HBO Confirms "Very Preliminary" 'Deadwood' Movie Talks
Yesterday, actor Garret Dillahunt tweeted "So uh...I'm hearing credible rumors about a #Deadwood movie." I had the same reaction to that tweet that a lot of other people seemed to have: don't even play around with this. Deadwood is serious business. Canceled in 2006 after three great seasons and a less than satisfying conclusion, there was talk at the time of two Deadwood movies to finish out David Milch's obsessive and idiosyncratic western vision. Those movies never happened.
But now HBO confirms that, yes, there has been some talk about a Deadwood movie. Really early talk, but that's better than nothing.
Here's the tweet that started the conversation.
Garret Dillahunt
@garretdillahunt
So uh....I'm hearing credible rumors about a #Deadwood movie. #Everybodypray
8:52 PM - 12 Aug 2015
Not long afterward, HBO went on the record to confirm that, yes, there have been some talks. But don't saddle up just yet. The network's official statement is:
In reference to Garret Dillahunt's tweet regarding the rumored Deadwood movie, there have only been very preliminary conversations.
That can mean a lot of things. Creator David Milch said in 2011 that "I still nourish the hope that we're going to get to do a little more work in that area."
Years earlier, when the plug was abruptly pulled on the show, HBO had offered to give Milch a short 6-episode fourth season to close out the series. He was unwilling to go that route. That's when the plan for a pair of two-hour movies landed on the table. But at that point resurrecting all the elements for the series — which had been a particularly expensive show to make — was evidently too difficult.
The TV landscape has changed so much now that Deadwood's fate might be very different today, and it isn't without a little bitterness that we can imagine Deadwood being more successful now than it was a decade ago. Maybe this will be a chance to see if that is actually how it would work out.
One Deadwood star, Timothy Olyphant, has been busy with another TV series for several years, but now that Justified is finished, his schedule may be more open. And Ian McShane, whose magnificently foul-mouthed character Al Swearengen was Deadwood's most attention-getting aspect, is working for HBO once again with a small but important role on the sixth season of Game of Thrones. So it isn't difficult to guess what led to some conversations. Whether they'll become more than conversations is something else altogether.
from:
http://www.slashfilm.com/deadwood-movie-talks/
Rejoice! HBO Is in Preliminary Talks about a 'Deadwood' Movie
My dear fellow fans of this cancelled-too-soon, Shakespeare-in-the-mud, 1870s South Dakotan-set HBO Western badass series from 2006, hark thine ears thusly! Garret Dillahunt, who played two characters on the series Deadwood, recently tweeted about rumors of the series returning with a movie. We've heard this before, right? Why believe it now? Dillahunt said:
So uh....I'm hearing credible rumors about a #Deadwood movie. #Everybodypray
But then, the call to action:
Come on @HBO...you made @entouragemovie. Give the #Deadwood fans some closure. #Youcandoit.
Now we're talking. Or at least, HBO is. The premium network confirmed in a statement, "In reference to Garret Dillahunt's tweet regarding the rumored Deadwood movie, there have only been very preliminary conversations."
That's enough hope to hang a hat on. Deadwood has long solidified itself in the canon of great television, but its story has always been unfinished, literally. David Milch's series ran for three seasons, but the wheels started to come off a little bit in the third when Milch seemed to lose interest in the project, and the show ended abruptly (and with terrible bleakness, even for that show). Deadline mentions that though Milch was offered another short season to wrap things up, he declined, but kept the possibility open for a wrap-up film.
Of course, how many times have fans heard that? "We'll get a movie!" we say (Fannibals, you know my pain here), trying to keep the hope alive that we haven't seen the last of our favorite shows. But it almost never happens. Still, as Dillahunt pointed out, it happened with Entourage on the big screen no less, a show that really didn't need a follow-up. The problem is, Deadwood has never had wide appeal, although in the years since its 2006 cancellation, it may have picked up more of a fanbase through DVD and HBO Go.
So let's look at this. Since the end of Justified, Deadwood star Timothy Olyphant could be available. Also, Ian McShane will be returning to the HBO fold after his turn in Showtime's Ray Donovan, as part of next season's Game of Thrones. Can someone please call Molly Parker, John Hawkes, Dayton Callie, Kim Dickens, Titus Welliver, Jim Beaver, W. Earl Brown, Brad Dourif, Paula Malcomson and everyone else? I don't care who died in the original run, get everyone on the horn. Dillahunt played two characters, anything is possible. Gather your flock, HBO, and deliver us more Deadwood!
The takeaway from this whole story is not just about rumors, but about HBO admitting that there have been "preliminary conversations," which at least means someone is talking about it. And now that Dillahunt tweeted about it (bless), it's our job to hound HBO and try and get this made. I'm really over the whole reboot/remake/whatever trend right now, but this isn't that — this is closure, and it is deserved. Too fuckin' right!
from:
http://collider.com/deadwood-movie-hbo-in-preliminary-talks/
Kim Dickens speaks about working on Deadwood:
"The dialogue was very dense, and I believe it's metered. At least that's my impression of what I remember hearing. But we didn't have scripts. The pages came in daily, and we didn't have a tremendous amount of time with that language, and I do think it took a few passes of just reading it to translate it for yourself the way you would Shakespeare in a way, and then to actually memorize it, because it's not exactly the way we speak now, that's for sure.
So to memorize it was challenging too, and this is material that we performed verbatim. There was no riffing. There was no improvising. There was no dropping words. It was so specific to the sound, the meter, and obviously to the meaning. You'd have to apply certain tricks to memorize it sometimes.
But that show really holds a really strong soft spot in my heart. It was a magical experience in the period alone and with David Milch. I had what felt like real artistic license, and there were no scripts or notes from someone else. We had the pages daily, and we shot them, and David was on set with us.
We were at Melody Ranch, and David would come down and sort of talk us all through. When we were doing a new setup for a new scene, he would come down and speak to all of us, the cast in it, the director, the crew. We would all just be on the edge of our seat. He's such a wonderful storyteller and speaker, and he would give us the feeling of what we were really playing, or the essence of the scene, or what the emotions were to capture, and then the director would execute it.
It was a really beautiful and magical experience. If you pass by it on the television or something, it's so in the moment. The minutiae between these people, these characters, it's so rich. If you do watch it over, there's so many more things to get, you know? It just keeps giving."
Posted on September 9.
from:
http://www.ew.com/article/2015/09/09/kim-dickens-fear-the-walking-dead-lost-deadwood-friday-night-lights-sons-of-anarchy-gone-girl-treme-house-cards
A Deadwood Dream
by Matt Zoller Seitz
August 18, 2015
Last night I had a dream about "Deadwood."
It was 2017, and David Milch's western had miraculously returned to HBO, eleven years after its unexpected cancellation. The opening credits were essentially unchanged, but they were missing a few familiar names and had gained a few new ones. And the first shot was a close-up of a smoldering pile of rubble.
The viewer realized with a shock that we had skipped ahead in the timeline. The plan, as outlined by Milch, was for the town of Deadwood to burn down at the end of season four—an event that occurred in reality on September 26, 1879—and then be rebuilt in increments through season five. The show's cancellation interrupted that narrative and created a serious production and logistical problem, nearly as pernicious as the challenge of reassembling what was, at the time, the largest cast of regulars in scripted TV—a veritable murderer's row of character actors who were thenceforth cast into the pop culture wilderness in search of fresh employment.
After a long moment, a sooty boot kicked the pile and broke it apart. The boot kept kicking it and kicking it until we saw a glint of dingy metal. Then a sooty hand reached into the frame and lifted a piece of a charred ceiling strut, revealing a can of peaches.
The hand belonged to Al Swearengen, the owner of the Gem Saloon. The camera pulled back to reveal Swearengen contemplating the peach can as if it were Yorick's skull. His face was partly masked by black and grey sweat-streaked ash, and his dark suit was shot through with moth-holes burned by cinders.
He unsheathed his throat-slitting buck knife, forced up the can's lid, speared a peach-half and lifted it, syrup gleaming on the blade, and popped it all into his mouth at once as if it were a piece of hard candy, and chewed.
After a long moment, he raised an eyebrow approvingly, took a long look around, and said, "If you want to hear God laugh, tell him your plans."
The camera pulled back again, taking in Swearengen from head to toe, and in the process revealed E.B. Farnum, the town's erstwhile mayor, standing nearby, clothed as much in soot as finery, chastising his dimwitted sidekick Richardson, who puttered about moaning and clutching at his temples. The camera pulled back further and rose higher and higher, taking in a panorama of destruction where a nascent hub of civilization once had stood. Everything was in ruins: the Gem Saloon, Cy Tolliver's upscale Bella Union, Mr. Wu's Chinatown with its caged women and chickens and flesh-eating hogs, Farnum's Grand Central Hotel, the jailhouse and sheriff's office where Seth Bullock had once jailed thieves and drunks and disturbers of the peace, the schoolhouse where his wife Martha had taught the town's children, the newspaper office where A.W. Merrick had chronicled the town's mostly-idealized history, the cramped cabin where Doc Cochran had treated the sick and elderly and deranged: it was gone, all gone. The black hills of South Dakota seemed to have acquired a brood of children. Three hundred buildings had been razed into heaps of blackened toothpicks.
At the farthest edge of the background you could faintly discern the hunched-over figure of Calamity Jane rummaging through a molehill in search of something to drink.
After that, it's all a blur—sort of a mind-trailer consisting of intimations and images, all mixed, strangely, with stories on a computer screen and on newspaper and magazine pages (like an old-fashioned movie montage) revealing how Deadwood had returned for a fourth season and gotten around the problem of having to rebuild one of the largest and most complex sets in the history of moving pictures—an actual working town consisting of historically accurate building exteriors that all housed miniature soundstages, the better to frame shots that juxtaposed people plotting or drinking or screwing in the foreground against pedestrians and horses and carriages roving the town's muddy main thoroughfare at middle-distance and more people in the buildings on the other side of the street, glimpsed through door frames and windows.
The masterstroke, it seems, was to skip ahead on the timeline, so that season four became an ellipsis in the master narrative. This choice absolved HBO of the expense of recreating the town so that it exactly matched what we'd seen in the first three seasons.
Apparently, after heated discussion and some consternation, the decision had been made to give continuity permission to go to hell.
