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David Milch
This book is about the life and work of David Milch, the writer who created NYPD Blue, Deadwood and a number of other important US television dramas. It provides a detailed account of Milch’s journey from academia to the heights of the television industry, locating him within the traditions of achievement in American literature over the past in order to evaluate his contribution to fiction writing. It also draws on behind-the-scenes materials to analyse the significance of NYPD Blue, Deadwood, John From Cincinatti and Luck. Contributing to academic debates in film, television and literary studies on authorship, the book will be of interest to fans of Milch’s work, as well as those engaged with the intersection between literature and popular television.
240 pages, Hardcover
Published October 14, 2019
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May 22, 2020
As someone who highly regards the achievements of Deadwood and who has spent considerable time researching David Milch and consuming his online lectures, the account provided here by Jason Jacobs is highly relevant material. It is a well-researched portrait of Milch’s career and life, drawing not only from the copious material available online, but also utilizing more difficult to obtain source material (two chapters from The Groundlings, the poem “The Men at Haskell Levine’s,” the 2001 WGA lectures which are no longer on the web, and thousands of pages of writers room notes obtained from Red Board productions spanning Milch’s post NYPD Blue career). It excellently consolidates most of the information I’d gathered on my own over the years regarding Milch’s life, influences, and philosophies, while also adding details, context, and insight. I’m grateful the publishing industry found it viable to finance such a comprehensive piece for posterity, as Milch historians now have a valuable landmark to reference, and academia now has an encompassing Milch title to (hopefully) put on future syllabi.
Jacobs’ portrait of Milch spans his lifetime, beginning in his early childhood in Buffalo and running through 2016 when his gambling losses became public. Milch has lived an incredibly fascinating life and it is necessary to understand his past in order to fully appreciate his writing process, “whereby the pain of the past in its pastness may be converted into the future tense of joy” (Warren). This past includes a high-achieving yet dysfunctional family in Buffalo (imprinting on Milch a doubleness of public respect with private degeneracy), the origins of the racetrack as the setting in which Milch could play out feelings of shame, his sexual abuse at summer camp, his unquenchable thirst for action resulting in gambling and drug addictions, and his mistrust (Milch categorizes it as “ambivalence” but it manifests more like mutiny) of order and authority. The documentation of Milch’s background continues through his academic career at Yale (under the guidance of Warren, Brooks, and Lewis) and Iowa (Yates).
Aside from biographical information, Jacobs also provides valuable background on Milch’s literary influences (Melville, Twain, Dreiser, Faulkner, James, and Conrad, to name a few) and positions his work within the literary cannon. There’s the account of Milch converting his literary knowledge and experience in the writers’ workshops of Iowa into the writers’ rooms of network television. This transition was the catalyst for Milch’s commercial success and launched his work into our cultural awareness. While abandoning the “Big Game” of literary giants may have seemed a sell-out of sorts (Yates), it was a conversion fully reconciled by Milch by the end of his career (if not by Jacobs at the end of this book).
An excellent summary and analysis of Milch’s television work follows, along with the timeline of Milch’s personal life that provides the context for this work. It journeys from the reckless abandon and obsession Milch lived with during his days on Hill Street Blues and early NYPD Blue to the gradual relieving of (chemical) obsessions and maturing spiritual themes in late NYPD Blue and into Deadwood. Jacobs identifies the NYPD Blue dream sequence between Sipowicz and Andy Jr. in season 4 (1996-1997) as the turning point in Milch’s work from the “relatively secular” to the “strongly devotional,” making the transition from fear to faith (referencing Hubert Selby’s conception of motivation, oft-quoted by Milch); I agree with Jacobs’ timeline, especially in-light of Milch’s discovery of his repressed abuse during this time. These themes continue and matured throughout Deadwood and John from Cincinnati, and it’s fascinating to see the changes in Milch’s perception of the world as his sobriety strengthened. While his chemical obsessions receded, his commitment to the manifestation of stories did not, and the story-telling process itself became his method of ego suppression (at depth) to express his spirituality and its guiding principles, most significantly that our perception of separateness from one another is ultimately an illusion. This transition was aided by Milch’s exposure to the philosophy of Alcoholics Anonymous, most specifically referenced by Milch in interviews via the 3rd Step Prayer, (“relieve me of the bondage of self”). While there are undeniably many problematic aspects of AA’s organization, its influence on Milch’s life and work was tremendously positive (although Jacobs largely treats AA with small derisions).
