In 'We Own This City,' AoDespair and George Pelecanos argue police corruption has never been worse. They spoke with kvanaren about what’s changed in the years since they made 'The Wire' and the challenges inherent to adapting real-life stories
Josh Charles as Daniel Hersl, camera operator Luke Owen, co-creators David Simon and George Pelecanos. Photo: HBO We Own This City feels like a return. Twenty years after making The Wire, showrunners David Simon and George Pelecanos again tackle crime and government in Baltimore, this time in a six-episode HBO miniseries based on a true story. But unlike The Wire’s more balanced, fictionalized perspective, We Own This City is acutely critical of contemporary Baltimore police culture.
At the New York premiere, George, you described We Own This City as a show you were excited to develop. But you had to convince David to go back to a setting so similar to The Wire. David, why were you reluctant? When I’ve had the opportunity to speak to something that happened, like Generation Kill or Show Me a Hero, it always feels stronger to me. Why would we toss out this narrative where Justin had gone to the trouble to characterize exactly how and why this became the mode of policing in Baltimore?Pelecanos: It presented more of a challenge. You have to honor the facts and you have to be careful. These people may have died but their families are still here.
Was there debate about it? The episode quickly cuts to explanatory text, making it clear that the independent review concluded it was a suicide but that some people are still uncertain. Simon: The cost of making a nonfiction series is that at certain points you’re not going to know everything, but the camera has to be somewhere, and it has to see something. Unlike prose, where you can pause and say, “No one knows what happens,” the camera can’t stop telling the story. That’s the fun of it. You’re fully engaged with trying to find your way to some proximate version of what’s true.
By taking the actors and making them interchangeable, by making cops into crooks or crooks into cops, you’re taking a jackhammer to the idea that people are X or Y. But I don’t think it’s a conscious thought when people are watching the show. Simon: In the first three episodes of The Wire, you saw Kima beat the shit out of a guy who’s on the ground; you saw Prez hit a guy who loses an eye.Simon: Yeah, and you go along with it. What does that say?
So I’m sorry. I know everyone’s suspicion is now girded in what’s been in the headlines, but a police department is a living, breathing institution that gets better or worse. It doesn’t stay constant. And right now we have a very ineffective police department, and my city is the most violent it’s ever been in its modern history.
Simon: If the question is, if we were making The Wire today would the structure of the filming be different, the answer is sure. We didn’t give much thought to who we were; we had this particular story we were rushing to tell, and when it came time to staff a complement of writers, we chased novelists. George, and Richard Price and Dennis Lehane. I tried to get Walter Mosley but he was already signed up on a different series. I wanted to get David Mills. I had some consciousness of diversity.
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