W. Earl Brown – Deadwood: The Movie

By: Jamie Steinberg

Q) What are the recent projects you have been busy working on?

A) I start a show for Hulu called “Reprisal.” The schedule was I was supposed to be done in North Carolina and have two weeks off to start the Deadwood Well, then a hurricane hit Wilmington. I got on a Tuesday flight and the hurricane hit Thursday. So, the hurricane really f-d the schedule up. I finished the pilot at 3:30am and I was at the airport at 4:30am for a 5:30am flight. I dropped my bag, got in my car and drove to Deadwood and walked on set the very moment that Dority…Dority is outside the door asking a question of Doc (Brad Dourif) and the people that are in the room. I’m knocking. They scheduled it so I would film my scene way later in the schedule because they didn’t think I would be there. Well, the three actors in the scene that are responding to me – they didn’t know I was on set. It was the very first day of filming and it was my first scene to be filmed. There was no f-g way I was going to miss a second of it! So, I finished “Reprisal,” flew to Deadwood and walked on set the very moment Dan Dority knocks on the door and asks a question. So, it all seemed to time perfectly. “Reprisal” comes out at the end of the year.

Q) What was going through your mind when they asked you to come back to “Deadwood?”

A) When we got cancelled…I’ve said many times that that show did not end, it stopped. And there is a big difference between those things. Looking back there was writing on the wall. I just blissfully did not recognize of the battle going on back stage for the future of the show. The handful of people that did know kept it quiet because they didn’t want to spoil the creative situation. But I said, “All the horses are out of the f-n farm. By God, I grew up on a f-g farm on Kentucky, I can get horses back in the barn because I’ve done it.” So, I kept a notepad keeping track of who is doing what. My memory was that I kept it for just over a year. But as I was telling Tim [Olyphant] the story during the movie…I remember having written on that pad, “Tim. Law man. Some cop show in Kentucky.” Being from Kentucky, I thought there might be a role for me in it. I remember for Anna [Gunn] writing, “Some meth show in ABQ.” So, again, my memory was that I just kept that for a year. Tim said, “No! I didn’t do ‘Justified’ until almost a year and a half after ‘Deadwood’ because I did that CBS show between the two.” So, I guess the moral of that story is I kept that notepad for a few years and finally hung it up thinking this would never happen. When it did happen, I had nothing to do with getting those horses back in the barn. But where I found out, I was in New Mexico shooting the “Preacher” pilot for AMC. I was doing the pilot and I had left a message for David’s [Milch] wife about something else. I had left it weeks prior. I had the weekend off and had gone up to Ten Thousand Waves Spa. I’m coming down the mountain and I get a cell signal showing a message from Rita Milch. I’m listening and she answered my question and she said, “Also, we just got off the phone with HBO this morning. There is a very good chance we may be returning to the thoroughfare.” I got all choked up and had to pull over to the side of the road. I tested my wife and still listened to that message about a half dozen times to make sure I hadn’t misheard it. That was the first inkling I knew of dead horses – you can stop beating them, but sometimes they can crawl their ass out of a grave.

Q) Where do we pick up with Dority in the movie Deadwood?

A) It’s ten years later. We know the history of the real guy because that was the time he was murdered. But he became a very successful businessman in his own right. He opened a brewery and spear fish. All the beer distribution through Deadwood was controlled by him. He took over the Bella Union. I found the newspaper article where he was murdered – shot by a fellow saloon keeper three times unarmed. He was trying to make his way back to the Bella Union, which was his place of operation, and he fell dead in the street. Dority, for the sake of our movie, is still at The Gem working for Al (Ian McShane), but he is a much cleaner and more prosperous man than we left him ten years ago. The moral of the story is that I’m wearing nicer clothes and I have a haircut.

Q) What was it like for you slipping back into character?

A) It was like a well-worn pair of boots that were custom made for you. It fits just right.

Q) This time around Hearst is in charge of things. Does Dority take on a more authority role over his former lacky position to Al?

A) Hearst (Gerald McRaney) is not in charge of things. By that point he is a US Senator and had established himself. For the sake of our movie, he’s back in town the day that statehood is declared and he also has a financial interest, which is discovered in the course of the movie as reason for being back there. Dority is still Al’s right hand. It’s just that Al is starting to show the effects of age and illness and trying to make that adjustment. David always said, “The star of our show is not Swearengen. It’s not Bullock (Timothy Olyphant). It’s Deadwood. That’s why it’s called ‘Deadwood.’ It’s about the community. It’s about that group of people.” The fact is, that generation dies and another generation is born and community continues. That’s the theme of our movie – the passing of generations and the continuation of life and community.

Q) Was there someone in particular you were hoping to share a scene with?

