David Simon

56
David Simon bigraphy, stories - American writer

David Simon : biography

1960 –

David Simon (born 1960) is an American author, journalist, and a writer/producer of television series. He worked for the Baltimore Sun City Desk for twelve years (1982–95) and wrote Homicide: A Year on the Killing Streets (1991) and co-wrote The Corner: A Year in the Life of an Inner-City Neighborhood (1997) with Ed Burns. The former book was the basis for the NBC series Homicide: Life on the Street (1993–99), on which Simon served as a writer and producer. Simon adapted the latter book into the HBO mini-series The Corner (2000).

He is the creator of the HBO television series The Wire (2002-2008), for which he served as executive producer, head writer, and show runner for all five seasons. He adapted the non-fiction book Generation Kill into an HBO mini-series and served as the show runner for the project. He was selected as one of the 2010 MacArthur Fellows and named an Utne Reader visionary in 2011. Simon also co-created the HBO series Treme with Eric Overmyer, which began its third season in 2012.

Life and career

Early life

Simon was born in Washington, D.C., the son of Dorothy (née Ligeti), a homemaker, and Bernard Simon, a public relations director for B’nai B’rith and freelance journalist.http://www.jpost.com/JewishWorld/JewishFeatures/Article.aspx?id=195504http://articles.baltimoresun.com/2010-04-22/news/bs-md-deaths-elsewhere-bernard-simon-20100422_1_b-nai-b-rith-international-mr-simon-soviet-jewry He was raised in a Jewish family, which originated in Eastern Europe and Hungary (his maternal grandfather had changed his surname from "Leibowitz" to "Ligeti").http://davidsimon.com/pickles-and-cream/ Simon attended Bethesda-Chevy Chase High School in Bethesda, Maryland and wrote for the school newspaper, The Tattler. He graduated from the University of Maryland, College Park. While at college he wrote for The Diamondback and became friends with contemporary David Mills.

Journalism

Upon leaving college he worked as a police reporter at The Baltimore Sun from 1982 to 1995. He spent most of his career covering the crime beat. A colleague has said that Simon loved journalism and felt it was "God’s work". Simon says that he was initially altruistic and was inspired to enter journalism by the Washington Post’s coverage of Watergate but became increasingly pragmatic as he gained experience. Later in his career he aimed to tell the best possible story without "cheating it".

Simon was a union captain when the writing staff went on strike in 1987 over benefit cuts. He remained angry after the strike ended and began to feel uncomfortable in the writing room. He searched for a reason to justify a leave of absence and settled on the idea of writing a novel. "I got out of journalism because some sons of bitches bought my newspaper and it stopped being fun," says Simon.

In an interview in Reason in 2004, Simon said that since leaving the newspaper business he has become more cynical about the power of journalism. "One of the sad things about contemporary journalism is that it actually matters very little. The world now is almost inured to the power of journalism. The best journalism would manage to outrage people. And people are less and less inclined to outrage," said Simon. "I’ve become increasingly cynical about the ability of daily journalism to affect any kind of meaningful change. I was pretty dubious about it when I was a journalist, but now I think it’s remarkably ineffectual."

Homicide: A Year on the Killing Streets

Simon’s leave of absence from The Sun resulted in his first book Homicide: A Year on the Killing Streets (1991). The book was based on his experiences shadowing the Baltimore Police Department homicide unit during 1988. The idea came from a conversation on Christmas Eve 1985 in the unit office, where Det. Bill Lansey told him "If someone just wrote down what happens in this place for one year, they’d have a goddamn book." Simon approached the police department and the editors of the paper to receive approval. The detectives were initially slow to accept him, but he persevered in an attempt to "seem … like part of the furniture". However, he soon ingratiated himself with the detectives, saying in the closing notes of the book "I shared with the detectives a year’s worth of fast-food runs, bar arguments and station house humor: Even for a trained observer, it was hard to remain aloof." During one instance, Simon even assisted with an arrest. Two detectives Simon was riding with pulled their car to a curb to apprehend two suspects, but Detective Dave Brown got his trenchcoat caught in a seat belt when he tried to exit the car. Brown told Simon to assist Detective Terry McLarney himself, and Simon helped apprehend and search one of the suspects.