If things got broken, that’s good, though. If things got messy, that’s good. We were definitely trying to keep things messy. Me and Idris, sometimes we’d look at a scene and figure it out as individuals and then come together, and the chemistry works. Particularly someone like Idris, [he’s] a sharing actor. Some actors are not necessarily sharing actors. They wait for their opportunity to say their lines. Not Idris. Idris is available. I think we share that in common, where we’re both available actors in terms of we’re listening first and then the moments come from listening and not just the scripts.
IDRIS ELBA (STRINGER BELL): We approached that scene like a play, and the cameras stood back and didn’t really get involved. It was like a theater piece. We had the whole space. The tension was really real, but it was delicate. We ended up with arguably one of the most explosive scenes I’ve ever shot, to be honest.
JOE CHAPPELLE (DIRECTOR/CO-EXECUTIVE PRODUCER): For the scene on the rooftop—there, that’s the heart of the season for those two characters anyway. When I got to the scene in the episode, which was the penultimate episode of that season, you’re getting to the climax of the book, getting to the climax of the movie. So I approached it with that in mind.
GEORGE PELECANOS (WRITER/PRODUCER): I think that’s not only the best thing I wrote for The Wire, but it’s probably one of the best things I’ve ever written, including in my novels. That comes from being on the show for three years at that point and sort of knowing everything intimately, including the actors, and as good as it is on the page, it’s dead. It’s just words on the page until they bring it to life. Idris and Wood Harris—I knew they’d knock it out of the park.
JOE CHAPPELLE (DIRECTOR/CO-EXECUTIVE PRODUCER): There was one thing I just wanted to get: a look at a certain point where they both know they are betraying one another. They don’t know the other one’s betraying them, but they each know what they are doing to the other guy. I just wanted one more take. And I think it’s the take that’s in the movie, especially in Wood’s coverage. It’s just the way he looks at Idris. It wasn’t like I asked them to do this one. In television, even on an HBO show back then, time is always an issue. It’s not like a feature, where you can go and get to come back tomorrow to pick up the scene. You have to get it done. I just remember going for an extra take or two on that particular scene, just so those guys got to really dig into it, which they did, obviously, and it’s spectacular.
WOOD HARRIS (AVON BARKSDALE): I just remember how I felt that day, like wow. I was thinking, What’s going to happen between me and Stringer? Is somebody going to die? You really don’t know. I know the look that he wanted: a look of concern of what the matter is. I just remember turning around at the end of the scene, as Idris walked off, and having to give this gaze, this gaze of discontent in a sense. I had a lot of fun that day.
IDRIS ELBA (STRINGER BELL): Growing up with Wood, you might just be having a great conversation and be so relaxed, and although that scene has lots of tension and lots of stuff going on underneath it, it was a very casual scene to shoot. I think we realized it was one of our last scenes, obviously, by the words. It wasn’t our last scene to shoot in reality, but it just felt—it was a process. It was a night shoot on a day when we both wanted to go out and have fun or whatever.
GEORGE PELECANOS (WRITER/PRODUCER): If you look at the way he shot that scene, you have the master shot and then he goes tighter and tighter, and the lenses are very long lenses. You see the lights of Baltimore behind them, blurred out, completely blurred out. And you’re one hundred percent focused on these guys. It’s like when they’re speaking, you’re in their heads. It was brilliant.
WOOD HARRIS (AVON BARKSDALE): When Idris got killed on the show, we both were contemplating over who would die. In fact, we wanted one of our characters to die. I just remember us talking about it and me thinking, No, I think they might kill my character. When you know a series is going to be over and done, for a character to get killed, it’s a good thing. Moving forward, all the fans know that you won’t be seeing that character anymore. It’s a good period to put on the end of a character’s life.
ED BURNS (CO-CREATOR): It was a logical thing to [kill Stringer] because we had used the character. We had brought him to the point where anything else would be downhill. To me, it would make sense to kill him. We crafted the relationships in such a way that just as he was trying to get out, the wall will close down upon him and he would have this death, which I think was a big shock to Idris. I don’t think it’s fair for a character to go beyond a high mark of his journey, just stretch the arc out for the sake of keeping the character there.
