By Travis Johnson
As the final air date (2006!) of Deadwood, David Milch’s magisterial and barbaric take on the Western, receded even further into the distance, reactions to news that we might get one – or even two! – TV movies to tie up the series’ sprawling plot went from “Fuck yes!” to “Gee, I hope so!” to “Timothy Olyphant’s like two series away now” to “This is just cruel now. Please stop.” 12 years of false promises and dashed hopes can make a man bitter.
But never say never! News has come from HBO programming president Casey Bloys at the TCA summer press tour that the green light has been flicked for a Deadwood movie, set to definitively conclude the story of rage-happy lawman Seth Bullock, conniving whoremonger Al Swearengen, and all the variegated miners, gamblers, road agents, hoopleheads, soiled doves, deviants and dirt-worshippers who orbited around them for three short, brilliant seasons.
An October shoot date has been set, with a projected 2019 release. Why has it taken so long? “It’s been a logistics nightmare getting all the cast members’ schedules together, but we are there. It is greenlit.”
No doubt it took some doing. Deadwood‘s huge ensemble was comprised of character actors, up-and-comers and the occasional nobody on the rise (Kristen Bell, then unknown, crops up for a couple of episodes), many of whom have gone onto bigger things: the aforementioned Olyphant rode out the excellent Elmore Leonard series Justified, Molly Parker just did mum duties in Netflix’s Lost in Space series, while the great Ian McShane, previously best known for the British crime/antiques series (oh, Britain…) Lovejoy, capitalised on his stunning turn as the Machiavellian Swearengen in a series of high profile supporting and starring roles, most recently being absolutely perfectly cast as Mr. Wednesday in Amazon’s American Gods.
The new movie is written by series creator David Milch, whose subsequent TV exercises, John From Cincinnati and Lucky, crashed and burned pretty spectacularly, and will be directed by Game of Thrones veteran Dan Minahan.
Set in the late 1870s/early 1880s, Deadwood was a labyrinthine, foul-mouthed, hyper-violent and politically astute account of the titular town’s evolution from lawless mining camp to (quasi) respectable town, and all the horrible double dealing, bloodletting, betrayal and sacrifice that entails. What stuck in most people’s minds, however, was Milch’s wonderful dialogue, which combined Shakespearean rhythms with a truly impressive command of vulgarity. Behold:
It remains to be seen whether some of Deadwood‘s rougher edges are tempered to suit the climate of the day; the show featured a lot of violence against women, casual racial and sexual slurs, and almost every female character was a prostitute – all ostensibly in the name of a realism that the show ignored when it suited it anyway. Will that fly now? We’ll find out next year.
In the meantime, celebrate, cocksuckers! And pussy’s half price for the next 15 minutes.
Gold Travis, last line gold.