This not only saved HBO and Milch's crew tens of millions of dollars and untold man-hours of preparation and construction time, it also introduced an element of mystery into the story of Deadwood: what person or persons or institution was responsible for the conflagration? How did this catastrophe come about, and what could be done to keep it from happening again? Every character blamed some other character, or some failing in the town's government, or within individual institutions: the sheriff's office, the recently established fire department, the godless heathens, the ignorant cattle-herders and stagecoach drivers who'd been repeatedly cautioned to dispose of their cigars and cigarettes with care, and those Yankton politicians who had been stingy about dispersing funds that would have brought water down from the rivered hills by way of above-ground wooden aqueducts.
In time, it became clear that what we were seeing in season five was actually a combination of season five and season four. Season four's narrative was about how a nexus of greed and incompetence and generalized ignorance about collective responsibility had sparked the fire that burned Deadwood to the ground. This narrative was encoded within the dialogue and monologues of season five, which concerned the rebuilding of the town and the re-imagining of its community.
In this dream, we saw businesses founded, friendships established and re-established, resentments rekindled, grudges set aside, love affairs nurtured. There was a marriage and a birth, an adoption and several deaths, some unspeakably savage, others unremarkable. And all of these stories unfolded against an aural backdrop of hammering and sawing, and a visual background of cross-timber grids rising up to form walls and roofs. Over the course of thirteen episodes the show got visibly darker, but in a way that ironically lightened the mood, because the comparative lessening of sunlight was the byproduct of all those new buildings going up.
Thus did the narrative of the rebuilding of Deadwood after a catastrophe become the narrative of the re-creation of "Deadwood" after its cancellation.
Nobody complained that all of the actors looked ten years older, because disaster does put the years on.
Near the end of the season, fall leaves appeared on the forested hills in the background, and then winter came, and the characters wrapped themselves in winter coats and scarves and thick gloves. The final episode took place on Christmas Eve. An avalanche poured down on the town, followed by a blizzard. There were no serious injuries and only one death—some yammering drunk from out-of-town that no one much liked anyway—but the deluge of snow cut off many of the citizens from their domiciles. So Al opened his saloon to the dispossessed and brought up crates of peaches and served them along with bourbon and hardtack, and dressed as Father Christmas, and bid his guests, their ranks thick with prospectors and whores and ruddy-faced orphans, and read to them from "A Christmas Carol," which had been published nearly four decades earlier on the other side of the ocean.
"Scrooge was better than his word," Swearengen read. "He did it all, and infinitely more; and to Tiny Tim, who did not die, he was a second father. He became a good friend, as good a master, and as good a man, as the good old city knew, or any other good old city, town, or borough, in the good old world. Some people laughed to see this alteration in him, but he let them laugh, and little heeded them; for he was wise enough to know that nothing ever happened on this globe, for good, at which some people did not have their fill of laughter at the outset; and knowing that such as these would be blind anyway, he thought it quite as well that they should wrinkle up their eyes in grins, as have the malady in less attractive forms. His own heart laughed; and that was quite enough to him."
from:
http://www.rogerebert.com/mzs/a-deadwood-dream
Deadwood movie: Ian McShane says he would be on board
McShane: 'Of course I'd love to reprise that. It was snatched away rather unjustly'
by James Hibberd •
Posted June 3 2016 — 12:03 PM EDT
No deals have been made for a Deadwood movie among the canceled Western's cast, but star Ian McShane says he's totally on board if HBO decides to pull the trigger.
Creator David Milch has been working on a script for HBO for the long-long-long awaited Deadwood movie, something the network has confirmed, but nothing has been greenlit. McShane tells EW he's ready to resurrect Al Swearengen, even with his starring role in Starz' upcoming Neil Gaiman fantasy drama American Gods.
"Of course I'd love to reprise that," McShane says. "How could one not, when it was snatched away rather unjustly by a combination of forces we'll never know about – hubris or money or whatever. But [Deadwood] certainly finished too early. At the time, most of us working on the show were incredulous. It's been announced by HBO so its not like I'm saying it. I know for a fact David is working on the script. It's been 10 years since it finished. [Star Timothy Olyphant's] free from Justified. I'm hoping they'll make the deal soon, for two or four hours, whatever they decide on. It was a very close knit group of actors on it. We got along very well. I'm sure David will decide to set it 10 years later, after the great fire or whatever happened in Deadwood. They haven't done the deal yet. They [were planning] to do it late this year or early next year."
Deadwood launched in 2004 and ran for three seasons before being cut short without a creatively satisfying conclusion. A planned movie was in the works after its cancellation, but eventually talks between Milch and the network collapsed. Ever since, the lack of a Deadwood movie gets regularly brought up by those HBO subscribers who watched the series as sore point.
In addition to American Gods and 2017's action sequel John Wick 2, McShane also has a mysterious upcoming role in the current season of HBO's Game of Thrones.
from:
http://www.ew.com/article/2016/06/03/deadwood-movie-mcshane
'Deadwood' Movie Currently Being Written, Says HBO
by Chris Cabin
The vast popularity and intense fandom of Game of Thrones is all good news for HBO, but it's worth remembering that they haven't always been the savviest people when it comes to programming. Let's ignore the fact that the previous head of programming drowned two, count'em, two projects with well-known maker of brilliant images and stories David Fincher over budgetary concerns, despite the fact that they fork over more than the yearly GDP of several African countries per episode of Game of Thrones. Let's also forget that they botched early adaptations of Watchmen, which was to be Paul Greengrass' first American television venture, and Preacher, though that one has actually turned out to be a blessing in disguise with AMC now doing very well with the project.
No, the biggest stick in my – and thousands of other viewers – craw is that they forced Deadwood to end before a proper ending could be put in place by creator-writer David Milch. That's the one that still stings after all these years, long after Deadwood has rightly been appraised as simply one of the best and most ambitious series to ever be put on the small screen. But HBO is not one to ignore their fanbase, and for a few years now, its been rumored that a Deadwood movie, which would air on HBO, is in the works and that more or less was confirmed last year, but very little has been heard since. Well, that changed when HBO's new head of programming Casey Bloys took to the TCA stage to discuss all things HBO, from seasons three of True Detective to Curb Your Enthusiasm's return to, yes, the Deadwood movie.
"David is writing the script. We haven't read it yet...I imagine it will be very good," is how Bloys responded to questions about the return of the beloved Western series. And though he wouldn't outright commit to a green light for the movie, he said that he "feels good" about the project and is impatient to read what Milch has been writing. So am I, but I can't say I blame Bloys for being hesitant to commit to a returning series, even with the same voice behind the project. Mind you, The X-Files recently returned for an abbreviated six-episode series with Chris Carter and several other key members of the original creative team behind it, and it was, in whole, a catastrophe. And this is coming from someone who even defends those last few seasons of the original series. So, fingers crossed and all, but let's not push it if it turns out the end result will be worse than the tacked-on ending we already have.
from:
http://collider.com/deadwood-movie-update/
'Fear The Walking Dead's' Kim Dickens Offers a 'Deadwood' Movie Update
Will a 'Deadwood' TV movie ever happen? Kim Dickens says that she's already heard some of the script from David Milch himself!
Ten years ago this month, HBO brought Deadwood to a premature conclusion after three seasons, which enraged fans. And if you really want to get them pissed off, ask them how much they liked John From Cincinnati! HBO offered hardcore Deadwood fans some small chance that the series could return as a miniseries or a TV movie. But it's been a decade, and there's been little movement on the project...until now.
Earlier this year, HBO admitted that Deadwood TV film was finally in the works, although series creator David Milch didn't seem to be in much of a hurry to finish writing it. However, Entertainment Weekly recently spoke with former Deadwood star Kim Dickens, and she said that she has not only met with Milch about the project, he read her a few scenes from the script.
"We sat at lunch and he read a few scenes to me between Stubbs, Tolliver, and Jane," related Dickens. "He read all the parts. It was amazing, it was funny, it was sad. It was all that it was." She added that "lots of [former Deadwood cast members] have had our lunches with him...I just know that everybody would do whatever they could to be a part of it."
Related: HBO Promises That 'Deadwood' Will Get a TV Movie
Dickens portrayed Joanie Stubbs on the series, an enterprising woman was the owner of the Chez Amis. She's currently the star of Fear The Walking Dead on AMC, which illustrates one of the biggest obstacles in the way of a Deadwood comeback. Almost all of the major cast members continue to be in high demand, with film and television projects of their own. Despite that, Dickens expressed hope that HBO and Milch are "aiming for sooner than later" for the reunion film.
Considering that there isn't even a production schedule firmly in place it seems like we're at least a year or two away from finding some closure in Deadwood. But knowing Milch, it could be even longer than that.
from:
http://www.craveonline.com/entertainment/1025829-fear-walking-deads-kim-dickens-offers-deadwood-movie-update#hRTpUAevS1aCQlSP.99
This would make a great movie.
Shaun: He's alive!
Bill: Well, this is...this is something. Zip, we thought you croaked. Gimme a kiss. (Bill raises Zippy to his face, and Zippy gives him an affectionate peck.) Give the kid a kiss too. As long as we're being stupid. (Bill reaches over to Shaun, and Zippy gives Shaun a peck too.)
Shaun: Hey, Zippy!
"name Vidal is derived from the Latin name "Vitalis," from the word "vita," which means "life."
After many days and well, years! Signs of new life on the BB.
Welcome! Interesting alias.
Skepticism Greets Rumors Of A 'Deadwood' Revival
by Adam Buckman
posted 11/14/17
If some sort of continuation of "Deadwood" actually comes to HBO next year, then it will be more than 10 years since it was last promised.
"Deadwood" fans are no doubt excited by this news, which suddenly appeared on various entertainment-trade sites and elsewhere over the weekend.
However, if previous experience is any guide, the TV Blog counsels against holding one's breath waiting for this to happen.
In addition, the historical record for remakes, reboots and updates of old TV shows is checkered to say the least. Who's to say that a return to "Deadwood" will accomplish anything other than revealing how much everyone has aged since we last saw them?
The stories about a "Deadwood" arrival -- such as this one on Deadline.com -- indicate that this "Deadwood" revival will more likely come in the form of a follow-up made-for-TV movie than as a full-fledged fourth season of the series.
The stories say "Deadwood" creator and principal writer David Milch wrote a script for a movie that is under consideration by HBO, the original series' home from 2004-06. If the movie ever gets made, the stories say it will air next year.
To long-time "Deadwood" fans, this tune sounds familiar. Back in 2006, as the third season was just getting ready to start, HBO announced there would be no fourth season.
