大卫·西蒙

大卫·犹大·西蒙（英语：David Judah Simon，1960年2月9日—）是犹太裔美国的一位作家、记者、电视剧编剧兼执行制片。

生平

他曾为《巴尔的摩太阳报》工作过12年。他创作的《凶杀：杀人街年记》（Homicide: A Year on the Killing Streets）以及和同艾德·伯恩斯合作的《街角：城巷一年见闻》（The Corner: A Year in the Life of an Inner-City Neighborhood）。前者成为美国全国广播公司（NBC）剧集《凶杀：街头生涯》（Homicide: Life on the Street）的蓝本，西蒙担任该剧的编剧及制片人。而西蒙同HBO合作，又将后者改编成了迷你剧《街角》。西蒙最有名的作品就是HBO电视剧《火线》，他在其中担任首席编剧、执行制片以及播出负责人长达六年之久。他还将纪实文学《杀戮世代》（Generation Kill，又译为《伊拉克战争亲历记》）改编成了同名HBO迷你剧，并为该剧担任播出负责人。

David Judah Simon (born 1960) is an American author, journalist, screenwriter, and producer best known for his work on The Wire (2002–2008).

He worked for The Baltimore Sun City Desk for twelve years (1982–1995), wrote Homicide: A Year on the Killing Streets (1991), and co-wrote The Corner: A Year in the Life of an Inner-City Neighborhood (1997) with Ed Burns. The former book was the basis for the NBC series Homicide: Life on the Street (1993–1999), on which Simon served as a writer and producer. Simon adapted the latter book into the HBO mini-series The Corner (2000).

He is the creator, executive producer, head writer, and showrunner of the HBO television series The Wire (2002–2008). He adapted the non-fiction book Generation Kill into a television mini-series and served as the showrunner for the project. He was selected as one of the 2010 MacArthur Fellows and named an Utne Reader visionary in 2011. Simon also created the HBO series Treme with Eric Overmyer, which aired for four seasons. Following Treme, Simon adapted former New York Times reporter Lisa Belkin's nonfiction Show Me A Hero (1999), into an HBO mini-series, with journalist William F. Zorzi, a colleague at The Baltimore Sun and on The Wire. Simon and frequent collaborator George Pelecanos reunited to create original series The Deuce. The drama about the New York porn industry in the 1970s and 1980s starred producer Maggie Gyllenhaal and executive producer James Franco and aired from 2017 to 2019. Simon's next series, The Plot Against America, debuted in 2020.

We Own This City was developed and written by George Pelecanos and Simon and directed by Reinaldo Marcus Green. The six-episode limited series premiered on HBO on April 25, 2022.

Early life and education

Simon was born in Washington, D.C., the son of Dorothy Simon (née Ligeti), a homemaker, and Bernard Simon, a former journalist and then public relations director for B'nai B'rith for 20 years. Simon was raised in a Jewish family, and had a bar mitzvah ceremony. His family roots are in Russia, Belarus, Hungary, and Slovakia (his maternal grandfather had changed his surname from "Leibowitz" to "Ligeti"). He has a brother, Gary Simon, and a sister, Linda Evans, who died in 1990.

In March 1977, when Simon was still in high school, Simon's father was one of a group of over 140 people held hostage (and later released) in Washington, D.C., by former national secretary of the Nation of Islam Hamaas Abdul Khaalis in the Hanafi Siege.

Simon graduated from Bethesda-Chevy Chase High School in Bethesda, Maryland, and wrote for the school newspaper, The Tattler. In 1983, he graduated from the University of Maryland, College Park. While at college he wrote and was editor for The Diamondback, and became friends with contemporary David Mills.

Career

Journalism

Upon leaving college, Simon worked as a police reporter at The Baltimore Sun from 1982 to 1995. Simon was hired by the Baltimore Sun for a piece he wrote about Lefty Driesell, who was then the men's basketball coach at the University of Maryland. Driesell had been extremely frustrated that one of his players was suspended from playing for sexual impropriety and called the victim, threatening to destroy her reputation if she did not withdraw her complaint. This was all done while the university administration was listening to the call, but they did nothing. Lefty Driesell was later given a 5-year contract and, in 2018, he was inducted into the ACC Hall of Fame.

Simon spent most of his career covering the crime beat. A colleague has said that Simon loved journalism and felt it was "God's work". Simon says that he was initially altruistic and was inspired to enter journalism by The Washington Post's coverage of Watergate but became increasingly pragmatic as he gained experience.