Seth Bullock arrives in Deadwood.
Viewers first see the mining camp of Deadwood in an extreme long shot just over ten minutes into the pilot episode. They view it from the perspective of Calamity Jane, standing high in the Black Hills in the Dakota Territory, watching the slow progress of the wagon train as it winds its way down into Deadwood. The short main thoroughfare is lined on both sides by wooden structures no more than two stories tall and is dwarfed by the endless mountains and tall dark pines that surround it. From this establishing shot, which situates Deadwood in its wild and isolated environs, the scene cuts to Seth Bullock at the front of the wagon train as he first experiences Deadwood’s hustling and bustling Main Street. The camera alternates between a number of positions over this fifty-second sequence: it is positioned behind Bullock’s head, allowing the audience a clear view of the road in front; it zooms in on Bullock’s face from the front and side as he takes in sights and sounds around him; and it tracks along the left and right side of the street, mimicking Bullock’s progress down the road. Bullock and the viewers are overwhelmed with the activity on the street. Men work away on various construction tasks while others loiter and pass a bottle, small dirty tents crowding the promenade; vendors peddle whiskey shots, guns, and live chickens while a butcher empties out the entrails of a dead animal. There is so much to take in: the buildings, the myriad of people populating the street, each with different guns, tools, and clothes, the countless signs (for a music hall, a meat market, and even a miners’ assay office and chemical laboratory), the horses and horse troughs, and the lines of washing hanging out to dry. The scene is awash with visual clutter.
This is Deadwood circa July 1876 or, more accurately, a representation of the mining camp. The series, created by David Milch, ran for three seasons on HBO from 2004 to 2006. Milch originally pitched a show to HBO about criminals and cops and law and order set in ancient Rome at the time of Nero. HBO was interested in working with Milch, but as there was already a series in development with a similar setting (Rome, 2005–7), HBO asked him whether he could find a new time and place that would allow him to explore the same themes. Although not a fan of the western genre, Milch decided on the American West and the mining camp of Deadwood, “a locale famous for its brazen, flagrant, and unrepentant illegality.”1 The characters that populate the narrative are a mixture of real Deadwood residents (Bullock, Al Swearengen, Sol Star) and fictional types often found in westerns. Milch uses the setting of Deadwood to explore the themes of law and lawlessness, order and chaos, and individuality and community. Hints of these themes can even be seen in the scene described above: the general chaos of the street, the omnipresence of firearms, the entrepreneurs hawking their wares, the construction of community spaces.
Seth Bullock arrives in Deadwood.
It is not cheap or easy to re-create the aesthetics of the past, and it is evident from this early scene in the pilot episode that HBO spared no expense in re-creating Deadwood. HBO’s business model and approach to original programming have allowed the company to lavish both time and money on its series, an important practical consideration for historical series. A big budget does not translate into “good history,” but it is undoubtedly advantageous given the practicalities of having to build/source/design the physical world of the past. Broadcast networks rely on revenue from advertisers, and “as each hour within primetime schedules is a source of advertiser revenue, networks are pressured to divide their budget on an array of different content so as to ensure diversity across each of their schedules.”2 As a subscription service, HBO does not have the same considerations or the high volume of original programming and long seasons consisting of twenty or more episodes. HBO’s decision to limit the number of episodes per season allows it to invest greater funds into fewer episodes while also giving showrunners more time to craft each installment.3 Deadwood cost, on average, $5 million (US dollars) an episode, an extremely high cost, even for HBO (Rome, Boardwalk Empire, and Game of Thrones [2011–19] would have a higher cost per episode in the future). For audiences, the promise of convincing sets, lavish costumes, and spectacular set pieces is part of the allure of HBO historical series.
As Bullock arrives in Deadwood, there is so much visual detail in this one scene alone that it is impossible to do it justice in written form. Indeed, this is a key difference between written history and history on-screen. The former, as William Guynn points out, has weak descriptive powers, while the latter has much stronger ones.4 The written word can be as vague as it pleases, whereas film, by its very nature, must include a great amount of detail to fill the frame. A writer can paint a broad picture of a particular scene with words—much like the one provided above—and let the reader’s imagination do the rest. In contrast, in a televisual representation of the past, the historical world must generally be created (either physically or digitally) down to the finest detail.5 Discussing the creation and composition of film shots, Ed Sikov states that “every detail matters. Every detail is a statement of meaning, whether you want it to be or not.”6 This is precisely part of what makes creating screen history a difficult endeavor. Every detail within the frame has meaning, and in a historical television series that detail has historical meaning—something to say about the past. This challenge is, however, a potential benefit of the medium. The longer running time of TV serials means that rather than relying on easily recognizable historical signifiers, TV serials can incorporate multidimensional historical signifiers across seasons. Deadwood’s sets and costumes, for example, go beyond the standard signifiers of the western genre and contribute to the creation of a complex and nuanced historical representation.
That history on-screen can, with seeming effortlessness, evoke the “look and feel of the past” is an issue that is at once regularly critiqued by scholars and critics while also remaining underexplored and generally overlooked. In Pierre Sorlin’s seminal examination of the historical film, for example, he does not even mention set or decor. For C. S. Tashiro this is a serious omission because to “pretend somehow the viewer (or critic) does not take surfaces as an integral part of the historical message is self-deceiving.”7 When the physicality of the historical world does garner mention, historians tend to berate filmmakers for being less concerned with getting the historical narrative right than perfecting the costumes, props, and settings that generate an aura of authenticity. The visual details that make up the world on-screen give the impression of historical authenticity while masking inconsistencies and inaccuracies in the content. Focusing specifically on the Hollywood feature film, Jonathan Stubbs articulates some of these reservations: “In many historical films, the past is embodied in their abundance of realistic, visible details, rather than by social relations, ideology, or other essentially invisible forces.”8 The spectacular settings and period clutter are viewed as “something to be gotten past in order to get the ‘really important’ material—history.”9
Furthermore, history on-screen is critiqued not only for focusing on the surfaces of the past at the expense of serious historical content but for incorrectly representing those historical surfaces. Historical details may “correspond to popular conceptions about what the past looked like and not necessarily to historical records.”10 The “insistent fringe” identified by Roland Barthes in 1957 is but one example of a sign commonly employed in Hollywood historical films. These short fringes with curls laid flat against the forehead bring with them the “label of Romanness,” and no matter what the characters do in the narrative, this “frontal lock overwhelms one with evidence, no one can doubt that he is in Ancient Rome.”11 These fringes, and many other signs, are often used to evoke a historical period and indicate historical authenticity regardless of whether they are historically accurate. Contemporary aesthetics also shape the historical representations on-screen, seen in the modern clothes, hairstyles, and makeup trends that appear alongside historically accurate representations. Historical films are regularly found guilty of “leaving out any unpalatable bits of historical gear and adjusting the attractive elements into a slightly more modern shape to gratify the unconscious cravings of contemporary eyes.”12 These are, of course, all valid criticisms that can be found to varying degrees across historical film and TV series, but this does not mean the visual elements of history on-screen should be ignored or considered only when they ignite the ire of historians.
Historians’ mistrust of the visually rendered past is not particularly surprising given their general reluctance to utilize the visual in their own histories. Peter Burke and Michael L. Wilson point out that, on the whole, historians have been slow to embrace images as a source of historical evidence equal to the written word and to utilize images to their fullest potential in their own published work.13 Historians prefer to ground their research and historical narratives in written sources, with images playing an ancillary role at best. Wilson contends that “pictorial sources have value only to the degree that they add to the main work of historical knowledge. . . . The visual remains an addendum to the linguistic.”14 This may, in part, be because many historians feel ill-equipped to fully analyze and “read” visual sources. Burke suggests that to address this, historians need to develop new forms of “source criticism” relevant to visual evidence and teach these methods within the discipline.15 The inadequate use of images also extends to their appearance in published historical monographs. Although historians now regularly include images in their work—photographs, paintings, engravings, cartoons, etc.—the use of these images is largely supplemental, and they often appear embedded in the text with little or no comment. They are treated as “merely decorative, showing what a person or place ‘actually’ looked like or adding a period ‘flavor.’”16 Historians themselves, then, are not above reproach for the way they make use of and present images.
There are scholars already working within the field of history-on-screen studies who specifically address the potential advantage and power of the image track. Robert Rosenstone readily acknowledges that film can slide into “false historicity,” relying on a period look and nothing more to convey history, but he also appreciates what it can offer. “Film,” he states, “provides a sense of how common objects appeared when they were in use.”17 Rather than appearing obscure and inanimate in a museum case or photograph, the tools, weapons, clothes, and everyday objects of the past are brought to life, animated by activity and use. “Because they tell us much about the people, processes, and times, ‘reality effects’ in film become facts under description, important elements in the creation of historical meaning,” he argues.18 Alison Landsberg likewise views as a benefit the ability of film and TV to create the look and feel of the past. The authentic props and costumes “have the effect of reminding viewers that the past was different,” helping to maintain the distance between audience and narrative necessary for cognitive thinking.19 For these scholars, achieving a “period look” is not sufficient to transform a film or television series into a work of history; the visual details must serve the historical narrative. In a way, they should function like puzzle pieces, providing little pieces of information and filling in small gaps, helping to produce a larger historical picture that is bigger than the sum of its parts.