The timing of the announcement took some of the air out of the excitement and anticipation for the new season, which turned out to be as superlative as the previous two.
HBO's decision to pull the plug didn't play well with the show's fan base, mainly because it appeared to stem from straight-up financial considerations and not about the quality of the show itself.
At the time, the indications were that HBO had decided to divert the money it might have invested in a fourth season of "Deadwood" into other series then in development.
Perhaps to deflect some of the criticism from disappointed HBO subscribers who then vowed to cancel their subscriptions, HBO promised (or seemed to promise) that it would produce one or possibly two follow-up "movies" (actually two-hour episodes) that together would serve as a finale for "Deadwood."
Back then, there was some expectation that these movies would turn up on HBO in 2008. They never materialized, however. And in the meantime, Milch made a series about a surfing family called "John from Cincinnati" for HBO that lasted just one season. After that, HBO and Milch seemed to be done with each other.
To make this new rumored "Deadwood" movie, HBO and Milch will have to find and sign up many of the show's former cast members.
The stories about the show's revival say the time frame for this new movie will likely be 1879, the year a catastrophic fire swept through the town of Deadwood.
If that is the case, then that year means three years have gone by in the world of "Deadwood" since it got underway in 1876. But for the characters and actors who play them, 12 years will have passed between the last time they were filmed and next year's possible airing of this new movie.
The way these characters might look could provide a distraction to the experience of watching them in their old roles, although Hollywood does have various tricks to compensate for that.
The bigger risk is that a new "Deadwood" simply won't measure up to the pleasures of the old one.
For true fans of "Deadwood" (or any other show that gets revived this many years after it was last seen), any perceptible decline in the show's quality -- real or imagined -- from a dozen years ago will be even more disappointing than the show's surprise cancellation in spring 2006.
from:
https://www.mediapost.com/publications/article/310064/skepticism-greets-rumors-of-a-deadwood-revival.html
Sundown on Deadwood
David Milch, battling Alzheimer's, finally finishes his TV Western.
By Matt Zoller Seitz
"Deadwood creator David Milch says he always had faith that his HBO Western would someday get to wrap up its story, even as more than a dozen years have passed since its surprise cancellation in 2006. But he also had doubts. Only when the cameras started rolling on Deadwood: The Movie — a TV movie set ten years after the show's last episode — could he exhale. "Let's just say that the exigencies of the business threw up a series of roadblocks over the years," says Milch, walking along the main thoroughfare at Melody Ranch Studios on a cold December night, his wife, Rita, by his side. "Somehow, they were all surmounted."
When the sun goes down on Melody Ranch — a Newhall, California, production facility that has hosted many film and TV Westerns — a sense of isolation creeps in. You can hear the wind rustling in the wooded hills, and every now and then a coyote yelps or an owl hoots. It's easy to imagine that this outdoor soundstage, with its temporarily dormant camera tracks and arc lights, is truly the place it pretends to be: a dirty, lawless camp that became a town in a territory that's now on the cusp of becoming a U.S. state (South Dakota), its populace more civil than when the series was canceled but still wild at heart. Horses are tied to hitching posts. Their handlers hang nearby, checking texts and griping about the storms that have just pounded Southern California. The rain flooded the interiors of most key locations, sparing only the Gem Saloon, where Deadwood's legendary gangster, pimp, and all-around power broker Al Swearengen (Ian McShane) holds court.
That's where the Milches are headed. It's the second-to-last day of the shoot, and they're filming a scene with Swearengen; his disabled housekeeper and ward, Jewel (Geri Jewell); and his former employee and sort-of consort, Trixie (Paula Malcomson).
Milch is here to watch, not interfere. He was a notorious micromanager during Deadwood's original run, ordering reshoots if he didn't like the way a scene was playing and dictating new dialogue from the sidelines for the cast to repeat. McShane has spoken of top-to-bottom rewrites being handed to actors just before the cameras rolled, the pages still hot from the copier.
This time, Milch is entrusting the day-to-day execution to his collaborators, among them the director Daniel Minahan, a series veteran, and his co–executive producer Regina Corrado, who started out as a writer on the series in 2005.
But his serenity is also the by-product of a greater urge to let go and accept what life has in store, even if it's not what he asked for.
It's here that we come to the matter of David Milch's Alzheimer's diagnosis.
Milch started to worry that something was amiss five years ago, when he and his friends and relatives noticed more instances of "imperfect recall and tardy recall and short temper. I became more and more of an acquired taste," he says. The writing process became harder too. There was, he says, "a generalized incertitude and a growing incapacity." About a year ago, Milch got up the nerve to have a brain scan. The news was not good.
"As best I understand it, which is minimally, I have a deterioration in the organization of my brain," he says. "And it's progressive. And in some ways discouraging. In more than some ways — in every way I can think of."
The cast and crew of the film and past participants in the show all declined to discuss Milch's condition, though they're aware of it. Milch himself seesaws between curiosity, bitterness, and incredulity, along with a rueful fatalism at the realization that his own father probably had Alzheimer's as well. "That was a while ago, and the diagnosis was not as sophisticated or specific, but in retrospect, he exhibited all the symptoms of the illness," Milch says. He is also moved to remember the deterioration of his mentor at Yale, Robert Penn Warren, whose poetry Milch reads on set to inspire the cast and crew. "He was not well toward the end of his life," he says. "He was every day encountering subtle differences in his condition. But there was an unflinching dignity in the way that he carried himself and a bravery and kindness."
As best I understand it, which is minimally, I have a deterioration in the organization of my brain. And it's progressive.
Milch's diagnosis is the ultimate humbling, having arrived at the tail end of 13 years of harsh reminders about the limits of control. For a self-described "degenerate gambler" who struggled with addiction throughout the first half of his adult life, Milch has had an incredible artistic run. He attended Yale to avoid the draft but was expelled after being accused — falsely, he says — of destroying a police car's siren with a shotgun. He became an assistant there (for Cleanth Brooks and Warren, among others) and later a lecturer, then drifted into television, winning an Emmy, a Writers Guild Award, and a Humanitas Prize for his first produced script, the 1982 Hill Street Blues episode "Trial by Fury." The creator of that cop drama, Steven Bochco, brought Milch along to his biggest success, NYPD Blue, a broadcast-network series that was groundbreaking for its language, violence, and nudity. Milch was an executive producer and writer for the show for seven seasons. The 2004 debut of Deadwood, a town-based Western in the vein of My Darling Clementine and McCabe & Mrs. Miller, was a new artistic pinnacle and the first drama on which he was entirely in control.
It was downhill from there. Deadwood was supposed to run for at least four seasons but got canceled after three owing to a financial dispute between HBO and co-producer Paramount (which owned the international rights) as well as HBO's increasing exasperation with Milch's improvisational production methods and declining ratings. His follow-up, the seaside parable John From Cincinnati, ran just one season. There would be more attempts at series: Some never got past the pilot stage, including The Money, a family drama about a superrich media clan, and the '70s cop drama Last of the Ninth. The HBO racetrack drama Luck got axed early in season two after a series of horse deaths; it had been green-lighted despite HBO's skittishness when Milch agreed to cede control of the filmmaking to executive producer Michael Mann. Milch then wrote six episodes of a historical drama about Boss Tweed but shelved it when there were no buyers. And a couple of years ago, it was reported that Milch was joining the third season of Nic Pizzolatto's HBO crime drama, True Detective, but it turns out the extent of his involvement was exaggerated. "Nic had written the first few episodes and came to David for advice and guidance, and they worked together on what became the fourth episode," says Rita Milch. "But then Nic continued on his own."
Behind the scenes, Milch's life was just as troubled. In 2016, it was reported that he had gambled away a fortune, accumulated $17 million in debt and had to put his houses up for sale. The details came from a lawsuit Rita had filed against her husband's business managers, alleging they had kept her in the dark about the financial damage his gambling had caused. (The matter was settled out of court.) Asked about their fiscal status today, the Milches decline to get into specifics. "It was an awakening, shall we say," Rita explains. "We've come back from it. We're obviously scaled back now, but otherwise life is the same."
When his Alzheimer's symptoms appeared, Milch had been working for years on what would become Deadwood: The Movie. Rumors had been swirling since the show's cancellation that he was trying to get it going again as a series or a package of two movies. But Rita says there was only ever the one film and that "all the rumors about other stuff earlier probably just came out of people really wanting more Deadwood."
The biggest obstacle was figuring out how to reassemble one of the largest recurring casts in TV history years after key actors had moved on. William Sanderson (E. B. Farnum) sums up his own skepticism by quoting Timothy Olyphant (Seth Bullock): "I can't get the whole cast to a barbecue in my backyard — how are we gonna do this?" The script's running time allayed fears of getting tied down, but the toughest gets were Deadwood's closest equivalents to leads, who had all moved on to other successful projects: Olyphant (Justified and Santa Clarita Diet), McShane (American Gods and the John Wick franchise), and Molly Parker (House of Cards). Once they signed on, the impossible became possible.
The film's tightly focused nature might've made it feel like a final summation even without the extra-dramatic frame of Milch's Alzheimer's, which is insinuated in fleeting exchanges — as when Brad Dourif's Doc Cochran asks Al what day it is and he mistakenly says Tuesday when it's Friday. The tale is suffused with a melancholy acceptance of the passage of time and the certainty of aging and death. These heavy themes were a relief to the actors, though: W. Earl Brown, who returns as Dan Dority, Al's right-hand man, says his first reaction on reading the script was "relief, not just because it was a beautiful piece of work but because the fact that it was set ten years later meant I wouldn't have to dye my hair and go to the gym."
There was trepidation, too. "Our speed is the slow telling of the tale, you know?" Malcomson says, relaxing after the end of a shooting day in the Gem on a 19th-century love seat atop a sawdusted stage. "We've got a lot of plot and a lot of things to pack into two hours, so it's sort of like we have to develop a bit of a different muscle for this."
But only a bit. Storytelling as remembrance was always at the heart of Milch's fiction. The show was forever contrasting the polished, neutered first draft of history, as penned by newspaperman A. W. Merrick (Jeffrey Jones), with the carnal, booze-soaked, dope-addled, money-grubbing reality taking place in the gambling parlors, opium dens, brothels, and Chinatown alleyways, where corpses were fed to pigs owned by Al's counterpart, Wu (Keone Young). The season-two opener was even titled "A Lie Agreed Upon" after Napoleon's (perhaps apocryphal) formulation explaining what "history" really is. Deadwood's only immutable realities were birth, death, love, and grief. The dead lingered in the minds of citizens, who visited their graves and spoke to them or sat silently in the margins of raucous celebrations, remembering the ones who couldn't be there.
