David Simon

David Simon went into great detail in his blog about why they had to completely re-edit The Wire scene-by-scene from source material to suit the HD format. There were scenes where the meaning was changed and details lost if they simply cropped without discretion. https://davidsimon.com/the-wire-hd-with-videos/

David Simon's writeup of the process of transforming The Wire from 4:3 to 16:9 is a joy to read: https://davidsimon.com/the-wire-hd-with-videos/ Amusingly (if that's the word) this updated version of the writeup, with embedded videos illustrating Simon's points, no longer has the embedded videos because there were somehow flagged by youtube or hidden by HBO. Still worth the read.

There's a great blog post by David Simon on the conversion of The Wire from 4:3 to 16:9 [1]. It goes into a lot of depth about some of the trade-offs and considerations as well as the lack of communication from HBO. Unfortunately, the video examples don't seem to work anymore. I can't help but wonder if HBO sent YouTube a DMCA takedown for David Simon's clips from the post (or they got taken down automatically). It's pretty sad if the creator of a show can't even post short clips from it to illustrate some of the design decisions behind them. [1] - http://davidsimon.com/the-wire-hd-with-videos/

Somewhat of a follow-on from [1] discussed in [2]. [1] https://davidsimon.com/but-im-not-a-lawyer-im-an-agent/ [2] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19570735

I wonder if it would be worth it for long tail revenues from streaming? I can’t imagine the HD widescreen remaster of The Wire selling lots of new DVDs (it was completed in late 2014 [0]), but it made the show a lot more appealing for continued rewatching over the years. 0: https://davidsimon.com/the-wire-hd-with-videos/

The headshot is my favorite: http://davidsimon.com/kwame-brown-another-federal-case-another-head-sh… TL;DR they can get you good for taking money from your parents to buy your first house, which most people in the US do.

David Simon, creator of The Wire, has written extensively about this starting with this post: http://davidsimon.com/we-are-shocked-shocked/ It is well worth a read for an extremely well argued, and informed, opinion from the other side.

It's worth noting that this article by David Simon was written on June 7th, purely in reaction to the leaked information about Verizon metadata being collected. As more information about PRISM became available, Simon acknowledge that the leaks did point to something more serious than he had acknowledged in his original post [1]. With that context in mind, I still think it's worth reading Simon's original post that you linked to. He's a very articulate writer who has clearly shown he's no puppet of the establishment through his work on shows like The Wire. [1]http://davidsimon.com/nsa-and-fisa-commentary-calling-it/

David Simon talked about this for the HD release of The Wire: https://davidsimon.com/the-wire-hd-with-videos/ It seems like the video examples are unfortunately now unavailable, but the discussion is still interesting and it's neat to see the creative trade-offs and constraints in the process. I think those nuances help evoke generosity in how one approaches re-releases or other versions or cuts of a piece of media.

I don't believe that's correct? https://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/text/18/1006 I believe this may be the same law referred to as "the headshot" in HBO's The Wire? The creator of the show discusses it further online: https://davidsimon.com/kwame-brown-another-federal-case-another-head-s…

The right way to do it is how The Wire has done it: https://davidsimon.com/the-wire-hd-with-videos/

I don't think you can change a work that drastically without the change itself being a piece of art. And the original artists might not want to be left out of that process. See David Simon's experience with the HD remaster of the Wire for similar themes: https://davidsimon.com/the-wire-hd-with-videos/

David Simon (of The Wire) wrote a hilarious and edifying piece on the main contention in these negotiations. He explains in it how agents systematically screw over writers: https://davidsimon.com/but-im-not-a-lawyer-im-an-agent/

Agreed. Of course, there have been more than a few remasters that didn't bother to concern themselves with such trivialities. The Buffy the Vampire Slayer remaster is an example of how you can thoroughly botch framing[0] when converting between aspect ratios. At that point, you might as well see what else you can screw up as well. At the opposite end of the spectrum, David Simon wrote a really interesting--and even-handed--blog post[1] about HBO's remaster of The Wire that converted to 16:9. He points out examples of scenes that work out better in 16:9 and those that...don't. Even when the conversion is made in conjunction with the original filmmakers, it's still a different version of what was originally intended and necessarily involves compromises. 0. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=F28XcxHxH6k 1. http://davidsimon.com/the-wire-hd-with-videos/

did anyone read David Simon's comments on all of this: https://davidsimon.com/the-wires-final-season-and-the-story-everyone-m…

