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The Wire Final Season

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from: David Plotz
to: Jeffrey Goldberg

Bonus Entry: Where "Sheee-it" Comes From

Posted Tuesday, Feb. 26, 2008, at 3:42 PM ET

Jeffrey Goldberg and David Plotz were online on March 6 to chat about The Wire. Read the transcript.

Isiah Whitlock as Clay Davis on The Wire.

Dear Jeff,

Special bonus entry today, courtesy of our readers. We're hardly alone in our worship of Isiah Whitlock Jr.'s portrayal of Clay Davis and our delight in his trademark "Sheee-it." Reader Kevin Ray sends us thrilling archival evidence that Whitlock's "Sheee-it" predates The Wire. In Spike Lee's 2002 film The 25th Hour, Whitlock played DEA agent Amos Flood, who arrests hero Monty Brogan (played by Edward Norton). Twice during the movie—when he raids Monty's apartment and when he interrogates him—Whitlock's Flood utters the barnyard epithet with his signature drawl. Watch the arrest scene here and the interrogation scene here.

This morning I tried to find a copy of David Benioff's novel The 25th Hour—Benioff also wrote the movie screenplay—to see whether he invented the special "Sheee-it." I couldn't track it down, so for the moment it remains a mystery whether Benioff imagined the pronunciation, whether director Lee dreamed it up, or whether it was purely Whitlock's genius. Can anyone clear up the mystery? Also, if any of the Wire brain trust is still reading us, I'd love to hear how Whitlock and his brilliant profanity came to the show. Did you cast Whitlock with the explicit hope of using the "Sheee-it" again, or was it just lucky coincidence that the role you put him in required cursing?

A couple other bits of delightful Wire-iana. First, reader Brendon Shank notes an amazing moment of life imitating television: The Philadelphia Inquirer is running a multipart series about Philadelphia's homeless, inspired by the gruesome death of a homeless man. This is delicious because the Inquirer's editor is none other than Bill Marimow, former Sun managing editor, nemesis of David Simon, and Simon's supposed model for managing editor Thomas Klebanow on The Wire. Klebanow, of course, is supervising the Sun's special homeless investigation, inspired by the gruesome deaths of homeless men.

And, finally, let me point our readers to an obituary for Omar Little. Writing for Obit magazine, my friend Michael Schaffer composed the story the Sun should have written. It begins:

Omar Little, the veteran stick-up artist who inspired fear and fascination in drug-plagued neighborhoods across the city, was shot and killed in a west-side convenience store yesterday. Police said the assailant remained at large.

Famed for his brazen robberies of area drug dealers, Mr. Little had retired from what he called "the game" a year ago, moving to the Caribbean with a new romantic partner. But he apparently returned to Baltimore this winter to seek revenge following the brutal murder of a beloved business associate …

David

tv club
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from: David Plotz
to: Jeffrey Goldberg

Bonus Entry: Where "Sheee-it" Comes From

Posted Tuesday, Feb. 26, 2008, at 3:42 PM ET
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Emily Bazelon is a Slate senior editor. Andy Bowers is the editor of Slate V. Jeffrey Goldberg is a national correspondent for the Atlantic and the author of Prisoners: A Story of Friendship and Terror. Melinda Henneberger is a Slate contributor and the author of If They Only Listened to Us: What Women Voters Want Politicians To Hear. David Plotz is Slate's deputy editor. He is the author of The Genius Factory: The Curious History of the Nobel Prize Sperm Bank. You can e-mail him at . John Swansburg is a Slate associate editor. June Thomas is Slate's foreign editor. You can e-mail her at .
Entry 1: Photograph of Tristan Wilds by Paul Schiraldi © HBO. Entry 8: Photograph of Clark Johnson, Brandon Young, Michelle Paress, and Tom McCarthy by Paul Schiraldi © HBO. Entry 21: Photograph of Felicia "Snoop" Pearson, Jamie Hector, Method Man, and Robert F. Chew by Paul Schiraldi © HBO 2008. Entry 27: Photograph of Lance Reddick by Paul Schiraldi © 2008 HBO. Entry 42: Still of Wendell Pierce by Paul Schiraldi © 2008 HBO. Entry 52: Still of Tristan Wilds by Paul Schiraldi © 2008 HBO. Entry 57: Photograph of Sonja Sohn, Wendell Pierce, and Dominic West by Nicole Rivelli © 2008 HBO. Entry 61: Still of Lance Reddick by Paul Schiraldi © HBO 2008.
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Remarks from the Fray:

I hope Goldberg and Plotz move on to discussing the idea that the press is complicit in allowing the inner-city (especially black inner-city) to decay by not paying attention to the problems that caused its sharp decline. Maybe newsroom characters feel cliched, but shouldn't we discuss how they enter into the "War on Drugs"?

--tsell89

(To reply, click here.)

So far as we've seen most of the newspapermen are indeed stock characters, but that's nothing to worry about. Except for a few leads each season, very few characters have conflicting motives. Think Clay Davis, Mayor Royce, Herc, Horse, Burrell, Rawles, Weebay, Chris Partlow, Snoop, the school administrators, even Marlo.

The strength of the show isn't in the complexity of the characters; it's in the multi-layered coherent vision, the way these somewhat two-dimensional characters all affect one another. Granted, that's a formula for pedagogy, but what saves the show (and not only saves it but really does make it the best show ever) is the one thing that fools everyone into thinking that Snoop, with her paucity of lines and sole motivation of kill-everyone-Marlo-tells-me-to, is a great character -- namely, style.

All the characters have great style, great lines. It's what makes the show fun as well as edifying. And from what I can tell, the newspapermen are going to have as much style as anyone. "Stay hungry. Good things come... when they come." C'mon.

--jamessal

(To reply, click here.)

I don't doubt that the busyness of the first episode had a lot to do with the retards at HBO deciding to cut the Wire from 13 episodes to 10 for its final season but I know Simon will make it work in spite of his bosses stupidity.

As far as Jeffrey's weak defense of the Sopranos, give it up man. The show lost its way after 3 seasons, so the claim that the Sopranos was on longer is not much of an excuse. Of course it is probably true that the Sopranos was a victim of its own massive popularity, while the Wire has been able to stay on course precisely because nobody was watching. Maybe if David Simon had gotten all the money and all the ball licking from critics that David Chase received he would have turned into a hack writer as well.

--sir biff

(To reply, click here.)

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