I´m not made for such complexity.
April 25, 2019 7:56 PM   Subscribe

It'd be a pity not to recognize what's at stake.........Deadwood The Movie, Full Trailer.
posted by lalochezia (51 comments total) 16 users marked this as a favorite
 
Alan Sepinwall visited the set and brought back stories.

What a wonderment that it’s actually going to happen.
posted by rewil at 8:01 PM on April 25, 2019 [8 favorites]


I never watched the show. I hear it's good. There's so much out there... *sigh*
posted by hippybear at 8:08 PM on April 25, 2019 [1 favorite]


Maybe I'll watch the movie and then decide if I want to go back to the show. That's the right way to do it, right?
posted by hippybear at 8:09 PM on April 25, 2019


The episodes are 36 hrs or so, 12 episode arcs in 3 seasons. Theoretically possible over a weekend, if you have the sand.

More seriously, I'd say catch an episode or two first. Many people bounce off the, uh, tone of it. There is much buried under that deliberately off-putting exterior that so loves to shock, but the ugliness of Deadwood, and there is much ugliness, is more than many viewers want to endure. I'd take its measure first.
posted by bonehead at 8:22 PM on April 25, 2019 [9 favorites]


Fuck me. Read that sepinwall piece! Milch has Altzheimers. GODDAMMMIT. "If this is His will, reverend, He's a son of a bitch."
posted by lalochezia at 8:23 PM on April 25, 2019 [9 favorites]


Pain or damage don’t end the world...
posted by carmicha at 8:27 PM on April 25, 2019 [10 favorites]


Yeah, possibly... I've made it through a lot of stuff, but my tolerance has also gone down over the years. I bailed on Battlestar Galactica because of it's subtext, not its events.

I'll check out a bit, and go from there. It'll all be there anyway for anytime I want it.
posted by hippybear at 8:28 PM on April 25, 2019


AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAIIIII can't wait.

That is all.
posted by ZakDaddy at 8:28 PM on April 25, 2019 [1 favorite]


bailed on Battlestar Galactica because of it's subtext, not its events

Deadwood is mostly text, not subtext, but it puts things right in the viewer’s face. I liked it when I first saw it, but didn’t find it so interesting on a second watching.
posted by Dip Flash at 8:32 PM on April 25, 2019 [1 favorite]


I'm all about Game Of Thrones. I found Sopranos boring after a while. I unfortunately find a lot of things boring after a while. Give me shorter and better written, don't give me something until I don't care anymore.

That said, I just started rewatching NYPD Blue. That's only something like 261 episodes. Wheeee. (I saw it all first-run, in front of the television, broadcast television. Haven't seen it since.)
posted by hippybear at 8:35 PM on April 25, 2019 [1 favorite]


The sub-text of Deadwood is simply that these people became the present. We are closer to the past than we might think.
posted by bonehead at 8:46 PM on April 25, 2019 [17 favorites]


From the Sepinwall story: Even now, when Milch’s assistant reads him my question about when he knew for sure the movie would happen, he laughs and asks, “Is it? Going to happen unquestionably?”

I hear that. This project has been mired in bad news for so long that I don't think I'll quite believe it's actually really happening until around the time the end credits roll. I'm still kind of irrationally afraid that posting something as mild as "ooh I can't wait" will cause the hard drives containing the only complete copies of the movie to all spontaneously combust, or something.
posted by mstokes650 at 8:49 PM on April 25, 2019


the hard drives containing the only complete copies of the movie to all spontaneously combust

Didn't something like this happen to one of the Pixar movies? Like, start from scratch (sort of) level bad?
posted by hippybear at 8:51 PM on April 25, 2019 [1 favorite]


I loved Deadwood. But, you can tell which episode it was when the runner stopped caring.

When it is good, it is amazing. When it is bad, it is merely, painfully, mediocre.
posted by Pogo_Fuzzybutt at 8:52 PM on April 25, 2019 [1 favorite]


these people became the present

Very much, and one of the most striking things to me is how the town grows over the seasons, grows into a ramshackle something that really starts looking like that part of downtown in some of our hometowns West of the Mississip.

I loved Deadwood. But, you can tell which episode it was when the runner stopped caring.

