Tell Him Something Pretty Robert Herritt

Home , Charlie Utter, George Hearst, Jack Langrishe

Reviews & Reconsiderations

he story goes that after he himself cover for what he wanted to submitted an early draft of do anyway. TDeadwood to HBO, David His maneuver was only fitting for Milch, the show’s creator, had some a show that so aptly dramatized the explaining to do. The script’s use of very human tendency to back-fill and obscenity was so brazen and volu- rationalize, to shoot first and give minous that it made even that net- answers later. In the world Milch work’s higher-ups, themselves no creates, reasoning, thought, speech, strangers to salty language, a little and even laws and institutions are uneasy. Surely a show set in a mining largely after-the-fact enterprises, camp during the 1870s Black Hills things people come up with to make Gold Rush had no need for dialogue sense of others’ actions, to make their so drenched in profanity. And wasn’t own actions intelligible, and, as in Milch’s choice of words — top-dol- Milch’s case, to ratify situations that lar expletives hardly unfamiliar to already obtain. Deadwood is a place today’s ears — anachronistic anyway? where the subterranean forces that If he wanted to work this blue, he’d shape human affairs are close to the have to provide a reason. surface, revealing the plans, theories, In reply to the executives, the customs, and laws that people impose former Yale literature instructor on their predicaments as mostly inci- penned a short essay, substantiated dental, their meaning a consequence with four pages of references, defend- of time and repetition. ing the foulness of his language as For those who haven’t had the true to the show’s time and place, as pleasure, Deadwood tells the story of well as to the characters themselves. how an illegal settlement on Sioux Whether his argument was sound land, populated by deviants and indi- or his research conclusive is mostly vidualists and lacking in formal laws, beside the point. Milch was deploy- gave rise to an organized community ing his skills as a theoretician to give and, eventually, a recognized part

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of the Dakota Territory — today the months old. But its thoroughfare is city of Deadwood, South Dakota. already a lively site of commerce and Loosely based on historical charac- labor, lined with buildings in various ters and events, the story unfolds stages of completion and tents where over the course of three seasons, residents can purchase meat, whiskey, aired between 2004 and 2006, after and prospecting equipment. which the series was abruptly can- How civil society can arise so rap- celed before reaching anything like a idly in a place without law is among satisfying conclusion. the show’s richest themes. One could A feature-length movie, which pre- easily read Deadwood as a state-of- miered on HBO in May and is set a nature theory brought to life, a story decade on from the original series, is about how free adults guided by self- the closest the show’s devotees are interest might actually come togeth- likely to get to that long-awaited end- er to form a functioning society. Both ing. It also offers a welcome excuse Locke and Hobbes, two of the most for reconsidering Deadwood and its notable practitioners of this sort of lowly view of human reason — some- theory, cited America, and specifically thing I wanted to do anyway. Indian lands untouched by European influence, as a real-life instance of the ne of the first things to notice state of nature they each envisioned. Oabout Deadwood is how quickly “In the beginning,” Locke writes in the settlement comes into being. The his Second Treatise of Government, “all camp we see in the first episode is only the world was America.”

HBO

Deadwood under construction

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Viewed as a genealogical thought the Dakota legislature might view experiment, the show reveals what the settlement’s legal standing. “We might be needed to get something don’t have to create it. It would be resembling a community off the disruptive if we did.” ground, and how that community might become a bona fide political his is just one of the ways in society through a series of events Twhich Deadwood inverts a cer- guided by no person in particular. tain rationalist picture of the social What begins as a practical endeavor and political — of top-down, techno- for furthering commerce and serving cratic deliberation as the ideal of prospectors takes on a life of its own, proper action. What the series shows growing into something worth sus- us time and again is a sequence of taining for its own sake. unplanned, impulsive, or unexpected By Deadwood’s third season, actions, the professed motivations even a murderous operator like Al for which are tacked on to suit other Swearengen — owner of the Gem purposes. saloon, pimp, thief, and the camp’s de So it is with one of the first sea- facto boss — has expanded his con- son’s pivotal events, the murder of cerns beyond his own gain. As he Wild Bill Hickok by Jack McCall, tells his friend Jack Langrishe, head who shoots the legendary gunfighter of a touring theater troupe, one eve- in the back in a fit of confused rage. ning while standing on the Gem’s During a meeting with his assigned balcony, aside from satisfying his attorney, McCall admits, “I’m a hard sexual desires, “I’ve no...ambition case for you, counselor. And no mis- past trading to my favor.” That might take, everyone in there saw me shoot have been true when he first arrived him.” “If you’ll let me set our strate- in Deadwood, but not anymore, as gy,” his lawyer replies, “I don’t think Langrishe is quick to remind him: we’ll dispute what people saw.” “Bullshit! A thing of this order you’d as soon not see ruined or in cinders.” McCall: Now, I guess you’re here Such is the process by which the to break me out. political realm emerges in Deadwood. Lawyer: Son, did James But- When laws and institutions appear ler Hickok ever kill a relative of on the scene, they aren’t instru- yours? ments of progress, but of stability and maintenance. They are ways of McCall: James Butler Hickok? protecting and perpetuating order that has arisen already. “Deadwood Lawyer: Wild Bill Hickok. Did he exists,” a corrupt magistrate tells ever kill a brother of yours or, or Swearengen as they consider how the like?

