JUMP CUT
A REVIEW OF CONTEMPORARY MEDIA

[1] The Wire was a Home Box Office production.
See http://www.hbo.com/thewire/.
The title is meant to refer literally to the wire tap, used in surveillance through the whole series, but also symbolically to the boundary running between different strata of society.[return to page 1 of essay]

[2] The Wire "was shot entirely in Baltimore by Baltimore craft and labour unions." David Simon, audio commentary on episode 1.1 (The Target) on The Wire: The Complete First Season (HBO Video/Warner Home Video, 2005)

[3] See http://video.google.com/
videoplay?docid=4969254136607732929

[4] David Simon, “Introduction” in Rafael Alvarez, The Wire: Truth Be Told (New York: Pocket Books, 2004), 2

[5] Meghan O’Rourke, “Behind The Wire: David Simon on where the show goes next,” Slate, December 1, 2006,
http://www.slate.com/id/2154694/
pagenum/all/#page_start

[6] Aileen Gallagher, “Andre Royo on Playing Bubbles on "The Wire,’ Snitching, and His Emmy Speech,” Vulture: New York Entertainment, January 2008,
http://nymag.com/daily/entertainment/
2008/01/andre_royo_on_playing_bubbles.html

[7] David Mills, “Q&A: David Simon (pt 1),” Undercover Black Man, January 22, 2007,
http://undercoverblackman.blogspot.com/
2007/01/q-david-simon-pt-1.html

[8] Simon, “Introduction”, 4

[9] ibid, 8

[10] ibid, 5

[11] ibid, 5-6

[12] Nick Hornby, “David Simon: Creator-Producer-Writer of HBO’s The Wire”, The Believer, August 2007,
http://www.believermag.com/issues/
200708/?read=interview_simon

[13] Eric Ducker, “The Left Behind: Inside The Wire’sWorld of Alienation and Asshole Gods,” Fader, December 2006,
http://www.thefader.com/articles/
2006/12/08/listening-in-part-iv

[14] Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels, The Communist Manifesto 1848 (Oxford: Oxford World’s Classics, 1998), 8.

[15] Jacob Weisberg, “The Wire on Fire: Analyzing the best show on television,” Slate, September 13, 2006,
http://www.slate.com/id/2149566/

[16] Scandalum Magnatum, “Balzac of Baltimore,” January 13, 2008,
http://scandalum.wordpress.com/
2008/01/13/balzac-of-baltimore/

[17] Simon, “Introduction”, 6

[18] ibid, 7

[19] ibid, 12

[20] Margaret Talbot, “Stealing Life: The crusader behind The Wire,” The New Yorker, October 22, 2007, http://www.newyorker.com/reporting/
2007/10/22/071022fa_fact_talbot?printable=true

[21] David Simon, “David Simon on Homicide, Truth and Journalism,” Bay Weekly, March 12-18, 1998,
http://www.bayweekly.com/
year98/lead6_10.html

[22] Dennis Lehane, “In Retrospect: Dennis Lehane on Clockers,” Critical Mass, February 23, 2008,
http://bookcriticscircle.blogspot.com/2008/
02/in-retrospect-dennis-lehane-on-clockers.html

[23] David Simon on The Tubridy Show Ireland: RTE Radio 1, January 24, 2008,
http://www.rte.ie/radio1/
thetubridyshow/1179937.html

[24] Simon, “Introduction”, 10-11[return to page 2 of essay]

[25] Talbot

[26] Ed Burns, audio commentary on episode 4.1 (Boys of Summer) on The Wire: The Complete Fourth Season (HBO Video/Warner Home Video, 2008)

[27] Ducker

[28] Simon, audio commentary on episode 1.1

[29] Hornby

[30] Scandalum Magnatum

[31] O’Rourke

[32] David Simon and Edward Burns, The Corner: A Year in the Life of an Inner-City Neighborhood (New York: Broadway Books, 1998), 58

[33] Mills

[34] On the whiteboard that lists open homicide cases, an open case is marked in red and a closed case in black. [return to page 3 of essay]

[35] Laurence Lanahan, “Secrets of the City: What The Wire reveals about urban journalism,” Columbia Journalism Review, January-February 2008,
http://www.cjr.org/cover_story
/secrets_of_the_city.php?page=8

[36] Scott Tobias “Interviews: David Simon” The AV Club, March 10, 2008,
http://www.avclub.com/
content/interview/david_simon

[37] ibid [return to page 4 of essay]

[38] ibid

[39] David Simon, “The Wire’s final season and the story everyone missed,” The Huffington Post, March 17, 2008,
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/
david-simon/the-wires-final-s_b_91926.html

[40] The writers of The Wire wanted to make a companion series to The Wire titled The Hall that would have focused more specifically on the political system. According to Simon, it would have acted as "an antidote to the Father-Knows-Best tonality of more popular political drama." Jim King, “Exclusive David Simon Q&A, The Wire on HBO”, 16 August, 2006,
http://members.aol.com/
TheWireHBO/exclusive-1.html

[41] The "yes we can’ mobilised to elect Obama might seem to have revitalised faith in alternative pssibilities, but post-election demobilisation and lack of real change might come to experienced as co-optation and defeat again. Barack Obama, incidentally, when asked about his favourite TV programme, declared that it was The Wire and that Omar was his favourite character.

[42] Simon and Burns are currently working on Treme, a series set in post-Katrina New Orleans.

[43] The latest HBO drama involving Simon and Burns is Generation Kill, a drama based on the experiences of an embedded reporter in Iraq in 2003.

[44] O’Rourke

[45] Matthew Iglesias, “David Simon and the Audacity of Despair,” The Atlantic, January 2008,
http://matthewyglesias.theatlantic.com/
archives/2008/01/david_simon_and_the_audacity_o.php

[46] O’Rourke

[47] King

[48] Adam Kotsko, comment posted on March 23, 2008 on Joseph Kugelmass, “A Little Something You Can Touch: HBO’s The Wire and the Politics of Visual Media,” The Valve: A Literary Organ, March 20, 2008,
http://www.thevalve.org/go/valve/
article/a_little_something_you_can_touch_hbos
_wire_and_the_politics_of_visual_media/

[49] Ken Tucker, Q&A with David Simon and Creative Team, special features on The Wire: The Complete Third Season (HBO Home Video/Warner Home Video, 2006).

[50] Mills

[51] David Simon, comment posted on Alan Sepinwall, January 27, 2007, “For The Wire Fans, What’s Alan Watching?”,
http://sepinwall.blogspot.com/
2007/01/for-wire-fans.html

[52] Mills

[53] David Simon, comment posted on Matthew Iglesias

[54] David Simon, “Down To The Wire,” Baltimore Magazine, 2008,
http://www.baltimoremagazine.net/
article.asp?t=1&m=1&c=32&s=466&ai=65969

[55] David Simon, “The Game is Real”, special features on The Wire: The Complete Fourth Season (HBO Home Video/Warner Home Video, 2008)