Speaker 1: Hello, and good day. This, of course, is ed on
Speaker 1: this lovely morning. I'm going to bring you back to
Speaker 1: one of our favorite bonus episodes from season three of
Speaker 1: SNAFU Formula six. I had the incredible pleasure of sitting
Speaker 1: down with Terrence Winter, the creator, writer, and executive producer
Speaker 1: of the amazing and epic TV show Boardwalk Empire. Terry
Speaker 1: did a ton of research on the Prohibition era, so
Speaker 1: we got to actually compare notes and even teach each
Speaker 1: other a thing or two about those good old bootleg
Speaker 1: and days. We also talked about our very different entries
Speaker 1: into Hollywood, and Terry's story is insane. He essentially conned
Speaker 1: his way into showbiz. It's a wild story. He's also
Speaker 1: the brilliant mind behind the show Tulsa King and the
Speaker 1: great Corsese movie The Wolf of Wall Street. It was
Speaker 1: an absolute honor and delight to connect with Terry. I
Speaker 1: loved his story, his grit, and his humor, and I
Speaker 1: think you will too. So keep listening and we'll be
Speaker 1: back with your regularly scheduled programming next week. Hey there,
Speaker 1: I'm Ed Helms and this is SNAFU Season three, Formula six.
Speaker 1: How prohibitions War on Alcohol went so off the rails
Speaker 1: the government wound up poisoning its own people. Welcome to
Speaker 1: another bonus episode. You may recall in these bonus episodes,
Speaker 1: I bring in a guest and just have a great interview. So,
Speaker 1: after spending this season unraveling prohibition, I wanted to talk
Speaker 1: to someone who knows this era inside and out, someone
Speaker 1: who could give us a whole new layer of historical context,
Speaker 1: color and detail. So who better than the guy who
Speaker 1: actually built it, or at least rebuilt it on TV
Speaker 1: inter Terence Winter, the brilliant creator of HBO's Boardwalk Empire.
Speaker 1: He joins me for a fascinating deep dive into prohibitions, gangsters,
Speaker 1: corrupt officials, and of course it's completely bonkers policies. We
Speaker 1: talk about his unlikely journey from Brooklyn to Hollywood, including
Speaker 1: the wild story of how he invented a fake talent
Speaker 1: agency to get his foot in the door, and how
Speaker 1: he stumbled upon the real life Nukie Johnson, the inspiration
Speaker 1: for his lead character, Nukie Thompson. I also asked him
Speaker 1: whether Formula six was ever on his radar and dig
Speaker 1: into some of the not entirely coincidental parallels between his
Speaker 1: fictionalized characters and the real people we covered this season,
Speaker 1: and honestly, just as a fellow showbiz guy, I had
Speaker 1: a blast nerding out with him, because who doesn't love
Speaker 1: a peak behind.
Speaker 2: The curtain of a great TV show.
Speaker 1: So settle in, grab a stiff drink pre non poisoned,
Speaker 1: and enjoy my conversation with Terrence Winter.
Speaker 2: Hey, I'm so good to meet you man too. It's
Speaker 2: so so great to meet you. Honestly, I didn't know
Speaker 2: you were a history guy.
Speaker 1: You know, there's such a cool overlap of this season
Speaker 1: of snaff Who, which is all about prohibition, And we'll
Speaker 1: get into some of the really surprising things that I
Speaker 1: learned and research for this season that might even be
Speaker 1: surprising to you as an expert on prohibition because of
Speaker 1: your incredible series Boardwalk Empire. But let's start a little
Speaker 1: more broadly so our listeners can get to know you
Speaker 1: a little bit better. Where are you from originally? What
Speaker 1: was your sort of path to Hollywood writer?
Speaker 3: I grew up in Marine Park, Brooklyn, which is an
Speaker 3: area that I usually have to describe by its proximity
Speaker 3: to other neighborhoods in Brooklyn that people have heard of.
Speaker 3: You may have heard of sheeps at Bay, which actually
Speaker 3: was an integral neighborhood in terms of prohibition because boats
Speaker 3: used to come right in there, and that's kind of
Speaker 3: your Coney Island, so you know, basically blue collar family,
Speaker 3: blue calm neighborhood. I actually started to be an auto
Speaker 3: mechanic in high school and that didn't stick. I took
Speaker 3: a detour into the Delhi business, eventually figured out that
Speaker 3: they needed to go to college. Eventually went to law school,
Speaker 3: practiced law for two years, hated it.
Speaker 2: And then my deep.
Speaker 3: Dark secret was I had always wanted to be a
Speaker 3: sitcom writer, which was something that you know on the
Speaker 3: East Coast in the seventies, you dare not tell your
Speaker 3: friends yes that you wanted to go to Hollywood and
Speaker 3: be anything.
