Difficult Men: The story of a TV revolution
Our friend who convinced us to watch The Wire and Breaking Bad sent us a copy of Difficult Men by Brett Martin. We were going to skim through it the other night and ended up reading the whole shebang. The writing is slightly annoying GQ-gushy, but the story is thrilling. (There’s an extended pun on the use of Nick Lowe’s The Beast In Me in the Sopranos soundtrack that makes us want to punch Martin in the face.)
Difficult Men is about a bunch of guys who kept saying, “This is great, but no one will watch it,” and then proved themselves wrong. Who knew that the idiot box would be the site of the next New Wave? Even David Chase, the creator of The Sopranos, thought he was selling out by working on TV.
The book is 90 percent The Sopranos and The Wire, with a sidebar on Deadwood. (Early on, the writer calls Al Swearengen of Deadwood “as cretinous a character as would ever appear on television”. Really?? Someone throw a dictionary at the writer.) The face of Bryan Cranston as Heisenberg on the cover is a total gyp, designed to draw Breaking Bad fans who are having withdrawal symptoms even before the show ends. Breaking Bad, a true spawn of The X-Files, merits just 14 pages and an epilogue by its creator Vince Gilligan.
Essentially, Difficult Men is the story of three Davids: Chase, Simon (The Wire) and Milch (Deadwood and the ill-fated Luck), the thinking that went into their groundbreaking shows, and the process of making them happen. (Index cards and whiteboards are essential. Story conferences must have plenty of food.) It’s also a reminder that Method acting can kill you. We wonder if that really was the first chapter of the book, or if they moved it up after James Gandolfini died.
Sex and the City is dismissed in a few lines. Fine, that show self-destructed, and the title of the book is not Difficult Women, but the condescension is palpable. (“Its characters were types as familiar as those in The Golden Girls…”) The horror of the final season and subsequent movies does not negate the role of Sex and the City in the cable revolution. Have some respect. There’d be no Girls without it.
The main lesson from the TV revolution: Let the writers run the show.
Answers to questions you might be asking, unless you wandered onto this site purely by accident >>>
September 27th, 2013 at 10:15
I’ve only lately been catching up on this supposed golden age of TV. I have loved Homeland, House of Cards and The Walking Dead so far. (Can’t wait for the new season, with Homeland’s S3E1 coming this Sunday, I believe.) I still have to watch The Sopranos, The Wire and Breaking Bad. Did you like Mad Men? I tried watching the pilot but it was exquisitely boring so I didn’t even get to finish it.
You’re right about Sex and the City and X-files; those laid the ground work for this “golden age” (notwithstanding the bad movie sequels). I have really only watched probably about 25% of X-files at the most so I’m glad all the shows are on Netflix…just have to find the time to do a marathon. I did catch the very first episode not long ago and it’s amazing how almost “period drama” it seems now. The show definitely evolved significantly over the years.
September 27th, 2013 at 20:09
Panalo si Drogon! Pang-pusa ni Vito Corleone!
September 29th, 2013 at 01:08
For a second there I thought you were referring to Alan Sepinwall’s “The Revolution was Televised”, which goes more in depth with Breaking Bad, the other Davids’ shows plus Oz, Buffy and Mad Men. Highly recommended!
September 29th, 2013 at 23:00
silentfollower: Namamangha kami sa pusang yan! Ang bait-bait, napuputulan namin ang kuko niya. At masunurin. Pag sinabihan ng, “No, don’t do that,” hindi inuulit. Kaya siguro nagwe-welga si Koosi at Saffy, nagmumukha silang bad manners. Hmp.
September 30th, 2013 at 22:52
Ms. JZ: Wow, nakakatuwa naman si Drogon! Inaabangan ko ang muli niyang pamamasyal sa mall.
Maaari ngang naninibugho sila Saffy at Koosi. Sana ay magaling na sila at nagbalik sa dating kasiglahan. At sana’y huwag na silang magtampo.
Isang pagbati rin kay Mat. Minsa’y naisip ko na maaaring lolo siya sa tuhod ni Drogon kaya’t sila’y magkakiskisang-balahibo.
October 1st, 2013 at 15:07
No, really, can anyone explain why HBO Girls is a big deal? OK, brownie points for Lena’s “not-for-TV body,” but is that all there is?
Isn’t this show just a TV version of the upper class kolehiyala hipsters who think they’re so, like, deep because they read everything in their SocSci reading list and follow indie bands, and thus their problems are much, much deeper?