There is a new western series that starts tonight, Sunday 3/21 at 10:00 pm on HBO called Deadwood. It's supposed to be a historically accurate series based on the old west, Custer, the Black Hills, etc. I can't wait to see it! To find out more, go to HBO.com. It looks like it's going to be very good!
I don't get HBO so I won't be able to watch it. But from what I've read it's supposed to be a 'realistic' western full of muddy, sewer filled streets.
Having watched quite a few 'realistic' westerns I much prefer the westerns with strong stories and characters we care about. But I'll be interested to hear your views on Deadwood.
I didn't care for the recent Tom Berenger western show.
That tried to be 'realistic' but just ended up being boring.
Well, let me start out by saying this one hour show had more foul language in it than anything I have ever seen. Literally every other sentence had swear words in it, with every conceivable form of taking the Lord's name in vain, profuse usage of the F word and the c word was used four or five times, too. Ouch. However, with all that said, I would watch it again. Here's why...
Overall, I think it really portrayed what it was like at that time. People were wearing bedraggled clothes that were so tattered you could just about smell their horrible b.o. coming through the TV screen. The town looked pretty authentic, too. It starts out showing a man being lynched and hung for horse stealing. The sheriff of that town is a good guy, who hangs up his badge and leaves to go to the town of Deadwood to start up a hardware store with a friend. His friend is an alright guy, too, and was one of the crewmen with George Clooney in the movie A Perfect Storm. There were some other faces I recognized but don't know the names of. One guy, I think was Ruben Kinkaid from the Partridge family.
Deadwood is a newly established, completely lawless town, filled with drifters and pioneers and gold diggers. It's all men, and they outnumber the women 100 to 1, the only women being prostitutes at the saloon. The saloon owner is totally crooked and creepy, extremely rich, and underhandedly runs the entire town. The people don't know exactly how powerful and bad he is and how many dealings he has his hands in.
It's like a soap opera, in that a lot of interesting things are going on, but eventually, they all tie into the whole of the movie...a saloon girl gets roughed up by a patron, so she shoots him in the head, which they show graphically. The saloon owner summons the doctor, who is a weirdo, and takes the body and feeds it to the pigs, which they show graphically, to cover up the death. Then the saloon owner beats the girl, then she sleeps with him later. Wild Bill Hickock shows up and has celebrity status. A young, wealthy couple are buying gold mines, but the woman keeps drinking some kind of tincture and seems to ignore her husband but we don't know why, yet. A pioneer family is leaving town to go back home to Minnesota. They get savagely attacked and mutilated by Indians, their body parts and appendages strewn all over the place, which they show graphically, too. Except that they weren't really ravaged by Indians, they were killed by this sicko drifter, who gets shot point blank in the head when the sherriff guy teams up with Wild Bill Hickock to get him in the street. A little girl from the pioneer family survived, and was taken to the doctor by this crass, crazy scout lady who is a friend of Wild Bill's.
Anyway, throughout the movie, they talk about restoring law and order to Deadwood, so I think the foul language is all part of the buildup to set the scene for how bad and corrupt and lawless it really was. The saloon owner is very threatening and covincing in his role.
Now you don't have to watch it, Paul :)
I'd better go do some things around the house.
Talk to ya later.
Great review Gina! I'm glad I couldn't watch it from your description of foul language and negativity from almost every character. This is the main reason I hate the new revisionist westerns. I hate listening to the F word and from what you say they've now gravitated to a new low using the C word. I often wonder just how low actors will go. If a trendy director asked them to have actual sex in a scene (as in a porn movie) my guess is, quite a few would. The line between 'art' and pornography is narrowing.
The West may well have been a harsh place to live but I prefer to watch uplifting stories rather than be treated to endless violence and death in grisly detail. We have enough of that on the news every evening.
Yeah, Paul, I don't like that word, either. This movie really took you to the core of what it was like to live back then. It showed you things that maybe you never thought about...like the hardware store guys had to hire a settler to watch their goods at night, because a lot of the merchants didn't have stores set up so they sold their wares off little sections of the street or wooden platforms. There was no order in the street, and people were crowded and walking in every direction trying to get to where they wanted to go. Men were gutting calves and hanging meat right out in the open so people would have food to eat. There were no prices on things and people would bargain to get stuff and the prices could change by the minute. It looked like a third world country marketplace. It was harsh and gritty and people were just surviving and had to watch their backs or be dead. It's amazing how the west became so romanticized and was portrayed as so much more docile because it was cleaned up for TV.
I haven't seen the Passion of the Christ yet, but I think this movie is similar to that in that you take for granted what really went on until it is graphically presented to you in those terms. Yeah, yeah, yeah, on Good Friday, you go to the stations of the cross, you see symbolized drawings of Jesus being scourged and you know it was horrible, but until Mel Gibson shows you Mary pleading and begging and screaming for her son who is beyond bloody and in agony, watching metal stakes being driven into his hands and feet, it's a whole different perspective.
It made me upset about the role of women, too, and how they were viewed. Women were literally slaves - slaves to their families, slaves to labor and work, slaves to men and sex. If their husband died, they and their children were completely vulnerable to every mistreatment imaginable.
