Did people curse in the real Deadwood like on HBO's "Deadwood"?
How did the movie get made 13 years after the show ended? How did the
actors handle constant rewrites? Keep watching for all the dirty details.
David Milch, the maestro behind "Deadwood," came to HBO well into a storied career.
He began writing for "Hill Street Blues" in 1982, beginning a two-decade run of bringing his dense,
literary style to crime and legal dramas. His most successful endeavor
to that point was co-creating the show "NYPD Blue" with Steven Bochco.
By the early 2000s, he was ready to create a new show using law enforcement
as a window into the way a community is formed. But the original inspiration was
not the time or place you'd think. In a 2006 interview with American Heritage, Milch said,
"My initial feeling was that I'd set it in ancient Rome, the time of the emperor Nero."
But HBO already had the series "Rome" in production, which they felt covered too much of
the same ground. So they asked Milch if he could explore the same themes of order forming from
chaos, in a different historical setting. Milch realized that the city of Deadwood, which circa
1876 was a lawless mining camp in Native American territory, was exactly the setting he needed.
One of the most striking things about "Deadwood" is its unabashed vulgarity.
Milch didn't specifically set out to dispel the genteel myths of American Western movies,
but HBO gave him full freedom to use as much violence,
nudity, and foul language as he needed to depict his vision of the West as accurately as possible.
"Welcome to f---ing Deadwood."
The language, specifically, became the most talked-about aspect of "Deadwood"
when it premiered, causing most viewers to immediately wonder: did they really curse
like that in the real Deadwood? Speaking with NPR, the curator of Deadwood's Adams Museum admitted,
"The short answer is yes, Deadwood was a very profane place."
There is ample evidence that all of the curse words used on "Deadwood" existed at
the time the show is set. Scholar and dictionary editor Jesse Sheidlower told New York Magazine:
"The evidence that we have is that they were using more
religious blasphemy than the sexual insults which are popular today."
But instead of using antiquated terms like "gol-darn" and "tarnation," Milch and co.
went with language that would be as shocking to modern audiences as the citizenry intended.
If you're a fan of "Deadwood," you might think the first role cast was one of the more central,
prominent characters on the show. Who will deliver the crudely eloquent monologues of Al Swearengen?
Who will embody the simmering rage of Seth Bullock, or the anxious gentility of Alma Garret?
But a chance encounter in 2002 led to a small role being the first official casting:
Jewel, the sweet, disabled cleaning woman at the Gem Saloon.
As actress Geri Jewell told Yahoo! Entertainment,
"I was at Horton & Converse drugstore in Santa Monica, standing in line.
This man turned around, and he said, 'Oh, my God. Are you Geri Jewell?'"
It was none other than future "Deadwood" creator David Milch,
who recognized Jewell as Cousin Geri on "The Facts of Life," a role which broke ground as the
first recurring role for an actor with cerebral palsy. He promptly asked her to be on the show,
and after one more meeting, the first member of his sprawling ensemble was cast.
Despite a main cast of well over a dozen, and hundreds of recurring guest stars, bit parts,
and extras, no actor boosted their reputation more during the course of "Deadwood" than Ian McShane.
As Al Swearengen, the owner/operator of the Gem Saloon, McShane was central to the labyrinthian
plot of the show. But surprisingly, the role wasn't originally written with McShane in mind.
David Milch wrote the role for Ed O'Neill, best known as Al Bundy on "Married... with
Children." According to O'Neill in an interview with Erik Hedegaard,
David Milch was so certain on casting decisions that he assured him,
"You're going to be my Swearengen."
Milch was convinced that O'Neill had the dramatic chops necessary to overcome his reputation as
a recognizable comedy star. Unfortunately, HBO hadn't been consulted at all on the decision at
that point. The network wanted to cast someone as relatively unknown as the rest of the cast,
and suggested McShane. As Milch told C&I Magazine,
"The minute [McShane] walked in, he just took ownership of the role and my imagination."
The most recognizable "Deadwood" cast member is almost certainly Keith Carradine.
Known for dozens of Western roles, he was so well-prepared to play Wild Bill in "Deadwood"
that he brought his own wig, custom made for him during production of Walter Hill's "Wild Bill."
Speaking with The AV Club, Carradine says he received a call from Walter Hill,
now set to direct the pilot of "Deadwood," who asked him what his hair looked like.
"I said, 'Well, it's short, Walter, but... I've still got that wig!'"
Reception of his performance was so positive that HBO initially pushed
back on the character's planned death in the fourth episode of the show,
matching the timeline of the real Wild Bill's infamous shooting during a hand
of poker. Carradine recalled his conversation with Milch at the time to Yahoo! Entertainment:
"[Milch] said, 'the good news is they love the show […] the
bad news is they don't want me to kill Hickok.'"
Despite the network's note getting his hopes up for a longer run, Milch won the battle and stuck
to the original plan. The character's presence, aided by Carradine's pitch-perfect performance,
reverberated throughout the rest of the show's run.
Praised for its dialogue, plotting, and depth,
the success of "Deadwood" begins and ends with the writing.
"Could you have been born, Richardson, and not egg-hatched as I've always assumed?"
And while there was a large team of writers on the show,
nearly every script was heavily re-written by showrunner David Milch,
to better fit the rhythm of the language he heard in his mind — sometimes on the spot.
