“It was a brave move on Bob’s part to get out there on the floor with the actors,” said Pat Moran, “and he had that handsome, beleaguered look of a homicide cop.”
Even when there was something for him to cheer about, things never got too good for Ray Cole, evidenced in the day he is all smiles because he “got laid last night.”
“Oh, yeah?” says Bunk. “Does your asshole still hurt?”
Cole’s skills as an investigator are best shown in Episode 22, when he tries to pin a gun on Bodie after the shoot-out that killed a nine-yearold boy. He shares the scene with another ringer, former Baltimore police commissioner and Maryland State Police superintendent Ed Norris, playing a homicide detective of the same name.
“The thing is … you’re unbelievably stupid,” Norris says to Bodie. “I don’t say that to upset you, just to state a fact.”
When Bodie doesn’t flinch, Norris says to Cole, “He doesn’t think so.”
“Nobody ever thinks they’re stupid,” says Cole. “It’s part of the stupidity.”
Cole then tells Bodie they not only have the guns used in the shooting – true – but he himself crosses over to the Continent of Stupidity by bluffing that they have his prints on one of them.
“Which one?” says Bodie.
Like a guy trying to remember which shell hides the pea, Cole guesses wrong, and Bodie – who will survive the corner by not being stupid until his pride gets the best of him – simply says: “Lawyer.”
In the words of Dominic West: “It seemed this incredible inside joke to have the boss himself play this shambling, half-competent detective.”
WILLIAM F. ZORZI AS BILL ZORZI
Season Five’s political reporter was played with a cantankerous game face by Bill Zorzi, a respected Baltimore Sun journalist who filed hundreds of stories under the byline William F. Zorzi, Jr. before the idea of hitting a mark on a soundstage entered his cynical mind.
A man with an aversion to wearing socks, Bill was known at the Sun as “Zorzi” except to Peter Meredith, the paper’s whimsical British weekend editor, who christened him “Zorz Babe.”
Few outside the newsroom know that there were years in the late 1980s when Zorzi played it conservative by pulling back his bushy Irish-Italian mane in a ponytail.
At other times he was known to wear barrettes.
As a thespian, former City Desk colleagues of Zorzi said the Loyola High School graduate wasn’t half bad.
But he’s no Scott Shane.
EDWARD T. NORRIS AS DETECTIVE ED NORRIS
Edward T. Norris, a New Yorker brought to Baltimore to fight crime by Mayor Martin O’Malley, was the city police commissioner when The Wire debuted in 2002.
The then-commissioner’s first line on the show was a nod to the department’s rank and file.
“Show me the son of a bitch who can fix this department and I’ll give back half my overtime.”
By Season Two, Norris had jumped the O’Malley ship to become superintendent of the Maryland State Police. And before production began on Season Three, Norris had resigned after being indicted on federal tax and misappropriation charges on misuse of a quasi-public city police fund. He pleaded guilty in March of 2004.
Of Norris’s acting chops, Simon said: “He says his lines and he doesn’t walk into furniture.”
Casting director Pat Moran was similarly impressed, but more so when he was the city’s top cop: “When Ed Norris was city police commissioner, the drug corner in my neighborhood got cleaned up.”
Norris held his own well enough to last through Season Five, when Bubbles goes into withdrawal in a police interrogation room and throws up on him.
LAURA LIPPMAN AND MICHAEL OLESKER AS THEMSELVES
Lippman, a longtime Baltimore Sun reporter and daughter of a Sun editorial writer, shared an early scene in Season Five with Michael Olesker, who wrote a local column for the paper for many years.
Together, they stand at a conference room window and watch smoke rise from a fire on the other side of town, sort of like a couple of kids trying to figure out what animals passing clouds look like.
Their reverie is broken when city editor Gus Haynes comes in and questions the heart of reporters who would watch a fire instead of chase one.
“David [Simon] approached me with a shyness totally out of character for him and asked if I’d mind doing a cameo,” said Olesker. “Are you kidding? He’s been a friend through good times and awful times, and from the moment I met him maybe 25 years ago, I realized this was a guy who was out to tell the truth.”
Added Olesker: “Standing in that remarkable recreation of the Sun newsroom was like being transported back before newspapers started falling off the side of the earth.”
