Man, I never come in here because we never, ever get to the movies anymore unless it's a kid flick, and I missed the whole Deadwood discussion! My Deadwood love is huge.

The period profanity would have been "goddamn" and that sort of thing (mostly religious). To make the effect for a modern audience, he translated it to "cocksucker" and "fuck".

He's claimed in several interviews that the salty language is accurate to the time and place (but I make no claims to the veracity of this statement).

I remember early interviews where the creator talked about profanity vs vugarity to a modern audience -- the relative weights of "Damn you!" and "Fuck you!" have switched over time. But since the viewers are living in a world where profanity is allowed on network primetime, "cocksucker" got promoted to Really Big Swear.

"Hooplehead" is an anachronism, too. It came from a 1920's comic strip.

He swears he looked it up, but...he used to do *lots* of drugs. lucky-to-be-here, OD on set kinds of drugs. Would hardly be the biggest lie he ever told in his life. Sometimes I get tired of the Sopranos scenes at the Bing, if you wanna know the truth. You know for no reason they have Implant Girl just going around the pole just to show a naked chick. At this point, don't we *know*? It was different when they were part of the story, but those aren't the ones I mean.

I think Deadwood is also best watched in marathon. I went through the first season getting the discs from Netflix, so it was usually two episodes at a time. I watched the second season in one day.

The Wire, too. But maybe that's cause I'm a fiend. Maybe that won't help if "you're so green you ain't even brown." But some things it helps to watch as parts of a whole...I enjoyed FF much more in bigger doses, too.

I've never tried to watch The Wire or Deadwood in real time; we cancelled HBO right when Deadwood was starting, and I didn't discover The Wire until the first season DVDs came out.

A lot of westerns are almost allegories.

I might just agree with you there. (Note the first line. Also, I may have pointed this out before, but the scene in The Wire where Bunk and Omar sit on a bench and talk is almost definitely an homage to the scene in Junior Bonner where Junior and his dad finally tell each other a few unpleasant truths.)

I have no dog in the hunt where the accuracy of Deadwood's language is concerned because I agree that the poetry is more important than the accuracy. My boss, who was born and raised in Deadwood, SD, can't hear the poetry for the profanity, either, though, and just rolls her eyes when I say that it's one of the two best shows on tv. She's nuts for The Sopranos, though, so what are you gonna do?

I've seen blooper reels for Warner Brothers movies from the 30s and 40s. People didn't say "Fuck."

When Bing Crosby would screw up a take while recording a song, he would habitually use blue language, including "fuck," not just in reaction to the mess-up but also by continuing singing with the words laced into the lyrics, so that the recording guys would destroy that take instead of keeping it and making bootleg copies of the botched version.

I have no dog in the hunt where the accuracy of Deadwood's language is concerned because I agree that the poetry is more important than the accuracy.

It took me an episode or two to adjust -- during the first episode, I just sat and blinked (and I swear like a longshoreman when the kids aren't around). Now, it's such a part of the show's lexicon, I can't imagine the dialogue without it. No idea what the accuracy is, but also don't really care.

When Bing Crosby would screw up a take while recording a song, he would habitually use blue language, including "fuck," not just in reaction to the mess-up but also by continuing singing with the words laced into the lyrics, so that the recording guys would destroy that take instead of keeping it and making bootleg copies of the botched version.

Oh man, somebody should have bootlegged them anyway. That would be hysterical to hear now.