Speaker 1: I had a similar thing in growing up in Georgia.
Speaker 1: I harbored these deep aspirations from a very young age.
Speaker 2: But I knew I could never tell anyone, Yeah were
Speaker 2: your trass kicks.
Speaker 1: Yeah, either get beat up or crazy, or they would
Speaker 1: crush your dreams.
Speaker 2: Absolutely, which is what friends are. Four. Can I curse
Speaker 2: on this hell? Yes? Or okay? Because it's very difficult
Speaker 2: for me to talk with that.
Speaker 3: I do all the record for the most uses of
Speaker 3: the word fuck in a movie Wolf of Wall Street.
Speaker 2: Which we're very proud of.
Speaker 3: So it's very hard for me to have a conversation,
Speaker 3: so that'll slip out occasionally. Anyway, once I came out
Speaker 3: of the closet as a writer, I just said, I'm.
Speaker 2: Moving to la and I'm going to figure this out.
Speaker 3: I showed up here in nineteen ninety one and I
Speaker 3: just kind of plunged in and I started out, you know,
Speaker 3: to tempting to be a sitcom writer, and then eventually
Speaker 3: just morphed into drama that kind of had comedy in it.
Speaker 3: So I just got incredibly lucky and still lucky to
Speaker 3: be doing that kind of stuff.
Speaker 1: So growing up in Brooklyn and then heading off to
Speaker 1: law school, did you then become a lawyer in Brooklyn?
Speaker 3: Did you say I was a lawyer in Manhattan. You know,
Speaker 3: my only ambition as a kid was I wanted to
Speaker 3: be rich, because we were not, and the only two
Speaker 3: jobs I knew that could make you rich were doctor
Speaker 3: and lawyer. The doctor was out, and I remember there
Speaker 3: was a quote by Benjamin Franklin and he said, pour
Speaker 3: thy person into thy head, and no man can take
Speaker 3: it from you, you know, get an education.
Speaker 2: Basically, Yeah, that's Peter Still. I like that. Yeah, I
Speaker 2: love that.
Speaker 3: So it took creative writing, and eventually I stumbled onto journalism.
Speaker 3: And you know again, you know, my ambition was to
Speaker 3: make money. That was what a good job was. The
Speaker 3: concept of liking your job was something you know, you know,
Speaker 3: you just want to make money.
Speaker 2: So lawyer was the thing. So I had.
Speaker 3: Another professor journalism, profession named Jerry Schwartz, who was a
Speaker 3: managing editor at the Associated Press, and I asked him
Speaker 3: to write a recommendation for law school and he did.
Speaker 3: He wrote me this glowing recommendation. He gave it to
Speaker 3: me in a Manila envelope and he said there's another
Speaker 3: letter in there for you personally, and that letter said,
Speaker 3: please don't go to law school, please be a writer.
Speaker 3: And I was like, this is the second adult who's
Speaker 3: told me I am a good writer.
Speaker 2: A good thing. He didn't submit that letter in the
Speaker 2: law school I should. I might have saved me a
Speaker 2: lot of time.
Speaker 3: Meanwhile, all my friends who became auto mechanics were making
Speaker 3: a fortune. They all thought I was the biggest idiot
Speaker 3: in the world. Joe College, you know I'm already now
Speaker 3: in the whole student loan wise from m YU, and
Speaker 3: I said, all right, there's only one way forward, and
Speaker 3: that's the law school. So I did that when at night,
Speaker 3: worked for Merrill Lynch during the day as the legal
Speaker 3: assistant to one of the lawyers who counseled the trading people,
Speaker 3: and graduated, got a job at a big Manhattan law firm,
Speaker 3: passed the New York Bar, the Connecticut Bar, and my
Speaker 3: first week there I realized I had made a grave,
Speaker 3: grave error. I hated it. I didn't I just couldn't
Speaker 3: give a shit about any of it. Within about a
Speaker 3: week and a half, I was sneaking out during the
Speaker 3: day going to movies, bookstores. I just two years in.
Speaker 3: I couldn't get out of bed in the morning. I
Speaker 3: just didn't go there. So it was really, you know,
Speaker 3: it was you really were You're making good money there?
Speaker 2: Yeah? Yeah, it was great. I had everything I thought
Speaker 2: what I wanted.
Speaker 3: I had an assistant, I had an office, I had
Speaker 3: a diploma written in Latin. I was like, holy shit,
Speaker 3: look at me, I'm a lawyer, and was that new?
Speaker 2: And did you go to NYU law school? Also?
Speaker 3: Now I went to Saint John's Law School, which is
Speaker 3: the Harvard of Queen's Sure, and I was in the
Speaker 3: top five percent of the bottom third of my class,
Speaker 3: so I was very proud of that. Again, it was
Speaker 3: like I wasn't even thinking in terms of are you happy?
