A Man on Fire

I’m reading David Milch’s memoir, Life’s Work.  If the only thing we remember him for is Deadwood, I’d be okay with that, on my resume.  But he wrote 81 scripts for Hill Street Blues (there were a total of 144 episodes, over the run of the series); he wrote and exec produced, with Steven Bochco, NYPD Blue – which it’s fair to say changed the nature of broadcast television in the 90’s; and he was the eminence grise behind John from Cincinnati, a brilliant misfire that sank beneath the waves after airing ten episodes on HBO.  He was responsible for Beverly Hills Buntz, Brooklyn South, and Luck, as well, but I doubt if they’ll prove to have the shelf life on streaming media the other shows do.

He was Yale, summa, master’s from the Iowa Writers’ Workshop, and mentored by Robert Penn Warren.  He’s been diagnosed as bipolar, he was a heroin addict, and he’s got a gambling Jones.  Milch is up front about all this, the good and the bad, but the gambling - and in particular the mystique of the track – has a very specific hold on him.  He walks it back to his relationship with his dad, which is unresolved.  The senior Milch was, ah, difficult. 

It’s interesting how Milch engages with this.  Art, he seems to feel, is in part a negotiation with the past.  He believes you can transform your personal history, through writing, but not transcend.  I happen to agree.  You can incorporate stuff (how do you not?), but you can’t shed your own skin, that’s soap opera psychology: confront your demons, and defeat them.  No.  What you can do is repurpose memory, and perhaps undo its darker energies.

Now, for instance, it probably comes as surprise to learn that the impelling inspiration for Deadwood is the story of St. Paul, struck blind on the road to Damascus.  Not me, either, but that’s what Milch says.  He actually pitched it to HBO.  They said, Naah, we’ve already greenlighted a series in ancient Rome, and he shifted gears.  He realized that the guiding principle was a myth, agreed-upon; if it wasn’t to be the dominant symbol of the emerging Christian gospel, there are other compelling mass delusions.  He settles on, wait for it, gold.  Gold is a lie agreed upon.  Which is how he winds up taking us out into the Black Hills of South Dakota.  A transliteration, he suggests. 

There’s a lot more in the book about Deadwood, the writing, the casting, the design, the zeitgeist, and I admit that’s mostly what I was reading it for.  War stories about Ian McShane, and Robin Weigert, and Timothy Olyphant, and how certain choices were made, about characters, and storyline.  You won’t be disappointed.

But here’s the thing.  Spoiler alert.  Milch’s brain is crowding up with deposits of amyloid plaque.  He’s got Alzheimer’s.  The past couple of years, he’s been in an Assisted Living/Memory Care facility.  He describes it as a growing solitude, coming unmoored.

In that sense, Life’s Work is enormously brave.  How much will he get to tell?  “Nothing comes easily,” he says, “in terms of being loyal both to the past and the present,” but he believes that’s the proper place of storytelling.  I’m both deeply impressed and terribly saddened, but I don’t think Milch is looking to curry favor, or find redemption, he’s simply setting the record straight.  We all want to enter our house justified, naturally enough, and Milch gets to tell the story his way.  I wish there were more of it. 

JUSTIFIED Redux

First off, we have to posit that Justified is one of the best series ever.  Period, full stop.  I won’t hear any argument.  I’m a big fan of Bosch, Happy Valley is amazing, I love Unforgotten and Shetland, but Justified is king.

Here’s what you do.  Go on YouTube, search for “Raylan Givens vs. Fletcher ‘The Ice Pick’ Nix,” and treat yourself to what comes.  Just the one scene.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LTwrFfiEx18

There are, of course, other scenes as fully flavorable, but this has the essentials.

Raylan makes his appearance in Dutch Leonard’s 1993 novel, Pronto, and then in Riding the Rap, in 1995.  The immediate jumping-off point for Justified is the 2001 short story, “Fire in the Hole.”  Dutch revisited the character in 2012, with Raylan, his last published title.

I think it’s common knowledge in the Justified fanbase that the writers’ room – headed by exec producer Graham Yost – had a mantra, What would Dutch do?  In any situation where they’d written themselves into a corner, or they weren’t entirely confident of a story development, they went back to the baseline: How would Dutch Leonard himself handle it?  They usually got it right.

Much has been made of the casting.  Timothy Olyphant and Walt Goggins, and astonishing support, Nick Searcy and Mikelti Williamson, Kaitlyn Dever and Joelle Carter, the Crowes and the Bennetts.  I’d happily list each one.  Not to mention the guest heavies - my stars and whiskers!  The incomparable Margo Martindale; Neal McDonough, no Band of Brothers, here; Sam Elliott and Mary Steenburgen.  Villains all, who get their just desserts. 

Timothy Olyphant and Graham Yost closed the book with Season Six.  FX, the network, wasn’t entirely happy about it.  (Justified was their highest-rated show.)  But hold the phone.  The sequel, Justified: City Primeval, just premiered a limited run in July, and Tim Olyphant’s back as Raylan. 

The new series is a hybrid.  The novel, City Primeval (subtitled High Noon in Detroit), came out in 1980, and it doesn’t feature Raylan, but local cop Ray Cruz.  Raylan has been added to the mix.  This has no ill effect.  You still got the basic Elmore Leonard elements, a crooked judge, a car bombing, Albanian gangsters, a long con, and the usual mix of opportunists and low-lifes, fast-talkers and the criminally insane.  This time around, we have more of the fish-out-of-water trope, but Raylan is nothing if not resourceful, and since you were wondering, he hasn’t slowed down.  Nor does the show waste any time getting stoked. 

You might miss the hillbillies, for about thirty seconds.