Anticipating Treme aka "Tremé" - David Simon and his buddies do post-Katrina N.O.

http://blog.nola.com/davewalker/2008/07/hbo_sets_drama_series_in_treme.html

http://www.imdb.com/title/tt1279972/

www.avclub.com/articles/melissa-leo-joins-cast-of-new-david-simon-hbo-show,24929/

I'm a little concerned about this being full of jazz musician cliches.

I mean it'll probably be less so than if anyone else did it, but it's rare to see any screen portrayal of jazz musicians that isn't full of cliches.

im pumped for this i think

wish hed do more intense intrigue type action like the wire - i mean consequences not jazz man CONSEQUENCES

always thought bunk and lester should have their own spin-off (they are playing homicide cops right?)

jazz or consequences would be my favorite game show ever

This hasn't been picked up yet, right?

I think HBO would greenlight anything Simon puts his name on, actually.

HBO ordered 10 scripts (presumably the first season would be ten episodes), but only the pilot is greenlit for filming.

i share hurting 2's fears about jazz cliches but this could be amazing

I'm a little concerned about this being full of jazz musician cliches.

I mean it'll probably be less so than if anyone else did it, but it's rare to see any screen portrayal of jazz musicians that isn't full of cliches.

― Bonobos in Paneradise (Hurting 2), Wednesday, 11 March 2009 01:10 (Yesterday) Permalink

yeah, me too. especially since i'm sort of really familiar with that particular scene. still, if anyone can do it, hopefully it's him.

so what you're saying Jordan is you don't know if you'd. . . dig it?

what's going to really torture me is that i bet he'll shoot tons of professional second line footage to get a few seconds in the show.

*snapping fingers*

simon's choices of like local advisors on music and new orleans and stuff are not heartening. allen toussaint and davis rogan? really? also, tom piazza is writing for this show. that's bad.

i mean it's not like i'm not going to anticipate it like crazy and maybe stalk the production a little bit but this is a one horse town and i am gonna be sick of hearing about it like months before it comes on the air.

david simon had george pelecanos and richard price and dennis lehane writing on the wire. a+ recruiting dude. then he comes down here and gets... tom piazza. i doubt tom piazza has ever been to treme.

oh no he hired some dudes no one cares about

seriously, what does allen toussaint know about new orleans music

allen toussaint plays 1) jazzfest and 2) $60 shows at the house of blues with elvis costello. he doesn't know shit about recent music in new orleans and certainly not after the storm.

i agree, although in toussaint's defense he did produce D-Boy by new birth brass band, which is pretty much the best brass band album.

he should have gotten someone like corey henry, kabuki, shamarr, or andrew baham as a music consultant, dudes who have diverse experience but are still really involved in the street-level scene.

Until I hear for a fact that this is bad I will assume it will be good.

"Treme" cast expands: Melissa Leo, Oscar-nominated for the 2008 film "Frozen River" and a cast member on the 1990s NBC drama, "Homicide: Life on the Street," has been added to the "Treme" cast. She'll portray a civil-rights attorney, and joins Pierce ("The Wire"), Steve Zahn ("Saving Silverman"), Clarke Peters ("The Wire"), Kim Dickens ("Deadwood") and Khandi Alexander ("CSI: Miami").

Cast is great. Leo is a fantastic actress.

Love Steve Zahn, hoping this gets him back on track choices-wise...

Treme christened with an impromptu barbecue by Kermit Ruffins

http://blog.nola.com/davewalker/2009/03/kermit_ruffins_christens_start.html

Wendell Pierce!!!

a mod needs to change the thread title

Bill Moyers and David Simon.

What exactly is the typical "jazz musician cliche"? It seems to me like most jazz musicians I know fit very well into the laid-back, pot-smoking, undependable, absent-minded, likes-to-talk-about-physics/linguistics/etc stereotype that I think of.

i think you just answered your own question bro

http://www.hollywoodreporter.com/hr/content_display/news/e3i30b29365238b36528481f5e659b2aea0

picked up

Awesome. Just heard the news.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/books/2009/may/20/wire-creator-allegorical-hurricane-katrina

David Simon, the creator of the hit TV series The Wire, is to create a drama that treats Hurricane Katrina as an allegory for the financial, social and cultural disasters that have shaken the US over the past year.