In retrospect, the show seems to have been building toward this bittersweet, multivalent conclusion. Like many episodes of the series, Deadwood: The Movie is about the tension between wanting things to change versus wishing they could always stay the same. It's also about the resonating power of loss. Scenes and subplots reckon with past traumas, including the assassination of Wild Bill Hickock and the murder of one of Swearengen's sex workers.
The nature of the project meant also that every shooting day was likely to contain both a reckoning with time and a professional farewell.
"You walked on the set, everybody was the same again, except they were older," McShane says. "But this time, when you finished a scene with them, you were actually saying good-bye."
And here they come: more good-byes witnessed by the Milches, who are seated behind Minahan at a bank of monitors. The scene finds Jewel helping an exhausted Al get ready for bed as Trixie moves through the room. It's not an action-packed moment by HBO drama standards, but it's the final scene McShane and Jewell will play before wrapping both this production and (as far as anyone knows) their performances as these characters.
The filming is complicated by the blocking, which requires the sometimes physically unsteady Jewel to sit on the edge of Al's bed, and by the requirement that she sing "Waltzing Matilda," a song she can't seem to memorize despite having nailed the scene's spoken dialogue. "Fuck that!" she exclaims, laughing. "What a hard fuckin' song!" At one point, flustered, Jewell falls off the bed, eliciting gasps from the cast and crew.
"Oh!" Milch cries. Rita's hand reaches for his shoulder as if to prevent him from falling next. "It's okay," she says quietly.
"I've fallen and I can't get up!" Jewell ad-libs as she is helped to stand upright, and the set echoes with laughter.
Jewell, McShane, Malcomson, Milch, and Minahan pull the scene apart and rejigger it to make it work. McShane takes the lead, reassuring Jewell that this is no big deal — that everyone has trouble remembering, that they'll all get through it together. "Let's go again, luv, yes?" McShane asks Jewell after they've collaborated on solutions between takes, whereupon Minahan rolls the cameras again and again. Two hours later, they're done, and the production applauds a wrap for both actors.
"What you witnessed tonight was heroic," Milch says to a visitor afterward. "I hope you remember it. I hope you tell people about it."
He says he's going to continue writing despite his new difficulties, because that's what he does, though he's not volunteering details about any future projects beyond an as-yet-untitled autobiography. Rita says the silver lining in all this is that her husband's job requires him to routinely participate in memory-strengthening exercises that most other people encounter for the first time in Alzheimer's therapy. "I compare it to a musician who can still play and has access to the memory of how to do that and is still able to exercise his talent," she says. "The brain is David's most exercised muscle."
Deadwood: The Movie will air on May 31.
From: https://www.vulture.com/2019/04/david-milch-deadwood-movie.html
Full Trailer for Deadwood:The Movie
https://www.youtube.com/embed/nysULZSpMwE
TRAVEL: The Ultimate Deadwood Movie Viewing Party Can be Found in the Real-Life Town of Deadwood
by Chelsea Batten
A good Western is hard to find these days. I'm not talking about the futuristic takes on the genre like Westworld or graphic novel-style spinoffs such as The Preacher. I'm talking about an honest-to-God cowboy flick, where lone lawmen hold off an angry mob to ensure that the prisoner lives until his hanging at dawn. Where mustachioed men engage in fisticuffs accompanied by tinkly saloon pianos. Where life is a race against time before it's swept away by greed, rotgut whiskey, or scarlet fever.
Back in 2004, HBO premiered the beautifully written but regrettably short-lived series Deadwood, a gritty epic set in the Black Hills of South Dakota. The show was immediately greeted with critical and popular acclaim, but only the nerdiest fans knew that the series was based on the history of an actual place. The real-life gold rush camp of Deadwood, South Dakota, was even populated by legends of the American West such as Wild Bill Hickok and Calamity Jane, as well as foul-mouthed saloonkeeper Al Swearengen and reluctant sheriff Seth Bullock.
Back in 2006, the Emmy-nominated show's untimely demise was a shock to viewers. Despite having ratings on a par with The Sopranos and Six Feet Under, Deadwood drowned under the weight of its extravagant budget and unpredictable producer David Milch. The final episode was clunky and confusing, to say the least; HBO, more than likely aware of this, offered a vague promise to make a 2-hour feature film that would provide closure in the form of a searing (and historically accurate) showdown between two of the main characters. Alas, the film never materialized.
Until now, that is. Thanks to the persuasive magic of television's new golden age, HBO has finally made good on its long overdue promise. Deadwood: The Movie will premiere May 31 on HBO. If you're among the series devotees who have been awaiting this moment for more than a decade, you should definitely head to South Dakota for the best viewing parties in the country.
Hosted in the real historic town of Deadwood, the party centers around a screening of the film at the Deadwood Mountain Grand resort. Sip on cocktails inspired by Deadwood's glory days, don a wide-brimmed hat and fake mustache in the old-time photo booth, and geek out at re-enactments of historically based show scenes. Spend the hours before the screening at nearby iconic destinations such as Mount Rushmore, Badlands National Park, and Custer State Park. Afterward, hang around for a performance from Sacred Cowboys, a country-rock band led by actor W. Earl Brown who played Swearengen's scruffy sidekick Dan Dority.
If you want to really take it to the next level, you can opt for the Deadwood: Heroes & Villains customizable travel package. This three-night package includes perks such as:
Accommodations at select properties like the Historic Bullock Hotel, where you'll share space with the ghost of Seth Bullock, who built the hotel and is said to haunt its halls.
Visit to Mount Moriah Cemetery where Seth Bullock, Calamity Jane, and Wild Bill Hickock are buried.
Viewing of a re-enactment of the trial of Jack McCall. This event was an important hinge of Deadwood's first season, showing how the town dealt with the murder of the venerated Wild Bill Hickok by the cowardly, crooked-nosed McCall.
The Lawman's Patrol Walking Tour. Led by an actor playing the historically accurate version of Con Stapleton (a dim-witted card dealer in the show, but actually the town's first marshal), this tour will give you the historical lowdown on Deadwood's brothels and bars.
A ride on the Deadwood Stagecoach, the iconic conveyance that carried mail, gold, and ambitious adventurers all over the Old West. (We recommend bringing along an orthopedic cushion. Maybe also a neck brace.)
Tour of the authentic 1876 Broken Boot Gold Mine, where you can actually pan for gold without worrying about a Brom Garrett type of situation)
Tour of local history museums such as The Days of 76 Museum (honoring Deadwood's pioneers) and The Adams Museum and House where the town's influential business leaders used to gather.
Rejoice, long-suffering Western fans. As Al Swearengen would put it (in one of his less profane moments), your prospects have just improved.
The Deadwood: Heroes and Villains travel package is available starting May 25 and runs through September 2, 2019. Prices start at $303 and vary depending on lodging and activity preferences.
from:
https://www.themanual.com/travel/deadwood-movie-viewing-party-south-dakota/
Rebuilding Deadwood, Plank by Plank
By Robert Ito
May 15, 2019
SANTA CLARITA, CALIF. — "Deadwood" is back for one final hello and goodbye.
Last November, more than a decade after David Milch's award-winning HBO series unexpectedly and maddeningly folded, Timothy Olyphant, as Seth Bullock, was once again in the center of the town's perpetually muddy main drag, having words — heated, profane, Shakespearean ones — with Gerald McRaney, the show's villainous George Hearst. From the balcony of the Gem casino, Ian McShane (Al Swearengen) glowered; offstage, Robin Weigert, the show's foul-mouthed, tenderhearted Calamity Jane, waited in the wings.
Against all odds, the producers were able to reunite nearly all of the show's principal cast for "Deadwood: The Movie," the show's much-delayed, much-anticipated finale. "I didn't think it was ever going to happen," Olyphant admitted later.
But if reassembling the show's enormous ensemble cast 13 years on was a herculean task, reassembling the town of Deadwood itself was no less knotty, or crucial. The series is named "Deadwood" after all — the locale is just as important as any single cast member, the story of its 19th-century gentrification intertwined with the rising and falling fortunes of its inhabitants. So the filmmakers needed to get the place right.
The good news: They got to return to one of the most memorable and beloved towns in the history of television. Although "Deadwood" ran for only three seasons, it was nominated for 28 Emmys, winning eight, and is now considered one of the greatest dramas in TV history (earlier this year, The Times declared it one of the "20 best TV dramas since 'The Sopranos'").
The bad news: They had to recreate much of it without blueprints, within four months, and on sets that had been taken over and rendered unrecognizable by other films and shows ("Django Unchained," HBO's "Westworld").
"We were still building things, even while we were shooting," the producer Gregg Fienberg said.
"Deadwood: The Movie," which debuts on May 31, is set in 1889, 10 years after the series left off, when civilization is coming to the town in the form of streetlights, fancy eateries and phone service (O.K., one phone).
So the primary challenge was to create a slightly modernized Old West, with updated streets and new buildings to reflect a decade's worth of progress while preserving the look and feel of the original Deadwood for its purist fans.
As with the original series, the film was shot on the Melody Ranch, a 22-acre film studio that has played host to Hollywood cowboys like Gene Autry (a former owner), Gary Cooper (who filmed "High Noon" here) and John Wayne ("Stagecoach").
When the producers and designers finally returned to the site last year, they discovered that most of the original buildings were still here — even many of the original props, including the Bella Union's craps tables and roulette wheel. Bullock's house, however, had to be rebuilt from scratch (it had been torn down by the "Westworld" crew), as did the interior of the updated, now-classier Gem ("No sleeping on the tables," one sign reads).
But when the designers went to consult the show's original blueprints, they were nowhere to be found. "The show was canceled so abruptly and everybody was so traumatized that nobody bothered to save them," said Maria Caso, the production designer on the series and the film.
Desperate, the designers painstakingly reviewed old episodes, often frame by frame, and tried to call back distant architectural memories. "We watched the show over and over to try to remember what we had built," she said.
Much of the reference material for the series and the film was provided by the curators and researchers at Deadwood History Inc., the umbrella organization for Deadwood's four museums. Over the years, Caso consulted them about everything including the price for a small glass of whiskey in 19th-century Deadwood (a nickel) and what Chinatown looked like.
