"It's essentially a six hour lecture on zoning regulations" - David Simon's Show Me A Hero

Two episodes every Sunday for the next three weeks

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pyD4U8nd4ho

http://www.hitfix.com/whats-alan-watching/review-oscar-isaac-shines-in-david-simons-show-me-a-hero/

HBO also has two new Simon series in the pipeline, one of em starts shooting in October

Now they just need to give Milch another go (again)

the next one has Franco playing twins...

can't wait!

grantland had an extremely positive review today

Oh I thought this was that Paul Haggis thing and summarily dismissed it.

he directed it

Oh. I'm torn.

Unlike Simon’s last two projects, Show Me a Hero is as entertaining as it is powerful.

Oh gtfo, Generation Kill was amazing.

looks dope

Treme had some amazing highs

not sure abt this, i do like zoning regs but….

Oh. I'm torn.

― :wq (Leee), Thursday, August 13, 2015 5:20 PM (4 days ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

tbf the problems in most paul haggis projects have little or nothing to do with the technical acumen of the direction - something tells me simon didn't exactly let him contribute script notes

about to fire up the first one of these

I really enjoyed it. Interesting, engaging, funny.

i like it thus far. understated direction, writing is as sharp as one would expect from simon (and william zorzi, who wrote all of the wire's political storylines) if not as enamored of creative profanity

oscar isaac is already tremendous

I LOL'd at "I don't recommend it."

Was put off by the nytimes review, but watched about 20 mins last night, not bad at all, understated, good performances.

I think I spoke too soon...vacuous Springsteen montage, then Winona Ryder shows up, then descent into young love cliche

I'll watch the rest but I couldn't shake the feeling that the first 2 hrs could easily have been rolled into 1.

Simon's shows can't be as fucking pretentious as his interviews, right?

I like this so far. It feels very textbook Simon but not to the point of being tired. I do feel a little like the first two episodes get repetitive -- look at all these angry white people hating affordable housing! look how mad they are! they're so mad! MAAAAAAAD!

Project characters are also a little bit cliched, maybe even border on soft racial stereotypes.

Isaac is great and so are some of the other councilmen.

I have to say the show-stealer for me might be Alfred Molina as councilman Spallone.

i like this but goddamn it's hard to watch those city council meetings with the foaming-at-the-mouth townspeople. it reminds me of the meeting about school desegregation in suburban St. Louis on this american life a couple weeks ago. this country is kind of the worst.

I think I spoke too soon...vacuous Springsteen montage, then Winona Ryder shows up, then descent into young love cliche

― calstars, Monday, August 17, 2015 10:25 PM (2 days ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

i would watch a whole show of nothing but springsteen montages fwiw. p sure wacisko is under some kind of court order where he can only listen to bruce springsteen btw.

I like this so far. It feels very textbook Simon but not to the point of being tired. I do feel a little like the first two episodes get repetitive -- look at all these angry white people hating affordable housing! look how mad they are! they're so mad! MAAAAAAAD!

Project characters are also a little bit cliched, maybe even border on soft racial stereotypes.

Isaac is great and so are some of the other councilmen.
--five six and (man alive)

uhhhhh I grew up around people like the average yonkers citizen and even a generation later they had/have slightly softer version of the same opinions

Project characters are also a little bit cliched, maybe even border on soft racial stereotypes.

― five six and (man alive), Tuesday, August 18, 2015 12:28 AM (Yesterday) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

i'm not sure this is exactly true; it's more like their scenes are there to illustrate the struggle, so they're not really actors in the way other characters get to be. which is a fair reason to critique the show. also to counter all those scenes where white racists are yelling about who "we" are, illustrating there's a Yonkers that goes politically unrepresented and is basically invisible to the power structure.

i didn't even recognize Catherine Keener at first

uhhhhh I grew up around people like the average yonkers citizen and even a generation later they had/have slightly softer version of the same opinions

― slothroprhymes, Wednesday, August 19, 2015 10:29 PM (2 minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

yeah yonkers is basically buffalo afaict. also the reporter on TAL remarked that listeners shouldn't judge the white racists in the school desegregation meeting too harshly bc most white people elsewhere in America are never faced with school desegregation. she opined that whites in nyc, chicago, wherever would likely react the same way. i think she's probably right.

so if present-day white yonkers residents have a softer version of the opinions represented on the show, they have the luxury of doing so because our country has basically given up on upholding the 14th amendment in housing.

the dominican mother crying when the cab came to take her back to new york + leave her kids destroyed me

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Jeq9_bKsy0k

holy shit i'm only a few minutes in but that is a BONKERS video.

