Author Archives: Treme Blog

November 15th 2011

David Simon Talks Food with Anthony Bourdain

Yesterday, the tell-tale trucks were parked on Elysian Fields telling us that Treme is back and shooting on Frenchmen Street. Later in the morning, a Steve Zahn sighting confirmed that. The show starts shooting once hurricane season ends, so it started again this year on November

Last year, Anthony Bourdain joined the writing staff to bring his knowledge of New York restaurant kitchens to the show. Recently, he sat down with co-producer David Simon to talk about food in Louisiana. If forced to choose, Simon says his last meal in New Orleans would come from Cochon, while Bourdain opts for a muffaletta from Verti Marte. See the conversation here.

–Alex Rawls

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November 4th 2011

Does Everything “Treme” Need Explication?

So it seems. Earlier in the week, The Times-Picayune‘s Dave Walker reported that the producers had worked out storylines for the characters that would ideally take four seasons to bring to their natural conclusions. That piece of information has circulated the web as an assertion that there will be two more seasons of Treme.

Today, producer David Simon clarified the point to Alan Sepinwall:

“It seems to be out there that i said we would be doing four seasons,” Simon wrote back. “I didn’t say that exactly. I told Dave Walker that the writer-producers met twice over the hiatus for a week at a time and plotted all the storylines and determined that two more seasons was the optimum for the vast majority of characters, for the theme, and practical for the history of post-Katrina New Orleans. That we would have a hard time finishing in three, or, unless some other avenues for storytelling revealed themselves organically, extending the drama to five seasons.”

At the same time, he recognizes that it’s entirely up to HBO bosses Michael Lombardo and Richard Plepler to decide whether they want a fourth season, and that “HBO has made no decision and I don’t expect a decision until we meet with them — at the earliest.”

To be fair, at the end of last season, Plepler said:

“It really wasn’t, frankly, even a decision for us. He wasn’t done telling the story, and we have such respect for him and regard for him, we want him to feel he’s expressed what he wants to express.”

Those who put two and two together had good reason to take the news as a de facto declaration that Treme would be around for two more seasons, but Simon’s guardedness is understandable. Network executives have changed their mind in the past and they could do so again. What we do know is that a fifth season is unlikely.

–Alex Rawls

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September 22nd 2011

Oozing Treme

Treme on HBOAn ongoing concern about Treme is how it plays to an audience that isn’t pre-sold on New Orleans. Season two has started in England, where the second episode recently aired. There as here, the show seems to inspire weekly recaps; What Culture finished its wrap-up:

Treme is possibly the best-written show on TV at present and it’s richness oozes out of every second of screen time. To try and sum up all the story threads is not doing the show any justice especially as nothing major happens. Instead it’s the small pieces of story, the glances, passing comments and little decisions made by each and every character that make the show so rich. However, it’s tough to get into without watching from the start and a little bit of background knowledge off of Wikipedia helps with understanding the traditions of N’Orleans.

Treme is definitely a show to get into, but do it justice and begin at the beginning. You won’t regret it.

–Alex Rawls

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August 15th 2011

HBO Stands Behind Treme

During the shooting of the season finale, HBO renewed Treme for a third season. On Sunday, Dave Walker announced in The Times-Picayune that HBO has given David Simon and Eric Overmyer an open-ended order for additional seasons after that:

Richard Plepler and Michael Lombardo, HBO’s co-president and programming president, respectively, both said they renewed their modestly-viewed, New Orleans-set drama because they like it and believe that it’s telling important stories.

“There wasn’t any question from Michael and me that we wanted David to continue his narrative, and we told him that,” Plepler said. “It really wasn’t, frankly, even a decision for us. He wasn’t done telling the story, and we have such respect for him and regard for him, we want him to feel he’s expressed what he wants to express.”

The question then becomes how long Simon and Overmyer see the story going. During the first season, there was talk of five seasons, but last season, Simon was less committal:

We joked after we saw the BP thing and the Super Bowl happened in the same season, “Oh, Christ, can’t wait to get to season five!” But that was a joke and we hadn’t thought about it in any intelligent way. It may be that that is the place to end the show and that there is plenty of material that won’t be addressed in the first three seasons to justify it, but you have to keep climbing a mountain and at any point if you plateau, and all you’re doing is being incremental to your story and purpose and themes, then you’re ruining your viewer’s experience. No one believes this because there’s so much money in TV that if you get a franchise up and running, your job is to keep it running, but that’s a hack’s road.

