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The Wire, one of the greatest TV series of all-time, premiered 20 years ago this week. In honor of two decades of “Omar coming” (RIP), chess lessons, and deez nuts, creators David Simon and Ed Burns spoke to the New York Times about the show’s legacy, and whether HBO would still make it today, in a post-Game of Thrones landscape.

“No, definitely not. HBO was going up the ladder at the time,” Burns said. “They didn’t understand The Wire until the fourth season. In fact, they were thinking about canceling it after three. We caught that moment where networks were thinking, ‘Oh, we need a show for this group of people.’ But now, it’s got to be Game of Thrones.”

He continued, “It’s got to be big. It’s got to be disconnected from stepping on anybody’s toes. I’ve watched a couple of the limited series on HBO, and they’re good shows, but they’re not cutting new paths. They are whodunits or these rich women bickering among themselves in a town.” Burns said he doesn’t hear anyone saying, “Hey, that’s a really great show” on HBO, which is not fair to The Righteous Gemstones, Barry, and Succession, three great shows. (I would add HBO Max’s Hacks in there, too.)

An argument could be made that HBO would still greenlight The Wire in 2022, but — and here’s the big difference between then and now — it wouldn’t have run for five seasons. Enlightened was also little-watched critical hit for HBO, but it only lasted for two seasons. Imagine if The Wire had ended after season two with Ziggy and his duck.

The Wire would have a very different legacy.

(Via the New York Times)

In all the years they’ve been going to concerts, Indiecast hosts Steven Hyden and Ian Cohen have seen many great performances…. and some pretty terrible ones. This week on Indiecast, Steven and Ian dive into their fan mailbag to answer questions on bad concert experiences, the best driving music, and times pop music ripped off indie artists.

Indiecast also discusses some of the biggest indie news from this week. Kate Bush is having a major moment thanks to her song “Running Up That Hill” getting featured in Stranger Things, prompting Steven and Ian to reminisce on Bush’s initial critical reception. In terms of new music, The 1975 confirmed their fifth studio album is on the way. Plus, two early aughts bands, the Yeah Yeah Yeahs and Phoenix, dropped singles this week.

In this week’s Recommendation Corner, Ian raves about emo revivalists Algernon Cadwallader’s reunion tour announcement. Steven shouts out Angel Olsen’s newest album Big Time, which leans into alt-country territory.

New episodes of Indiecast drop every Friday. Listen to Episode 91 below, and subscribe wherever you get your podcasts. You can submit questions for Steve and Ian at [email protected], and make sure to follow us on Instagram and Twitter for all the latest news. We also recently launched a visualizer for our favorite Indiecast moments. Check those out here.

Thanks to Elon Musk‘s very public attempt to purchase Twitter, Tesla stock has been plummeting, and now, another hit is reportedly coming to the electric car company with CNBC’s news that shares immediately plunged again on Friday. In short, it’s a bad week for Tesla stock, which lost another 6% of its value after two leaked emails from Musk, and that adds up to a 25% drop over the past four months.

According to an email obtained by Reuters, Musk is planning to layoff 10% of Tesla employees because, and this is a direct quote, he has a “super bad feeling” about the economy:

The message, sent on Thursday and titled “pause all hiring worldwide”, came two days after the billionaire told staff to return to the workplace or leave, and adds to a growing chorus of warnings from business leaders about the risks of recession.

Almost 100,000 people were employed at Tesla and its subsidiaries at the end of 2021, its annual SEC filing showed.

If Musk follows through on the layoffs, that would mean roughly 10,000 Tesla employees will now be out of a job. Then again, as Reuters noted, it hasn’t exactly been the best workplace over there this week. Not only did Musk threaten to fire anyone who didn’t stop working remotely, but he accused them of “pretending” to do their jobs.

Musk is also severely angering shareholders who are reportedly tired of the “circus show” he’s caused with his attempt to acquire Twitter. That deal lead to stocks plummeting for both companies. In fairness, Tesla’s stocks were already in trouble due to manufacturing delays caused by the recent COVID lockdowns in China, but Musk poured fuel on the fire with his egotistical desire to own Twitter. Compounding all of those issues, Musk is now facing allegations of sexually harassing a Space X employee.

In short, things aren’t going great for the Elon Musk empire.

(Via Reuters)

The Strokes, and therefore also their fans, were met with some unfortunate news yesterday, as they had to pull out of their headlining slot at this weekend’s Primavera Sound Festival due to a case of COVID-19 within the group. So, festival organizers made some changes so the show could go on, moving Caribou into the band’s performance slot and getting Mogwai to take Caribou’s set time.

Those two bands weren’t the only ones who helped fill the void, though: During their set, Tame Impala softened the blow of The Strokes not being able to make it by covering their iconic Is This It single “Last Nite” at the start of their encore. They didn’t really spin the track into anything else, either, as Kevin Parker and company kept their performance extremely faithful to how The Strokes themselves sound when playing the tune.

