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...
Commentary: Obits, Appreciations
Obituary: David Eugene Mills
From the Times-Picayune, Reprinted with permission. David Simon, co-creator of HBO’s “Treme,” first worked with David Mills, a “Treme” writer and co-executive producer who died Tuesday (March 30) at age 48, when they both wrote for the student newspaper at the University of Maryland. With “Treme” aiming for an April 11 premiere on HBO and the production aiming to wrap its 10-episode first season in late April, Simon wrote his friend’s obituary Wednesday. It was distributed, unsigned, by the network. Here’s the complete text: David E. Mills, an Emmy-award winning television writer who worked on dramas as varied as “Homicide,” “NYPD Blue,” “E.R.” and “The Wire,” died suddenly Tuesday after collapsing on the New Orleans set of his new HBO drama, “Treme.” He was 48. A former journalist who worked for the Washington Post, the Washington Times and the Wall Street Journal, Mills was on the set of the post-Katrina drama as it filmed a scene at Café du Monde in the French Quarter when...
‘The Wire’ loses a talented, trusted set of eyes
Behind the scenes, Bob Colesberry was a showbiz giant Appreciation, from the Baltimore Sun, Feb. 15, 2004 Reprinted with permission It was a shotgun wedding of sorts, with an HBO executive playing pastor. I was there to get a book that I had written, an account of a year on a Baltimore drug corner, made into television. I had another writer with me, a trusted college friend with experience in episodic drama. David Mills had worked a few years on NYPD Blue, just as I had a couple years under Tom Fontana on Homicide. And we had already hired a line producer who would help us put film in the can. So why was I being ushered to this New York office to meet another producer? Some studio type named Colesberry. A film producer, no less, from the world of big-budget features where everyone had a producer title, whether they did any work or not. He would probably ask for crane shots and try to rewrite scripts and screw up the casting and blow a hole in the budget. “Don’t commit to...