They really nailed the look for the Jon Bernthal guy.

i watched ep 1 & 2 last night, really dig this

plus yonkers citizenry not too far removed from my country town, my mum would flip her shit like catherine jeener i just know it

oscar isaac + brooce = lurrrrrve

*keener

yea that vid is insane for both like good and bad reasons that it exists & was on tv

horseshoe can have my allocation of springsteen montages, im good

president of the yonkers NAACP:
the class of people who are just, forgotten about, should have the right to live where they want to-

host: -IF THEY CAN AFFORD IT!!! *CROWD ROARS* why should the taxpayers - yes - why should the taxpayers - why in the name of god should the taxpayers go out and acquire expensive property? alright, to build low-income housing, to generally - and i'm not going generalize, generally, take the neighborhood in the first few years, panic it, and send it running? alright. i say move them into the rich neighborhoods"

i was raised in northern jersey so a distressing amount of the people at those meeting scenes are representations of people I'm all too familiar with

"also the reporter on TAL remarked that listeners shouldn't judge the white racists in the school desegregation meeting too harshly bc most white people elsewhere in America are never faced with school desegregation."

lower middle class/working class whites vs affluent whites

that video is amazing, managed to make it 10 minutes in before losing most of my will to live

srsly, why springsteen. why???

i mean, at least they picked dark-ish springsteen songs, i'm fine with those. and hey, coulda been way worse, like mellencamp or some shit

i don't understand are people critiquing "hungry heart" AS A SONG? that is nonsense.

if you're critiquing the sentimentality/laziness of tv montages, that's fair, but send them to me. it's true that they're best employed sparingly--i always enjoyed the big end-of-season musical montage on the wire.

dunno if i can face this. simon comes across as a total moron and the wire has aged badly in my mind. treme was dire and all his characters are ciphers and stereotypes for his few basic views about "decline".

you are not going to like this

that's all i need to never watch it.

thank you!

haha you're welcome! i want to berate you for your views on simon but they seem fair. i don't think he comes off like a moron in interviews, but he does come off like a dick

yeah it was rough :(

Slayed me.

can we get Oscar an Emmy plz thx

i hadnt really thought about it til now but those hallucinations of nick's dad leaning against the tree made him look kinda distant & disapproving...even though nick clearly idolized him maybe that was the empty hole that he was trying to fill with votes/approval etc

i am still really sad about nick waciscko

this show ruined my life, basically

otm

this thread is now for holding hands quietly staring out a window & sighing

*sigh*

i turned to my husband this morning and was like, "i'm so sad about nick waciscko" and he was like, "still?" he has no soul.

oscar isaac is really something

and he really did kill himself in the cemetery, i thought it was maybe a dramatic element but ughhhhhh

so sad

http://i.lv3.hbo.com/assets/images/series/show-me-a-hero/homepage/2015/august/150824-ep04-nick-outside-1024.jpg

;_;

I think an emmy nom has to be a given for isaac

lonely guy just thinking baout hings

isaac will def get an emmy nom

holy shit I've been trying to figure out all this time who his gf reminded me of, and I just realized it's Janet from Three's Company

lol not bad, she does have that relatable look & actually like this girl ive been hanging out w/ a lot recently

i wonder now if im going to see janet from threes co. in this gal friend hm idk

she is v easy on the eyes

4 shur

i kinda fell in love with her shoulderpads after a while

imma miss these people

She and Isaac both of course look much prettier out of their late 80s Yonkers getups.

oscar is the most attractive man in the galaxy

I always like hearing that because, like me, he is a modest 5'9" in stature.

so I'm not disqualified from being galaxy-class attractive

i normally adhere to a pretty strict "you must be this tall to ride" policy but he is so pretty I've waived the height requirement

godDAMN he is lovely

well geez I was just speaking generally, not asking for a waiver :p

um i only waved the height requirement for him :p

the "brick by brick" documentary is on vimeo fyi

http://www.brick-by-brick.com/hbo.html

I kind of like the people in that trailer better than the analogous characters in the miniseries

just finished this. fuck.

just finished this, really enjoyed it. agree with general criticism I'm reading re: tonal ambivalence w/r/t wasicsko. the dramatization didn't portray him as much more committed to the cause than news coverage at time of his death did ("He wasn't pro-desegregation, he was pro-compliance" etc. etc.), so establishing him as the titular hero felt both unsatisfying as it fit in the narrative itself and factually questionable. skimmed upthread before watching, expected the final tragedy to be really awful, neighbors burning down townhouses or something. by part 5, I was pretty disillusioned with his character and annoyed with the extent to which the dramatization seemed to be more than half-heartedly promoting his retconned self-importance.

that said, pretty turned off by criticism that conflates the above with how the show handled his suicide. (thinking in particular an Atlantic crit's condescension toward wasicsko because he read the suicide to be brought on by a sense of entitlement that the real world didn't provide. though this may be as much the show's failing as one of interpretation, given the extent to which it seemed to leverage his suicide toward lionization, complete with eulogical send-off to put a bow on the story.) frankly, thought it was one of the most real illustrations of suicide i've seen -- the slow evaporation of self-worth, the withdrawal from and alienation of friends and loved ones, the distorted view of a collapsing world that really wasn't collapsing at all -- that in light of part 6 makes parts 3-5 deeply painful in a way very few things succeed at demonstrating. (especially impressed at this from Simon, who in the Wire -- and elsewhere here -- struck me as more interested in predictable characters as parts of a system, however sympathetic they might be, than as unpredictable and unknowable humans.) the point is that it doesn't make sense, and the sadness is as much in the nihilism as it is in the tragedy of a life ended too soon; to get into a measuring contest of whether wasicsko had it easier than other characters, as Mock at the Atlantic does, completely misses that point. of course we as viewers found him frustrating and overreacting and entitled as he slipped farther and farther out of reach -- so did the other characters in the show, who too reacted with frustration and annoyance rather than empathy before they realized what was ahead. extremely well-executed, if somewhat tonally clunky next to the wonky housing stuff; would be pleased if Simon continues to work at more seamlessly blending the personal and the structural going forward.

