I’ve had a leasehold on davidsimon.com for years now. People smarter than I am told me that even if I had no sense of its use at present, I should throw a few shekels down in case. But until recently, I saw no reason to do much of anything with the site. My ambivalence rests on a couple basic ideas: I’m a writer, and while I’m overpaid to write television at present, the truth is that the prose world from which I crawled — newsprint and books — is beset by a new economic model in which the value of content is being reduced in direct proportion to the availability of free stuff on the web. In short, for newspapers and book publishers, it has lately been an e-race to the bottom, and I have no desire to contribute to that new economy by writing for free in any format. Not that what is posted here has much prolonged value -— or in the case of previously published prose, hasn’t soured some beyond its expiration — but the principle, in which I genuinely believe...
Laura
A year ago today, we took to the streets and celebrated the life of Laura Schweigman in that way that New Orleanians do. A native Baltimorean, she was captured by the Crescent City during our years filming Treme, and, in her own way, she captured it right back. If you watched anything from The Wire to Show Me A Hero to Generation Kill to Treme, you reveled in some of her fine television work, and if you were along for the ride as she raised hundreds of thousands of dollars for everyone from Baltimore school children and recovering addicts to New Orleans musicians and culture-bearers, you knew she was the best of us. Her memory is a blessing always. Mighty kootie fiyo, Laura Schweigman (1979-2024). Share this: Click to share on Facebook (Opens in new window) Facebook Click to share on X (Opens in new window) X Click to share on LinkedIn (Opens in new window) LinkedIn Click to share on Reddit (Opens in new window) Reddit Click to email a link to a friend (Opens in new window) Email...
A letter for leniency
This is the full text of a letter written on behalf of one of the defendants charged with narcotics violations in conjunction with the death of my friend and collaborator Michael K. Williams. It was written at the request of Mr. Macci’s defense attorney, but what follows will make fully clear why I felt compelled to undertake the task in no small part to honor Michael’s memory. The Honorable Judge Ronnie Abrams Your Honor: I write to you in regard to the sentencing of Carlos Macci, who has entered a plea of guilty to narcotics offenses in conjunction with the overdose death of Michael K. Williams. And as a close friend and professional colleague of Mr. Williams, I write to urge you to consider leniency. Specifically, I met Michael in 2002 as a writer and producer, when I first cast him in a role in an HBO Production that broadcast for five seasons and chronicled the tragic American diaspora that is the drug war. From that moment, I came to know and love Michael...
Mr. Belafonte, sir.
There will be better and more substantive testimonials and remembrances of this great, great man published this week. I met him briefly, on limited terms, but on news of his death, I found myself reliving the entire encounter. The worst of it left me dazed, shaking my head at myself, incredulous that it happened as it did. And while most of the joke is on me, there is enough in this tale to deliver some insight into how sharp, savage and charming a man Harry Belafonte was. In short, it’s always a shame to not share a good anecdote, so here we go: A few years back, HBO execs brought me in to look at a project that had been languishing at the network for too long: A proposed long-form miniseries on Taylor Branch’s magisterial trilogy of America in the King Years, perhaps the most definitive account of the critical years in the civil rights movement. Those who have read those three tomes will immediately understand that there is enough power and content in any one of them for...