As previously mentioned, the Red Board writers’ room notes offer incredible insight into Deadwood, providing Milch’s thoughts on the characters’ histories and emotional interiors that were used as the foundation for his writers to produce first drafts. The notes are full of prime Milch’s thoughts on philosophy, his estimation of his actors, his challenges in building the characters in proportion to one another to achieve a unified and balanced world, and even some dialogue that never made it the screen (most notably a chilling conversation between Wolcott and the Doc – “Is it possible doctor that there is some subterranean stream still flowing in us?”)
It is also important to note that Jacobs’s identification (aided by Murray Pomerance) that Milch has two voices – the “voice that writes” (Hyde) and “the voice that communicates to everyone else the meaning of the voice that writes” (Jekyll) – is very insightful. It explains the necessity of Milch’s micromanaging every aspect of his shows to achieve the vision intended by the script, as well as the failure of Luck when the explanatory Jekyll voice was deprived from him. The Jekyll voice is the public persona mode of communication that we associate with genius and see in Milch’s lectures. It occurs to me this voice had at one point the potential to combine with Milch’s brilliant dialogue to grow into the unified voice of a novelist, however in Hollywood it served the purpose of securing the buy-in of executives and actors of the meaning within the words and stories he proposed.
Milch’s post-Deadwood work can only be considered a disappointment given the standard of excellence he set previously in his career. While the potential in John from Cincinnati was as ambitious as anything Milch ever conceived, the structure of television (which had previously provided Milch the perfect vehicle to develop the slow, exploratory build of his characters’ signature cycles of disgrace and redemption), lacked the patience and faith to trust in Milch’s vision that wasn’t readily accessible to either viewers or executives after even a full season of production. It’s a tragedy that once Milch had reached the limits of what his ambition could convey on television he couldn’t switch mediums and finally tackle the novel, but as Jacobs quotes Milch in reference to his inclination in this regard, “I’ve been a slob my whole life: why pretend to be different?” It was too late in the game for Milch to make such a drastic change, and his unwavering belief in himself didn’t allow him to concede he couldn’t transform television to accommodate his evolving storytelling needs.
In analyzing his post-Deadwood television career, it seems Milch’s biggest mistake was in not realizing that the extraordinarily precious and ephemeral creative environments he inhabited on NYPD Blue and Deadwood would not be easily be replicable on later projects. To have the simultaneous faith of network executives, actors, and audiences providing the financial security to enable nearly complete creative control of a world is not something that coalesces often. It’s hard to blame Milch in this regard, however, as up until the end of Deadwood his Hollywood endeavors were met with only unparalleled success, so it would seem an act of fear (not faith) to believe this pattern would not continue indefinitely. In hindsight, however, it seems one of HBO’s (and by extension Hollywood’s) most historic blunders to cancel Deadwood prematurely while continuing to pay Milch millions in the years to come (as well as the millions spent on thwarted productions) to produce content that never again rivaled the unified vision he had already captured. As a creative decision, it was an abomination. As a financial one, it may have been just as horrid.
Other Highlights
Analysis of the beginning of Milch’s only and uncompleted novel, The Groundlings, is a special and unexpected treat. While often referenced I have never seen a copy, which Jacobs appears to have located at the University of Iowa, where the first 2 chapters were submitted as a MFA thesis. It was real pleasure to read excerpts and analysis of the work which gave Milch his start with Robert Penn Warren and trace the beginnings of a voice that was that would eventually be realized within mass culture.