This chapter seeks to further this line of inquiry, exploring how the look and feel of the past is actually crafted and what it contributes to the representation of history on-screen. Contrary to common criticisms of historians, history on-screen does not always mean the visual spectacle of the historical world is privileged over the actual plot, characters, and historical interpretation. Inadequate time has been devoted to understanding how the material past is rendered on-screen, what it offers on its own, and what it adds to the historical narrative. This chapter, then, primarily focuses on how history is conveyed by the mise-en-scène, rather than the script. None of the shows examined in this book could be analyzed by looking merely at the scripts, which are simply words on paper. One could get a sense of the history portrayed from the script, but when analyzing the actual TV series, with all of its sights and sounds, a much richer and more powerful history is revealed. The script is undoubtedly important, yet it is only one element that will contribute to the history on-screen. There are the more “practical” aspects to consider, like the settings and locations, costumes and props, the performances and the sound (explored later in its own chapter). Many of these elements come under the broad heading in film studies of mise-en-scène. John Gibbs and Ed Sikov argue that an understanding of mise-en-scène is the “first step in understanding how films produce and reflect meaning.”20 This is precisely why mise-en-scène is a good place to start this examination of history in serial form, looking not only at how style creates meaning but at how style creates historical meaning.
“Mise-en-scène” itself is a complex term that requires some examination. As Adrian Martin points out, the phrase has meant different things to different people in different parts of the world over the course of its history. It is not a fixed concept, but one constantly in flux.21 The French term has its origin in the theater and literally means “to put on stage,” and has been used in English since the late nineteenth century.22 Early attempts to define mise-en-scène in relation to cinema were vague, “gestures towards an aesthetic, rather than a careful or patient inventory of its component parts.”23 Since then, however, many have sought to provide a more concrete definition. In their seminal film studies text, David Bordwell, Kristin Thompson, and Jeff Smith explain that “mise-en-scène includes those aspects of film that overlap with the art of theatre: setting, lighting, costume and makeup, and staging and performance.”24 All of the details described in this chapter’s opening paragraph of Bullock’s arrival at Deadwood, all of the individual elements that created such a vivid representation of the past—the buildings, the props, the costumes, the actors—can be grouped together under the heading of mise-en-scène. This chapter focuses primarily on the aspects of mise-en-scène directly under the purview of the show’s production designer—specifically, the sets, props, costumes, and makeup. To create the Deadwood set, a large team headed by production designer Maria Caso researched, planned, built, sourced, and arranged every single element captured by the camera.
The production design is the overall look of a TV series or film; it provides a sense of time and place and contributes to the psychology of the characters and the progression of the narrative. On Deadwood this visual design was created by Caso and the art department in close collaboration with other crew and departments, particularly the directors of photography and showrunner David Milch. Costume and hair and makeup are separate departments under the supervision of the production designer. The production designer must be intimately acquainted with the characters, the story, and, for a historical production, the history and construct a complete on-screen world that reflects and enhances the story. The production designer is, therefore, a visual storyteller, rewriting “the script in visual terms,” although this individual’s contribution to the narrative often flies under the radar.25 The ultimate aim for a production designer is to achieve these goals while having the work remain invisible to the audience. When something looks wrong or attracts attention to itself, it pulls viewers out of the narrative. This is a particularly tricky balance to achieve on a historical production. The production design must express a specific historical time and place, as well as the characters and the narrative, while also maintaining an “invisible neutrality.”26 On Deadwood, Caso’s goal was to “tell the richest story and be of service to the characters with realistic looking sets as well as visually interesting locations to suit the script and give the show a unique ground breaking visual distinction. On a budget, of course!”27
Production design for historical film and television often requires a balance between adhering to the expected visual style of the genre and achieving period authenticity through research. Production designers regularly draw upon a variety of “visual texts,” ranging from past films and TV series to paintings and photographs. Employing signs familiar to a genre helps to quickly build and establish the historical world for the audience.28 However, competent production designers also carry out extensive research and do not rely exclusively on what Sue Harper calls “deeply rooted cultural topoi.”29 Research forms a “base of knowledge” for the production designer. As production designer Eve Stewart (The King’s Speech, Hooper, 2010; Les Misérables, Hooper, 2012) explains, rigorous research means “you end up with an inherent understanding of the period—so if you need to do something quickly, which you often have to do, and for not very much money,” decisions can be made on the spot.30 Changes may be made to the look of the past for dramatic or narrative reasons, but production designers stress the importance of solid historical groundwork. “You might decide to change things,” states Antxón Gómez (Che, Soderbergh, 2008), but what is crucial is that “you’re doing it from a base of knowledge.”31
A film’s or a TV series’ production design is not only something that is overlooked by history-on-film scholarship but is also an area that is not well understood or appreciated outside of the industry, or even inside it. Key texts on production design lament that, although crucial to the success of a film or television series, the concept of production design and the role of the production designer are only hazily understood outside of the art department. Much like the area of sound (discussed in chapter 4), production design has been ill-represented in general film studies texts. As Tim Bergfelder, Sue Harris, and Sarah Street point out, one reason for the scarcity of scholarship may be the temporary nature of set design—erected and shot, then dismantled or destroyed—making it “a decidedly slippery target” of study for the scholar, with only limited resources (the film or TV series itself, concept drawings) available.32 Production designers themselves were amongst the first to study and explore what their profession brought to screen narratives. Léon Barsacq applied his hands-on knowledge in the early foundational text Caligari’s Cabinet and Other Grand Illusions (originally published in French in 1970), charting the development of production design from George Méliès and the early days of cinema through European cinema of the 1920s and 1930s and Hollywood cinema of the 1950s.33 Other influential texts followed, including Charles Affron and Mirella Jona Affron’s Sets in Motion, although they were relatively few and far between.34 More recently though, since the 2000s, there have been an increasing number of texts dedicated specifically to production design, including edited collections of interviews, case studies of specific periods in set design, and general overviews of the topic.35 Further contributing to confusion over production design are the myriad terms employed over the course of film history, as well as the evolving roles and duties of those in charge of production design and those on their team.36
The first section of this chapter focuses on the mining camp itself, particularly the communal spaces that provide the backdrop for the actors and the stories that play out. The camp is more than this, though; it is a character in itself, and like all good human characters it changes and evolves as the show progresses. The sets help tell the history of the camp as new permanent buildings replace temporary structures, as new and repurposed buildings are used for community spaces, and as the footprint of the camp grows. As well as helping to chart the progress of the camp, sets reveal the social history of these structures. Al Swearengen’s Gem Saloon, the heart of the camp, demonstrates the multiple roles and functions that spaces could have and how such structures were experienced and utilized. The second section zeroes in on the finer details within the set, particularly the costumes designed by Janie Bryant.37 While the previous section focuses primarily on the “look” of the past, this section centers on the “feel” of the past, in terms of both the tactile sensations and the emotions that the series evokes. It also considers issues of authenticity and invention in mise-en-scène. While props and costumes in historical dramas are primarily judged in terms of their authenticity, most are not authentic in the sense that they date from the period but are instead usually crafted using modern methods and materials. This is another type of invention which history on-screen engages in that can, in fact, work to the benefit of the production. Of course, there are too many individual elements that make up mise-en-scène to do them all justice in this chapter, which is why aspects of mise-en-scène will continue to be discussed throughout the book.
Once one is aware of what the various departments, including art and costume, bring to the construction of history on-screen, questions over authorship naturally arise, which the third section of this chapter addresses. A key strategy of HBO has been to promote its showrunners/creators as authors and artists. This strategy has contributed to a wider discussion of authorship on TV while also enhancing the value of the HBO brand by foregrounding the talent and “genius” it employs. Milch was (and, with the release of Deadwood: The Movie in 2019, still is) one of HBO’s celebrated auteurs. However, by recognizing the individuals and production teams responsible for researching and creating the physical historical world, this chapter highlights the complex and collaborative nature of history on-screen.
For several years in the 2000s it was possible to walk three streets of 1876 Deadwood, totaling the length of about two football fields. Given permission, you could stroll through the upscale Bella Union, check out Utter Freight, and visit the Number 10 Saloon, where Wild Bill Hickok was shot and killed. To get to this Deadwood, South Dakota, you needed to travel thirty miles north of Los Angeles, California, to Melody Ranch. Deadwood was constructed on the same movie studio ranch where classic westerns like The Cisco Kid (syndicated, 1950–56) and Hopalong Cassidy (NBC, 1952–54) were filmed, and the vast majority of the series takes place on these three specially constructed streets. Unlike many traditional westerns that divide their time between the wide-open spaces and natural wonders of the West and the community spaces of the settlement, Deadwood only occasionally strays beyond the camp and its hillside cemetery into mining operations in the Black Hills.38 HBO’s hefty budgets, and the research and dedication of the production team, brought this iteration of Deadwood to life, with the aim of capturing the look and feel of the historic settlement.
While it is admittedly convenient to use the phrase “look and feel of the past” as a shorthand for the complete on-screen visual world, it is overly simplistic and ultimately inadequate.39 This is especially true for the first half of the equation—the look of the past. A painted backdrop depicting the western camp or a photograph of Deadwood could potentially provide information about what the place looked like at a particular point in time. The Deadwood set does more than this; it creates historical space. Of course, as Bergfelder, Harris, and Street point out, “sets on their own do not create space on the screen.” Sets assume the appearance of three-dimensionality “in conjunction with the work of the cinematographer, who through framing and lighting devices animates the fragmentary construction and imbues it with an imaginary wholeness, and the editor, who during post-production adds a temporal dimension to spatial relationships.”40 In the finished product viewers get to see not only how the past looked—the furniture, the decor, the clothing, and the architecture of the buildings—but also how the public and private spaces of the past were experienced and utilized. The creation of historical space effectively allows viewers to see the look of the past in action, conveying significantly more historical information than the look of the past alone.