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HBO Jack McCall (Garret Dillahunt) and his lawyer (uncredited) in a meat locker serving as a makeshift jail.

McCall: A brother? it with the same respect it has the natives, claiming its riches for them- Lawyer: I’m asking you if what selves and their “ne’er-do-well cous- happened in that saloon was ins and brothers-in-law.” In this way, vengeance — for the death of a Milch shows how our retellings of family member? Possibly a broth- events, and our recounting of our er in Abilene. Or the like. own motivations, are often tools for obscuring some unsavory reality, or McCall: A brother in Abilene. at least making it more palatable. McCall’s defense will rest not on They are, as Swearengen says in the denying he killed Hickok, but on closing line of the series, attempts to contriving a suitable reason for why “tell [us] something pretty.” he did. The murderer’s exoneration How fitting, then, that someone is helped along by the fact that more like E. B. Farnum, a man governed than a few residents have a stake almost entirely by greed, envy, and in it, not least Swearengen. As he resentment, is also the most skilled sees things, convicting and executing talker, forever dressing up his unscru- a murderer might hurt the camp’s pulous nature with verbiage conspic- chances of getting annexed to the uously ornate even by Deadwood’s United States: The nation’s lawmak- standards. Farnum also secures him- ers could claim that Deadwood is self the title of mayor, a post even he a renegade government, and treat admits is “largely ceremonial.”

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Deadwood’s most honest residents to himself than are most of the oth- are the ones least adept at ratio- ers. What sets him apart is that he nalizing their feelings and actions. admits as much. This is certainly true of Trixie, who begins the series as a prostitute at the hat our thoughts and reasons Gem and Swearengen’s lover. Unlike Tare, in a sense, downstream Farnum, the intricacy and vulgarity from the true causes of our behavior of Trixie’s speech is a true expres- might seem like a view at home in sion of her complicated thoughts, a materialist picture of the world. judgments, and emotions. She seems But what we see in Deadwood is always to speak directly from her something different altogether: an soul, making no effort to apologize, environment suffused with agency in much less to justify herself. which our individual intentions play Something similar can be said of only a small part. another of the camp’s more upright In Deadwood’s very first scene, inhabitants, Seth Bullock, who fled Bullock surmises that his recently the role of marshal in Montana to acquired gunshot wound “don’t look become a hardware proprietor in like it wants to infect.” The miner Deadwood, but eventually finds the Ellsworth encourages a fellow pros- star pinned again on his chest. Bullock pector about his newly acquired gold doesn’t go in much for just-so stories claim, “‘Twix nuggets or nothin’, that vindicate his occasional spasms she’s usually gonna show you some of violence and animosity. “Reason,” flake.” Doc Cochran, the camp’s phy- Swearengen explains to Langrishe sician, implores Calamity Jane to about the sheriff, “ain’t his long suit.” change her hard-drinking ways by And so we frequently find Bullock explaining how “Nature is a forgiv- mystified by his own behavior, as he ing mistress, and you might could is after volunteering to serve as the have some time to fill before she col- camp’s health commissioner — osten- lects her due.” Swearengen informs sibly to avoid being appointed sheriff. his right hand, Dan Doherty, who Sitting with his best friend and busi- has offered to intervene in an esca- ness partner Sol Starr on the porch lating spat between his boss and of their hardware store that evening, Bullock, “No, that ain’t how this Bullock laments his own “mettlesome wants to resolve.” The mining mag- nature,” explaining that, “What I’ve nate and Deadwood’s chief villain done, Sol — and you have to admire George Hearst refers to himself as me for it — is move three hundred “the boy the earth talks to.” miles to set the same damn situation This is a universe in which inten- up I left Montana to get away from.” tion, human or otherwise, is every- Bullock, of course, is no more opaque where, and survival and success isn’t

