Well shiiieeeeeeeeeeeet.
The legendary and undisputed King of long-form television, David Simon, is currently developing a new TV series, ‘The Deuce’, along with writer and collaborator George Pelecanos, focusing on the porn industry—its legalisation and rise—in the 1970s, according to reports today.
Simon told The Hollywood Reporter about the conception of the show, and navigating the connotations that might come with it: “George and I looked at each other and said, ‘I don’t wanna make a porn show. … I’m married with kids and lawn furniture. I don’t want to go there, man. That’s dark.”
Oh, inDEED is it dark. But dark is precisely what cloaks David Simon’s oeuvre.
David Simon explained the show’s concept to THR.
“You don’t want to make porn to critique porn because that would be a venal journey—nor do you want to look down on people because that also is fairly dishonest. You really have to land it in such a way where it’s a story about people and it’s a story about markets—about the moment where something became legal and profitable and what happens to people in that environment when markets prevail.”
Seeing as David Simon has dealt almost exclusively in real-time narratives (as in, commenting on the Baltimore drug trade as it was happening with The Wire, and exploring New Orleans closely after Hurricane Katrina hit with Treme), Simon’s take on a retrospective time period will, no doubt, be a sight to behold.
‘The Deuce’, according to Complex, will explore the “rough-and-tumble world that existed in midtown Manhattan until the rise of HIV, the violence of the cocaine epidemic and a rejuvenated real estate market ended the bawdy turbulence.” Its yet to be picked up by a network, but bets probably wouldn’t be lost on HBO promptly getting to.
via THR.
