The impact of the Internet is that it's pulling the froth of commentary and debate off the top of first-generation news gathering, leaving newspapers with only a first-generation role for themselves, which is not enough for them to sustain readers, and so they're losing young readers. By and large, excusing the fact that there are some first-generation journalists going out and acquiring new information directly for the Web, the vast majority of the Internet is reaction and debate and commentary -- some of it brilliant. But I don't run into a lot of Internet reporters at council meetings and in courthouses.
The issue that's being debated here is whether or not a second-tier regional paper -- that once covered its city, that was trying to get better at explaining the nuances and the particular details of life in the streets of its city and in its boardrooms and its council chambers and in city hall -- is becoming thinner and thinner. And what they're able to capture of the city is thinner and thinner. That's what we depicted. And incredibly, the entire onanistic, self-absorbed, psychically wounded, worried-about-tomorrow world of journalism had nothing to say about that.
Obviously, though, your show is given tremendous respect and attention by critics and the media.
I'm not being pissy about it, I'm cracking up. On some level, it's almost perfect that they missed it. I think that a lot of journalists didn't remark on what the coverage was or wasn't, because the reality is that a lot of editors at a lot of these papers are no longer aware of what they're missing anymore. I think normal viewers got it better than journalists.
When Marlo tastes the blood on his arm -- what insights are given into his soul at that moment? Does he even have a soul?
Sure he does. I don't want to be the kind of person to tell you what the movie means. The thing about that scene, it's an homage to the end of a movie I love a great deal, "The Gambler" with James Caan, the modernized treatment of Dostoevsky. I confess we stole that sequence in some ways. It's not the same sequence, it's not like Brian de Palma with "Battleship Potemkin" on the stairs [the Odessa steps sequence used in "The Untouchables"]. It's not like we stole the filmic sequence, but if you look at the end of "The Gambler," there are some clues there.
Was that Marlo on the street at the start of the ending montage? I thought he might've gone back to running a corner.
After leaving the circle-jerk of developers, he walked up on those kids who were telling an Omar story and challenged them. He wasn't on a corner otherwise. He clearly wants his name back, but whether he's going to get back in the drug game? Unstated in the piece.
Avon, Stringer Bell and Marlo are such different leaders. I think it's clear what drives Avon and Stringer, but Marlo is a real mystery, to the end. What drives him?
Power. Totalitarian power. The desire that only dares to speak its name when a human being is sated with money and fame.
No one really gets out unscathed this season, except for Kima Greggs, maybe. Do you think it's possible to work within any of these institutions and remain honorable?
Bunk, Prez, are OK, maybe. Bubbles, of course, though he is an outsider, struggling only with his own addictions. Sydnor will be fine for a minute or two more, maybe. But no, that's the point of this postindustrial American tragedy. Whatever institution you as an individual commit to will somehow find a way to betray you on "The Wire." Unless of course you're willing to play the game without regard to the effect on others or society as a whole, in which case you might be a judge or the state police superintendent or governor one day. Or, for your loyalty, you still might be cannon fodder -- like Bodie. No guarantees. But only one choice, as Camus pointed out, offers any hope of dignity.
Which of the characters will you miss writing for the most?
I think I'll miss writing about Baltimore. That sounds like a cheap answer. For people who haven't watched the show carefully, who think it's just a brutal and cynical assessment of the city, that may sound like a surprising answer. And Baltimore may not miss me writing about it. But I thought we wrote with a lot of affection for the place, and with a lot of sincerity.
There may be other Baltimore stories, and in fact, Ed and I are looking at other things to do, but I'm never going to sprawl a story over a city that way again.
Is this your masterpiece? It would be hard to create anything else that would be as complex as "The Wire."
Listen, I don't even know if it's a masterpiece. Let's see if it holds up for five years. I think it's pretty good, but you're throwing around some big words there, and I'm not just being falsely modest.
You're very Jesus-like when you speak in such a humble way.
That's how the complex works. [Laughs.] I don't know what it is. I think ["The Wire"] will hold up, and I think it'll hold up as a unified 60 episodes. But I could be wrong. Is anything really a masterpiece? Shit's never finished; it's just abandoned, I think Churchill said that about books. That's true about everything.
I thought someone said that about poems. (And before that, art.)
It's a better line about poems than it is about prose. But the show is very pessimistic about the American empire. I don't delight in pessimism. I would be happy if, 10 years from now, "The Wire" is entirely wrong about the direction the country's headed. I'd be happy about that because I live in Baltimore. I'm an American. I have a vested interest in its turning out better, not worse. But I don't know. So let's wait on that masterpiece shit. I'm not quite sure what we built.
I guess history will determine that.
Right, I mean, by the way, it may just be some dusty DVDs on the shelf, when the machines don't play DVDs anymore. It may not even be worth debating.
Just another outdated technology. Plus, our culture is just getting dumber and dumber, so it may not stand a chance.
The proof in that is that a guy with a C-average degree from the University of Maryland and 13 years of covering cops for a newspaper in Baltimore has a television show, and everyone's arguing over whether it's brilliant or not. OK, that's a culture that's in serious decline.
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