by Paul Parcellin
Terence Winter does not relish spilling blood, but he’s not afraid to kill, either. As a writer for The Sopranos, and now executive producer and showrunner of HBO’s Boardwalk Empire, he has sent many to an untimely grave. The latter show, a sprawling drama starring Steve Buscemi, whose backdrop is the violence and chicanery of Prohibition-era bootleggers in Atlantic City, N.J., began its fourth season September 8.
Terence Winter’s Boardwalk Empire
As viewers of the first three seasons of Boardwalk Empire can attest, running illegal whiskey in the 1920s produced a body count similar to that of current-day drug lords and their minions. And it’s not just the show’s minor players who get hit. Some of the series’ mainstay characters have suddenly found themselves on the wrong end of a Smith and Wesson. For Winter, the choice of whether or not to have a character clipped can be an agonizing decision. One senses it’s a bit like the struggle a real-life crime boss might go through in deciding the fate of a heretofore golden boy who has betrayed his elder.
It’s difficult because there are big characters on the show who you love to write for, says Winter, and a lot of times they’re audience favorites. “On a personal level, these are people you enjoy working with. Nobody wants to lose their job, and certainly you don’t want to have to tell someone they’re losing their job.” To that end, a pact was made among the writers of The Sopranos. They all promised each other they wouldn’t keep a character alive because they liked the actor. “Otherwise, you’d never kill anybody,” he says. The rule is, if it serves the story, then that’s what needs to be done. (Spoiler Alert) The most difficult decision, he says, was killing off Michael Pitt’s character, Jimmy Darmody, who Winter says is a great addition to the cast and a great guy across the board. “But the more I wrestled with it, I just kept coming back to (the notion) that this just has to happen, and that this is the best thing for the series.” It was also, perhaps, the series’ most shocking moment. “For a storyteller, that’s the most unexpected thing to do, and that’s exactly what I strive for every week—to surprise people.” As numerous screen hit men have said, it’s strictly business—nothing personal.
Michael Pitt as James Darmody in Boardwalk Empire
Winter made the transition from writing for relatively small sitcom casts to producing scripts for the sprawling Sopranos ensemble cast without difficulty. He says, far from being problematic, he likes writing for an ensemble better than writing for a smaller cast. “There was always somewhere else to go. There were always new scenes to write that took you into a completely different environment or a different headspace.” Writing scenes for Uncle Junior was vastly different from writing for Christopher, or Tony’s therapy sessions, or Tony’s kids, A.J. and Meadow. “It was about always getting to stretch new muscles, and it was actually very freeing in many ways because there was always something new to be thinking about, always a different character to inhabit.”
When he was hired at the start of the second season of The Sopranos, a marked change came about in the kind of dialog he was writing. He went from the world of sitcom-cute to New Jersey wise guy raw. Previously, he wrote for shows such as The Cosby Mysteries, Flipper, Sister, Sister, and Charlie Grace. “I couldn’t believe some of the things that were appearing on my computer screen,” he said. “I thought, ‘Can I actually hand this in?’ Much of the content, by Winter’s description, was really dark, or really violent, or non sequitur dialog. “But that’s how people talk. It’s not very logical. It doesn’t really flow perfectly like network dialog usually does, and that’s what it was like on The Sopranos.”
Characters from David Chase’s The Sopranos
“What I loved about these characters was that they would lie to each other. People were sometimes confused—they’d say, wait a minute, in one scene Tony says this, and then he says the complete opposite in the next scene. And David (Chase) would say, yeah, he’s lying. Oh, right, people in real life lie to each other all the time. All of these characters lie to each other. So, it took me a while to get used to writing that freely because, again, you’re used to writing network television, and here you can write things that are just so different.”