The series, called Treme, after a New Orleans neighbourhood, was commissioned by HBO earlier this month after a successful pilot, and will air in the US in 2010. Filming will start later this year – after the hurricane season abates. The 10- or 12-part drama will be, Simon told the Guardian, "an allegory for the trauma that the country as a whole went through two years later".

"The fact is that the levees on the canals were substandard, and done on the cheap at an immense profit. Ultimately that becomes a metaphor," he said. "New Orleans was relying on things that were believed to be genuine bulwarks against tragedy and disaster. People felt that there were similar bulwarks protecting our financial institutions and foreign policy. Now, two years on, we are all essentially in the same boat as New Orleans. Katrina was an outlyer of where we are today."

...

On Treme, Simon said: "It picks up three months after the storm, and will deliver a story of people trying to pick up their lives and culture again. New Orleans is one of the most extraordinary cultural creations in the US in terms of almost every artform – and it is very vulnerable. The characters have to find their way back and try to solve the existential crisis that Katrina has left them."

The show will be, he said, a "homage to one of America's greatest achievements, African-American music. A thousand years from now, if anyone is talking about anything on this rotating orb, and they mention America, they might talk about constitutional government or democracy or baseball – but they will surely talk about blues and jazz. New Orleans is the cradle of all that."

sounds ominous

i can't wait for the 3rd season reveal of the solution to the existential crisis that Katrina left them----or is it???? even a ~real~ solution???????

i want to find out what "Katrina was an outlyer of where we are today" means

all of us will be metaphorically flooded and left for dead some day

I don't like blues and jazz :(. I mean, I like it well enough (roots of all music and all that(, but a series full of it/about it doesn't sound like my bag. Sigh.

The 10- or 12-part drama

does that mean it's a one-season / miniseries type deal?

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4jH_KkUyZsw

SO EXCITED YOU GUYS

i'm excited but it's a little disconcerting how this seems custom-tailored to my tastes. i'm either going to love it or hate it. or enjoy it while nitpicking about the music and musicians involved in it.

also it's going to be weird if all the wire fans are talking about new orleans brass bands and second lines in a few months.

i am looking forward to your contributions on this thread once this show actually exists, Jordan!

is khandi alexander still going to be in this? i shall look it up. think of khandi alexander!!!

she is!

i love khandi alexander!

right?

yes!

Alto Sax: Life on the Street.

There's an extremely short clip of actual show footage in this video at 1:50
http://www.spoilertv.com/2010/01/hbo-2010-promo.html?utm_source=f..
Also features a quick look at Boardwalk Empire

http://i.cdn.hbo.com/assets/images/series/the-wire/character/the-law/lester-freamon-160.jpg

generation kill was great

― caek, Saturday, June 18, 2011 1:33 PM (8 minutes ago) Bookmark

i always call this show "tres gay" in my head

more i think about it this really is like if stanely kramer had directed "nashville" instead of altman

i gave up on this show early, but until someone can convincingly contradict this estimation, i'm not coming back

ha i don't even like nashville but jess is kind of otm

amateurist's opening salvo otm. this is an embarrassment.

i haven't seen the new season yet, but treme makes me happy and amateurist is the bummerest of all bummers.

:-(

Really loving this show.

The show put a smile on my face during one of the scenes in David Chang's restaurant where they played 'Uptown Top Ranking.'

the kitchen scenes are becoming my favorite part of this show

It seemed inevitable at the beginning of the season that within 4 or 5 episodes they would bring her back down to New Orleans. I really respect that they've run with the NYC thing like this.

nah, this show really sucks. i'm getting off the bus.

says the only guy left on the bus, to noone in particular

I'm on the bus. I'm lovin' the ride.

Slept on this show for ages, but went through all the episodes over the last few weeks. Sure, it's not perfect, but it has a lot of charms.

New season starts Sunday. HBO has already picked it up for a shortened fourth and final season.

have not seen in some time, would like to, still resent amateurist for his life mission of raining on things

http://www.nola.com/treme-hbo/index.ssf/2012/09/hbos_treme_renewed_for_a_fourt.html

HBO's 'Treme' renewed for a fourth and final season

“Treme” drew an average of 2.2 million cumulative weekly viewers in its second season, far below HBO blockbusters like “True Blood,” “Game of Thrones” and “Boardwalk Empire,” but HBO programming executives had expressed admiration for the show’s execution and importance. Steeped in New Orleans music, cuisine and recovery-related social and political issues, the post-Katrina drama was honored with a Peabody Award in April.

