DEAD MAN

[BTW: Really glad you turned me on to this, Chris.]

Dead Man is a Jim Jarmulsch western featuring:

a. Johnny Depp as William Blake, an Easterner lost in the West,
b. a screenplay that is at once lyrical-romantic and deadpan farcical, and
c. a compellingly loopy Indian visionary named 'Exaybachay'... or "Nobody", or "He Who Talks Loud, Saying Nothing," who is William Blake's poetic guide on his journey into the literal, figurative, and spiritual West.

The screenplay is the primary delight. The First Nations poetry -- the rhythms of the untranslated language and Nobody's goofy visionquest poetic speech -- is by turns comic caricature and mythic gravity.

Nobody: William Blake, do you know how to use this weapon? [a six-gun]
William Blake: Not really.
Nobody: That weapon will replace your tongue. You will learn to speak through it, and your poetry will now be written with blood.

When Nobody discovers the disabled Johnny Depp in the wilderness, Nobody is shocked and disbelieving when he is told the white man is 'William Blake'. Nobody quotes a Blake poem, and it is immediately clear that Blake has no idea what Nobody is talking about.

Gary Farmer plays Nobody, and why am I not surprised to find that Gary Farmer also plays a character named 'Nobody' in Jarmulsch's Ghost Dog: the Way of the Samurai?

There are several delicious comic scenes with odds characters and incredible dialog... one featuring Iggy Pop, Billy Bob Thornton, and Jared Harris as an amazing bunch of backcountrymen gathered round a campfire... but my favorite group of running gags are the three hired guns sent out to kill William Blake. After one falls by the wayside, the remaining two continue on, painstakingly making their way on horseback from one edge of an extreme long shot frame to the other, and all the time, hearing the persistent drone of Conway Twill, an amiable killer and non-stop blather-box. Imagine you are Cole Wilson, legendary steely-eyed, cold-blooded killer, traveling the wide open spaces of the Great West, a slow, steady pace on horseback, in the company of Conway Twill as he talks on and on and On and ON, as the horses slowly make their way in extreme long shot from one side of the frame to another...

"Anyhow, gettin' back to the beginning of the story, my granddaddy come over from Scotland, you see. He was actually part of the Mactwill clan. Uh, the, uh, clan tartan was kind of gold and purple, if I remember correctly. I never wore a lick of it myself. Dropped the "Mac" part of the name when he decided to come out West... on account of he figured it'd get him more work and all. How 'bout your family history there, Cole? Let me guess. Kind of figured you for a German, huh? I mean, am I right? Am I close? Austrian?..."

At the end of this extreme long shot of seemingly interminable duration, as, the horses exit frame left, cut to black, and you hear a gunshot. And you understand why.

My favorite set in a Makah village, with its Northwest Coastal Indian long houses made of wide spruce planks, its totems, and the icon-decorated walls, garments, and hats of the Makah Native Americans.

It's a beautiful movie, a funny movie, a movie in the tradition of the American western, and a charming piece of visual and dialog poetry. Watch the deleted scenes, too. There is another delightful extreme long shot of Conway Twill's persistent droning, a not-so-pleasant and graphic scene showing what happened after the cut to black and the gunshot that i'm really glad they cut out of the film, and a couple nice scenes between William Blake and Nobody... one that actually makes explicit the dramatic structure of William Blake's journey. I'm glad this scene was cut, even though it is a nice one, because I like figuring out the structure of his quest as it unfolds more than I would have enjoyed being told about it and then watching it unfold.

[BTW: I collected the lengthy dialog excerpts from the English subtitle files I found on the internet. That's my favorite source of dialog clips from surrent screenplays i admire.]

DEADWOOD

I love romantic fantasy films. So I love westerns. I love the myths and stereotypes. I love the familiar genres elements, and how it is possible to turn endless variations on them for subtle and original effects. It may be associated with my affection for folk music. And American myths, like gangsters.

The first season of DEADWOOD was sheer pleasure for me. It was a while back, so my responses aren't fresh any more. But I loved the sense of place, and the brute force of the language, and the odd quirky characters. The First Season is available on DVD, but it costs a pantload, so try one from netflix first, to see if you like it. For western fans, it's going to satisfy, unless you hate modern, anti-heroic westerns, and can only picture Gregory Peck as the leading man. For others... I don't think it will fly. In fact, my wife is a self-described fan of westerns, and she hasn't shown any interest in DEADWOOD. But I do think she likes the old-fashioned Norman Rockwell versions from the fifties rather than spaghetti westerns, The Outlaw Josey Wales, and Unforgiven, to name a few modern western exemplars.

I wasn't quite happy, however, with the first episode of Season Two Deadwood. It felt like they spent a whole episode building up tension to a final climax of the two main character's major arcs. Now, I think they should resolve these arcs, sure, but I don't want them spending the whole damn episode cutting back and forth amongst various points-of-view. I want the conflcits resolved, and I want to move on to the army of colorful characters and THEIR conflicts, which is the meat of the experience.

However, Episode Two satisfied in every way. Characters just started showing up every minute or so, popping off their conflicts like firecrackers. And the dialog is a charming blend of fuck-studded profanity and pretentious Victorian high diction, vigorously dramatizing their lofty aspirations and and self-images, and at the same time deflating them with their comic malapropisms and gutter language.

I think DEADWOOD and WEST WING share common features that attract me. There's a complex brew of inter-personal conflicts aligned into factions, producing a nice political stew... an ever-shifting ferment of new issues revealed and resolved. And they are, for me, both basically comedies with witty bursts of high diction and felicitous phrase... maybe like a Capra comedy. At its best, West Wing could also float a substantial theme or human drama... no for long, but sometimes affectingly. Not so DEADWOOD. The characters are sympathetic, yes, but not the themes.

I note, also, that DEADWOOD squandered two strong characters in the first season... the seizure-wracked preacher, and Wild Bill Hickock. They each had an epic dignity and seriousness that will be missed in the second season. Epic dignified and serious characters carryng substantial themes are needed to balance the comedy. Or it will just start to feel silly.