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Bryan has been reading the comments to the interview and has taken the time to come up with this wonderful reply. I think he intended it to go among the comments, and it probably started out as an answer to Atomized’s question, but it’s such a great response there’s no way it couldn’t have its own post.

I’m sure everyone who reads this will be appreciative of the time and effort Bryan has put in for us - let alone the wonderful glimpses of the process of making world class TV this letter gives.

Over to Bryan:

“Good question. Since I totally botched Sally’s interview… I’ll try to do better here.

A very long answer to your question…

Actually, the uproar over the profanity subsided midway through Season One. There was a significant uproar from the traditional Western Genre group and probably some Christian objections too. However, HBO, being a subscription service not having to sell ads to sponsors is insulated from pressure groups. If you don’t like their program content, don’t subscribe.

Plus, they’re HBO… they have a reputation to uphold.

As I told Phil, in the standard Westerns and most other productions there may be little or no profanity on the page but there might be an enormous amount of cursing in daily conversation and communication. More than a bit hypocritical, don’t you think?

I have several friends who if I took the “F” words out of what they said — all that would be left would be the “uhs” “and “ands”. Most of them didn’t watch Deadwood because of the profanity. (I bet they dug the nudity though). On Deadwood there was a lot of profanity on the page but little or none anywhere else. It wasn’t a rule or anything like that. The characters in that place at that time communicated one way, the people who made Deadwood communicated differently.

David’s staff thoroughly researched when specific words came into use. When I was at the library in Virginia City, Nevada, I looked at period diaries and letters. The only word I never found was Deadwood’s signature (CS) word.

Because HBO is subscription service ratings have less of an impact. If the HBO executives like a program they are loyal to it. They attract great head writer/executive producers because they have that reputation in the industry. From what I’ve been told the network censors on NYPD Blue drove everyone nuts. That wasn’t the case on HBO. They knew going in that the profanity would limit their audience significantly.

In 1876-1877 Deadwood was the most profane, deadliest place in the West. Very few educated people… criminals of all sorts had migrated there along with grifters of every type. Deadwood the mining camp averaged a murder a day. An anti profanity ordinance was passed in 1878.

What the show was really about was how community evolves. Strong individuals hustling for themself, followed by singular law, then elections, ordinances, and punitive measures, and finally organized community. When the railroad arrived in 1880 the community changed again with the influx of merchants, money, and more educated people. By then most of the gold in the creeks was depleted and thousands of the get-rich-quick panners had gone on to other places.

At that point Deadwood became a hard rock/underground mining/ industrial town run by the large mines. It stayed that way for another 75 years. It wasn’t a particularly rich load, only yielding an ounce per ton in many cases. Gold was $20 an ounce. When they began chemical leaching operations the yield improved but devastated the environment. People actually went crazy from the 24/7 ground shaking, thunderous pounding of the stamp mills crushing ore.

The series made a great deal of money. HBO is adept at maximizing all the revenue streams (DVD, merchandise, foreign rights, etc.) I heard that a season of 12 episodes was done for something in the neighborhood of 36 million (compared to maybe 160 million for “Rome”).

What I briefly alluded to in the podcast was that what goes on the page has a great deal to do with what things cost. The series was filmed on a movie set in Santa Clarita California (30 minutes north of Burbank) on the old Gene Autry Ranch. There is a Western set and sound stages there. I’m pretty sure I saw the Grand Central Hotel in the new movie “Appaloosa”.

Called the “Melody Ranch” it is 100 plus acres right in the middle of a residential area — 10 minutes away from Olive Garden, Red Lobster, and K Mart.

Any time they had an off set shoot everyone had to move a hundred miles north. That could add $300,000-$1,000,000 to an episode. A mob scene requiring fifty extras has a price tag. Extra extras have to be paid, fed, costumed, etc. An explosion requires fire department presence. Union rules are strict and closely monitored. The use of animals is costly and highly scrutinized. Night shooting requires extra lights and another meal. Even which actors you use can be a consideration (Ex: a $10,000 per episode minor character versus a $25,000 minor character.) It’s a business. Though David wrote whatever he wanted, I know cost was something he was conscious of.