“The Men at Haskell’s Levine” – also a hard to find poem published in The Southern Review, and it was wonderful to see some analysis on a work I’ve never seen referenced before and which offers foundational insight into the compulsion for action that followed Milch his entire career. Jacobs ends his analysis stating “we become comfortable with our necessary pathologies, we like the familiarity of our illness,” but “it offers no answers as to the origin of such feelings.” My own interpretation is that the origin stems from a desire to feel fully alive, a feeling which is terribly absent in some without the stimulus of an external action which lifts consciousness out of one’s self, even if temporarily. It often never occurs to identify an origin of something which has seemingly always existed in one’s self.
Critiques:
While I enjoyed the detail and breadth of Jacobs’ account of David Milch’s career and life, there are a few items I am puzzled by or don’t agree with, one being his hesitancy to acknowledge Milch’s work not only as that of genius (which he eventually concedes) but also as “great artwork.” Jacobs, quoting V.F. Perkins, notes in both the introduction and conclusion of the book that “there are many works of genius that are not great works of art.” The hesitancy of labeling Milch as a great artist comes from Jacobs’ conclusion that “it may be that the medium (TV) itself has not yet found a genius who can make their mark as indelibly as those working in film or literature or the fine arts have done.” It seems an odd qualification for Jacobs to make, as he’s now finishing his second book on Milch (the first being Deadwood-centric), and is a professor of Film and Television studies. If he is ambivalent of asserting TV, at its best, can achieve the status of great artwork, I’m confused as to why he wanted to write this book. From someone currently outside the world of the University, it sounds like an accommodation to academic hair-splitting, the politics of which I am not aware of. Milch succinctly addressed this question in a 2006 WGA Event in response to the question: “I want to be in conversation…with as many people as possible. And so, for me, now, I’m awfully glad to be writing in television, not that I wouldn’t write a novel, but I don’t feel that it’s a more sacred or resourceful enterprise or discipline than what I’m doing now.” While I’ll admit Milch’s vision eventually outgrew his medium, his best work on TV unquestioningly surpassed this reader’s litmus test for “great art.”
Jacobs does not position Deadwood as “pinnacle achievement.” I myself absolutely do, as I view Milch’s shift from secular to spiritual a transition that transcended and included its preceding themes, with no loss of clarity during Deadwood’s prime. It would have been interesting to hear Jacobs’ alternate view of the pinnacle.
An additional curiosity is Jacobs’ lack of incorporating Milch’s 2012 interview with Television Academy Foundation as source material, which confirms a lot of his conjecture on the status of Luck’s production (Milch confirms he was not allowed on set to provide his “Jekyll” voice to the production, additional motives behind the cancellation, as well as his tremendous relief upon said cancellation, citing the ongoing deprivation from his “brothers and sisters” that was tantamount to creative starvation). It also provides a clear timeline as to when Milch’s gambling addiction resurfaced (during the production of Luck), something which is intimated as a continuous, life-long habit in the book.
Finally, it’s unfortunate the book could not have been delayed by a year or so to incorporate analysis of Deadwood: The Movie and more fully acknowledge Milch’s Alzheimer diagnosis, made public in 2019 (a year before the publication of this book). Jacobs writes that whether or not Luck “stands as the final sustained work that Milch produced, it provides an opportunity for a fitting end” to his book. While Luck may have provided an opportunity for a narrative ending, it certainly isn’t the best option, as the Deadwood: The Movie provided the most tangible sense of closure that a career such as Milch’s could ever hope for. That Milch has previously cited “closure” as a construct none of us are entitled to only enhances the full-circle and unexpected nature of such an event. Adding to the feeling of Milch’s finality associated with Deadwood: The Movie was the attached revelation and public discourse of his degenerating Alzheimer condition. Of the several articles written on the topic, Mark Singer’s piece in The New Yorker offered an unflinching view of the disease, as well as its impact on the mind of a genius. For a condition which is habitually hidden from the public’s view in fear of offending delicate sensibilities, Milch’s labored description of his decline was as heartbreaking as it was brave. It also brings his own life full circle with that of his father’s, who, also suffering from dementia, took his own life in front of Milch’s mother and brother all those many years ago. In a feat of transcending the father, however, Milch’s response was not destructive but inspirational. These 2019 interviews represent a reaching out by Milch to the community he viewed as central to our spiritual evolution. Instead of hiding his disease in shame and resolving to decline in privacy (the culturally accepted response), he provided insight into the nature of the decline itself, via both these interviews and through Swearengen in Deadwood: The Movie (along with Hays in season 3 of True Detective). It was an astonishing final act of faith made Milch, revealing the most private of dramas to play out in one last public place, and in full accord with his long-stated belief that none of us are truly separate from one another, so none of us should hide from one another. It would have made a very satisfying end to this book.