The historical narrative that Deadwood presents must be first identified in order to assess and appreciate the role production design plays. A real mining camp, Deadwood was located on land ceded to the Lakota (called the “Sioux” by settlers) in the 1868 Fort Laramie Treaty. As part of the treaty, whites were to keep off the Lakota reservation and the US Army was tasked with enforcing this. Rumors of gold in the Black Hills soon spread, however, and these rumors, in addition to a nationwide depression starting in 1873, prompted thousands of prospectors to illegally flock to the area. The mining camp of Deadwood was established in April 1876 and within a few months was populated by approximately seven thousand whites. As it was located on the Great Sioux Reservation, it was not initially subject to any rules or laws of the United States government; it was outside US sovereignty. A provisional municipal government was set up early on in the camp (provisional because there could be no official government without it being treasonous) and business exploded, with 173 businesses operating by the end of summer 1876.41 The US government quickly moved to annex the Black Hills, including Deadwood, from the Great Sioux Reservation and created three new counties in the Dakota Territory. By February 1877, Deadwood was officially part of the United States and legal settlement began. Due in large part to its unlawful origins, the initial mining camp of Deadwood and the town it quickly grew into had a rough-and-tumble reputation. Deadwood historian Watson Parker argues that, contrary to popular myth, the town actually ran fairly smoothly from the outset. A “judicious combination of force and judgement” ran “the town with less conflict and excitement than the dime novelists have portrayed.”42 The appearance of notorious western figures such as Calamity Jane and Wild Bill Hickok, as well as notable violent events such as Hickok’s death, mean that Deadwood continues to stand out from other similar mining camps.
Even though the series takes this specific place as its name and follows its general chronology, Deadwood is not a history of its namesake. Milch uses “a combination of sheer invention and interpretation of historical events to create a place that, while it has some grounding in historical reality, is never confined by it.”43 The series takes Deadwood, along with its inhabitants, and knowingly manipulates the events and individuals associated with the camp’s history in order to explore more general themes relating to individuality, community, and law and order on the western frontier. There is a universal element to these themes Milch is exploring, evidenced by how he was able to adapt his initial pitch to HBO by changing the setting from ancient Rome to Deadwood. Once he made this decision, however, he undertook two years of research, grounding these themes in a very specific historical context.44 Steven Peacock astutely summarizes Milch’s focus: “Deadwood is concerned with the fundamental theme of settlement, exploring the creation and closure of the frontier as a line between urbanised, civilised society and an untamed wilderness and wildness.”45 Regardless of its name, Deadwood is not a history of a particular mining town, but a history of the formation of community in the West.
The show’s approach to history can be seen in the treatment of the Gem Theatre, adapted to the Gem Saloon in Deadwood, a significant historical space in the series. The Gem Saloon built for Deadwood is not an exact replica of an 1876 saloon, nor is it an architecturally sound building. Indeed, as Juan Antonio Ramírez points out, there are key differences between real-world architecture and screen architecture. Not only are sets temporary, flexible, and adaptable (often repurposed for multiple productions), but they are fragmentary, with only what the filmmaker needs designed and built due to money and time constraints. As well as being stylized, set design often alters the size and proportions of real spaces to enhance a desired mood, exaggerating certain elements and abolishing others in order to maximize the intended message and best serve the narrative.46 Deadwood’s Gem exhibits many of these properties. Although the viewer becomes familiar with many spaces within the saloon, others remain hidden. The main space that the viewer sees in the Gem is the large open barroom with a double-height ceiling. It is furnished with a bar, piano, and tables and chairs for drinking and gambling and is accessible through the large double doors that lead directly to the Main Street promenade. Leading off from the large room towards a back entrance is a short hallway lined with doorways. Behind one of these doors is the prostitutes’ communal room, where Doc Cochran regularly examines the girls. Otherwise, viewers do not see behind the other closed doors, and it is more than likely they were not built at all. Back in the main saloon area, a staircase ascends to a gallery overlooking the bar area and another row of doors. Up here is Swearengen’s office and adjoining private rooms, and presumably more brothel rooms. The Gem set was not structurally sound either; its exterior and Swearengen’s porch were located on the Main Street set, but its interior was actually located about fifty yards north on a soundstage.
Inspired by the real Gem Theatre and its owner/operator, the Gem Saloon of Deadwood has a seedy reputation. “Of all the low spots the longest-lived and the most continuously notorious was the ‘dissolute and degraded’ Al Swearengen’s Gem Theatre,” explains Parker. Descriptions of the Gem paint a vivid picture of an “‘everlasting shame of Deadwood,’ a ‘vicious institution,’ a ‘defiler of youth, a destroyer of home ties, and a veritable abomination.’”47 To call the Gem a theater would not be incorrect; it put on a variety of theatrical amusements and hosted traveling theater companies, as well as Indian troupes later in its history. The major source of the Gem’s income, though—reportedly up to $5,000 a night—was the women, who not only performed on the stage but joined the men in between and after acts, encouraging them to drink and retire with them to the curtained boxes for privacy. The Gem Theatre was first and foremost a “hurdy gurdy” house, a brothel. Many of the traits of the historic Gem Theatre are carried over into the Gem Saloon of Deadwood; it is a brothel, a bar, and a gambling den operated by Swearengen, although the theater element has been removed completely—except for a piano. The Gem Saloon, though, transcends its forebear by taking on numerous other roles within the community. Just as many other frontier mining saloons did, the Gem Saloon becomes a multipurpose hub, highlighting the significance of these spaces in the evolution of the American West.
First and foremost, the Gem Saloon is a place where the men of the camp come together to relax and find company, both male and female. Although often empty of patrons during the daylight hours, the Gem comes to life at night. After long solitary days spent working gold claims, the men convene in the Gem to drink, gamble, and converse. The saloons of the “Wild West” have a particularly seedy and violent reputation in popular culture, but as Kelly J. Dixon argues, they were mainly “public places where people went to relax and socialize as opposed to places where people sought brawls and certain death.”48 While some sudden and vicious acts of violence do take place at the Gem, it is, for the most part, a place of leisure and entertainment for the majority of miners who frequent it.
During the quiet daylight hours, the Gem often transforms into a community space. The Gem swiftly converts from barroom to courtroom in episode 5 of season 1 when Swearengen offers up his saloon as a venue for the trial of Jack McCall. His barmen Dan Dority and Johnny Burns dutifully prepare the room, covering deer antlers on the wall with cloth and rearranging tables and chairs for the jury, judge, lawyers, and accused. Such uses of saloons were not unusual according to Elliott West, who has studied frontier saloons in the Rocky Mountains. Given the lack of official public buildings, and the roominess and availability of saloons during the day, courts often convened in saloons.49 Furthermore, “early residents came together in drinking places to solve other common problems,” and saloons often “served as midwives at the birth of the first governments.”50 The Gem serves these functions too, with the first meeting of the town’s notables being held in episode 6 when cases of smallpox are reported. Swearengen invites the men to the Gem, and as they sit together around one large table, they devise a plan of action to procure a vaccine and tend to the sick. Three episodes later, as Swearengen’s fears over annexation grow, he organizes another meeting. “Be at my joint in two hours,” he tells E. B. Farnum. “We’re forming a fucking government.” Within the confines of the Gem, Swearengen suggests the formation of an informal municipal government, and those assembled volunteer themselves for posts. Over the course of the rest of the series, the Gem continues to function as the meeting space for official and unofficial town meetings. “As a base of operations you cannot beat a fucking saloon,” Swearengen tells Dan, and he is right. The saloon was “the mining camp’s most versatile social institution, particularly in the early days.”51
The Gem Saloon is transformed into a courtroom for the trial of Jack McCall.
As a community space the Gem Saloon also provides insights into the cultural norms and social mores of the frontier mining town. Although the Gem is a flexible community space, it is not open equally to all and reveals a social hierarchy. When Mr. Wu, a Chinese businessman and Swearengen’s dope supplier, enters the Gem through the front door in episode 6, it causes a stir amongst all those who see. Wu and Swearengen have, beneath the very humorous surface, a strong and mutually respectful relationship.52 Nonetheless, when their business is complete, Swearengen tells Wu: “Get the fuck out of here, Wu, the back way—understand? The back way or we’ll start getting people having the wrong fucking idea of things around here.” “Celestials,” as Chinese immigrants were often called, lived in segregated Chinatowns in western frontier towns, and indeed Deadwood had a comparatively large Chinatown. These immigrants’ relationship with the white inhabitants was complex. They provided essential goods and services and were a cultural source of fascination. However, a strong anti-Chinese sentiment existed in most camps, as they were perceived to be barbarous, overly sensuous, and a threat to white men’s jobs, perceptions that often resulted in violence.53 Wu’s second-class standing in Deadwood is illustrated by how he is not permitted to enter through the Gem’s front door.
Even though the Gem Saloon set is not a historical building in any strict sense, the way it is constructed, shot, and edited communicates the historical importance of saloons in frontier mining camps. “Increasingly,” states William Whyte, historians have “come to accept the value of the built environment as historical evidence,” and studies of town halls, schools, factories, and hospitals have appeared, seeking to explore the meaning these structures held. As Whyte points out, uncovering the meanings of historical buildings and architecture is an incredibly complex task that requires examining many stages in a building’s history.54 One crucial element in understanding the significance of buildings, whether they are carefully planned and designed or hastily assembled and functional, is how inhabitants experienced those buildings and utilized the space. This is an area that history on-screen can address and communicate exceptionally well. Through “holding” the action, the Gem Saloon shows, rather than tells, why the saloon was so central to frontier camps and towns. Of course, the Gem was not the only saloon in Deadwood, and “no camp was worth its name unless it could boast of several.”55
Deadwood offers up a variety of saloon sets and in doing so complicates the architectural typologies of the western saloon. Just as shows and movies set in ancient Rome use Barthes’s insistent fringe as a sign of Romanness, the western also employs a number of signs, ranging from small props (the cowboy hat, the sheriff’s badge) to a codified set with specific buildings (the saloon, jail, Main Street, etc.).56 Within this schema, the filmic saloon has its own signifiers: the rough wooden bar and furniture, dim lighting, and, most notably, the swinging saloon doors through which “trouble” enters the establishment. Deadwood does employ some of these familiar signs but, importantly, supplies viewers with a spectrum of saloons. As West points out, once frontier mining camps were established and became more permanent, “different categories of drinking spots that catered to the diverse needs of the townspeople and reflected the economic, social, and even ethnic components of the town began to appear.”57 There were as many as twenty-seven saloons operating in Deadwood by September 1876.58 To present such a large number would have been impossible, even with Deadwood’s sprawling cast and numerous storylines. Instead, the series presents three distinctly different saloons: the Number 10, the Gem, and the Bella Union.