CGI is also expensive and Deadwood used it some. The opening sequence of the pilot where the freight wagons, Calamity, and Hickock are descending the winding trail down the mountain into the Deadwood mining camp was CGI.

All this is obviously too much for one person to handle while writing a show. The secondary Executive Producer was Greg Fienberg and his production team at Roscoe Productions. Really good people. You’ll find the Roscoe executives as various types of producers in the opening credits along with the full time writers.

Roscoe employed a great support staff and were responsible for day to day operations.

With David sometimes writing for the following day it put the production under a great deal of stress – not knowing exactly where he was going. Even though he would give them a pretty good idea, until you actually see the pages, you can’t be sure.

I wasn’t around very much in Season 3 but would drop by the set or David’s offices on the weekends to just see how everyone was doing. When you’re around a group of people in high energy, stressful situations I think the bonds are a little stronger.

Why the series didn’t continue? Only a guess on my part.

I do know that for a show runner/head writer, hands-on guy like David the demands are overwhelming. Not only is it psychologically taxing, it is also physically exhausting.

HBO rotates top notch directors in and out of their many projects. If you see a director on Deadwood you might see him again on “Rome”. The director on my Season One Episode “Mr. Wu” (available at I Tunes for $1.99) Daniel Minahan did an episode on HBO’s new series “True Blood.” Steven Shill worked on both Rome and Deadwood. A director I learned a great deal from during Season One was Davis Guggenheim (went on to Executive Produce “An Inconvenient Truth” and won an Oscar).

My first experience watching a director was Walter Hill when they shot the pilot. I tried to be on set every second they were shooting. It made me realize that for all the creativity involved, it is very much a blue collar industry. People with families and lives come to work early and stay late and try to contribute to something larger than themselves. They are very much like you and I — very much like people we interact with daily. Just people trying to do their best… trying to make a living. A good, but very insecure, living.

Seeing how all these wonderful directors interpreted the words on the page and enhanced them visually made me a much better writer. Listening to actors was also beneficial. It taught me to write in a professional manner to meet the specific needs of other professionals.

Another huge influence was Director of Photography James Glennon (now deceased). He took an interest in me on day one. Great guy. If it had been up to Jim and me, we would have made a Western version of Saving Private Ryan – blowing up stuff, fights, cave-ins. We are action guys. The production might have gone broke but we would’ve had a great time. BOOM.

As I told Phil, unlike the staff writers who write seven days a week, I wrote mostly at night and spent the shooting days on the set trying to learn as much as possible. The full time writers sit in overstuffed chairs or on a smelly sofa with interns in straight-backed, hard bottomed metal chairs behind them – and watch David write while he’s lying on the floor dictating into a microphone to a writer who’s wearing a headset, who types the words into the working script – which is on a television screen in front of David. Kind of weird but kind of cool too.

Be forewarned — if your cell phone goes off your career expectancy goes from optimistically marginal at best to absolute zero.

Watching a genius write is immensely educational though sometimes boring as heck (for me). After a couple of weeks I was drinking a case of Red Bull a day. A couple of months later when I’d outgrown my wardrobe, I switched to Sugar Free (which you probably know tastes like a skunk peed in a can.) Breath mints were definitely called for. Requested, actually. Okay – demanded.

David seldom spent more than two hours writing at a time then he’d get up and be off to take care of other responsibilities and come back later. As a writer, you already know how sometimes problems will work themselves out in your subconscious if you’ll get them out of your conscious mind.

The writers would go back to their desks and either continue writing in the direction David appeared to be headed or try to think up cool set pieces that David might like and use. They spent many, many, pressure filled hours sitting at their desks in trailers struggling to get something exceptional on the page. David Milch is all about the writing. You write great, you get to hang around. Not much of a life though.

They then e mailed whatever they wrote to one of David’s assistants who printed out a copy for David to read. Whatever I’d write would also be e mailed in, usually at 5 AM after an all nighter. Unlike the others, I was basically writing my own version of the Deadwood series, trying to stay an episode ahead of David. I not only wanted to write better than the full timers I wanted to write at David’s level. A slightly overweight, delusional person, granted – but at least one with minty breath.

