‘Wire’ creator helps ailing officer from Yonkers
Chris Serico • The Journal News • Oct. 2, 2010 • AP Photo/Chris Pizzello
Fundraising for a Yonkers police officer who’s battling brain cancer is getting a boost from the creator of one of the most critically acclaimed TV series of all time.
TV producer David Simon, the mastermind behind HBO’s celebrated series “The Wire,” will be a guest speaker at Sunday’s benefit for Sgt. Roy McLaughlin, a 12-year veteran of the Yonkers Police Department.
Simon’s speech, scheduled for 3 p.m., is part of an eight-hour event at Dunwoodie Golf Course. He’ll join family and friends to raise money to offset the medical bills of McLaughlin, who’s married with four kids.
Simon and his long-time friend and colleague, Bill Zorzi, got involved after Nay Wasicsko-McLaughlin, the sergeant’s sister-in-law, mentioned it to Zorzi. In 2002, Simon and Zorzi consulted with Wasicsko-McLaughlin while researching Yonkers’ housing desegregation fight for an HBO project. Wasicsko-McLaughlin works for the city of Yonkers in the human resources department.
“Some of that history was quite naturally a struggle for Nay to deal with, but she has been responsive and thoughtful in all of our encounters,” Simon wrote in an e-mail from Germany. “When she told me of her brother-in-law’s situation, it seemed entirely appropriate to do whatever Bill and I could.
“I don’t know Sgt. McLaughlin personally, but I’ve been told he is a fine man who has given Yonkers a career of service,” he continued. “He is now in a hard fight and he and his family is in some need.”
Zorzi, who worked with Simon in the news department of the Baltimore Sun, will introduce Simon at Sunday’s event. Simon made a name for himself at the Sun as a crime reporter, and still has a soft spot for cops.
“I very much enjoyed covering police in Baltimore and came to admire good police work. I wrote a book about it, in fact,” he said. “That said, I’ve written about a lot of different people in different situations and I think part of the trick of being a good storyteller is to find the wit and humanity of whomever you are trying to depict. But yeah, it is hard not to enjoy the company of police when they know their business.”
As they often did at the newspaper, Zorzi and Simon also collaborated on “The Wire,” a fictional narrative of Baltimore through characters on the streets, in the police department, in court, on the docks, at City Hall, in the schools and in the media. Although it’s never won an Emmy, it’s widely considered to be one of the best TV series in history.
Simon’s latest HBO show “Treme,” a drama about New Orleans in the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina, is in the middle of filming its second season. “The second year after the storm was harder than the first for New Orleans. More persistent problems, more exhaustion, less adrenalin. It didn’t get easier and the stakes, if anything, went higher,” Simon said. “That said, crime returned to New Orleans dramatically in the summer and fall of 2006, so that will be relevant to the characters. Similarly, redevelopment plans and the politics of the city began to weigh heavily.”
Sunday’s fundraising event follows an eventful week for Simon, who on Tuesday won a $500,000 “genius grant” from the MacArthur Foundation. “Actually, I don’t yet have a clue what to do with the money,” he said. “The MacArthur Foundation has urged me to rest on it before doing anything, telling me they’ve been in this game longer than me and that it is likely that I will find uses for it on less commercial projects than television and that I should therefore be patient.”
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Unpublished Q&A with David Simon
What do fans of “The Wire” most often say to you, specifically, about the show, other than how great it is?
They love them some Omar. Favorite character for a lot of folks, by far.
Is there one “Wire” quote that resonates with you in particular?
It is, I fear, too profane for a family publication. It involves the Greeks, though, and their invention of something more than civilization itself.
Will Season 2 of “Treme” be “Wire”-like in the sense that another layer will be added, i.e. streets and cops for Season 1, the docks for Season 2, the schools for Season 4, etc.?
“Treme” is not “The Wire.” We are not using each season to address a different institutional dynamic in the city, as we did previously. Instead, we are carefully following the post-Katrina chronology of the city.
