The HBO Auteur

Wyatt Mason: It was a bright, warm, blue-skied December afternoon in Central City, New Orleans, and in this neighborhood of humble shotgun houses and overgrown empty lots, a convoy of white trucks and trailers idled incongruously while unmarked police cars blocked intersections nearby. On any other morning, a police presence would have meant more bad news: in a city that has one of the highest homicide rates in the United States, this neighborhood — roughly a mile from the French Quarter — has a murder rate that, in recent years, has hit quadruple that of the city as a whole. This morning, however, the 20 drivers, as well as 80 other crew members who hefted and humped a boggling array of gear at the tumbledown corner of Second Street and South Liberty, had anything but murder in mind: they were six hours into a day of filming the third episode of "Treme," David Simon's new HBO drama — co-created by the seasoned television writer and producer Eric Overmyer — which is set in post-Katrina New Orleans and will make its debut on April 11. The production was only two scenes into the six on the call sheet; at that pace, they were looking at a 15-hour marathon — yet another in the 11-day ultramarathon that shooting an hour of episodic television on location can demand. As the novelist George Pelecanos, a staff writer on "Treme," told me of the years he spent on set as a writer-producer on "The Wire," Simon's breakthrough series: "If you got out with a 12-hour day, that was the luckiest day of the series. Try doing that for seven months straight. Only young people can do it. You don't see many people in their 50s carrying around lights."

PLUS, Stuever's review.