The "groundlings” will never have another hero quite like David Milch.
And thank you to Jason Jacobs for writing such a compelling book.
Jacobs’ portrait of Milch spans his lifetime, beginning in his early childhood in Buffalo and running through 2016 when his gambling losses became public. Milch has lived an incredibly fascinating life and it is necessary to understand his past in order to fully appreciate his writing process, “whereby the pain of the past in its pastness may be converted into the future tense of joy” (Warren). This past includes a high-achieving yet dysfunctional family in Buffalo (imprinting on Milch a doubleness of public respect with private degeneracy), the origins of the racetrack as the setting in which Milch could play out feelings of shame, his sexual abuse at summer camp, his unquenchable thirst for action resulting in gambling and drug addictions, and his mistrust (Milch categorizes it as “ambivalence” but it manifests more like mutiny) of order and authority. The documentation of Milch’s background continues through his academic career at Yale (under the guidance of Warren, Brooks, and Lewis) and Iowa (Yates).
Aside from biographical information, Jacobs also provides valuable background on Milch’s literary influences (Melville, Twain, Dreiser, Faulkner, James, and Conrad, to name a few) and positions his work within the literary cannon. There’s the account of Milch converting his literary knowledge and experience in the writers’ workshops of Iowa into the writers’ rooms of network television. This transition was the catalyst for Milch’s commercial success and launched his work into our cultural awareness. While abandoning the “Big Game” of literary giants may have seemed a sell-out of sorts (Yates), it was a conversion fully reconciled by Milch by the end of his career (if not by Jacobs at the end of this book).
An excellent summary and analysis of Milch’s television work follows, along with the timeline of Milch’s personal life that provides the context for this work. It journeys from the reckless abandon and obsession Milch lived with during his days on Hill Street Blues and early NYPD Blue to the gradual relieving of (chemical) obsessions and maturing spiritual themes in late NYPD Blue and into Deadwood. Jacobs identifies the NYPD Blue dream sequence between Sipowicz and Andy Jr. in season 4 (1996-1997) as the turning point in Milch’s work from the “relatively secular” to the “strongly devotional,” making the transition from fear to faith (referencing Hubert Selby’s conception of motivation, oft-quoted by Milch); I agree with Jacobs’ timeline, especially in-light of Milch’s discovery of his repressed abuse during this time. These themes continue and matured throughout Deadwood and John from Cincinnati, and it’s fascinating to see the changes in Milch’s perception of the world as his sobriety strengthened. While his chemical obsessions receded, his commitment to the manifestation of stories did not, and the story-telling process itself became his method of ego suppression (at depth) to express his spirituality and its guiding principles, most significantly that our perception of separateness from one another is ultimately an illusion. This transition was aided by Milch’s exposure to the philosophy of Alcoholics Anonymous, most specifically referenced by Milch in interviews via the 3rd Step Prayer, (“relieve me of the bondage of self”). While there are undeniably many problematic aspects of AA’s organization, its influence on Milch’s life and work was tremendously positive (although Jacobs largely treats AA with small derisions).
As previously mentioned, the Red Board writers’ room notes offer incredible insight into Deadwood, providing Milch’s thoughts on the characters’ histories and emotional interiors that were used as the foundation for his writers to produce first drafts. The notes are full of prime Milch’s thoughts on philosophy, his estimation of his actors, his challenges in building the characters in proportion to one another to achieve a unified and balanced world, and even some dialogue that never made it the screen (most notably a chilling conversation between Wolcott and the Doc – “Is it possible doctor that there is some subterranean stream still flowing in us?”)