Speaker 3: And you know, it was I was like twenty nine
Speaker 3: at this point, and I had that moment like, okay,
Speaker 3: you were going to either jump out a window in
Speaker 3: ten years from the depression of working somewhere you just
Speaker 3: don't like and you'll never be good at this because
Speaker 3: you don't like it.
Speaker 2: What do you want to do when you wake up
Speaker 2: in the morning.
Speaker 3: And I was like, all right, well, maybe i'd be
Speaker 3: a salesman, you know, because I liked to bullshit.
Speaker 2: And I was like, all right.
Speaker 3: Then there's a little voice that said, come on, it's
Speaker 3: not a salesman, what is it. And I was like,
Speaker 3: all right, well, an ad copywriter. Maybe I could do
Speaker 3: that because and then even the voice like come on,
Speaker 3: go deeper. And then it was finally, I want to
Speaker 3: go to fucking Hollywood and sitcoms. And once I said
Speaker 3: that out loud, it was like everything changed. But then
Speaker 3: I thought, all right, well, I remember this bit in
Speaker 3: mister Saturday Night with Billy Crystal, where he talked about
Speaker 3: the idea of you're either living room funny or you're
Speaker 3: really funny. You know, you could be funny with your
Speaker 3: friends and yeah, hey, I'm I'm the funniest guy in
Speaker 3: the group.
Speaker 2: Can you do that for real? And I thought, all right,
Speaker 2: well I think I can't.
Speaker 3: And I thought the fastest way to figure this out
Speaker 3: is write my own material and do stand up and
Speaker 3: if I can get people to laugh, then I'm legit.
Speaker 2: Wow.
Speaker 3: I wasn't particularly interested in being a stand up, but
Speaker 3: I wanted to see am I crazy? Or am I funny?
Speaker 3: Or I really am funny? So for a couple of
Speaker 3: months right around that time, I was doing stand up
Speaker 3: and catcherizing Star and this is what You're strip ninety
Speaker 3: nineteen ninety, nineteen ninety.
Speaker 2: Wow, what a great time in those clubs. Yeah, oh yes.
Speaker 3: And it was interesting too because it was like this
Speaker 3: young woman named Sarah Silverman. Sure, holy shit, Chris Rock
Speaker 3: was still around, you know, well these are the real deal,
Speaker 3: you know. And I was doing open mics and watching
Speaker 3: these people and going man, you know, like a young
Speaker 3: Sarah Silverman was just great to see that and then
Speaker 3: to watch our career after that was great.
Speaker 2: Wow, you know I did okay.
Speaker 3: You know, I get on at two in the morning,
Speaker 3: the three people and it's okay, I said something. They laughed,
Speaker 3: great that work this word that and then once I
Speaker 3: once I said okay, I'm not crazy, then I was like,
Speaker 3: all right, I'm doing this.
Speaker 2: So you stopped doing stand up and then dove it.
Speaker 1: That's so interesting that that that crucible of stand up
Speaker 1: was your sort of testing ground. And anyway, I had
Speaker 1: a similar, uh similar path. I knew that I wanted
Speaker 1: to work in comedy, and to me, stand up was
Speaker 1: sort of like, all right, if you're serious, you know,
Speaker 1: get into it. And I got right into that same
Speaker 1: circuit you were in, but like the next sort of
Speaker 1: time frame. So I started in about ninety seven ninety eight,
Speaker 1: and uh, and I love I still relish my years
Speaker 1: in the New York City stand up.
Speaker 2: It's anybody has never done it.
Speaker 3: I mean, you know, it's funny if you think like
Speaker 3: they say, like one of the biggest fears people have
Speaker 3: is speaking in public. Speaking in public with the agenda
Speaker 3: of also trying to get people who laugh is like,
Speaker 3: and it's funny. Do you do a bit, or you
Speaker 3: say a joke and people don't laugh. It's like getting
Speaker 3: punched in the face. It is like it is no
Speaker 3: sound louder than people not laughing. Yeah, they say you
Speaker 3: think they're going to.
Speaker 1: Let's say you're like a string quartet, or or like
Speaker 1: even a great professor at a university giving a lecture.
Speaker 1: Most performers will get up in front of an audience
Speaker 1: and the audience actually wants them to succeed. Not true
Speaker 1: in comedy clubs. A lot of audience members in a
Speaker 1: comedy club want you to bomb. They want they want
Speaker 1: to feel the train wreck. They're there to see the
Speaker 1: just car crash. But wow, that's that's awesome. Okay, So
Speaker 1: then then Hollywood and you just moved out and.
Speaker 3: I jumped in down. I did not know a soul,
Speaker 3: literally sold everything I had. I was not in a
Speaker 3: relationship at the time, and I just showed up here.