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Copyright 2019. All rights reserved. Print copies available at TheNewAtlantis.com/BackIssues. Tell Him Something Pretty a matter of imposing one’s will but By contrast, it’s often those charac- of deciphering the import of these ters in thrall to some detached notion winds and currents and turning them of truth or reason who are the most toward one end or another, as both clueless. Here, A. W. Merrick, editor Bullock and Swearengen each try do of the camp’s newspaper, the Black in their own ways. Swearengen can Hills Pioneer, is the purest example. be found daily on the Gem’s balcony, The closest thing the camp has to an observing the goings-on below and intellectual or idealist, Merrick is a working on his “deployments and man of words more than action, as is flanking maneuvers.” illustrated nicely during his encoun- For Bullock, blind principle is a ter with Bullock, Starr, and Charlie means of managing his own nature, Utter after breakfast one morning at with varying degrees of success. It’s Farnum’s hotel: only after being reminded of this fact by a visiting general that Bullock Merrick: Gentlemen, what’s finally relents, agreeing to become to prevent us from freeing our the camp’s sheriff. “In a camp where friendship from dependence on that little dining room? Relying the sheriff can be bought for bacon not on happenstance and appetite grease,” the general tells him, “a to further commerce between us, man, a former marshal, who under- but on our own conscious choice? stands the danger of his own tem- perament, he might consider serving Utter: Meanin’ what? his fellows.” Merrick: Meaning, Mr. Utter, the It’s worth noting that neither most informal and disorganized of the show’s two central charac- of clubs. ters — Swearengen and Bullock — is a miner, one of those who arrive Seth: We gotta open [the store], in Deadwood to assault nature and Sol. extract their fortune from the ground Utter: Yeah, I don’t join clubs. by sheer mechanical force. Whatever wealth the two men have they’ve Merrick: Ah, now, its sole purpose acquired as merchants, standing could be just walking together as behind a counter or sitting behind we are now. a desk, waiting for human nature to bring the gold to them. Like many Sol: Well, why don’t we just walk of the show’s characters, they are together when we happen to be out? improvisers in touch with the idea that, as Calamity Jane puts it, “Every Merrick: We could, we could, or day takes figuring out all over again we could dedicate ourselves to how to...live.” the principle of walking together.

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HBO

A. W. Merrick (Jeffrey Jones) proposes forming a club to his friends Charlie Utter (Dayton Callie), Seth Bullock (Timothy Olyphant), and Sol Star (John Hawkes).

Would it — maybe all we need is opening relishes being “beholden” to a name. no one. What they find is that their inheritances can’t be so easily jetti- Merrick succumbs to a classic fal- soned. Swearengen’s warrant almost lacy. Wished-for social arrangements catches up with him. Bullock ends up are rarely brought about by “con- sheriff after all. Ellsworth’s innate scious choice.” Nor do names cre- sense of duty and decency leads him ate circumstances that weren’t real to marriage and fatherhood. already. Words usually come after. But nobody is wholly innocent of hat, of course, was then. The this kind of folly. Those who arrive TDeadwood we find in Deadwood: in Deadwood in its early days are The Movie has a somewhat different running from the established world, character, and a new legal status eager to remake themselves accord- to go with it. (Mild spoilers for the ing to their own design in a place movie ahead.) Its streets are no less uncorrupted by the customs and alive than in the show’s first episode, expectations of the past — a ratio- except this time it isn’t the pragmatic nalist project if there ever was one. demands of commerce that animate Swearengen is on the run from a the thoroughfare, but nearly the oppo- murder warrant. Bullock abandons site: ceremony — specifically, the 1889 a life as a lawman for that of a mer- South Dakota Statehood Celebration. chant, while Ellsworth at the show’s It’s one of several ceremonies that

