David Simon's new show on HBO has a lot of flashy elements going for it: it stars James Franco as twin brothers who become fronts for the Mob, it explores the emerging porn industry in '70s New York, and of course it comes from the creator of The Wire. But for Simon, the show is about much more than just those flashy elements; it's about exploring what happened to the porn industry at its start and how that's still relevant today.
"I'm much less interested in whether porn is good or bad in a moral sense ... as I am in the way power and money array themselves, and how society arranges themselves into some people are victims and some people are victimized," Simon said during a panel for The Deuce at the 2017 summer TV Critics' Association press tour. "I'm much more interested in the way when a product becomes a product and an industry becomes an industry and how that is now market capitalism, and also how labor is treated or not treated."
The Deuce stars Franco as brothers Vincent and Frankie Martino, twin brothers who work in Times Square in 1978 who were inspired by real people. The ensemble of talented actors includes Maggie Gyllenhaal as sex worker Eileen "Candy" Merrell who is drawn into the emerging industry of pornography, as well as Lawrence Gillard Jr. as an NYPD patrolman to show the role that law enforcement had during porn's rise.
Simon explored similar various facets of the same story in The Wire, and found what drew him, along with frequent collaborator George Pelecanos, to The Deuce is the way its tale is still reflective of our world around us.
"I'm not interested in making a piece about 1970s porn just to make a piece about 1970s porn that doesn't in some way argue to us right now," he said. "I think this is a moment that if you look at how it arrayed itself, what happened, where the money went, who got paid and who didn't, and who paid the cost. If you watch the show in the context of what we know the world to be, I think that will say a lot more than whether it's good or bad to look at dirty pictures.
"This is a moment where you actually get to see something go from paperback beneath the counter ... and then suddenly it's legal, and everyone realizes that the money involved in that is going to be real. And what happens to those people who were the pioneers and who become caught up in it or who siezed it aggressively and willingly, what happened to them is really fascinating," he continued. "There's something really telling about who gets paid, who gets left out, who gets betrayed, who achieves some degree of agency, who doesn't. We're not using misogyny as a currency to get you interested. If we made something that is purely titilating, then damn us. I am interested in it being an actual product, and how it became such a fundamental product to the point where Times Square is no longer there ... but pornography is everywhere. It's obviously bigger than its moment."
The Deuce creative team drew from consultants in everything from the sex work industry to porn to the NYPD, with the goal to have people who were alive during this time and experienced it not thinking they get it wrong and they "get the straight story."
For Franco, who never got to meet the real person on which his character was based, it was an opportunity to "combine my romantic notions of old New York with these guys who are just about the facts ma'am. I think it created an exciting combination ... and had real meaning. There was a point to go back and look at that time."
As this is HBO, The Deuce will include stimulating sexual imagery that would be expected in a show about porn. But when asked about the way HBO has been taken to task for its various shows' depiction of women experiencing sexual or violent situations, Gyllenhaal said The Deuce won't fall into those criticisms because it tries to be intentionally challenging.
"If the show also turns you on a little and then makes you consider what's actually turning you on and the consequences that's turning you on and what's making you hot, that's a better show," she said, saying she hopes it make the viewer "consider your position right now in America in the way sex is commodified."
"I think it's become clear in a way that wasn't clear maybe a year ago that there is a huge amount of misogny in the world," Gyllenhaal continued. "Here we have this opportunity to pick it up and lay it on the table, and do it in a way that's thoughful and smart, and also real. So that includes having to see some things that look violent and uncomfortable. I think if you don't put that on the table and take a really good clear look at it, nothing will happen, nothing will change. To me, I feel like playing a prostitute that does go through very, very difficult things, as a filter through which to look at women and our relationship to sex, to power, to cash, to art, is maybe one of the most interesting ways to go in and explore the state that we're actually in."
Terri Schwartz is Editorial Producer at IGN. Talk to her on Twitter at @Terri_Schwartz.
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