David Milch ("NYPD Blue," "Deadwood"), Shane Black (Lethal Weapon, Kiss Kiss, Bang Bang) and Sydney Pollack (Tootsie, Three Days of the Condor) gathered Saturday for the Creating Classic Characters panel at the Austin Film Festival. The conversation quickly became a completely engaging discussion of the craft of writing, managing expectations of the studios, Dostoevsky and much more.

Black was his general convivial and vulnerable self, while the affable Pollack spoke with great humility about his legendary career. As for Milch, at first, not knowing who he was, we thought with his long-winded first answer referencing Dostoevsky, Hemingway and Hawthorne, that he might be some pretentious jackass. Boy were we wrong! Milch displayed his uncanny analytic mind in discussing his work and the art of writing. His performance left us flabbergasted and wanting more, kind of like that amazing professor whose classes you never missed, even if you passed out in your contacts and had scratch your cornea the night before. We have not watched "Deadwood" before, but after seeing a glimpse into the mind of this genius, we think we may have to head over to our HBO-having friend's house to check it out.

Pictures and lots o' quotes after the jump.

Some pearls from the panel:

• Pollack on structure: "Since I can't write...I start looking for a craft, some sort of matrix to make it follow."


• Black on Lethal Weapon and the writer's job: "Finding the spine of it was the hard thing, and I think we did finally. When a director like Sydney Pollack says he is trying to find the spine, he's being nice. (Writers,) find the fucking spine. It sort of is your job.


• Milch on creative process: "The distinctions between being a writer...being a director...are false distinctions. There is an interpenetration of roles that one hopes is built on trust.


• Milch, trying to untangle his microphone chord: "I always wanted to do a show, Jews confront ordinary domestic problems, like untangling a chord.


• Milch on order: "Order for me, of any kind, I associate with taking a beating. To neutralize it, I don't think consciously. Any instrument of order, I want to destroy. I have interns with me at all times so I don't kill the machine.


• Pollack on rehearsal: "I think something marvelous happens when the tree doesn't have roots that go to deep into the ground.


• Pollack on the studios: "I don't think the studios want the job that I have. I think they're afraid of the it. They talk a big game, but I think they want something where they can say, Woo, I don't have to do anything."


• Milch in part paraphrasing his friend Hubert Selby Jr.: "There are only two motivations: fear and faith. The studio smells which moves the artist."


• Milch on influences: "Everything you write is a conversation with everything you've ever read."


• Milch on "Deadwood:" "The question of the language of "Deadwood" has been an ongoing pain in my genitals."


• Black on writing: "A lot of scripts I read don't seem to be about anything.

Photos taken by Eric Uhlir.