Simon said the past week was spent securing the participating of all the series’ main cast members, a complicated contractual task given the shorter season.

“To a person, they all came back,” Simon said. “We’re happy for a chance to finish the story on our own terms.”

What I've seen is flawed, but I most certainly agree that it has its charms

The show can be quite preachy/corny at times, but then there'll be an episode or a scene that is so damned good that it merits the whole exercise.

i'm glad people are getting paid but the show's whole "oh yo trombone shorty what's up nothin kid just eatin a lucky dog in front of preservation hall with my boy steve earle we fixin to go get some gumbo ya ya down the bayou wit ya mom n dem" vibe is pretty lol. not everything is all new orleans all the time!

tho they shot a scene with eyehategod which is a step in the right direction, has that episode aired yet?

hahah eyehategod, for real?! they didn't show up this premiere no

even when this show is being totally aimless, there's just something amiable about it that i can't help but be charmed by

Shame to see the show end, I enjoyed its meandering charms.

i stopped watching out of indifference midway through the 3rd season. should i go ahead and finish it?

just started watching season 3, it's pleasantly boring. mostly i pause it a lot to tell my girlfriend some story about run-ins with the musicians or places in the show (and being reminded of those stories is the main appeal for me, that and the novelty of seeing brass band dudes acting).

i'm just waiting until i can afford the damn thing, but maybe i can just stream it online by this point and catch up

s3 was the ebst season, it comes together at the end very nicely.

the indian practice in season 3 ep 4 had the juice, it's those little moments that make me glad they did the show. shannon powell's musical cameo was nice to see too. it's even worth sitting through all of the scenes of the violin player's dumb band.

http://www.nytimes.com/2014/02/16/arts/television/tv-the-old-way-watching-whats-on.html?_r=0

the dim belief that music is truth

fukk u caramanica

Just now watching this - alternating between enjoying it a lot and being bored to tears. Did we really make it to the last episode of the first season before any rap gets air time?
God, I hope pretty violinist busker isn't going to hook up with Steve Zahn for S2.

::bites tongue::

Dammit.

Why's that a bad thing? They were my two favourites.

Sometimes Zahn was annoying

I read that he improves but he's constantly annoying in S1.

He is extremely irritating all the way to the finale. I was thinking he can't always be this bad and then he was even worse in that doomed Christian Slater vehicle.

God, the political brass-bounce band is painful to listen to.

this is the worst-ever show abt new orleans, including both real worlds and k-ville.

hey i liked k-ville!!

k-ville gave us the "gumbo party" so i cant hate too hard

i mean it was a cop show, i wasn't watching for documentary excellence

It's too bad the entire show isn't about Wendell Pierce.

finishing season 3, need to call attention to the conversation between journalist metal dude and girl in the line at the airport

her: (some question about music)
him: "yeah, some metal"
her: ??
him: "i like metal...and sea shanties"
she turns around
he smirks
hahaha that guy

http://grantland.com/features/david-simon-show-me-a-hero-hbo-the-wire-treme/

Food comes in, and Simon jokingly grumbles, “Do I look like a chicken-salad-eating motherfucker?!”

kind of

the more notable quote is you cannot make me give a fuck, said abt Grantlands dumb content article abt ranking Wire characters, which obv hes otm

Kind of looking back at this fondly now - episode to episode points could be bad and John Goodman/Steve Zahn were pretty awful but it was so good at the small-level humanist stuff (like The Wire). The growth of Goodman's daughter and the wife he left behind with her new husband, Wendell Pierce becoming a band director, the abusive junkie keyboard player turned shrimper. Even the Big Chief's son (no idea that was the kid from Finding Forrester!) became pretty interesting over the course of the show.

http://consequenceofsound.net/2015/06/stephen-colbert-picks-jon-batiste-as-late-show-bandleader/

A native of Louisiana and graduate of Julliard, Batiste is a big name in the worlds of jazz and blues music. A prolific solo musician in his own right, he’s also collaborated with Prince, Wynton Marsalis, Allen Toussaint, and Dr. John over the years. Batiste has a very charismatic personality, as seen on-stage with raucous live performances and off the stage in acting roles on HBO’s Treme and Spike Lee’s Red Hook Summer.