The Night Of, the eight-part crime procedural miniseries, is coming to HBO and BBC Worldwide this weekend.
The series is based on the British television seriesCriminal Justice, which ran from 2008 through 2009.
Like HBOsTrue Detective, the series benefits from the teaming of one director and one writer.
Zaillian probably could have written and directedThe Night Ofall by his lonesome.
He wrote the screenplay forSchindlers List(1993), a pretty good movie, to say the least.
Zaillian co-wrote Martin ScorsesesGangs of New York(2002) with Jay Cocks and Kenneth Lonergan.
It was the last piece of acting the formerThe Sopranosstar ever shot.
Gandolfinis death stopped production.
The series is a cop procedural, told with amazing accuracy.
I bought a used copy on Sixth Avenue in the Village for a quarter.
The bookwasbetter than the movie.
According to interviews Price gave, his classmates hated it.
A deeply moving account of confused and spiritually underprivileged youth.
I get this completely.
I even foundLast Exit to Brooklynat Strand for about a buck, used of course.
His introduction is a kind of universal shared experience.
Price also looked to read things that matched his experience.
I mean, I didnt have a red pony, he told theParis Reviewin 1996.
I walked past the corner the Baldies hung out almost daily.
I used to live above Ann and Tonys restaurant on Hoffman.
The Bronxs Little Italy is the only place you’re able to get a meat calzone.
I could taste them on every page of Prices book and it built up an appetite.
I found used copies ofLadies Man,Blood Brothers, andThe Breaksand went on a jag.
LikeThe Warriors, I recognized something on every page, but it wasnt just the decor.
I knew how boredom could make you think about calling in a bomb threat.
Everyone did, these things went through everybodys head, didnt they?
Then Price really messed me up by getting a little too specific.
I grew up in construction shanties.
The lead character ofBlood Brothersworked on construction sites as an electricians apprentice to his old man.
Tommys kid in the book even had the same nickname as me in high school, Stony.
And that was when he got his first non-construction job.
Who couldnt relate to that?
Price captured the neighborhood, the generational divide, and the entire early seventies.
The South Bronx, Price writes.
Chubby wandered the humid streets like the last survivor of World War Three.
Human shadows shifted along brick walls like rats.
Building entrances like one way tickets.
Latin Music sifted through the air high above his head.
A man in a flowered beige shirt and denim beach hat passed him on the street.
Reading his books were enough to make you miss your stop.
I still go on Richard Price jags.
Like Lays potato chips or heroin, reading Prices books is like sniffing glue when youre eight.
It fucks up your head.
His books were all written before Id lived them, I just discovered them after.
I know I wasnt the only person who identified so keenly with his books.
No matter how personal he got, he had a way of being universal.
Its a good thing Price started writing cop dramas that went outside of my own experience.
He cut me loose.
Ladies Man
The first cop drama wasSea of Love, which starred Al Pacino and John Goodman.
It was a little more reflective and a little more pervy.
The book reeked of more amyl nitrate than Pacino huffed inCruisin.
No wonder nobody ever got laid.
Richard Price was born in 1949.
His father was a window dresser for Modells sports shops.
Price was the first kid in his family to go to college.
He went to Cornell University, from 1967 to 1971 before joining Columbia Universitys fiction MFA program.
After the first four books, Price took his cue to move into screenplays.
Paul Newman reprised his role as pool hustler Fast Eddie.
Prices screenplay forColor of Moneygot nominated for an Oscar.
It starred Nick Nolte and Rosanna Arquette and featured a pristine master of Procol Harums live version of Conquistador.
Price gave Scorseses camera the freedom to be obsessive.
Price also wrote the screenplay for the remake of the 1947 Jules Dassin film noir classicKiss of Death.
The 1995 remake starred Nicolas Cage and David Caruso.
In 1993, Price turned in the script for the gangster comedy-dramaMad Dog and Glory.
Price also wrote the screenplay for the movieRansomwith Mel Gibson, which came out in 1996.
He also doctored up the script for the movieAmerican Gangster.
Price, being part of the Writers Union, puts his pen down when he clocks out.
Even when he doesnt know them, he does.
Even when he has to make them up as he goes along.
Besides capturing the feel of the neighborhood,Clockerscaptured the players and the playas.
Price gave one of the characters, the teenaged crack sales team leader, an ulcer.
Clockers, which came out in 1992, was nominated for the National Book Critics Circle Award.
Spike Lee made it into a film in 1995.
The movie starred Harvey Keitel, Delroy Lindo, andThe Night Ofs John Turturro.
Clockerswas the first novel in Prices Dempsy trilogy.
Lush Life
Price returned with a vengeance in 2008.
Schoolyard, creperie, realtor, corner.
Tenement, tenement, Tenement Museum, corner.
Pink Pony, Blind Tiger, muffin boutique, corner.
Sex shop, tea shop, synagogue, corner.
Bollywood, Buddha, botanica, corner.
Leather outlet, leather outlet, leather outlet, corner.
Bar, school, bar, school.
Peoples Park, corner.
Tyson mural, Celia Cruz mural, Ladi Di mural, corner.
Bling shop, barbershop, car service corner before you get to the bar at 27 Eldridge Street.
A series of endless rights after Rivington Street.Lush Lifeis about a mugging, but its also about mugging.
The novel was loosely based on the Russian serial killer Andrei Chikatilo.
The Whites
Price published his ninth novel,The Whites, under the pen name Harry Brandt.
The whites inThe Whitesare those precinct cops who cant sleep because theyre haunted by cases they cant solve.
Richard Price taught writing classes at Columbia, Yale University, and New York University.
But any writer who wants to learn how to write in modern literature should just read the books.
Over and over again.
The Night Ofwill premiere on HBO on July 10, 2016.