In other Tame Impala news, the group has been getting involved with the cinematic world lately. Last month, they and Diana Ross shared “Turn Up The Sunshine,” their collaboration for the Minions: The Rise Of Gru soundtrack. Shortly after that, it was revealed they would also be contributing music to the new Elvis Presley biopic.

Watch Tame Impala cover “Last Nite” above.

If you woke up this morning thinking, “Gee, I wonder how long it will take for me to hear yet another imbecilic theory from some Republican about why the recent mass shooting in Uvalde, Texas happened that has nothing to do with guns?,” well, your wait is over.

The latest excuse for America’s gun problem that doesn’t involve guns comes courtesy of Steve Bannon, who Mediaite reports is blaming…”open borders.”

Bannon was chatting up famously nutty right-wing commentator Gina Loudon on his podcast this week, when the two entered into an inane back and forth about the tragic events in Uvalde. “We have to get a timeline, a timeline down to the second of what happened here,” Bannon insisted. “Because this does not make sense, there are so many loose ends.”

What made even less sense was Bannon then insisting that “We have got to find out more about this gunman. This is going to be tied to the open borders, you watch.” Given that it was Bannon’s show, his guest was obviously in agreement—and even managed to take the argument one frightfully ignorant step further. “Everyone wants to take the pressure off guns and put it on mental health, I totally get that,” Loudon said. “But as someone who spent better than a decade of her life studying mental health, you do not want the Joe Biden Department of Mental Health and Gun Safety to be formed… That is the most dangerous thought ever.”

More dangerous than, say, a clearly unstable teenager buying himself two AR-15 rifles, then using them to kill 19 schoolchildren and two teachers? If you’re asking Loudon, the answer seems to be “absolutely.”

Loudon went on to state that the shooting in Uvalde had nothing to do with mental health, and everything to do with illegal immigration. “If our wall had been built and if we had the rule of law enforced, this shooting would never have happened and these children and adults would be alive today,” she claimed. Except that Salvador Ramos, the suspected gunman, was a U.S. citizen who was born in North Dakota. So we’re not exactly sure how she managed that leap of logic.

(Via Mediaite)

While the critical response to HBO’s new limited series The Staircase has been overwhelmingly positive, with Uproxx’s Carrie Whittmer describing it as a “masterpiece that redefines true crime,” not everyone is enamored of the dramatic retelling of the 2001 murder of Kathleen Peterson, and the subsequent trial of her husband, Michael.

Shortly after the eight-episode series, which stars Colin Firth and Toni Collette, premiered, director Jean-Xavier de Lestrade—who spent 14 years embedded with the Peterson family and Michael’s legal team to tell the story of his legal roller coaster—told Vanity Fair that he felt “betrayed” by Antonio Campos, who created the scripted series.

De Lestrade, who is portrayed in the series by French actor Vincent Vermignon, believes that Campos’ narrative suggests that the documentarian and his team—including Sophie Brunet, who entered into a romantic relationship with Peterson—crafted and edited their docuseries in a way that might help exonerate Michael or help with his appeals, a charge he adamantly denies. “I understand if you dramatize,” de Lestrade told Vanity Fair. “But when you attack the credibility of my work, that’s really not acceptable to me.” But as Campos told The Wrap, that was never their intention:

I have nothing but a deep respect and admiration for Jean-Xavier de Lestrade and for Sophie and for everyone involved in this documentary. And from the beginning, we were always doing something that was a dramatization inspired by true events. We approached everything in this story with as much care and love as we possibly could and infused that into their characters and had nothing but respect and admiration for the characters that we were creating of them…

None of us would dispute that the documentary is a masterpiece. And that’s how we perceive it. The characters in our story were making something that is a masterpiece.”

“The product that we made is, I think, very much, earnestly an homage to the thing that they created,” added executive producer Maggie Cohn.

Also: The owl did it!

(Via The Wrap)

(Warning: The above audio contains profanity, albeit of the untranslated Russian variety.)

Behind the scenes, Vladimir Putin’s inner circle is really not thrilled with his war on Ukraine, and we’re slowly hearing more about this internal mess. That includes word of a few significant developments: (1) Putin’s inner circle is reportedly maneuvering to install a successor based upon the ongoing dismal invasion; and (2) U.S. intelligence officers claim to have viewed documents showing that Putin’s “rule is no longer absolute” (also partially due to his health and an assassination attempt).

Not only that, but previously leaked audio showed how Russian troops are so fed up with this war that they nearly blew up their general, and yup, there’s more of the same coming to show that Putin’s Army officers are peeved with what he’s having them do in Ukraine, too. You can listen to the non-translated audio footage above, in which Russian colonels call Putin the c-word and a “host of f*ckers.”

