From ‘The Wire’ to ’70s porn scene
DAVID Simon, the man who created ‘The Wire and ‘ Tremé’, is working on a television series about the porn industry in New York.
Simon (55) said the programme, which will be called ‘ The Deuce’ and detail the rise and legalisation of porn in New York’s Times Square from the early 1970s, said: “It’s a story about people and it’s a story about markets.”
His next HBO project, called ‘Show Me a Hero’, about a public housing battle in New York, is due to be broadcast in August and HBO are said to be keen on ‘ The Deuce’. It will deal with the darker side of midtown Manhattan, including the rise of HIV and the drug epidemic of the 1980s.
In an interview with ‘ The Hollywood Reporter’, Simon admits that he and frequent collaborator George Pelecanos had qualms about taking on the project which first came to their attention via a location manager for ‘ Tremé’. He had been researching the life of a man who had been one of the mafia fronts on 42nd Street during the 1970s. “He said, ‘ You’ve got to hear the guy’s stories’,” Simon recalls. “George and I looked at each other and said, ‘ I don’t wanna make a porn show… I’m married with kids and lawn furniture. I don’t want to go there, man. That’s dark.’”
Simon, a former journalist, started looking into the story and met the man and decided to commit to researching fully for the project. His main concern was that he did not want to sneer at the sex industry or use porn to sell the show: “You don’t want to make porn to critique porn because that would be a venal journey – nor do you want to look down on people because that also is fairly dishonest.”