The Wire

by Rafael Alvarez

  Bob, gone?

  Trim, boyish, and seemingly fit as a fiddle, producer Robert F. Colesberry Jr. died at the age of 57 after complications from heart surgery. His death in New York City on February 9, 2004, knocked the wind out of The Wire family.

  Each season of the show following his death would feature a photo of Bob in his on-screen role as Detective Ray Cole in the opening montage.

  A man who often kept his own counsel, Bob was a silent type who listened more than he spoke. But his talent and commitment influenced every aspect of any project he had a hand in.

  He learned from some of the film industry’s most celebrated directors, many of whom came to regard Colesberry as an essential collaborator. Bertolucci embraced him. Scorsese credited him with helping to reinvigorate his career with After Hours. And Alan Parker told him that one day – his talents as a producer notwithstanding – he should direct.

  “I never wanted to shoot another reel of film without Bob as my partner,” said David Simon, who shared executive-producing duties on The Wire with Colesberry. “He was a consummate storyteller and a trusted friend.”

  Because the show must go on, “a triumvirate [Simon/Colesberry/ Noble] had to be rethought and each of us took over some of what Bob had been to the show,” said Simon in 2009.

  Bob’s widow “Karen pitched in … so did Joe Chapelle and others. But the loss of Bob by necessity transformed Nina [Noble] from line producer to an executive producer. And she was ready.”

  Not by a long shot, however, was anyone ready for the death of Bob Colesberry.

  A Philadelphia native who was once invited to minor-league camp as a second baseman by the Baltimore Orioles, Colesberry graduated from New York University, which established a scholarship in his name.

  Over a long career not nearly long enough, he worked on films as diverse as Fame, Mississippi Burning and a CBS production of Arthur Miller’s Death of a Salesman, starring Dustin Hoffman and John Malkovich.

  During film school, he tended bar at Max’s Kansas City in Manhattan – where the Velvet Underground played their last gigs with Lou Reed – and where Colesberry fell in with a coterie of young filmmakers surrounding Andy Warhol. Colesberry worked as an assistant director on several Warhol films.

  On Fame, he served as first assistant to director Alan Parker, co-writing the B-side to the film’s hit-single title song–a feat for which he continued to receive royalty checks years later.

  “It was called ‘Hot Lunch,’” said Parker. “Bob actually wrote the lyric, ‘If it’s blue, it must be stew.’”

  Other directors who benefited from Colesberry’s unwavering commitment include Ang Lee, Robert Benton, and Alan Pakula.

  Pakula, who directed The Parallax View and Sophie’s Choice, worked with Colesberry on the 1997 film The Devil’s Own and died a year later in a freak car accident aged 70.

  “Alan was somewhat of a father figure to Bob,” said Karen Thorson, a post-production producer on The Wire to whom Colesberry was married for 12 years. “When Alan died, Bob withdrew.

  “I don’t think he contemplated his own death very much,” Thorson said. “But prior to his [heart] surgery, he said, ‘I have so much more to do with my life.’”

  As the executive producer of HBO’s The Corner – the project that first teamed him with Simon – Colesberry was honored with a Peabody Award and an Emmy for best miniseries.

  He received Oscar and Golden Globe nominations for his work on Mississippi Burning, and Emmy nominations for both Death of a Salesman and HBO’s 61* – about the race between Mickey Mantle and Roger Maris to break Babe Ruth’s single-season home run record.

  A devoted Yankees fan – much to the consternation of his Baltimore-centric crews on The Corner and The Wire – Colesberry jumped at the chance to work with director Billy Crystal on 61*.

  At one point, when a friend called Colesberry to find out how the filming of 61* was going, Bob went into great length on the adventure of it all. He had the pleasure of eating lunch with Yogi Berra and stood at the plate in old Tigers Stadium, where the film was shot, trying to get some wood on knuckleballs thrown by former big-leaguer Tom Candiotti, who appeared in the movie.

  “When it was announced that 61* had been nominated for an Emmy, [the film’s director] Billy Crystal wrote Bob a note that said, ‘Whether we win or not, it’s how we played the game,’” said Thorson.

  “After Bob died, I found a lot of little treasures like that.”

  •

  At the time of his death, Colesberry was a longtime resident of both New York City and Amagansett, NY. To those who knew him in his early life outside of Philadelphia, his successful film career, or any career, was unexpected.

  Friends from Germantown High School remembered a talented athlete who did little more than hang with the boys at the corner of Wayne and Tioga.

  Outside of a lone loitering arrest and one notable attempted theft of a ceramic cow from the roof of a neighborhood steak house, young Bob didn’t get into too much trouble. But, said a relative, “He was around the boys who did.”

  Jill Porter, a high school friend, recalled that Colesberry’s academic career included spots on the varsity baseball and football teams and strict attendance at all four periods of lunch every day.

  “He was nice and had this charm to him,” she said. “But we all thought he was going absolutely nowhere.”

  An artillery lieutenant when discharged from the Army in 1968, Colesberry enrolled at Southern Connecticut State College, where, looking for easy courses, he tried drama.

