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The Deuce - David Simon, Franco, Gyllenhaal on sex industry in 1970's NYC - S1 on HBO

C

Cornballer

Member
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The Deuce premieres Sunday, September 10th on HBO. The 90-minute premiere was directed by Michelle MacLaren, and the season will consist of 8 episodes. Simon and Pelecanos are the showrunners and intend the show to run for three seasons. The cast includes James Franco, Maggie Gyllenhaal, and a bunch of alums from The Wire.
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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Cast:
James Franco, Maggie Gyllenhaal, Gbenga Akinnagbe, Chris Bauer, Gary Carr, Chris Coy, Dominique Fishback, Lawrence Gilliard Jr., Margarita Levieva, Emily Meade, Natalie Paul, Daniel Sauli, David Krumholtz, Don Harvey, Mustafa Shakir, Anwan Glover, Jamie Neumann, Ralph Macchio, Zoe Kazan, James Ciccone, Garry Pastore, Finn Robbins, Gino Vento, Aaron Dean Eisenberg
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Videos:
Interviews and Articles:
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Reviews:
- Sepinwall's full review
Every character is given such a vivid inner life, and the show pulses with such energy, that it — like The Wire (and, to a lesser degree, Tremé) before it — manages to get away with various indulgences that have dragged down too many other recent dramas that have aspired to follow in Simon’s footsteps. The story drifts, with little delineation from one episode to another beyond “this is what happens next,” and it takes its sweet time getting around to the porno movie of it all, not really spending much time in that arena until the last few episodes. Doesn’t matter. The world and its citizens are so rich that it’s a pleasure to spend time in it at all, as written by this team, as directed by the great Michelle MacLaren and others (including Franco for a couple of episodes), and as performed by this superb cast.
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- 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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- The Guardian review
One of the key factors that hobbled The Wire’s popularity during its early seasons was the difficulty of keeping its massive cast straight; The Deuce has the benefit of boasting a few name-brand actors impossible to forget, but even so, it does not demand such a high price of admission to its absorptive world. Writing unencumbered by the jargon of police work or Show Me A Hero’s bureaucratic government lingo, Simon has created his most accessible work of humanism to date, and he’s done so without sacrificing his loftier ambitions of societal critique. “All the pieces matter” is another one of Simon’s classic axioms, and even before his new creations have fully come into focus, he’s re-convinced us of the statement’s truth.
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- Matt Zoller Seitz review for NY Mag
Working with a formidable group of directors — among them Breaking Bad ace Michelle MacLaren, who helmed two episodes, including the feature-length pilot — The Deuce sets an unenviable task for itself: depicting the mundane reality of these characters with understated, at times shocking frankness, never shying away from the particulars of exploitation yet also going out of its way to make the transactions as non-­titillating as possible. It might be an impossible goal, and there are times when the series runs up against a truism of storytelling in moving pictures: No matter how scrupulous you try to be when telling a story of physical exploitation, a part of the audience is still going to tune in for indefensible reasons while tuning out whatever context the storytellers try to provide. Historically accurate as its dynamics might be, this is still a series where boorish white men run things and women and minorities are stuck with economic table scraps. Despite the best efforts of the writing staff and Gyllenhaal (who became a producer on the series partly to make sure that her character was well served), there are moments when The Deuce seems to lose its grip on the leash of its worldview and the situations take on a hypnotic power that is presumably not meant to be exploitative but comes across that way anyhow. The scenes of pimps intimidating sex workers and angry men expressing hateful thoughts about women have a low, simmering fury that practically warps the borders of the screen.
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- Deadline review
The Deuce is damn good, and I can’t wait for it to return and move deeper into the ’70s and beyond. In the meantime, if you have time this long weekend, check out the more than 80-minute first episode on HBO Go or HBO Now.
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- Mic: HBO’s ‘The Deuce’ nails the ’70s sleaze of New York’s Times Square
Like with AMC’s Better Call Saul, it’s interesting to watch a show to which you already know the ending. One only has to take a walk through Times Square today — no one has called it the Deuce in decades — to know what happened: Welcome to M&M’s World, Shake Shack and H&M.