Speaker 3: On May eighth, nineteen ninety one, I got a room
Speaker 3: in a horrible sro hotel was actually in MacArthur Park,
Speaker 3: and now I was like, I have to figure out.
Speaker 3: So I went down to the Writers Guild and this
Speaker 3: was just complete luck. They had a list of new
Speaker 3: agents or young agents who were actually looking for clients.
Speaker 3: And on that list was a guy I went to
Speaker 3: law school with who sat four seats.
Speaker 2: Away from her.
Speaker 3: Oh wow, and his name was Doug Viviani. He's not
Speaker 3: an agent, so don't call him. But I called him
Speaker 3: and I said, what are you doing?
Speaker 2: Are you an agent?
Speaker 3: He says, no, I am a real estate attorney and
Speaker 3: a client of MI. I wrote a book on real estate,
Speaker 3: and I use the fee to get bonded as an agent.
Speaker 3: But I don't know anything about being an agent. I said, congratulations,
Speaker 3: you're my agent.
Speaker 2: What are you talking? I'm in LA. I'm right, I'm
Speaker 2: trying to be a writer. I need an agent.
Speaker 3: I said, So I'm going to create the Doug VIVIANNY
Speaker 3: Agency out of a mailboxes, etc. And we're going to
Speaker 3: get letterhead and a phone mail and I'm going to
Speaker 3: submit my work under your letterhead, and if I get anything,
Speaker 3: you get ten percent, like an agent.
Speaker 2: And he said great, So that's what I did.
Speaker 1: So you were your own agent. He was just the
Speaker 1: sort of like nominally yeah.
Speaker 2: He he was like, you know the guy on Charlie's Angels.
Speaker 3: So I did that and I photocopied all my scripts
Speaker 3: and this is back you know, this is I'm like
Speaker 3: nineteen ninety two when you could do this. I would
Speaker 3: just pull up to the Warner Brothers lot, for example,
Speaker 3: and say, yeah, I'm the messenger from the Doug Vivannie agency.
Speaker 2: I have some scripts I need to drop off.
Speaker 3: And I just hit every sitcom office in LA and
Speaker 3: there was like thirty of them at a time, and
Speaker 3: I addressed, you know, here's my scripts to the showrunner
Speaker 3: from an agent. And now at least my scripts are
Speaker 3: in the building where theoretically, if lightning struck, I could
Speaker 3: at least have a shot. And I don't know, about
Speaker 3: a week or so into it, I got a there's
Speaker 3: a phone message on the Doug Vivianni voicemail line, and
Speaker 3: it's a woman said, yeah, Hi, my name is Winnifred
Speaker 3: Hervey Stalworth on the executive producer of Fresh Prince of
Speaker 3: bel Air. I read Terry Winter's stuff. Interested in having
Speaker 3: him in maybe to pitch, So I said, oh my god.
Speaker 3: So I called Doug in New York and it was
Speaker 3: a Friday. He was gone for the weekend. I was like, shit,
Speaker 3: I gotta wait till Monday now. And I was like
Speaker 3: you know what, Doug doesn't really know anything about being
Speaker 3: an agient.
Speaker 2: I'll just be Doug. And I called her back and
Speaker 2: I said, yeah, so Donald Trump, of you?
Speaker 3: Yeah, John Baron calling, so yeah, And I have no
Speaker 3: idea what agents did or said. The only agent I
Speaker 3: ever saw was Rubin Kincaid on The Partridge Family, and
Speaker 3: he didn't seem to do much.
Speaker 2: But I figured, you know, let me just I'm just
Speaker 2: gonna wing it.
Speaker 3: And she said, yeah, yeah, we read his stuff. He's really,
Speaker 3: you know, talented. Sow Kid's amazing. So does he have
Speaker 3: like one more teenage oriented script, because you know, Fresh
Speaker 3: Prince Is is kind of a teenage show. I said, yeah,
Speaker 3: he just finished an incredible episode of The Wonder Years,
Speaker 3: but I don't have a copy of it. I won't
Speaker 3: have it until so I'm trying to calculate in my
Speaker 3: head how long is it going to take it? Right?
Speaker 2: One days episode? So it was Friday.
Speaker 3: I can get it to you too, mon late Tuesday afternoon.
Speaker 3: If that were yeah, fine, great, So hung up the
Speaker 3: phone and cranked out a Wonder Year's episode, went in,
Speaker 3: gave it in now he was the messenger of the lawyer.
Speaker 3: It was everybody and they had me in the pitch
Speaker 3: an idea, and that became my foot in the door.
Speaker 3: I sold them on an idea that ultimately never went anywhere,
Speaker 3: but that was my first shot. And a little after
Speaker 3: I got into a thing called the Warner Brothers Sitcom Writers' Workshop.
Speaker 2: They used to do.
