Simon saunters onto stage, accompanied by the TV critic Charlie Brooker. In his hand he cradles a large brandy glass filled with what appears to be urine but is rapidly said to be a blend of lemon and whiskey for the upper respiratory tract infection that is the true hallmark of all habitues of transatlantic travel; a mile high club for the cattle class age of mass transit.
The first thing that Simon tells us is that not only was his background not in television (Simon started out as a reporter before becoming a novelist) but he never watches television, and nor do any of the other writers of
The Wire, perhaps explaining why the series is so unlike any other TV series. Having laid this astonishing fact upon us, Simon sits back and Brooker cues up the next question, but Simon has more as he launches into a tirade against network television and the impossibility of telling a story that is interrupted every thirteen minutes with adverts for soap and cars, Simon sarcastically suggests that when our ancestors gathered round a camp fire so that the elders could speak, it is unlikely that they were interrupted with "a word from our sponsor".
The conversation then drifts over to
Homicide: Life on the Streets, Simon's first foray into TV. Not as warmly remembered as many other cop shows, was a strange blend of TV and the real world as it was a spin off series from
St. Elsewhere based upon Simon's non-fiction book
Homicide: A Year on the Killing Streets. Occasionally brilliant, Homicide was the product of a losing battle between the creative team's desire to create a gritty and realistic police procedural, and the network's desire to broadcast pre-digested, empty-headed pablu as a delivery vector for adverts aimed at a largely undiscerning audience. "Where are the victories?" the suits would evidently ask in production meetings. Their demands for redemption, romantic sub-plots and action ran quite contrary to the desire of the writers and Simon speaks of the series' Writer Director Tom Fontana doing an "antler dance" while on the phone with the network executives. An antler dance being a name for putting a finger through your flies and making obscene gestures while on speaker-phone.
When asked about the possible role of racism in
The Wire's lack of commercial success, Simon is, much like his series, unafraid of acknowledging that some matters are complicated. Rather than being a problem of racism, Simon sees it more as a problem of empathy. White Americans are so used to having TV series that are about them that they struggle to cope with series that are unapologetically not about them; "that's not my story" Simon says as he mimes turning the channel. By contrast, minorities, who are used to never having their stories told, are far more willing to watch stories that are not about them. Similarly, people from more cosmopolitan cities are more used to engaging with people that are not like them and as such their empathy can stretch that little bit further. Which is not only an interesting observation to make about different groups' need to identify with the protagonists of a piece of art, it is also an interesting point about the nature of politics. Is it an accident that people in cosmopolitan multicultural cities tend to be less right-wing than people from rural communities?
Simon is an amazingly articulate and erudite speaker. Instead of dishing the dirt on what happened on set or telling cute stories, he lunges into questions that are put to him. The talk includes quotations from Picasso and references to Greek Tragedy and Stanley Kubrick's
Paths of Glory (1957). There is no false modesty about Simon, he is not only overtly political and clearly proud of what he has achieved with
The Wire, he is openly scornful of TV as a medium. Most TV, Simon explains, aims to make you slump back in your chair with your mouth hanging open; passive, supine, easily manipulated.
The Wire, on the other hand tries to make people lean forward and try to make sense of what are complicated ideas, densely layered and then fired unrelentingly at the viewer with every new episode and plotline.
David Simon is a speaker who makes you want to read and think. When he leaves the stage the applause are, somewhat predictably, almost deafening.
