Ian McShane. He’s definitely a British actor, (I’ve seen him in lots of British productions), but I don’t know where he hid his accent either. Huh.
Nice cast they’ve got there. I like Keith Carradine and the rest.
I think that they charged so much in the Gold Rush areas because people had, like, gold. My history knowledge is pretty sketchy, but I do remember reading that in these Gold Rush towns, the stores charged just about anything they wanted and people paid—because there was no where else to go. And they had the gold to pay. I remember hearing about prices like a dollar for an egg, and so forth.
I was a bit distracted by the language, too, although some of the colourful language was great – “Fuck us all for the limber-dicked cocksuckers that we are.” I wish I could make a toast like that and make it sound all macho.
It was more jarring little things that seemed a little bit anachronistic – like “Coming out with your fly down might strike the wrong note.” I don’t have the OED handy, so I wouldn’t swear to it, but as I understand it, “fly” didn’t have that association back then. (Even the fly of a tent, back then, was the extra canvas stretched over the top of the tent to keep the rain off – not the flap over the entrance.) And even if that usage of “fly” was around – it would have been “opened” or “unbuttoned.” “Buttoned up” and “buttoned down” are pretty much equivalent terms – the up/down dichotomy doesn’t make sense in the absence of zippers.
Geez, being a pedant can get in the way of enjoying a good show sometimes – my mind wandered along those lines until I got distracted by the shillaber (as they were called until the 1920s, when it got shortened to just the initial monosyllable…)
I liked the references to opium and laudanum. The dude getting taken with the salted mine was obvious going in, but a lot of fun. The part where the doctor stuck that rod through buddy’s bullet wound made me gag.
I liked the guy who said “first drink with this hand today”.
He was the one with a real mouth. As others pointed out, Milch did say he did research and read journals and what not from back then that indicated the swearing was at a pretty high level.
Anyway…
Good show. Characters with pasts, different accents, different looks, different personalities.
Well written.
Nudity. Violence. Gambling. Swearing.
Now as long as something happens (the carnivale-induced ennui has us all worried, I think), I think I’ll be very satisfied with this show.
For anyone unfamiliar with history, don’t get too attached to Wild Bill.
What was that little bit when Bullock and Star (the marshal and the guy from The Perfect Storm) opened their dry goods place - another man commented loudly that someone else had sold him a 50-cent bar of soap with a $5 prize in it.
Bullock went over to him and told him to take his something elsewhere. Was the other guy some sort of shill for another dry goods store? Was he trying to get the customers to go to the other store?
Exactly. He was either a plant or the owner of another shop. He was trying to lure the customers away. Obviously Bullock didn’t take to kindly to that. I’m not sure what the exact dialog was though.
He said “Front your game away from our store.” It’s a carny term – The “Front” of a concession was the area worked by the shillabers, which were rigidly demarcated – (a rigged game might be said to have a 25’ front, which means the shills are allowed to work the midway in a 25’ radius from it.) – and the work of the shills is properly called “fronting.”
We had a discussion over at the American Dialect Society mailing list about the terms they used in the show. A tv reviewer(David Bianculi) wrote to us to ask if the terms were actually “period.”
The term “cocksucker” DID exist in that period as a term used to denigrate someone, but it sure wasn’t common in written form. That tells us nothing about whether it was used by lowlifes to refer to each other.
Other terms, “shitface” and “piss off” were almost certainly NOT used that early.
I think the author, while suggesting that he did a lot of research, used much poetic license when it came to swearing slang.
If they do, then I’d like to know where David Milch found a contemporary description of the hand! None exists of which I’m aware. It’s most likely a later invention.
When I was a kid I went to Deadwood with my family and saw all the sights (including the spot where Hickock got shot) and there was a museum of some sort which claimed to have the actual cards that Hickock was holding when he was killed. It was aces and eights and a queen. They had them under glass.
I remember this very well, but it was like 25 years ago and I was a kid. Did I get duped? Was it some sort of tourist trap bullshit “replica” or something?
