By Heather Ziegenbein, Black Hills Pioneer
February 16, 2005
DEADWOOD - Taking our little town of Deadwood and placing it in front of millions of viewers every Sunday night has changed a lot for some who live and work here.
One particular group of individuals will remember this experience and the relationships they have made because of it. Adams Museum director Mary Kopco and researcher Jerry Bryant, who have been involved with the HBO series since its birth, and Dr. Dave Wolff, a professor of Black Hills history at Black Hills State University, all were interviewed for a documentary produced by KiKim Media in August that appears on the series DVD released in February.
"About three years ago someone from David Milch's office called and said they were doing preliminary research for a possible series on Deadwood that they were going to pitch to HBO," Kopco said.
Since that afternoon, when HBO calls the Adam's Museum, they drop everything. It could be the production artist, the costume designer or a writer asking a question. Everything from the set design, the make-up or the hair styles is questioned.
"It is kind of neat to see that what you are doing is actually showing up on television," Kopco said.
KiKim media visited the Black Hills both in June and August of this year. For a week and a half, Alex Beckstad, an associate producer of "The Real Deadwood," from Menlo Park, Calif., cruised the Hills. His tour guide was Bryant, a resident archaeologist and research curator for the Adam's Museum. The man with gray hair and a wild beard was the perfect tour guide. He looks Deadwood, talks Deadwood and knows his history like no other resident here.
"It was different being in a small town, but working with the Adams Museum was the best part.
We spent days just tooling around with Jerry and picking his brain on absolutely everything he knew about Deadwood," Beckstad said. "The most interesting part for me was the fact that Deadwood has changed, but it hasn't changed. There is a real 'Live and let live' attitude with the people there."
This documentary touches on the Native American history of the Black Hills, the regular use of extreme profanity, the misuse of women and the fact that Deadwood wasn't even a part of the United States at the time.
In 1874 when Gen. George A. Custer traveled into the Black Hills, he started a wave of pioneers. There was an economic depression and gold seemed to be the only quick fix. In 1876, the last big gold rush in America was on. By June, Deadwood had grown to more than 10,000 people. Main Street was formed by prospective businessmen searching for a fortune of their own. Outlaws, gun slingers and prostitutes littered the roads and they weren't even supposed to be there. But because Deadwood was not a state at that time, there was no legal basis to convict anyone.
"There is a deep veneer and it's a deep veneer of extreme scholarship. But, you must never forget that this is a piece of fiction. The real history is that someone only got shot or stabbed in the Gem Theater once a week for at least a year," Bryant said.
After these local historians had seen "The Real Deadwood," they were proud of how it turned out.
KiKim Media is an award winning producer of documentaries and worked hard to get the information correct.
"They definitely did their research and they asked such great questions. Because of this experience we have become better historians. I mean, I knew things about Bill Hickok but now I have a deeper sense of this time in history," Kopco said. "It (the documentary) is a well-crafted piece of art."
©The Black Hills Pioneer, Newspapers, South Dakota, SD 2005
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