"We actually had to hire a part-time researcher, Jerry Bryant, because the questions were so constant," said Mary Kopco, Deadwood History's executive director during the series's run. "He ended up writing a whole book on Al Swearengen based on all the questions we were being asked."
The extra effort seemed particularly necessary with a show like "Deadwood," Caso noted. "The audience, they check on everything," she said. "So we did a lot of research before we started drawing or building. We really wanted to recreate as many of the details as we could, just so it's true to history, and to honor that."
Of course, this being Hollywood, there is a certain level of artifice. Those gorgeous mountains and ponderosa pines are all added later by the visual effects department; the 40-foot logs brought in for Hearst's telephone poles are fake, because of continuing troubles with bark beetles, which have been killing California trees by the tens of millions.
As for all that mud and mountainous terrain in flat, drought-prone Southern California, "we brought in tons and tons of dirt, 50 or so trucks full, and constantly sprayed it down with water," Fienberg said.
And no, Kopco said, unprompted, none of the residents of Deadwood were feeding corpses to the town's hogs.
During a break in filming, Caso walked down Deadwood's main street, surveying her team's handiwork and pointing out landmarks. She noted the patchwork brick and stone facade of the Bullock and Star Hotel, which grew out of the hardware store the two men founded in the original series. (In real life, the hardware store partners eventually had a falling out; the hotel was named the Bullock Hotel.)
"Bullock and Star started to make this grand hotel with this beautiful stone, but then they ran out of money so then they started using a different stone, and then finally they switched to brick," Caso said of the historical men. "So we copied that."
In Deadwood's Chinatown, Caso revealed a 150-year-old "opium bed" they purchased for the show. Returning to the main street, she pointed out the town's butcher shop, its roof cluttered with piles of antlers. "They would butcher the deer and then throw the horns on top," she said of the butchers in Deadwood.
The town's fanciest restaurant, the Oyster Bay, offered bivalves of questionable freshness. "It took two weeks for the oysters to get from Providence to Deadwood," she said.
Caso then headed inside the Bella Union, the saloon formerly owned by Cy Tolliver (played in the series by Powers Boothe, who died in 2017). Unlike on most Hollywood shoots, where the exteriors are in one location and the interiors are built inside a studio soundstage miles or even states away, there are no false fronts in Deadwood. Walk off the street into any hotel or cat house in Deadwood — other than Swearengen's expansive, two-story Gem — and you're inside that hotel or cat house.
"It grounded the show and gave it a sense of realism that's difficult to get when you're always cutting from exterior to interior," she said.
For the cast, re-entering the Deadwood set felt like stepping back in time — to 1889, and 2006. "When we first started filming, I told a cameraman, 'That door should be closed!,'" McShane said. "It was like going back to exactly what I would have said 13 years ago, letting them know that Swearengen closed every door behind him because he didn't want any surprises."
On the second to the last night of shooting, cast and crew were saying their goodbyes, their faces illuminated by torchlight. Many remarked how emotional and bittersweet it was to be back in Deadwood; others, family members in tow, took one last long look at the town's main street. Few probably knew how much work had gone into researching the wallpaper, say, or making sure each period sign was accurate.
"All I can tell you is that it's a joy to be around," Olyphant said. "It makes you feel like you're a part of something really special because everything around you is so special. I can only assume it raises your game."
from:
https://www.nytimes.com/2019/05/15/arts/television/deadwood-the-movie-hbo.html?em_pos=medium&ref=headline&nl_art=2&te=1&nl=watching&emc=edit_wg_20190517
Bullock's Last Stand: Timothy Olyphant on 'Deadwood: The Movie' and David Milch
Timothy Olyphant takes us behind the scenes of the long-awaited 'Deadwood' reunion and shares lore from the original series — including the real reason it was canceled
by Alan Sepinwall
Timothy Olyphant was never happy with his performance during the original three-season run of Deadwood. "I recall barely having my head above water," he told me in the fall, "and I recall regretting every single choice made and begging David [Milch] to let me walk him back and change it." Actors can be their own worst critics, and Olyphant was pretty wonderful in his role as hot-tempered Deadwood marshal Seth Bullock. He is, remarkably, even better in Deadwood: The Movie, which premieres on HBO on May 31st. While the long-awaited reunion is very much an ensemble piece, with significant story arcs for beloved characters from Sol Starr (John Hawkes) to Trixie (Paula Malcomson), Calamity Jane (Robin Weigert) and, of course, Al Swearengen (Ian McShane), among others, it also features the single best work I've ever seen Olyphant do on screen, whether in the original series, on Justified, or anywhere else. The film finds Bullock in a very happy and successful phase of his life as business partner to Sol, husband to Martha (Anna Gunn) and father to kids they've had since the events of the series. Then the arrival of old friends and enemies threatens that peace and fulfillment in myriad ways. Olyphant is called on to play a wide range of intense emotion in a short period of time, and he does it spectacularly.
It's a performance he might not have given. Owing to his hard feelings about his original work on the series, Olyphant was reluctant to sign onto the movie at all. That's one of many topics we discussed over the course of an hourlong conversation on the movie's set. He didn't want to do this interview either, postponing our scheduled chats several times. But as we sat on a bench outside Bullock and Starr's new hotel (which stands where their hardware store was on the original show), Olyphant opened up at length about the experience of doing the original three seasons, his memories of the abrupt cancellation, his affection and admiration for series creator Milch and much more. At the end of it, he admitted to me that while he'd been averse to talking at first, "I'm glad I did." That could apply just as easily to his work in the movie itself. I'm thankful he changed his mind about both.
In the 12 years since Deadwood was canceled, was there a point at which you assumed this reunion wouldn't happen?
I never thought it would happen.
Why not?
I wasn't all that keen on it, to be honest with you. So, I just figured it wouldn't happen because I wasn't really interested in it happening. But it's been really lovely. And contradicting that, I always was hoping to have the opportunity to work with David [Milch] again. [Playing Bullock again] had some appeal but I was more interested in working with David.
Obviously, Deadwood: The Movie can't exist without you and it can't exist without Ian McShane.
That's nice of you to say. I never assumed that to be true.
At what point —
I'm being sincere about it. Put this mustache on anyone, it could work.
At what point did you start to understand that this had a real chance of happening, and that you wanted to do it?
I didn't know I wanted to do it until about a few weeks ago. But I knew it had a chance a year or so ago. There was a natural script. David and I, we'd met a couple of times. I knew he was enthusiastic about it. So, I knew it was real. It feels like it's almost been a year or so.
What made you decide to say yes, given your ambivalence?
For practical reasons, it worked. I was available, it shoots here and the money was good. And I'm glad I did it.
The scene you filmed yesterday had Bullock at his angriest and most violent. It had been a while since I'd seen you in that mode. What's it been like returning to that character, having to play these extreme emotions?
I've enjoyed it. I've enjoyed the scenes, I've enjoyed the job. And there are times where I've realized it feels like just yesterday I was doing this, and at the same time, it feels like it's been a long time. It's a surreal experience, and so far a really lovely one.
The process on the movie seems less chaotic than it was on the show. I know HBO insisted on a locked script; David is limited in what he can change. How has it felt not having the huge, last-minute alterations that were his hallmark?
To criticize my own personal feelings about where people are in their lives and what they're going through, I feel a little ripped off. Because one of the great appeals of working with David is the chaos. And in the same respect of feeling like I don't know why these fuckers blew this show up 12 years ago, there's a tinge of me feeling ripped off that these fuckers didn't get this thing going sooner. Because what I do miss, without getting too much in the weeds about why I may have not been as interested in this as perhaps others, I always thought if we're going to do it, we should go back and give David the opportunity to do what he does best, which is multiple episodes.
He's one of the greatest episodic writers the genre has ever seen. And to some degree, my concern has always been, for our movie, what's the fucking point? My recollection of what made the show great was never the plot. What made the show great was spending time with these characters, and that whatever characters were on screen, the show might as well be about them. And when you do a movie, you just don't have the real estate. So, nobody wants to see The Untouchables where the lady with the baby carriage at the train station has 20 pages of material, because you've got to take out 20 pages that goes to Eliot Ness and there lies the rub. Right? So, the idea of doing a movie of this show, by its very nature, my concern was, "Are we not destroying the show? Are you killing the very thing by handcuffing it?" But all that being said, I'm glad I did it.
Process aside, does the material feel like Deadwood to you?
Every draft I read, every page I read, what's very much alive is the poetry and the characters. And my experience when I read the first draft, and this was a couple of years ago, is you start flipping pages and I had the same experience on every page: "Wow! This is beautiful writing," and, "Jesus, what a great character." And two or three pages later, "Oh, Jesus! What a great character. I forgot about this guy. Oh, Jesus! I forgot about her. What a wonderful character." That was my experience flipping through the pages, and that was my experience when I first got the pilot, and every episode that David handed in — or, I shouldn't say he handed in an episode. He never handed us an episode, he handed us pages. But every time he handed us pages, I just thought, "Jesus, what a great scene, what a great character."
I don't feel like that's been diluted. That feels just as alive as ever, and I also will say, not that I'm the best perspective on this, when I read this draft I thought, "There's been nothing like this since this thing existed, and there's still nothing like this." And I only hesitate to say that with any great authority because I really don't watch television so much. For all I know there is. So, what the fuck do I know? But I've not seen anything like it. I've not seen anything like it prior to this show coming on the air 14 years ago or whatever it's been, and I haven't seen it since.
David read his daily letter to the cast and crew this morning. Before he was diagnosed with Alzheimer's, he used to do that kind of stuff off the cuff. What's it like standing there as he reads these things?
Every minute with David Milch is a blessing and I cherish it, and that's how I felt then. And the reason I say that I was always keen on working with David again is because of those moments. Because of that type of thinking, that type of passion, that type of creativity. I miss it. My memory of being on the show, and I say this knowing memory is not a very reliable narrator, I feel like I had a very full experience and really took it in. Even when quite honestly I felt completely overwhelmed and drowning in it, I really was very keen on what I was seeing, watching and learning from David.
What I didn't know at the time was how much that experience was the gift that would just keep giving. I've been lucky enough to go on and do other shows, but I took those experiences of working with David to all those other shows. I've seen what was possible. And it was extremely helpful, always being able to stop and say, "What would David do? Just pretend to be David and do that."
