The Plot Against America (HBO) - from the creator of The Wire

[AncalagonTheBlack]

Official Teaser | HBO

 

Based on Philip Roth's novel of the same name.

From creators David Simon and Ed Burns comes The Plot Against America, an alternate American history story of the country’s turn to fascism told through the eyes of a working-class Jewish family in New Jersey. Starring Zoe Kazan, Morgan Spector, Winona Ryder, and John Turturro, the limited series premieres on March 16th at 9PM

Cast

• Winona Ryder as Evelyn Finkel
• Zoe Kazan as Elizabeth Levin
• Morgan Spector as Herman
• John Turturro as Rabbi Lionel Bengelsdorf
• Anthony Boyle as Alvin
• Azhy Robertson as Phillip
• Caleb Malis as Sandy

[RumHam]

That's a nice surprise, The Deuce just ended not too long ago I wasn't expecting Simon to have anything else out this soon. He hasn't done anything with Burns since Generation Kill. Doesn't look like Pelecanos is involved though he seems to be developing a separate HBO show based on one of his books. 

[AncalagonTheBlack]

 

[Zorral]

The Plot Against America looks very good, as David Simon's efforts do.  It also looks effectively scary in the very way things are scary now.

[Martini Sigil]

I'm in....lol.... love the concept

 

[Zorral]

1 hour ago, Martini Sigil said:

I'm in....lol.... love the concept

 

https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/1940-fdr-willkie-lindbergh-hitler--the-election-amid-the-storm-by-susan-dunn/2013/06/14/905d7d86-cc44-11e2-8845-d970ccb04497_story.html

Have you read Philip Roth's 2004 novel from which Simon has adapted this series?  Here's a review from that year -- it's very smart in every way:

https://www.nytimes.com/2004/10/03/books/review/the-plot-against-america.html

Quote

 

It is a bit odd to think of Philip Roth as a descendant of Sinclair Lewis, but when I reflect on some recent appreciative essays on Lewis by John Updike and Gore Vidal, it occurs to me that half the writers in America may be Lewis's descendants. For what has Roth been doing during these past 45 years, except fulminating against the conformist oppressions and hypocrisies of bourgeois life, writing Lewis's "Babbitt" in versions all his own -- sexual, generational, comic, anti-McCarthyite, anti-P.C., antipuritanical, academic, East Coast, Middle Western and Jewish? One of Roth's characters in "The Human Stain," fuming over America's prissiness and the impeachment of Bill Clinton, wonders how the stupid public could have learned so little about human nature over the years. For hasn't anyone read "Babbitt"? And so, having dwelled over "Babbitt" for long enough, Roth has evidently decided to dwell over "It Can't Happen Here," and has even found a clever way of setting his own tale of America-goes-fascist in the post-1935 era, exactly as Sinclair Lewis did -- quite as if "The Plot Against America" and "It Can't Happen Here," not to mention "A Cool Million," were, all of them, contemporaries: nervous novels from the Age of Roosevelt. And there is a reason for this.

Fascism took over most of continental Europe during those years, and this event was terrifying not just for the obvious reasons but also because every country in Europe seemed to have generated a fascist movement of its own, drawing on national idiosyncrasies and charming folk costumes -- such that, after a while, the very existence of local traditions and funny hats came to seem positively sinister. In America, European-style fascist movements, the imitators of Hitler and Mussolini, were already marching around the streets. Roth describes the German-American Bund of Union, N.J., drinking from beer steins and enjoying the accordion music of "a stout little man in short pants and high socks who wore a hat ornamented with a long feather." But the genuinely scary prospect in America was a fascism that might draw on something more than immigrant peculiarities -- a fascism thriving on the "patriot" legacies of the American Revolution and the cornball kitsch of surly folk cultures from this or that region of the country. A fascism in red, white and blue. That was Lewis's fear, and West's. And it is Roth's.

 

 

[Martini Sigil]

3 hours ago, Zorral said:

Have you read Philip Roth's 2004 novel from which Simon has adapted this series?  Here's a review from that year -- it's very smart in every way:

I did not know there was such a thing... thank you!!!!!!

[Zorral]

5 minutes ago, Martini Sigil said:

I did not know there was such a thing... thank you!!!!!!

There is nothing I like more than sharing information (as opposed to fake noose -- that I ignore as much as possible, in hopes fake noose, lies and etc. will finally die and blow aways!).

 

[red snow]

It's David Simon so I'll be giving it a try. Also curious to see what pelecanos is doing with HBO. Hopefully means twice as much output although i like the magic when the two work together.

[dornishpen]

I read the novel 15 years ago, as expected it's quite disturbing.

However the ending of the novel isn't bleak the same way a similar novel written now might be, I would say it's hopeful, I don't know if the series will end the same way.

[Freshwater Spartan]

Didn't like the novel's ending. I felt it pulled punches on its premise. I wonder how faithful the tv show will be. I wouldn't mind a little deviation.

[The Monkey]

Any thoughts on the first episode? I thought it was quite promising, but it's too early to tell if it can effectively pull off its premise. 

[Zorral]

I loved the cinematography of the opening in the street with kids playing with chalk -- beautifully composed, lighted, shot.  It heartbreakingly idyllically nostalgic.

I have a serious problem with Winona Ryder and have in everything she's ever been in starting with Age of Innocence. She's just an awful actor.

[Nictarion]

Kind of on the fence about this after a couple episodes. Feels like it might fall in with Simon’s lesser output (at least for me) like Treme, Show Me a Hero, and not quite up there with the The Wire, and The Deuce. 

[RumHam]

On 3/25/2020 at 11:42 AM, Nictarion said:

Kind of on the fence about this after a couple episodes. Feels like it might fall in with Simon’s lesser output (at least for me) like Treme, Show Me a Hero, and not quite up there with the The Wire, and The Deuce. 

I haven't started watching yet, but now that it's over what's the verdict? 

[Nictarion]

25 minutes ago, RumHam said:

I haven't started watching yet, but now that it's over what's the verdict? 

It’s well made, has some good acting (particularly Zoe Kazan), and a powerful message, but it never really fully clicked for me. I’d file it under good, but not great.