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Gregg Fienberg
Co- Executive Producer
HBO: What are some of the underlying themes of Deadwood?
Gregg Fienberg: Deadwood is ultimately about the rise of democracy and the creation of society in America — why we create governments, why we socialize with each other. The milieu of Deadwood being this small place in the middle of nowhere where all these people come together under the illusion that gold is something that really has intrinsic value. It's a great way to watch how all these different personalities come together, and how they need to have some sort of organizing principle under which they're guided, otherwise they'll just all kill each other.
HBO: Tell us about the creative process of making Deadwood.
Gregg Fienberg: [Executive Producer] David Milch's writing process is the most fascinating process I've ever seen. He's sort of famous for putting out pages at the last minute and writing pages on the day you shoot or the day before you shoot.
A television show is almost like a baby. It's born, and you don't really know its destiny. You have an idea of what it's meant to become, and what you want it to be, but it's a living, breathing thing. Two hundred people are here every day creating this thing and what David does is he watches what the actors are doing every day then he writes. He sees them perform, and then it starts talking to him. He literally will come up with a completely new story line just by watching an actor do something that he never expected him or her to do in a particular scene. So, day by day, the, the stories develop and the show develops.
David is such an adept writer he can write the most amazing scene two hours before you need to shoot it. I'm so entertained by what we're doing, I can't wait to see the next day's pages, the next scenes, where the next episode is going to go. It's a different way of working than normal filmmaking, but I've come to think that maybe this is how it should always be, strangely.
HBO: Can you give an example?
Gregg Fienberg: We were doing a scene in the cemetery; we were burying one of several people that got killed in the town so far. The scene was good, but I watched David kind of thinking about it and looking at it, and it wasn't quite as lively as some other scenes that we've had, so he noticed that there was dust blowing through the scene. So out of nowhere, he walked up to the character of AW Merritt, played by Jeffrey Jones, and he said, you should sneeze. You're allergic to this dust. You're allergic to funerals. Sneeze. You can't control yourself, you keep sneezing throughout this scene. Jeffrey was unbelievable, I mean he's a very comedic actor, and he just started doing it. The whole scene took a different tone — you don't expect to see people sneezing at a funeral. It was a character that deserved to be killed, and there were other things going on in the scene, and that one act brought everything out in the scene. It happened in an instant, with David just sitting out there in the woods watching.
HBO: How big is the production of Deadwood?
Gregg Fienberg: In terms of the size of this production and what it is we're doing, I think it's one of the largest productions ever mounted for a television show. We have a set that's two football fields long full of western buildings, and three different streets. We have two stages full of sets. We go on location into the mountains, an hour and a half away, sometimes two hours away. There are so many different elements that we have to pull together just to make it feel like we're in this town.
This was a town that went from zero to ten thousand people in six months. We're trying to replicate that. Buildings were being built every day in different spots and we're trying to make it feel like that that's what's happening in this town. We'll be constantly shooting on one set on the street, and the construction guys are next to us building the set we're going to use next, or one that's supposed to look like it's in the middle of being built. It causes a lot of mayhem while we shoot, because they have to build in between the cuts in the actions.
HBO: What do you think is the best thing about Deadwood?
Gregg Fienberg: The unbelievable characters that David Milch has created — Calamity Jane, Charlie Utter, Seth Bullock, Wild Bill Hickok. He's taken a different point of view on Wild Bill than I've ever read or heard about, and it feels so real to me. There is so much emotion, from sadness to happiness to giddiness, and so much raw power in what he's writing, that I think that the audience will relate. Even though this is a period piece, it won't feel like it. It will feel like: I know that person, I know somebody like that, or I am like that person.
The emotions are very real and incredibly moving. The audience will never know what to expect from scene to scene. One minute they'll be angry about something, and the next minute they'll be crying. The audience will never get bored.
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Deadwood Nuggets
Deadwood received its name from the many burned dead trees early miners found when placer mining first began there in 1876.
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Deadwood History
For more information and on the Real Deadwood, try the following source:
Adams Museum and House
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