03.11.09 DAVID SIMON’S NEW PILOT TO START FILMING!!!

Today, Variety announced that Melissa Leo — the veteran character actress who received an Oscar nomination this year for Frozen River — will join the cast of “Treme,” David Simon’s new HBO series that will focus on musicians in New Orleans after Hurricane Katrina.  Leo will play a civil rights lawyer alongside a couple of standouts from Simon’s “The Wire” — Clarke Peters (Lester Freamon) and Wendell Pierce (Bunk Moreland).  Filming begins next month.

More on the series:

Simon, a frequent visitor to the city and a longtime New Orleans music fan, said… that the stories told in “Treme” would reach beyond the music scene to explore political corruption, the public housing controversy, the crippled criminal-justice system, clashes between police and Mardi Gras Indians, and the struggle to regain the tourism industry after the storm.

“It’s basically a post-Katrina history of the city. It will be rooted in events that everybody knows,” Simon said. “What it’s not going to be is a happy stroll through David Simon’s record collection. It should not be a tourism slide show. If we do it right, it (will be) about why New Orleans matters.”

…Annnnnnnnnd that sound you hear is me breathing into a paper bag.  I want David Simon to make a series about anything and everything that’s raw and ugly about America.  Baltimore?  Check.  The Iraq invasion?  Check.  Post-Katrina New Orleans?  Big boner in anticipation.  Ooh!  Ooh!  Do Detroit next!!!