I would be as ashamed to go to HBO with any incremental argument as I would be to not finish when I know there’s more to say. No one says to you when you get to chapter 18, “Listen we’re not going to do the last six chapters,” but television is its own beast. I find that to be the most debilitating thing, to do these things with the constant fear that you will be thwarted before you can say everything you want to say. I just had a conversation with HBO and said, “It’s my job to tell you what the plan is, and to have a plan, and have it be the best plan. I don’t know if it’s three, four or five [seasons] and neither does Eric. But we will know somewhere between the end of this season and beginning of the next one. And it’s my hope there will be a next one.”

–Alex Rawls

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August 2nd 2011

Treme Down Under

Delmond Lambreaux on HBO Treme.One of the questions we’ve always asked about Treme is how it plays outside New Orleans. Season two is just starting in Australia: how does it play out of the country?

Treme has some of the same difficulties and delights. The plots are satisfyingly complex and stretch over many hours, only sometimes tangling with each other along the way. There is a multiplicity of characters, with astonishing performances from actors both familiar and unfamiliar. And not every scene pushes along the plot: the writers make room for the small moments of life.

Treme is also different to The Wire—funnier and more joyful. If The Wire was centrally about the war on drugs and its failure, Treme is centrally about music and the consolation it can provide. Almost every tough scene is followed by a moment in which people are making music.

… and in other TV news, Cris Collinsworth has no idea what he’s talking about.

—Alex Rawls

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July 12th 2011

Steve Earle at House of Blues: Moving On

Steve Earle on HBO Treme.Last night’s Steve Earle and the Dukes and Duchesses show at House of Blues was more reserved than his last appearance in town in 2005 on the The Revolution Starts Now tour. That time, he came in riding a political album that called for change with rock ‘n’ roll; this time, he was closer to the busker he played on Treme, leading an instrumental lineup better suited to bluegrass. This time, he offered solace in hard times by singing old songs (or songs that could have been old) the way old songs are sung. Earle spoke surprisingly little during the show and referred little to Treme until he pulled out Harley’s guitar from the show to play “This City,” which was greeted by the crowd like it’s the national anthem.

“Some songs aren’t done until you play them for the people they’re intended for,” he said afterwards. “Now it’s done.”

–Alex Rawls

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July 4th 2011

Treme Wrap-Up: “Everything We Do Counts”

[SPOILER ALERT] The second season of Treme ended Sunday with an episode written by David Simon and Anthony Bourdain that echoed last year’s season finale, but not in an air-tight, look-what-I-did way. Last season, we saw Janette having a perfect day in New Orleans; this season, she rides the streetcar with Susan Spicer and goes to see Rebirth (last year, Soul Rebels). Last year, the episode ended with her getting on a plane to move to NYC; this season, she’s back in town and considering moving into a Cochon-like restaurant. Last season, Delmond was on his way back to New York as well; by the end of a season of rediscovering his New Orleans-ness, he’s letting his apartment going and moving back as well.

Last season, Trombone Shorty was Antoine’s Road Not Taken: what would have happened if he cared about music more than good times and girls? He reappears in that role to remind Batiste of his place in the world, having taken the Henry Butler gig Antoine blew off a gig to audition for. Last season, Antoine’s catch phrase was “Play for that motherfuckin’ money.” He ends this season with his little TBC busking on Frenchmen, advising them to “play for that money,” editing himself in deference to their youth.

In last year’s finale, Khandi Alexander’s LaDonna reconnects to her lust for life by saying goodbye to Daymo and joining his second line. This season, she finds herself again by joining the city in an expression of outrage that wasn’t just for her and her own sense of violation, but for the city’s sense of violation during that time. When she says, ”Bitch, I’m past upset; I’m all the way to Lost My Fucking Mind,” not only does she speak for all of us in 2006 and 2007, but she awakens from her sleepwalking self, one I suspect many of us recognize. If we see the cast and communal entity – the city – the exhaustion of DJs Davis and Jeffy Jeff in the final scene make sense. The effort involved in getting through that year was debilitating, and after people finally woke up from pipe dreams and depressed lethargy for one final 90-minute episode, everybody’s spent. All that was left was time for one final echo. Just as David Simon previewed the first season in the pilot as a montage while a posing Davis played Louis Prima’s “Buena Sera,” he put all of the stories to bed at the end of season two with a too-tired-to-play Davis spinning Louis Armstrong’s “Wrap Your Troubles in Dreams.” And if no one at Back of Town chews on that juxtaposition first, then I’ll try to get back to it.