There's a bunch of things that are lovely about coming back to this in particular, but I imagine it applies to a lot of things if you ever get the opportunity to return to something — just the high school fucking reunion, for all I care. Because you get to see the people again, and you get to share stories and take people in, and hold it up to the memory of what those experiences were and ask, "Do you remember it the way I do? Is that how it was for you? Was I the way I thought I was?" And that's a very rare opportunity. When I say that I've always been very keen on the idea of working with David again, it's always been about how I'd love to go back and see what's changed and at the same time see what remains the same. I was always hoping to have another opportunity to collaborate with him, and I would be lying if I didn't admit I'm a bit saddened that that opportunity has been somewhat diminished by life's other plans. It's hard not to be a little selfish about that. I'm an actor after all. But at the same time, I feel very blessed to be around him again.
I've heard many conflicting accounts of the cancellation over the years, including one that pinned it to a panic that ensued after you bought a new house. Care to clarify?
I'll tell you my version, and I already said this earlier: I fully understand that my memory of how it happened may not be how it happened, even for me. This is a story I've told over the years and every time you tell it, it changes. And let me also preface this with, I've never been one to let truth get in the way of a good story. So, if you are holding onto facts and you're going to call me on these facts, go fuck yourself.
Sure.
OK. Fair enough. Here is what I remember. First of all, Ian and I in Season Three were renegotiating our deal. We were getting ready to start the season and our deals had not been completed. At the time, the late, great James Gandolfini, God rest his soul, had been in the papers quite a bit for refusing to go back to work. Well, Mr. McShane and I didn't want to be those guys, so we're like, "We'll go back to work in good faith, and we'll work this out as we go." As I recall, we must have shot seven, eight episodes at least, before I remember getting the call that we had come to a new understanding. And the two of us got a lovely raise and back pay for all the episodes we had already shot. I say that only because when I did go buy a house, I felt confident that my conservative estimate was, "Only count on one more season, because anything more than that, even though they've just given us this big raise, you never know." See how funny it sounds now? So, yeah, I went and bought a house. I think a lot of cast members bought houses that year. Why would they give us a raise if they were going to turn around [and cancel it]? I wonder if the HBO people have an understanding that they gave Ian and I a big raise when obviously the show was going to blow up. They would never even have had those negotiations. It's hysterical to think how backward-ass that situation was. So anyway, I bought a house, and yes, I don't think I had been in the house but a few days when Mr. Milch called me in the morning and said, "Bad news, the show is over." And I said, "Really?" He said, "Yeah." And I told him he should come over and see the house before I sell it.
Now, as I understand it from others, no one else had been informed of that. So my then calling my rep to say, "Hey, the show has been canceled," led to a series of phone calls. It was a bit of a grass fire, if you will, that became difficult for the two sides to then walk back. In fact, the show was not over at all, but that by the time that spread around, no one wanted to back down from it. And so, it just became fact.
Did you wind up selling the house?
No. I'm a glass-half-full type of motherfucker, and I said to myself, "Well, thank God I didn't know they were going to cancel the show. I would never have bought this house." And let me put this under the list of why these people owe me. What we have to thank for this is the villain in [Live Free or] Die Hard and a fucking bald head in Bulgaria shooting Hitman. That's what that phone call led to. "How about the villain of Die Hard?" I said, "Sure." And they're like, "Do you want to read the script?" I said, " I get it. I'm in. I just bought a house. Did you not hear? They just canceled my fucking show. Yes, I'll do it." "What about this video game adaptation?" "Yes to that too. I'm in. I've got to make up some TV money." You know what, though? Those experiences were equally valuable. Oddly enough, those kinds of experiences, perhaps arguably more valuable than these. You know? Find yourself bald in Bulgaria doing some pile of shit, that will get you up a little earlier in the morning and make you work a little harder.
In the original show there's basically just the one bit at the end of the pilot, when Bullock and Hickock kill the bandits, where you draw your gun and shoot somebody. Then you go off to be Raylan Givens on Justified, you're doing that basically two or three times an episode.
Oh, come on, now. You're exaggerating. Two or three times a season.
Being back here doing a gunfight today, does it feel more natural to you than it might have back when you were doing the pilot?
First of all, there's nothing worse than an actor telling people they didn't like their performance when other people probably loved it. So, I will only say this: I don't remember much feeling natural on this show. It was a big opportunity for me at the time, and I recall barely having my head above water, and I recall regretting every single choice made and begging David to let me walk him back and change it. I recall being an actor who's just trying not to get fired.
But this experience led to others. By the time I got to Justified, I recall being an actor that showed up and said, "I'm just going to assume everyone else here has bad ideas until proven otherwise, and I'm just going to do it the way I would do it and fall on my own sword, thank you very much. And then we'll go from there." And it was just a wonderful experience. I wasn't concerned about being fired. I was concerned about whether or not I wanted to quit. You're just at a different place along the journey. And that really is the biggest difference. Showing up here, worrying about losing my job; showing up to that one down the road, a similar type of role, worrying about whether I wanted to fire the show or not. By the way, I'm not suggesting that was a possibility or even in my mind. But it's just, you're at a different place along the journey, and your mind is on other things.
This has been a very interesting and a strange experience, to be asked to do a role that you were doing at a time that, had you been given a second chance, would you even have done it the same way? It's a strange experience, and I don't think one that I would expect, for example, Ian, to have. When Ian came to the show at that point in his journey — there were so many veterans on the set. I was watching so many guys at just the top of their game, not a care in the world. But hopefully you're smart enough to watch and learn. It's a funny little game that I seem to be playing in the last couple of weeks here, to come back and do a role that you did 14 years ago and not make all the same mistakes you did 14 years ago. We'll see.
Everyone on set seems to have hundreds of David Milch stories that they're swapping any chance they get.
to be continued
from:
https://www.rollingstone.com/tv/tv-features/timothy-olyphant-deadwood-interview-835207/
Bullock's Last Stand: Timothy Olyphant on 'Deadwood: The Movie' and David Milch , continued
What's one of the crazier ones that you remember vividly?
Just to name one, I can tell you the whole scene fighting with the Native American guy, all made up on the day. The stunt guys had been working on a fight between me and this Native American dude for a week and they had the whole thing mapped out. Then on the day we showed it to Milch, the guy comes running up, hits me with this tomahawk after my horse has already been hit with an arrow, and then I crawl out and this whole giant fistfight breaks out. David says, "I bought all of it right up until he got hit with the tomahawk." Which is essentially the first moment. And so the whole holding onto the guy's leg while he was dancing and yelling the stuff in his language, that was David just saying, "Hey, do this. Right? You just stand over him and, 'Fuck you. You killed my friend.' " Which was hilarious to me. And me just hanging onto his leg until eventually he foolishly lost his balance and then I beat him with a rock. That was all on the day. And it wasn't even working until this guy that they had cast all of a sudden started doing the thing that you see now that kind of gives you chills, some kind of war song. It was, like, our fifth take or something. David kept trying to talk to him like he was from Brooklyn. All of a sudden that came in. I remember saying to the guy, "What the fuck was that?" He said, "I just remembered this song I learned when I was a kid in camp." It just came to him. He said, "I'll do that." That was just one of these remarkable days, the willingness of David to throw out what was false and to go with his gut.
I can go all day. I remember so many things that he did in terms of direction. The scene where Bullock is beating the shit out of Jack McCall in the mud, and Garret [Dillahunt, who played McCall] is trying to get the fuck out — Milch told us the story about him being in an alleyway and these guys are walking towards him, and he keeps thinking, "Oh, I'm going to beat the shit out of these guys." And now they're kicking the shit out of him, and he's like, "I'm about to pounce because I'm like a leopard. These guys have no idea." And he goes, "Now they've taken all my things and they've set my clothes on fire. Now they're walking away." They're turning down the alley and they're leaving him there. And he says, "These guys have no idea how lucky they are." He tells Garret that story, and he's like, "That's how you would play the scene." And that was so genius.
I remember a scene with Anna. The Bullocks are arguing in the house. We shot it, it was fine, it worked great. Then he comes in and tells me, say your line like that's the last line in the argument, and then walk out the door. But just before you leave, hang your coat up and then walk out. And then she has her next line. And he says, "Now, Tim, come running back in the room, grab your coat as if you're ready to leave and then come running back in. And now say your line, and then hang up your coat and walk out. And then come back in and grab your coat." I must have done it three times, hang up my coat and walk out, walk back in and grab my coat. Hang up my coat and walk out, come back in and grab my coat. It was so funny. I was like, "This guy ..." Then at the end he says, "Do it again." I said, "No. That's it. I don't have any more lines." He said, "OK, put on your coat like a flaming homosexual." I remember thinking very clearly, "Well, so much for that Steve McQueen role you thought you got."
Very rarely do you ever see this in any creative endeavor, and it's the thing that everybody is striving for, which is a man who's completely engrossed, and committed, and well versed, and studied in the subject matter in the world. And in the same breath a willingness to disregard it all and go with whatever gut instinct he has. And I've always felt going forward, I did not graduate first in my class in Yale, but everybody's got a gut instinct, and it's really just about the willingness to go with it, do the work, and then the willingness to fail and just go with your gut. It was literally David on my shoulder going into the Justified writers' room and saying, "You know, what if [Danny Crowe] just fell in a hole?" And they're like, "What the fuck are you talking about?" I was like, "I saw it in a cartoon once. It's going to work." Because it's just a willingness to be like, "Wait. I know what to do here. This would be fun. I saw David do it."
He was famous for writing on the spot.
It was so enjoyable to watch, just a guy with all his toy soldiers in this little sandbox. I remember doing a scene where I'm walking across the road here and he stops and says, "Remind me, what episode is this?" And someone whispers to him. He goes, "It would be wonderful if we could connect this. Are the Chinese here? Do we have the Chinese?" Fucking all three ADs are on the walkie-talkie: "How soon can we have the Chinese? We can have the Chinese here in an hour and a half, Dave." "Great. Is there something else we can shoot in the meantime?" "Well, there's that scene down at the Bullock house you were talking about." "Yes. Perfect. I can get those pages out in a few minutes. Let's go shoot that and come back to this." It was just absurd and wonderful. Exhausting as well. That's what no one wants to admit. It fucking was exhausting.
Jimmy Smits quit NYPD Blue over it.
