E-mail a friendDavid Milch
airdate June 11, 2004
Emmy-winning writer David Milch's TV success marked the end of his academic career. For nine years, he was a lecturer at Yale. He also co-authored several college textbooks on literature. A script Milch wrote for Hill Street Blues began a long writing association with Steven Bochco, with whom he co-created NYPD Blue. Milch exec produced HBO's Western drama series, Deadwood, and his latest series, also on HBO, is John from Cincinnati, described by some as "the show that could replace The Sopranos."
David Milch
Tavis: David Milch, nice to see you again.
David Milch: Good to see you, Tavis.
Tavis: Glad you came back. I told our audience I was going to folk have you back, and you are back, and for those who didn't see the show the first time, they'll understand why I wanted you back here in about 2 minutes. Before I get to that, though, congrats on a great season of "Deadwood."
Milch: Thank you.
Tavis: I read somewhere--somebody told me that Deadwood, South Dakota--the real place...
Milch: Yeah.
Tavis: Has experienced a boom in tourism like you cannot imagine.
Milch: It's true. It's true. They're doing very well up there, and my only regret is that it's all accruing to the benefit of the Costner brothers, who invested up there when "Dances With Wolves" was made. No victory, but leave something drastic and bitter in the cup.
Tavis: I hear you. What have you enjoyed most about this first season, and what are you looking most forward to in season number 2?
Milch: The work is such a pleasure to do, and to be among your brothers and sisters is really all you can ask for in life. So, we're working very hard, and we enjoy it, and it's a constant surprise. HBO allows us the privilege of kind of discovering the material as we go, and being able to respond to it. So...it's such an important thing to be part of a community, particularly for someone with the vast number of character defects I have, so I enjoy it from 5:00 in the morning until 8:00 every night.
Tavis: "Character defects" is a great segue, which I don't want to miss, but I gotta ask this one question, and I'll come back to that, I promise. But I thank you for the segue.
Milch: We can avoid my character defects.
Tavis: No, we'll talk about that. I want to talk about your character defects, and I thank you for the segue. Before I do that, though, I know a couple things about season number 2. Maybe I'm not supposed to know these things. I don't know if it's a secret or not, but can you tell me what the audience can expect from season number 2?
Milch: Oh, the camp grows. And we try to be faithful, at least, to the fundamental thrust of the camp's history, so in the second season George Hearst, the entrepreneur, comes in. Mark Twain comes in. There's a more substantial representation of the African-American population. Oh, the Pinkertons come to camp. It's a busy, busy place. Yeah.
Tavis: Now, the reason why I wanted to have you back on was because when you were last here, I asked you a question about your substance abuse down through the years, which you've gotten under control now. But you've talked very openly over the years about the struggles you've had dealing with substance abuse. And at the very end of our conversation, I asked you a question, and you started to give me such a brilliant response that I was so disappointed we ran out of time, as well as our audience. You won't believe the number of e-mails that I received that said please get David Milch back on to finish what he was saying. So for those who did not say what David said when I asked him about whether or not you have to use substances to be a genius, to do great work, like so many of the great ones have-- I asked him that, and here's what he began to tell me.
Milch: I think that people who have less of a stake in the given reality--risk takers...are drawn to experimentation. They feel less inhibited, and often times they feel driven to an alternative reality. I think that one doesn't create because one takes drugs. I think one creates in spite of it. You know, St. Ignatius said, "Whom the devil would tempt, he tells not a lie, but a lesser truth." Drugs are a lesser truth, and I believe that they're-- Jung said that spirits-- there's spirit, and there are spirits. And that spirits are offered to us by the devil as a shortcut to a reaching out to God, but that the in-dwelling with the spirit is achieved by humility. We're looking for ego suppression in either case, and so creativity, I think, is a separate process, but what happens is we associate--I used to say, "Well, I can't quit smoking because I wouldn't be able to write. I can't quit drinking because I wouldn't be able to write. I can't quit dope because I wouldn't be able to write."
Tavis: You're a genius. I'm out of time.
Milch: You can quit it all.
Tavis: No, I want to talk off-camera. Don't move. I feel sorry for you guys. I'm gonna get some more of this good stuff in a second off-camera.
All right, so I got some more good stuff off-camera. As a matter of fact, the minute we had to wrap that show, the whole set, the whole staff gathered around. You continued to talk a little to us about the point you were trying to make, but for those in the audience who didn't get a chance to have the benefit of hearing you completing that thought, you want to pick up where you left off?
