Here is a link to an interview I did with David Simon–creator of The Wire–in the Winter issue of Film Quarterly. It's about his Iraq mini-series, Generation Kill, which aired this past summer on HBO.
Simon is so transparent about his project (and about his estimation of his own project) that he's almost too good at the interview game. His eyes glint when he's giving you the money quote:
"I would feel better about this war, personally, if I didn’t believe that the people who ordered it did so with as callow a sense of what war is as adults can have. Never mind whether it was the right war at the right time. Did they know what they were saying when they said “war”? And I just get the impression, since they didn’t serve, since they went out of their way not to serve, that maybe they didn’t know. And maybe there are a lot of Americans who are in that same category. And maybe walking for seven hours with these marines serves some surrogate purpose in terms of reminding and educating Americans as to what war actually is."