All of those echoes and more I haven’t touched on are a reminder of how arbitrary time markers are in real life, and how one day, month, season or year gains meaning in context of those around them. That’s one place where the relationship between Treme and real life in New Orleans is an imperfect one since the series is constructed as a story meant to be told over 10 or 11 hours with a beginning, middle and ending, whereas endings (and, I’d argue, “closure”) are arbitrary, where a narrative is imposed backward on events that just took place. Still, those season-to-season echoes mark subtle shifts in characters and their situations and add resonance to the show’s narrative.

Other Notes:

- Antoine’s stint as a band leader revealed still more of his flaws, but you had to feel for him as he dealt with phone message after phone message of band foolishness including Wanda Rouzan calling him twice to chew him out before he’s even had breakfast.

- Toni’s friend announcing that she’s leaving is a reminder that our population was still in flux at that time, and many who came back found the city too grinding to continue living in.

- At Salon.com, Matt Zoller Seitz has complained much of the season that Treme has cut too quickly to the next scene. It’s hard to imagine he had that complaint when Davis was onstage with the Grassy Knoll with Alex McMurray having become the new guitarist. Steve Zahn played Davis’ pain, embarrassment and realization of what had to happen with great stillness, and the length of the scene made his discomfort palpable. (Zoller Seitz interviews David Simon today, with good stuff on LaDonna in the final episode.)

- After an Annie-heavy season, the episode’s more than a half-hour in before she appears on screen.

- While Sonny’s out shrimping and proving himself to Linh’s father, the theme of oil in the Gulf of Mexico is touched on, opening the door to future storylines should Treme last long enough.

- While the series has either mirrored real life or taken liberties with it, I’m not sure before this episode that it has chosen to affect reality. When Colson passes the Danziger Bridge files to the FBI, the production in effect is giving him credit for starting the investigation into the shooting.

- The Jazz Fest audience looked like a Jazz Fest audience; a lot of extras were really acting considering how cold it was the day they were shooting.

- I don’t share most people’s hostility toward Nelson, but like so many out-of-towners who’ve thought that New Orleans was their personal playpen, he learned that people play hardball here in ways you never anticipate, and no one’s as easily marginalized as an out-of-towner.

- One of my gripes with the series is its occasional tendency to explain the unnecessary, so it was nice to see Dr. Lonnie Smith onstage with Delmond and Donald Harrison without anybody saying, “Look, it’s Dr. Lonnie Smith!” And when James Andrews sat it with Rebirth at the Maple Leaf, the crowd took it in stride; it didn’t need explanation. I winced a little at the mouthful of exposition Janette had to deal with when she saw the streetcar, but the moment was redeemed by her tearing up as she rode it.

–Alex Rawls

 

 

 

In the series pilot, DJ Davis

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June 28th 2011

Treme Wrap-Up: David & Roselyn Get Their Wish

A few more Treme notes from this week’s episode.

- Last year, street musicians David and Roselyn started a Facebook campaign to be on the show. They got their wish this week when they appeared as part of the tribute to Harley in the park. (Though they’re not in this picture, they’re in this scene.)

- Earlier this season, we saw Wilbert Rawlins, Jr. directing the marching band at Desiree’s high school. Members of the To Be Continued Brass Band were students of Rawlins in high school, and he helped them learn to improvise and play as a brass band – a path that it looks like Antoine’s heading down with his student. (Rawlins is one of the figures in Dan Baum’s Nine Lives, so you can read more about this there.)