Milch: Sure. The first thing I want to say is I'm glad you're wearing a different suit. Otherwise people would think I slept outside.
Tavis: Well, I'm glad you remembered the moment and dressed the part.
Milch: You know, one of the things about an addictive personality, even if you're not using, is you are absolutely a creature of habit. I wear the same clothes every day. And you'll see--when I was writing the character Sipowicz on "NYPD Blue," he was an alcoholic. He had a frog on his desk. If somebody moved his frog 2 inches--"Now people wonder why I drink." And it may have something to do with the point I will blunder to make, which is that--I mentioned there about ego suppression...that if you, as a creative personality, are going to go into the consciousness of another character, or as an actor are gonna portray another character--as a musician are going to in-dwell with the metrics and the rhythms of the melody, that requires a going out of the spirit.
Now, typically, our egos, especially if we've been wounded in some way--one of the things that makes you feel you have less of a need to stay with the given reality is if, in the given reality, you've had your balls beaten off or, you know, you've had a lot of trauma. One of the consequences of having so much trauma is the ego feels very fragile, and so what the ego will say to you rather than let you enter into this other state--"Oh, you're gonna lead me? You're gonna lead me? I'm in pain, pal. I need X, Y, and Z before I let you go. I need a drink. I need a smoke. I need to use. I need to shoot up. I need to..." Fill in the blanks. Now, the truth is, because the state of creation is really an alternative to that, once you begin to cook, all those things disappear. So, I was just speaking with one of the producers, and I was trying to make the analog, when you're about to exercise, the ego doesn't want you to exercise because the ego wants things to stay just the way it is. Same way Sipowicz wants his frog to stay right where it is. The ego will come up with 1,000 reasons for you to keep doing exactly what you've been doing...because it's afraid of change. I am. Ego means I am. And I am exactly the way things are. So what the ego will say, "Well, you've let yourself go. You know, you don't want to start exercising. You want to--first of all, you should go to your doctor. You ought to get a physical, and we can't get a physical for 3 weeks because that son of a bitch isn't available. So just don't do anything today."
Now, the paradox is that the minute you go into a different state of being, now the ego wants you to continue. So if somebody pushes me in the pool, before I get to the other end of the pool I'm thinking, "You know something about myself? I have always been a tremendous athlete." The same guy that couldn't exercise 20 seconds before. When you're trying to learn how to drive a car, the one thing you know is I'm never gonna learn how to drive a car because it's too complicated, and I don't know how anybody else ever learned how to drive a car. First I have to do this, then I have to look in the mirror. And meanwhile, my old man is saying to me, "You dumb bastard! Let me drive." So you have so many traumatic associations with the idea of change that what happens is the ego says, "Don't do anything." But if you just set the neural process in motion--if you take the first action, then a sequence of subsequent neural exchanges take place which don't depend upon volition. So the model is you cannot think your way to right action, you have to act your way to right thinking. Your thinking will change once your behavior changes. And so, with the ego saying you gotta smoke, you gotta drink, you gotta do all these other things, all you're really doing is getting ready to go to work. And once you go to work--but then the ego says, "Oh, but you have to do this other stuff first."
Tavis: There's no way you can process this every day, David, so how do you get through a day?
Milch: How do I--what do you mean?
Tavis: What you just laid out is a brilliant analysis. But to get up every day, and to do what you do with all the challenges that you have, and all these things that you could do that are calling you to other places, you stay on target.
Milch: You fake it till you make it. If I have to think my way through all that stuff, I'm gone. And so I have a series of exercises that I give myself and my students to do. You know, Dostoevski said that man can't stand too much freedom. Man needs miracle, mystery, and authority. So if in freedom I have to make the decision to do a certain thing, it ain't gonna happen. So what I do is--when I get up, within 3 minutes I have to do this, I have to do that, and within an hour, I have to be at work. And if I can make that not a matter of volition, but a matter of habit, it's a much better habit than the ones I used to have.
Tavis: And in 20 seconds I have to be off the air. You've done it again, so you have to come back again.
Milch: It's a pure pleasure.
Tavis: We've gotta continue this dialogue. Every time you come on, you give me something to think about. David, nice to see you. Congrats on "Deadwood." we're looking forward to season number 2.
Milch: Thank you.
Tavis: Love this guy David Milch. Up next, the talented gospel singer--I love her, too--CeCe Winans--used to be Bebe and CeCe. Now CeCe's doing her own thing. She's here in just a moment. Stay with us.
Back to June 11, 2004