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Inside the Episode
With Steve Hawk
Underwater Ballet
I'm probably not supposed to editorialize or show favorites or do any pro-JFC tooting on this blog, but I just now finished watching Episode 4 for the umpteenth time and I wouldn't sleep well tonight if I didn't say this: I could watch Ed O'Neill play Bill Jacks as written by David Milch all day long.
Okay, end of wank.
Speaking of Bill (the ex-cop), I took notes during rehearsal for the scene in his house, toward the end of the episode, during which Zippy the bird telepathically instructs him to befriend Freddy, the murderous drug dealer. As is often the case on a Milch show, O'Neill got the pages for the scene the night before or perhaps even the morning of the shoot, so he barely had time to memorize his lines, let alone analyze Bill's emotional trajectory. But the best part of nearly every workday on JFC is hearing Milch explain a scene's subtext just before shooting begins. It's mesmerizing and inspiring and often hilarious; you feel lucky just to be in the room.
Another wank. Sorry.
Anyway, here's how Milch broke it down: The scene is about Bill's ongoing fear of isolation since the death of his wife, Lois. It opens with him feeling pretty good about the day he just had helping Butchie and Kai search for John – which was the universe inviting him rejoin the party. When Bill recalls how Zippy and he helped save Shaun's life the day before, he reaches an emotional high-point: He's saying, without realizing what he's saying, that at that moment he feels equal to the demands of solitude. But the triumph is temporary, and Bill reflexively slides back into fear, gravitating toward the circular staircase that leads to the room where his wife died. There he inventories the inevitability of his loneliness with a litany of redundancies: "Last overlap between me and the Yosts, Butchie asking 'my help with that search. A P.S., my assistance, and end to the concluding chapter. Final completion and finish."
In other words, as Milch put it during rehearsal, Bill is saying, "I am now blocked off from the present and I am completely f**ked."
But then Bill wanders back to the bird cage, where Zippy nudges him back into the world by "conveying" that he must make friends with Freddy. "That is senseless and offensive," Bill says to the bird just before scurrying out to deliver coffee and donuts to his new "shitbird" friend.
On the set later that day, after the scene was finished, Milch asked O'Neill how it'd gone. "I felt like I was underwater," he said, "but I think we got good stuff."
Found Moments
Two samples this week of JFC's cinematic improvisation:
1) During pre-production for the series, when Milch first saw the finished set for the interior of Bill's house, he was openly displeased about the spiral staircase in the living room. It was too big, he said, too centrally located. Within minutes he'd nearly cracked his skull on it. But rather than have the team remove it, he rolled it into the story. Thus Bill's open anxiety about the thing, and his ongoing comic effort to protect his noggin by taping bubble-wrap to the steps. And thus also Milch's decision to have it serve as a constant reminder to Bill about the loss of his wife. Not to give anything away, but the significance of the staircase, and where it leads, will grow as the season progresses.
2) The scene in which Doctor Smith talks to Rosa the Avon Lady about her flowers was probably the purest form of improvisation we had all season. Milch conceived, wrote and choreographed that little piece only minutes before it was shot. We'd just finished shooting something at the nearby Snug Harbor Motel, and Milch decided at the last minute to add a scene that would illustrate the neurologist's confusion over his decision to resign from the hospital in the wake of Shaun's miraculous recovery.
As it happened, the production's "base camp" was located on the street directly in front of Rosa Adams' house. For months, we'd been eating breakfast in her driveway. She's been unflappably sweet, never failing to smile at anyone on the crew who catches her eye. Milch adores her, and routinely buys huge shipments of the Avon products she sells out of her house.
So that's the real Rosa in that scene, and that is her house, and her flowers and her Avon catalogs. There was some initial concern when she had trouble pronouncing "catalog," but Milch flowed with it and came up this exchange:
Rosa: "You want a cat-a-lag?"
Smith: "A Cadillac? Sometimes ... oh, a catalog. Of course, thank you."
Smith, of course, has no idea why he's even there, or why he's ended up with a catalog, or why he starts to tell this kind stranger about Butchie's "festering implants." He's completely at sea, but also, inexplicably, at peace.
No Offense, Mick
There's a scene in the surf shop where Shaun and his friends are watching a surf video and one of the kids says, "Yost surfs faster than Fanning." Another kid responds, "My grandmother surfs faster than Fanning."
For the record, before any knowledgeable surfers out there start screaming, Mick Fanning is widely regarded as the fastest surfer on the planet; nobody (except, maybe, Kelly Slater) generates more speed on a wave, and there's a very good chance he'll win the professional world title this year.
So, for the record: That little back-and-forth in the shop was just kids being kids.
Alternate Titles
Three alternate titles to the official one ("His Visit: Day Three"):
a. "Losers, Hangers-on and Fanatics"
b. "Miracle Boy Says 'Shit'"
c. "An Unsightly Bulge"
Steve Hawk is a writer and lifelong surfer from Southern California. He acts as a writer and surf consultant for John From Cincinnati. Bio
Discuss this episode in the John From Cincinnati Bulletin Board.
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"His Visit: Day Three"