Aided by the extended running time of the series, Deadwood allows viewers to become intimately acquainted with all three saloons and thus demonstrates that there was no archetypal saloon. The Number 10 Saloon is a single-story structure far more crude in its construction than the Gem. Canvas stretched tight over a wooden frame serves as the roof, while large gaps in the rough cladding are visible as the camera captures patrons gambling around card tables. The walls are heavily adorned with deer antlers and hand-printed signs proclaiming “50 Cent Whiskey Shots” and “No Spitting on the Floor.” It is always incredibly dim inside the Number 10 Saloon at night as there is no overhead lighting. Indeed, the lighting fixtures in each of the three saloons perfectly illustrate their differing aesthetics. In the Gem the main lighting is supplied by two rough wooden chandeliers, along with wall lamps and candles. In the Bella Union, the more upscale saloon, lighting is provided by proper brass chandeliers and lamps. Instead of rough wood, the walls are covered in green patterned wallpaper and the wood is rich and dark and polished. Deadwood’s saloon sets communicate the standing of their proprietors, their target clientele, and their various offerings of entertainment and amusement. While the Number 10 offers up booze and simple tables for poker games, the Bella Union showcases professional craps tables, a cashier cage, and decidedly cleaner-looking prostitutes than those at the Gem. The Bella Union, Number 10 Saloon, and Gem Saloon sets demonstrate not only the centrality (and ubiquity) of the saloon in camp life but also the incredible diversity of saloons, which came in various shapes and sizes.
The saloon sets are just three of many spaces created by Caso and her team; as a whole, the Deadwood set charts the progress of the camp and contributes to the historical narrative at the heart of the show, about how “order arises out of the mud.”59 Frontier mining camps either died or thrived and evolved quickly, the latter of which is witnessed over the course of Deadwood’s three seasons. The show actually opens in the Montana Territory in May 1876 and moves to Deadwood ten minutes into the first episode. This opening sequence in Montana is vital for establishing key characteristics of Bullock but is also significant for providing a counterpoint to Deadwood. There is already a level of “order” to Montana; the streets are flat and even, the buildings complete and solid, the sidewalks empty of clutter. This picture contrasts sharply with Bullock’s first experience of Deadwood’s muddy and chaotic Main Street. Bullock and Star arrive in Deadwood in July, and from this point on most episodes in each season cover one consecutive day in the camp, although there are a few exceptions to this rule.60 This means that season 1, for example, covers only about two to two and a half weeks of time in the camp. The time in between seasons is ambiguous, as no firm dates are supplied, and Milch does not strictly adhere to the historic camp’s chronology. Season 2 takes place months after the end of season 1, sometime in early 1877, and season 3 picks up approximately six weeks after that. Deadwood, then, only covers roughly a year in the camp’s history, but it is a time of intense development and change. Within the space of a year the real Deadwood was illegally settled, had formed its own government, had thousands of inhabitants and hundreds of businesses, and was incorporated into the United States.
The Deadwood set contributes to the larger narrative of the camp evolving from an impromptu settlement full of individuals seeking a fortune to a community coming together and establishing permanent roots. Permanent buildings expand the footprint of the town and replace provisional structures. Initially, boards, canvas, and logs were used to construct cheap and hastily built dwellings. But then, states Duane A. Smith, “as the camp matured, the architecture reflected its growth and change.”61 Substantial wooden buildings and even brick and stone replaced the crude domiciles as people decided to settle. Such changes are particularly evident in season 3. As Swearengen takes the newly arrived theater manager, Jack Langrishe, on a tour of the residential area in episode 3 of season 3, he explains, “This is new, the entire area is recent,” pointing out the Bullock and Ellsworth homes made of brick and stone.62 Opposite the houses is a rough, grassy area with tree stumps and makeshift park benches, populated by milling townspeople. “And who does this fucking belong to?” Langrishe asks. “Well, I guess this belongs to fucking everybody,” Swearengen replies, lingering a moment and looking happily surprised at this revelation.
Swearengen may be bemused by the realization of a neighborhood park, but community spaces and institutions have been appearing since season 2, contributing to the show’s evolution narrative. As both Smith and Parker point out, real communities began to form when people organized to create social institutions that drew even more people together.63 Citizens “organized to promote their common interest,” Smith explains. When they joined these institutions, they often realized “they had common aspirations and even plans for their camp. When this occurred, something intangible happened to the entire community; it became more than just a temporary working habitation.”64 Creating certain types of institutions and establishments, such as schools and banks, was considered an outward sign of progress for a mining camp. These particular spaces are added to the Deadwood set throughout season 3. An assembled crowd applauds as Alma Garret opens the doors of Deadwood’s first bank; the Chez Ami, a former brothel, is repurposed as a school in the first few episodes; and a new schoolhouse is acquired midway through the season. The transformation of the larger set structures is buttressed by the introduction of new props. In the season 2 opening episode a stagecoach arrives in Deadwood (the first the audience has seen) and a telegraph wire is erected, both signaling the town’s progress and increased connectivity to the rest of the United States.
It is difficult to overstate that these are but a very few examples of the Deadwood set and what it is capable of: on-screen there is a complete historical world. When watching, spectators see an illusion that this world extends far beyond what their eyes can see. Of course, there was a limit to the physical spaces that could be specially created—a boundary to the set. The way the camera moves and the way the action is staged, though, give the impression that the camera provides a window into a much bigger world. This is especially true of the scenes that take place on Deadwood’s streets. During the season 1 finale, there is a particularly tense sequence when many of the show’s characters come out onto the street and move from building to building, giving the viewer a sense of the geography of the camp. Bullock moves along Main Street from his hardware store to the Grand Central Hotel, crosses the street, and heads back down to the Bella Union. After entering the Bella Union, he exits and turns left down a side street and then right into Chinese Alley, where he has heard a gunshot. Along this course the camera also captures the arriving General Crook and his army parading into camp down Main Street, Johnny Burns dragging Reverend Smith on a stretcher from Doc Cochran’s to the Gem, and Alma, Sol, Farnum, Charlie Utter, Joanie Stubbs, and Cy Tolliver all crisscrossing and moving along Main Street. The result is the impression that this is a living and breathing camp, that the camera could move into any one of the tents or shanties on Chinese Alley (which the viewer never does really see) and it would be complete.
As well as the physical structures and objects captured on-screen, the “look of the past” can refer to the overall visual style of the production. As Michelle Pierson points out, the creators of historical films often re-create the past by giving them “the look of having been made at an earlier time.” “The colour and grain of old techniques of photographic and cinematographic reproduction” are employed to create a “period look” and accentuate the historical setting for the audience.65 This can be achieved by manipulating the image digitally (the desaturated color palette of Band of Brothers is an obvious example of the practice) and can be crafted manually. Of course, the past was not sepia tinted or grainy, but these techniques serve a number of potential functions. They highlight and enhance the mediated nature of history on-screen, contribute to the historical narrative (the subdued palette of Band of Brothers, for example, reflects the grim experiences of war), and help “root the story within a specific historical micro-universe.”66 Deadwood’s sepia-toned color palette was achieved not only through color grading but through the work of Caso and her team.67 The choice of color palette was influenced by the sepia tones of old photographs, as well as the historical realities of life in a mining camp. “We used quiet colors (compound hues, neutral tints, browns, blacks and grays) with touches of jewel tones,” Caso explains. Buildings and furnishings in Deadwood were built with the abundant supply of lumber from the Black Hills, but there was no paint available. Caso remembers being told that having a plethora of plain wooden structures “would all run together and look terrible” on camera, but she pushed forward with the idea, staining buildings various shades of brown and aging the sets with wax and glaze.68 The end result is a color palette reminiscent of sepia photographs that also communicates the rough and provisional nature of the camp.
The “look of the past,” in its various forms, is clearly capable of conveying a wealth of historical information, even if its ability to do so is often left unacknowledged. Rosenstone, addressing the debate over the “information load” of historical film and whether or not it is impoverished or rich—specifically the visual detail and specificity required by the medium—proposed his own question. The question is “not whether film can carry enough information but whether that information can be absorbed from quickly moving images, is worth knowing, and can add up to ‘history.’”69 The first part of the question is the hardest to answer definitively. Attentive, thoughtful, and highly visually literate viewers will likely pick up on the visual nuances of the historical narrative or may seek out further information and clarification from the many insightful weekly reviews and recaps available on websites like HitFix and the AV Club.70 On the other hand, there will always be more-casual, less-involved audiences who may completely miss out on and overlook the finer visual details (or who may require a second viewing to appreciate them). Varying levels of engagement and understanding are to be expected of any text, written or visual. It is easier to respond in the affirmative to the other parts of Rosenstone’s question, even focusing solely on the visual elements of on-screen history. The Deadwood sets “add up to history.”
