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Series Creators: David Milch and Kem Nunn
Directors: Mark Tinker, Ed
Bianchi, Jesse Bochco, Adam Davidson, Gregg Fienberg, John McNaughton, Daniel
Minahan, Jeremy Podeswa, Tom Vaughan
Cast: Rebecca De Mornay as Cissy
Yost, Greyson Fletcher as Shaun Yost, Willie Garson as Meyer Dickstein, Bruce
Greenwood as Mitch Yost, Luis Guzmán as Ramon Gaviota, Keala Kennelly as Kai,
Austin Nichols as John Monad, Ed O'Neill as Bill Jacks, Luke Perry as Linc
Stark, Brian Van Holt as Butchie Yost, Matt Winston as Barry Cunningham, Emily
Rose as Cass, Garret Dillahunt as Dr. Michael Smith, Dayton Callie as Steady
Freddie Lopez, Jim Beaver as Vietnam Joe, Paul Ben-Victor as Palaka, Chandra
West as Tina Blake, Paula Malcomson as Jerri, Matthew Maher as Dwayne
Synopsis: One day, at Imperial Beach in California, a strange male
savant with a credit card saying John Monad (Austin Nichols) appears; his first words to anyone that Mitch Yost
(Bruce Greenwood), a legendary surfer
who renounced his career in disgust, should get "back in the game".
Mitch suddenly starts to levity, John finds himself with Mitch's heroine
addicted son and former surfer Butchie Yost (Brian Van Holt), and it's clear John is in the centre to countless
strange activities, from Mitch's grandson (and surfing protégée) Shaun Yost (Greyson Fletcher) surviving a life
threatening injury in an actual miracle to strange goings-on in a disused hotel
bar. All in lieu that, to spread a gospel for a new spiritual movement, that
the Yost family needs to all be healed of their various neuroses and get back
in said surfing game.
Ah, this is a pretty infamous
series to cover. On the same night the legendary series The Sopranos (1999-2007) ended, on an infamously abrupt conclusion
that still baffles people to this day, premium cable and satellite channel HBO (Home Box Office, Inc.) premiered their
new surfing spiritual oddity John from
Cincinnati afterwards. From the mind of producer/writer David Milch, creator of Deadwood (2004-6), in collaboration
with surf noir author Kem Nunn, it
become notorious as one of the only HBO
programmes to only last one season. HBO
started in 1972 and from that far back to today, they went from strength to
strength in terms of branding, getting away with adult and edgy content
including the legendary Tales from the
Crypt series (1989-1996) until a series like Oz (1997-2003) could be seen as the prologue to their influence on
the "Golden Age of Television", a concept talked of by critics that
suggested over the 2000s to this day that cinema is in the apparent doldrums,
upended and dethroned by television shows such as HBO's own The Sopranos, The Wire (2002-8), and Game of Thrones (2011-).
Personally, I have no interest in
"the Golden Age of Television" and hence never had a real desire to
follow HBO as a brand, never seeing
that television had made cinema redundant or that they had to be at odds with
each in the slightest in the first place. I will eventually see The Wire, because it's too big, and I
wished Tales from the Crypt was
available in the UK. Naturally, it's the oddities in their catalogue, some
successful (Todd McFarlane's Spawn (1997-9)) or failures (Ralph Bakshi's Spicy City (1997) and John from Cincinnati itself) which are
the more interesting properties. Those that are not the toasts of mainstream
culture like Game of Thrones but the
weird, ambitious and sometimes doomed projects, John from Cincinnati a pretty infamous example and the kind of the
television I'm more inclined to track down.
To keep things simple, a Christ
figure appears in Imperial Beach in California one day to communicate a divine
message to humanity. The titular John's not Christ, but its emphasised he's
likely the son of the Son of God, still a heavenly source who decided to pass
on God's message by way of a legendary surfing family. It's an odd premise, but
just for idiosyncrasy, it's also an awesome one to start off with as, hey,
maybe God does work in mysterious ways, and there's something befitting a
messiah hanging out among the surfers, New Age post-hippies and weed heads at
the beach. It's also established this figure, described as a robot by one
character being sent on a mission by something skyward, has an upward battle as
to do this he needs to work with the Yost family, as dysfunctional as you can
get, turning as much into a tale of a spiritual cleansing of pain and anxiety
from their perspective. And as for John
himself, a savant who communicates by parroting others' words in choice sound
bites, the moments he speaks for himself are apocalyptic and/or overtly with
mind that his goal he's been sent off on is bloody important or everyone's
screwed.
Mitch Yost is a spiritual figure
who has yet disconnected himself from life. His wife Cissy (Rebecca De Mornay) has become the
"ultimate ball buster", De
Mornay shouting a lot of her dialogue for the rafters, because of an
unfortunate incident with her son. Said son Butchie is a heroin addict living
in a closed hotel. His grandson Shawn, a surfing protégée, lives with his
grandparents, who are divided about letting him sign with the same promoter, Linc
Stark (Luke Perry), who led Butchie
to drugs and ruin, and with his mother Tina Blake (Chandra West) appearing later on, she stigmatised both by leaving
Shawn with his grandparents when he was born and her career as a porn actress.