Via Business Insider, the audio also features these officers going off on a close Putin ally, Russia’s minister of defense Sergei Shoigu, who signed onto Putin’s plan to invade Ukraine months ago. The colonels (one of them being Lieutenant Colonel Vladimirovich Vlasov) described Shoigu as “completely fucking incompetent” and “just a f*cking showman, for f*ck’s sake.” In addition, Vlasov goes off on Gen. Alexander Dvornikov (who has apparently been off the scene for weeks, and he’s not alone, since Putin’s been firing military leaders like crazy) as a “brainless f*cking idiot.”

So, it sounds like this imperialistic war isn’t going nearly as smoothly as Putin had hoped, but that’s also what one gets when one messes with molotov cocktail-wielding grandmas and the will of President Volodymyr Zelensky, who refused to be airlifted out. And NBC News is now reporting that, 100 days into this war, the Ukrainian people are more committed than ever to stand their ground and take their whole country back from Vladimir Putin.

(Via Business Insider)

Is hypocrisy an inherited trait? If one were to use the Trump family as the basis for a case study, it would certainly seem so. While Papa Trump is busy promising to Make America Great Again, he has long relied on foreign workers to make his businesses run, while factory workers in Ivanka Trump’s now-shuttered clothing company regularly complained about abusive work conditions and “poverty pay.” Now, Jimmy Kimmel is calling out self-proclaimed patriot Donald Trump Jr. for employing the same practices.

On Thursday night, while discussing the general hypocrisy of the Republican party—and how no one even seems to realize it or care—Kimmel took aim specifically at the former president’s perpetually amped-up adult son:

Donald Trump Jr., he’s always talking about China. Very anti-China. ‘My father was tough on China.’ ‘Hunter Biden’s in bed with China.’ Well, I happened to be scrolling through his website, because this is what I do. He’s got an online store with, really, some wonderful products like [a] ‘F**k Joe Biden’ hat that is ‘designed and embroidered in the USA. Ok, well, it may have been embroidered in the USA, but we ordered one of the hats. Boy, you’re not going to believe this: it was actually made in China. You won’t find that on his website though.

Other items Kimmel procured included a “Let’s Go Brandon” T-shirt that had been thoughtfully made in Nicaragua. And as for a Let’s Get Biden To Quit tee, presented in the colors of the rainbow flag, just in time for Pride Month? That came from El Salvador.

“And why doesn’t he have the shirt made here?,” Kimmel wondered—already knowing the answer. “Because they cost about 30 percent more to have them made here.” (For the record: Kimmel also showed off the tags of his own T-shirts promoting The Jimmy Kimmel Show and, lo and behold, they actually are made in America.)

You can watch the full segment, beginning around the 4:30 mark.

Muna are floating in the space between indie up-and-comers and pop stars as they prepare to release their next, self-titled album, which has “Anything But Me,” their biggest song since their hit “Silk Chiffon.”

Today, they’re showing admiration to one of the most important pop stars of the past couple of decades — Britney Spears — by sharing a cover of her “Sometimes” from her 1999 classic LP …Baby One More Time. They make the song their own by adding a lush texture, sporadic beats, and Katie Gavin’s distinct voice; it’s dance-ready, but also has a sense of melancholy.

This bittersweetness is similar to their song “Home By Now,” about which they said: “‘Home By Now’ is the song on the record that we feel might be closest to our first album in that it’s a dance song with brutal lyrics and an emo bridge. It’s a breakup song that’s a bit more full of longing and doubt than ‘Anything But Me.’ While a lot of this album does seem to be about trusting my instincts, this song acknowledges the pain of not knowing if I left a relationship that I was meant to be in.”

Their cover of “Sometimes” is on the soundtrack to Fire Island, which is streaming now on Hulu. Listen to it above.

Johnny Depp agreed with his attorney that “nothing on this earth,” including “$300 million and a million alpacas,” would get to him to play Jack Sparrow again. But that was before Amber Heard was found guilty of defamation against her ex-husband. Now, a former-Disney executive is certain Depp will return to the Pirates of the Caribbean franchise.

“I absolutely believe post-verdict that Pirates is primed for rebooting with Johnny as Capt. Jack back on board,” an unnamed “former Walt Disney Studios executive” told People. “There is just too much potential box-office treasure for a beloved character deeply embedded in the Disney culture.” They continued:

“With [producer] Jerry Bruckheimer riding high on the massive success of Tom Cruise in Top Gun: Maverick, there is huge appetite for bringing back bankable Hollywood stars in massively popular franchises,” the insider adds. A spokesperson for Disney has not responded to People‘s request for comment.

There hasn’t been a new Pirates of the Caribbean movie since 2017’s bloated Dead Men Tell No Tales, but Jack Sparrow is still a presence at Disney properties, including the Pirates of the Caribbean dark ride at Disneyland and Walt Disney World’s Magic Kingdom, among other parks. There has been talk of a Bruckheimer-produced Pirates reboot starring Margot Robbie, however, with “lots of girl power.” People spoke to another Hollywood insider who believes Robbie would play Jack Sparrow’s daughter, and “likely have a cameo with [Depp] as a test.” So much for the girl power.

(Via People)