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Copyright 2019. All rights reserved. Print copies available at TheNewAtlantis.com/BackIssues. Tell Him Something Pretty punctuate the film. Among the oth- inevitability is the deepest tru— ers are a funeral, a wedding, an auc- What is wrong with you...to be tion, and what could be described shifting your feet so incessantly?! as last rites, each of which serves as Farnum: The procession of years. a marker of how far Deadwood has Wantin’ leakage. come since we last saw it roughly ten years earlier. The town is now a place Farnum deflates Hearst’s airy where people celebrate and preserve paean with an unwitting remind- what they have achieved instead of er that time brings both improve- knifing each other to get more. And ment and deterioration. What Hearst the movie presents less as a conclu- touts as modernity’s gift many in sion than a formal remembrance and Deadwood see for what it is: a threat farewell. to all they have built from a man bent Nevertheless, the elements of on dominance through destruction. human nature that shaped the events It’s a fitting reversal for a place sto- of the original series are still on dis- len from the Sioux under the guise play. There is plenty of treachery and of another high-flown philosophy of murder and greed in this legitimized progress. Deadwood, but the rationale given As in the original series, Bullock is for this wrongdoing is far more lofty one of Hearst’s chief adversaries. And than we are used to, mostly going again, we find them well-matched as by the name “progress.” This is the two men who approach life in very watchword of George Hearst, now a different ways: Hearst, the legisla- senator from California, who comes tor and “colossus of commerce,” as to Deadwood not only to christen its Swearengen calls him, determined to membership in the United States but shape events according to his design; to run telephone wires through its Bullock, now a marshal, engaged in hills, all the while preaching a gospel a different relationship with the law. of progress through communication As Bullock explains to Swearengen, technology to anyone who will lis- “My job ain’t to follow the law, Al. ten, including his old whipping-boy, My job is to interpret it, then enforce the mayor, E. B. Farnum. it accordingly.” Hearst: Stall progress he may, t’s no secret that questions of rea- stop it he cannot. Every busi- ness, Mr. Farnum, in this terri- Ison and planning were on Milch’s tory thrives as a direct result of mind when writing the original communication. Now we’ve no series, as he has addressed them say as to the pace of modernity’s explicitly many times over the years. advance. I myself am merely its In a talk delivered to the Writers vessel. A humble foot soldier. Its Guild of America in 2007, Milch

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Copyright 2019. All rights reserved. Print copies available at TheNewAtlantis.com/BackIssues. Robert Herritt insisted that “the ego — the sense of characters as alive and enigmatic the self — is always after-the-fact. It as any to ever appear on television. is a response to your behavior, it does Even the most trivial scenes feel like not generate your behavior, although musical compositions, a stirring mix you think it’s the other way around.” of the high and the low, the vile and Commenting on Swearengen and the profound. Bullock during a 2006 interview in The new movie displays the same American Heritage, Milch explained, level of mastery, especially in its “Both, I think, had lives that lived dialogue. Alma Ellsworth seems to them more than they lived their acknowledge as much in one of the lives.” early scenes, which finds Trixie, in Milch is no doubt drawing on his the late stages of pregnancy, berat- own experience here. As a recov- ing Hearst from her balcony as his ering addict, he is acutely aware of parade moves through town, accus- our ability to manufacture thoughts ing him of murder: “I convey to you, that validate our actions. But he is senator, memorial greetings from also speaking as an academic. When the miner Ellsworth and prostitute Doc Cochran says of Swearengen’s Jen. But two of the who-knows- “moods” that “you generate those how-many you’ve done for while yourself and then you find your making your monied progress....For excuse for having ‘em,” the character ain’t it so, sir, it’s the thieving and is offering a gloss on the psychologist throat-cutting, them’s bloodied and William James’s view of emotion, a dead in the mud, as still stiffens the theory that Milch has referenced in member in your long-johns....” interviews. One could even understand Alma: Trixie hasn’t lost her gift. Deadwood as an expression of Milch’s Utter: She ain’t, for a fact. Time own approach to writing. During can’t touch that. the show’s run, he was notorious for only thinking about his writing At the same time, Milch’s laxity of while he was doing it, for delivering forethought while writing the series pages the day they were shot, and never stopped him from engaging for shouting his revisions to actors in lengthy exegesis on completed from off-camera as the scenes were scenes, unpacking their significance underway. Yet out of this haphazard for the actors on set in the moments process came something that feels, before the cameras rolled. In this in a word, impossible. The show is a way, Deadwood, like the camp it generous mess of themes and ambi- depicts, came into being through a guities, evocative set pieces and lyric cycle of extemporary creation and volleys of dialogue, not to mention willful interpretation, mostly in that

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Copyright 2019. All rights reserved. Print copies available at TheNewAtlantis.com/BackIssues. Tell Him Something Pretty order. Unlike much of today’s enter- takes the most base aspects of our tainment culture, which is guided by humanity and, through forces only data to appeal to what audiences are glancingly understood, creates some- expected to want, Deadwood springs thing precious. into existence spontaneously, less the product of engineering than of alche- Robert Herritt is a writer living in my. For thirty-six episodes, the show New York City.

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