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HBO's The Deuce pilot up for subscribers - David Simon, James Franco, Mags Gyllenhaal

C

Cornballer

Member
The pilot is up now on HBOGo, HBONow, and on demand platforms if you're a subscriber. The pilot is about 90 minutes long.
The Deuce premieres September 10 at 9PM on HBO. Starring James Franco and Maggie Gyllenhaal, The Deuce explores 1970s New York at the pioneering moments of what would become the billion-dollar American sex industry.
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About the Show: Get into the gritty and decadent world of NYC's Times Square in the 1970s, as the business of pleasure begins its climb to become a billion-dollar industry in this drama series from the creative team behind 'The Wire®' and 'Treme®'. James Franco, Maggie Gyllenhaal, Gary Carr, Gbenga Akinnagbe, Dominique Fishback, Emily Meade, Lawrence Gilliard, Jr. head up a stellar cast.
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Trailer.

VEUgmOY.jpg
 
R

Ricky_R

Member
Wonder why Simon went with a more "hollywoodish" style. Not only because of the cast, but the direction, style and dialogue. It's missing that gritty, more realistic take that The Wire and Treme had.

I'm basing that on the trailer though. Maybe the music doesn't help.
 
A

ahoyhoy

Unconfirmed Member
Ricky_R said:
Wonder why Simon went with a more "hollywoodish" style. Not only because of the cast, but the direction, style and dialogue. It's missing that gritty, more realistic take that The Wire and Treme had.

I'm basing that on the trailer though. Maybe the music doesn't help.
Click to expand...

I have faith in Simon. I think they were just trying to market it like Vinyl, not realizing the reason Vinyl sucked was because of how unrealistic and disorganized it felt.
 
C

Cornballer

Member
- Sepinwall interview with Simon and Pelecanos: ‘The Deuce' Creators Don't Want Their Fictional Porn To Turn You On
Sepinwall: George, you said before that you had to be careful with this material. How did that translate into what you did?

Pelecanos: Well, I think one thing we did was we, David and I surrounded ourselves with a lot of women—

Simon: —in a professional way.

Pelecanos: —because we realized, to try to do the story, two middle-aged straight guys, it just wasn't going to work with just us. First of all, we got Michele MacLaren to direct the pilot, which was a great decision in retrospect. We had many women in the writer's room. We also had a gay writer, we had a transgender writer, we were trying to stack the deck and so that we'd get a lot of different voices in this thing and to color us. I'd say the majority of the department heads were women. Then when we did shoot it, we always talked to whatever director was working with us and explained that we're not shooting porn, we're shooting the shooting of porn. So the way it's lit is un-beautiful and there's a lot of shots of people just sitting around on set, bored. I hope it's never titillating because that wasn't our intention. Then even in the editing room we would these conversations like, ”Can you take five seconds off that, I think we're lingering on her breast too long," you know what I mean?

Simon: Yeah, there was a lot of arguing and discussion and intellectual rigor that really went into, first of all, why are we doing the show and what do we hope to say? Second of all, what is the imagery that is addressing that, what is prurient, what is puritanical? We needed to land it in such a way that we weren't measuring it by pornographic metrics. That was the most important job. George is right, I mean, from Megan Abbott and Lisa Lutz and Will Austin in the writers' room to Maggie Gyllenhaal, who had incredible influence on her character's arc and on the story in general, to the department heads. To Nina Noble, our producing partner who's already a huge influence creatively in our team, but here she had a particularly special role in terms of conveying what we were trying to do and doing it in such a way that she put everybody at ease. George is right: we could be the most attentive and empathetic couple of white, straight males that we can manage but that doesn't mean that we have the material surrounded.
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- NY Times: ‘The Deuce' Recalls Sex and Sleaze in 1970s Times Square
Yet another hurdle facing ”The Deuce" was the need to entice an audience into caring about people whose everyday travails tend not to pull at the heartstrings: a predatory pimp, say, or an amoral manager of a mobbed-up massage parlor. True, the writers had a few real-life characters to work with, including Matthew Ianiello, a.k.a. Matty the Horse, a high-ranking Mafioso who controlled what prosecutors called a ”smut cartel" in Times Square. There was also the aforementioned Marty Hodas, whose peep-show success required his lackeys to lug trunks filled with quarters to a bank at 42nd Street and Eighth Avenue.

But most characters were conjured through the alchemy of fact and imagination. Pimps bedecked in the royal attire of the street. Fresh-faced women stepping off long-distance buses at the Port Authority. A conscientious but compromised police officer — played by Lawrence Gilliard Jr. — wondering about some vague downtown threat called the Knapp Commission (a panel investigating police corruption). A determined reporter, a gay bartender, a sex-film ”director" — all making choices in an unfolding story fraught with foreboding, as the planned three-year program chronicles the changing nature of the sex business through the ‘70s and into the ominous ‘80s.
Click to expand...
 
