Life in Imperial Beach became a little more interesting last year after the arrival of David Milch and his cast and crew to shoot HBO’s new series “John from Cincinnati” (JC) (please note, Wildcoast the organization I run, received a donation from Milch’s production company and my sons and father appear as extras in the series. I was not asked to promote the show in exchange for the donation or having family members cast as extras. HBO is pretty good at PR on its own).
JC is about a guy who might or may not be named John (Austin Nichols) who may or may not be from Cincinnati who arrives in Imperial Beach to learn to surf and teach and learn about life from a family of surfers named Yost, (Bruce Greenwood, Ed O’Neil, Rebecca De Mornay, Brian Van Holt and Grayson Fletcher) who live in Imperial Beach. A pretty cool cast of supporting actors includes Luis Guzman, Willie Garson, Matt Winson, Luke Perry, Emily Rose and Jennifer Grey. Kem Nunn of Tijuana Straits fame and former Surfer mag editor Steve Hawk are among the chief writers along with former “Deadwood” writers such as Ted Mann and Regina Corrado. Here is Milch talking to Newsweek’s Devin Gordon about the show,
To me, John [played by Austin Nichols] is a living, breathing character who embodies … an intermediate entity between us and the absolute, but he knows as little about himself as we do about ourselves. Somebody’s running him, in other words, and he doesn’t understand who. But he reveals more as it is in his power to reveal it … John has been sent for some purpose, at a specific time and at a specific place. He doesn’t understand it, and neither does the audience, but it does become clearer. In the sixth episode, John will begin to speak of his father and of 9/11. Everyone around him assumes that he’s talking about the 9/11 we know. But he’s actually talking about a 9/11 to come.
If you have HBO then you’ve already seen the JC trailer. If you haven’t here it is.
“John from Cincinnati” premieres on June 10 right after the season finale of “The Sopranos.”