David Simon, creator of ‘The Wire’, being interviewed by Ari Shapiro (NPR)
SHAPIRO: Ok, so you’ve spent your career television without AI, and I could imagine today you thinking, boy, I wish I had that tool to solve those thorny problems…
SIMON: What?
SHAPIRO: … Or saying…
SIMON: You imagine that?
SHAPIRO: … Boy, if that had existed, it would have screwed me over.
SIMON: I don’t think AI can challenge what writers do at a fundamentally creative level.
SHAPIRO: But if you’re trying to transition from scene five to scene six, and you’re stuck with that transition, you could imagine plugging that portion of the script into an AI and say, give me 10 ideas for how to transition this.
SIMON: I’d rather put a gun in my mouth.
Yeah, I’ve read The Corner though not seen the series in full. Highly recommend the book and also Homicide: A Year on the Killing Streets and you see so much of what ends up becoming The Wire in both.
I highly recommend watching The Corner if you’re a fan of The Wire.
It’s heartbreaking, but very very good. And yeah the woman who plays Francine deserves awards for that shit, I mean wow.
I never watched Homicide. I get the vibe that it didn’t hold up as well as his later stuff.