nerdreposirory

I posted about this a few days ago, and now I have a finished cut – or I should say, two of them.

First, let me preface this by saying that I absolutely love Deadwood. It’s in my personal Top 5 television series of all time, and it’s a show that I revisit almost every year, recommend on a regular basis, and quote constantly (much to the chagrin of my wife).

My goal here is not to “fix” or “improve” upon David Milch – although certain members of the show’s subreddit accused me of aspiring to that level of arrogance. This was merely a fun project to pour some energy into, and an opportunity to dip my toes into the fan editing waters and see how everything turned out.

So with that, I present Deadwood: The Last Days of Wild Bill, a film that aims to explore how the presence of Wild Bill Hickok affects the residents of the town and informs the relationships between some of its most prominent characters.

This is meant to be a standalone affair, something that can be enjoyed with or without any prior knowledge of the series – but if you’ve never been exposed to Deadwood, then I hope this might inspire you to check out the show in its entirety.

There are two versions: a shorter, more tragic approach that ends with Hickok’s death (131min), and an “extended cut” that includes the subsequent pursuit of justice and concludes with a bit more closure for Bullock, Jane and Charlie (168min).

If this sounds interesting to you, please DM me for a link – I’d very much like for some folks to check it out and provide feedback.

Lately, I’ve been watching a lot of TV-to-Movie edits. There are shows I’ve wanted to revisit, but don’t necessarily want to devote the bandwidth for an entire season, or shows I’ve skipped altogether due to negative reviews, but decided to check out a more streamlined version and enjoyed the results. This naturally made me a bit curious about the process of putting together an edit like this, and I decided to roll the dice on a project of my own.

I think David Milch’s DEADWOOD is one of the greatest series of all time, a masterwork of language and character with an identity that feels like nothing else. But within this sprawling, layered narrative, is there a particular story that could be pared down into something a bit more straightforward? I think there is, and with that in mind, I’m taking the first half of Season One and focusing on the arrival of Wild Bill Hickok, how his presence informs the relationship between Bullock and Swearengen, and Hickok’s murder and aftermath.

I’m pretty far along in the process already – didn’t want to start a thread until I knew it was something I would see through to the end – and I’m hoping to have a cut ready by the end of the weekend. I don’t have a detailed list of changes, but the broad strokes are as follows:

• removed Brom Garrett and the entire subplot regarding his gold claim
  • this also means removing Alma Garrett, as there’s virtually nothing for her to do that doesn’t start with this subplot
• removed most of Ellsworth’s scenes
  • much like Alma, there’s little for him to do in the early episodes that doesn’t relate to the gold claim subplot
• greatly reduced the presence of the orphaned Norwegian immigrant, Sofia
• greatly reduced the presence of Cy Tolliver, Joanie Stubbs and anything related to the Bella Union
  • also cut the subplot involving E.B. Farnum’s clandestine relationship with the Bella Union staff
• removed the entire plot regarding the smallpox outbreak
• removed Reverend Smith’s illness
  • there are still hints that something is amiss, but now we mostly view him from Bullock’s perspective, and Bullock just thinks he’s a religion nut
• numerous small trims throughout to improve pacing and cut around characters or events that don’t serve the main plot

I don’t know how many other DEADWOOD fans are hanging around, but I’m hoping there will be at least a handful of folks interested in checking this out when it’s ready. Feel free to drop some comments, and I’ll be back with an update soon!

Greetings Hal 9000! Heard about these edits from a friend, and would definitely love to check them out for myself. Would you be able to send me a link for both the prequel trilogy and the sequel trilogy edits? Thanks in advance!