Life's Work

April 1, 2022

Son of a drug-addicted surgeon. Stealing liquor at age eight. Summa cum laude graduate of Yale. Thrown out of Yale Law School for shooting out streetlights. Taking off time from the Iowa Writers' Workshop to manufacture acid in Cuernavaca. Becoming sober, creating and writing Deadwood and NYPD Blue, and losing a fortune by horse betting like his dad. And now facing Alzheimer's. Milch has some story to tell.

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August 8, 2022
Milch, a TV writer and producer best known for his work on NYPD Blue and Deadwood, delivers a warts-and-all memoir. Born in Buffalo in 1945, Milch didn’t have it easy from the start: his prominent doctor father was also a gambler, alcoholic, and philanderer, and his mother was a driven educator who didn’t always keep track of her own kids. Between the ages of six and 13, Milch was routinely sexually abused at summer camp, a trauma he kept secret for decades. He was expelled from Yale after he shot out the lights of a police car during an acid trip, but not before he became a protégé of poet Robert Penn Warren. Milch’s big break came during the TV writers’ strike of 1982 on Hill Street Blues—the show’s producers had to take a chance on a screenwriter too new to have joined the Writers Guild—which paved the way for his later series of “shows known for profanity.” Deadwood fans will relish the behind-the-scenes accounts of casting decisions and the series’s origin story: the concept Milch first pitched, of a power struggle between cops in Rome, morphed into the morally complex western. But his professional success was marred by endemic self-sabotage in the form of erratic behavior and racking up millions in gambling debts. The circumstances of the memoir’s creation—Milch now has Alzheimer’s, so recollections derive from recordings made years earlier by his wife—lend the whole affair a sense of melancholy. It’s an unflinching self-portrait, and one that could just as easily come from the mouths of the unvarnished antiheroes he put on screen. Agent: Jennifer Joel, ICM Partners/CAA.

October 10, 2022
In this heartrending memoir written while struggling with Alzheimer's, Milch, a pioneer of the golden wave of television, explains every facet of his fascinating life. As a child he feared and respected his father, a drunk and violent physician. He attended Yale (alongside George W. Bush and John Kerry), and, under the tutelage of Robert Penn Warren, discovered writing. Yale is also where he found drugs, acquiring habits that worsened when he attended the Iowa Writers' Workshop and studied with Richard Yates and Kurt Vonnegut--his life is filled with remarkable people. Milch began his television career working on Hill Street Blues, and then he created the groundbreaking NYPD Blue. He goes on to explain the process of creating the monumental Deadwood, John from Cincinnati, and many other shows, in perhaps a little too much detail, but it is enlightening to see how these works were molded and shaped. Throughout all these experiences Milch struggled with his addictions to heroin and gambling, but his remarkable wife, Rita, ensures that he always returns to the world. The conclusion is deeply sad, but Milch's startlingly honest memoir is also a beautiful reflection on a life well-lived.

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Starred review from September 1, 2022
A brilliant memoir from the writer who brought us Deadwood, NYPD Blue, and many other great TV shows. Known for his gritty dialogue and reality-driven, richly meaningful plots, Milch (b. 1945), a consummate storyteller, sets himself up as an unreliable narrator from the start. In the prologue, he reveals that he has Alzheimer's and that he is writing with the aid of his family's recollections as well as transcripts of his writing sessions from the past 20 years. For most of the book, the author writes with a mix of authority and swagger about his early days--both his triumphs and missteps. While Milch was at Yale, his writing got the attention of Robert Penn Warren, who mentored him. Warren's support continued even as he developed a heroin addiction, among other tribulations. Milch outlines all those issues, alongside his successes with Hill Street Blues and NYPD Blue (which created more issues), with the command and charm that so many of his memorable characters possess. He also provides interesting inside details about his classic shows. In one of his many asides about writing, Milch explains that he was writing more assuredly during Deadwood, which he says was inspired by the Apostle St. Paul, and he began using what he calls "God's voice." Using that voice, the author delivers several amazing passages--including one about Zenyatta, the famed racehorse--that beautifully encapsulate the power of sports and the experience of being a sports fan. "I really started pulling for that filly the last eighth of a mile, even as one had the sense that it didn't look like she was going to get there," he writes, setting the scene. That's why when Milch's formal writing voice begins to weaken, coinciding with his declining health and struggles with other issues, including the "corrosive" influence of gambling, the story becomes all the more poignant. A master class for writers and a backstage bonanza for TV fans rolled into one unforgettable package.

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