Video: ATX Festival Panel — Beau Willimon in conversation with David Simon and Tom Fontana

From the recent ATX Festival:

After more than a decade of reporting crime from the streets of Baltimore, how did a career journalist like David Simon learn to navigate a TV writers’ room? The outcome was in no small part due to the indispensable guidance of veteran TV producer Tom Fontana. Together, they brought Simon’s realistic characterization of the BPD’s Homicide division to life in the provocative and critically-lauded, Homicide: Life on the Street. Separately, the two would go on to create two series that began to define HBO and stand out as part of the TV revolution: Oz and The Wire. Join Simon and Fontana as they reflect on their earlier and vastly different experiences in the realm of 90s broadcast TV.

Simon and Fontana are icons: Homicide, Oz, The Wire. Incredible TV. And Willimon (House of Cards) is on his way to joining them. The conversation is both illuminating and hysterical, so many great anecdotes.

For example for the series Oz, Fontana wrote out each character’s story for the entire season, all their scenes, then folded the scenes together into an episode.

For more ATX Festival videos, go here.