If David liked what you wrote he’d take you on a ride around the lot in his golf cart discussing how he wanted you to proceed. Fortunately, I got many such rides. Unfortunately, I never got a ride back. We’d always end up at the way, way, way back side of the property and I’d have to walk back. I’m a smart ass. If asked, I will tell you what I really think.

NEVER tell anyone of higher authority what you REALLY think. It is a career killer in an industry largely populated with sycophants. A business where work is so scarce, positions so few, careers so tenuous, egos so large and out of touch with reality – that saying the right thing at the wrong time will end your career. Over and out.

It’s an industry that reeks of cat-piss-smelling FEAR (see Ep10, Season One). Being an inept bull rider, where life and career are always in jeopardy, I was used to working scared. Fear always made me angry at myself for being afraid. Thing is — I’ve always been afraid…. and consequently, my therapist tells me — angry. I didn’t need a therapist before Deadwood.

I was VERY fortunate that David was a friend. A good friend and mentor who understands the weirdness of writers. Still, I never got a ride back to the writing trailer. Not once. Not even when it was raining straight down. Many times I walked back in the dark with coyotes nipping at my boot heels. I started bringing food to them from craft services. After that we got along famously. In retrospect, over time I saw fewer and fewer of them. The craft services food probably did them in.

Because David sometimes likes to write scenes only one or two days in advance of shooting them, everyone is always under pressure. While certain cast members objected on NYPD Blue (David Carruso split) I thought on Deadwood it brought out the best in the actors. Like writers, their gift lies below the surface. When forced to rely on your talent, if you are confident and trust the material, great performances are possible.

Ian McShane might get six pages of very intricate dialogue faxed to him at eleven o’clock at night (when David finished writing) and he’d be on the set at 6 AM totally prepared and without complaint. Watching Ian, Powers Booth, Jim Glennon, Directors Ed Bianchi, Walter Hill, Davis Guggeheim, Dan Minahan, and Steve Shill and, most of all, David, taught me how to be a professional. You have to be a professional or you will not survive.

Your FINAL answer –

I’m guessing, David got tired.

Because they often had a new director every episode plus another director doing reshoots, and because David puts very little stage direction on the page, he was always there to indoctrinate the new directors and explain what he wanted. That meant a lot of days that began with his driver picking him up at home at 4 AM and dropping him back there after midnight. Undoubtedly tough on a family man like David.

While they’d usually shoot only five days a week, David wrote every day. Every single day. He didn’t require that his staff writers (other than the one he dictated to) come in on the weekends but they did. He’d sometimes make them think he was done so they would go home, then he’d come back and work by himself.

And… being the hands-on guy that he is, even with the support of Roscoe Productions and great technical people, everything ultimately went through David. Everyone with a problem wanted to speak directly to him. I didn’t think there would be a Season 3 for that reason. There ended up being a 3 but no 4.

It should also be noted that many actors work on one or two season contracts or even on a set number of episodes — contract. And some don’t get paid as much as you might imagine. A twelve episode series really doesn’t provide enough money or work to survive out there, so it’s hard to keep a cast together without elevating the salary costs to the point that it becomes financially untenable.

L.A. is an expensive place to live. One of the writers had two boys in elementary school. The public school was too dangerous. The tuition for the two boys at a private school was $40,000. $40,000 to eat paste and crayons. I’d eat paste and crayons for $40,000. I’d eat paste and crayons for $400. Heck … forget the money. I ate at craft services for over two years – a paste covered crayon sounds pretty appetizing. Plus, I’ve never run across a dead coyote with a paste-ee face and multi-colored teeth.

And… finally….a possible reason of why Deadwood didn’t continue could be that a writer as gifted and proven as David Milch has other offers on the table at all times.

Good Luck,

Bryan

P.S.

The most important thing David Milch ever told me was…

“If you show up everyday and do the work, good things will happen.”

He does and they do.”