Gangster's Paradise

A prohibition-era drama set in Atlantic City, which stars Steve Buscemi, is written by Terence Winter of The Sopranos fame, has Martin Scorsese as its Executive Producer and cast members who’ve variously starred in Trainspotting, Harry Potter, No Country For Old Men, Gangs Of New York, Macheté, The Bad Lieutenant and Deception.

It sounds too good to be true, but that’s precisely what you’ll be able to feast on in February when the wonderful Boardwalk Empire debuts here on Sky Atlantic, a new entertainment channel that’ll cherry pick from HBO, AMC and other American cable networks.
The subject of some seriously rave Stateside reviews – “The Academy should save itself a little time and roll a big truck full of Emmy statuettes to the Boardwalk Empire studios right now” gushed Salon.com – it’s the perfect vehicle for Buscemi who plays Enoch “Nucky” Thompson, the semi-fictional and wholly crooked city treasurer who has a weakness for young Irish widows.
Terence Winter says that Buscemi’s casting was a “no-brainer” as was his own agreeing to script the HBO 13-parter.
“Steve’s one of the most easy-going, regular guys I’ve ever met,” reflects the former lawyer who’s holed up for the day in Manhattan’s boutique Crosby Street Hotel. “There’s no attitude or bullshit – he’s always prepared and has a great sense of humour, which has a trickle down effect on the rest of the cast in terms of behaviour. I wanted to replicate the happy set we had on The Sopranos. If it’s a film you think, ‘Well, I only have to get through the next sixty days with this son of a bitch!’ but with a TV series you could be stuck with them for the next eight years. You really want to know what someone’s like in terms of their work ethic and personality before casting them, and Steve is great.
“As for my own involvement,” Winter reflects, “we were just coming to the end of The Sopranos when HBO rang up and said, ‘We have this book we want you to read and see if there’s a TV series in there.’ It turned out to be Boardwalk Empire, which is essentially the history of Atlantic City from the 1800s to the modern-day. After they casually threw in: ‘Oh yeah, Martin Scorsese is attached to this’, I went home to my wife and said, ‘This is mine to screw up!’ The components were all there, I just had to put them together.”
Was Nucky Thompson’s character written specifically with Steve Buscemi in mind?
“No, I didn’t know who was going to be the guy. The truth of it is if I were to cast somebody who looked and felt like the real Nucky, the most logical choice would have been James Gandolfini because he’s this big, burly, balding kind of guy. Obviously that wasn’t going to happen, so we did some thinking outside the box. I’m pretty sure it was me who came up with Steve, and after living with the idea for a couple of days Marty was like, ‘That’s our man!’”
Marty of course being Martin Scorsese, the multiple Oscar and Golden Globe Award-winner whose 1976 clean-up-the-streets classic, Taxi Driver, is Winter’s all-time favourite film.
“My friend and I had this vague notion of wanting to be in showbusiness but had no idea how to go about it, so we joined this theatre group in Brooklyn that was part of the Catholic school I’d gone to. We were walking to the weekly rehearsal, which we hated, when my friend looked at me and said: ‘You know what, fuck it, let’s go to the movies!’ The movie happened to be Taxi Driver and it changed my life. I saw it about 15 times that summer and it really was the thing that got me thinking about film and cinema.”
While not a man who normally gets starstruck, Terry admits that he was a bundle of nerves rocking up to Scorsese’s mansion for their first plot development meeting.
“I was like the girl going to the prom,” he laughs. “What was I going to wear? Should I take a gift? I was told by somebody at HBO that it was for dinner at 9.30pm, which I thought was kinda late but he’s known to be a night owl so I agonised over what bottle of wine to bring. I got there on the stroke of half-past, gave him the wine and then felt awkward as hell as I realised there wasn’t any dinner. I was like: ‘Oh my God, Martin Scorsese thinks I bring wine to all my business meetings!’ Anyway, I managed to convince him I don’t have a drink problem and we started talking about the show.”
Did he have any geeky questions that he just had to ask Martin Scorsese about his films?
“I did,” Winter nods. “I apologised in advance and said, ‘I’m not gonna do this every time we meet, but a couple of things about Raging Bull…’ I’ve got to spend hours and hours with Marty and ask him everything I’ve ever wanted to know about Raging Bull, Goodfellas, Taxi Driver, After Hours. I just literally went through all of his films. He was incredibly gracious and funny and happy to talk about it.”
