Q: With all the "urban renewal," are you going to have to move to the suburbs to find "real" locations for next year?
Will next year be your last year filming in Baltimore? Is New Orleans next? [Alicia McLaughlin, Jim King, Jason Tippitt]A: It sometimes seems that way, although urban renewal in Baltimore basically means dislocating the poor rather than reintegrating their lives to any part of the new Baltimore. There are still vast tracks of West Baltimore, East Baltimore, Park Heights, etc. that are rough-and-tumble. But many of the vacants have been bulldozed and in some cases at the fringes, the real estate is now valuable enough that development has moved in. Johns Hopkins has basically taken over a dozen square blocks of East Baltimore north of their hospital complex and are transforming what was once a struggling neighborhood of people that the wealthy university managed to systemically ignore into a biotech park. Where are the people now? Some are dead, some are in prison and the rest - the vast majority - have been pushed to other slums, or to those sections of eastern and western Baltimore County that are starting to show the same social ills that were once limited to the inner city. Hopkins apparently had to destroy the village in order to save it.
This is not unique to Baltimore. Prince George's County is now struggling with significant crime, even as portions of Northwest Washington, Northeast Washington and even Anacostia are being red-lined for redevelopment. We do not fix problems in this country, we do not help people help themselves, we do not do much that is meaningful to bring people from one America to the other. We simply move the problem to the place where it bothers us least. That is happening in Baltimore. There is money to be made downtown and the developers are making it. And to ride around the harbor from Brewer's Hill to Locust Point, it sure is pretty. But our rising tide only lifts some of the boats. Capitalism is a pyramid scheme; nothing more, and certainly, given in its power and authority in our society, nothing less.
I would be happy to film other projects in Baltimore after The Wire. I feel great loyalty to the film crews here and to the talent that has worked on Homicide, The Corner and The Wire, not to mention all of those Levinson and Waters movies and other productions. And this is my home.
The two projects I am currently seeking to film (it may or may not happen; who knows in this industry) cannot shoot in Baltimore, however. One is a miniseries based on the Iraq war, written with Ed Burns and Evan Wright, the author of the book - Generation Kill - on which the scripts are based. The other is a continuing series based on post-Katrina New Orleans that I am beginning to write with Eric Overmyer. Baltimore is a great film town, but I'm afraid it can't double for Baghdad or Nawlins. Not even with Vince Peranio doing all his magic as a set designer. But I certainly hope this is not the last time I shoot anything in Baltimore, given my loyalties and given the gracious patience that the city has shown our cast and crew and all of our trespasses.
Q: Thanks, David, for your support of our group. We can't wait for Season 5. [Jim King]
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