David Milch's Deadwood Reveals That He Was Diagnosed With Alzheimer's Disease

Although it seemed like it would never happen, and even when it started, it seemed like it could be easily removed at any time, Deadwood The film is scheduled to premiere on HBO in May, more than ten years after the end of the series. Vulture shared a detailed account of the production process Deadwood: the moviebut it's clear from the beginning of the play that something is wrong, with writer Matt Zoller Seitz noting that Milch – who was infamous for writing and rewriting new scenes on the fly in the original sequence and repeatedly ordered "watch, not interfere". In the film, Milch apparently entrusted "day-to-day execution" to other people, such as director Daniel Minahan and the former director. Deadwood writer (and now executive producer) Regina Corrado. The reason for this change of approach is simple: Milch has been diagnosed with a case of Alzheimer's.

He said Vulture that his friends and family began to realize that something happened a few years ago, when he began to have episodes of "imperfect recall, late recall, and moderate temperament". He added that writing became more difficult, so a growing disability. He ended up undergoing a brain scan and discovered that, as he well understands, his "deterioration of the organization" of the brain is deteriorating. "And it's progressive," he added, "and in some ways discouraging. more Milch apparently began reading poems from Robert Penn Warren, his mentor to Yale, his mentor at Yale, who experienced similar deterioration and "experienced a similar deterioration at the end of his life. "But continued with" an unshakeable dignity in the way he behaved and a bravery and kindness. "

It looks like this attitude – and the change in Milch – will be somewhat reflected in the film itself, with Vulture reference to a sequence in which Ian McShane's Al Swearengen does not remember the day of the week. The film is also apparently "imbued with a melancholy acceptance of the passing of time and the certainty of aging and death", which one can probably expect, as it unfolds a decade after the last final episode. Once the film is finished, Milch says he will continue to write "because that's what he's doing", although his only project announced to date is an autobiography.