David Simon
David Judah Simon[1] (born February 9, 1960) is an American author, journalist, screenwriter, and producer best known for his work on The Wire (2002–08).
For other people named David Simon, see David Simon (disambiguation).
David Simon
David Judah Simon
February 9, 1960
Washington, D.C., U.S.
- Author
- journalist
- screenwriter
- producer
1982–present
2
He worked for The Baltimore Sun City Desk for twelve years (1982–95), wrote Homicide: A Year on the Killing Streets (1991), and co-wrote The Corner: A Year in the Life of an Inner-City Neighborhood (1997) with Ed Burns. The former book was the basis for the NBC series Homicide: Life on the Street (1993–99), on which Simon served as a writer and producer. Simon adapted the latter book into the HBO mini-series The Corner (2000).
He was the creator, executive producer, head writer, and show runner of the HBO television series The Wire (2002–2008). He adapted the non-fiction book Generation Kill into a television mini-series, and served as the show runner for the project. He was selected as one of the 2010 MacArthur Fellows[2] and named an Utne Reader visionary in 2011.[3] Simon also created the HBO series Treme with Eric Overmyer, which aired for four seasons. Following Treme, Simon wrote the HBO mini-series Show Me a Hero with journalist William F. Zorzi, a colleague at The Baltimore Sun and on The Wire. Simon and frequent collaborator George Pelecanos reunited to create original series The Deuce. The drama about the New York porn industry in the 1970s and 1980s starred producer Maggie Gyllenhaal and executive producer James Franco, and aired from 2017 to 2019. Simon's next series, The Plot Against America, debuted in 2020.
We Own This City was developed and written by George Pelecanos and Simon, and directed by Reinaldo Marcus Green. The six-episode limited series premiered on HBO on April 25, 2022.[4]
Early life and education[edit]
Simon was born in Washington, D.C., the son of Dorothy Simon (née Ligeti), a homemaker, and Bernard Simon, a former journalist and then public relations director for B'nai B'rith for 20 years.[5][6][7][8] Simon was raised in a Jewish family, and had a bar mitzvah ceremony.[9] His family roots are in Russia, Belarus, Hungary, and Slovakia (his maternal grandfather had changed his surname from "Leibowitz" to "Ligeti").[7][10][11] He has a brother, Gary Simon, and a sister, Linda Evans, who died in 1990.[8]
In March 1977, when Simon was still in high school, Simon's father was one of a group of over 140 people held hostage (and later released) in Washington, D.C. by former national secretary of the Nation of Islam Hamaas Abdul Khaalis in the Hanafi Siege.[12][13][14]
Simon graduated from Bethesda-Chevy Chase High School in Bethesda, Maryland, and wrote for the school newspaper, The Tattler. In 1983, he graduated from the University of Maryland, College Park. While at college he wrote and was editor for The Diamondback, and became friends with contemporary David Mills.[15]
Political views[edit]
Simon has described himself as a social democrat, broadly supporting the existence of capitalism while opposing "raw, unencumbered capitalism, absent any social framework, absent any sense of community, without regard to the weakest and most vulnerable classes in society", which he described as "a recipe for needless pain, needless human waste, (and) needless tragedy". He has criticized the idea of trickle-down economics.[100]
In 2013, Simon compared the global surveillance disclosures uncovered by Edward Snowden to a 1980s effort by the City of Baltimore to record the numbers dialed from all pay phones.[101] The city believed that drug traffickers were using pay phones and pagers, and a municipal judge allowed the city to record the dialed numbers. The placement of the payphone number recorders formed the basis of The Wire's first season. Simon argued that the media attention regarding the surveillance disclosures is a "faux scandal."[101][102]
During a November 2013 speech at the Festival of Dangerous Ideas in Sydney, he said that America has become "a horror show" of savage inequality as a result of capitalism run amok, and that "unless we reverse course, the average human being is worthless on planet Earth. Unless we take stock of the fact that maybe socialism and the socialist impulse has to be addressed again; it has to be married as it was married in the 1930s, the 1940s and even into the 1950s, to the engine that is capitalism."[103][104]
Simon has also spoken out publicly against crime journalist Kevin Deutsch, disputing the portrayal of Baltimore's illegal drug trade in Deutsch's book, Pill City: How Two Honor Roll Students Foiled the Feds and Built a Drug Empire. Simon has described the book as "a wholesale fabrication."[105]
During the 2016 Democratic presidential primaries, Simon praised Bernie Sanders for "rehabilitating and normalizing the term socialist back into American public life", but opposed some attacks against Hillary Clinton which he felt focused on her presumed motives rather than the substance of policies.[100]
In April 2022, David Simon thanked Russian opposition leader Alexei Navalny for using a quote from the TV series The Wire in his court speech and wished good luck to the politician.[106]
Personal life[edit]
In 1991, Simon married graphic artist Kayle Tucker. They had a son. The marriage ended in divorce.
In 2006, Simon married best-selling Baltimore novelist and former Sun reporter Laura Lippman in a ceremony officiated by John Waters.[107][108] They have a daughter, who was born in 2010.[109] Lippman and Simon separated in 2020 but neither has since filed for divorce. The two continue to co-parent their daughter.[110]
Simon's nephew, Jason Simon, is a guitarist and vocalist for the psychedelic rock band Dead Meadow.[111] The band was mentioned in an episode of The Wire.
Simon was the 2012 commencement speaker for the Georgetown University College of Arts and Sciences, as well as the speaker for the Bethesda-Chevy Chase High School graduation.[112]
In 2019, Simon joined a host of other writers in firing their agents as part of the WGA's stand against the ATA after failing to come to an agreement on their "Code of Conduct". Simon's statement to the writers union was widely circulated. He had previously led the rallying cry about the practices of packaging by the major talent agencies.[113][114]