One thing that is uplifting for me, is to look at how far society has come from that time (though some people can argue that it hasn't come that far). We are unified, we have a justice system in place, law enforcement to protect us, churches, schools, healthcare, equal rights, jobs...And all in a tiny time span, historically speaking.
Okay, I'd better go do more chores now :) Get me off my soap box!
Yes Sir, this is an ADULT TV show.
And I'm not sure even an X rateing should clear the violance. and GORE.
This might have been the way things were, but WHHHOOOOOOFFFFA its got some for sure and certain violent and crude, rude and dirty details.
Gina... that is supposed to be Calamity Jane (Canary) that followed wild Bill into town and supposedely she did talk and act that way....
Yeah, Mule, I thought that might be Calamity Jane. And you're right - I don't know how they'd rate this if it was a movie. They did a really good job making the gory stuff look real - like the bullet wounds were so believable. One thing I didn't quite follow was why the sherriff seemed eager to hang the horse thief for the lynch mob in the beginning? Was it because he wanted to be on his way to Deadwood already? And also, I don't know much about Wild Bill Hickock. Is he a good guy with a notorious past of being sort of a bad guy? He looked like General Custer. Actually, he looked exactly like the cartoon calvary guy in Spirit, Stallion of the Cimarron. That wasn't Keith Carradine who played him, was it?
Funny how you talk about part of "progress" being "law enforcement to protect us!" Last I read you were cop bashing!
Now on to the real meat of this thread. Deadwood and its ilk are the reasons, in my opinion, that the Western must die. There is a large core group of people such as Dave and Mule and Paul and I, who love the Western. But because Hollywood, and particularly the slimy likes of HBO, insist on trying to bring the legend of the West down into slimedom, they are going to lose their original audience and gain very few new fans with trash such as Deadwood. No, I have not seen it. I heard plenty beforehand to know I would never lower myself to watch it. People have bowel movements and puke, too, just like they swear and shoot each other's heads off. That does not mean we have to watch any of it and call it entertainment. Whatever happened to the idea of escapism? If I want to see the effects of gunshots wounds I'll just go to work. I can see that on the ambulance any day. It's idiots like those at HBO who believe no one in the world has an imagination except them who continually insist on showing us EVERYTHING until there's nothing left to see. When will this ever end? I say down with HBO. They have long since forsaken any good Westerns they used to do, and they have lowered themselves to the status of common sewage with Deadwood. Keith Carradine should be absolutely ashamed of himself, along with anyone else who claims to have a conscience and had anything to do with the making of this series. I wouldn't let my dog watch it. So...do you want me to stop sugar-coating my opinions?
Welcome back... and thanks for your forthright views on westerns such as Deadwood. I find it sad Deadwood received HBO's biggest ever audience. It appears a large segment of today's audience likes to revel in blood and filth. Just look at what's number one at the box office 'Dawn of the Dead'. As if there isn't enough real violence in the world today.
Kirby, what if tomorrow, the producers of Deadwood offered you 10 million dollars to be a consultant for the show. What if they needed a western expert, and your job responsiblities were to do research, advise costume designers, set directors - manage all the authentic details, and later down the road, maybe help write story concepts, and maybe even appear on TV and sing some of your trail songs.
Before you answer that question, think about what 10 million dollars would do in the hands of the 'right' person.. Of course it would offer your family and future generations of Jonas' financial security...you could really get your books out there, and probably even start a movie deal on one of them..you could open a save the wolf foundation and protect the open spaces of Yellowstone. With a little credibility, you might even be able to influence some changes on Deadwood and revive the western genre. And all you would have to do would be to set aside your differences ..nobody's asking you to curse, or commit murder, just confide in your knowledge and expertise for the success of the show. Would you do it? It's okay if you say yes, you'd do it, - I wouldn't think any less of you. It's not a test, I'm merely pointing out the positive things that could spin out of an arrangement like that. And I'm saying - as a friend - don't burn your bridges. Maybe there's people on Deadwood right now who don't like the direction the show is going in and want to change it. You never know who is checking out your site, and at the very least, a few new western fans might stumble upon it and order up some books.
Thanks for the compliment, Kaye. I don't want to beat a dead horse (sorry about the pun) and I don't want to lecture, but I'm learning that with passion, talent, and effort, we can create our own opportunities. I think Kirby has all the right ingredients and with a little luck, someday, things are going to come together for him. (And when it does, a little nepotism ain't such a bad thing, either. You think you'll be in need of an art director? I would need flex hours, of course. :) Just kidding. I'll find a good job eventually.)
Kaye, absolutely! And if I get the job, I'll sub the work out to you, Paul, Ken, Mule, Guy, Janette, Kate, George etc. We'll keep it a "family" affair. heh heh. There ya go, Kirb, we've got it all figured out. So go out and drum up some business :)
I feel this particular thread has grown too large to keep posting here, so I'm going to carry it over into a new post. This subject is way too close to my heart to let it get lost in a big string of replies.