But that’s getting way ahead of things. The area got a lot dirtier before it got better, and stayed that way for plenty of time. The Deuce marks — memorably, violently, viciously — all of the weird and wrenching moments in between.
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- Vanity Fair review
The Deuce has a low-key rhythm to it, long patters of clever dialogue (the characters all speak so well) giving way to a moment of reflection or a burst of activity—a fight, a gunshot, an orgasm. It’s the ramble of everyday life, experienced by people not often associated with the everyday. In that way, The Deuce’s laid-back energy belies a kind of noble mission. The show offers a graceful portrait of lives not credited with much grace in their own time. Troubled and fraught as those lives may have been, they were nonetheless whole and worthy of understanding.

The Deuce may not plumb the deepest depths, not yet, anyway. But it does, at least, do the fine and winning work of giving these strutters and their well-worn stage some very good lighting—blue and red and irresistibly bright.
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- TVLine review
It offers plenty of local color throughout — a little messy at times, yes, but loaded with potential. In a way, The Deuce feels like HBO’s atonement for last year’s misfire Vinyl: a similar retro drama that got tripped up by glamorizing the rock-‘n’-roll ’70s. The Deuce seems to understand that this is an era you wouldn’t want to live through again, but can still be a pleasure to observe — from a safe distance.

Grade: B+
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- Collider review
What really makes The Deuce so good, though, are its conversations, the cadence and truth of its dialogue, and its both bold and vulnerable performances. It captures its setting in an extraordinary way, from the cigarettes and diners and honking horns on the street to the early morning papers rustling through the gutters. Also important for a period piece: nothing feels forced, or educational, or winking in a “look what people thought in the past!” way. It’s just a new background for an age-old tale of people trying to make it, no matter where they are in the social pecking order. Some people are trying to change the game, and some people are working as hard as they can to make sure that it never changes. The Deuce finds a way to make us care deeply about both.

4 out of 5 stars
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- Variety review
That’s the thing about Simon: When the story doesn’t quite make sense, the characters still do. All of them, no matter how marginal, feel like human beings at the center of their own life story.

A lot of storytelling is crammed into “The Deuce” — the regular and recurring cast fields nearly 40 characters, and it takes a minute to match rhythm with the cadence of each of their lives. But once you do, it’s a fascinating world: period but not nostalgic, lived in but not superficial. Maybe it has too many moving parts, but all the moving parts are a joy to look at.
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- Baltimore Sun review
“The Deuce” is a series that at the very least will make Sunday nights a most entertaining place to be for HBO subscribers. But, in the bargain, it will also offer anyone willing to go on this journey with Simon and Pelecanos a chance to understand in a visceral way some of the forces that have rigged the system in the favor of a few and ruthlessly exploited many others.

There is an irony here: Since its arrival in American homes in the early ‘50s, TV has been the driving agent in American life of using sexual fantasy and desire to sell the consumer culture that lies at the heart of capitalism.

As a result, television almost never talks about the symbiotic relationship between media and capitalism. That’s too close to home.

But Simon and Pelecanos do, and HBO let’s them do it in “The Deuce.”
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- Omaha World Herald review
Get in on this one early. It’s quite good, Simon’s most immediately engrossing effort since “The Wire.”
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C

Cornballer

Member
Btw, as most of you know, the pilot is up early for HBO subscribers on HBOGo, HBO Now, on demand, etc... if you'd like to check it out. Reviews from GAF folks have been very positive. I thought it was quite good. We have a thread for discussion here if you'd like to read through some early impressions.
 
Grizzlyjin

Grizzlyjin

Supersonic, idiotic, disconnecting, not respecting, who would really ever wanna go and top that
Thanks for the thread. The pilot won me over, so I'm definitely in for the whole season.
 
V

Viewt

Member
Watched the pilot the other day - liked it a lot! I'll definitely be checking out the rest of the first season.
 