I have been thinking about Wasiscko & the title... a lot of comments have been "well he's a pretty crummy hero"

The title isn't meant to imply that he IS a hero, or the hero. It could as easily be the tenants or mary ...there are no perfect "Heroes" here, like in life

And Simon even said that the quote "Show me a hero & I'll write you a tragedy" is talking about how heroes don't exist in the real world, that the truth of their lives is often more difficult & nuanced

i was so starved for more i watched all the behind the scenes clips ondemand

i feel bereft

Still sad about this. Great show though.

Kinda curious about Zaleski and Restiano. They're both still alive, and it seems like their reputations could get a bum deal out of this, that might not be especially warranted.

The phonebox scene -- "Ask him about the Desmond Hotel" -- felt a bit disrespectful to include, whether it's true or not.

watched episodes 4-6 last night.

oof.

The title isn't meant to imply that he IS a hero, or the hero. It could as easily be the tenants or mary ...there are no perfect "Heroes" here, like in life

otm

one possibly stupid question - the pager going off with 911-911-911 - is it meant to be clear what that's referring to? is it just supposed to mean that she knew he was in trouble and was desperately trying to reach him?

(I mean, yes i realize it's pager shorthand for "emergency, call back immediately", but what emergency? his life is in shambles and she's worried about him emergency, or something else?)

he's kinda like McNulty but with depression

wow, yeah

The whole time I couldn't help but think I was watching the guy from New Girl doing Adam Scott's part from Parks & Rec.

...

I guess I'm not the only one

http://i.onionstatic.com/avclub/5486/05/original/820.jpg

http://www.pastemagazine.com/articles/2015/08/show-me-a-hero-review-part-3-and-part-4.html

i love parks & rec but that's a stretch for me

Whoa I haven't seen this but Ive stayed at the Desmond Hotel. It's a real place in Albany. And a pretty wacky one, too.

So glad I didn't read up on Waciscko before watching last two eps. Just devastating.

Also: watched this whole thing w/o realizing that was Wynona Ryder!

http://www.theguardian.com/media/2014/sep/28/wire-david-simon-interview-american-politics-show-me-a-hero

“What was required in Yonkers was to ask: ‘Are we all in this together or are we not all in this together?’ Is there a society or is there no society, because if there is no society, well, that’s the approach that says ‘Fuck ’em, I got mine’. And Yonkers coincides with the rise of ‘Fuck ’em I got mine’ in America.

“That’s the notion that the markets will solve everything. Leave me alone. I want maximum liberty, I want maximum freedom. Those words have such power in America. On the other hand ‘responsibility’ or ‘society’ or ‘community’ are words that are increasingly held in disfavour in the United States. And that’s a recipe for cooking up a second-rate society, one that does not engage with the notion of collective responsibility. We’re only as good a society as how we treat those who are most vulnerable and nobody’s more vulnerable than our poor. To be poor is not a crime, except in America.”

This is remarkably ahistorical - I would have thought Simon would know better than to think the Reagan era introduced selfishness as a main ingredient of American political activity - but watching the series with these ideas in mind seems to make it more intense. It also, unfortunately, means I tend to not give much of a crap about the vignettes, except as sort of exercises in storytelling craft (this is also a problem with Haggis directing, I think - he's just really ham-handed, my god).

At a certain point the furious, inexhaustible rage that Simon has against what he sees as the unstoppable decline of our country starts to wear you down. I know what happens, we're heading into ep 6 tonight, and I will be surprised if I'm much affected other than an incremental increase in my resolve to never own a gun. Will report back later.

The "white people listen to The Boss, brown people listen to Tribe" thing is also ridiculously OTT. Give it a rest.

Just finished Episode 5, really moving, even though some aspects of this show seem hackneyed.

The phonebox scene -- "Ask him about the Desmond Hotel" -- felt a bit disrespectful to include, whether it's true or not.

Just finished this - I had the impression that Vinni was lying with this phonecall? Purposefully trying to fuck with Nick and Nay? And I thought the scene where Nay asked him about it during the vote count and he had no idea what she was talking about and she realised Vinni was lying was really well-handled.

Overall I loved this. It took a few episodes for the families in housing to feel real and not sketched out, and I thought the pacing was strange in places, but by the last half of the series it definitely worked. And Nick doesn't come off as any hero, really - why should he? He had no burning desire to make the integration happen when he got elected, he only backed it when it was clear how catastrophic avoiding it would be, and his later attempts to claim credit for the housing showed that his ego was bruised and he was a pretty selfish and damaged guy, albeit a mostly likeable one who did the right thing when it was necessary (and didn't realise that that would be catastrophic for his career in politics).