[MUSIC PLAYING]
THOMAS MORTON: Hey, it's Thomas.
We are in an old shipping yard--
the tail end of Brooklyn.
It sort of looks like a set from Season 2 of The Wire, but
is actually the set for seasons "all"
of Boardwalk Empire.
We're going to meet the show's creator, and a main director,
main writer--
Terence Winter.
He came up writing spec scripts in early '90s
Hollywood for such classy fare as Sister, Sister and Xena:
Warrior Princess.
Then he became one of the main staff writers on The Sopranos
and created this thing with Martin Scorsese.
THOMAS MORTON: Hi.
TERENCE WINTER: Hi.
THOMAS MORTON: Thank you for taking us out here.
What's going on today?-- some sort of glue?
TERENCE WINTER: This is, I guess, just
touch up on the boardwalk.
These boards are actually weathered.
I mean, Atlantic City is actually right on the ocean,
so the whole place is weathered.
Actually, when we built this, even when it was brand-new, we
had to weather down the boardwalk to make it look like
it wasn't new, because it's supposed to be the real thing.
THOMAS MORTON: I wanted to ask you because it's something
that's always kind of both inspired and terrified me
about your history, is the switching to screenwriting
when you were almost 30, which is where I'm almost at.
Because you were in law, and you did a bunch of other stuff
before that.
And you're from Brooklyn.
Was the writing thing something you did on the side
and slowly simmered until you couldn't take it, or was there
some sort of snap moment where you kind of realized your--
TERENCE WINTER: It simmered.
I didn't do it on the side.
I hadn't written a script until I already decided to
quit everything and just go and fully commit to that.
My ambition as a kid was really relegated to, I wanted
to make money, and by the time I grew up a little bit, the
only two jobs that I was really focused on that I knew
made a lot of money, or at least I thought, were doctor
and lawyer.
So lawyer seemed feasible because I was a pretty good
bullshit artist.
And I thought, all right, well let me do that.
I didn't even consider whether or not I would like it.
It just seemed like an important job, and I wanted to
be important.
And have a diploma written in Latin.
So I did that, and I was really miserable.
But all the while, I was still a big fan of movies and TV.
And that ambition was sort of growing.
THOMAS MORTON: Now, did you ever actually learn
screenwriting, or was it in-built from years of
watching television and kind of picking up the rhythms?
TERENCE WINTER: Yeah.
It was mostly that-- mostly osmosis.
And I started out writing sitcoms.
I watched a gazillion hours of TV sitcoms as a kid.
There's a station--
WPIX--
in New York-- channel 11 that in the '60s and '70s just ran
Gilligan's Island, The Munsters, The Abbott and
Costello Show--
just over and over again.
So I just soaked all that in.
And I felt like I understood the rhythms of a sitcom, and
also the idea that a sitcom sitcom script is 30 minutes
long, 22 minutes long.
And I thought, OK, I can do this.
I got to L.A. I went to the Writers' Guild.
I got actual physical scripts.
I looked at how they were formatted--
I think, maybe read Syd Field's screenplay book and
just got the basics, and then I just plunged in.
I wrote a Doogie Howser spec script.
That was the first thing I ever wrote, because I had
heard about a guy back in Brooklyn.
His uncle knew a guy who was an
electrician on Doogie Howser.
I thought, oh, this is great.
I'll just write a Doogie Howser.
I'll get it to him, and I'll get a job on the show.
THOMAS MORTON: Slide it under the bathroom stall.
TERENCE WINTER: Yeah.
That, unfortunately, did not happen, but that was it.
And then I just kept doing it from there.
And I used to actually tape sitcoms and dissect them.
I'd stop and watch a scene.
I'd write down what happened in a scene.
I'd watch the next scene, and write down
what happened in it.
It's almost like when people say they want to grow up to be
an engineer, and they used to take a radio apart and put it
back together.
I used to do that with stories.
THOMAS MORTON: When you were writing for sitcoms, like
Sister, Sister, and Xena, and stuff, what were the other
writers like there?
I think a lot of people tend to kind of look down on that
stuff as pretty lowbrow, but it takes a level of
workmanship just to make things that good.
TERENCE WINTER: Early on in my career, I wasn't planning out
a career path.
