"Processing"

[David Milch has Alzheimer's disease. He also has a new screenplay]

David Milch has Alzheimer's disease. He also has a new screenplay
by Greg Braxton
Dec.14,2023

David Milch sat in a Playa Vista restaurant, eyeing a small cheese pizza in front of him. The story he was telling is true.
"I was running bets for my old man and half a dozen people when I was a boy," Milch said, flashing a soft smile at the recollection of hanging out at the racetrack. "They'd tell me, 'Bet $10 on the seven horse and shut up!' For the big races, it was frightening, carrying around $1,000 when I was 7 years old."
Encouraged by his companions in the nearly empty restaurant — Rita, his wife of 43 years, and his good friend, John Hallenborg — Milch continued to weave his memories of those bygone days into indelible images: magnificent horses thundering across the finish line and "degenerates" wagering staggering sums.
In many ways, it was a familiar scenario. Telling vivid stories populated with colorful characters, good and not so good, has been the defining work of Milch's life. That ability made him royalty in Hollywood as he wrote for the classic police procedural "Hill Street Blues" and created provocative fare such as the gritty cop drama "NYPD Blue," with Steven Bochco, and the acclaimed neo-western "Deadwood."
But this was not just a casual lunch to indulge in nostalgia.

While Milch, 78, can still tap into his past to construct a compelling yarn, his thoughts are filtered through a degrading lens. In 2019 he disclosed that he has Alzheimer's disease. After being at the center of the TV world, his career came to an abrupt halt. Many in the legion of friends and associates who used to surround him when he was a big shot gradually drifted away.
"I'm losing my facilities" he wrote in his 2022 memoir "Life's Work," composed with the help of his wife and children. "I wonder, and not infrequently, 'Is it gone for good?' My mind."
But as he picked at his pizza, Milch demonstrated that his mind is far from "gone." His vibrant spirit and artistry are thriving in a manner that might surprise the families of those affected by the degenerative disease.
David Milch has a new screenplay.

For more than a year, driven by a dual mission of keeping Milch's artistic muscles alive and shattering the stigma that shadows those who suffer from dementia and Alzheimer's disease, Rita and John Hallenborg have established a routine of working lunches intended to stimulate the TV legend's creative juices.

"Work is at the core of David's spirit — it's his essence," said Rita, sitting next to her husband at one of the lunches. "I really don't care about the end result or whether this gets made." The idea, Hallenborg added, "is to keep David engaged and bring him a source of joy."
The result, a feature called "The Last Horsemen," could return Milch to the spotlight nearly five years after his last produced credit, "Deadwood: The Movie," was released.
It's another unexpected twist in the life journey of Milch, who was known not only for his considerable showbiz triumphs but also his notorious dark side. In addition to being diagnosed with bipolar disease in the early 1990s, his addiction to gambling and drugs did extensive damage — he lost millions at the track and on sports betting. His volatile personality made him feared on and off the set.
"The Last Horsemen" is the realization of a Milch story that was never developed, a narrative set in the horse racing world that centers on a corrupt gangster and his son and their impact on a young couple. Like other Milch projects, it contains raw language, complex relationships and unflinching violence.

Elements of the story came together as Rita was focusing on "Life's Work." "David would ramble and tell me stories, and it was often the same story," she told The Times. "It was often David's story in different manifestations, and the characters were often him and his father. David was abused as a child. It was like all these things that he'd been working through his whole life."
"There was the outline of a story he would keep coming back to," so Rita called Hallenborg, who had worked with Milch on various projects. "I needed someone who could turn that outline into script form," she added.
She trusted Hallenborg, who had been visiting Milch at the assisted living facility where he now resides. In addition to writing, their bond was built on their mutual love for horse racing — they'd spent numerous afternoons at the track — and their shared experience with addiction.
"Rita told me that David was absolutely animated about this story," Hallenborg said.
At lunches during the next year, the tale was fleshed out. "We'd ask David, 'What do you think of this?' And it will be like the click of a light on his face," said Rita. "I push 'record' on the phone, and it goes from there. It's jumbled and confused, but in there is a kernel of something that's real David."
Rita would email the recording to Hallenborg, who "would take from that the gold that David had mined" and incorporate that with his own voice.
"David, I want to talk today about happiness for gamblers," Hallenborg said at one outing. "Did you feel happiest when you won at the track, or were you anxious to parlay your winnings back into the game?"
Milch replied that he "didn't feel any imperative to prove myself again."

