Real Characters in #Treme

In the play Brooklyn Boy, a best-selling novelist returns to his home borough to be with his ailing father.  He continually explains to his friends and family that they are not in his book, but rather characters in the book are based on them.  They fail to understand the difference.  The author’s friend keeps asking him, “but it’s me, right?”   Even his father complains about the dedication, “to my mother and father.”  “Couldn’t you have used our NAMES?” he demands.   It turns out that the author is uncomfortable about how his upbringing formed him and he’s trying to separate himself from that reality.

Treme will be walking this tightrope between fact and fiction.  There are characters sprung fully formed from the forehead of David Simon, characters based on real people, and real people playing themselves.  Elaine Wolff in the San Antonio Current has already called them on it, saying that the John Goodman character, Creighton Bernette, serves as a proxy bullhorn for the social justice and political issues surrounding the levees and the federal response.  She also says that actors Clarke Peters and Wendell Pierce rise above the “central casting” characters they were handed.

Commenters quickly jumped on the topic, indicating that the Goodman character is no proxy, but is rather a reference to Ashley Morris, the very real blogger who spoke truth to power (and anybody else within shouting distance).  In Newsweek, Joshua Alston says that, “Simon doesn't treat his characters like people as much as walking ambassadors for the most esoteric details of NOLA culture.”  If characters are real people, or based on real people, or are real life New Orleanians filling the ranks of extras,  purposefully included in the writing, are they esoteric details? 

The power of film/tv, as opposed to theater, is that the focus is directed.  In a close-up shot, the viewer can’t focus anywhere else.  (Except for maybe on the snacks in one’s lap.) The casting and character development do the same thing.  The focus is directed at a certain characteristic and a certain point in time.  That’s the reality for that moment. It may be real, based on something real, or completely fiction, but it serves that moment. 

Some productions do this well, others do it poorly.  It’s interesting to follow the build up to the Treme  premiere because of this very facet.  Some wonder if the show will actually “get it,” others are just pleased that somebody’s even taking it on and looking beyond the Hollywood star machine for casting.  As David Simon put it in the recent NPR Fresh Air interview, ”who can play Kermit Ruffins or Dr. John?  Nobody.” This is not to say that casting a New Orleanian by itself ensures authenticity.  The writing and the performance can sink that ship before it even launches. 

Simon has said that Treme is not a documentary.  It leaves out a whole lot, and puts in a lot of imagination.  As the novelist in Brooklyn Boy might put it, this is not New Orleans, but it’s based on New Orleans.  Unlike the novelist in the play however, the point is not to create distance, but rather to create accessibility to a very unique place. (Listen to the Firewall and Iceberg podcast for a discussion.) The ultimate decision for us as the audience is to decide if the moments they create are enough of a reality for us to be entertained and educated.