Behind the scenes of HBO's Deadwood movie as David Milch battled Alzheimer's

Rolling Stone

Alan Sepinwall offers a taste of the HBO movie's production for Rolling Stone. "In what’s become a daily ritual in the movie’s production, Milch, the series’ creator, produces a few sheets of paper containing a soliloquy on the key themes of the scene they’re about to shoot," writes Sepinwall. "The cast and crew gather in a dutiful circle around him. In uniquely Milch-ian style, he holds forth, citing Machiavelli, the Bible and the old question of whose ox is gored....Midway through, he pauses to swig the remains of Bridgers’ morning coffee, then concludes with thoughts on the psychological game between (Seth) Bullock and (George) Hearst that plays out in the scene’s closing moments. After an appreciative silence, Milch cracks in his nasal Buffalo accent, 'Thank you for your tolerance.' It is a moment both beautiful and bittersweet. Once upon a time, Milch delivered speeches like this extemporaneously, dazzling his actors as much with the quickness of his wit as its eloquence. But in a plot twist sadly worthy of many of the tragic characters he’s written over the past four decades, Milch has been diagnosed with Alzheimer’s. He can still write his unmistakably ornate dialogue — has, in fact, been doing minor rewrites throughout the shoot — but his memories come and go, and he moves, talks, and at times thinks more slowly and carefully than he did during the original run." As W. Earl Brown, who plays Dan Dority, puts it: “The depth of David’s mind and spirit is still there. The acceleration’s gone, but the rest of it’s there.”