It has its Matrix Revolutions period for sure. Thankfully something like that shouldn't be necessary in a one-shot production like this movie, so they can put a whole season of good writing into it and cut out a bit more of the chaff. I hope the pigs are still around, and I'd love to see Franklyn Ajaye some more.
posted by rhizome at 9:01 PM on April 25, 2019


Didn't something like this happen to one of the Pixar movies? Like, start from scratch (sort of) level bad?

Toy Story 2
posted by rhizome at 9:02 PM on April 25, 2019 [2 favorites]


The first season of Deadwood is the most perfect arc of television I've ever seen.

Just that.
posted by mediareport at 10:10 PM on April 25, 2019 [9 favorites]


The bone dry, furious insanity of Hearst was such a ... wonderful? Thorough portrayal of what kind of creature finds and wields power. History speaks against it but I always hope Bullock would have killed Hearst and fed him to the pigs.
Also, if this is any kind of heart-warming revisiting of these characters I am going to be very fucking annoyed. Hopefully they will be as rigorously desperate and vile and hopeful as originally portrayed.
posted by From Bklyn at 12:56 AM on April 26, 2019


Is this also a theatrical release? Seems strange to make a two hour movie--also on HBO--from a series that was hours and hours longer.
posted by zardoz at 1:10 AM on April 26, 2019


I'd like to point out that this premieres on May 31st - the exact same day as Amazon Prime's Good Omens adaptation.

Dreams really do come true.
posted by jurymast at 2:20 AM on April 26, 2019 [4 favorites]


Cock suckers!
posted by fearfulsymmetry at 2:30 AM on April 26, 2019 [9 favorites]


This show had several of my favorite characters on television, ever. It's so good to see them again. On the flipside: Hearst!?! Hearst is back?? I did not expect that. It's hard to tell what this is about, but it almost sounds like it continues right where they left off. Which is odd, because I swear I'd read that it was written so that some time had passed.

The first season of Deadwood is the most perfect arc of television I've ever seen.
I've rewatched this series a few times, and I always forget how many big events happen almost right away. I always think that there's more time before they happen, and that some of them are even in the second season, but it's actually very dense.

Re-visiting our past threads about Deadwood, I found this quote from David Milch:
Commercials were once TV’s version of the church. Which is to say, you couldn’t offend the sponsor, therefore certain values had to be underscored in the subject matter. Now, with the move to cable, we’re in the process of exploring the anti-versions of all these forms.
From this wonderful GQ roundtable interview from 2012 with him, Vince Gilligan, and Matthew Weiner. They end the thing talking about how DVR had changed people's TV-viewing habits, and then Milch says that this conversation is going to sound silly in five years because everything will have changed again. Indeed.
posted by heatvision at 3:42 AM on April 26, 2019 [2 favorites]


Often lost in the conversation is how well the show was shot and edited. The big example would be the fight in "A Two Headed Beast". And then, from the same episode, there's a gem of visual storytelling with Bullock in the middle of the street eyeing his pocket watch and carefully drawing his pistol, which is then used as a starting gun to resolve the deadlock between Steve the Drunk and Hostetler signing the sales agreement.
posted by whuppy at 5:17 AM on April 26, 2019 [1 favorite]


And that shot of everyone collapsed and exhausted in each others' embrace after Al passes the stone. Goosebumps.
posted by whuppy at 5:20 AM on April 26, 2019 [2 favorites]


Oh, man, this is exciting! I didn't see Dan Dority in the trailer, so I had to check imdb to make sure he's in this. Deadwood wouldn't be Deadwood without Dan. I nearly feel that way about every character from the series, though...
posted by Bob Regular at 5:33 AM on April 26, 2019


If you're late to the party, you can catch up with the overall arc of the show by watching this handy summary.
posted by FatherDagon at 6:01 AM on April 26, 2019 [2 favorites]


But, you can tell which episode it was when the runner stopped caring.

When it is good, it is amazing. When it is bad, it is merely, painfully, mediocre.


Absolutely not true, imo. Milch never stopped caring and it was not his decision to cancel the show.