F

FiggyCal

Banned
I don't know if the porno, "Deep Throat" will be important to the story in any way, but a sign for it is visible in one of the trailers. I think its interesting that James Franco played Hugh Heffner in Lovelace, a movie about Deep Throat's main actress. Now he's playing a different role, but its still connected to that movie in some way.
 
Z

Zousi

Member
The Wire has been the only series from Simon that i have really liked, so here's hoping for that another. First episode didn't really rock my socks, but maybe this will get there. Playground where this operates should deliver.
 
C

Cornballer

Member
- The Ringer interview: How Michelle MacLaren Brought ‘The Deuce’ to Life
Featuring 1970s porn palaces and two James Francos, the new HBO series—created by David Simon and George Pelecanos—is fall’s most ambitious drama. Luckily, one of TV’s most experienced directors agreed to take it on.
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MacLaren signed a two-year first-look deal with HBO just as the network was scoping out potential collaborators for the nascent Simon project. “They said that it was a pilot with George Pelecanos, David Simon, and James Franco, and I said, ‘Absolutely, I’d love to read it.’” Once she did, MacLaren put together a full visual presentation, conferred with Simon and Pelecanos, and began the hard work of fleshing that vision out into a densely populated, rigorously thought-out, eight-hour season of TV. The result is the strongest new drama of the fall, a multifaceted ensemble piece of HBO’s Golden Age old school with a welcome injection of diversity, flash, and, perhaps most surprisingly, palpable joy. On paper, The Deuce may be ambitious in the extreme; in the moment, however, it’s an exceptionally well-executed hang that just happens to explore the most American kind of capitalism: the one that operates just outside the law.
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C

Cornballer

Member
- EW review
The Deuce plays to the story lines of history, making for a layered, ironic experience. We know what becomes of the Golden Age of Porn, we know Times Square is now the epicenter of a media-saturated society, and the show — which fixates on film as art, escapism, and crass content — knows this too. The Deuce is a clear-eyed tragicomic drama about sex workers and social change in the ’70s. But like Mad Men and Halt and Catch Fire, it’s an origin story for the present that asks us to consider the culture we want moving forward.

Grade: A
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B

BlueTsunami

there is joy in sucking dick
That whole scene of Darlene watching A Tale of Two Cities. That Simons magic is back again. I'm really digging this.
 
C

Cornballer

Member
- NY Times review:
TV is full of dramas that take ages to become the thing they’re about; see, recently, “Snowfall” and “Ozark.” This is less a problem for “The Deuce” because it’s so rich with voice. This should be a lesson for peak-TV storytellers: Get the characters right first, and viewers will float you some credit for the plot.

What “The Deuce” has from the get-go is filthy, vibrant, indomitable life. Most of the action is conversation.
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Z

ZeroX03

Banned
Wow those reviews are mostly gushing. Excited to get in on the ground floor, hopefully it plays well week to week. Especially liked this tidbit:
Also important for a period piece: nothing feels forced, or educational, or winking in a “look what people thought in the past!” way.
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That sort of thing bugs me.
 
F

Fjordson

Member
The pilot is so good. Just wish I had waited so the wait for episode 2 wouldn't be as long.

I actually like James Franco so I wasn't too worried about his casting, but he's even better than I thought he'd be in this. The way he plays the two brothers in subtly different ways is great.

Cornballer said:
- The Ringer interview: How Michelle MacLaren Brought ‘The Deuce' to Life
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I was about to post this, but then thought "scroll down, Cornballer probably already saw it" :p really cool article.

It also made me realize that for as into TV as I am these days, I don't know much about the directors. She's done Game of Thrones, Westworld, Breaking Bad and The Leftovers and even won Emmys, but I didn't recognize her name in the headline.
 
Y

youbastards

Member
Watched the pilot twice already, can't wait for this series. After 11/22/63 and this, Franco just might be one of my favorite actors now.


That scene in the bar where the brothers are talking about Vincent leaving his wife...