Speaker 3: They would take fifteen people from a pool of hundreds
Speaker 3: around the country and then put you through a program.
Speaker 3: At the end of it, they called me in. They said,
Speaker 3: we have an interesting situation. We have a show we
Speaker 3: think you'd be great for. It's not a sitcom and
Speaker 3: this isn't a reflection of your sitcom writing. It's a
Speaker 3: drama that has comedy in it. And I said, well,
Speaker 3: why me? And they said, well, it's about a blue
Speaker 3: collar guy who's a lawyer who works for a big,
Speaker 3: stuffy law firm.
Speaker 2: Do you think you could do that? And I was like,
Speaker 2: if I don't get this.
Speaker 3: Fucking job, I said yes, basically my life story. So yeah,
Speaker 3: And that was my actual first staff job. It was
Speaker 3: a show called The Great Defender with Michael Rospoli, Peter Krause,
Speaker 3: Richard Kylee who's Man of La Mancha. And thank God
Speaker 3: that I've been working ever since that show.
Speaker 1: Wow, incredible, there's a thread here which is grit and
Speaker 1: Moxie and I sort of never seeing an obstacle as
Speaker 1: an obstacle.
Speaker 2: But yeah, but it's just something to work around.
Speaker 3: And yeah, especially with this, I was not taken no
Speaker 3: for an answer.
Speaker 2: So where do you Where do you think that came from?
Speaker 2: Growing up? Like, were you a scrappy kid in Brooklyn
Speaker 2: to do? I mean, yeah, I mean I grew up.
Speaker 3: When I was thirteen, I started working for a butcher
Speaker 3: shop that was owned by Paul Castellano, who's the head
Speaker 3: of the Gambino family. When I was sixteen, I worked
Speaker 3: in an illegal card game run out of a synagogue
Speaker 3: in our neighborhood that was run by a guy named
Speaker 3: Roy Demeyo who's the subject of a book called Murder Machine.
Speaker 3: He and his crew in the early eighties killed more
Speaker 3: people than the Iraqi Army at the time, I think
Speaker 3: was the statistic. He had a bar in my neighborhood,
Speaker 3: so by asthmosis, I just kind of knew those guys.
Speaker 3: I also just became fascinated with crime and criminals. Actually,
Speaker 3: somebody asked me this, like, what was the first thing,
Speaker 3: and it sounds quaint now, but it was the movie Oliver.
Speaker 3: I loved the idea of being part of that gang
Speaker 3: of pickpockets. That was like, so I wanted to be
Speaker 3: the I wanted to be the artful dodger. Like that
Speaker 3: looks so cool to me. And right around that time,
Speaker 3: I read Abby Hoffman had this book called Steal this
Speaker 3: book course Yeah, which was my bible, and it was
Speaker 3: the first time of like, oh, wow, you can scam shit.
Speaker 3: And then the Sting came out and I was like,
Speaker 3: oh my god, I'm using your brain to psyche people
Speaker 3: out and get what you want. And I just became
Speaker 3: fascinated with the idea of using psychology or human nature
Speaker 3: to sort of, you know.
Speaker 2: Get my way through the world.
Speaker 3: And I just sort of, yeah, became that guy and
Speaker 3: that kid you know who was always, even to this day,
Speaker 3: my initial instinct if I'm presented with a problem, I
Speaker 3: always think of what's the way to scam my way
Speaker 3: through this? And I go, yeah, you can just pay it.
Speaker 3: You can just pay the bill.
Speaker 2: You don't need to do right.
Speaker 3: But that's right where I go, what lie do I
Speaker 3: tell to get And I know here that's you from
Speaker 3: when you're fifteen years old, but.
Speaker 2: Wow, it was all ingrained.
Speaker 1: Well that's a pretty good transition point for us, because
Speaker 1: you had a kind of exposure to that criminal element
Speaker 1: in Brooklyn. Is that what made you such a perfect
Speaker 1: candidate for one of your biggest staff jobs at the Sopranos.
Speaker 2: There, I think, so.
Speaker 3: Yeah, when I when I saw that pilot, my agent
Speaker 3: at the time sent it to me, and you know,
Speaker 3: like most people, I thought, opera, what is this? And
Speaker 3: I don't even think I finished watching it and I
Speaker 3: was like trembling. I was like, I know these guys.
Speaker 3: I know these people. I know how they talking to,
Speaker 3: how they think. I called him up, I said, you
Speaker 3: got to get me on this show.
Speaker 1: So the real life mob life was not for you.
Speaker 1: It was not something that even attracted you from a
Speaker 1: sort of like romantic or exotic sense, which I think
Speaker 1: is draws a lot of people into that space. But
Speaker 1: the fictional mob space was right where you felt at home.
Speaker 2: And yeah, that love. I love that stuff.