I'll admit S3 was a more challenging watch, but that's not due to a lack of care. As someone who has rewatched the entire show numerous times, I think S2 is best, S3 next, and S1, excellent as it its, is my least favorite.
posted by dobbs at 6:07 AM on April 26, 2019 [1 favorite]


Remember, Season Three was built on the promise that they would have a Season Four.
posted by tzikeh at 7:30 AM on April 26, 2019


Yeah, I think that a lot of the weakness of S3 was due to setting up something with Brian Cox and his theater troupe that they never got a chance to pay off, which just left it kind of confusing and unresolved.
posted by Ragged Richard at 7:44 AM on April 26, 2019 [2 favorites]


The arc of Deadwood is that beneath all the simmering tensions and bursts of violence and drunkeness and racism and profanity and exploitation, that we're watching people build a community out of nothing and watching that community become something that's worth something to all of them. You're basically watching a flower grow out of the blood-and-shit-smeared mud and then hoping it doesn't get trampled underfoot.
posted by Navelgazer at 7:51 AM on April 26, 2019 [9 favorites]


Maybe I'll watch the movie and then decide if I want to go back to the show. That's the right way to do it, right?

That's what I'm going to do--I'm trying to catch up on Game of Thrones and I only have room in my heart for one grimdark tittyfest at a time.
posted by betweenthebars at 8:27 AM on April 26, 2019


The arc of Deadwood is that beneath all the simmering tensions and bursts of violence and drunkeness and racism and profanity and exploitation, that we're watching people build a community out of nothing and watching that community become something that's worth something to all of them. You're basically watching a flower grow out of the blood-and-shit-smeared mud and then hoping it doesn't get trampled underfoot.

Which is why I love Wild Bill's funeral so much and believe that it is the lodestone of the series, particularly Rev. Smith's eulogy referencing 1 Corinthians and the metaphor of a human body for the whole of society, and that all parts are necessary. God what a delightful fucking show.
posted by theartandsound at 8:34 AM on April 26, 2019 [8 favorites]


grimdark tittyfest

brb changing my PSN name
posted by secret about box at 8:43 AM on April 26, 2019 [2 favorites]


grimdark tittyfest

was pretty good until the album with that fake duet using the old vocal track from Ronnie James Dio and added a sax player.
posted by freebird at 8:56 AM on April 26, 2019 [2 favorites]


The arc of Deadwood is that beneath all the simmering tensions and bursts of violence and drunkeness and racism and profanity and exploitation, that we're watching people build a community out of nothing and watching that community become something that's worth something to all of them. You're basically watching a flower grow out of the blood-and-shit-smeared mud and then hoping it doesn't get trampled underfoot.

And the threats to Deadwood blossoming often come from the encroachment of "civilization" in the form of Hearst and the Pinkertons; the cost to grow and become part of something bigger ends in lies, murder and blood.
posted by nubs at 10:11 AM on April 26, 2019 [2 favorites]


It's nice to see Ian McShane reach some kind of apotheosis in his seventies. Although he was already fairly cool fifty years ago, and obviously the Lovejoy period had its charms (and the original run of Deadwood, of course), but I do feel we're in the era of Peak McShane.
posted by Grangousier at 11:12 AM on April 26, 2019 [2 favorites]


Saw an interview with Milch once (or maybe him talking to a literature or film class) where he's talking about Deadwood and he refers to the concept of virtue in Aristotle's Nicomachean Ethics and how it's quite different from how we usually think about it. The usual way to understand the connection between virtue and right action is that a human's inner state of virtue leads them to act "rightly". Virtue produces virtuous action. In the Nicomachean Ethics, Aristotle argues (according to Milch) that that understanding is the wrong way around. It is right action that produces (inner) virtue. Acting rightly makes you good (eventually).

This is all connected to how Swearengen evolves over the course of the show. As the town grows, his self interest forces him more and more to act rightly even though it goes against his (terrible) instincts. Over time, he himself changes for the better.

Watching it the first time through I remember noticing the change in Swearengen and wondering in a positive sense how he seemed less and less evil as time went on. When I heard Milch discuss the Nicomachean Ethics, that all came into focus.
posted by kaymac at 12:33 PM on April 26, 2019 [10 favorites]


Here's a second to more Franklin Ajaye. When I was a kid in LA, his album "Comedian" was foundational for me. ("Stop crying, Ajaye.")
posted by aurelian at 12:46 PM on April 26, 2019


Watching it the first time through I remember noticing the change in Swearengen and wondering in a positive sense how he seemed less and less evil as time went on.