Even more so than the “look of the past,” the “feel of the past” is a vague and undefined phrase. What exactly is the feel of the past, and what does it consist of? Rosenstone and Landsberg identify both experiential and emotional components, elements that are often intertwined and difficult to separate. Sounds and visuals vividly re-create the historical world, creating an impression of what it might have felt like to be there, encouraging the audience to feel and care deeply about that past. Film utilizes its unique audiovisual language—editing, camera angles/movement, music, etc.—“to heighten and intensify the feelings of the audience about the events depicted on the screen.”71 Audiences become invested in the characters and storylines, leading them to identify with the emotions experienced by the historical actors. Indeed, it is the distinctive experiential powers of history on-screen and the resulting emotions they provoke in viewers that scholars often find particularly troubling. As Landsberg points out, “The proper mode of historical engagement is analytical and distanced, cognitive rather than emotional.”72 Landsberg’s proposed theory of affective engagement, however, persuasively demonstrates that history on-screen does not necessarily foster a seamless identification with the past. Instead, film can encourage mental and cognitive activity in viewers that results in historical thinking. The viewers may become emotionally invested in the past, but they do so as themselves: there remains a distance between audience and narrative that stimulates cognitive thinking.73
The emotional and experiential connection to the past is, of course, built up through narrative and character, but mise-en-scène also plays a significant role in encouraging this aspect of feeling. Scenes from episode 10, season 2, as Seth and Martha Bullock watch over their unconscious and dying son, demonstrate how mise-en-scène is employed to heighten emotion. Undoubtedly they are an emotional set of scenes anyway, given the storyline, but the emotions are intensified by the performances, staging, and lighting. Taking place at night, the scenes are shot with a particularly low light, eliminating any background details beyond the close-ups of Seth’s and Martha’s faces. Their skin is bathed in a golden-orange glow, highlighting their tears and anguished expressions. The camera alternates between close-ups of the two but sometimes pulls back enough for a shot of all three together: William lying prostrate in front, Seth and Martha sitting over him, the small fractured family finally brought together by tragedy. The audience is invited close into the family circle when no one else in the camp is; they witness the Bullocks’ suffering in close proximity.74
Feeling can also refer to the knowledge and understanding developed by the viewer of a historical period or event. Landsberg states that film can “create and convey something like period truths, a sense of the different texture and contours of everyday life at a specific moment of the past.” In other words, the viewer gets the feel of the past, becoming familiar with its day-to-day rhythms. This is especially true for television series given their extended running times. The long duration of a series “enables the construction of a place that feels enduring, to which one returns again and again.”75 Over thirty-six hours the audience gets a feel for life in the camp, from the general harshness of life on the frontier to the power structures that govern the camp. This feel for the camp (which requires a level of dedicated viewing) eventually helps the audience to follow the complex storylines and often opaque actions of the characters. They get a feel for how things are done in the televisual version of Deadwood. Mise-en-scène once again plays an important role in cultivating this particular feeling for the past. The Deadwood saloon sets, as already noted, become familiar spaces with recognizable patterns of quiet days and raucous nights. The Gem quickly establishes itself as the central hub of the camp, playing host to a variety of events and serving dual roles in the community. Swearengen, the Gem’s owner and the camp’s puppet master, rules from the balcony of the Gem. When George Hearst arrives in Deadwood and challenges Swearengen’s dominant position (and takes a sledgehammer to the wall of the Grand Central Hotel to create his own mirror balcony and seat of power), he threatens to disrupt the feel for Deadwood that the audience has settled into.
The explanation thus far of the “feel of the past” covers several aspects of what it means to feel, which is “to have a sensation, impression, perception or emotion.” History on-screen creates a vivid visual and aural impression of the past, inciting emotion in viewers and allowing them to perceive and understand what it may have been like in the past. But what of sensation? “To feel” can mean to have a bodily sensation of heat, cold, or pain caused by an external stimulus and also to be affected through touch, a sensation of the skin.76 Although television is a visual and aural medium, it can stimulate senses beyond sight and sound in the viewer. This discussion will focus specifically on how the carefully crafted surfaces of the sets, props, and costumes create the tactile sensations of the past. Surfaces are often overlooked in favor of what lies beneath. Binary oppositions such as surface/depth suggest, as Victoria Kelley argues, “that the real value of interest lies in the second half of the pairing, not the superficial, but the in-depth.”77 This is the attitude often applied to history on-screen: undervaluing the physical world in favor of the historical narratives played out against (sets) and within (costumes) these physical surfaces.
These surfaces and their varied textures contribute to the feel of the past, affecting the viewer in a bodily way. As Vivian Sobchack summarizes, “We do not experience any movie only through our eyes. We see and comprehend and feel films with our entire bodily being, informed by the full history and carnal knowledge of our acculturated sensorium.”78 The exploration of embodied spectatorship, or how cinema affects and engages the body of the viewer, has been taken up by scholars such as Sobchack, Laura U. Marks, and Jennifer Barker, especially since the 2000s. Marks is particularly interested in what she terms “haptic visuality,” in which “the eyes themselves function like organs of touch.”79 Marks’s definition of haptic visuality is rather narrow, but her idea of the eye as an organ of touch is a useful one.80 In this discussion of Deadwood it is more useful to employ the related term “haptically charged surfaces” to denote shots (and not always necessarily close-ups) that feature “conspicuous and evocative” textures.81 These surface textures provoke a response or recognition from the spectator’s own body; they encourage the viewer to feel with his or her body, which in turn contributes to the experiential and emotional components of the feel of the past.
Human skin is a familiar surface on-screen, but its regular look and texture can be manipulated to stimulate responses of desire and, as in Deadwood, repulsion. Typically makeup has been exempt from attempts at historical accuracy. While costume—and, to an extent, hair—is designed and styled to match the historical period, contemporary standards of beauty and makeup are regularly employed in historical productions.82 An attempt at period-appropriate makeup on Deadwood’s female characters is evident: Calamity Jane is constantly covered in dirt, Trixie’s complexion gives the impression of no makeup at all, and Alma, as the wealthiest woman in town, is generally the most polished looking. But it is not the skin of Deadwood’s healthy female or male inhabitants that prompts a strong bodily response. In season 1 smallpox appears and soon spreads through the camp, resulting in the establishment of a pest tent. The viewer sees dense coverings of pustules over faces and limbs, and infected skin pink and shiny with fever as Doc, Jane, and Reverend White minister to the ill. In episode 7 Jane and White are both seen bringing their healthy, unblemished skin into close contact with an infected patient as they lay wet cloths over his forehead and lips. The haptically charged surface of the man’s face, covered in nubbly inflamed pustules, prompts the viewer’s body to recoil and provokes a feeling of dread and revulsion.
Calamity Jane comes into close contact with the skin of a smallpox victim.
The surfaces of the camp itself and its inhabitants generate a sensuous feel for how dirty and grimy life on the frontier was. The hair of Deadwood’s residents (again, except for the more genteel and respectable characters, such as Alma and Martha) often appears slick and greasy and unwashed. Their clothes, especially those of the men, are dirty and distressed. Janie Bryant and her team took to using wire brushes and sandpaper to wear and age the textiles’ surfaces, also coating them in fuller’s earth (a clay material often used in film production) to create layers of dirt. Bryant wanted the “costumes to feel and smell and seem as dirty as they really were during that period.”83 Deadwood’s muddy main thoroughfare is, perhaps, the surface that most evocatively conveys the dirtiness of the camp. The streets of historic Deadwood in its early years were “a reeking cesspool of rottenness” made up of mud, garbage, and manure from a menagerie of different animals.84 To re-create this, Caso and her team used eighty truckloads of dirt and kept the streets constantly wet and muddy.85 The textured surface of the mud is foregrounded throughout an epic five-minute fight between Dan and one of George Hearst’s men. The camera is often positioned low to the ground, at the same level as the men. The viewer can see in exquisite detail their bodies slipping and sliding in the muck, their clothes and skin becoming saturated in dirt and blood. Then, when the camera pulls back to a high-angle shot, the viewer sees the complete vista, with smooth and rough patches of mud and puddles dotted across the surface. In another scene in season 1 Alma rushes through the street with her ward, Sofia Metz, in her arms. The camera closes in on her legs, the mud itself taking up the full bottom half of the screen, the hem of her long skirt dragging, and her dainty boots squelching and sucking in the mud. Viewers do not just see the thick, rich Deadwood mud, especially when it comes into contact with the bodies of the characters; they can almost touch and feel it with their own bodies too.
Dan Dority slips, slides, and almost drowns in Deadwood’s mud.
The clothes that adorn Deadwood’s inhabitants, made from various materials and textures, likewise contribute to the feel of the past. “Screen costume,” Sarah Gilligan summarizes, “functions as a crucial ‘storytelling’ element of mise-en-scène, supporting our understanding of characters’ traits, emotions and motivations through a ‘dress plot’ of changing garments and appearances.”86 Consider the style of three of Deadwood’s female characters—Jane, Trixie, and Alma—particularly in season 1. Jane’s loose-fitting trousers, coat, and hat, Trixie’s revealing work attire, and Alma’s prim and proper Victorian gowns help to establish character, providing the audience with clues about the women’s socioeconomic standing and place in society. However, this is achieved not only through design—the cut, shape, and color of the fabrics—but through the actual materials used. Jane’s masculine attire is fashioned from worn brown leather, moleskin, and tweed. Trixie’s worn, flimsy camisoles and her plain corset contrast sharply with Alma’s luxuriant satins, velvets, and lace. These various materials and textures function as “storytelling devices” but are also recognizable to many viewers.87 Clothing is a human’s second skin, and we are all intimately familiar with the feel of different textures against our flesh. Our bodies know the touch and sensation of the fabrics captured on camera, although the styles are foreign. Naturally, some textiles are more haptically charged than others. Joanie’s and Alma’s jewel-toned velvet ensembles are particularly evocative, the deep, soft fibers of the material contrasting with and pulling the attention of the viewer away from the rough, hard world around them.