R

Ricky_R

Member
ahoyhoy said:
I have faith in Simon. I think they were just trying to market it like Vinyl, not realizing the reason Vinyl sucked was because of how unrealistic and disorganized it felt.
Click to expand...

Oh, me too. I don't care what he does or how he does it, I'm always going to be there. It's just a bit weird, because that seemed to be his staple, so I'm wondering if it was his or HBO's decision to go that way.

Either way, I'm sure the writing will be on point.
 
C

Cornballer

Member
- Fienberg's review for THR
James Franco and Maggie Gyllenhaal lead the remarkable ensemble of David Simon and George Pelecanos' entertaining and substantive HBO drama about sex and power in 1971 Manhattan.
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A gritty, grimy (but rarely grim) tapestry of pimps and hoes, cops and pornographers, feminists and misogynists, crusaders and deadbeats, The Deuce has a lower intimidation threshold than Simon's last HBO project, the tremendous and tremendously wonky public housing miniseries Show Me a Hero, but it still balances the salacious with the journalistically inquisitive. It's another Simon drama that's a discipline-spanning sociological treatise on one level and a showcase for dozens of memorable, colorful characters on another. After watching the full eight-episode first season, which premieres on September 10, most of my complaints boil down to wishing The Deuce had at least five more episodes in which to let rapidly unfolding storylines breathe a bit more.
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The Bottom Line: So far, so very good.
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B

BTails

Member
Sanjuro said:
I hope this has better Luck than Vinyl.
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I actually enjoy Vinyl quite a bit, even though it was over the top, and cheesy, and a bit of a mess of a show.

Boogie Nights is one of my all time favourite movies, so it'll be hard for me to not draw comparisons while watching this, but I'm looking forward to it quite a bit!
 
M

Messofanego

Banned
Cornballer said:
- Sepinwall interview with Simon and Pelecanos: ‘The Deuce’ Creators Don’t Want Their Fictional Porn To Turn You On
Sepinwall: George, you said before that you had to be careful with this material. How did that translate into what you did?

Pelecanos: Well, I think one thing we did was we, David and I surrounded ourselves with a lot of women—

Simon: —in a professional way.

Pelecanos: —because we realized, to try to do the story, two middle-aged straight guys, it just wasn’t going to work with just us. First of all, we got Michele MacLaren to direct the pilot, which was a great decision in retrospect. We had many women in the writer’s room. We also had a gay writer, we had a transgender writer, we were trying to stack the deck and so that we’d get a lot of different voices in this thing and to color us. I’d say the majority of the department heads were women. Then when we did shoot it, we always talked to whatever director was working with us and explained that we’re not shooting porn, we’re shooting the shooting of porn. So the way it’s lit is un-beautiful and there’s a lot of shots of people just sitting around on set, bored. I hope it’s never titillating because that wasn’t our intention. Then even in the editing room we would these conversations like, “Can you take five seconds off that, I think we’re lingering on her breast too long,” you know what I mean?

Simon: Yeah, there was a lot of arguing and discussion and intellectual rigor that really went into, first of all, why are we doing the show and what do we hope to say? Second of all, what is the imagery that is addressing that, what is prurient, what is puritanical? We needed to land it in such a way that we weren’t measuring it by pornographic metrics. That was the most important job. George is right, I mean, from Megan Abbott and Lisa Lutz and Will Austin in the writers’ room to Maggie Gyllenhaal, who had incredible influence on her character’s arc and on the story in general, to the department heads. To Nina Noble, our producing partner who’s already a huge influence creatively in our team, but here she had a particularly special role in terms of conveying what we were trying to do and doing it in such a way that she put everybody at ease. George is right: we could be the most attentive and empathetic couple of white, straight males that we can manage but that doesn’t mean that we have the material surrounded.​
Click to expand...
That's great to hear about the inclusive behind the scenes.
 
J

jtb

Banned
Whoa, didn't even realize this was happening. Just assumed David Simon was enjoying retirement given his incessant cranky tweets lol
 
DOWN

DOWN

Banned
That poster is ugly set photo collage. They couldn’t spring for a paintover version?

Anyway I’m looking forward to this show
 
P

Pyroclastic

Banned
good lucking out for chris partlow and d'angelo

method man too I guess lol

damn chris bauer (frank sobotka) is in this too, that's pretty much a reunion
 
E

Einchy

semen stains the mountaintops
HBO has played this commercial, like, a million times for me now.

Show looks great, though.
 
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