All the Pieces Matter : The Inside Story of the Wire

I loved this book.

Every single page had something illuminating/funny/thought-provoking/amazing/interesting. An oral history at 320 pages is a good length, however I wished for another 100 pages easily (Abrams had thousands of unused pages).

If you love The Wire, you will love this book. If you liked The Wire, but didn't watch it closely enough/watched it too long ago to understand the subtleties that helped craft it into one of the best (in my personal opinion, THE best) shows of all time, you will like this book. If you never watched The Wire, go watch the goddamn Wire and stop reading this review. If you watched The Wire and didn't like it, we can't be friends.

The book was filled with many great tidbits, but here's a few short quotes that stuck out to me:

David Simon: Sometimes a story needs its vegetables

David Simon: The audience is a child. If you ask the audience what they want, they'll want dessert. They'll say they want ice cream. They'll want cake. You ask them what they want next, they'll want more ice cream, more cake. “You like Omar?” “yeah I love Omar, give me more of Omar.” No, I want to tell you a story, and the characters are going to do what they're supposed to do in the story, and that's the job of the writer. That's the storyteller's job. You don't write for anybody except the story. The moment you start thinking about the audience and the audience's expectarion, you're lost.”

Andre Royo: He really understood that the audience was starting to change and appreciate not being treated like they're stupid. Nothing has to be spelled out. They can stick with a story even though there's forty characters. All of a sudden, The Wire became that show where there's a hierarchy. If you say you like The Wire, that means you like reading books. It means you give a fuck about the human race. It made you feel like you went out and bettered yourself when you say, “My favorite show is The Wire.” All of a sudden, people look at you differently, it became a badge of honour to tell somebody, “Have you heard about The Wire? You got to watch The Wire.”