"I think David is happy for a brief time when gambling ... minutes, hours," offered Rita. "His high was being at risk, having everything on the table."
"Absolutely," Milch said.
"When he was happy, I was happy," Rita continued. "But no, I didn't enjoy the gambling."
"She felt the danger, even at a remove," Milch said.
At times, the memories came flooding back. "My dad was a big tipper," Milch said. "He would take me down to the winner's circle, carrying me."
Recalling how he got more serious about gambling in high school, Milch said, "My old man tightened up the cashier to carry his bets. And I would have a little action on the side. There was so much action going on. At some level, I became an irritant because I was carrying all this stuff, and sometimes I would forget."
Although he was quieter at other moments, Milch was attentive as Rita and Hallenborg exchanged stories. "Even when he was working at the office, David was keeping tabs on what was happening at the track," Hallenborg said. "He would send people to the track to place his bets or pick up money. He would talk to the trainers."
"Now I'm the wretched wretch you see before you," Milch quipped, much to the delight of his tablemates.
Rita and Hallenborg were both stunned by Milch's enthusiasm when they presented him with pages of the script. They said his sharpest talent, still, is shaping and editing screenplays.
"He'll just start in on them," Rita said. "I compare it to a musician playing an instrument. He just starts riffing. He can still bring the magic, even though he'll forget or get disconnected."
That disconnection is visible in one draft of "The Last Horsemen." While making notes around lines of dialogue, Milch suddenly segued into composing a scene for "NYPD Blue," which includes exchanges between Det. Andy Sipowicz (played in the series by Dennis Franz) and other characters from the ABC TV show, which ran from 1993 to 2005.
As "The Last Horsemen" script reached its final stages with Milch adding his notes, Rita had other contributions and insights on characters that significantly improved the story, Hallenborg said. After those additions, they thought maybe, just maybe, "The Last Horsemen" might have enough commercial appeal to be produced.
While the screenplay is shopped around, the focus of the unusual partnership has switched to an idea hatched by Hallenborg that he hopes will lead to a TV series. The story is inspired by two young men he met on social media — one who has been in recovery and another who has been in and out of prison.
"He's a fascinating, talented, handsome, smart, charming sociopath," said Hallenborg of the second man. "I'm 38 years sober, but prior to that I had plenty of association with people who were outlaws. This is not unfamiliar ground to me."
Gambling and racetrack shenanigans are once again a key part of the narrative, and Hallenborg continues to prod his former mentor with questions about his racing past and the culture of gambling, using those details to add authenticity to the new story.
Hallenborg, who has a 40-year background as a freelance writer for business publications, is open about his own ambitions, keenly aware that any successful project that links him with Milch will heighten his own profile in Hollywood. He has optioned three screenplays that were never produced.
Even so, his work with Milch has an emotional element that's much deeper than any suggestion of fame or finances. Milch helped support Hallenborg years ago when he was in treatment for prostate cancer and could not work, once pre-paying him for two scripts that were never developed. Their new partnership is Hallenborg's way of returning the favor.
"From a spiritual standpoint, this is the most rewarding work of my life," Hallenborg said. "Yes, it would be great if this would lead to something. But my No. 1 priority is to keep David's engine going."
At one of their recent outings, Hallenborg expressed awe at what the trio have already achieved in helping to craft "The Last Horsemen": "Sometimes a little inflection from David, something that he just adds, will give insight into characters that was not there before. That is the magic of the guy."
Rita reached out and affectionately stroked her husband's hair. "See, Dave? You're magic."
Milch nodded his head and smiled: "Shows you what prison can do."
That exchange could easily fit into a Milch-penned drama, although it's hard to reconcile the mild-mannered person who slips $10 to the waitress before she even takes orders from the table ("Please indulge him — it's important," Rita advises the startled server) with the fiery force of nature who once referred to himself in an essay for young screenwriters as "David f— Milch."
:::
Although Rita is heartened by her husband's ability to remain creative at this stage of the disease, she acknowledges a harsher reality.
"David's mind is getting harder and harder to get to," she said later. "It's heartbreaking. He's leaving, piece by piece. He lives in a state of agitation, brought on [by] a sense of unfulfilled obligations. He has paranoid moments, which is common with dementia."
Two oddly kindred spirits wind up on the same page
That agitation can be explosive, as evidenced by an early-morning visit to the assisted living home. Hallenborg had arranged with Milch in advance to go over some script pages based on conversations the pair had a few days earlier.
But minutes after Hallenborg escorted Milch from his apartment to a conference room, it became clear that something was not right. Milch frowned as he riffled through the pages.
"Why haven't I seen this before?" he finally asked.
"Because I just wrote it," Hallenborg replied.
After a few tense minutes, Milch grew more confused.
Realizing the strain, Hallenborg apologized: "I tried to call you earlier, David, and there was no answer. You said I was imposing when I came to your room to get you, and that was not my intention."
"Well, your intention is not the be-all and end-all," Milch snapped.
"I never said it was."
"YOU JUST DID!" Milch fired back. "You just gave me this to read, and I don't know what the f— it is."
"OK, I apologize for imposing on your morning," Hallenborg said calmly. "It was not my intention to do that."
"It wasn't?"
"No, David. I've stopped by here many times. Today there's friction and bad communication between us and I have to accept that. I really am sorry for imposing on you."
"If you were really sorry, you wouldn't have done it!"
After returning Milch to his room, Hallenborg said the encounter would have been smoother if Rita had been present. It's a mantle she's become used to wearing.
"In horse racing, there's the goat, which is to keep the horse calm," Rita explained. "If I'm there, David can reach out and put his hand on my knee, and that will make him feel better. I see that as my role — the calming influence."
Milch's current situation might be compared to the later years of Tony Bennett and Glen Campbell, popular singers who were able to keep performing years after they were diagnosed with Alzheimer's.
Monica Moreno, senior director of care and support at the Alzheimer's Assn., said Milch's ability to access his talent for storytelling is similar to the experiences of the two singers.
"His ability to be a TV writer and producer was such a huge component of who he is," Moreno said. "Considering the work he had in this area, it's not uncommon to see where they're discussing things he's done his whole life that it stimulates those memories and allows him to engage."
:::
Milch first made his mark in the 1980s as a writer and executive producer on "Hill Street Blues," which was co-created by Bochco. He and Bochco went on to co-create "NYPD Blue," which broke network barriers, and frequently stirred controversy, with its foul language and nudity. The series was a massive hit and won numerous Emmy awards.
Milch's creation of the HBO series "Deadwood" in 2004 was another success, proving that he could extend his writing prowess far beyond the urban milieu of police precincts and crime scenes. The revisionist western, set in the real-life mining town of Deadwood, South Dakota, starred Timothy Olyphant and Ian McShane at the head of an ensemble of evocative characters and was marked by brutal violence and toe-curling obscenities, often projected with Shakespearean flair.
After "Deadwood," though, Milch struggled to match his earlier accomplishments. In 2007, HBO yanked his trippy surfer family drama "John From Cincinnati" after just one season, and the premium network also canceled his 2012 horse racing drama "Luck" after one season when three horses died during production.

