This week’s news is full of the fifth anniversary of the Katrina devastation. Hopefully the Emmy awards will also follow suit by awarding Agneiszka Holland best director for “Do You Know What It Means,” the pilot of the specutacular new HBO series, "Treme."
This latest gem by David Simon deserves all the accolades: a unique show following the lives of musicians and everyday people as they pick up the pieces after the hurricane damage.
From its first dramatic offering, Simon pegged what bravery and uncertainty these New Orleans citizens faced once they returned to their nearly destroyed homes. It was an inspired choice for "Treme's" first show’s director to be Holland. She is a brilliant, Polish-born director who had previously penned and directed films about the Holocaust, including the Oscar nominated “Europa, Europa.”
Holland possesses the fine Eastern European artistic mindset to direct this episode of how Katrina survivors picked up the pieces after the storm’s devastation and tried to figure out what and who had survived. Kudos to Simon for choosing Holland and double kudos to the Emmys if they award Holland the statue.
It would also be a loving tribute to Treme’s co-writer David Mills, who died suddenly on the set when the series was being filmed. And here is hoping that Simon is already working in the horrendous BP oil spill into the next seasons’ scripts.
Also what the Emmys should be giving tribute to Sunday night is the winner of the first Emmy in the female acting category 60 years ago. That would be the most famous woman in America that today people have not heard of: Gertrude Berg. A television pioneer, Berg was a entertainment genius and entrepreneur, who wrote, starred in and produced the first successful American sitcom, “The Goldbergs,” and charmed a beleaguered nation.