Speaker 1: And it's like all the fun of the mafia with
Speaker 1: none of the danger.
Speaker 3: It's like, I say, why people ride roller coasters. It's
Speaker 3: like you feel like you're about to die, but you're not.
Speaker 3: Going to die how euxhilarating. Yeah, so writing about it,
Speaker 3: you know, was much preferable for me.
Speaker 1: All Right, I could go on for hours. I love
Speaker 1: hearing about your career and all the machinations and steps
Speaker 1: you took. It's my favorite thing is just learning about
Speaker 1: how people got where they wanted to be.
Speaker 2: And you have an incredible story. But let's turn the
Speaker 2: page and get into.
Speaker 1: Kind of where you and I actually have this interesting overlap,
Speaker 1: which is in our shared fascination with the Prohibition era.
Speaker 1: I think most people assume they know what prohibition is.
Speaker 1: Liquor was made illegal. It was a big mistake. There
Speaker 1: was a bunch of mobsters and Tommy guns, and then
Speaker 1: it got repealed. You made this credible show Boardwalk Empire.
Speaker 1: What drew you to prohibition in the first place? I
Speaker 1: mean I could make an obvious leap from the Sopranos
Speaker 1: to Prohibition era gangsters being the overlap. But was there
Speaker 1: anything about that era in particular that felt so so
Speaker 1: ripe for storytelling?
Speaker 2: Yeah?
Speaker 3: I mean I was given a book by HBO called
Speaker 3: Boardwalk Empire about the history of Atlantic City, and they said,
Speaker 3: maybe there's a TV series in here.
Speaker 2: Okay, the history of Atlantic City. That sounds great.
Speaker 3: But on the way out to Doyts say, Martin Scorsese
Speaker 3: is attached to that book, and I was like, oh, okay,
Speaker 3: well that's a different story. I will find the TV
Speaker 3: series in here.
Speaker 2: You're right.
Speaker 3: So you started reading and there was a chapter about
Speaker 3: this guy named Nuckie Johnson, who I later fictionalized as
Speaker 3: Nuckie Thompson. But Nuckie was the corrupt treasure of Atlantic
Speaker 3: City during the Prohibition era, where you know, you have
Speaker 3: a corrupt politician in charge of a city on the
Speaker 3: East seaboard where all the alcohol comes through, and suddenly
Speaker 3: overnight he was friends with Lucky Luciano and Oarld Rostein
Speaker 3: and Al Capone and everybody else.
Speaker 2: I went, this is the series, this.
Speaker 3: Guy, this era, And I was like, I love the twenties.
Speaker 3: You know, that snappy, fast talk in nineteen twenties stuff.
Speaker 3: I've always been fascinated with that kind of dialogue, the era.
Speaker 3: You know, what was also interesting to me too, is
Speaker 3: that even though it's one hundred years ago, it's still
Speaker 3: felt modern.
Speaker 2: People dressed in.
Speaker 3: Suits, they went out to restaurants, they talked on the telephone,
Speaker 3: they drove in cars, you know, it's still felt cool,
Speaker 3: it still felt like accessible. It wasn't like ten years
Speaker 3: earlier would it felt like, you know, down n abby.
Speaker 3: But this was modern people. You know, you could wear
Speaker 3: some of those clothes today. And I said, wow, this
Speaker 3: is such a great setup and it's really not really
Speaker 3: been explored in TV or film. So when I went
Speaker 3: to meet we'll call him Marty because I know him,
Speaker 3: and I know it sounds douchey, but that's the name
Speaker 3: I meant to be Marty when I went to be
Speaker 3: Mester Scorsese, and believe me, that's what I called him
Speaker 3: initially that he was like, oh, this is great. I
Speaker 3: have never done anything in this era before. So once
Speaker 3: he gave me the blessing, you know, we were off
Speaker 3: to the races. And then you know, the real work started.
Speaker 3: They had to. You know, we had a protagonist who
Speaker 3: was like fifty years old in nineteen twenty, so I
Speaker 3: was like, okay, So he was born in eighteen seventy,
Speaker 3: So got what books did he read? What was his
Speaker 3: pop culture references? What was happening in nineteen twenty? There's
Speaker 3: the war. World War One just ended. He had all
Speaker 3: these guys coming home, women just got the right to vote.