DAVID SIMON (CREATOR): They told me the script was still down in the production office. I had to finish some pages. Then I was going to go out to the trailer. He was getting things done in the makeup truck. He was working on the current episode. They told me his script hadn’t been delivered to him yet. I said, “All right, I’ll go out in an hour.” It turned out he read somebody else’s script. Normally, you want to go and at least have the bedside manner to talk to him personally.
IDRIS ELBA (STRINGER BELL): I was at the studio. I was making music, and David called me and he didn’t know I hadn’t read it. He was like, “I just wanted to call you and talk to you about Episode Eleven or whatnot.” I was like, “Oh, yeah. Okay. Cool. Cool.” At that point, I hadn’t read it. I had got the script, but I hadn’t read it. He must have presumed I read it. He started talking to me, and he must have realized I didn’t know. I hadn’t brought it up on the call at that point. He said, “I’m sorry, Stringer doesn’t make it to Season Four.” That’s when I realized what he was talking about.
It wasn’t the most ideal way to understand that. He was very careful and caring about letting me know. I was a little emotional about it because I was like, “Why are you killing Stringer? I don’t get it. What’s the point? What’s the storyline?” He had a master plan, which he hadn’t really shared with me at that point. It wasn’t a big deal, but it certainly was a surprise. You know what? Death is a surprise. You don’t know when you’re going to die. I think that was a key moment for me as an actor, because this is my livelihood. This is a very, very popular character at the time. It’s being taken away. It was being taken away at a time when the character itself was changing his ways. He was becoming not only a gangster, but a very smart businessman. I suspect The Wire must have saw this in me and killed his character or it becomes the show.
I didn’t know that at the time. I didn’t really get that. There was no bad beef with me and David. David had some ideas about the way we shoot the death, which I didn’t really agree with, and so we got into talking about that. From his point of view, he didn’t do anything wrong. I think he, as a writer, had to make a really difficult choice to behead a character that he loved. He really loved Stringer Bell. He was one of his favorite characters to write—well, so he told me—and it was a tough decision for him as well.
GEORGE PELECANOS (WRITER/PRODUCER): Ed Burns would always come up with these things. He would come up in the writers’ room and say, “I was talking to so-and-so today and this new thing, the last couple of weeks, is after these guys executed someone, they’d piss on him.” So, I wrote that into the script, where Omar pisses on Stringer Bell after he kills him. It’s a sign of disrespect. Idris didn’t like that, either. I don’t blame him. He said, “Ain’t nobody pissing on me.” We were like, “Well, it’s not pissing on you. We’re gonna make a dummy of you and urinate on that.” He’s like, “Nobody pisses on my double, either.” So, I cut that out of the script. And it’s fine.
IDRIS ELBA (STRINGER BELL): That felt a little unnecessary. It just started to turn into a TV show for me, you know. Had I thought about it outside of the reaction, maybe I wouldn’t have been so opposed to it, but the truth is we never shot it and it didn’t need it. The death was impactful enough. The urination part felt like overkill.
DAVID SIMON (CRE
ATOR): We didn’t see that as being a statement about Stringer and death. You’re dead, you’re dead. We saw it as being a moral lapse in code by Omar, which we thought would have been an interesting addition and would have countered some of the mythos of Omar Little. And that’s what George argued for, and that’s what I argued for. But Idris said, “I don’t want to do that. I really don’t want to do that.” And he was utterly unconvinced by everything George and I said.
ED BURNS (CO-CREATOR): That was my idea. It was between Mouzone and Omar. Each had a reason for doing what he was doing. Omar was going to take it personal, so, therefore, how do you express that visually? When the script came out, David should have went to Idris and said, “This is it. This is the way it’s going to be,” and he didn’t. Idris had a lot of people saying, “They’re mistreating you,” and, “They’re fucking you up,” and stuff like that, and that’s not true. His character’s dead. What happens to a dead man, the dead man doesn’t care.
