Listened to a couple interviews with the author of the book, which is about the history of HBO, and there's a lot of interesting media stuff in there. Check out Bill SImmon's interview with him from last Friday and Peter Kafka's from last month. I'll get both links shortly.
Show Recode Media with Peter Kafka, Ep The inside story of HBO, with Jim Miller - Nov 17, 2021
podcasts.apple.com
(sorry APple Podcasts link, just google "Recode Inside Story HBO" for your preferred podcast app)
Plus: Author James Andrew Miller joins the show to discuss his new book on the history of HBO, ‘Tinderbox: HBO’s Ruthless Pursuit of New Frontiers’
www.theringer.com
Book breaks some pretty uncovered things too, like James Gandolfini's addiction problems which ultimately boiled over to an intervention after he had to no-show an award show and Michael Imperioli had to stand in for him last minute because he was fucked up (that in and of itself could be a
Sopranos episode). This is mentioned in Bill Simmons' interview, while Peter Kafka focuses more on the business of AOL TimeWarner -> AT&T, and the issues HBO has had throughout the years.
Other details that I remember from the Simmons' interview is that D&D also threatened/wanted to not finish the series with two seasons (the 8 and 6 episode ones), but instead make two feature-length movies to wrap them all up. HBO pushed back and eventually got their way on that, but had to compromise on the shortened seasons.
Another detail w/ The Wire, is that... HBO was going to cancel the wire. Whoever was the head of HBO at the time was basically done with the project. At the time, the Wire wasn't winning awards, it wasn't even a cult hit, it was just kinda -there- and they thought, eh, probably not worth moving on. This might have been at the end of Season 2. David Simon was beside himself and whoever the 2nd in command at HBO was loved the show and got him a long meeting with the exec at the time, David SImon went in, made his case, then they let him make the 3 final seasons of the Wire mostly as is to realize his vision for the show. While it's disappointing that this exec wanted to kill the Wire after Season 2, it's also something that he listened to the creator and then let it continue... Reason being they wanted to keep a relationship with David Simon and worried killing the project would end that relationship (likely would have). I believe this anecdote is in Peter Kafka's interview, but I could be wrong.
www.insider.com