Work was one of Milch's addictions, said Rita. "It was all very intense, and that's probably a part of the attraction — this heightened sense of reality. He worked seven days a week for all his working life. We lived separate lives, but it was always intense and scary. We would be walking on eggshells."
A typical day now for Milch begins in the morning, when he will read and edit scripts and manuscripts. "People bring him stuff to read, and he'll go over pages with a pencil," said Rita, who visits him several times a week.
"People ask me about him all the time," Hallenborg said. But "he doesn't get many visitors, versus the whirlwind of people who wanted his attention back in the day. They're scared of what he's going through."
Moreno said the main thing for families affected by Alzheimer's is that as the disease progresses, "there is still the ability for families and friends of the individual to maintain a connection to that person's likes and dislikes. It's important to treat them with dignity and respect."
Even though she is pleased with the breakthrough, Rita is realistic about the future.
"I'm aware of what David is able to do at this point, and what he was able to do when he was at his best," she said. "We're at a different point, and we have to accept that."
In the final pages of his memoir, Milch addresses his plight in another true story.
"I still hear voices. I still tell stories. There are those in my head and another in my throat and others in my work. There is the voice in my wife's head and the one in my children's heads. The deepest gift I think an individual can experience is to accept himself as part of a larger living thing, and that's what we are as a family. Shut the f— up, Dave. I still hear that voice too."