It wasn't just the writers that had to swallow their pride — actors needed to adjust to the
demanding task of learning several new pages of dialogue on the spot. Actor Brad Dourif,
who played fan-favorite Doc Cochran, recalled a particularly infuriating incident:
"One time he came up to me, and said, 'You see this line?' And he gave me
four pages. 'I'm replacing this line with this,' and it was a four-page monologue."
Well before "Game of Thrones" gained notoriety for killing off main characters, "Deadwood" — by
the virtue of its setting and commitment to authenticity — was the best example of a show
willing to kill off major characters without warning. It was simply a reality of the West,
and the particular power struggles that came with being a lawless, frontier mining camp.
Viewers unfamiliar with history were likely shocked when Wild Bill Hickok was shot and
killed in just the fourth episode of Season 1. Plenty of characters would succumb to illness,
stabbings, gunfights and more over "Deadwood's" three seasons and feature-length movie.
"Run for your f---ing life."
Speaking with Inside Pulse during the filming of Season 2, Jim Beaver shared the anxiety
that he felt over the potential fate of his character, pure-hearted prospector Ellsworth:
"Everybody on 'Deadwood' is worried they're going to end up pig chow.
Well, maybe not everybody, but I think the worriers outnumber the non-worriers!"
Ellsworth was killed by an assassin at the end of Season 3.
One of the most memorable moments in all of "Deadwood" is the Season 3 fight between Dan
Dority, played by W. Earl Brown, and villainous henchman Captain Turner. Milch wanted the fight
to be completely realistic and avoid Western clichés, or as Brown recounted to Slashfilm:
"No cowboys flying through plate glass."
So the actors and crew found themselves coordinating a bare-hand,
all-out brawl in the mud of the thoroughfare with no clue how to end it. Fate intervened
at a poker game Brown was playing with Alice in Chains guitarist Jerry Cantrell.
Apparently, his brother Dave Cantrell had once been badly losing a bar fight, when:
"In desperation, he tried to push the guy off of him. He felt his finger
hit soft tissue and knew without seeing it, that it was an eyeball."
And so the makers of "Deadwood" found their way to have Dority,
seemingly about to lose his life, turn the tables by clawing out Turner's eye in a stroke of luck,
and by far the most intense visual of the show was born.
Beyond well-known Old West heroes like Wild Bill and Calamity Jane, many characters in "Deadwood"
were based on real citizens of the historical city of Deadwood. Central characters like Al
Swearengen, Sol Starr, and Seth Bullock were based on real people, although many characters
had slightly different fates than their real-life counterparts. The show’s legacy has driven tourism
to the real Deadwood to such a degree that there are many specific travel packages designed around
the show and movie. Visitors can experience the "Deadwood: Heroes & Villains" tour, among others.
You can even get a guided walking tour from the town's first Marshall,
or at least a re-enactor playing the part of Con Stapleton,
who was also a character in "Deadwood." While they welcome visitors, the city's official website
does have an entire section of its website about differences between the HBO show and real life.
In interviews, time and time again,
the cast recall their time on "Deadwood" as a head above all the rest. Speaking
with the AV Club, W. Earl Brown recalled something a fellow actor once told him:
"He said 'I don't really care about money, fame,
and that stuff. What I want to do is something that has an impact.' [...] And 'Deadwood' was
that for me [...] I think it was, for everyone involved, something really, really special."
Keith Carradine remarked to the AV Club as well that it wasn't just the role of Wild Bill Hickok
that attracted him to the part, but the mad genius behind "Deadwood" that made it more memorable:
"I mean, what a role to have the chance to play, but especially as written by Milch.
It was extraordinary stuff. He wrote this kind of American Shakespeare."
Reflecting on returning to her role as Calamity Jane for "Deadwood: The Movie,"
Robin Weigert told Slashfilm,
"We were getting incredible words to say. And I knew that I was with an exceptional
cast – that everybody I got to partner with in scenes was humbling, wonderful."
After a slow-motion death in 2006 — when HBO and David Milch debated about production schedules,
costs, and the length of a potential Season 4 for so long that the casts'
contracts expired — there were rumors of everyone reuniting for one or possibly two wrap-up movies.
But each tii me the plans didn't come to fruition, it sank the sprawling cast's spirits further until
it seemed all hope was lost. Asked by Vulture if he ever thought the movie would really happen,
the famously verbose Ian McShane replied with a curt "No."
Even W. Earl Brown, who for years maintained a hand-written list of
every main cast member's commitments for several years just in case,
lost the faith at some point. In 2019 he told Slashfilm,
"I gave up beating the dead horse after a few years."
Finally, on the strength of "Deadwood's" strong DVD sales and streaming legacy,
Milch and HBO struck a deal. "Deadwood: The Movie" premiered on HBO in 2019,
garnering high praise from both critics and fans.
"What a grand surprise after such a piece of time."
In 2015, David Milch received a diagnosis of Alzheimer's. Just months later,
he finally reached an agreement with HBO to write a script for "Deadwood: The Movie"
and began a four year process of wrapping up the story. His usual mad rush of re-assembling
sets and scenes on a whim and last-minute rewrites were tempered by the symptoms of the disease. He
relied more on the director and other producers to run things on set, and stuck to the script.
But that script was still pure Milch magic, and writing has proved to be
Milch's best weapon to hold on to his mind in the face of the disease's progression.
Speaking with Vulture, his wife Rita described it with an analogy perfect for the legendary TV
creator, who wrote an ensemble cast's voices like a symphony conductor:
"I compare it to a musician who can still play and has access to the memory of how to do that
and is still able to exercise his talent. [...] The brain is David's most exercised muscle."
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