These surface textures provide practical information about what things looked like while also stimulating sensations and contributing to the other “feelings” of the past previously discussed. Viewers cannot fully touch the infected skin, the mud, or the luxurious textiles, but they do still “have a partially fulfilled sensory experience of these things which make them intelligible . . . and meaningful.”88 It is useful here to return to Landsberg’s idea of affective engagement. Affective engagement “draws the viewer into proximity of an event or person in the past, fostering a sense of intimacy or closeness but not straightforwardly through the eyes of someone living at that time.” History on-screen can touch, move, and provoke the spectator’s body, but what is of central importance to Landsberg is that the past remains a foreign country. “Accepting this claim,” Landsberg argues, “is epistemologically important to the project of history, for it is the first step in acknowledging that any attempt to represent the past is inevitably imaginative work, a construction.”89
The haptically charged surfaces of Deadwood provoke bodily responses in the viewer while retaining a sense of difference. We most likely have memories of caressing a soft, tactile fabric and of squishing through mud. Even if we have never touched a sick, infected body, we can imagine, in part through our comprehensive set of touch memories, what it might be like. Our bodies remember and imagine the feel of these surfaces. The sensation provoked in viewers is thus immediate and close—they sense it in their own bodies—yet it is distant too. They are familiar sensations in an unfamiliar world. Although viewers are responding in an affective way, it does not mean they lose sight of the past as a foreign country. Instead, the bodily response can generate cognitive thinking. We are repulsed and panicked by the infected skin, which prompts us to think about the realities of life on the 1870s frontier. The smallpox vaccine is many days’ ride away, and the facilities for caring for the sick are crude by modern Western standards. Likewise, Alma’s long, heavy gowns do not just dazzle the audience with their beauty and rich fabrics but also invite viewers (and I think particularly female ones) to consider the restriction of movement and the impracticalities experienced by women who had to conform to such a code of dress, especially on the frontier.
Alma’s dresses and, indeed, all of Deadwood’s costumes are crucial in the creation of the historical world and play an “authenticating role.”90 Costumes are “a key ingredient in surface realism”; they “convince us of the historical or cultural authenticity of the period or place on offer.”91 The idea that historical authenticity—“what makes a cinematic account seem real and worthy of belief”—is often secured with surface detail is a point made by numerous scholars, including historians who have worked on historical films. For Natalie Zemon Davis, authenticity is most frequently conceived of as “a matter of the ‘look’ of the past, or rather ‘the period look,’ ‘period props’ and ‘period costume.’”92 Hannah Greig agrees, arguing that while the representation of material culture is rigorously researched, filmmakers are much more flexible in their manipulation and shaping of historical events, timelines, and persons.93 Film studios during the classical Hollywood era would often stress in press releases and marketing materials the lengths their costume (and set design) departments had gone to in order to achieve historical accuracy.94 Jane Gaines and Charlotte Herzog surmise that this focus on authenticity in the physical details served a particular purpose: “If viewers can be convinced that historical detail is accurate, the narrative may be liberated to a degree from any obligation to follow pre-existing historical accounts.”95
However, this focus on the sets, props, and costumes providing a mask of authenticity for the “inauthentic” narrative ignores that authenticity in mise-en-scène is not realistic, achievable, or, indeed, particularly desirable. Authenticity in costuming is impossible, as the costumes are always shaped by the designer’s modern aesthetics and influences beyond the historical record. What we see on-screen is a mix of old and new; period-appropriate styles and fabrics that have been constructed and fitted with a modern eye. Edward Maeder argues that the costume designer, “like the sculptor, painter, or even the historian, works within physical, social, and aesthetic limits to make a creation acceptable and comprehensible by contemporary standards.” While costume designers may endeavor to faithfully re-create historical clothing, their “vision is so influenced by contemporary style that [they] cannot be objective, and the result is always an interpretation.”96 Furthermore, as already noted, in film and TV every genre has an expected visual style, and for the art and costume departments there is a tension between striving for period authenticity and adhering to visual styles of the genre.97 Bryant not only researched 1870s fashions and the clothing of real-life historical figures like Calamity Jane and Wild Bill Hickok but was also influenced by other western films. McCabe and Mrs. Miller (Altman, 1971) immediately came to mind when Bryant read the script, and it continued to be a major influence on her as she designed the costumes for Deadwood.98
It is more productive to think of mise-en-scène as another type of invention that history on-screen necessarily engages in. While Caso, Bryant, and their staffs strove to create historically accurate sets and costumes that resembled what they had found in the archives, what they produced is ultimately still an invention. Rosenstone’s categories of true and false invention—invention that either engages or ignores the discourse of history—can also be usefully applied to the physical invention of the historical world. Since the concept of historical authenticity is already so closely associated with mise-en-scène, it makes sense to adapt Rosenstone’s terms slightly when discussing this particular aspect of history on-screen. Authentic invention “engages the discourse of history,” is rooted in research, and, while never replicating the past exactly, contributes to the historical narrative in a multitude of ways. On the other hand, inauthentic invention “ignores the discourse of history,” adds nothing to the historical narrative, is primarily concerned with visual spectacle, and unwittingly presents the audience with visual falsehoods (as opposed to films and TV shows that do this knowingly to create a particular effect).99 Recognizing the invented nature of the historical world does not undermine it; in fact, being able to make the physical world from scratch, and to alter, edit, and destroy it, is a benefit.
Re-creating historical costumes has a number of advantages, especially since clothing is a vulnerable remnant of the past. Textiles are incredibly difficult to preserve: they “suffer from exposure to light, damp and insect infestation . . . become faded and discoloured. Fibres break down, shatter, and eventually disintegrate.”100 An outfit displayed in a museum needs to be carefully mounted on conservation-friendly materials, illuminated by a low light, rotated in and out of display, and, of course, kept static, hung on an inanimate mannequin (the last is true for both historic objects and replicas).101 Chances are the outfit will only be partial, “dependent on accidents of survival,” and what survives will likely reflect only a section of society, usually the wealthy or elite.102 History on-screen gives viewers the opportunity to see all manner of clothes in their proper environment and to see how they move and sit on the human body. As Philippe Perrot notes, clothing can condition gait, posture, and behavior: “one does not stand or act the same way with or without a corset, with or without a tie.”103 Bryant made sure that the female actors were always wearing the appropriate undergarments, such as camisoles, bloomers, petticoats, and bustle cages. These undergarments, along with the cut of their clothes, gives the actors a certain posture and a limited range of motion authentic to the period. The clothing on Deadwood has no historical value except as it is captured on-screen. In contrast to real historical textiles, they can be worn, dragged through the mud, removed hastily, and torn as is required by the script, with little to no concern for their well-being.104
Bryant and her team employed modern materials and techniques to construct Deadwood’s costumes, but these ahistorical methods do not translate to the screen.105 Due to time and money constraints, the clothing for the extras was rented and bought, a common practice on historical film and TV sets, while the clothing for the principal characters was “built” from scratch. As Maeder points out, “Finding authentic fabric and materials is always a problem. . . . In such situations the designer is forced to improvise, to adapt available materials and techniques to imitate historic ones.”106 For Deadwood’s costumes Bryant utilized a range of textile suppliers, including upholstery stores, across the United States. Even so, she admits that sometimes she had to compromise on the materials, as there simply was not the quality of cloth available that there would have been in Victorian times, although this was not an insurmountable problem. “You can find things,” she explains, “that are close enough and that will photograph beautifully.”107 All these costumes—rented, purchased, specially crafted—were constructed with the aid of modern devices such as sewing machines and over lockers, very different to the technology available in the 1870s. Ultimately, though, these inventions have no effect on the history presented on-screen. The audience cannot tell from the image or from the haptic response it elicits that what they see, from the material to the seams, are not authentic.
One of the added benefits of building mise-en-scène from scratch, particularly sets and costumes, is that the art and costume departments can take all the details from the vast research they have conducted and create their own heightened interpretations. They can choose the elements they believe best serve the historical narrative and employ them in their designs. Rather than being viewed as something negative, the ability to select and edit is an advantage. There is only so much time in a TV series and only so much visual information that can be captured on camera. What is captured, then, needs to be as effective as possible at conveying a clear message. Authentic invention can convey information to the audience, potentially more clearly than even the “real.” However, it is worth keeping in mind that incorporating the real—actual clothes from the period, on-location shooting at historic sites—does not necessarily make something more authentic. Choices are still made about which vintage outfits will work for the show and which will not and how buildings and locations will be shot, lit, and edited. What matters, of course, is that when designing and building mise-en-scène, those responsible engage in authentic invention.
Clearly, mise-en-scène plays an important role in the construction of history on-screen, creating a multidimensional, sensuous world that is integral to the historical narrative. The art and costume departments on Deadwood are responsible for the structures and surfaces that create the look and feel of the past, contributing to the history and shaping the audience’s engagement with the past.108 Although Milch oversaw the production in his role as showrunner, he did not research, conceive, plan, or build the sets, props, and costumes that form Deadwood’s historical world. Part of the reason, perhaps, why mise-en-scène is overlooked and dismissed by scholars is they do not take the time to consider the people behind its creation and the full extent of the work that goes into it. Now that the contributions of the art and costume departments have been identified, a discussion of authorship cannot, and indeed should not, be avoided.
Caso, Bryant, and their teams clearly played a significant role in crafting the history on-screen, but it is a role that is rarely acknowledged. Instead, the focus is typically on the director (in film) and the showrunner (in TV) as the central authorial figure. In the realm of TV, HBO has itself played a part in developing this discourse by actively promoting its showrunners as independent authors.109 This is a key marketing strategy designed to help HBO stand apart from other cable and broadcast networks. HBO developed this approach “to cultivate a ‘high culture’ status for its brand,” Trisha Dunleavy explains. “The effect was to entice ‘upscale’ viewers seeking to align themselves with programming whose ‘art television’ reputation offered an elitist contrast to universally available ‘ordinary’ television.”110 In the process of seriously examining mise-en-scène in a historical TV series, a number of questions regarding authorship naturally arise. Who is responsible for the historical interpretation presented on-screen? In the case of Deadwood, it can be argued that Milch functioned as a kind of “head historian,” almost like the editor of an edited collection. He selected the key personnel, provided direction, and was ultimately responsible for the focus and approach of the series and its overarching historical narrative. However, many individuals and departments made his vision possible and enriched and influenced his narrative. Assigning authorship in history on-screen is an incredibly complex proposition but is also a potentially rewarding path to follow.
