From David Simon and the writers of "Treme," an obit of their late co-worker. Given Simon's background as a journalist-- as well as Mills'-- it's a fitting tribute.
David E. Mills, an Emmy-award winning television writer who worked on dramas as varied as “Homicide,” “NYPD Blue,” “E.R.” and “The Wire,” died suddenly Tuesday after collapsing on the New Orleans set of his new HBO drama, “Treme.” He was 48.
A former journalist who worked for the Washington Post, the Washington Times and the Wall Street Journal, Mills was on the set of the post-Katrina drama as it filmed a scene at Café du Monde in the French Quarter when he was stricken.
He was rushed to the downtown Tulane Medical Center where he died without regaining consciousness. Doctors there said he suffered what appeared to be a brain aneurism. Mills was on the film set as a writer and executive producer, monitoring filming of an episode of the series, which is slated to premiere on HBO in little more than a week.
Cast and crew of “Treme” held a memorial service in Washington Square park this morning and then suspended filming for the day.
Mills won two Emmy awards for television writing and was nominated for three other Emmys for his writing on “NYPD Blue” and “E.R.” As a newspaperman, his coverage of race and popular culture for the Style Section of the Washington Post in the 1990s was nominated for a Pulitzer Prize by the newspaper.
In addition, Mills – a light-skinned African-American who loved to explore the nuances of race, politics and culture in America, tweaking ideologues wherever he found them – maintained a much-read internet blog, “Undercover Black Man,” for the last half of this decade.
Born in Washington D.C., Mills grew up in the Northeast section of the city, attending Ballou High School before a housefire resulted in his family moving to Lanham in Prince George’s County, Md. Mills graduated in 1980 from Duval High School, where he competed on the It’s Academic team and earned a Benjamin Banneker four-year scholarship to the University of Maryland at College Park.
He immediately gravitated to the Diamondback, the daily newspaper at the campus, beginning as a staff writer in the fall of 1980, then becoming the news editor in 1981. The following year, he ran the daily broadsheet’s editorial pages and arts pages simultaneously.
“He was an enormous talent,” said David Simon, a co-executive producer with Mills on “Treme” who first met Mills in the Diamondback newsroom. “He loved words and he loved an argument – but not in any angry or mean-spirited way. He loved to argue ideas. He delighted in it, and he was confident that something smarter and deeper always came from a good argument.”
After graduating from College Park in 1984, Mills was hired by the Wall Street Journal and assigned to the paper’s Chicago bureau to cover the chemical and biotech industries. Mills soon found that he was bored by the subject matter and homesick for Washington.
