William Zorzi, screenwriter for ‘The Wire’
The first thing I am hit by is that the guys on stage look really corporate. Like, really corporate. I might as well be at a banking conference, again. How this feeling happens so often at a literary festival is beyond me, but then again I am new at this. Michelle of M on the Bund is onstage, marking the end of the festival with this very last session. She tells the story of how the festival grew from a handful of paid audience members to the sizable audience that is present today and thanks a bunch of people who made it possible. Then of course, a round of applause for Michelle who has made this event possible.
The range of people here is amazing…people who look like students, people who look like investors, people who look like journalists. I’m not sure who the guy is introducing Bill, but I now realize that the guy who looks like the head of a bank is actually Bill Zorzi. He’s wearing a navy suit, pink button down, and a pink and navy striped tie. He used to work for the Baltimore Sun, along with David Simon, another of the show’s main creators. I wonder morosely if the Sun still exists, given the recent collapse of the U.S. newspaper world. I’m waiting for him to speak, and excited for him to be at once witty and hilarious so that I can forget that he looks like a banker. He does not disappoint, and laughter titters across the audience as he claims he cannot “explain himself” which is what his moderator has asked him to do. The moderator goes through a laundry list of the characters that Zorzi has had a hand in creating, and asks if “The Wire” is a Greek tragedy and Bill and the audience are in an uproar. He laughs that he’s just trying to put food on the table.
Next he’s asked about the process for creating the characters. It’s interesting to find how many times authors are asked about this. The answer is usually the same, part research and part “just pops up”. Zorzi goes off on a tangent, something about a whispering campaign regarding some guy named O’ Malley and he touches upon “The Wire” as an interesting way to explore racial politics in the U.S. There’s more talk about the characters, and I space out a bit (not the best blogger) but I perk up when Zorzi coins the phrase “Shang-hyenas”. Mr. Moderator asks about sex in the scripts, and whether or not they are required by the producers. Zorzi replies that there isn’t a requirement; sex happens as it’s needed in the story. Zorzi begins talking about the process of how each show is written. Each episode is written by one writer, and then a core group sits down determines if it works with the entire story. Four months before production of the season begins, the core group is locked in a room and the plotline is charted out and the course of the show is decided.
Mr. Moderator asks Zorzi what was it like switching from journalism to writing fiction and screenplays. Bill says that writing fiction is much easier and is surprised when no one boos in the audience. He’s working on a non-fiction book now and confesses that it’s quite tough. He calls himself an “old dog” and the non-fiction a “new trick”, which he is trying to figure out. Mr. Moderator brings up the fact that newspapers are shutting down across the U.S. and asks whether or not this reality will be reflected in the script of “The Wire”, which portrays newsroom scenarios with avid journalists. Discussing the switch to digital and the phasing out of paper materials, Zorzi brings up that he’s not sure if people realize the value of newspapers in their lives. Newspapers eventually will be missed, and digital is not the same. Joe the Blogger is not necessarily going to go fight the good fight and shine the light on the underbelly of society. He cannot imagine the world without the New York Times, but his bigger concern is on the smaller scale, small towns losing their papers, and therefore losing their watchdogs. “Probably becomes like China,” he says, and adds, “I’m leaving tomorrow.”
Mr. Moderator asks next how much is the drug culture a part of the U.S. and whether there’s any hope. Zorzi immediately responds that there is no hope, and he’s the wrong guy to talk to if you are looking for hope. He continues, “This subculture that has a lot of influence in our lives and in the cities and beyond now, nobody wants to think about or talk about or nobody cares about.” Pretty bleak stuff. Next question asks if the U.S. is in a bit of denial about its corruption problems, as depicted in the show. Zorzi replies, “I don’t know.” Tittering in the audience. “I think police corruption has been around for a long time.” He asks in return, “Do you really think it’s that corrupt? I see more ‘broken’ rather than corrupt?” The audience member is not given a chance to respond and someone else takes the conversation onto an entirely different path, asking what it’s like to work with HBO, which has such consistently good shows. Zorzi explains that David Simon dealt more with HBO than he did, and Simon gave a lot of credit to HBO for giving them creative control and independence.
Another question refers to the very authentic dialogue and script, and asks if a lot of background research is done and whether or not dialect coaches are hired? Zorzi says that dialect coaches are hired for the British/Scottish actors. Otherwise, David Simon covered cops for years at the Baltimore Sun, Ed Burns was a cop for twenty years before becoming a Baltimore city school teacher, so had a good sense of both worlds, and Bill himself covered not only politics but a variety of topics. Bill recounts that he spent a lot of time researching the education system since he spent much of his journalistic life avoiding education as a topic. As he’s responding to another question (which is difficult to hear from the back of the room), he asks if spoilers are okay and the moderator says we’ve all watched the show ten times, and Bill responds, “Oh right, those bootleg copies,” and everyone laughs, while he continues, “taking food OFF of our tables.”
The session ends abruptly as there’s a film showing at 6:30pm and we are herded out of Glamour Bar en masse. Guess that’s it for the festival. Fascinating stuff, but I better run before the waiter scoops me up and out of here.
- Article originally posted on Urbanatomy Shanghai