Whether presented on-screen or in written form, all history is authored, and knowing the identity of the author-historian is of central importance to any serious student of history. According to Alun Munslow, most historians tend not to think of themselves as authors, as they are not “free to create, invent or design their own stories.” But as Munslow bluntly puts it: “No author, no history.” Although scholarly historians aim to report the facts and construct a truthful interpretation of history based on historical sources, they still make a “vast range of ‘literary decisions.’” Historians make choices about what facts are included and excluded, whom or what events are focused on, the chosen time frame of their study, and the authorial voice they employ in the act of writing. “The historian-as-author,” Munslow explains, “relies on precisely the same authorial mechanisms, manoeuvres, strategies and schemas as all authors.”111 E. H. Carr makes a related argument in What Is History? and underscores why, when reading a work of history, the reader’s first “concern should be not with the facts which it contains but with the historian who wrote it.” “The facts are really not at all like fish on a fishmonger’s slab,” he explains. “They are like fish swimming about in a vast and sometimes inaccessible ocean; and what the historian catches will depend, partly on chance, but mainly on what part of the ocean he chooses to fish in and what tackle he chooses to use. . . . By and large, the historian will get the kind of facts he wants. History means interpretation.”112 Identifying the author of a written work of history is fairly straightforward, as the author is named on the opening page. For a historical film or television series, coming to terms with authorship is far more difficult.
Although clearly central to the study of history, the issue of authorship has received surprisingly little attention from history-on-screen scholars. There are, of course, a number of works that focus on particular filmmakers who have made a name for themselves in historical film, with Oliver Stone providing a notable example.113 The correlation is implicit: it is the director who functions as the author-historian in historical film. But, as Davis argues, decisions about how the look and feel of the past are rendered on-screen are made by a myriad of people, and therefore assigning authorial responsibility to any one person is problematic. “In films,” she explains, “the processes of research, interpretation, and communication are widely dispersed, even if directors put their stamp on the product along the way and in the final editing.” Research is undertaken by each of the film’s departments (art, sound, music, etc.), and the finished product will ultimately be shaped by small decisions made by all those involved—from the actors to the directors of photography, editors, costumers, and set dressers (to name but a few)—during preproduction, during on-set shooting, and in postproduction. “Such collective creation contrasts with historical book writing,” she concludes, “whose cast of characters would extend at most to a few co-authors, student research assistants, an editor and copy editor, and a book designer.”114 Bruno Ramirez, who has also worked on historical films, likewise acknowledges the contributions of the various film departments in crafting on-screen narratives. In fact, Ramirez is one of the few scholars to recognize the “crucial contribution” of the art department in creating history on-screen, and stresses the close coordination between each of the departments vital to producing coherent and nuanced histories.115 Both Ramirez’s and Davis’s comments illuminate the complicated and collaborative nature of history-on-screen authorship. Using Deadwood as a case study, and by focusing specifically on Milch’s role alongside the art and costume departments, their ideas and observations can be developed further to fully explore the question of authorship in history on-screen. Ramirez’s and Davis’s discussions were centered on feature film; TV authorship, although similar in some respects, presents quite a different model.
The central figure that has emerged in cable television shows is not the director, as it is in film, but the showrunner. Television has long been viewed as a commercial enterprise rather than an art form authored by individuals, but with the rise in popularity and critical acclaim of scripted serial dramas in the late 1980s and early 1990s, the position of the showrunner increasingly came to the fore. First appearing in trade publications in 1990, the term is now a common part of TV parlance.116 Even so, “showrunner” is an ambiguous and unofficial title that is perhaps not fully understood outside of the industry. Quite often a series is conceived and created by a writer or writers who pitch the show to network executives. Once the project is green-lit and has gone through several stages of approval, the creator “assembles a team of writers and producers to undertake the ongoing creative process, while the creator steps into the role of executive producer to function as head writer via the unofficial title of ‘showrunner.’”117 Showrunners are most commonly “hyphenates”—writer-producers. During production they serve dual functions: they are “in charge of the production and the creative content of a television show” and have both creative and managerial duties.118 The showrunner typically supervises the writers’ room, works on the set day-to-day to liaise with directors, actors, and the rest of the production crew, and has final authority over the editing process. Milch’s influence as showrunner over the production of Deadwood provides a clear example. Milch is not credited as the director of a single episode (a role many showrunners dabble in) and is credited as the solo writer of three episodes and co-writer of two episodes. Yet, as cast comments and an in-depth profile of Milch for the New Yorker revealed, he was intimately involved in all aspects of production. Milch’s routine was to lie in the living room of a trailer, staff writers present, dictating thoughts and lines of dialogue to an amanuensis.119 Milch was present at rehearsals and during shooting, setting the scene for cast and crew with his “spiels” and providing insights into the larger significance of the scene in the show’s narrative. He could also be found in the editing trailer working on the final cuts.
As the head writer, one of the key roles of the showrunner is to maintain a consistency of voice, a major factor for Deadwood’s completely unique language, which mixes ornate prose and profanity in almost equal measure. The showrunner maintains control over all the scripts even though, episode to episode, he or she is not explicitly credited. As Brett Martin explains, most TV series have a writers’ room and follow a similar procedure: six to twelve writers work together to produce detailed season and episode outlines. The individual episodes are then assigned to one or two writers, who pen the script. Once they are finished, however, the showrunner reviews and amends the script, often changing it significantly and making sure the language is consistent from episode to episode. Common practice is for the staff writer to retain sole credit for the script, even with significant rewriting by the showrunner.120 Milch would write and rewrite constantly, changing dialogue at the very last minute and even improvising on set. Sean Bridgers, who played Johnny Burns, stated that with Milch “you have to have faith in the way he works, that you might not get your lines until you’re about to shoot the scene.”121 Actor W. Earl Brown, who played Dan Dority, was given a writing credit for episode 10 of season 3. Brown stated that while he was proud of “my episode,” he could not take credit for much of the script. One scene was conceived and penned by regular Deadwood writer Regina Corrado, another scene was of completely unknown origin to him, and Milch, “the Maestro,” as Brown called him, had tinkered with the script. “What I did write, initially at least, were all the scenes inside the Gem,” Brown remembered. “And while they are few and far between, there are a few actual lines I wrote which survived as first written.” As Brown explained it, every writer on staff “wrote on every episode” and then each episode was rewritten by Milch, who would “mold, manipulate, and mangle the words into literature.”122 Parsing out exact writing credits on Deadwood, then, is an impossible task.
Moreover, although he never officially directed an episode, Milch was often present on set performing tasks typically attributed to the director of a feature film. Directors on TV shows are “often hired as rotating freelancers” and, while certainly making important contributions, do not have the control or powers of oversight that the showrunner has.123 On-set dynamics between Milch and episode 12 director Ed Bianchi can be witnessed on “The Wedding Celebration” featurette on the season 2 DVD. Bianchi and Milch discuss the particulars during prep for the night ahead of shooting, including where props will be placed and where the camera will be positioned.124 Bianchi asks Milch numerous questions and generally defers to his authority.125 Milch was also on hand to coach the actors through their performances, explaining the importance of the scene in the larger narrative, illuminating the psychology driving the characters, and providing feedback on the delivery of the ornate prose.126 Not only did Milch have final authority over the scripts, but he exercised considerable control over the mise-en-scène, those areas in the production of film—setting, staging, performance, and framing—that are typically assigned to the director/author in feature films.
HBO has led the way in drawing upon traditional and familiar concepts of authorship from other media and actively cultivating the image of the showrunner to lend legitimacy to its shows.127 Just as in feature films, auteurism in TV is promoted to elevate postnetwork quality TV above mass-produced programs, particularly those from the major broadcast networks. Deadwood was not just any TV western (traditionally a lowbrow genre); it was a David Milch western. As Horace Newcomb points out, Deadwood is “most often referred to as ‘David Milch’s Deadwood’” and is “all but inseparable from the authorial, or auteur, status of Milch.”128 Assigning the role of author to Milch is unsurprising given his pedigree: he has a distinguished academic career, was mentored by great American writers, such as Robert Penn Warren, has published works of fiction and poetry, won an Emmy Award for his writing on Hill Street Blues, and was executive producer on the critically acclaimed NYPD Blue (ABC, 1993–2005). “Celebrating showrunners as producers of artistically-valuable quality television,” Tobias Steiner argues, “has been a particularly crucial element of cable network HBO’s larger strategy of quality programming.”129 HBO did not invent the showrunner, but since the early 2000s it has employed it effectively as a branding strategy.130 The idea of the showrunner-as-author is often developed and endorsed in prerelease marketing materials and in medias res paratexts. Many of the special features included in the Deadwood DVD box set do just this. “Trusting the Process with David Milch” focuses on Milch’s unorthodox and unique working style. Actor Stephen Tobolowsky (Hugo Jarry) proclaims early on in the featurette, “I don’t think anything goes on on this set that David doesn’t affect, alter, correct, delete, add. He is sculpting this as he goes.”131
The public is encouraged to think of Deadwood—and, indeed, postnetwork quality TV shows more generally—as the work of (usually) one man. However, the realities are far more complex, as this chapter has already shown. “Series television is a massively collaborative endeavor,” stress Michael Z. Newman and Elana Levine. “Despite the rhetoric within production circles of respecting the vision of the showrunner-auteur myriad choices and decisions are made every day a TV show is in production, and many or most of them are outside the purview of even the most hands-on showrunner.”132 There are numerous leadership roles within a series, from different department heads (art, sound, casting, editing, etc.) to multiple producers. This issue of collaborative creation comes through in the limited existing literature on TV authorship and is equally relevant to this consideration of history-on-TV authorship, bringing to the forefront the tension and balance between acknowledging the centrality of the showrunner and acknowledging the contributions of the vast number of people with diverse expertise who contribute to the series. Of all the showrunners examined in this book, David Milch is the most actively involved and omnipresent, being involved, like Tobolowsky said, in every element of the show.133 Yet, even in this most extreme of cases, the argument can still be made for the complicated nature of history-on-screen authorship. If we look at Milch and consider his own biography and previous works—or, to return to Carr’s analogy, what part of the ocean he chooses to fish in and what tackle he chooses to use—we find clues to his historical interpretation and what has shaped it. But in asking questions about the authorship of history on-screen, we can delve deeper than the showrunner/director. When we do so, it becomes much clearer what the various television/film departments contribute to the construction of history on-screen, and our understanding of the work will be that much richer.
