David Milch shows up in Imperial Beach in a couple of weeks to start filming his newest HBO pilot, John from Cincinnati, which the veteran writer, director and producer calls “surf noir.”
Pre-production work has already started and Milch’s crew is building a set at a run-down motel at the southern end of Highway 75 near the salt flats of San Diego Bay.
According to Movieweb, actors cast for the pilot (which crew members hope will be green-lighted for an entire first season) include:
Austin Nichols..in the title role..who recently made an appearance in Milch’s Deadwood, as Wyatt Earp’s murderous brother Morgan, (who) joins previously cast Bruce Greenwood (the agent in Capote), Luis Guzman (brilliant in Boogie Nights and Carlito’s Way) and Brian Van Holt (Back Hawk Down).
John from Cincinatti sounds a little bit like the Brady Bunch meets the Adams Family and is about the (again from Movieweb):
… dysfunctional Yost family of Imperial Beach patriarch Mitch (Greenwood), a former surfing star who can now levitate (slightly), married to the aggressively unhappy Cissy, parents of the drug-addicted, dissolute Butchie (Van Holt), also a former surfing champ and the father himself to the talented but resentful skateboarder Shaun find their lives disrupted by the arrival of dim but wealthy John From Cincinnati (Nichols), a boarding savant who’s come to take lessons from Butchie, and Barry Cunningham from Azusa, whose personal connection to the Yost family has him returning to Imperial Beach to avenge a wrong done to him, by them, 23 years ago.
To prepare for what could become an instant cult classic, check out Stacy Peralta’s brilliant “Dogtown and Z Boys”, the best documentary ever made about Southern California.
Then listen to a little bit of Black Flag, Suicidal Tendencies and Iggy Pop before you pop in the DVD of “Repo Man” in which punks, aliens and a band of outlaw repo men come together to live in peace and harmony and eat sushi in the flood control canals of LA.
Sounds a little like City Hall.