E-mail a friendDavid Milch
original airdate August 9, 2007
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: I am pleased to welcome David Milch back to this program. For 25 years, he's been one of TV's most creative and prolific writers and producers, including seminal shows like "Hill Street Blues," "NYPD Blue," and more recently, "Deadwood." He's once again teamed up with HBO for his latest project, "John From Cincinnati. The show wraps up its first season this Sunday night. Here now, a scene from "John From Cincinnati."
Tavis: So I said to David Milch while the clip was running, “I hope you can explain that scene.” So, Mr. Milch, you're on.
David Milch: I don't think explanation is a relevant category. (Laughter)
Tavis: It is when you do a talk show.
Milch: Yeah, I guess you're right. I was going to offer a substitute for explanation. (Laughter) I had wanted, when I'd first pitched "Deadwood" to HBO -
Tavis: And by the way, congratulations - six Emmy nominations next month for "Deadwood."
Milch: Thank you. Thank you very much.
Tavis: I'm sorry, go ahead.
Milch: I had wanted to do a show about the genesis of faith. And it was set in Rome, and it was about city cops in Rome, and the first collar they made was St. Paul. And they were already doing a show set in Rome. And I was interested in faith as a regenerative and reorganizing principle for the community - in this case, Rome itself.
They were doing a show set in Rome, so I said, “Okay, how about gold?” An illusion agreed upon - rather than the cross, the abstract worth of a metal. Everyone agreeing and seeing how that reorganized a society. This is a show in which I tried - I wanted to come back to the original idea. If God were trying to make himself known with a particular urgency because the apocalypse is coming, and if the difficulty was not with his faculty of communication but rather with our capacity to understand.
Tavis: And I'm with you so far. You choose, though, a dysfunctional surfer family as the vehicle to impart whatever it is that Milch is trying to impart to us - whatever the characters are trying to say to us. Tell me how that choice becomes -
Milch: The idea that the universe is a solid system but a series of waves. And that man is not an individual creature, but that his essence is carried from seeming individual to seeming individual is available to surfers if they aren't loaded and selfish or if they don't become addicted to the behavior of surfing itself. Doesn't often happen. (Laughter)
Tavis: You are not just a writer and a producer - every time we have conversations on this program, this is our third or fourth time doing this now and I'm always honored to have you here - I'm always fascinated to talk to you because I know I'm going to learn something and be challenged in some sort of way. You are, in your own way, an intellectual. Which -
Milch: What do you mean, in my own way?
Tavis: Let me put it this way - I don't (unintelligible) many people like you in this business.
Milch: Thank you, sir.
Tavis: How about that? And so what fascinates me is how you get these profound, deep, provocative thoughts in your head that you then have to translate -
Milch: And how I can sell them to these people (laughs)?
Tavis: Exactly. I'm like, who in the heck in the meeting understood what you said in this city, to begin with - sorry about that. But who understood what you were saying, and furthermore, to the question, how do you then take these high concepts and write a TV show that people like me - everyday people who aren't as bright - can actually follow the storyline?
Milch: Usually I check for my wallet after somebody says that. (Laughter) Everyday people.
Tavis: How do you bring it down to people who can actually follow what you were trying -
Milch: Well, there is a very cogent and articulate school of thought which says I didn't bring it down. (Laughter) And in fact, that question - the artist is one of God's surrogates, I believe. And what I was just saying about God trying to make himself understood, I believe is the artists' challenge, as well. I can make myself understood at the sacrifice of the truth.
The challenge is to make oneself understood and to try simultaneously to stay true to one's sense of the deeper trues of experience. And I pray before I start to work every day. I won't think about what I'm writing before I begin to write, and I ask to be a vessel of whatever intentions my experience has prepared me to make available to others.
Tavis: You said something a moment ago that I am certain that I will use, so let me just say now on national television that the first time I use the line that I want to reference here in a moment I will give attribution to David Milch. The second time I use it, it'll be something like, "I heard somebody say." And the third time I use it, it will be, "as I always say." (Laughter) But it's a great line.
It's a great line from David Milch, and the line was that the artist is God's surrogate. I love that prose. The artist is God's surrogate. There are some persons who I suspect though are listening right now who don't get what you said and what I certainly get who might think that sounds a bit arrogant.
Milch: Quite the opposite, I think.
Tavis: Right. I agree, but.
Milch: That is a question that anyone of faith asks himself in this version every day. Is the thing that I believe in most fundamentally absolutely useless in the society in which I am given to live? And the answer is, not if you act in faith. And so I must believe that I am God's surrogate in the sense that any of us, I believe, is put here to do his will as we understand it.
Whether we choose to or not is up to us, and so why surfers? Surfers are because my show - "Deadwood" was canceled, inexplicably to me. The suggestion -
Tavis: Six Emmy nominations, though.
Milch: The suggestion was made to me, why don't you do a show about surfers? Young, masculine, that's the demographic. Can you do that and have it engage your own spirit? "John From Cincinnati."
Tavis: "John From Cincinnati." And the title comes from?
Milch: The German mathematician Leibniz spoke of monads - indissoluble pieces of matter which God used to create the universe. And this guy's name on a credit card which appears in his hand is John Monad. And butchy surfer junky (unintelligible) member Monad, he says, "You look like the kind of guy that would come from Cincinnati." And John, who purifies the intention of anything that anyone says to him, says, "I am from Cincinnati."
Tavis: Yep. (Laughs) So, hence "John From Cincinnati."
Milch: Sure.
Tavis: Let me turn here.
Milch: It's a pleasure to see you again.
Tavis: I'm always delighted to see you, and always challenged by our conversations, in a very good way. With all that you possess and hear in your head and in your heart, as evidenced by these conversations we have that always trip me up, are your talents, you think, being best used in the line of work that you are in? I wonder whether or not, with all that you have to offer, whether or not TV and film is the best way to you for you to use those gifts. Does that make sense?
Milch: Absolutely. I believe absolutely I am properly employed in television, because when you're as - I don't want to say crazy, but when you're the way I am and you have been successful, you embody the mystification of the businessman, the paradox of the businessman in dealing with the creative people.
Which is, I don't know what they're doing, they're children, they're idiots, you don't know what they're going to give you - and they leave me alone. Whether they're going to keep leaving me alone is always the question, (laughter) but better they leave me alone than the doctors.
Tavis: So where does "John From Cincinnati" go from here?
Milch: I don't know.
Tavis: You don't know? You never know till you sit down? Is that pretty much the way it works?
Milch: Oh, no, I know where "John From Cincinnati" would go if they're going to keep doing the show. What the fate of the show is going to be is still up in the air, and I'm going to keep working and in some ways, I think all stories are the same story. So -
Tavis: Which means what, right quick?
Milch: Which means that if God is anywhere, he's everywhere, and it's my task - I said to a priest, as he was dying, “I'm grateful to have lived long enough to be able to say to you that the shadow in which I always believed I and my characters must move is cast by God's sheltering hand.” So any story can let you do that.
Tavis: See why I like talking to this guy all the time? It's always for me - sometimes I do this stuff because I hope you enjoy it, and other times I do it just for me, and tonight was one of those conversations. David Milch, nice to see you.
Milch: My pleasure, sir.
Tavis: Always glad to have you here.
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