It’s wonderful to see somebody who’s been in the business for half-a-century, has more money in the bank than even Manchester City could spend and yet still gets such a buzz from his work.
“Absolutely, he’s the biggest movie nut you can imagine. Literally 24 hours a day, that’s his life. It’s incredible the wealth of knowledge he has – not only about cinema but everything. He can talk intelligently about any topic and is bubbling over with excitement – it’s infectious. There were nights on the set at 3am where he was the only person awake enough to be running around and laughing and just so full of energy. It was really something to watch.”
The Irish widow we referred to earlier is played by Kelly Macdonald, an actress Terry’s had on his radar since the 1990s.
“I first noticed her in Trainspotting and then followed her career through HBO’s The Girl In The Café, No Country For Old Men and everything else she’s done,” Terence enthuses. “Our casting director, Ellen Louis, said: ‘What about Kelly Macdonald?’ and Marty and me simultaneously went, ‘Yes, if she wants it it’s a done deal.’
“Being the grandchild of Irish and Scottish immigrants to this country myself, I’ve heard the ‘No Dogs, No Blacks, No Irish’ stories and wanted to get that side of things absolutely right.”
While Nucky Thompson is an exaggerated version of real life Atlantic City politician-cum-mobster Nucky Johnson, Boardwalk Empire’s portrayal of the young Alphonse Gabriel Capone sticks studiously to the history books. The future King of Chicago is played by Stephen Graham, a Merseyside actor best known on this side of the pond for his This Is England and This Is England ’86 portrayal of screw-loose skinhead Combo.
“Stephen had worked with Marty on Gangs Of New York, so he was another we both agreed on straight away. He was just so electric – he’s like a stick of dynamite ready to go off. The first day on set when Stephen was in full make-up with his hair cut, I didn’t recognise him. He was Al Capone! I couldn’t believe it – he was standing 15 feet away from me with a cigar in his mouth and wearing a suit and I couldn’t believe it was Stephen.”
It’s interesting that for all his faults – murder, torture and embezzlement being the most heinous – Nucky takes an extremely dim view of his underlings being racist towards a black bootlegger.
“No, he’s an equal opportunity criminal,” Winter reflects. “If you can help him make money he doesn’t care where you’re from. He’s a realist too. He knows that to run a city and get things done you have to work with everybody. It translates into a really likable quality.”
Terence Winter brought a different type of gangsta to life in 2005 when he wrote the screenplay for the Jim Sheridan-directed 50 Cent vehicle, Get Rich Or Die Tryin’. Was that fun to make?
“It was and the person who was ultimately responsible for it happening was Bono. When the guy whose label U2 were signed to, Jimmy Iovine, told him he was doing a film about Fiddy, Bono said, ‘You gotta get Jim Sheridan!’ I didn’t know that until about a year after the fact when Bono told me the story in Dublin.”
Who’s the person with the exquisite musical taste that chose The Brian Jonestown Massacre’s ‘Straight Up And Down’ as the Boardwalk Empire theme music?
“Steve Turner, who’s the head of our post-production department, originally selected it for a promo piece we were doing for the show and I liked it so much I requisitioned it for the opening credits!
“I didn’t want to use what you’d expect for a 1920s show because there was already lots of period music in it,” he continues. “I’ve been a fan of The Brian Jonestown Massacre for years – I think Dig!’s even better than Spinal Tap – so it was really great being able to use them.”
Hopefully the San Franciscan outfit will make more money out of it than Alabama 3 did when ‘Woke Up This Morning’ was chosen to accompany Tony Soprano on his drive through the New Jersey Turnpike.
“What do you mean?”
They sold all of their publishing rights a couple of months before HBO came a-calling for sixty grand.
“God, I never realised that. Wow, that sucks.”
The crime rate famously plummeted in New Jersey whenever The Sopranos was on. Has Boardwalk Empire had the same effect on crime in Atlantic City?
“That’s an excellent question!” Winter chuckles. “I’ll have to check with people down there. I’m actually going to Atlantic City tomorrow to watch a fight, so if I come out without getting mugged I’ll consider that a good sign!”