David Simon Shares Our Approach to Appeal
“When I/we write, the person we imagine either reading or watching it is the person who understands the event. So if I’m writing a homicide detective, I want other homicide detectives […] to say, ‘This guy knows my world, this is the way it is.’ […] I don’t care about the other people. The other people will follow; some of them will and some of them won’t. I don’t care if it becomes inside baseball. I regard these things as travel logs of a kind: Here’s a chance for you to go to a drug corner in West Baltimore; I know you’re never going on your own, so you’re not going to understand everything, and they’re gonna be using some vernacular, but if you’re really interested in the travel show you’ll come along. […] It’s always writing for the person living the event, and not wanting to be ashamed in front of them, and I don’t care about anybody else.”
-David Simon, on the intended audience appeal for his work, from a lecture