Taking only the art department, which has been the focus of this chapter, one can start to see how vast the production of Deadwood truly was and how many were involved in creating its look and feel of the past. Working with Milch was, of course, central, but the art department had relatively free rein within the confines of his vision. “David would give us information about the characters and he allowed us to create and design the sets for the show,” Caso remembered. “Working with David is very unique because he allows us to be fearless in our designing.”134 Similarly, Bryant’s conversations with Milch were not about the costumes per se but about the characters—what their lifestyle was, where they had come from—and apart from a few specific requests, costuming decisions were left up to her.135 Both Caso and Bryant undertook their own research independent of Milch. Caso and her team, for example, traveled to Deadwood to liaise with the town’s museum curator and sought out all the literature they could find that referenced the camp, as well as old photographs. Based on this research, as well as discussions with Milch, they planned, built, and maintained the Deadwood sets. These sets and props, as already argued, did not simply provide a one dimensional “look” of the past but actively constructed history on-screen and contributed to the larger historical narrative.
Furthermore, Caso and Bryant are just two more individuals, alongside Milch, who contributed to the production. An art department is organized as a hierarchy, with various tasks and responsibilities assigned and carried out by various groups. As production designer, Caso was head of the art department, and beneath her was the art director. The art director directly oversees the execution of the sets and manages the many craftspeople involved. These craftspeople include the construction teams, made up of construction coordinators, foremen, and assistants who build the actual structures (the exterior of the Gem Saloon, for instance) and the painters who stain and age them. The set decorator then fills these spaces and provides all the details that are found within them (the tables and chairs of the Gem, the pictures and antlers and light fittings). They work closely with the propmaster and the propmaster’s assistant, who make and/or source the props. The leadman assists the set decorator as well and is in charge of the swing gang, the set dressers, and the on-set dressers, who arrange all of the furniture and props on set and maintain continuity between takes. There is also a greensman, who is a set decorator specializing in outdoor scenes featuring landscapes and foliage. These roles alone deal with only the sets themselves and do not even start to touch on the many other creative personnel employed in related departments, such as costume, hair, and makeup and visual effects. Some of these positions were held by the same people across all three seasons, while others were employed on Deadwood for a season or two, or perhaps only a single episode. Whether they worked there briefly in a minor role or for two seasons in a managerial position, as Caso explains, they “all collaborate[d] to achieve the look and feel that David Milch wanted.”136
What does this mean, then, in terms of putting history on-screen? Who is ultimately responsible for the history that is presented? As Caso states, her team worked together to bring history alive from the script to the screen, from the mind of Milch into reality. Deadwood is Milch’s interpretation of history, but his interpretation is built upon and complemented by the work of many others. To return to the earlier analogy, Milch, as the editor and overseer, employed individuals such as Bryant and Caso to apply their insights and expertise to his subject. Their contributions are significant in their own right, but, importantly, all those assembled on Deadwood worked together to create a cohesive historical narrative. Not all the cast and crew function as author-historians, although some individuals and teams do (see the section on sound effects in chapter 4), but they nonetheless make history on-screen possible. It is this collaborative nature that makes history on-screen an exciting area to consider, full of possibility. It is unlikely that the amount of research and practical work required for a production like Deadwood could be achieved by one person (in a reasonable time frame), nor is one person likely to have a profound interest, and skills, in such disparate areas. Film and TV employ people who are talented in their respective areas, and they contribute their part of the puzzle to the historical picture that is portrayed on-screen. The collaborative nature of history on-screen needs to be better understood and celebrated, rather than ignored.
There is no one alive who can claim to have walked the streets of Rome in the time of Julius Caesar, to have witnessed the confrontation between American colonists and British troops in Boston, or to have arrived in 1876 Deadwood by horse-drawn wagon. There are, perhaps, a very few who could claim to have experienced warfare in the Ardennes Forest or the island of Peleliu or who may have strolled along the Atlantic City boardwalk in the 1920s. Nonetheless, many avid TV viewers do have an idea of these far-flung places and times from watching HBO’s long-form dramas: Rome, John Adams (2008), Deadwood, Band of Brothers, The Pacific (2010), and Boardwalk Empire. These TV series and miniseries have “overcome the constraints of time and place by bringing us millions of images of diverse places, people, buildings and many otherwise unfamiliar objects.”137 This is a unique power of history on-screen: viewers do not have to imagine the look of the past or the past in motion, as it is there in their own home before their very eyes on tablet, TV, computer, and mobile screens. Individual production designers and their teams vary on nearly every TV show (and film), but with the right combination of showrunner, production designer, and art department crew, an incredibly rich and detailed past can be rendered on-screen. Creating the look and feel of the past is not an exercise in crafting empty veneers, as the case of Deadwood has shown. The look and feel of the past adds many more layers to history on-screen.
However, it is worth recognizing the practical constraints the production as a whole, and the art department in particular, works under. It is not always an ideal working environment, as the work is in part governed by the realities of production schedules and budgets. When he was writing the script for episode 10 of season 3, Brown was told by Milch to keep all the scenes after the attempted shooting of Alma confined to the Gem. When asked why, Milch responded, “Because we are waaay over fucking budget and it’s cheaper to shoot on the stage rather than in the thoroughfare.”138 In this instance and presumably many more, the script was shaped by time and money considerations to save shooting days and production expenses. The actual timeline and logistics of production can also influence people’s roles and effectiveness. In film, production designers are usually brought on at quite an early stage, but their job can be made difficult by the need to work in close consultation with the director of photography, who is often not employed until much later in the process because he or she is typically more expensive to employ. The production designer’s job generally finishes at the end of the shoot and does not continue into postproduction, which is becoming a bigger issue as more and more gets added to the look of a TV series or film once shooting has concluded.
Indeed, the nature of production design is changing dramatically. “Of all the disciplines,” Fionnuala Halligan opines, “production design is changing at the fastest speed. Digital advances have altered the nature of what we traditionally perceive as set design, with the finished product a complex blend of processes.”139 Deadwood provides just one example of production design: relying mainly on the traditional processes of physically building the sets and traveling to suitable locations to shoot the scenes outside the camp. Only occasionally were special visual effects (VSFX) employed, such as the use of a green screen for the cemetery sequences so that the camp could be appropriately positioned in the background. For other HBO shows, though, VSFX are becoming increasingly important. Terence Winter was aware that accurately depicting 1920s Atlantic City on-screen in Boardwalk Empire was going to be a major challenge and was particularly concerned about creating the boardwalk. It would be one of the primary locations for filming and would have to be convincingly rendered on-screen. It was while watching a behind-the-scenes featurette for the HBO miniseries John Adams that Terence Winter realized that with the help of computer-generated imagery (CGI) he “might actually be able to pull this off.” “The special effects have really made the difference from being able to do this and not do it,” Winter conceded.140 HBO’s budgets and the technology that the series makers have consequently been able to employ mean that Boardwalk Empire was able to reproduce the look of the 1920s in its production design. Winter is proud of the fact that, in terms of production value, Boardwalk Empire is on par with Hollywood movies. “We’ve done things as big and spectacular as feature films,” he boasted.141
Arguably, historical TV series are placed in a precarious position by the budget needed to maintain the look and feel of the past and to compete with what big-budget historical feature films can offer. In May 2006, before the third season had even aired, HBO announced that the contracts for Deadwood’s ensemble cast would not be renewed for a fourth season, effectively ending the series. At the time and in the years since, there have been conflicting stories from Milch, then HBO chief executive Chris Albrecht, and subsequent HBO executives over why the show ended, and to this day no consensus has been reached. Milch’s commitment to a new HBO series (John from Cincinnati, 2007), Paramount’s partial ownership of the show (due to a previous contract Milch had signed), and the cost of the show, paired with supposedly dwindling numbers, are all cited as possible reasons.142
Rumors of returning to Deadwood and concluding the show on a more satisfactory note persisted for over a decade but seemed, after such a long period of time, unlikely to materialize. However, in 2018 HBO confirmed a Deadwood movie was in the works, with Milch and key cast and crew returning. Once again, creating the look and the feel of the past was of paramount importance to Milch, Caso, and the production team. They faced a number of difficulties given that some of the sets had been destroyed (Melody Ranch had been used for films and TV series, including HBO’s Westworld, in the intervening years) and the original blueprints for the set were lost.143 Caso and her team aimed to strike a balance between rebuilding the set familiar to viewers of the original series and acknowledging the reality that Deadwood changed tremendously in the years between the end of season 3 and the events of the film, which take place in 1889. “Modernity had hit Deadwood and you see the growth clearly,” Caso explained.144
This modernity is evidenced in the first minutes of Deadwood: The Movie (Minahan, 2019). Mirroring the pilot episode, the audience’s first view of Deadwood comes from Calamity Jane’s point of view as she looks down from the Black Hills. The outlook is much changed; the footprint of the town has expanded greatly from a single main thoroughfare to a great mass of buildings of varying shapes and sizes. The changes are clearer once down amongst the inhabitants of Deadwood. The streets are still awash with visual clutter, but the buildings themselves are now made of brick and stone, and the signage is permanent and professional rather than hand painted and haphazard. Along the familiar dirt streets, pocked with muddy pools, are the Gem Saloon and Grand Central Hotel, although both have received considerable cosmetic upgrades. While Deadwood: The Movie does not have the same luxury of time as the previous seasons, it serves as a fitting coda—not only to the characters who populate the narrative but to the town itself—and continues to demonstrate how integral look and feel are to crafting a historical narrative on-screen.