from:
https://www.latimes.com/entertainment-arts/tv/story/2023-12-14/david-milch-deadwood-nypd-blue-alzheimers-disease-dementia-rita-stern-milch-john-hallenborg

or:
https://archive.ph/BLEAa#selection-2123.0-2319.388

Too many wars.
Too many dead.

If it were a question about John from Cincinnati, someone would answer...

Don't ask. Tell us a story.

Although it is good to hear a voice here. Too much time since it happened

What an out of this world (not exactly!) discovery I've just made browsing the JFC sprawling settlement.
Nothing in the JFC world is dead, and the proof is in the pudding, i.e. the thread What Are You Laughing At.

http://www.barcodeart.com/artwork/clocks/barcode/index.html
Funny little thing, been quietly chugging along here all that time, without a single soul around.

And here is another one widget, still working, Huntington Beach live camera.
http://www.hbcams.com/live/

In summary, as a wise man once said, manuscripts don't burn. Certain political movements be damned.
As to the time or times... we'll see. Could we turn the clock back? Who knows.

What, no takers?
Walkara, Shrek, Spirit, the Founders?
Waxon, Skor, Captain?
Patrick/Myles, Eccles, Ray, Backinthegame, Cassie?
Notorious CC, Ciao Cinzano?
Who knows where they are keeping silence.

"In downward dog position".

What if that time has now come?
To discover what happened in the IB after John vanished for good. 
Do we need to hear a narrator 'tell us something pretty'- as Swearengen grumbles to himself scrubbing blood off the floor in his saloon for the umpteenth time?

Who can take this responsibility? Not myself, no please no. Mitch, 'the big realist'- in the words of Cissy?

The comfort of any fictional story is in its impermanence. What's written, can be edited, deleted, replaced. There are as many writers as there are people in the world.

Let's say...

to be continued.........

Makes one wonder, were some NDAs signed at the end of JFC filming? Are they usually signed in the entertainment industry? Is that even customary for such companies as HBO?

If not, then - hypothetically!- would anyone who had assess to the filmed and unreleased JFC scenes be able and willing to reveal some of their content? As an interview, let's say, for Vulture, Hollywood Reporter, Alan Sepinwall, James Poniewosik or anyone with the clout and interest? Or off the record? Or in a clandestine 'Deep Throat' style underground garage meeting? 

Imagination runs wild. 

Marc Ostrick says he filmed 13 episodes of JFC.
"John From Cincinnati, 13 episodes, TV Series 2006 – 2007 (executive producer/director/co-editor)"

Here's the link to Ostrick Production company filmography:
https://ostrickproductions.com/?page_id=5 

Remember, we run campaigns, fund-raised money for ads in Hollywod Reporter, bird seeds, tried crowdfunding the second season of JFC.
Those were the times.

I so wish to get a peek at the films Mark Ostrick might keep. They could be stored in HBO vaults for what we know.
Copyright be damned. With the HBO.

Where's the time machine.