Listen, I might have done a small victory dance when [David] told me the show was over. But I at the same time have never been a part of anything quite this special. I always talk about the show and this experience, and the experience of working with David. It's the gift that keeps on giving. My wife's like, "Yeah, but Tim, it was a pain in the ass." And I said, "Yeah, I remember that too." It's nice to come back to it. It's nice to come back to it after having been around the block a few times, and to realize that so much has changed and yet not very much. That's a wonderful realization.
The only thing that's probably better left unsaid is the passage of time, certain people who are no longer with us, others who are not in great health. And I think that the audience may not appreciate the experience at all, but from a personal standpoint it's one of the reasons I'm really glad I said yes, to come back and be with everybody again. Some really, really wonderful people. Wonderful people that made a profound impact on my life. And funny, because it wasn't even that long. Three very intense years.
from:
https://www.rollingstone.com/tv/tv-features/timothy-olyphant-deadwood-interview-835207/
* Deadwood will acquire the Heritage Award whereas its creator, David Milch, has been chosen for the Occupation Achievement honor at this Saturday's Television Critics Affiliation Awards, to be held in Beverly Hills.
Ian McShane on 'American Gods' Season 3, 'John Wick 4,' & His Love for 'Deadwood'
By Christina Radish
Jan 17, 2021
You also did fantastic work on Deadwood. That was such a special show and it seemed at so many points, over the years, that the much talked about movie was just never going to happen. What was it like to actually finally get to do that movie and revisit that character?
McSHANE: When Deadwood happened, we had a meeting with me and David [Milch] and Tim [Olyphant] to start making the deals because they had a script and it all came together. I remember 2018 was a very full year. I did John Wick 3, and then we finished Season 2 of American Gods, and then I did Deadwood. It was like an out of body experience. We all went back, and it had been 12 years since we'd done it, but everybody came back exactly the same, we did our best, we finished it, and then it came out and I think they were a little dismissive of it, in terms of I thought they'd give something to David because I think it's his crowning achievement. SAG and all of those other people were very churlish with their awards. So, I was a little sad that David didn't get a little more because I did think the two-hour movie adaptation was pretty masterful, considering how most adaptations ended up disastrous. I thought they did a pretty good job on it.
In comparison to American Gods, which feels different every season, it was amazing how the Deadwood movie seemed to pick right back up where it left off, even though so much time had passed.
McSHANE: It was important to get that same feel. Even though they had a fire and the buildings are made of brick now, the people were still there, going through it. Life was tough. I love the fact that David wrote Al to show that he'd declined, over the years. He wasn't the same. Neither was Tim. Tim was older. We all are. Thank god, they didn't try to pick it up with everybody the same as they were before. The town was the same, but the people had all gotten older and a little bit more mature. It was a wonderful thing to do. The shoot was like, "Wow, we're all here again. Here we are. Let's do it." It was very special.
Does it feel very freeing to play a character like that, where you essentially can swear whenever you want, or a character like Wednesday, who can do whatever he wants to manipulate people? Is there something fun, as an actor, about playing characters like that?
McSHANE: Yeah, absolutely. Deadwood was David Milch's creation of a world maturing. And then, law came in and changed society. If Deadwood had gone on, I think it would have been one of the greatest shows, ever. It would have shown America becoming, after yesterday I won't say civilized, but showing how society changes. We did get the chance to do some of that. So, playing characters like that is very freeing. But then, David Milch is one of the greatest writers of all time on TV. Milch's vision is so extraordinary. At the beginning, you thought Al was a villain, but then you realized there was a little more to it than that. He wasn't just a black hat and black boots. That's the way with all characters now. Up until the '70s and '80s, villains were villains. Not so much in European movies because they've always been much more interesting. In the 2000s, you had The Shield and Tony Soprano. You had the Golden Age of TV, if you like.
from:
https://collider.com/ian-mcshane-american-gods-season-3-interview-john-wick-4/
Deadwood: Why HBO Canceled the Series
The popular HBO series Deadwood was canceled after three seasons when WarnerMedia and Paramount Television couldn't come to terms.
By Rachel Roth
Published 2/23/2021
A western like no other. The HBO series Deadwood premiered on March 21, 2004, and ran for a total of three seasons. Set in the gold mining town of Deadwood, South Dakota, both before and after annexation by the Territory of Dakota, the series was largely a study about how civilization was nothing but organized chaos as shown through the lives and rivalry of saloon owner Al Swearengen and local justice Seth Bullock. Similar to another HBO giant, Boardwalk Empire, Deadwood combined fiction with historical truth, mixing original characters with real-life members of history, including Wyatt Earp and Wild Bill. Violent and compelling, the series is still considered to be one of the best of all time.
However, while Deadwood was beloved by both fans and critics, no amount of praise could save it from getting canceled. The series got the official ax in August of 2006, and the reasons for its abrupt end are as frustrating as one can possibly imagine.
Unlike most shows that suffer from poor ratings or drama from the set, the problems Deadwood faced came from higher up. The show was notoriously expensive, with set design alone taking up a big chunk of change. Showrunner David Milch was also a perfectionist, needing everything to look as authentic as possible. In order to make the show work, WarnerMedia, a subdivision of HBO, had to partner up with Paramount Television to properly produce the series, but the two networks could never get along. Contract disputes and disagreements over profit caused a troubled relationship, and the two finally split before Season 4 could get the green light.
It wasn't just network disputes that got Deadwood off the air, though. Milch the perfectionist wouldn't settle for anything less than what his vision demanded, and refused the initial olive branch the two companies offered him. Unable to reach a satisfying agreement with Paramount, HBO was ready to cut their losses and move on. Instead of a full 12-episode season order, Milch was offered a six-episode final season to wrap up the remaining plotlines, which he quickly turned down.
Milch finally agreed to wrap things up in a two hours series finale in the form of a TV movie, and after many delays, Deadwood: The Movie premiered on HBO on May 31, 2019, providing some much-needed closure for fans. Most of the main cast returned to reprise their roles, with the exceptions of Powers Boothe, Ricky Jay and Ralph Richeson, who all sadly died before production began, and Titus Welliver, who was busy filming Amazon's Bosch.
Deadwood: The Movie picks up a decade after the events of Season 3, with South Dakota celebrating its newly acquired statehood. While not the ending many had envisioned for the series, this final outing did enough to finally lay to rest many of the lingering questions fans had when the series was canceled.
from:
https://www.cbr.com/deadwood-why-hbo-canceled/
What Deadwood Changed About The Real Al Swearengen
Deadwood's saloon owner Al Swearengen is based on a real person, but the series changed his background and personal life to make him more sympathetic.
By Robert Hutton
07.19.2021
Ian McShane's Al Swearengen in Deadwood is one of the most memorable characters in TV history and, like many characters on the show, he was based on a real-life resident of the historic frontier town. The real-life Swearengen was, like his fictional counterpart, the owner of the Gem saloon and brothel in Deadwood. That said, series creator David Milch and the other writers made several changes to the historic figure to make him a more compelling and sympathetic character.
Al Swearengen is often considered to be one of the complex antiheroes who defined the 2000s TV "Golden Age", alongside Tony Soprano or Walter White. He is established very early on in Deadwood as a conniving, ruthless businessman with a taste for profanity that borders on almost poetic. The complex role established McShane as a major actor and won him a Golden Globe and an Emmy nomination.
As Deadwood's story unfolds, Swearengen frequently butts head with Timothy Olyphant's Seth Bullock and his business rival Cy Tolliver (Powers Boothe). He also acts to help bring the camp together and develop into a more organized society, holding the first-ever town council meeting in the Gem and bribing legislators to legally recognize Deadwood. As the series progresses, Swearengen becomes more of a heroic figure, fighting to protect the town from the big money of George Hearst. In similar historic narratives like The Aviator, Deadwood also changes some key elements of Swearengen's life for dramatic purposes. These include his background, the timeline of his years in Deadwood, and the amount of influence he had. Deadwood made similar changes to most of the characters that appeared; for instance, both Trixie and Doc Cochrane were composites of multiple real-life people. Ultimately, the changes to Swearengen made him a more dramatically compelling figure.
The Real Al Swearengen's Life
Al Swearengen was born in 1845 alongside his twin brother Lemuel in what was then the Iowa Territory. He reportedly led a homebound life until the age of 30, when he moved to Deadwood and his first business was a saloon called the Cricket. In 1877 he closed it down and opened the Gem Theater, which despite its name was a dance hall, saloon, and brothel. This rough nature is depicted in Deadwood, where The Gem is not exactly Cheers. The Gem was a successful business, sometimes making as much as $10, 000 in one night.
Swearengen was ruthless in his pursuit of profit and was particularly cruel to the women he employed, controlling them through physical and psychological abuse. He was frequently arrested for assault and disturbing the peace. He deceived many young women as to what their work would be like when they came to Deadwood, before forcing them into prostitution. Interestingly, one of Swearengen's first dancers was Martha Jane Cannary, who would later become known as Calamity Jane. Jane is a major character in Deadwood portrayed by Robin Weigert, but the series doesn't explore her connection to Al in detail. The real Swearengen also had a turbulent personal life, going through women almost as fast as Don Draper. He married a woman named Nettie, who came with him to Deadwood in 1876 but quickly divorced him, citing spousal abuse. Swearengen married twice more while living in the frontier town, with both also ending in divorce. The Gem burned down in 1879 but was rebuilt as a larger and more extravagant saloon. In 1899, however, it burned down again and was not rebuilt.
After the final fire, Swearengen left Deadwood and married Odelia Turgeon. He died in 1904 in Denver at age 59. There are conflicting reports of his passing, with some stating he died penniless trying to hop a train. However, recently rediscovered newspaper accounts suggest Swearengen was murdered, dying of a head wound. If Deadwood had continued into the 20th century, it could have had a much more violent ending than the elegiac final minutes of Deadwood: the Movie.
The timeline of Al Swearengen's life is very different in Deadwood compared to the real-life figure. The series changes Swearengen's background, making him English instead of Dutch to match actor Ian McShane's British heritage. As part of this change, in the series Al is short for Albert instead of Alfred. The stories that Deadwood's Swearengen tells as part of his famous monologues suggest a much more colorful backstory than the real man - although perhaps Al shouldn't be taken at his word. The TV series also changes the chronology of Al's ownership of the Gem. The first season of Deadwood includes the famous events of 1876 that made the town notorious, including the killing of "Wild" Bill Hickock. This incident has been depicted in film numerous times, with everyone from Cary Grant to Jeff Bridges playing Wild Bill.
