David Matthews (born November 8, 1967) is an American author and screenwriter. Matthews is of African-American and Jewish descent. His memoir Ace of Spades recounts growing up in the inner city of Baltimore, Maryland as a biracial child who could pass for white.
Matthews' Jewish mother had schizophrenia and left his father when Matthews was only a few months old. As a result, Matthews was raised by his father, Ralph Matthews, Jr., an African-American journalist who counted Malcolm X and James Baldwin among his friends. The Matthews family lived in the Maryland suburbs of Washington, D.C., but in 1977 moved next to the segregated Bolton Hill area of Baltimore, a tiny enclave of rich, white families, which was surrounded by the primarily black ghetto of west Baltimore. He describes himself as not initially fitting in with either the black or white children in his public elementary school, sparking his decision to "pass" as white. [1] Matthews attended Baltimore City College High School where he attempted to "pass" as not only white, but Jewish. Lacking any cultural knowledge of Jewish life, Matthews was not accepted as a Jew and continued to search for an identity. Matthews' first book, Ace of Spades details this search, and is presented in a somewhat acerbic coming-of-age literary style. [2]
Matthews currently resides in New York City and Los Angeles.
He is the author of two non-fiction books. His first, "Ace of Spades", is an autobiographical memoir. His second, "Kicking Ass and Saving Souls" follows the adventurous life of Stefan Templeton.
His work has appeared in The New York Times, Salon, The Huffington Post, and he has contributed to "The Autobiographers Handbook". He has also written the introduction for the Paris Review edition of The Catcher in the Rye.
Matthews' television credits include Law & Order: Los Angeles; Story Editor for Law & Order: Special Victims Unit; Executive Story Editor for Season 4 of HBO's Boardwalk Empire; Co-Producer on F/X's Tyrant ; [3] and Supervising Producer on HBO's Vinyl. [4]
Jayson Thomas Blair is an American former journalist who worked for The New York Times. He resigned from the newspaper in May 2003 in the wake of the discovery of fabrication and plagiarism in his stories.
Dream On is an American sitcom television series created by Marta Kauffman and David Crane. It follows the family life, romantic life, and career of Martin Tupper, a divorced New York City book editor played by Brian Benben. The show distinctively interjected clips from older black-and-white television series to punctuate Tupper's feelings or thoughts. It ran for six seasons on HBO between July 8, 1990, and March 27, 1996.
The Wire is an American crime drama television series created and primarily written by American author and former police reporter David Simon. The series was broadcast by the cable network HBO in the United States. The Wire premiered on June 2, 2002, and ended on March 9, 2008, comprising sixty episodes over five seasons. The idea for the show started out as a police drama loosely based on the experiences of Simon's writing partner Ed Burns, a former homicide detective and public school teacher.
David Sanford Milch is an American writer and producer of television series. He has created several television shows, including ABC's NYPD Blue (1993–2005), co-created with Steven Bochco, and HBO's Deadwood.
David Judah Simon is an American author, journalist, screenwriter, and producer best known for his work on The Wire (2002–08).
Frank Hart Rich Jr. is an American essayist and liberal op-ed columnist, who held various positions within The New York Times from 1980 to 2011. He has also produced television series and documentaries for HBO.
Benjamin Franklin Deford III was an American sportswriter and novelist. From 1980 until his death in 2017, he was a regular sports commentator on NPR's Morning Edition radio program.
Marc Levin is an American independent film producer and director. He is best known for his Brick City TV series, which won the 2010 Peabody award and was nominated for an Emmy for Exceptional Merit in Nonfiction Filmmaking and his dramatic feature film, Slam, which won the Grand Jury Prize at the Sundance Film Festival and the Caméra d'Or at Cannes in 1998. He also has received three Emmy Awards and the 1997 DuPont-Columbia Award.
Marc E. Platt is an American producer who has worked in film, theatre, and television. He has received numerous accolades including two Tony Awards, two Primetime Emmy Awards, as well as nominations for three Academy Awards.
King Gimp is a 1999 documentary that was awarded the 2000 Oscar for Best Short Subject Documentary and 2000 Peabody Award. King Gimp follows the life of artist Dan Keplinger of Towson, Maryland, who has cerebral palsy. Filmmakers Susan Hannah Hadary and William A. Whiteford, of the University of Maryland Video Press and Tapestry International Productions produced the film. Geof Bartz, A.C.E. edited the final version.
R. Stefan Templeton is the founder of the SPEAR Project.
David Eugene Mills was an American journalist, writer and producer of television programs. He was an executive producer and writer of the HBO miniseries The Corner, for which he won two Emmy Awards, and the creator, executive producer, and writer of the NBC miniseries Kingpin.
Rafael Alvarez is an American author based in Baltimore and Los Angeles. Alvarez went to work for the Sunpapers of Baltimore as a teenager—first in the circulation department and then the horse racing desk in sports—before landing on the City Desk as a utility man and neighborhood folklorist. He was with The Sun from 1977 through 2001. After leaving the paper, Alvarez worked on ships as a laborer before joining the staff of the HBO drama The Wire. He also worked on the NBC crime dramas Life and The Black Donnellys.
Augustus "Gus" Haynes is a fictional character on the HBO drama The Wire, played by actor Clark Johnson, who is also a director for the series. Haynes is the dedicated and principled editor for The Baltimore Sun city desk.
M. Scott Templeton is a fictional character on the HBO drama The Wire, played by actor Tom McCarthy. The actor joined the starring cast as the series' fifth season began.
The Wire is a fictional television drama series produced by the Home Box Office network. The fifth season of the show included a focus on the media and in particular a fictionalized version of The Baltimore Sun. The series introduced many new characters who were professional journalists.
"-30-" is the series finale of the American television drama series The Wire. It is the tenth episode of the fifth season, and the 60th episode overall. Written by series creator/executive producer David Simon (teleplay/story) and co-executive producer Ed Burns (story), and directed by Clark Johnson, the episode originally aired on HBO on March 9, 2008. This episode is the longest-running episode of the series, with a runtime of 93 minutes. The episode's writers were nominated for the Primetime Emmy Award for Outstanding Writing for a Drama Series.
Rich Cohen is an American non-fiction writer. He is a contributing editor at Vanity Fair and Rolling Stone. He is co-creator, with Martin Scorsese, Mick Jagger and Terence Winter, of the HBO series Vinyl. His works have been New York Times bestsellers, New York Times Notable Books, and have been collected in the Best American Essays series. He lives in Ridgefield, Connecticut, with his wife and children.
James Yoshimura is an American writer and producer, best known for his screenwriting work on the NBC series Homicide: Life on the Street and the short-lived Fox series The Jury, for which he served as a co-creator. He also co-wrote Homicide: The Movie, a made-for-television film that came out in 2000, after the series ended. Yoshimura has received two Emmy Award nominations: one for Homicide: The Movie and one for the Homicide episode "Subway", which also won a Peabody Award for excellence in television broadcasting.
Dwight "D." or "Doc" Watkins is an author, HBO writer, and professor at The University of Baltimore.