In a blog post at NPR’s “A Blog Supreme,” Patrick Jarenwattananon asks Josh Jackson the point of scenes with Harley, Spider Stacy and Jon Cleary “is that even though New Orleans regenerates its own scene, a sizeable number of its musicians are from somewhere that isn’t Louisiana.” Actually, that’s one of the uncomfortable realities about the New Orleans music community – the degree to which non-native New Orleanians are a part of the scene. Anders Osborne, Theresa Andersson, Galactic (with the exception of Stanton Moore) and Susan Cowsill are just the starting place of a list that grows yearly. Many of the Bywater musicians drifted in as well, all drawn by the same passions that Hector dives headfirst into, but that makes the question of what constitutes “New Orleans music” a complicated one.

- … and a great line from David Simon. I wondered during Dr. John’s scenes how they wrote for him. Raynola asked that question at the Back of Town blog, to which Simon replied:

You write what you think Mac might say if he had to say what you need him to say for the scene. Mac then looks at it and takes it to another whole level.

And later, we watch the dailies with shock and awe.

–Alex Rawls

 

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June 27th 2011

Treme Wrap-Up: The Storm, The Storm, The Storm

Antoine Batiste. HBO Treme.[SPOILER ALERT] Last year, I asked Wendell Pierce if Antoine’s financial and musical instability were functions of Katrina, his musical limitations or himself. He couldn’t answer because he hadn’t seen scripts yet that would clarify that issue, and I doubt he’s seen them this season either. One thing’s clear, though—the issues he faces have less to do with a hurricane and more to do with pre-existing conditions. Yes, he has stepped up as a teacher and as a parent (a bit), but he blew off one of his band’s shows to play with Henry Butler (that might lead to a European tour) and he tried to hijack Kermit’s crowd. This week, he can’t control his ego and sings answering lines during Wanda Rouzan’s version of Dorothy Moore’s “Misty Blue” (the original produced by Wardell Quezergue) until she blows up at him and quits the band onstage. When Cornell’s girlfriend sings, Antoine gives Desiree a reason to wonder if he’s cheating. He hovers over her—even though she’s a bandmate’s girl—like he’s going to do her on the set break.

We’ve seen the womanizing throughout the series, and we saw his inner ham when he was onstage with Bonerama earlier this season, so the question we’ll likely find an answer to at some point next season is whether a band can survive with such a shaky leader, and whether Antoine is self-destructive or he lacks control of his urges.

The other character who’s having a bad season is Davis, who’s being forced to face his limitations. Last season and early this season, he could come up with crazy schemes and get away with being an *ahem* “overachiever.” Once other people and their hope and money are on the line, his musical limitations are a liability, not an eccentricity. It’s hard to watch him be aced out of his band by Alex McMurray and partially bumped off the album that he hoped would launch his (exceedingly unlikely) musical career, and it’s interesting to watch Steve Zahn play Davis as being in a perpetual state of being stunned disbelief, snapping out of it only long enough to care for Annie. I think his relationship with her hit its apex at Christmas when she showed up in a bow and played for him; now, it feels more caring and friendly, like his relationship with Janette.

Other Notes:

- At the impromptu memorial for Harley, Davis talks about how Harley seemed to travel the world. In an interview earlier this year, Steve Earle (who played Harley) remembered meeting Luke Winslow-King when Winslow-King was busking in Rome.

- In another art-mirrors-life moment, Susan Cowsill leads the group in the singing of “Will the Circle Be Unbroken,” but she changes the line, “for to carry my mother away” to “brother away.” In context, it makes sense, but the moment’s resonant because Cowsill lost her brother Barry after Katrina, and her shows from the first half of 2006 were very public displays of grieving. By the spring of 2007, loss was part of her musical subtext, but it was no longer the dominant note.

- This season’s police stories have dovetailed with 2011 in interesting ways. Earlier in the season, Danziger Bridge made an appearance, and now the question of details appears, suggesting that police work has been compromised by the officers’ detail activities for years, though it returned to the front page of The Times-Picayune recently. The reference to the coroner’s office in St. Gabriel in the show performed a similar function.

- Antoine’s history of stiffing cabbie’s is so bad that a taxi driver’s actually happy when he only tips a dollar on a $20 fare.

- It sure looks like we’re going to get a Purple Rain-like scene to resolve the Harley/Annie story. As long at the Time show up to play “The Bird,” I’m good with that.