  It suited him. Elated, he found his calling and by his junior year had transferred to the Tisch School for the Arts at New York University, graduating in 1974 with a degree in film and television.

  After stints as a location manager and first assistant director, he was – by the early 1980s – helping to produce such films as Barry Levinson’s The Natural and Martin Scorsese’s The King of Comedy.

  In 1985, he worked on Scorsese’s critically acclaimed dark comedy After Hours, which won the industry’s Independent Spirit award and helped resurrect the director’s career.

  By the late 1980s, Colesberry had become a veteran, hands-on film producer, obsessed with every detail of the projects on which he labored. Passionate about authenticity, he reveled in stories rooted in reality.

  Bob, said director Bill Forsyth, had a need “to believe utterly in what he was doing. But when that belief was intact, his dedication and loyalty were givens, always there.”

  His pre-production rituals were famous among those who worked with him. He filled reams of yellow legal pads, writing down every thought and phone call to be made, down to the smallest detail, creating shot lists and storyboards for every scene days ahead of time.

  Colesberry would scout locations for filming with a discerning eye, firing off hundreds of still photos from a small digital camera that he carried everywhere. He was fearless in search of a shot, wandering with equal glee through Moroccan hillsides or Baltimore ghettos, camera in hand.

  And he apparently saved everything. Friends remember crate upon crate of legal notepads, still photos, shot lists, casting tapes and directors’ reels that would follow Colesberry from one project to the next.

  Thorson has crew jackets, T-shirts and other mementos from more than two decades of work: State Police buttons from Mississippi Burning; a 1920s radio from Billy Bathgate; a crew photo from 1979’s Fame.

  Once, having left a favored crew sweatshirt from The Corner on a dangerous Baltimore corner, Bob went back alone, after wrap, to retrieve it.

  “It was one of those crew shirts you get on film projects,” said Thorson, who couldn’t recall if Bob ever found it or not. “He kept those tokens because he was proud of the projects.”

  In addition to overseeing all of the visual aspects of The Wire, he also participated in story meetings with the writers.

  And, at the urging of Simon and Noble, Colesberry directed the last episode of the show’s second season
and was slated to direct the first hour of the third season at the time of his death.

  In May 2004, he posthumously received a second Peabody Award for his work on the show.

  “He had spent a lifetime in film learning every aspect of his craft, in every way preparing himself to direct,” recalled Simon. “When he finally did so, it all came to him naturally and beautifully. He understood everything about the process of telling a story visually, and he was utterly committed to that process.”

  •

  As the team that Colesberry helped to assemble began meeting in Baltimore in March 2004 to begin filming the third season of The Wire, some of those who had worked closely with Bob gathered to talk about the man and his work.

  They included Ed Bianchi, who directed three episodes of the drama; Uta Briesewitz, the show’s director of photography in the first three seasons; and the late film editor Geraldine Peroni, who worked on the pilot episode of the series.

  Joy Kecken, a director, independent filmmaker and writer for The Wire, served as a moderator.

  JOY KECKEN: From a writer’s point of view, I always thought it was amazing in some of the production meetings how Bob would come up with a certain look or how to complete the story without so much exposition.

  ED BIANCHI: In my first tone meeting, the very first thing I was asking for was a crane. To do a crane shot. Bob got [the idea] immediately.

  GERALDINE PERONI: Because he had a strong sense of story, he probably understood that the crane shot was part of telling the story rather than just being a fancy gimmick.

  EB: Absolutely.

  UTA BRIESEWITZ: I have a memory on that crane thing. Because Bob came up to me and said, “I saw the director Eddie Bianchi. The opening shot, he wants to do this really elaborate crane shot.”

  And I was thinking to myself – a crane shot, he’s in trouble, he’s not going to get a crane. Then Bob continues, in detail, completely describing the shot to me. I saw his fascination with it and how excited he was about you bringing this idea to the table. And halfway through it, I already knew it, he has his crane.

  (Laughter all around)

  JK: When I came here a few weeks ago for a story meeting, I was dreading having to pass Bob’s office. I didn’t want to see that it was empty.

  UB: Wherever we were for the pilot or very often when you change locations, you walk into offices and they all look the same. They just have a computer or whatever, there’s not much going on. You walk into Bob’s office and it’s completely …

  EB: … dressed.

  (Laughter from all)

  UB: With all his little photos and his posters and his baseball stuff like he’s been there for years. I always liked to come to his office.

  He had little memorabilia from all the films that he’d done. And it always felt like home. It was like, “This is where production is now, this is my home, and this is where I love to be.”

  JK: How did Bob influence The Wire?

  EB: The first day I met Bob he was with [David] Simon and I said it had the feeling of a movie. And David said, that’s Bob. Bob wanted to approach it like it was a film rather than episodic television, and that always was a great jumping-off point for me because that’s exciting.

  UB: The whole aspect of making it look like a feature was mentioned from the very beginning. He always wanted to push me to make it look different or push the envelope a little bit.

