'I'M JUST LIKE A TUMBLEWEED' ALIX LAMBERT OF 'CINCINNATI' NOT YOUR USUAL TV SCRIBE.

Byline: David Kronke

TV Writer

A career trajectory taking someone from performance art involving marrying and divorcing four times in six months to a harrowing documentary on Russia's prisons to writing for David Milch's HBO dramas sounds as otherworldly as anything on Milch's current series, "John From Cincinnati."

But that's precisely what Alix Lambert has done -- and much, much more.

"I'm just like a tumbleweed blowing down a highway, bumping into things," says Lambert, who wrote an episode of "Deadwood" in its final season and is a staff writer and associate producer on Milch's enigmatic new surfing drama, "John From Cincinnati." "I have all of this material I've collected and then have to figure out, 'What is it about?' It sounds New-Agey, but I just approach things as they appear to me."

From extra to producer

Lambert calls her life "nomadic," adding that the toughest thing about working on "Deadwood" was staying put in Los Angeles for a full year.

"I never have a plan -- David Milch says, 'Do the next indicated thing,' " she says. "That's always how I've worked."

"She's a very promising writer; she has a very cosmopolitan perspective," says Milch of Lambert, whom he met on "Deadwood's" set while she served as an extra, playing a prostitute (she also interviewed him once). He invited her into his company's internship program and then asked her to contribute a script.

"She wrote a wonderful, wonderful script," Milch says, adding, apropos of nothing, "My general thought about her is, she's a great American."

The art of marriage

Lambert's career is summarized in the book "Mastering the Melon: Projects by Alix Lambert" (Galeria Javier Lopez; $30), which includes the marriage licenses and divorce decrees and wedding photos of her whirlwind marrying spree -- Lambert may be the original runaway bride.

"When I was in Las Vegas once, I noticed that the place where you get a divorce was right next to a wedding chapel," she recalls. "I thought it would be funny to run back and forth all day, getting married and divorced."

That's not exactly legal, so instead, Lambert married three men and one woman (whom she married in Budapest) as quickly as the law would allow.

Other stunts include her creation of a fake band (complete with violent downfall) and a piece called "Male Pattern Baldness," in which Lambert shaved her head and managed a pretty good imitation of former Houston Rockets coach Jeff Van Gundy.

"I read in a news thing that he has, in fact, seen it and that he was not pleased at all," she reports. "It started out as goofing around. ... It was a very 3-in-the-morning kind of idea," admits Lambert, who watches basketball coaches storming the sidelines more closely than the game itself. "The way the coach paces is this whole language, sending signals out to the crowd and players. Coaches always seem to be in a constant anguished state of, 'Why am I me?' "

Bodies of knowledge

Soon, Lambert became a documentary filmmaker. Her "Mark of Cain," examining the Russian prison system through inmates sharing the stories of their ornate tattoos, was seen on ABC's "Nightline."

Lambert calls "Cain" "one of the greatest experiences in my life. ... Everybody was saying, 'What are you doing? You have unprecedented access to this prison system. This is the wrong way to go about it.' But I intuitively felt that's where the bigger story would be told. A lot of people go into projects with an idea where your answer will be. Why? You should wonder what your questions will be."

From there she made a surfing documentary -- "After you spend three months in a Russian prison, you're not exactly averse to going to New Zealand with nice-looking surfers," she says wryly -- which helped her land her second gig with Milch, on "John From Cincinnati."

"He gives opportunities to people who never wrote for television before," Lambert marvels. "For him, it's a lot more work; he had to train you. I admire his saying, 'OK, I think this person has potential to do something interesting.' "

Some critics and viewers have found Milch's new show mystifying in its melding of spiritualism, drug use, surfing culture and random plotting.

"I think that's intentional," Lambert says. "There's a mystery to the show that unfolds to the audience. Some people don't want to know what's going to happen in episode 10 when they see the first episode. ... That puts you there with the characters, who are also saying, 'What the hell is going on?' It makes some people uncomfortable, not being sure where it's going. But that's my whole life."

David Kronke, [phone]

[e-mail]

www.insidesocal.com/tv

JOHN FROM CINCINNATI

What: Enigmatic drama about a Southern California surfing family.

Where: HBO.

When: 9 p.m. Sundays.

CAPTION(S):

photo

Photo:

Alix Lambert, a writer and producer for "John From Cincinnati," got married four times in six months and once shaved her head to mimic male pattern baldness (and yes, both stunts were in the service of performance art).