If you offered me a job writing, I would say yes.
I mean, that was my standard.
I just was thrilled to be making a living at this, so I
was proud to have those jobs.
And, look, I mean, you take a show like Sister, Sister.
It's a show generally written for kids between the
ages of 9 and 13.
So, yeah, it's not going to be Seinfeld.
It's a different animal.
And there are a lot of people who worked on those types of
shows for a long time--
Full House, Family Matters.
That's a skill set.
And there's an audience for that, and there's a generation
of kids who will look back at that and go, ah, that was my
favorite show growing up.
I've actually gotten more attention from friends' kids
for that than I have for The Sopranos.
They go, oh, I used to love that show.
THOMAS MORTON: How did you catch David Chase's attention?
How did you start working on The Sopranos?
TERENCE WINTER: I got pilot the episode--
actually, the videotape.
I'm dating myself.
My agent sent me the tape of the pilot of The Sopranos.
And he said, I want you to watch this thing.
And I thought it was the greatest thing I'd ever seen.
And I'd grown up in Brooklyn--
sort of knew people like that in that world.
I actually worked in a butcher's shop that was owned,
basically, by Paul Castellano, who was the head of the
Gambino family at one point.
And I just sort of was familiar with that terrain.
So I called my agent and said, you've got to
get me on this show.
The second call was to a guy named Frank Renzulli, who
co-created the first show I ever worked on, called The
Great Defender.
Frank grew up in Boston in a similar environment.
I said, have you seen this thing?
He said, yeah, I'm actually meeting with this guy David
Chase on Friday.
I said, you've got to get me in there with you.
He said, I'll do my best.
As it turned out, Frank was the last guy David hired for
his season one staff, so the door got shut down.
So, basically, what happened is most of the first year
staff didn't survive.
Frank was one of the few people who did.
And when it came time for Season 2, finally, David said,
all right, who's this guy you've been telling me about?
And he says, it's my friend, Terry Winter.
I'm telling you, he can write the show.
Just give him a shot.
And David did, and he gave me an episode to write, and it
was basically an audition.
And the idea is if I did good, I would get hired,
and I guess I did.
THOMAS MORTON: So it was yet another spec script?
TERENCE WINTER: Yeah, basically.
THOMAS MORTON: So you've got a show you're making with Martin
Scorsese and Mick Jagger.
Can you tell us about that or is it hush-hush?
TERENCE WINTER: Yeah.
We're developing a show that we set in New York City in
1973, which was the year that disco, hip-hop, and punk rock
sort of all were born--
centers around the music business, if you haven't
guessed already.
Basically, an A and R guy sort of the middle of his career.
And it was a really interesting period, musically.
The city was at a low point, in terms of
economics and crime.
And, as is often the case, great art is born
of times like that.
And it was just an amazingly fertile time for music.
And I'm lucky enough to be working with Martin Scorsese
and Mick Jagger on this, which is just--
these are the days when I wake up and go, OK, I'm dreaming--
the first time you find yourself in a room with those
two guys, and think, how did I get here?
THOMAS MORTON: How was it going from being a writer for
like 20 years into making your own writing room.
And the whole show--
I'm sorry.
There's a lot more to it that that.
But how hard of a transition was that?
TERENCE WINTER: It wasn't really hard.
I had the great good fortune to learn at
the feet of the master.
David was just an incredible manager of the entire show,
not just the writers' room, but the whole thing--
and really great at putting a crew together, and really
mixing and matching people who really wanted to work together
and hang together, and we had a really fun, happy set.
THOMAS MORTON: Well, could we take a look around this set?
TERENCE WINTER: Yeah, sure.
Absolutely.
This is our Boardwalk set.
This is, I think, the size of a football field.
It took months and months to build.
It was designed by our original production
designer, Bob Shaw.
It's essentially a replica of the Atlantic City boardwalk,
circa 1920.
Most of the stories you see are based on the research of
stores that were very similar or actually existed in
Atlantic City.
The Fralinger's taffy store is actually still there.
And the incubator baby exhibit was actually something that
was in Atlantic City and Coney Island.
THOMAS MORTON: Worth paying $0.25 to see,
some underweight babies.
TERENCE WINTER: Yeah.