It is also important to note that Jacobs’s identification (aided by Murray Pomerance) that Milch has two voices – the “voice that writes” (Hyde) and “the voice that communicates to everyone else the meaning of the voice that writes” (Jekyll) – is very insightful. It explains the necessity of Milch’s micromanaging every aspect of his shows to achieve the vision intended by the script, as well as the failure of Luck when the explanatory Jekyll voice was deprived from him. The Jekyll voice is the public persona mode of communication that we associate with genius and see in Milch’s lectures. It occurs to me this voice had at one point the potential to combine with Milch’s brilliant dialogue to grow into the unified voice of a novelist, however in Hollywood it served the purpose of securing the buy-in of executives and actors of the meaning within the words and stories he proposed.
Milch’s post-Deadwood work can only be considered a disappointment given the standard of excellence he set previously in his career. While the potential in John from Cincinnati was as ambitious as anything Milch ever conceived, the structure of television (which had previously provided Milch the perfect vehicle to develop the slow, exploratory build of his characters’ signature cycles of disgrace and redemption), lacked the patience and faith to trust in Milch’s vision that wasn’t readily accessible to either viewers or executives after even a full season of production. It’s a tragedy that once Milch had reached the limits of what his ambition could convey on television he couldn’t switch mediums and finally tackle the novel, but as Jacobs quotes Milch in reference to his inclination in this regard, “I’ve been a slob my whole life: why pretend to be different?” It was too late in the game for Milch to make such a drastic change, and his unwavering belief in himself didn’t allow him to concede he couldn’t transform television to accommodate his evolving storytelling needs.
In analyzing his post-Deadwood television career, it seems Milch’s biggest mistake was in not realizing that the extraordinarily precious and ephemeral creative environments he inhabited on NYPD Blue and Deadwood would not be easily be replicable on later projects. To have the simultaneous faith of network executives, actors, and audiences providing the financial security to enable nearly complete creative control of a world is not something that coalesces often. It’s hard to blame Milch in this regard, however, as up until the end of Deadwood his Hollywood endeavors were met with only unparalleled success, so it would seem an act of fear (not faith) to believe this pattern would not continue indefinitely. In hindsight, however, it seems one of HBO’s (and by extension Hollywood’s) most historic blunders to cancel Deadwood prematurely while continuing to pay Milch millions in the years to come (as well as the millions spent on thwarted productions) to produce content that never again rivaled the unified vision he had already captured. As a creative decision, it was an abomination. As a financial one, it may have been just as horrid.
Other Highlights
Analysis of the beginning of Milch’s only and uncompleted novel, The Groundlings, is a special and unexpected treat. While often referenced I have never seen a copy, which Jacobs appears to have located at the University of Iowa, where the first 2 chapters were submitted as a MFA thesis. It was real pleasure to read excerpts and analysis of the work which gave Milch his start with Robert Penn Warren and trace the beginnings of a voice that was that would eventually be realized within mass culture.
“The Men at Haskell’s Levine” – also a hard to find poem published in The Southern Review, and it was wonderful to see some analysis on a work I’ve never seen referenced before and which offers foundational insight into the compulsion for action that followed Milch his entire career. Jacobs ends his analysis stating “we become comfortable with our necessary pathologies, we like the familiarity of our illness,” but “it offers no answers as to the origin of such feelings.” My own interpretation is that the origin stems from a desire to feel fully alive, a feeling which is terribly absent in some without the stimulus of an external action which lifts consciousness out of one’s self, even if temporarily. It often never occurs to identify an origin of something which has seemingly always existed in one’s self.