This in itself is a lot but there's
many others, all idiosyncratic characters with idiosyncratic dialogue. Bill
Jacks (Ed O'Neill), a retired cop and
friend of the Yost family who is still grieving for his later wife and (clearly
with supernatural emphasis) talks to his pet birds; Kai (real life surfer Keala Kennelly), an employee at the Yost's
surfing store who is the one really sympathetic figure; Barry Cunningham (Matt Winston) the new owner of the
closed hotel, being kept for Butchie by Ramon Gaviota (Luis Guzmán) and lawyer Meyer Dickstein (Willie Garson), who is traumatised from being molested in one of
the rooms and has prophecies through epileptic fits; Steady Freddie Lopez (Dayton Callie), a drug dealer who comes
for Butchie but finds his humanity, lackey Palaka (Paul Ben-Victor) tagging along; Linc Stark himself, going through a
journey as employees are trying to push him out of his surfing promotion
company Stinkweed; and Dr. Michael Smith (Garret
Dillahunt), who when a medical miracle happens understandably finds his
scientific grasp of reality broken and has to find himself whilst being a
humane, kind figure among this crowd. Its many characters to follow, arguably
as much why the series was such a difficult one for many, yet for me the story
somehow manage to make everyone of them have something of interest.
Probably another reason the
series was notorious was that it isn't structured like many series at all. It's
languid in pace, at least two episodes not really about anything but merely
surrounding twice when characters wandered off somewhere, and many ending not
on plot twists but casual, matter of fact pauses for breath followed by an
abrupt cut to black and the credits. I eventually started to love this about
the series, all before you get to the overtly strange moments which begin to
happen. The dialogue is as unconventional, full of dense and very
unconventional dialogue ticks and conversations.
It's also crude and profane - a
lot of expletives, and some dialogue and character turns which show complexity
but could be off putting in how offensive they can get. Clearly reflecting back
to 9/11 and the War on Terror, whilst not feeling like Islamophobia, some
characters including John use the term "raghead" a lot, and there are
details that would be much more difficult to get away with having ten years
later. (Though Mitch's bafflement over his wife's reaction to an ominous video,
where she immediately draws a comparison to Taliban propaganda videos with
their black sheet backgrounds, does also show Milch and Nunn are prodding these
fears and scrutinising them too). Butchie in particular, even when he gets more
sympathetic, is written to fall back into deliberately offensive comments when
pissed off, a conversation using a racial epithet to his ex-wife extreme but, whether
it was wise to do in the script, to show his fallibility as someone burnt out
on drugs and his own worst behaviours.
That's not withstanding how this
is also meant to be a spiritual, unconventional television series which, from
just ten episodes, was too weird to survive anyway. It's insanely vague even
(on this revisit) if I got every plot detail and can make sense of it. The tale
of a new spiritual growth from the Yost family and the journey to this point is
already with one foot in the eccentric before even more overly surreal moments
take place. Where a room at the hotel is a literal phantom zone for those dead
or in the midst of a temporary limbo, or parrots can heal the brain dead. Times
in this show it does feel like the series is striding into territory it itself
is not fully confident in what it perceives but does anyway, a sense of taking
a ridiculous risk in terms of coming off as ridiculous, such as a major plot
point being revealed by a door-to-door delivery catalogue or that the owner of
the hotel carries around a big teddy bear he talks to.
There's even the entire factor of
the actual surfing to bring up, which is sparse but when it takes place gives
the series an added odd serenity. The opening title credits are perfect - old footage
as if one's own faded memories set to Johnny Appleseed by Joe Strummer & The Mescaleros - but it also led to the casting
of actual surfers in the cast which adds its own curious touch, the non-actors
alongside known actors. Greyson Fletcher
as Shawn plays off as a laid back teen in the tulmultous period inhis like; Keala Kennelly as Kai in contrast is my
favourite character and the person in the cast who stole many scenes even among
some idiosyncratic figures, the calmest figure who adds an incredibly
charismatic emotional weight. Even if the show really doesn't have a lot of
surfing, when it takes place it offers a respite of relief that befits the
spirituality that's grown into that culture - particularly the last of the
series, from an opening flying camera in the clouds up to the burst of surfers appearing
in the waves befits the zen-like virtues the sport has developed.
So does John from Cincinnati work? For once, I'll leave that to each
individual viewer to decide because, honestly, the issue with John from Cincinnati is that, like many
other surreal works I've covered, this is one that is entirely to personal
taste and is especially so with this particular example. Structured as it is, in
mood and whether you can get into its headspace, is the real issue at hand with
ever you will appreciate it or not. Expecting a bombastic conclusion even from
a cancelled production is not possible here - the closest thing in Episode Six
is a monologue that throws a barrage of dense, at times messy philosophical
ideas which emphasises the sense that David
Milch was stepping out of his comfort zone from a success with Deadwood and was freefalling into this
odd spiritual material. I admire his risk, a small cult behind the series just
for the jumping off point that, in the history of HBO, this is the one rare work which never even got past the first
series, which makes its a curiosity already. But, having spoken as someone who
isn't interested in the boom of television in popular culture, finding most of
it uninteresting to track down, I have to admire the attempt at something very
different here.
Abstract Spectrum: Mindbender/Odd/Unconventional
Abstract Rating (High/Medium/Low/None): Medium
Personal Opinion:
So obviously, John from Cincinnati was going to be a
strange experience even on a rewatch, argubly the fact that it was meant to be
a mainstream television hit, the aesthetic and production style to such a show
from HBO, contributing its own distinct
personality as a result among other oddities I've covered. (How many weird
creations have Muse's cover of Feeling Good in the final credits of an
episode for example?) The bigger surprise is how much of a mainstream release
it was just in concept, knowing these projects are usually never going to
succeed. It's a reminder that, sometimes, when you put your hands together and
pray really hard, strange ephemera does appear in pop culture rather than the
fringes I usually cover. So naturally, I admired it.
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