Today, Times Square is the number-two tourist destination on earth, as aggressively cheerful as Disney World. But in the 1970s, it was a scuzzy, seedy wonderland of lowlife pushers, peep shows, and, most of all, prostitutes and pimps. It's no wonder, then, that David Simon, the mastermind behind The Wire, set his new HBO show, The Deuce, there. Cocreated by George Pelecanos, it tells the story of Vincent and Frankie Martino, identical twins (each played by James Franco) inspired by real-life brothers, who open a mob-backed "massage parlor." When a court finds that New York has no "community standards" to speak of, overturning decades of obscenity laws and unleashing the national id, the Martino brothers, along with Candy (played by producer Maggie Gyllenhaal), a hooker who finds her real talent behind the camera, set off to achieve the American dream. It's a wild ride, as gritty as Midnight Cowboy and as good as Simon's best.
David Simon: HBO gets a lot of porn-show pilots—about four a year. So George and I were really reluctant. But Marc Johnson, our assistant location manager on Treme, kept telling us, "You gotta meet this guy; you gotta hear his story." We had some things to do in New York, so to be polite, we went to see the surviving brother. About two and a half hours in, George and I excused ourselves to go smoke a cigarette. Neither one of us smokes. We walked around the block and said, "Jesus, we're gonna have to do a porn show!" The stories were just coming off this guy.
ESQUIRE: Maggie, how did you get involved?
Maggie Gyllenhaal: David sent me the first three scripts and we had a coffee. I'd never made a commitment like that, let alone played a prostitute, so I said I wanted to be a producer, which was kind of a big ask. And I remember you said, "Are you ultimately going to trust that I'm the storyteller here?" After a couple conversations, we were like, "Yeah, let's do it."
DS: We were both interested in the same things and terrified of the same things. You don't want to do this story if you don't know exactly why you're doing it. You don't want to do it just to do it.
MG: Otherwise, it's Pretty Woman.
DS: We both said, "We have to be the antidote to that, and if we don't, shame on us."
ESQ: And of course, Pretty Woman started out as a dark drama before it went through the studio machine.
DS: If you're going to hold yourself above these people who really were the pioneers of this new industry that was about to affect the way every American viewed sex in his or her own life, then you're an asshole and the piece is going to reflect that. On the other hand, if the camera is lingering for longer than it ought, then you're making porn to critique porn. Then you're full of shit.
MG: And that conversation continued throughout the entire five, six months we were shooting.
DS: Frame by frame.
MG: Sometimes I'd say, "How could you have possibly cut that orgasm? That's the reason we did this scene!"
DS: In the back of my mind, I pictured the guy who walks into his living room wearing only a towel, clicks on HBO, and is like, "Hey, The Deuce is on!" Fuck that guy! At the moment that you start thinking, Hey, this scene could be hot, I want the camera to give you some element of humanity—I have to think about that?—which ruins it.
MG: You probably wouldn't have thought I'd be the one saying, "Put that shot back in."
DS: Well, I saw Secretary. . . .
MG: [The Deuce] is a story about misogyny, but it's also a celebration of sexuality. I like that the first time Candy gets involved in porn, we see the awakening of an artist. She's not thinking, Oh, this is so terrible, this is so dirty. She's like, Shit, this is interesting!
DS: Not the fucking, but the lights and the camera.
ESQ: Yeah, porn is her film school. Speaking of which, there was a period, and you may get into this in season two, when porn went a little art house.
DS: Absolutely. There was a moment when people thought it could go either way. This is later on, but there came a moment when it became clear there was going to be no art-house end to this thing. Somebody showed [Gerard] Damiano, the director who made Deep Throat, a VCR—one of the old top-loading ones. And he looked at that and said, "Ahhhhh, no . . ." These are the moments before anybody really knew quite what it was going to be.
ESQ: Are we better or worse off as a result of what you're documenting on the show?
DS: When I was growing up, the great Homeric journey was to try to figure out how to get a Playboy magazine. Now I watch my kids grow up when the most startling hardcore pornography is a touch of the keyboard away. I certainly can't imagine that's all for the best. On the other hand, I don't see any political or prohibitive solution to things like drugs and pornography. Nobody needs a union more than a sex worker.
ESQ: You're making a series about men and women in a particular moment, and you're airing it in a very different moment. Did that pose any challenges?
DS: For all the talk in the world about how much we've changed, there's still a latent misogynistic anger that's just right there under the surface.
MG: It's not even latent! I mean, you have the Republican presidential candidate saying when you have a lot of power, women let you grab their pussy.
DS: This man is a hand grenade.
MG: Certainly some things have changed. But it's kind of an exciting moment to be looking at misogyny in America, and power, and sex, and art, and commerce. All that is on the table now in a way that maybe it wasn't a year ago.
The Deuce premieres September 10 on HBO.