> "And the examples tend to the arcane, like importing food, not activities most people engage in." Another common one is people borrowing parents from their parents to make a down payment on a house. Lots of people do it, but the sentence for using such a loan and not disclosing it is 30 years. This particular violation is referred to as a "head shot" by investigators looking for something with which to nail a suspect. http://davidsimon.com/kwame-brown-another-federal-case-another-head-sh…

Hopefully you disclosed this as a loan and not as an asset. Otherwise, boom Head Shot - http://davidsimon.com/kwame-brown-another-federal-case-another-head-sh…

I suggest you read this blog post by David Simon, creator of the Wire, which was posted on HN a few days ago: http://davidsimon.com/the-nigger-wake-up-call/

So, David Simon (of The Wire/Treme fame) wrote this up: http://davidsimon.com/we-are-shocked-shocked/ I think he makes some good points.

You're not alone. David Simon (journalist, author, and creator of The Wire) wrote about this: http://davidsimon.com/stray-penises-and-politicos/

See https://davidsimon.com/the-wire-hd-with-videos/

There's a long treatment of this in Simon's 2008 talk, "The Audacity of Despair". I'd written at length on that earlier: http://davidsimon.com/portfolio-item/the-audacity-of-despair https://plus.google.com/u/0/104092656004159577193/posts/CexRd31Mpxn Simon says: In this culture, if you want to find out where the dirt is done, parse some statistics. I learned as a reporter to start despising statistics, and to regard anything that was ever cited to me in advance of an argument as dubious just because somebody was pulling it out and using it. As I got better as a reporter, I realized that as soon as any of our institutions create a means of measuring themselves in terms of quality, someone is running behind them in that institution to figure out a way of destroying that statistic as a meaningful measure of anything. In education it's No Child Left Behind and standardized test scores. In the police department, it's crime statistics and clearance rates. In the journalism it's Pulizer Prizes. These stats don't have to do with anything once the people looking to advance themselves and their agenda, and to protect their institution, get done with them. ... It's not corruption in the sense of somebody thinking "I am here to make Baltimore worse", or "make the retaining walls in New Orleans collapse yet again". It's somebody thinking "I don't want it landing on me, I want my day to be easier than yours, and I want you to think well of me until I get out of this job".…

For anyone who is interested in further reading on the impact of drugs on Baltimore neighborhoods and the people who live there, I urge you to check out The Corner: A Year in the Life of an Inner-City Neighborhood (1). One of the readers on Goodreads summed it up quite well: Books don't get much more powerful or moving than this. The premise is simple--Baltimore Sun reporter David Simon (who's lately been earning acclaim as the driving force behind HBO's "The Wire" which takes place in the same area)and Ed Burns spent a year living on or around one of the busiest drug markets in Baltimore and reports what he learned. In doing so, he tells the stories of the people who inhabit this world: street pushers, kids trying (although often not that hard) to stay straight and the parents who worry about them, when they're not too busy trying to score their next fix. The stories are harrowing--from people who spend their days cashing in scrap metal for cash to get hooked up, to families sharing one small bedroom in a shooting gallery. Pretty much everybody is hoping for a change in fortunes, but the book offers few happy endings. In spite of this, its a fascinating glimpse of a world where most of Simon's readers will never go. The narrative is occasionally broken up by Simon and Burns' musings about the war on drugs. No matter where you fall on the political spectrum, its hard to disagree with Simon's belief that the war has failed, at least in his little corner of the world.…

The Guardian is, by their own admission, a center-left paper. That's in Britain, which means they are somewhere between "radical" and "terrorist mooslim communisocialifascist" here in the US. The person who broke the stuff for them is very strongly political. [2] US corporate media, on the other hand, subscribes to the "view from nowhere" style [3], which they mistake for objectivity. It makes them easily manipulated; when you create a controversy, they are obliged to move away from it. That gets you the classic, "Opinions on Shape of Earth Differ: Round or Flat?" journalism. [4] This is compounded by the way newspaper journalism has been in decline for years, and was even before the Internet drank their milkshake. [5] Now, major newspapers feel very vulnerable, and one of their few remaining assets is that people in power will talk to them. That makes them basically stenographers to power. [6] [1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Guardian#Political_stance_and_editori… [2] http://pressthink.org/2013/06/politics-some-politics-none-two-ways-to-… [3] http://pressthink.org/2010/11/the-view-from-nowhere-questions-and-answ… [4] http://delong.typepad.com/sdj/2005/08/opinions_on_sha.html [5] http://davidsimon.com/do-you-know-who-i-am/#comment-6754 [6] http://billayers.wordpress.com/2013/06/11/our-media-stenographers-for-…