Inside the Episode
With Steve Hawk
Question One: "Why Imperial Beach?"
That's what fellow surf rats most often ask me when they hear I'm working on 'John From Cincinnati.' Unwaveringly cynical about mainstream depictions of their precious pastime, surfers can't help but wonder why the series takes place in a town known in the surf world for its polluted beaches and average waves. Their single-mindedness causes them to ignore the more obvious disconnects, such as: Why is a surf show named after a dude from (or maybe not from) Ohio?
It turns out Imperial Beach and the adjacent Tijuana River Valley are awash in themes that make it a potent setting for any decent storyteller and we'll get to those later. First, though, here's the mundane connect-the-dots reason why JFC is set in IB: A couple of years ago HBO executives approached David Milch (the show's executive producer, head writer and creative visionary) with the idea of changing key elements in a series he'd pitched to them some time earlier. Milch's original idea involved a New York City junkie and street scammer whose life takes an upswing when he befriends a gentle stranger with mysterious powers. The network asked Milch to shift the story from NYC to a California surf town, and to make it about a family of legendary surfers. Milch, who'd already successfully transplanted his birth-of-social-order themes from ancient Rome to 1870s Deadwood, embraced the surf motif. Also, he'd recently hired novelist Kem Nunn to write for 'Deadwood.' Nunn, now co-creator and co-executive producer on JFC, is surfing's best-known and received novelist. His most recent "surf noir" book, Tijuana Straits a tale of drugs, worm-farming and murder takes place in and around IB.
It also happens that Imperial Beach was once a major destination for California surfers. Back In the '50s and '60s, IB's best-known surf break, Tijuana Sloughs, at the mouth of the Tijuana River, was a coveted big-wave spot. Most of the surf legends of that era Pat Curren, Buzzy Trent, Peter Cole and others regularly ventured to the border to ride the place with Dempsey Holder, the father of IB surfing. By the mid-'70s, however, the surf media had all but forgotten IB, and today it's hard to find a surfer outside of southern San Diego County who's ever set foot in the sand there.
The more Milch learned about IB, the more convinced he became it was the right spot for a show that deals with characters living on the margins. Some of us close to the project initially assumed JFC would overtly address the many powerful forces that collide there: the United States and Mexico; land and ocean; rich and poor; military and civilian, natural beauty and urban decay. But Milch, as both an artist and a man, cares much less about politics than the people he encounters every day on the street and in his scripts. And for all the "issues" swirling around the real IB, this show will always at its core be about the intricately flawed characters who invariably populate Milch's fictional universe.
The region's social and political complexities are not to be denied, of course, and they inevitably seep into the show. Shortly after the series' first line is spoken (John says, "The end is near."), a cluster of illegal aliens scurry through the brush nearby. And when Mitch levitates beside his car in the same episode's early minutes, that's the Tijuana Bullring behind him.
Question Two: What's with Mitch's levitation and the bird's resurrection?
Obviously something otherwordly is in play, and that's all I can say about that at this point. But here's something to bear in mind: When Mitch goes up in the air and Zippy comes back to life, the people most affected (Mitch, Bill) choose to view what others might consider miraculous events through the prisms of their personal pathologies. Mitch decides he has brain cancer; Bill blames his descent into senility. Which raises the question: If a miracle happens and no one acknowledges it, did it really occur?
Question Three: What's with the sequence of non-sequiturs John utters during the gun-brandishing scene in the Snug Harbor Motel parking lot?
"We are all frail vessels," John says to himself as the Snug Harbor crisis unfolds. And, "Butchie's mom hurt Barry's head." And, "Room 24 will give up its dead and the dead shall be forgiven." And, "Where Ramon is from they would build Mitch a shrine." And, "One good blowjob rocks the Jew lawyer's world." And, "Shaun will soon be gone."
By the end of this episode, none of those comments is illuminated, which I'm sure has left some people scratching their heads. But have faith: They'll make perfect sense later.
Question Four: If this episode were to have a snappier title other than the official one ("His Visit: Day One,"), what would it be?
My three picks:
a. "Circumstances Intervene"
b. "Meet the F***king Jetsons"
c. "The Pigs Got Grandma."