Nelson Johnson’s book Boardwalk Empire
His current series was inspired by the book Boardwalk Empire by Nelson Johnson. One of the book’s chapters, dealing with corrupt Atlantic City politician Enoch “Nucky” Johnson caught Winter’s eye. “HBO had given me the book, which is essentially a history of Atlantic City. And they said, why don’t you take a look and see if there’s a TV series in here. The chapter that I landed on was all about the Prohibition Era, and really about this guy, Nucky Johnson, who, when I read about him, I said, that’s a TV series.” Johnson was treasurer of Atlantic City, and ran the municipality by the sea as his personal fiefdom. “Suddenly, you get this guy who is a corrupt politician to begin with, veering toward low-level criminal activity. Alcohol becomes illegal, and it so happens this guy runs a town that’s right on the Atlantic Ocean. So, suddenly overnight he’s best friends with every gangster in the country, and the story takes off from there.”
According to Winter, using real historic characters, as does Boardwalk Empire, has its pros and cons. Aside from Nucky, a host of gangsters are portrayed in the show, including Al Capone, Lucky Luciano, Meyer Lansky and Arnold Rothstein. “In some ways it’s easier because you’ve already got a colorful character who already exists. I’d be hard-pressed to come up with somebody as colorful as Al Capone.” The challenging part is incorporating the factual story of Al Capone into a fictional script. You’re married to the real story of Al Capone, and that might not be convenient at some point. “I would love to have Al Capone go to Paris, for example. But I’d have to fight with myself because that never happened. Where it’s challenging, and fun, is to have them interact with your fictional characters.” One of the reasons Winter changed Nucky Johnson’s name to Nucky Thompson was to avoid being stuck with the facts of the real Nucky’s life. The Nucky of TV lives a decidedly more dramatic life than did the real McCoy. As the series progresses, pressures from outside and from within Nucky’s organization mount to volcanic proportions, and the corrupt politician crosses the line from being a hands-off criminal mastermind to a hands-on cold-blooded killer. “I’m pretty sure the real Nucky never killed anybody, and I didn’t want to say he did. So I said, all right, if I fictionalize the real guy, he’s clearly based on the real Nucky but he’s not the real Nucky. So I can have my Nucky do anything I want, while still staying true to the character.”
Stephen Graham as Al Capone and Michael Pitt as James Darmody in Boardwalk Empire
Using well-known historic figures also brings up a problem for the show’s writers when it comes to putting those characters in sufficient jeopardy to elevate the story’s drama. If the viewer knows, for instance, that Al Capone didn’t die within the timeframe the story is taking place, how does the writer amp up the tension in those characters’ scenes? Winter says that’s an issue producers and writers have been dealing with over the course of the show. “Most people know he (Al Capone) didn’t die until the 1940s,” he says. “Less so with someone like Arnold Rothstein, for example. People aren’t really sure of him, and they’re not entirely sure of Lucky Luciano.” Winter maintains that writers must find the drama and jeopardy somewhere else other than the threat of death. “You don’t want to be the guy standing next to Al Capone because if guns come out and you’re with Al Capone, you know he isn’t getting it, but you very well might. It’s like what Star Trek used to call the red shirts. You see them in a red shirt and you know they’re doomed.”
In Boardwalk Empire, bouts of bloodletting can transpire when least expected. Not only do the “red shirts” fall victim to hails of bullets, but on notable occasions major characters are felled, often in shocking and unexpected circumstances. Yet, as dramatic and often violent as each season becomes, it’s necessary to somehow ramp up the danger and tension quotients each season over the last. “That’s the essence of drama and conflict—to always make sure that there is tension, whether that tension comes in the form of violence or emotion or anything else,” says Winter. “As you get deeper into any series it’s more of a juggling act. The trick is to stay one step ahead of the audience.” Setting up a predictable story line – Nucky has an enemy, it gets scary and then he vanquishes his enemy—is formulaic and dull. The audience starts to see the wheels turning and they feel they know what’s going to happen. “Your job as a storyteller is to keep the audience off balance. That’s really the trick, and it becomes harder and harder to pull off the longer you’re on the air.”