  That was very important to him as well – to move the camera. And then playing depth, foreground, middle ground, background, or longer lenses. For instance, the scene where D’Angelo explains how to play chess to Bodie and Poot. We started putting the camera on the dolly there as well and playing the long lens.

  JK: It was great that he was willing to change the style midway through.

  UB: I felt the show kept improving because Bob kept encouraging people at what they do and really encouraging them to put their talent into the show.

  (To Bianchi) I remember you were the one to introduce music when Avon came to the projects when we did the slow-mo.

  EB: We thought in editing that if we put the disc jockey a little bit ahead of the movement, we thought it would justify the sound, the music. But when they got into the editing room, Bob liked it and went with that despite it going against some things that they may have talked about before.

  GP: Right. Because it almost worked as score. And there was the line that everything was source.

  UB: And of course, I came back to Bob and said, “Can’t we introduce music a little bit more?”

  But we stuck to what our format was, which is a good thing. It’s a most powerful tool to be as close to reality as possible.

  JK: Bob was a producer as far back as [1988’s] Mississippi Burning, but he was really a director at heart.

  GP: It was the first season. I was living in Fells Point and I was driving home one evening. And I saw the crew trucks and everything and I got out and it turns out it was the second unit. It was the first time I saw Bob in his role as second unit director.

  And he just looked like he was so happy to be there and to be directing. It was so apparent at that moment that he wanted to be out there doing that. In the editing room, we would get in tons and tons of footage because he would be so prepared and he would get so many angles.

  When it came time for him to actually direct a whole episode, we were wondering how he was going to manage to get everything into the short amount of time, and he was prepared for that, too.

  UB: I cannot agree more with you. When Bob directed the last episode, I’ve never seen him that happy. It just showed the passion he had. And also when I talked to Karen [Thorson] even before Bob passed away, I said you should have seen him, he was so happy.

  And the whole crew was affected by it. We had a really, really fun, uplifting mood even though it was the last episode.

  EB: In a way, I believed he used that second unit directing to prepare him for being a director on that last show.

  GP: Oh, yeah.

  EB: I thought he did a wonderful job. He was picking up, which I thought was really nice, these visual themes from the first episode, tying up everything that was started then, but the way he approached it visually, I thought – wow.

  See, there’s something that’s very sophisticated. Certainly not a first-time-director kind of thing.

  GP: [The episode] really turned out great. When David [Simon] and Nina [Noble] came up for the director’s-cut screening, everyone was so excited because it really felt like a feature. And that was what he wanted and he accomplished that.

  UB: I asked [Bob], “Why did you only start now? You should have done it years ago.” He said to me, “I waited for 30 years to do that and I learned from the best.”

  So I think he was always the silent student behind all the famous directors that he worked with.

  JK: He worked with Alan Parker …

  UB: … Martin Scorsese …

  JK: Let’s talk about him as an actor.

  (Laughter all around)

  EB: He got better the second year.

  (More laughter)

  UB: Bob had a great sense of humor. He had very good style personally. He appreciated beautiful things. And he always dressed modern. The first time I saw him [as Ray Cole] I couldn’t believe that he voluntarily dressed in these awful, nerdy clothes.

  I was really impressed that he didn’t protest, that he didn’t say this is my time on the camera and I want to at least look as good as I look in real life, if not even better. So he totally took that part and we were poking fun at him. I just loved him for that already. But he was very often very nervous.

  GP: He really was vulnerable there in front of the crew. So in a way it was really great that he was willing to allow the crew to see him in that way. I thought it was really interesting that he was willing to do that.

  One of the things that was also interesting was how he liked to tell stories, but he never told stories where he turned out to be the hero.

&nbs
p; But little by little, you’d find out these amazing things about him. Like at some point I found out he used to hang out at the Factory with Andy Warhol and all those guys. You’d get these little glimmers of his past that he would never just brag. He never bragged. He was very modest about all the people he worked with, which was very impressive.

  UB: I think he wanted to be more part of the crew with everybody else than being the executive producer who would sit off by himself. You would see it when we would go out for a drink and Bob would come along.

  I was sometimes too tired to do things, and I would hear the next day how Bob danced all night. It sounds so silly – like he was one of us, but he was really the glue to this whole crew.

  EB: He came up that way. Bob came up as a crewmember, as an assistant director. That’s who his friends were on movies. It’s nice to keep though. A lot of people don’t keep that part of themselves.

  GP: People are very willing to shed it.

  EB: He told his friend, his best friend, I don’t recall his name, he came up to me at Bob’s memorial. And he said Bob said I was still enthusiastic.

  And I think that’s what Bob was – still enthusiastic. He could have said that about himself. He was enthusiastic about his work and enthusiastic about the whole project. I think you kind of have to have an enthusiasm in order to dedicate yourself the way he dedicated himself to a project.

  GP: It was definitely not a job.

  UB: He was such a source of inspiration and energy. He will just be terribly, terribly missed. I can’t even imagine how it’s going to be not having him behind the monitor – a constant force and source of inspiration.