Deadwood: The Movie

And How People In Custody Are Dehumanized

On May 16th, 2019, “The Big Bang Theory”, a popular sitcom for people who absolutely hate comedy, aired the final episode of its twelve season run. The show, which lives on in syndication and will frequently be sampled by inmates in prison desperate for a cheap, easy smirk in favor of an actual laugh, won ten Emmys during the course of its run. Twelve million people watched the finale. Weeks later, HBO debuted “Deadwood: The Movie”, the coda for a brilliant three-season show that ranks as one of the greatest achievements in the history of the medium. “Deadwood” ran from 2004-2006. It won eight Emmys during its run. When the finale aired in 2019, less than a million people watched.

There are many reasons why it’s folly to compare the two. One of these was a mass-market crowd-pleaser show on broadcast television, the other an often-impenetrable cable series returning after an absence of over a decade. One show emphasized a common contemporary relateability between characters in between punchlines, and the other, from an earlier era, gave itself over to wordy soliloquies of varying degrees of solemnity. There are a lot of ways to handicap one side over the other when the two shows stand side by side. But as much as we try to qualify the differences afoot, it’s worth remembering that 12-to-1 ratio of viewers. That’s how many people make the choice of easier, more flattering entertainment over something more challenging. That’s the ratio artists must understand, the ratio you have to consider when talking about art. That is how many people prefer something easier to an idea that offers a bit of pushback. When you fight against powerful establishments, that’s the ratio you are fighting. Nobody said being honest was easy.

Of course, “Deadwood” was hardly ever the David fighting Goliath. It was a pricey, multi-character epic during a period where HBO was in the business of funding true prestige television, searching for another “Sopranos” to match up with their flagship James Gandolfini-led hit that changed the television landscape. The show, which took place during the late 1800’s in a still-young western town beginning to evolve into a hint of what America would become, prided itself on a strong roster of ornery character actors. Yes, Timothy Olyphant was one of the main actors in the series, but largely the show eschewed the glamour of westerns’ past, the sex and the violence and the dramatics. It was a show of constant, often unpleasant negotiation, between characters who would spit out their florid language as often as they’d hawk up phlegm.

I caught up with the series on DVD shortly after it aired (I AM PART OF THE PROBLEM) and was immediately smitten. I tend to not appreciate shows and movies that have too much profanity, as the repetition becomes wearisome, but “Deadwood” used the “f”-word like a powerful orchestral sting within a symphony. No one on television spoke as beautifully as the characters on “Deadwood” whether it be a dignified educated man, or someone far too fond of expletives in a dirty, immoral town. The stories often left my memory – like many shows, “Deadwood” was about people coming in and out of each other’s spaces, and often little else. But instead of a fixed set like the bar in “Cheers”, those spaces existed across a fully-realized western community.

So besotted with “Deadwood” I was, I even followed creator David Milch to another series, HBO’s “John From Cincinatti”. It’s unlikely there’s as beguiling a one-season series that’s ever existed, the show recreating the philosophical multi-character milieu of “Deadwood” on a California beach resort dogged by tales of supernatural and/or interstellar influence. In fact, if you can find the show anywhere, I dare you to watch only the final episode with no knowledge of what came before. It will be the most maddening, fascinating hour of television you’ve ever seen.

I went to prison in 2014, and by then, “Deadwood” had been off the air for eight years. The dream of a “Deadwood” finale movie, which had been bandied about for years, seemed moot at that point. But that wasn’t taking into account the era of streaming, where everyone, even non-streaming entities, seemingly bankrolled any and every wild TV idea they could find (the endpoint of this, of course, being Quibi). With Milch in poor health, all parties involved united to provide an end to “Deadwood”.

The resulting movie isn’t some big blockbuster finale, as you’d expect, but more of a post-script to the series. South Dakota is now being recognized as a state, leading to a large celebration which brings out all the usual suspects. The biggest issue for Al Swearengen (Ian McShane), the standout character in a loaded ensemble, is that Senator Hearst (Gerald McRaney) learns that the prostitute Trixie (Paula Malcolmson) is alive. In the third season of “Deadwood”, Trixie attempted to shoot Hearst as a revenge killing, but only managed to wound him. He thus asked a favor from Swearengen to kill her. At the end of “Deadwood”, Swearengen faked Trixie’s death to please Hearst, but now Hearst is none too happy Swearengen (now on his death bed) lied.