Who's to say it's not a malevolent aliens' ship?
No, not aliens!
What Are Lightning Sprites? Magic in the Skies!

https://www.almanac.com/what-are-lightning-sprites-magic-skies

Who dived in to hold the stature's hand - Shaun, Kai or Butchie? Hmm....

Christ of the Abyss by Guido Galletti in San Fruttuoso, Italy.

No need to travel in time that far, not yet.

All Further Days Of John From Cincinnati scenes written after HBO canceled the show were building on the premise of John presence in Imperial Beach.  Our sequel fervently tried to hold on to the dream.

What happens when our characters give up, wake up and join the daily grind?

I got some rather misanthropic ideas about that, prepare to be disappointed.

'I'll take care of it my birthday after next' - Palaka

[How 'Deadwood' Updated the Traditional Western TV Series]

How 'Deadwood' Updated the Traditional Western TV Series
By
David Hunter


How did David Milch's hit series Deadwood update the Western? Its several endings give us several answers.

Unlike most of the shows of TV's golden age, Deadwood was canceled prematurely. This bestowed a lot of unintended authority on the closing moments of its unexpectedly final episode. Over a decade later, the story was picked back up, as the cast reunited for Deadwood: the Movie. But the storyline was also continued, in another way, in a special feature on the DVD box set titled "Deadwood: the Meaning of Endings," a recorded conversation with iconoclastic showrunner David Milch in the immediate aftermath of the cancelation in which he spoke about how things might have continued if the show had gone on. He also offered, as consolation to disappointed fans, some paraphrased wisdom from the philosopher William James: "the idea of the end of a thing as inscribing the final meaning, is one of the lies... that we use to organize our lives."

So, we have a lot of endings to choose from when we try and decide what Deadwood means to us, and how it might relate to the Westerns before it. And on top of that, Milch gives us the choice to ignore all of them.

 Deadwood: A Show About Progress?

The final moment of the original run of Deadwood was a powerful bit of punctuation. It strongly compelled you to perceive the show in a certain way, a certain shape. The first three seasons of the show followed a distinct trajectory, one of growth. In the pilot, the town of Deadwood was just beginning to get off the ground. People were starting to flood the town, situated on the occupied ancestral land of the Sioux, Cherokee, and Iroquois, drawn by the gold recently discovered in the Black Hills.

Over the run of the show, Deadwood would prosper and grow. It would form an ad hoc government, and the new arrivals would form a community. Meanwhile, increasingly powerful and entrenched forces from within the United States would attempt to swoop in and usurp what Deadwood's founders had built. This conflict climaxes with the coming of the ruthless mining baron George Hearst (Gerald McRaney), who arrives in Deadwood for the third season, to oversee the consolidation of most of the gold-bearing land under his control. What Hearst discovers is that Deadwood is a strong enough community to, if not resist his will entirely, at least partially deflect it and make it impossible for him to personally stay in town. This is the culmination of two seasons in which the characters of Deadwood learn to care for each other, out of affection and need, and in the process become resilient.

The most dramatically important relationship is between the show's two leads, Seth Bullock (Timothy Olyphant) and Al Swearengen (Ian McShane). They begin as enemies — Bullock is a lawman, and Swearengen is a murderous saloon owner and pimp — but they learn they must rely on one another, and so form a symbiotic relationship. Bullock will become the face of lawful Deadwood, while turning a blind eye to Swearengen's crimes. Swearengen will do all the killing that needs to be done, but always in the service of the greater needs of the town.

We watch Swearengen kill a lot of people, always after a period of moral calculation. But the final murder is the worst. Series regular Trixie (Paula Malcomson) has attempted to assassinate the vile George Hearst, and failed, and Hearst is calling for her death. Instead, Swearengen murders Jen (Jennifer Lutheran), another one of the trafficked women under his control. She's a total innocent but is less familiar to him than Trixie, and Hearst is unlikely to be able to tell the difference between their dead bodies. After the ruse succeeds, Johnny Burns (Sean Bridgers), one of Swearengen's lieutenants, who had a crush on the murdered girl, asks if she suffered. Swearengen gruffly tells him that he made her death as painless as possible. Then, while alone, he delivers the iconic line "wants me to tell him something pretty," while scrubbing up the blood.