JEFFREY FUGITT AS OFFICER CLAUDE DIGGINS, MARINE BOAT PILOT
Ahab to McNulty’s Ishmael, Diggins was played by Officer Jeffrey Fugitt of the city marine unit, proving it’s easier to teach a boatman to act than the other way around.
Fugitt’s best line comes while watching in disbelief as McNulty tries to tie a line from the police boat to a pier piling: “Why don’t you just do bunny ears?”
Said Moran, “I think he was more terrified of our cameras than plucking five floaters a day out of the harbor.”
RETIRED BALTIMORE SUN REWRITE MAN DAVID MICHAEL ETTLIN AS HIMSELF
“I showed up to find my name taped on a cast trailer door, received a shirt and tie picked out by the costumers, enjoyed lunch with the extras, memorized my precious few seconds of dialogue in the script,” said Ettlin, who spent 40 years working for his hometown newspaper.
“I had my recent haircut blessed by the stylist and a few years of wrinkles and blemishes removed from my face and walked up to the second floor of the production building for my first look at The Wire’s Sun newsroom.
“I was flabbergasted. Had I fallen asleep in the real newsroom and awakened on the set, I would have been very disoriented for the first minute or so … all so amazingly real.”
Following his own, well-honed edict that the first rule of rewrite when an editor floats a story is to “shoot it down”, Ettlin delivered this line – spoken in the real Sun newsroom more than a decade earlier – on his final screen appearance.
“Just because something happens doesn’t mean it’s news. There’s always a salmonella outbreak somewhere. I don’t see why we have to cover this one.”
DE’ANDRE MCCULLOUGH AS LAMAR
Brother Mouzone’s bodyguard is played by De’Andre McCullough, protagonist of David Simon’s non-fiction narrative, The Corner.
A man of few words, Lamar delivers a mouthful with a subtle look when Mouzone sits with a pile of books – including Love in the Time of Cholera by Gabriel García Márquez – outside the Franklin Terrace high-rise.
“Do you know what the most dangerous thing in America is?” asks Mouzone, who has just run Cheese off the turf with a shot of ratgut to the shoulder. “A nigger with a library card.”
Lamar and a fellow lieutenant share a look that says: How many times do we have to hear that one?
FORMER MARYLAND GOVERNOR ROBERT EHRLICH AS A STATE TROOPER WORKING STATE HOUSE SECURITY
To Mayor Carcetti, whom the fictional governor has kept waiting for more than an hour, Ehrlich says: “… the governor’s office says he’s ready to see you now.”
BLUE EPPS AS A MAN AT BLIND BUTCHIE’S BAR ARGUING THE MERITS OF PORT VERSUS SHERRY
George “Blue” Epps, a real-life survivor of the corners of West Baltimore. Clean and sober for more than a decade, Epps works as a drug counselor in West Baltimore.
“A real corner guy who straightened himself out,” said Moran. “He has a great face. You don’t go through a war zone and escape with your life without some battle scars.”
NATHAN “BODIE” BARKSDALE AS A RECOVERING ADDICT WHO REFUSES TO SIGN JUNKIE JOHNNY’S COURT SLIP IN SEASON ONE
Barksdale had only recently been released from the Maryland Correctional Institution in Jessup when this episode was
filmed.
Although no specific character in The Wire was modeled on him, Simon and Burns were familiar with his status as a drug trafficker in the 1980s and used both his surname and street moniker in homage.
RETIRED BALTIMORE POLICE SERGEANT JAY LANDSMAN AS LIEUTENANT DENNIS MELLO
The real-life Sergeant Jay Landsman, a key player in David Simon’s 1991 non-fiction narrative Homicide, and a friend to young police reporters, played Mello.
The bigger Robert Wisdom’s role as Howard “Bunny” Colvin became, the larger Lieutenant Mello’s screen presence. Mello was most prominent across the “Hamsterdam” arc of Season Three.
“He’s got a great sense of humor, which is good, because if you’re humor-impaired, making movies in Baltimore alleys is not the place to be,” said Moran. “And he might have one of the thickest Baltimore accents going and he looks like a cop.”
