David Mills

David Eugene Mills (November 20, 1961 – March 30, 2010) was an American journalist, writer and producer of television programs.

He was an executive producer and writer of the HBO miniseries The Corner, for which he won two Emmy Awards, and the creator, executive producer, and writer of the NBC miniseries Kingpin.

Mills was born in Washington, D.C. His family moved to Lanham, Maryland after their home was destroyed by a fire.

In 1979, Mills graduated from DuVal Senior High School in Lanham.

Mills attended the University of Maryland, where he was on the staff of The Diamondback, the independent student newspaper.

He met frequent collaborator David Simon while working on The Diamondback.

While he was a student, Mills published This Magazine, a tabloid that failed after three editions.

Later, he and a group of his friends published Uncut Funk, a zine that focused on the music of George Clinton and Parliament-Funkadelic.

After graduating, Mills became a features writer.

He worked for The Wall Street Journal, The Washington Times, and The Washington Post.

Among the many articles he wrote, Mills produced a number of controversial celebrity interviews.

In 1989, Mills interviewed Professor Griff, a member of the hip hop group Public Enemy, for the Washington Times.

During the interview, Griff made a number of antisemitic remarks, leading to criticism of the group.

Mills spoke with activist and rapper Sister Souljah in 1992 for the Washington Post.

During the interview, the two spoke about the race riots that had taken place weeks earlier in Los Angeles after a predominantly-white jury acquitted four police officers who had been videotaped while beating a black motorist named Rodney King following a high-speed car chase.

The most controversial portion of the interview came when Mills asked Souljah whether violence was a rational response to outrage.

Imagining the thoughts of a participant in the riots, Souljah said that it was:

"Mills: But even the people themselves who were perpetrating that violence, did they think it was wise? Was that wise, reasoned action?

Souljah: Yeah, it was wise.

I mean, if black people kill black people every day, why not have a week and kill white people?

You understand what I'm saying?

In other words, white people, this government, and that mayor were well aware of the fact that black people were dying every day in Los Angeles under gang violence.

So if you're a gang member and you would normally be killing somebody, why not kill a white person?

Do you think that somebody thinks that white people are better, or above and beyond dying, when they would kill their own kind?"

Within weeks of the interview, Democratic presidential candidate Bill Clinton criticized Jesse Jackson and the Rainbow Coalition for inviting Souljah to speak at its convention.

Quoting Souljah as saying "If black people kill black people every day, why not have a week and kill white people?"

Clinton said that "if you took the words 'white' and 'black' and reversed them, you might think David Duke was giving that speech".

In 1993 Mills wrote the script for an episode of Homicide: Life on the Street.

The network series was based on a book, Homicide: A Year on the Killing Streets, by David Simon, a college friend of Mills.

Simon was also a writer and producer of the show.

The episode, called "Bop Gun", which featured Robin Williams as a guest star, aired in January 1994 as the second-season premiere.

Mills named the episode after a Parliament song, "Bop Gun (Endangered Species)"; one of the criminals featured in the episode claimed he shot someone in anger over the destruction of a rare record by Eddie Hazel, a member of Funkadelic.

This was the first of many P-Funk references that Mills would incorporate into his screenplays.

Mills and Simon won the WGA Award for Best Writing in a Drama for "Bop Gun".

Mills said of the episode, "That script inspired me to quit journalism. It was a golden opportunity, even though I didn't know what I was doing. I developed bad habits as a newspaper feature writer. I would always stretch a project to fill the available time."

At a professional writer's seminar during 1994, David Milch, the co-creator of NYPD Blue, tried to explain why there were so few African-American screenwriters.

He said that "in the area of drama, it was difficult for black American writers to write successfully for a mass audience".

In response to Milch's comments, which were made public by The Washington Post, Mills wrote a letter in which he challenged Milch's assumptions concerning Black writers.

As a result, Milch hired Mills as a writer for NYPD Blue.

Mills wrote two more episodes for Homicide, one each in 1995 and 1998.