A Few Takes on Deadwood's Ambiguous Ending

Swearengen's line came to be seen as the message Deadwood existed to deliver. In fact, in the video above, even as Milch is urging viewers to resist the impulse to let the ending of a show define it, he quotes this exact line. The moment is overpowering because while it acknowledges the horrors of the American frontier, and expresses contempt for anyone who won't acknowledge them, it also implies that these horrors can be confronted, and accommodated. It echoes another famous Swearengen quote: "The world ends when you're dead. Until then, you got more punishment in store. Stand it like a man... and give some back."

But, context is important. What is the ultimate purpose that gives this suffering, both endured and inflicted on others, meaning? If you watched Deadwood as it aired, the pattern you saw was of a town that only grew in size and strength, acquiring increasingly powerful enemies, but able to battle them to a draw. In this context, the losses taken by the people of Deadwood are casualties in a larger ideological struggle against the wholly depraved forces of American capital, which would gladly accept a human toll hundreds of times worse than the cost of doing business. If the town of Deadwood is growing stronger by the season, perhaps Seasons 4 and 5 would have been the ones where the town would finally be able to triumph over its enemies. The premature cancelation allows these dreams, even as its final moments encourage hard-nosed realism.

Only listening to Milch explain what would have actually happened if the show had continued dispels this fantasy. What did Milch foresee for the town? Destruction by fire. That Deadwood might burn to the ground is signposted several times throughout the show, and happened in reality. But, though the town would rebuild, Milch imagined that the influence of Al Swearengen would be permanently diminished. Whatever you think about a Deadwood without Al, it's not one that continues to take on the forces of agglomerated capital. That might have led to an ending in which all seems to have been for nothing.

The Deadwood Movie Changes the Series' Ending While Best Summarizing Its Message

Of course, none of this story was ever put on film. Not only that, but when Deadwood: The Movie returned in 2019, in the digital age, none of these events seemed to have ever taken place. When we see Deadwood again, most of the characters are exactly where we've left them, seeming to have passed the entirety of the intervening years in cozy domesticity (cancelation treated them better than us). The movie displays a sentimentality that the Al Swearengen of 2006 might not have liked. Quite literally, in fact; the movie provides several of its characters with "pretty" deaths, even symbolically returning Jen to life.

But in all this sentimentality I do think you find the best summary of what Deadwood was really all about. Milch's great gift as a writer is his ability to empathize with all of his characters, high and low, and his willingness to put words of great eloquence and understanding in the mouths of all of them. He likes people, or seems to in his capacity as a writer, and the driver of his affection isn't what values they stand for, but simply proximity and familiarity.

The pain and damage of Deadwood isn't a calculated loss in a battle between two competing ideologies, either one of which could triumph. (Although, in the movie, Milch allows the possibility for the first time that George Hearst might not "own the... future.") That pain is only meant to pay for the momentary happiness of the people who happen to live in Deadwood, even if the town is eventually absorbed seamlessly back into the United States and that happiness disappears without a trace. And, even if those original townsfolk are simply lucky to have the purchase they do, other unlucky people had to die for them to have it. In Deadwood, any quantity of human happiness and freedom is precious and worth its price. That is not a morally impregnable ethos, for sure, but while you're watching the show, it feels like something you believe.

from:https://collider.com/deadwood-western-tv-show/

Let's throw a wrench in the works.
Let's take one more step possibly leading into these now wildly popular 'multiverses'.

Everyone from the original JFC is back. But! Not the innocent instigator, the Don Quixote, the childlike beta model of super-intelligence, John. If it soothes your heart, an angel. He is not returning.

And again, it wouldn't be too difficult to imagine, knowing what's happening IRL, as the genXYZ, or whatchamacallit would say.

What then? What would our heroes do?