BOXING TRAINER MACK LEWIS AS HIMSELF
Lewis, now in his nineties, played the old trainer hanging on the ropes who gives Lester Freamon an old promotional poster of former Golden Gloves boxer Avon Barksdale. The scene was filmed in Lewis’s East Baltimore gym where John Waters filmed the fight scenes in his 1977 film Desperate Living.
BALTIMORE TRIAL LAWYER BILLY MURPHY AS HIMSELF
William H. Murphy, Jr., was born into a prominent Baltimore family: an ancestor bought the fledgling Afro-American newspaper in the late 19th century and made it one of the most influential black papers in the country. His father was one of the first black judges in the State of Maryland.
The Murphy Homes housing projects on the Westside, which imploded like the fictional Franklin Terrace high-rise at the beginning of Season Three of The Wire, were named after his family.
On the show, Murphy plays an attorney accompanying state senator Clay Davis into a courthouse. Former Maryland state senator and local radio host Larry Young – whose career was not dissimilar to Davis’s – plays a talk show host on The Wire who has Clay Davis as a guest.
Though one of the most successful attorneys in metropolitan Baltimore – he has successfully defended boxing promoter Don King and has said of his clients that they are “… a child of God and everyone else is a son-of-abitch” – Murphy’s first love is jazz.
A drummer, his playing is about as subtle as his courtroom theatrics. If Keith Moon had lived to play jazz, it might sound like Billy Murphy on a good night.
CLIFTON GROSS, FORMER PRESIDENT OF THE INTERNATIONAL LONGSHOREMEN’S ASSOCIATION LOCAL NO. 333, AS A CARGO HANDLER
In Season Two, Gross helps Frank Sobotka unload a container in the scene where Sobotka – wracked with guilt over the way his best intentions on the docks turn to shit – works a ship to “get clean.”
RICHARD PRICE AS A PRISON ENGLISH TEACHER
Richard Price, author of the novels Clockers, Samaritan and Lush Life, as well as the screenplay for The Color of Money, led a group study of The Great Gatsby.
In the class, D’Angelo Barksdale – having accepted the truth about his Uncle Avon – sees beyond Gatsby’s glitter as well.
DAVID SIMON AS AN OBNOXIOUS REPORTER
Simon, notebook in hand, plays one of a number of anonymous reporters haranguing Frank Sobotka for a quote when the union leader leaves the longshoremen’s headquarters after his arrest by the FBI.
Of the performance by the Wire creator, Pat Moran said, “He should stick to what he knows best.”
episode fifty-seven
“TOOK”
“They don’t teach it in law school.”
– PEARLMAN
Directed by Dominic West
Story by David Simon & Richard Price; teleplay by Richard Price
We all know that Jimmy McNulty likes action – whiskey, women, and wisecracks – and in this episode, Dominic West got the chance to call “ACTION!” in his directorial debut for The Wire. The story opens with reporter Scott Templeton taking a call in the newsroom from McNulty, who launches into a scripted rant, masquerading as the serial killer.
The killer tells Templeton to stop making up shit about him and putting it in the paper. Both incredulous and panicked, Templeton alerts his editors and tries to get McNulty on the phone, unaware that he’s been on the line with the half-baked (and often pickled) detective all along.
Still on the phone with Templeton, Jimmy is starting to get a kick out of his experimental theatre and lays on a heavy “Bawlmer” accent.
McNulty/Serial Killer tells Templeton they won’t be able to find the victims anymore and Freamon sends two pictures of Mr. Bobbles over the cell line.
Back in the detail listening room, Detective Vernon Holley – who is not in on the scheme – thinks he’s got his first break in the serial killer wiretap. Cops begin to swarm the Inner Harbor, where they believe the call is coming from. Already there, Sydnor switches off the cell through which Freamon has placed McNulty’s call, wraps it in aluminum foil and joins in the search for the killer.
In homicide, Landsman, Greggs, Detective Ed Norris, and Holley review the wire recording while McNulty meets Templeton and his editors on Calvert Street.
Gleefully putting Templeton on the spot, Jimmy asks the reporter if it sounded like the same guy. Assuring him it did (after some hesitation) Scott says he didn’t remember such a heavy Baltimore accent the first time.