MICHAEL POTTS (BROTHER MOUZONE): He didn’t like the idea of him being killed, but he was really upset about [the character’s body being urinated on]. He came to me and told me, and I think he said it to Michael also, “Just to let you know, if they keep that in, I’m going to walk, because I’m not going to get pissed on. So, if they insist upon that, I’m walking. I’m not going to continue doing it.” Okay, so lots of discussion back and forth and what have you, and they decided no pissing on him. Just shoot him.
GEORGE PELECANOS (WRITER/PRODUCER): That was pretty bad. In the run of the show, he was definitely the most upset about his death. He was really pissed off, and David and I had to go into the trailer and sort of talk him down. He was mad. His career was really taking off because of the show. We would go on set in the middle of the night, and we shot in the neighborhoods. Women would be hanging out of the window in these neighborhoods and they’d be screaming at him like he was the fifth Beatle.
DOMINIC WEST (DET. JIMMY MCNULTY): Killing off Idris, I always thought, The lucky bastard, he gets all the best lines and gets all the great scenes and he only has to do three years. I have to do five fucking years of it. I was pretty jealous of him. Then I had to say all sorts of lines like, “Who was this guy?” When I was going through his apartment, and he’d be reading [The] Wealth of Nations, and I’d go, “Who was this guy?” Why are we glorifying this fucking gangster? I thought it was a bit glorifying. I was rather reluctant or a bit riled to have to make Idris look so good, but he made himself look good, so he deserved it.
DAVID SIMON (CREATOR): I had a long talk with Idris in that graveyard where we filmed the scene where he meets Colvin. We actually walked around the graveyard in the evening, and I tried to explain to him we were not punishing him and that he was genuinely a leading man. We had been incredibly fortunate to get him in servicing the show, servicing the story. It was the right thing for the narrative as a whole, but that he was going to have a career and that’s when he gave me the line about “From your mouth to God’s ear.” He didn’t believe it. He took it bad, but I’ve seen him since then, and a little perspective on where that was goes a long way. If you were into the show when Stringer got killed, that was something.
In order to make a story matter, you can’t just kill the people, you can’t disappear the people, the characters that people want to disappear. The audience is a child. If you ask the audience what they want, they’ll want dessert. They’ll say they want ice cream. They’ll want cake. You ask them what they want the next minute, they’ll say more ice cream, more cake. You show them that they like something else. “You like fried chicken? Here, taste my fried chicken.” Then the next ten things they order will be the fried chicken. “You like Omar?” “Yeah, I love Omar. Give me more of Omar.” No, I want to tell you a story, and the characters are going to do what they’re supposed to do in the story, and that’s the job of the writer. That’s the writer’s job. That’s the storyteller’s job. You don’t write for anybody but the story, for yourself and for your idea of what the story is. The moment you start thinking about the audience and the audience’s expectation, you’re lost. You’re just lost. So, you’ve got to just put it out of your mind and tell the story that you think you’re there to tell.
BENJAMIN BUSCH (OFF. ANTHONY COLICCHIO): The thing with The Wire was that it didn’t care who you loved. It never worried. It allowed art to define its decisions, not commerce. No one was ever safe.
GEORGE PELECANOS (WRITER/PRODUCER): It was like four in the morning on Howard Street, which is kind of desolate. Every place we shot was a little bit dangerous if you weren’t around security on set. So, I get off and I’m walking to my car down a dark alley and I hear somebody running behind me. I turn around, and it’s Idris. I say, “I just want you to know all this stuff is business. It’s just to make the show better, and that’s all I’m ever concerned about.” And we shook hands. He’s a really cool dude. When I got nominated for an Emmy for that episode, he sent me a bottle of nice Scotch.
RICHARD PRICE (WRITER): One of my favorite things that David did—one of the sentimental tropes—is that if you take a kid on the street corner, and this kid is dealing and he’s holding together the business, he’s got inventory, he’s got sales, he’s got police pressure, he’s got higher-ups pressure. If this kid can keep numbers in his head and make money, they say, “Well, if this was a white kid and you put him in Wharton and he came out, he’d be running the world.” What David did, and it’s very sentimental to say that, but what David did, he took Stringer Bell—and of course you’d see Stringer Bell in a corporate setting—he took him to the cleaners, everything but his underwear robbed.