Speaker 3: Prohibition itself, what were the movies? So it was like
Speaker 3: a ton of research. You know, Also, how did people
Speaker 3: actually talk. I'm sure they didn't Alt twite, say twenty
Speaker 3: three sched do every five minutes, dude. The Charleston was
Speaker 3: like every time you ever see anything in the twenties,
Speaker 3: everybody's doing the fucking Charleston. I was like to think
Speaker 3: any other songs written between nineteen twenty and nineteen thirty
Speaker 3: and it's funny. I mean, I wanted to do a
Speaker 3: thing where, you know, it was like that Nucky at
Speaker 3: some point says if I hear the Charleston when we're talking,
Speaker 3: to kill somebody. And it actually didn't come out till
Speaker 3: nineteen twenty four anyway, so we didn't even touch on
Speaker 3: it until way late. But yeah, I was just sort
Speaker 3: of once I started doing the research, it was just fascinating,
Speaker 3: not just all the other stuff, but the prohibition stuff
Speaker 3: itself was so eye opening in terms of the history
Speaker 3: of how it even came to be and then what
Speaker 3: a disaster it became. You know, the single biggest thing
Speaker 3: that made criminals millionaires overnight, and it was like outlawing
Speaker 3: Turkey sandwiches. Most people didn't give it them, like, wait what,
Speaker 3: I've been drinking beer my whole life. Now I can't
Speaker 3: do it. Fuck you, I'm gonna keep doing this. And
Speaker 3: just so many failed consequences of that law.
Speaker 1: It is truly a wild moment in American history. The
Speaker 1: sort of moral panic on one hand, and then there's
Speaker 1: the anti German sentiment kind of like flaring up, and
Speaker 1: then that gives the teetotalers ammunition to go after the brewers. Yeah,
Speaker 1: to go after all these Germans.
Speaker 2: It was a perfect storm.
Speaker 3: I mean, yeah, you're you're at war with Germany, and
Speaker 3: now suddenly you know Coleslaw's liberty cabbage and hamburgers or
Speaker 3: liberty sandwiches. And I mean, I think half the brewers
Speaker 3: got shut down. And I got where it came from.
Speaker 2: You know, there were it was. Alcoholism was devastating. You know.
Speaker 3: The cliche is the data you know, got paid on
Speaker 3: Friday and then you didn't see him and spent all
Speaker 3: his money at the bar, and you know, and your
Speaker 3: family went destined to This is been days before social
Speaker 3: programs or even before AA was a thing, I guess.
Speaker 2: So there was a real it was a real problem.
Speaker 1: So Nukie Thompson is a character that that was played
Speaker 1: by Steve Buscemi. How close to the real Nukie Johnson
Speaker 1: was he?
Speaker 2: Not at all.
Speaker 3: I mean, if we were to cast the real we
Speaker 3: were to somebody who looked like Nukie Johnson, Jim Gandlofini
Speaker 3: would have actually been perfect. Knuckie was a big, burly,
Speaker 3: bald headed guy.
Speaker 1: So I feel like Steve Buscemi's casting was such a
Speaker 1: stroke of genius for Boardwalk Empire because it is against
Speaker 1: type and in a way that you know, can this
Speaker 1: guy who's who's sort of a slight build, not an
Speaker 1: intimidating presence, and who's face to me just has a
Speaker 1: sort of kind of warmth and sadness and a sort
Speaker 1: of tenderness. Can this guy carry a mob show? Tell
Speaker 1: me a little bit about why Steve Buscemi was so
Speaker 1: perfect for Boardwalk Empire.
Speaker 2: You know, it.
Speaker 3: Started with with Marty. You know, you said, all right,
Speaker 3: who are you going to get to do this? And
Speaker 3: you know, I said, well, this is what the real
Speaker 3: guy looked like. And Marty said, no one's ever heard
Speaker 3: of this guy. Which is also funny because when I
Speaker 3: went down to do my research in Atlantic City. The
Speaker 3: real Nucky between like nineteen ten and nineteen thirty was
Speaker 3: hands down the most powerful guy in Atlantic City. Everybody knew,
Speaker 3: nothing moved without Knuckie. And when I went down initially
Speaker 3: and talked to old timers, and people say, have ever you
Speaker 3: hear Nucki Johnson, No, never heard him. Never heard after
Speaker 3: the show, Oh yeah, Nukie, I have uncle work for
Speaker 3: Suddenly everybody knew who he was, but nobody knew who
Speaker 3: this guy was. So Marty's you know, very you know correctly.
Speaker 3: He said, it doesn't matter. We can cast anybody. And
Speaker 3: then he just said, well who let's let's just name
Speaker 3: actors we like and hell yeah at helm a help
Speaker 3: not available, not available. And I said, well, Steve is Semmy.
Speaker 3: I always love Steve, and he goes, oh, I love
Speaker 3: Steve a Semmi, And we rattled off a couple of
Speaker 3: other names and then he's like, all right, whatever. And
Speaker 3: a couple of days later Marty called me up but
Speaker 3: he said I can't stop thinking about Steve for this
Speaker 3: and I said, yim me too. I said't that crazy?
Speaker 3: He says, yeah, yeah, And it's funny. Even Steve. When
Speaker 3: I called him, he knew he was in the running,
Speaker 3: and when I called him to tell him he got
Speaker 3: the role, I said, Steve, you know, we're.