Of the cast, Olyphant has had the most active career since the show, so it seemed as if maybe he’d offer something akin to a cameo. Nope, U.S. Marshall Seth Bullock is back in full force, tasked to rule upon a land dispute involving the now-vengeful Hearst. It’s great work from the actor, a true movie star no one managed to properly launch. Some of these guys have added wrinkles from when they were last on the series, but Olyphant looks like he simply walked off the set in 2006 for a drink of water and came right back in 2019. McShane, meanwhile, continues to make a meal out of Swearengen, this ornery, foul-mouthed crime boss who can’t resist a loud epithet or an affordable prostitute. Since “Deadwood” ended, he’s sleep-walked through a number of meandering, low-effort roles in big movies that seem to only require his purring baritone. It’s good to see him suit up again in a role that was once earmarked from Ed O’Neill – no offense to the legendary Al Bundy, but it’s hard to imagine anyone other than McShane in this part.

The superb “Deadwood” premiere was directed by the great Walter Hill. It was disappointing they couldn’t get the legendary director of “The Warriors” and “48 Hrs” back in the saddle (he eventually directed a western for 2022, “Dead For A Dollar” — we might talk about that one soon). They opted instead for Daniel Minahan, who had helmed several episodes of the show and keeps the leisurely pace and diplomatic screentime for all performers. Minahan’s got a movie out in theaters now, “On Swift Horses”, starring a cornucopia of young talent, but I most remember him for the gonzo mockumentary “Series 7: The Contenders”. That film is a brilliantly funny “Most Dangerous Game” variant that’s clever even before you get to the realization that the reality TV tropes embedded in the narrative hadn’t yet begun to be utilized by reality TV yet. An amazingly prescient movie, that. You can watch the whole thing here!

“Deadwood” ends up dutifully checking in with some of the older characters of the series, like Robin Weigert’s uproarious Calamity Jane. Anna Gunn and John Hawkes were two actors whose profiles had risen since the original series, though they slide comfortably back into an ensemble where they were already reliable but minor highlights. It’s always a pleasure to see Brad Dourif (as Doc Cochran) and William Sanderson (as shop owner E.B. Farnum), both of whom should pop up in similar roles in just about everything. Amusingly, Garret Dillahunt appears in a joke cameo – he played a different character in each of the first two seasons of the show, and now he’s revealed to be one of their sons. Unfortunately, Jeffrey Jones also returned to the cast late enough for everyone to have known better, but we don’t get a reprise of the snarling Cy Tolliver, as Powers Boothe had passed on. Doesn’t seem like a fair tradeoff.

One of the many strengths of “Deadwood” is how it presents loathsome characters in a genuinely lawless environment, and then proceeds to deepen them to the point where we’re almost wearing their skin. When there is no consistent presence of justice, people are freed to become their best or, more often, their worst ones. And at the end of every episode of “Deadwood”, you have to sit with the idea that all of these characters were people, they were human, they were flawed, they were often tragic. The achievement of meaningful art, to what we should strive, is to emphasize the point that everyone deserves love.

This is a principle we need to emphasize in a world where callousness and hate have found such a comfortable home. Here is a link to the absolutely odious commentary found on Fox News (somehow the civilized version of whatever happens on OANN and Newsmax) regarding the arrests and imprisonment of innocent people. Within these gaudy, desperate displays of fear disguised as hateful triumphant is the idea that there is a joy, a glee in punishing others, that there can be faith in the system when others are in pain. It’s a strange point of view coming from people advocating for a President who transparently has broken – checks notes – literally hundreds of laws throughout his life but particularly in the last couple of months. This is a mentality we need to fight when we talk about people in cuffs. The guiltiest people shouldn’t be treated like this. And here, the innocent are simply looked at as collateral damage. It’s shameful we let any of this escape someone’s mouth, no matter where it is. We need to understand that it’s happening live on prime time, every day.

I wrote this entry before finding out the latest stunt being pulled by this administration of unserious people, sullying the White House lawn with posters of immigrants who have been arrested by the Trump White House. Yet another acknowledgement of who should be considered a criminal and who should not be — dark faces demonized before the authority of the Whitest House. I could write a book about this. Let this merely be a reminder that this is scumbag behavior, no matter what you believe, no matter who you are, where you were born, what your politics are. Don’t let anyone treat this as okay, don’t let anyone accept it as “normal.” This is behavior beneath contempt.