David Milch finished the Deadwood movie amid his battle with Alzheimer's

Vulture

The 74-year-old Milch began feeling the effects of Alzheimer's disease five years ago after he says he noticed more instances of “imperfect recall and tardy recall and short temper. I became more and more of an acquired taste." Milch had been working for years writing the Deadwood movie that will air on May 31. As a result, he had trouble writing, explaining to Vulture that there was “a generalized incertitude and a growing incapacity.” He adds: “As best I understand it, which is minimally, I have a deterioration in the organization of my brain. And it’s progressive. And in some ways discouraging. In more than some ways — in every way I can think of.” According to Vulture's Matt Zoller Seitz, "the film’s tightly focused nature might’ve made it feel like a final summation even without the extra-dramatic frame of Milch’s Alzheimer’s, which is insinuated in fleeting exchanges — as when Brad Dourif’s Doc Cochran asks Al what day it is and he mistakenly says Tuesday when it’s Friday. The tale is suffused with a melancholy acceptance of the passage of time and the certainty of aging and death."