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C

Cornballer

Member
- Onion A|V Club review
In The Deuce, his latest examination of social ecosystems in this country, David Simon takes a typically granular and decidedly unglamorous look at the legalization of pornography in 1970s New York. The drug-slinging game of The Wire has been replaced with prostitution, a business with every bit as expansive and demanding a market—and poised for a transformation—which is what accounts for Simon’s interest. The former journalist has always had a knack for not just exposing the underbelly of a teeming metropolis, but also shining a light up at those who look down from their penthouses. Once again, he spins dramatic gold from the hard-to-follow inner workings of a city and even harder-to-face realities, avoiding moral judgments despite regularly wading into vice, all while delivering the latest in appointment TV.

Grade: A-
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C

Cornballer

Member
- Sepinwall & Grubb's TV Avalanche podcast covers The Deuce (28:35 mark)

They both love it. Sepinwall has seen the whole season and Grubb watched the first six. They were impressed with its ability to address prostitution and porn seriously (as you'd expect from Simon/Pelecanos) while still remaining a fun and watchable show. Their one reservation, which they didn't personally experience since they binged it, is that the episodes don't have much internal structure and it probably holds up better if you blow through a bunch of episodes at once. They also note that second Franco twin (the deadbeat) is a little unnecessary, but amusing nonetheless.
 
C

Cornballer

Member
- SF Chronicle Review
The performances are at least very solid (Franco in both roles) and in many cases stunning. Gyllenhaal owns every scene she’s in, as she explores the complexities of Eileen/Candy. Gyllenhaal is such a complete actress that it almost seems as though her character’s entire personality, the way she carries herself, changes when she removes her curly blonde “Candy” wig, pulls her own dark hair back and becomes Eileen Merrell, heading to Jersey to visit the family. She has done so much great work in her career, but it’s hard not to think that she reaches an entirely new level of perfection with this role.

Fishback, Carr, Method Man as a silky smooth pimp named Rodney, Pernell Walker as the prostitute Ruby, Gbenga Akinnagbe as brutal pimp Larry Brown, Bauer, Macchio, Levieva — each of these actors stands out, but what you take away is how perfectly they interact not only with each other, but with the “main character” of “The Deuce”: the streets of the city.

The subject matter, the nature of most of the characters, may not seem appealing, but there is a resilient humanity at the base of “The Deuce.” Most of all, there is a great story and even greater storytelling.
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T

tbm24

Member
Super excited to see it. Seems like as good a place to ask as any, does HBO show any of their content in 4K? This show in particular?
 
C

Cornballer

Member
tbm24 said:
Super excited to see it. Seems like as good a place to ask as any, does HBO show any of their content in 4K? This show infantil particular?
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There are other people on the forum that are more knowledgeable about this, but I think the only content they've released in 4K is the Westworld S1 blu-rays.
 
C

Cornballer

Member
Cornballer said:
- George Pelecanos on this week's The Watch podcast from The Ringer
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- The Ringer posted a few excerpts from the interview
Greenwald: One more thing about the idea of how television is being made now, I’m very curious your perspective on it. Because after watching the pilot and after watching the second episode, I was all in, but there was something surprising about the show. There are a lot of things that were surprising about what we’re seeing. But I realized, it felt almost old-fashioned. And I meant this in the best possible way. That what your show did so brilliantly in the pilot is say, “Here’s a world. Here are some characters in it. Welcome, basically, and there’s more to come.” So much of TV now is, like movies, made for the poster. Right from the beginning there’s a question that’s gonna be answered. There’s a crime that needs to be avenged. You have that momentum and an attempt to get the audience in and running with you. I love that you didn’t do that. It feels so open-ended and exciting for that reason.

Pelecanos: Yeah, you’re usually encouraged to have a big “oh shit” moment in the pilot.

Ryan: Right, the bag of money.

Pelecanos: Yup. And it helps that we’ve been at HBO for 15, 20 years. They know what we do. They have some faith in us. We avoid those tropes if we can. But I’m pretty confident people are gonna stay with us just because it’s good.
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C

Cornballer

Member
- Vox review
But, really, I should just tell you to watch it. It’s impeccably acted, written, and directed, and no matter how ridiculous “a series about the 1970s porn industry with two James Francos” might sound to you, this is somehow not just the best possible execution of that idea, but the most thoughtful one, too. It’s the best show of the fall, by a wide, wide margin.
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F

FlyinJ

Douchebag. Yes, me.
Is the premiere on the 10th still the first episode that has been available previously, or are we getting ep 2?
 
