Trailer for Wellington actor/director Taika Waititi’s new feature Boy, inspired by the characters from his Oscar-nominated short Two Cars, One Night. His Q+A appearance (in three parts) following the film’s Sundance screening is delightful.
David Simon, creator of television’s The Wire, photographed by Philip Andrews on the New Orleans set of his new HBO series Tremé, for Jesse Pearson’s lengthy interview in Vice magazine. The topic of conversation darts from the screenwriting process and studio involvement, to American healthcare reforms, to the origins of Omar and his fourth-floor jump, to the failure of prohibition, and so on.
Simon spends time discussing how and why a sixth season of The Wire focusing on the immigration issue — it would have played between seasons three and four, leaving the media critique as parting shot — turned out not to be achievable, and why he feels the show’s first season was its weakest. Here’s the introduction:
David Simon is responsible for one of the greatest feats of storytelling of the past century, and that’s the entire five-season run of the television series The Wire. If that sounds like hyperbole to you, then you haven’t watched the show yet. It is the most intricate web of character, motivation, insight, action, repercussion, and emotion that’s ever been on TV, and it rivals the grand novels of the late 19th century, when novels actually, regularly, had scope. More hyperbole, but there you go.
Contains plot spoilers of course, but if you haven’t watched it, do yourself a favour this festive season. (via Wilson Miner)
Dan Wagstaff interviews Fantagraphics Books art director Jacob Covey. I love his cover for Supermen! The First Wave of Comic Book Heroes (1936-1941); perhaps inspiration for my next Tumblr theme.
I’m not interested in writing short stories. Anything that doesn’t take years of your life and drive you to suicide hardly seems worth doing.
— Cormac McCarthy during a lengthy interview with The Wall Street Journal’s John Jurgensen. (via John Gruber)
Typeface designer Jonathan Hoefler and co-chair of the MFA Designer as Author programme at the School of Visual Arts, Steven Heller, talk to “Please Explain“‘s Leonard Lopate on the topic of how typefaces are created and why typography is important to communication and design. (via Yves Peters)
Fantastic, candid 44-minute interview with Moon director Duncan Jones, from the folks at /Film. Love the bit where he gets all starstruck after a call from Robert Zubrin. There are spoilers in the second half, clearly signposted. (via Dean Minifie)
Sam Rockwell and Duncan Jones talk to Salon’s Caitlin Shamberg about Moon and the pleasures of 1970s science fiction films. (Contains discussion of the film’s key plot point.)
Beautiful-looking video of Nick Sambrato explaining how his Kluge letterpress works. Shot by Chase Heavener on a Canon 5D2, the footage of the press in action is completely mesmerising.
David Lynch presents Interview Project
Launching June 1, the Interview Project is “a road trip where people have been found and interviewed”. The team covered 20,000 miles over 70 days, and interviewed people they found along the way. Watching the short trailer reminds me of the intimate feeling of 50 People, One Question, and if that’s anything to go by then it should be well worth watching.
Hot off the wire, here’s Paul Deady’s radio interview with Tumblr founder David Karp while he was in New Zealand for the Web09 conference this past week.