Steve Buscemi as Enoch ‘Nucky’ Thompson in Boardwalk Empire
Crafting a season’s storyline begins with a good deal of thought in between seasons about where he wants to start next season, and in what timeframe the story will begin—how much time has elapsed between the last episode of the past season and the first episode of the new one. Once that is determined, Winter says he tries to imagine what the characters’ mindsets might be. He comes to the writers meeting with a pretty broad-stroke idea of where he wants the season to go, who the new characters will be and what the main characters’ arcs will be. “To make the analogy, it’s like a road map… we’re going to drive from New York, we’re going to end up in California, and along the way we’re going to stop in Chicago, St. Louis and Vegas, those things being various story moments throughout the year. Once we have that for every major character, we plunge in and say, episode one, where, literally, do we start?” Writers must decide what will be the inciting incident that is going to take them through the season and start introducing new characters. “It’s a lot of sitting around a table and eating cookies and potato chips, and a lot of what ifs. What if this, what if that, for hours on end for weeks on end until we’ve got an outline.” Once a couple of outlines are established, writers go off and start working on their scripts. Usually, by the time production starts four or five scripts are complete, and the rest of the season goes on from there.
Writing a period drama is only slightly more complex than scripting one set in the current day, says Winter. While great attention is focused on providing a historically accurate portrait of the times, the writers presume that the audience is well versed in the mores and technology of the era in which the story takes place. “I assume the people who are watching the show are intelligent,” he says. “I assume they’re interested in history, I assume they’re not balancing their checkbook while they’re watching, and that they’re paying attention.” He concedes that a lot of that is a big assumption because the show is complicated. There’s a huge cast and a lot of action that can take place in New York or Chicago, as well as in Atlantic City. Despite the complex twists and turns that the story sometimes takes, the writers avoid spoon-feeding the story to the audience, as network television often does, with a lot of heavy-handed exposition. However, if it’s something particularly tricky, Winter says he tries to take the time to make sure all the information is there. If it’s a particular historical event that may be obscure, he takes greater pains to spell it out. “The fun thing, and what’s great about it for me, is that a lot of people learn about things (from watching the show), and then they go off and research them on their own.” For example, last year a storyline involved women’s reproductive rights. The show may have opened up a lot of people’s eyes to some surprising facts. At one time, about a century ago, it was illegal to possess birth control in this country. “Even I was shocked,” says Winter. A lot of people watching the show were also surprised, and they further researched and wrote about the topic. “It’s almost like an interactive component of the show, involving people with history.”
Story ideas, such as women’s reproductive rights, come from the writers, who pitch ideas to Winter. He says he looks for pitches that give him a fresh idea, or a new perspective on an idea he is turning over in his mind.
Boardwalk Empire Executive Producer Martin Scorsese in 2010
Occasionally, Winter gets story input from Martin Scorsese, who is an executive producer on the show, and who also directed Boardwalk Empire’s pilot episode, an event that Winter calls a dream come true. “He’s really remarkable, and terrific in terms of the working relationship, just incredibly easy to work with, and collaborative and funny, and brilliant, obviously. And he’s really involved.” Winter marvels at how on top of things the famed director is. He reads every script and every script revision, much the way Winter does with HBO and the show’s writers. “I will have a long conversation with him where I’ll say, this is what I’m envisioning for the season. And he’ll give me some ideas, or give me some feedback on that. Then once we start the actual writing process, he’ll read the scripts, and again, the revision pages, and he’ll weigh in on casting.
“During the course of the year we generally talk about once a week about how everything is going. But his capacity to keep this massive story straight in his head while also doing movies, documentaries, and without being in the writer’s room with us, is really amazing. I’ll mention a minor point in a story, and a month later he’ll ask me about it. I have to go back and read my own notes because I can’t keep it straight half the time. He’s got such a natural ability to hear a story, understand it, and remember the way it’s structured, and even more so visually.
“I changed one shot in one episode and I didn’t tell him, and he noticed it. You cannot get anything by him visually—at all—even down to the color of somebody’s socks. He’s really, really on it… and that’s no surprise. He’s Martin Scorsese.”