C

Cornballer

Member
- The Atlantic review
But it’s in the scope of its story and the complexity of its characters that The Deuce (created by Simon and George Pelecanos) comes the closest to Simon’s earlier masterpiece. It’s about the sex trade, but also about the weirdness of human sexuality; there are Mafiosi gangsters, and corrupt cops, and selfish journalists, and new pornographers. The playing field is different but the game—and the rules—are the same.
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R

Raitosaito

Member
Just watched EP one, and was honestly very engrossing and authentic for it's time. This is good television through and through. Now we just need EP 2.
 
C

Cornballer

Member
- Vanity Fair: David Simon Doesn’t Want His Pornography Show to Be Sexy
- Time Magazine review
But The Deuce never loses sight of the human. And for all the drama of its plot, it consistently and gratifyingly goes small, letting us learn about its characters gradually and in relation to one another. With the same granular dedication to detail that they brought to The Wire, Simon and Pelecanos show us an entire gray-market economy through the eyes of its participants. It's a triumph, and, better yet, a pleasure.
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C

Cornballer

Member
- LA Times review
Though television has fractured into a billion and five more platforms, and bad guys and gals are now explored in far more interesting ways than they were when “The Wire” arrived, “The Deuce” has the potential to be HBO’s next great original series.
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- NPR review
Almost every major character is a cog in someone else's wheel struggling to stay afloat while wading through the muck of life on the Deuce. Those compelling, artfully drawn characters keep you enthralled even as the show goes about the slow business of showing how pimps, prostitutes, the mob and police helped turn a back-alley pursuit into a billion-dollar industry.
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S

storafötter

Member
I thought the pilot was off to a good start. I thought at first that the show kinda glamorized pimps (it kinda does until the end of the pilot). Maggie Gyllenhaal plays well as usual. I look forward to seeing more. Been clamoring another "The Wire" show as Treme wasnt for me.
 
R

RatskyWatsky

Hunky Nostradamus
Pilot was great - the cast was uniformly excellent and the atmosphere was dripping with authenticity (not that I would know, having never been to the 70s, but it sure didn't just seem like the actors were playing dress up!).

I did have one complaint though - the dialog was a bit hard to hear in some of the scenes due to the background noise. Wish they had toned that down just a tad.
 
C

Cornballer

Member
Series premiere tonight:
Pilot

Twin brothers Vincent (James Franco) and Frankie Martino (James Franco) - one a double-shifting bartender with two kids and a wayward wife in Brooklyn, the second an insouciant gambler with piling mob debts - navigate their way through the rough-and-tumble world of 1971 Times Square.

While Vincent plots ways to improve his situation and pay off his brother's debt, he crosses paths with other midtown denizens - including veteran hookers Candy (Maggie Gyllenhaal) and Ashley (Jamie Neumann), young streetwalkers Darlene (Dominique Fishback) and Lori (Emily Meade), and smooth-talking pimps C.C. (Gary Carr), Larry (Gbenga Akinnagbe) and Rodney (Cliff Smith/Method Man) - as they ply their trades under the not-so-watchful eye of the NYPD. Meanwhile, when NYU student Abby (Margarita Levieva) is enlisted by friends to buy amphetamines on the street, she ends up in the Times Square precinct, an unlikely starting point for making a bold change to her privileged life.
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C

CyReN

Member
Checked out the pilot and enjoyed it. I hope SNF doesn't hurt ratings too much.

Does the show have a twitter? Can't seem to find it, does have a FB though.
 
O

old manatee

Banned
RatskyWatsky said:
Pilot was great - the cast was uniformly excellent and the atmosphere was dripping with authenticity (not that I would know, having never been to the 70s, but it sure didn't just seem like the actors were playing dress up!).

I did have one complaint though - the dialog was a bit hard to hear in some of the scenes due to the background noise. Wish they had toned that down just a tad.
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You should go! No time like the present.
 
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