Franco My Dear, I Give A Damn
HBO don’t play around. It it’s in the bizness of creating TV that hits big with both critics and mass audiences. And now, this fasll, it’s got a seriously prestigious and provocative (and sleazy!) new offering from auteur David Simon.
Just as The Wire was about more than gangs and drugs and Treme was about more than post-Katrina New Orleans, David Simon’s new show—which he co-created with frequent collaborator George Pelecanos—is about more than the early days of the porn industry. The series, which gets to an almost Smell-O-Vision level of sweat and filth in its capturing of 1970s Times Square, is a dissection of misogyny, sex work, and how objectification became such a lucrative industry. And it also stars James Franco and Maggie Gyllenhaal. (Premiering September 10 on HBO)
Oh, man. That sounds awesome.
Sex Sells, Selling Sex
The Guardian has seen it:
Most TV pilots get saddled with the unenviable legwork of introducing and providing a small taste of depth for a full ensemble of characters that an audience could conceivably see themselves spending a season with. And in its 87 unhurried minutes, the premiere of Simon’s latest series The Deuce, in collaboration with co-creator George Pelecanos, sets up a sprawling network of colorful figures linked by the sale, display and distribution of sex. Individually engrossing, the characters join together to form a frank portrait of American striving.
We meet the flamboyantly attired pimps and their stables of girls, struggling hustlers and ambivalent cops, each one more than meets the eye. An ingenue fresh off the bus (Emily Meade) has more guile to her than she lets on, and yet less than she thinks. The pimp (Gary Carr) who lures her into his crew before she can even make it out of the station plays the role of the magnanimous provider, but turns violent and brutish without cause or warning. A curly-haired tough cookie of a prostitute (Maggie Gyllenhaal) represents herself without male assistance, firmly businesslike when explaining to a teen John why he can’t get two handjobs for the price of one, and then tender and maternal when making the occasional visit to her daughter. Simon shows us what appears to be a vicious sexual assault, just so that he can expose it as a committed role-play a moment later. Nothing is as it seems at first brush. Look closer.
Heavy.
But we can’t wait!