- Since there’s not time this season to wrap up the story of Sonny and the Vietnamese woman he loves, I assume that means next season will explore how the Vietnamese community fit into the New Orleans story.

- This episode was bad for the one thing Treme does that makes me nuts: scenes with New Orleans musicians that seem to exist just to get them in, and dialogue that tells us who they are. I was glad to see Harold Battiste make an appearance, and maybe the relevance of the scene will emerge in later viewings. First time through, it seems like it was there to put Harold in the scene. Similarly, if Delmond and Dr. John were going to debate whether recording in New York and New Orleans (at Piety Street Recording) was different, they wouldn’t have to identify Uganda Roberts, particularly since the episode before, Albert had brought up Roberts. Did it have to be Chris Thomas King’s house that Hector tried to buy?  Those moments clunk, no matter how well-meant.

- Speaking of Hector, one element of his character that’s easily missed in his story is how much he’s like any out-of-towner who moves here. He relishes the magic of the food, music and way of life the same way that people do who moved here after a Jazz Fest or Mardi Gras. No one on the show’s having more fun than he is, partially because he has the money to enjoy it – no doubt – but also because the city’s charms are all new to him.

–Alex Rawls

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June 20th 2011

Treme Wrap-Up: Worlds vs. Worlds

[Spoiler Alert] This season, Treme has pitted the characters’ little worlds – whether physical or mental – against the real world of conflicting priorities and values that returned in 2006, and the results haven’t been pretty. LaDonna has spent this season dealing with the consequences of having her little world, GiGi’s, no longer feel like her haven, and last night she couldn’t even go into it.

Davis fancies his band as a modern New Orleans version of Funkadelic, but like George Clinton, he discovers that people prefer the good times of the Lil’ Calliope-led Parliament to his theatrical political satire. Antoine’s desire to be big-time leads him to take his band out of the neighborhood bars that were filled with regulars to Frenchmen Street, where he faces the real musical world and a lack of a built-in audience. How does he solve the problem? The way he too often does – shortcuts, in this poaching Kermit Ruffins’ audience, even though Ruffins propped him up last season when he was down on his luck.

Hector faces is own version of this dynamic when he leaves the halls of power and tries to buy people’s property door-to-door, finding people resistant for reasons that have nothing to do with money.

It’s harder to read Lambreaux’s story this season because the character’s so bottled up. Is he depressed or angry because of post-Katrina circumstances, or has he always been a hard man to deal with? Is he a fish out of water in NYC, or is he just an arrogant prick? That ambiguity makes him fascinating, and the scenes with him in the recording session are really uncomfortable, lightened by the bemusement of Dr. John at the whole scene.

Most dramatically, Annie is forced into the real world with the shooting of Harley. The cameras stalking Harley and Annie as they walked said something was about to happen and made his performance of Hank Williams’ “I’ll Never Get Out of This World Alive” poignant. The scene made perfect sense (hate to disagree with Maitri at Back of Town), down to Harley’s slightly superior but well-meaning final comment, “You’re making a bad mistake, son.”

But his death will likely force Annie to own her song and her art, and it will likely put the wheels in motion to end her relationship-of-convenience with Davis. She split from one man who watched out for her in his fashion in Sonny, and she’s had her second musical mentor taken from her. As she slowly embraces her need to take responsibility for herself, she’ll likely see how little Davis brings to her life and move on.

Notes:

I usually restrict myself to observations that Dave Walker doesn’t make at Nola.com, where he’s encyclopedic in his rundown. Here are a few quickies:

- That is Peter “Spider” Stacy of the Pogues busking with Harley and Annie. Stacy is currently a Bywater resident.

- The episode ends with Allen Toussaint’s “Tipitina and Me” from the benefit album Our New Orleans. The track is Professor Longhair’s “Tipitina” played in a minor key, and according the producer Joe Henry, the track became his inspiration for Toussaint’s The Bright Mississippi album, which Henry produced:

“It sounded old world, it sounded classical, deeply rhythmic like tango, with New Orleans rhythm but also had a deep blues tonality,” Henry says. On a cross-country flight, he scoured his iPod for songs that might similarly showcase Toussaint’s rich musical voice, even though a jazz album seems counterintuitive as a follow-up to The River in Reverse, which celebrated his songwriting.

–Alex Rawls

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