A) Everybody! Top to bottom, you would be hard pressed to find another cast that is even in league with that group of actors. Just the f-g best. No matter who I was in a scene with it was a joyous occasion. I think it was Tim who said that everybody in the cast was capable of stealing the scene. [laughs] I don’t think of it as stealing the scene. I think of it is that the level of play is just elevated between those who can play. As far as the people themselves, I stayed in touch…Robin [Weigert] and I played poker together. Ian and I would have breakfast about a twice a year with others from the “Deadwood” group joining us. And Garret [Dillahunt] is my neighbor. I see him at the gym all the time. I still see the actors, but I just hadn’t seen the characters in thirteen years. That was kind of homecoming and realizing how much I had missed…I mean, I knew on one level how much I had missed it. I said on set, “Thomas Wolfe wrote, ‘You can never go home again.’ Well, about for about two months we proved that c-ksucker wrong.”

Q) Talk about working with iconic writer David Milch.

A) My relationship with David seemed far more than that of bosses and employee. When Ricky Jay left the show in Season One, I got his job in the writers’ trailer. So, I worked for two years in the writers’ trailer with the whole group of writers. I got to spend a lot of one-on-one time with David and he’s been one of my life’s great teachers. And not just in a superficial showbiz manner or even in just a creative pursuit – just as a person. David’s way of thinking, and I tend to agree, writing is a spiritual experience. It’s really joining into whatever that great spirit is. As he said, you’re a vessel. Stories have a way of telling themselves. As a writer, what you have to do is set aside your ego, open your spirit and listen. Then, that story will tell itself. It’s a very esoteric way of saying “just do the work.” That was what it is like – communing with something greater than yourself. In one of the recent interviews with David, in the article he talks about his health issues and talks about working with Robert Penn Warren. I can’t even come close to paraphrasing correctly, but he talks about how working with that man believing in spirit and joining in something greater than yourself and this acknowledgement of this communion. Reading that, I was like, “You were that to me!” That’s also ironic. I’ve often thought that David taking me under wing (and I’m far from the only person David has taken under wing and passed along great lessons to) … I’m from Murray, Kentucky. Robert Penn Warren was his mentor and he was a graduate assistant to Robert Penn Warren and Cleanth Brooks at Yale. Cleanth Brooks is from my hometown and Robert is from Guthrie, Kentucky, which was about thirty or forty miles away. So, I’ve often thought that when David realized where I was from (because he lays everything at the foot of Mr. Warren and Mr. Brooks [to a degree]) it was probably a reason I was granted access.

Q) What were favorite moments of working on “Deadwood” over the years?

A) There are too many quantify. I was asked in another interview what was my favorite episode. There are scenes that pop out to me, but as to what episode they were in I can’t always pinpoint it. I’ve been re-watching the series and it’s just so full of so many beautiful moments of grace and connection out of such obscenity, ugliness and violence. There were plentiful. There were many of them. So, I can’t quantify or qualify them.

Q) What does it mean to you have worked on an iconic series that meant so much to the fans that they kept pushing for it to return?

A) It means everything! Probably ten years ago I was at home bitching about something. The movie Something About Mary happened it didn’t really do anything for my career. There were people I used to be in competition with whose careers broke wide open and they became movie stars. And I was bitching about the failure of Mary and my career not taking off. Out of the blue my wife asked, “What are you proudest of?” I said, “What?!” She said, “In your career of everything you’ve been involved with, what are you proudest of?” I said, “Well, you know ‘Deadwood.’” She said, “Well, when did you do ‘Deadwood?’” I said, “I did the pilot in 2002 and we went to series and started in 2004.” She goes, “Yeah, that was just four years after Something about Mary. If your career had exploded like this other person’s career you would be the fat goofy guy in broad comedies. You never would have played that role in ‘Deadwood.’” And that was just a pivotal moment of realizing she was right. I would never have been doing a supporting role in that and it would have been “below me” if my career had taken off in that other direction. So, again, (in several interviews I’ve used this quote) there is a song by Ray Wiley Hubbard called “Mother Blues” and it says, “Every day that my gratitude is higher than my expectation, I have good days.” Well, (and I said this to Ray after it all happened) I had two very good f-g days of making that movie. I went up on days we weren’t working – and a lot of us did – just to be there. It was like that with the series too. Franklin Ajaye said when we were doing the series, “Man, I’ve been in showbiz for over thirty years. This is the first show that when people sign out, they stick around.” It was that.

Q) How do you plan to celebrate the film premiere?

A) I’m going to Deadwood, South Dakota. They have permission from HBO to simulcast the night that the movie premieres. I play music with The Sacred Cowboys and we were an active band a decade ago. We started playing again last fall so they hired us back years ago to play their Wild Bill days. So, the band is going up to Deadwood and I will introduce the movie and then the band is going to play after the movie airs. I think a couple of the cast members are doing that, too. Then, it will have happened. I’ll watch the movie countless times over the years.