Critiques:
While I enjoyed the detail and breadth of Jacobs’ account of David Milch’s career and life, there are a few items I am puzzled by or don’t agree with, one being his hesitancy to acknowledge Milch’s work not only as that of genius (which he eventually concedes) but also as “great artwork.” Jacobs, quoting V.F. Perkins, notes in both the introduction and conclusion of the book that “there are many works of genius that are not great works of art.” The hesitancy of labeling Milch as a great artist comes from Jacobs’ conclusion that “it may be that the medium (TV) itself has not yet found a genius who can make their mark as indelibly as those working in film or literature or the fine arts have done.” It seems an odd qualification for Jacobs to make, as he’s now finishing his second book on Milch (the first being Deadwood-centric), and is a professor of Film and Television studies. If he is ambivalent of asserting TV, at its best, can achieve the status of great artwork, I’m confused as to why he wanted to write this book. From someone currently outside the world of the University, it sounds like an accommodation to academic hair-splitting, the politics of which I am not aware of. Milch succinctly addressed this question in a 2006 WGA Event in response to the question: “I want to be in conversation…with as many people as possible. And so, for me, now, I’m awfully glad to be writing in television, not that I wouldn’t write a novel, but I don’t feel that it’s a more sacred or resourceful enterprise or discipline than what I’m doing now.” While I’ll admit Milch’s vision eventually outgrew his medium, his best work on TV unquestioningly surpassed this reader’s litmus test for “great art.”
Jacobs does not position Deadwood as “pinnacle achievement.” I myself absolutely do, as I view Milch’s shift from secular to spiritual a transition that transcended and included its preceding themes, with no loss of clarity during Deadwood’s prime. It would have been interesting to hear Jacobs’ alternate view of the pinnacle.
An additional curiosity is Jacobs’ lack of incorporating Milch’s 2012 interview with Television Academy Foundation as source material, which confirms a lot of his conjecture on the status of Luck’s production (Milch confirms he was not allowed on set to provide his “Jekyll” voice to the production, additional motives behind the cancellation, as well as his tremendous relief upon said cancellation, citing the ongoing deprivation from his “brothers and sisters” that was tantamount to creative starvation). It also provides a clear timeline as to when Milch’s gambling addiction resurfaced (during the production of Luck), something which is intimated as a continuous, life-long habit in the book.
Finally, it’s unfortunate the book could not have been delayed by a year or so to incorporate analysis of Deadwood: The Movie and more fully acknowledge Milch’s Alzheimer diagnosis, made public in 2019 (a year before the publication of this book). Jacobs writes that whether or not Luck “stands as the final sustained work that Milch produced, it provides an opportunity for a fitting end” to his book. While Luck may have provided an opportunity for a narrative ending, it certainly isn’t the best option, as the Deadwood: The Movie provided the most tangible sense of closure that a career such as Milch’s could ever hope for. That Milch has previously cited “closure” as a construct none of us are entitled to only enhances the full-circle and unexpected nature of such an event. Adding to the feeling of Milch’s finality associated with Deadwood: The Movie was the attached revelation and public discourse of his degenerating Alzheimer condition. Of the several articles written on the topic, Mark Singer’s piece in The New Yorker offered an unflinching view of the disease, as well as its impact on the mind of a genius. For a condition which is habitually hidden from the public’s view in fear of offending delicate sensibilities, Milch’s labored description of his decline was as heartbreaking as it was brave. It also brings his own life full circle with that of his father’s, who, also suffering from dementia, took his own life in front of Milch’s mother and brother all those many years ago. In a feat of transcending the father, however, Milch’s response was not destructive but inspirational. These 2019 interviews represent a reaching out by Milch to the community he viewed as central to our spiritual evolution. Instead of hiding his disease in shame and resolving to decline in privacy (the culturally accepted response), he provided insight into the nature of the decline itself, via both these interviews and through Swearengen in Deadwood: The Movie (along with Hays in season 3 of True Detective). It was an astonishing final act of faith made Milch, revealing the most private of dramas to play out in one last public place, and in full accord with his long-stated belief that none of us are truly separate from one another, so none of us should hide from one another. It would have made a very satisfying end to this book.
The "groundlings” will never have another hero quite like David Milch.
And thank you to Jason Jacobs for writing such a compelling book.
Displaying 1 of 1 review