because of Simon's now very public hatred of two of his former editors. Both of these editors are considered sacred cows among many of today's working journalists. But these jorunos' defense of these two editors, and their backlash against Simon and The Wire, is playing exactly into The Wire's viewpoint, which is: what are We paying attention to?

I'm sure that during the first seasons of The Wire, every police in Baltimore spent time trying to figure out which real-life cop McNulty was based upon, who was the real-life police commissioner, the deputy commissioner, etc. The difference is that police generally don't have the podium of either column inches or online news sites and name-brand blogs at their disposal to vent or offer personality corrections. I'm wondering if they have the same competitive streak that drives most journos to go out and prove they are better, smarter and more prolific than every other journo — in reality, that, and not the pursuit of truth, is what drives most journalists.

As Slate's critics finally realized (post No. 17 in the Slate discussion), today's journalists are fiddling while Rome burns. What I've read in the last few weeks (the Atlantic, Slate, etc.) proves to me the exact Problem with Reporters and Editors today — their obsession with gossip rather than news. The discussion has been overwhelmed by the talk of these two real-life editors "would never do/say that" instead of "that's exactly what Corporate America is doing to the World of Journalism." Just see the LA Times, which just fired a head-cutter who evidently wasn't cutting heads fast enough.

In their rush to defend two sacred cows, journalists are missing the actual story of Corporate America gutting newspapers, while MBAs are running the newsrooms based on the demands of Wall Street and not the demands of good journalism (as Pete Hamill, among others, pointed out 10 years ago). I saw this problem even at the small-time daily journalism level. Like me, most of the people that care about newspapers — outside of the elite big-time journo circles that have been discussing these guys ad infinitum — DON'T CARE who the fictional 'Wire' editors are based upon. We care that corporate greed and an attitude of "more with less" is decimating American journalism. All we're left with is gossip. That's the story most of the new criticism (with the exception of the No. 17 post at Slate) is missing.

Incidentally, a more balanced treatment of Simon's admitted grudge, but one that also takes into account the Real Issues I'm talking about, is in the Columbia Journalism Review's story and in NPR's report.

I had my own criticism of the first episode (see previous post). I, too, griped about the portrayal of the news business in the initial 60 minutes as inaccurate and simplistic, and I was concerned about the dramatic presentation and pacing.

And I admit, Slate's Press Box guru makes some good points regarding the newspaper industry itself, and how Simon does or doesn't accurately portray it for 2008 (as opposed to the 1990s, as Shafer points out). But the Press Box column (and, yes, my earlier post) misses Simon's larger, and more important, point about what are We watching?

The first episode seemed way too expository for me, even for a first episode. The previous season openers didn't seem so, well, talky. And, as Slate pointed out today in its TV Club, the Baltimore Sun material just stopped the show dead in its tracks. Gawker feedback is also ambivalent about the Sun stuff. I know it is only the first episode, but with now only 9 episodes left, I don't know how we're going to add layers to the newsroom caricatures presented last night. Only the ambitious Scott Templeton character seems to have any sorts of layers, and from what I've read, he turns over to the dark side in his ambitions. I guess, I have no problems with the bad guys being the bad guys (the two top editors) -- God knows, I've got my own set of grudges against Corporate newspaper management; I truly believe they are soulless stupid motherfuckers who deserve to rot in sulfur-burning Hell.

But I want my good guys and not-so-sure guys layered, with some faults. That's why we all love McNulty, Bubbles, Bunk, all of them. They're all fuck-ups and losers, but they're our fuck-ups and losers. Like us. Shit, the most popular character is a drug-dealer-robbing murderer. But we loves Omar.

So, I am a little disappointed in the "daily act of journalism" spewing hero of City Editor Gus Haynes (Clark Johnson, who was so good on Homicide, and seems to be a great director for this show, behind the cameras, too), the grammar-checking copy editor/rewrite man, and the Alma Gutierrez character as a naive reporter. Shit, I was never that fucking naive as a cub reporter on a shitty and small newspaper, and the HBO Web site has her character with 5 months already at the Sun -- a bigger-than-midsize newspaper, with her previously working at the Sun-Sentinel in Fort Lauderdale. Baltimore is in the majors leagues, not some Single-A shit, and I've heard of the Sun-Sentinel. She is actually happy with a "contributing" byline, takes a grammatical correction in stride (with no grumbling) and seems shocked that anyone would be ambitious enough to want to go to a bigger paper. Hey, she wants to stay in Baltimore, cool. But don't begrudge someone looking to move up -- at least her compatriot doesn't want to go into management, and it'll get him out of the fucking Tribune chain.

My naivete ended as a reporter when I was covering cops in a rural-poor community for a shoe-string weekly reading police reports about rural-poor crime. I was seated on a bench seat next to a shackled and drunk white woman who could barely sit up straight she was so baked. Another time, I asked an investigator to explain the nature of a sodomy charge against some scumbag, and the investigator deadpanned: "blowjob."

OK, so let's hope for the best for the final 9 episodes. And I should say, that this is all David Simon's fault -- if he and his crew of writers had not set the bar so high, we'd all be praising the shit out of the first episode. So don't forget that, me included. When was the last time any show or movie acurately depicted the mouthpieces that manage today's Corporately owned newspapers?