However, while Deadwood depicts the Gem as being an established saloon during this period, in reality, it didn't open until 1877. The series likely exaggerates the extent of Swearengen's political powers and ambitions too. The real Swearengen was indeed able to navigate the rough-and-tumble world of the Dakota territory, which likely included its fair share of bribes and dirty deals. The Gem was one of the few establishments that was able to avoid the real-life Seth Bullock's attempt to "clean up" the camp. There's little evidence of Al being the kind of community leader and mastermind he was in Deadwood.
Like canceled shows such as Veronica Mars, Deadwood received a revival in the form of a TV movie. It moves further from history, avoiding the topic of the Gem burning down and being rebuilt during the gap between the series and the film, which takes place in 1889. It gives Swearengen, on the verge of death from liver failure, a graceful departure, promising to leave the Gem to Trixie. As noted, the real Swearengen lived for another fifteen years and had no sentiment towards the women who worked for him. These changes show how Deadwood made Swearengen more sympathetic.
How Deadwood Made Al Swearengen A More Compelling Character
The real Al Swearengen was by all accounts, a brutal man and abuser who took advantage of desperate women and men. Early episodes of Deadwood don't shy away from this, showing Al beating Trixie, ordering the murders of multiple men and encouraging attacks on local Indigenous groups. However, he transitions into more of an antihero, a trajectory followed by many villainous characters like the MCU's Loki. This is especially true towards the series' end as he works to defend the community from Hearst's moneyed interests.
The real Swearengen may have had his own sentimental side and inner troubles, but it's hard to tell from the historical record. Milch's writing and McShane's performance flesh out a historical bully into a rich character who is motivated as much by trauma and fear as by greed. The tension between Swearengen's frequent brutality and coarseness and his more vulnerable care for his community makes him a compelling figure. This fits in with Deadwood as a whole, which showcases the tender and optimistic moments of forming a community alongside the brutality of the Old West.
Al Swearengen captivated viewers of Deadwood and helped propel Ian McShane on to more major roles in John Wick and American Gods as well as a cameo in Game of Thrones. The character had a real historical basis but Deadwood changed many elements to make for a more compelling narrative. Ultimately, it was the series' writing and McShane's performance that made Al Swearengen so memorable.
from:
https://screenrant.com/deadwood-al-swearengen-true-story-comparison-differences/
Mud, blood and a f---load of swearing: Is Deadwood the best Western ever?
By Karl Quinn
August 25, 2021
David Milch's down-and-dirty Western, which ran over three seasons from 2004 with a standalone movie in 2019, might just be the finest example of world building ever committed to screen. It's not just that its setting is so brilliantly conceived and meticulously detailed – it's that the gold-mining town of Deadwood, South Dakota (it was a real place) emerges before our very eyes as the series progresses.
As Deadwood grows from tents to timber shanties to a proper town, it's like Sim City made flesh. Though with its obsessive focus on actual human flesh and the many ways it can be corrupted, perhaps that should be Sin City.
Amid a multitude of magnificently realised characters, the chief protagonists are two: the brothel-owning, murder-dispensing, expletive-dripping Al Swearengen (Ian McShane), one of the greatest screen villains ever, and the trigger-happy lawman Seth Bullock (Timothy Olyphant). Both are based on historical figures, though series creator David Milch fleshes them out with great flourishes of lurid imagination.
At first glance the two men appear to represent diametrically opposed world views and moral positions, but on closer inspection it's clear they are really just different expressions of the same dynamic. Swearengen is drifting towards regulation, despite his predilection for havoc, while Bullock's professed commitment to the rule of law is in constant struggle with his impulse to summary violence. Together, they represent the tension between order and chaos that pertains in any society inching its way towards ostensible civilisation.
(In case all this relentless and wanton violence seems a bit far-fetched – hell, it's almost as dangerous as some of those quaint English villagers beloved of Inspector Morse and co – it's worth noting that legend has it that the real Deadwood hosted a murder a day at the height of its lawlessness in the late 1870s.)
But it's not just the world building that makes Deadwood so special – it's the words too. Milch came of age on Hill Street Blues, and co-created NYPD Blue (with Steven Bochco). Those shows were renowned for their gritty realism, but Deadwood steps it up a notch. It is the fullest, purest, foulest and most fast-talking expression of Milch's take on human struggle.
(For an insight into his life, which includes heroin, alcohol and gambling addiction, and his creative process, which includes dictating dialogue as it comes into his head, check out Mark Singer's superb 2005 profile of Milch in The New Yorker).
Al's almost-Shakespearean approach to cussing (Swearengen by name, swearing by nature) and his propensity for monologues delivered while being fellated or surrounded by topless brothel workers arguably paved the way for Petyr Baelish's similarly X-rated dissertations in the early seasons of Game of Thrones. At any rate, it's frequently hilarious, if your ears can withstand the battering.
That Deadwood never received anything like the attention or acclaim it deserved is a bit of a travesty, but it's not too late. For those brave enough to visit, a whole world of blood, mud and foul language awaits. Saddle up and git; there's gold in tham thar episodes.
from:
https://www.smh.com.au/culture/tv-and-radio/mud-blood-and-a-f-load-of-swearing-is-deadwood-the-best-western-ever-20210813-p58ihf.html
Imagine a "Deadwood" Musical With Music by Tom Waits? It Almost Happened.
Sing a song of Swearengen? Sweet!
By Tobias Carroll
In early 2004, HBO debuted a high-profile television series in the timeslot just after the show that had solidified the channel's reputation for original programming. Watching another great episode of The Sopranos immediately followed by the instant-classic Western Deadwood pretty much solidified TV's "golden age." Both shows have also had notable followups in the years since: Deadwood got a two-hour movie that tied up some loose ends from the series, while The Many Saints of Newark offered an expanded look at the history of several Sopranos characters.
There's one big difference between the two shows, however — The Sopranos never had a high-profile Broadway adaptation. To be fair, Deadwood didn't, either — but apparently, we were a lot closer to seeing one than anyone knew. Even more intriguing was the prospect of who might have written the music for it: none other than Tom Waits.
This nugget of information comes from culture writer Matt Zoller Seitz, who has covered Deadwood for pretty much as long as Deadwood has existed — and who has an expansive new book on the show due out later this year. It was while discussing the book on Twitter that Seitz revealed the musical version of Deadwood that almost was.
"[A]ccording to the family, at some point after the cancellation of the show, David Milch talked to Tom Waits about doing a musical version for broadway," Seitz wrote.
Seitz later clarified that Milch talking with Waits was as much as he knew about the project. But one can only imagine what might have been — and, after all, it's not like Waits hasn't done work for the stage before. "Swearengen's Wild Years," anyone?
from:
https://www.insidehook.com/daily_brief/television/deadwood-musical-music-tom-waits
Timothy Olyphant Says 'Deadwood: The Movie' Reminded Him How Much He Stole From His Co-Stars
"These people made a far greater impression on me than I think I gave them credit for," says the actor who returns in the role of lawman Seth Bullock
Steve Pond June 2, 2019 @ 5:47 PM
Since "Deadwood" ended its three-year run on HBO in 2006, Timothy Olyphant was always pretty sure of one thing about the profane Western series created by David Milch: It was not coming back.
"I thought it was never going to happen," Olyphant told theWrap about a revival of the series in which he played Seth Bullock, a lawman in a lawless town. "There was no reason for it to happen. I think I'm on record as saying it's tough to get that many people together for a barbecue."
But Milch agreed to make a two-hour movie, "Deadwood: The Movie," which picks up with the denizens of the town of Deadwood 10 years after the original series ended — and Olyphant, who in the intervening years had played the bad guy in "Live Free or Die Hard" and starred on the series "Justified," among other jobs, finally realized that it might be time to pull on Bullock's boots again.
"I had a meeting over at HBO, and they said, 'Are you in or not? Because we need to tell people tomorrow.'" He shrugged. "Shortly after that moment, I realized, 'Oh, we're going to do this.'"
Olyphant was adamant that "I wasn't interested in playing the same part again," but he and Milch talked a lot about Bullock, who is based on a real Deadwood lawman from the late 1800s. "I don't think he was interested in telling the same story, either," he said. "So that passage of time was very present in our conversations."
And when he got back on the set to work with costars like Ian McShane, Molly Parker, John Hawkes, Dayton Callie and others, Olyphant found that he was actually enjoying the revival he had initially resisted.
"I loved seeing everyone again, I loved watching everybody work," he said. "I'm quite fond of a great many of those people — fond of them as people, fond of their work. They were already good at what they did a dozen years ago, and now they're ridiculously good.
"A lot of times when you look back at these things, there's all the things you remember, there's the things you expect. What's fun are the unexpected things, the things you've forgotten. And they come rushing back. Little tics that people did, things they said. Things I've been saying for 10 or 12 years, that I had forgotten I stole them from people on this set."
One example: "I remember standing next to John Hawkes, and he said, 'Well, let's tighten up and get into character.' I was like, 'Wait, you say that? That's what I say. Did I get that from you? I've been saying that for 10 or 12 years now. I got that from you, didn't I?' Things like that that just tickled me along the way.
"There were a bunch of those moments where someone did something, and I thought, 'Oh, I do that. This must be the source.' These people made a far greater impression on me than I think I gave them credit for."
And while the original series ended when HBO cancelled it after Season 3, this time around the project had a built-in finality to it. Not only was it envisioned as a single, standalone two-hour film, but Milch said in 2015 that he'd been diagnosed with Alzheimer's disease, making additional "Deadwood" films unlikely.
That finality, he said, gave "Deadwood: The Movie" a feeling similar to the final performance of a long-running play. "There's a funny thing that sometimes happens when you're doing a play," he said. "On the last performance, every time another actor speaks, you really hear it because you know it's going to be the last time they say it. And when you're telling them things, you really want to make sure that they're hearing it, because you know this is going to be the last time you say it. It takes on a weight. And oftentimes those last performances feel like, 'Oh, that's the play. There it is.'
"This movie had that kind of feeling. No one spoke about it, but I for one, realized, 'Oh, this may be the last time I work with this person.' It took on a weight, and at the same time maybe a joy."
So did he think, Oh, that's "Deadwood?"
"I don't know what the f— it is," he said, laughing. "I was there, and I consider myself lucky to have been there."
from: https://www.thewrap.com/timothy-olyphant-says-deadwood-the-movie-reminded-him-how-much-he-stole-from-his-costars/