I loved that, because everybody wants to feel good and say, “If you took this young kid,” but no. It might be true if the kid was born in another body, in another world, but he wasn’t. There’s a ceiling. There’s a very low ceiling. I liked that so much better than if Stringer Bell became a business power in Baltimore, went legit successfully. That’s what I love about the show. It always foiled expectations. Just when you thought you were gonna get an uplifting story, you got smacked in the face.
MICHAEL KOSTROFF (MAURICE “MAURY” LEVY): There seemed to be a pattern that people who started to pursue goodness were often the people who got offed. Stringer was starting to see a way to not kill people and to run a business, and he gets killed. D’Angelo wanted out; he got killed. So, the really horrible people tend to survive.
GEORGE PELECANOS (WRITER/PRODUCER): Season Two, the ratings went up. I’m going to say something that no one else will say, but because we had a white cast in that season, America was more ready for that. But then, Season Three, the ratings went down again.
Most people had still not tuned in to The Wire. It was a show that could still be canceled at any time. But the cast members noticed and appreciated its uniqueness, knowing they had never worked on a show like it before and likely never would again. Robert Wisdom and Andre Royo talked one day about the show’s depth of black actors. They decided to document the range, and turned the event into a celebration.
MICHAEL POTTS (BROTHER MOUZONE): Robert Wisdom, in that third season, he was trying to organize a whole picture. He wanted a portrait of all the actors. He goes, “This will never happen again, brothers.” He was going around saying, “We’ve got to take a picture of this, because this will never happen again. Look at this.”
ROBERT WISDOM (HOWARD “BUNNY” COLVIN): That was Andre Royo and I. We were just shooting the breeze one day and just marveling at the full array of talent that was coming together. This was the third year, and we came up with the idea to document this moment. At that point in television history, it hadn’t happened, and we figured it would probably be a long time before it happened again. A show that didn’t pitch itself as a quote-unquote black show. So, we went about trying to organize it.
I was inspired by the Harlem musicians photo back in the day. There was a photo where all the jazz musicians of the
day came together in Harlem. And when you look at who showed up, it was just incredible. So, that’s what we set up to do. Everybody from Idris to Wood Harris showed up. There’s some people who didn’t understand what we were doing. But I think everybody felt, especially with twenty/twenty rearview, that it was really worth doing and they were proud that we were able to pose.
ANDRE ROYO (REGINALD “BUBBLES” COUSINS): Me and Bob would sit around talking. He’s someone I would learn from. He would talk about music. Bob was one of those characters you see in a lot of movies. Me and him, we liked each other. We would talk about, “Let’s not be afraid to celebrate us.” It wasn’t just the black actors we had. It was the range. One day, we had a black actor, it’s his first acting job. On the other side of the spectrum, we got Glynn Turman. We’re like, “Oh, shit. That’s a lot of people. That’s a lot of range. That’s a lot of history.” We were talking like, “Let’s get all the black actors together and take this shot. Let’s make sure we have moments we can remember about this show and the times we had. Let’s get all the actors together.”
We made it an event. I wanted a deejay. We rented a space, got Dona [Adrian Gibson], our costume [supervisor], who was a great cook, to cook some food. We made it a party. We sent out an email. People came in on their days off.
A few people were nervous about it. They felt like they didn’t want to exclude the white cast, because we have a big cast. We’re all part of the family. It wasn’t that we’re excluding the white cast members, it’s just a rarity that we see this many black actors in one show that have a storyline. It’s a rarity. It’s not a rarity for a white cast to be together. Back then, you turned on the TV or look at billboards, and the majority of people you saw was all white. But I had called David. I talked to Dom West. I was like, “Would this bother you?” They were like, “No. Go for it.” David Simon showed up and was proud he had that many black actors. It was a great time and a great day. We can’t be afraid to celebrate ourselves.
All the Pieces Matter Page 23
