David Milch Headlines Most Uncomfortable Panel Discussion Ever at ‘New Yorker’ Fest

09 Oct 2007, by Adam Sternbergh, New York Entertainment

Three things you would have learned at Saturday morning’s “Outside the Box” TV panel at the New Yorker Festival:

1. Premium cable is better than a network, at least if you’re a TV creator.
Three out of the five panelists (Weeds’ Jenji Kohan, The Wire’s David Simon, and Battlestar Galactica’s Ronald D. Moore) all agreed, not surprisingly, that being on cable gives them greater freedom, while David Shore (creator of House, and the lone current network employee) and David Milch (NYPD Blue, Deadwood) dissented. Shore argued that although House can’t show as much nudity (though, as he explained, during a successful battle over a bare bottom, an executive said to him, “When you get a nineteen share, you can show a little more ass”), the show’s never been asked to avoid controversial subjects. As for Milch, well – we’ll get to that.

2. This truly is a Golden Age of television….

3. David Milch is either the best dinner-party guest in the world or the worst. Or both… [more]