Really, Atlantic City was so cool because it means
everything from highbrow entertainment, like the best
of Broadway, to lowbrow stuff, like carnival stuff.
THOMAS MORTON: How much research did--
I know you're fastidious about it for the creation of the
show, but in its initial inception, how much background
had you done when you were bringing it to the table?
TERENCE WINTER: Oh, months and months of research.
There are so many different components to the show.
There's the World War I component with Jimmy Darmody.
-I've been kissing your ass since I was 12.
-And what about the last three years?
-I wanted to serve my country.
-And nearly get yourself killed.
TERENCE WINTER: There was the prohibition component, the
political component.
-This establishment is being shuttered for violation of the
Volstead Act.
-It's loaded, sir.
There is over 200 cases of brandy wine and champagne.
TERENCE WINTER: Pop culture--
there were so many different aspects of the show--
what was going on in the gangster world, what was going
on in Chicago.
-You guys gonna get into the liquor business, too?
THOMAS MORTON: Now, was there something before the book that
led you into it, or was that the primary source?
TERENCE WINTER: No.
The book--
I started there, and the book was given to me by HBO.
This wasn't something that was necessarily on my radar.
I didn't know what I was going to do next after The Sopranos.
HBO called me up in 2007 during the last season, and
they said we have a book called Boardwalk Empire.
It's basically the history of Atlantic City.
Why don't you read it and see if you think there's a TV
series in there.
And oh, by the way, Martin Scorcese's attached to this.
The signage has changed from season to season, too, because
they advertise different things on the boardwalk.
This set over here we're coming to is called the
Swiss-Knit Shop.
And we couldn't figure out what that was.
And what it is is that people would rent bathing suits, and
they were knit wool bathing suits.
So you wear a wool bathing suit, and then give it back,
and it was actually rented to somebody else.
THOMAS MORTON: I think I'd rather spend my
quarter on the preemies.
TERENCE WINTER: Actually, the boards on this are actually--
this is the level of detail--
I don't know if you noticed, like, some of them, like, form
an arrow facing that way, and some form an
arrow facing that way.
If you're moving either north or south on the boardwalk,
they basically tell you which way to walk.
THOMAS MORTON: Oh, so they're kind of like lanes.
TERENCE WINTER: Yeah, sort of.
If you're heading this way, stay this side.
And that way, the other side.
THOMAS MORTON: You mean that's how it is on the
Atlantic City boardwalk?
I've never heard of that.
TERENCE WINTER: Yeah, these are
absolutely the same pattern.
THOMAS MORTON: Psychological pressure to keep moving.
TERENCE WINTER: Yeah, exactly, and head
in the right direction.
One of the few things that we purposely changed was the fact
that our benches face toward the ocean.
In Atlantic City, they actually face toward the
boardwalk, so people would actually watch each other
promenade in their Easter bonnets and stuff.
But we figured, in modern day you'd want to look at the
ocean, even though we don't have an actual ocean.
We put it in later digitally.
This is the Ritz Carlton set where Nucky
lives and has his offices.
He actually lived in the real Ritz Carlton in Atlantic City,
but the real Ritz Carlton was one of the few really kind of
boring looking structures.
It didn't really have anything special about it, so we
cheated a little.
We took another hotel whose name I can't remember, and
said, well, we'll call that the Ritz Carlton because
nobody really knows, because it just looked more fancy--
so built it out, and, yeah, a little more, like, befitting a
guy like Nucky.
And the great thing about this set is you can come right in
and go all the way to the elevators.
And the elevators don't go up, but the doors open and close.
So you can take him right off the elevator, open it up, and
have people in here talking, drinking tea, playing the
piano, and right all the way straight out into the
boardwalk in one shot, and it just really
makes it come alive.
It's also, you remember this factored in pretty
heavily in Season 1--
the Belle Femme dress shop-- and this-- same thing--
you can walk right in there, and have people interacting,
and looking through the window.
And it just gives life that goes far
beyond your normal set.
And, just again, the level of detail from our production
design, it's just--
everything just looks so--
see, this chandelier is like--
yeah, it's amazing.
THOMAS MORTON: It's incredible.
Well, thank you, man.
This has been a real good time.
TERENCE WINTER: My pleasure, man.
Really nice meeting you and talking to you.