I feel like a sucker now (even though I was like 12).
Oh yeah, and I meant to mention the issue of antique curse words. If the writers were able to dig up a bunch of genuine 19th century curse words, and loaded up the script with “you furgleblarder,” and “scrunt you” and so on, we would have no an idea of what these curses meant or just how rude they were. It would be distracting (“What did he just call him, Maude?” “I think he said ‘furtlegarder,’ Henry.”) and ineffective.
I was taken to Deadwood when I was a kid. It was about 22-23 years ago, before it became a casino area. Honestly, about all I remember is that I saw Boot Hill. I really wasn’t very interested.
As far as aces and eights go, I really don’t have a cite other than the one earlier to Cecil’s article. I have heard other people mention aces and eights as the Deadman’s Hand at poker games though. These are people that probably never heard of Cecil, so I’m led to think that if aces and eights are a myth, it’s a commonly held one.
Here’s the rub–there is no evidence of what the cards were. There are no contemporary print cites. If you can supply anything that is documentable, I’ll change my mind.
I gotta disagree on this one. The modern tone of the cussing was so distracting that I lost interest in what seemed an otherwise compelling story (plus I had to go back to work ). Anyway, if done well and conveyed with meaning from the actors this had the opportunity to open up a whole new world of cursewords. Why do you suppose many other countries use English curse words even though they don’t know what they mean? They just feel right. So “Stuff you, you furgleblarder” said with the proper tone and conviction, and repeated throughout the course of a series, could easily become part of the lexicon as “fuck you, you cocksucker” or anything from the Sopranos for that matter.
Point taken, and I don’t disagree that it might have had the effect you describe. But I think that
A) much of the viewing public doesn’t see it your way, and would be confused (and therefore possibly tune out),
2) cursing (with modern cursewords) apparently attracts a certain number of viewers, and
iii) it would be difficult, perhaps impossible, to uncover real period cursewords, since they are unlikely to have been thoroughly and accurately documented. (And let’s face it, writers are a lazy bunch. Why go to all the trouble for a dubious benefit?)
A fourth possibility is that many of today’s cursewords really were used back then. Who knows?
I liked it a lot, but like most of the posters here, I found the profanity to be jarring and distracting. My s.o. and I are civil war re-enactors and we’re very aware of authenticity issues in t.v. and movies. S.o. thought the cursing was a bit much; I questioned whether “cocksucker” and “pissed off” would have been used then, but all-in-all, we liked it because it was REALISTIC. I said to my s.o, well, I think that de-romanticizes the old west. I, too, was glad to see Calamity Jane portrayed more accurately, instead of the glamorized beauties that usually come out of Hollywood (e.g., Nicole Kidman in Cold Mountain). Single women didn’t have a whole lot of choices for supporting themselves, and the prostitute trade was accurately shown – yes, the whores had to put up with a lot then - even getting beaten. I’m waiting to see what happens when she gets pregnant. I don’t think the profanity was as bad as “The Sopranos,” which I couldn’t stay with for more than 10 minutes because every other word was “fuck” or some variation thereof. After the show, giving it some thought, it occurred to me that there was something missing in the saloon scenes – smoke. I didn’t recall that any of the men smoked, and I think most of them would have. Why add so much profanity in an effort to make it more realistic, but not have the men smoking? Another realistic element would be spittoons. The men chewed tobacco and spit; saloons, always had several spittoons near the bar for the men spit in. Minor complaints, but if the producer wants realism, he should focus on the other elements of the era in addition to curse words. Still, a good job at making history “real” for us.
I will definitely keep watching.
). Anyway, if done well and conveyed with meaning from the actors this had the opportunity to open up a whole new world of cursewords. Why do you suppose many other countries use English curse words even though they don’t know what they mean? They just feel right. So “Stuff you, you furgleblarder” said with the proper tone and conviction, and repeated throughout the course of a series, could easily become part of the lexicon as “fuck you, you cocksucker” or anything from the Sopranos for that matter.