McNulty asks the editors not to publish the photo of the new victim and not to say where the cell call came from. Unable to resist needling Templeton one more time on his way out, McNulty tells the reporter that the killer is just using him. When the reporter finds that offensive, Jimmy says it shouldn’t, since the whole thing has been a boon for him. Haynes clocks this and his suspicions regarding Templeton bloom anew.
In the wake of the phone call and photos from the serial killer, Judge Phelan signs an amended wiretap order, noting that this is all bad news for Carcetti – and his presumed run for governor – who ran for mayor on a law-and-order platform.
Carcetti, furious that the killer hasn’t been caught yet, lifts the ban on overtime for the case and bitches out Rawls, who calls Daniels, who summons Landsman and Bunk Moreland to his office. Angry that McNulty’s bogus horseshit is sucking up what little resources exist, Bunk refuses to go to the meeting.
On the corner, Michael is put in cuffs by Carver and Officer Baker and taken downtown. In the homicide interrogation room, Bunk shows Michael photos of his stepfather’s brutally beaten body. The boy does not flinch and does not cooperate.
When Bunk criticizes McNulty and Freamon for the mess they’ve made, Lester says they’re just a couple of weeks away at most from nailing Marlo.
And when Haynes tells Klebanow and Whiting that Templeton’s prose style is over-the-top purple, Klebanow tells Gus he’ll edit the story himself.
The FBI begins doing voice analysis of McNulty’s fake phone call to Templeton. Freaked out, Jimmy pleads with Freamon to finish off Marlo as soon as possible.
While Bubbles serves guests at the Viva House soup kitchen on Mount Street – working alongside the real Brendan Walsh, who founded Viva House with his wife Willa Bickham – he recognizes Sun reporter Mike Fletcher.
Bubbles later takes Fletcher to a homeless village and tells the reporter to write it the way it feels.
Freamon and Sydnor intercept a photo from Marlo’s phone: a picture of a clock reading 5:50 which is followed by a quick call to Monk. Sydnor heads out to tail Monk, who doesn’t move for an hour and a half.
At Clay Davis’s corruption trial, Rupert Bond questions Day-Day the driver about $40,000 he received as the executive director of a charity. Day-Day says he never saw any of the money; it all went back to Davis.
Defense attorney Billy Murphy points out that the driver has received immunity from prosecution in return for his testimony. He then gets Day-Day to admit that he was the one who cashed the checks for the charity salary and – even if it was supposed to go back to Davis – there’s no proof the senator received it.
Meanwhile, McNulty has become
the patron saint of OT in the homicide unit, doling it out to all of his begging colleagues from the serial killer account, promising to make the paperwork jive.
Haynes reads Templeton’s published story, the one edited by Klebanow, and tosses the newspaper with disgust before heading to Kavanaughs, a cop bar, for a drink. There, he sees Major Mello from the Western and asks if it’s possible that a woman could be processed through the court system on a fake ID. Mello says no, that judicial system IDs are linked to fingerprints and someone must be fucking with him.
On the street, Omar grabs Savino Bratton (played by Chris Clanton) and kills him with a bullet to the head, checking off another name on his list of Stanfield crew-members. At Michael’s corner, he tells the boy that he’s going to kill the rest of Marlo’s muscle until Stanfield meets him in the street. Once he’s gone, Michael is relieved that he wasn’t recognized from the shootout at Monk’s apartment.
When Lester tells McNulty they’ll need more man hours and cars for surveillance to break Marlo’s “clock code,” Jimmy confesses to throwing OT hours around the office and Freamon warns that he’s going to screw the whole thing up.
Seven or eight detectives are going to be necessary for the home stretch, says Lester, as he and McNulty try to think of people in the district stations whom they trust.
At City Hall, Carcetti is told that if the investigation of the serial killer lingers for even a month, he will be forced to lay off teachers. And that would be disaster for a candidate running for governor.
In court, Clay Davis gives the performance of his life. And the story is Robin Hood as Davis explains the reality of poor neighborhoods, that while the charity money did wind up in his bank account, he never kept a dime.
Cash and carry is the current of the ’hood, he says, that’s how it works when people come to him directly for help with baby food and funerals.
When he’s finished, the gallery erupts in applause, and Bond and Pearlman stand by, baffled.
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