David Simon Interview @ Vice

Vice has an interview with David Simon, creator of The Wire, the multi-braided television epic that held a mirror up to the social institutions that shape America and ran for five seasons on HBO. It’s a great read. Simon addresses addiction, Greek tragedies, the fall of newspapers, crime fiction and more, as well as describing the process of creating the characters and storylines of The Wire.

I loved this quote about health care reform and the cries of “socialism!” it has been generating lately:

If socialism is a taint that you cannot abide by, then, goddamn it, you shouldn’t be in any group insurance policy. You should just go out and pay the fucking doctors because when you get 100,000 people together as part of anything, from a union to the AARP, and you say, “Because we have this group actuarially, more of us are going to be healthier than not and therefore we’ll be able to carry forward the idea of group insurance and everybody will have an affordable plan…” That’s fuckin’ socialism. That’s nothing but socialism.

And some good news – Simon is currently filming a new HBO series called Tremé about the lives of local musicians in New Orleans that will begin airing in 2010.