And to a degree Bullock becomes less interesting over time - not terribly so, and Olyphant is always great - but enough that Swearengen really becomes the primary protagonist by series' end, which is a hell of a trick to pull off.
posted by Navelgazer at 12:50 PM on April 26, 2019


It is right action that produces (inner) virtue

I've listened to and read a lot of Milch's lectures. I've heard him say that, "We do not think ourselves to right action. We act ourselves to right thinking." I've also heard him say that most people think ego is what causes someone to behave a certain way whereas he believes that the action controls the ego.

He's spoken about both of these theories in regards to writing. You don't spend time writing, so your ego thinks you're not a writer. You sit down and start to write and after a while, your ego thinks "I'm a writer". This is also why he does not believe in outlining his shows. Plotting is logic and logic does not belong in writing. Don't think; write.
posted by dobbs at 1:17 PM on April 26, 2019 [8 favorites]


The best part of Deadwood being on was when I was at a dinner party, met someone new, found out they loved Deadwood too, and then we went on about thoroughfares and called each other cocksuckers to the horror & confusion of everyone else at the table.

It is going to be a trip seeing Olyphant as Bullock after watching Santa Clarita Diet though.
posted by jenjenc at 5:41 PM on April 26, 2019 [4 favorites]


My man Garret Dillahunt is criminally missing from this trailer. He killed it in both of his roles on the show.

"Puberty may bring you to understand what we take for mother-love is really murderous hatred and a desire for revenge."

And I hope "hoople head" is still relevant slang this 10 years later.
posted by Brocktoon at 7:27 PM on April 26, 2019 [3 favorites]


My man Garret Dillahunt is criminally missing from this trailer.

Yeah, he's not in it. He's amazing in Deadwood but I've never liked him in anything else. He sticks out like a sore thumb in No Country for Old Men.

My biggest miss from this movie is gonna be Silas Adams played by Titus Welliver, who was busy shooting Bosch when this was being shot. He's one of my favorite characters and Bosch is so ho-hum and forgettable. Very disappointing.
posted by dobbs at 5:24 AM on April 27, 2019 [2 favorites]


i started watching the show last year, and its rep is well-deserved, but to my non-american eyes, it was, even as it intended to be a critique of the genre (or something of the kind), at the end of it's still a romantic look at squatters that heralded the occupation of a land. everyone was genuinely great in it though, that's how i powered through my initial impressions and finished the show's run.
posted by cendawanita at 8:15 AM on April 27, 2019


Yeah, [Garret Dillahunt]'s not in it. He's amazing in Deadwood but I've never liked him in anything else

He's pretty good in Raising Hope or whatever the dolty family sitcom he is/was in.
posted by rhizome at 10:06 AM on April 27, 2019


Honestly I can’t see Dillahunt in anything without seeing his (second) character - the psycho killer one - and frankly it’s colored everything I’ve seen him in ( same goes for every other actor in this show, without exception.)(that’s a plus.)
posted by From Bklyn at 1:28 PM on April 27, 2019


Dillahunt has a special talent for bone-chilling (if often brief) roles in films like The Road and Looper.
posted by Brocktoon at 2:04 PM on April 27, 2019 [1 favorite]


Honestly I can’t see Dillahunt in anything without seeing his (second) character - the psycho killer one

You would freak the heck out if you ever saw "Raising Hope," man.
posted by jenfullmoon at 9:24 PM on April 27, 2019 [1 favorite]


Here's a good example
posted by rhizome at 8:31 AM on April 28, 2019


I binged the whole three seasons of Deadwood a few weeks ago - the first time I'd seen it since the original broadcast - and I thought it held up very well. My only quibble was a brief spell in (I think) Season One where they slipped into a bit of a villain-of-the-week pattern with Kristen Bell's young grifter followed immediately by Alma's dodgy father. Aside from that, though, I enjoyed it just as much as ever, and I cannot WAIT for the movie.

On another issue, how does Milch pronounce his surname? I'm guessing "milk" but I really have no evidence one way or the other.
posted by Paul Slade at 10:18 AM on April 28, 2019


Phonetically. It rhymes with "zilch"
posted by rhizome at 4:40 PM on April 28, 2019


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