Speaker 2: Really excited we want to offer you this role.
Speaker 3: And he said, hey, look, you know it's really just
Speaker 3: an honor to be considered.
Speaker 2: And I said, Steve, no, we're giving you the role.
Speaker 3: And he's like, what, I've been preparing myself for two
Speaker 3: weeks to not get this. I didn't even hear you.
Speaker 3: I didn't even let that register. I said, yeah, no,
Speaker 3: you got it. We're doing this, and he's like, holy shit.
Speaker 3: And then of course, you know, he went on. You know,
Speaker 3: I think he won the Screen Actors Guild a couple
Speaker 3: of times in a row, and Emmy nominations, and you know,
Speaker 3: people just loved me.
Speaker 2: He totally solid it and pulled it off. Obviously he's
Speaker 2: Steve SEMMI, Yeah, he is.
Speaker 1: I would imagine, you know, your collaboration as a showrunner
Speaker 1: with the wardrobe department and the production design department and
Speaker 1: the props department was so fun on a project like
Speaker 1: this and so cool. And then of course your music team,
Speaker 1: but both the score and you know, your needle drops
Speaker 1: and throughout the episodes. What are some things that stood
Speaker 1: out to you in that in that research process that
Speaker 1: were either surprising or especially exciting or fun to think.
Speaker 2: About and write about.
Speaker 1: And were there things that came up in so much
Speaker 1: and that process that that inspired moments in the show.
Speaker 3: Like loved like the all the wardrobe stuff, the hair stuff.
Speaker 3: One of the things I loved was a little detail
Speaker 3: that in somewhere in nineteen sixteen, the Gillette Company invented
Speaker 3: the safety raiser. Up until that point, men shaved themselves
Speaker 3: with a straight raiser, So facial hair was a big thing.
Speaker 3: So a lot of guys had beards and mutton chops
Speaker 3: and all these crazy everybody had facial hair up until
Speaker 3: nineteen seventeen. Suddenly that was the safety raiser came out.
Speaker 3: So young people started looking at facial hair as oh, yeah,
Speaker 3: that's your dad, that's your grandfa. So somewhere around season
Speaker 3: two I would start seeing young people with mustaches in
Speaker 3: the crowd of extras or on the show, and I
Speaker 3: mentioned it to our hair person a few times, and
Speaker 3: I mentioned it to our extras casting person, I said,
Speaker 3: do not send me any young men with facial hair.
Speaker 3: It kept popping up and it started to driving me crazy.
Speaker 3: So I actually got the yearbook from Princeton University of
Speaker 3: nineteen twenty two, and I went into the hair department
Speaker 3: and I said, find me one man in this book
Speaker 3: with facial hair. And there was not one college student
Speaker 3: that had a mustache or a beard in nineteen twenty two.
Speaker 3: Said that's the level of accuracy we need to have here,
Speaker 3: and they did. I had the A plus team of
Speaker 3: every department head, hair, makeup, wardrobe, music, cross the show, production,
Speaker 3: production design, just crazy details, you know, like wardrobe is like,
Speaker 3: you know what drives me crazy if you see a
Speaker 3: show set in nineteen twenty everybody's dressed like it's nineteen twenty.
Speaker 2: You know.
Speaker 3: I don't know about you, but I you know, I
Speaker 3: have guest genes from the nineties, probably that I still have. Actually,
Speaker 3: my wife has called me on ship like that a
Speaker 3: couple of times, like you've got to, you know, you
Speaker 3: gotta get rid of it. So not everybody dresses like
Speaker 3: it's twenty twenty four.
Speaker 2: Most people don't, you know, if.
Speaker 3: You're really hip, and maybe you're in New York or LA,
Speaker 3: maybe you do, but you sure don't. And if you're
Speaker 3: a working class guy in Atlantic City, you dress like
Speaker 3: it's eighteen ninety three. Yeah, you know, so I needed
Speaker 3: we needed a smattering of that, and everybody took such
Speaker 3: pride in it too. I remember even once a big
Speaker 3: debate about a chain link fence. You know, I didn't
Speaker 3: even bring it up, or a production designer. He said,
Speaker 3: you know, we had a chain link fence somewhere, And
Speaker 3: he said, before you say anything, yes, they had chain
Speaker 3: link fences in nineteen twenty. They're invented in nineteen oh five.
Speaker 3: Like they get easy, He goes, I didn't know my myself,
Speaker 3: and I had to check this out, but yeah, they
Speaker 3: had shaneling fences back then.
Speaker 2: So like stuff like that.
Speaker 1: Ah, I love that, and it just informs all the
Speaker 1: the actors on the set. It gives them all these
Speaker 1: these kind of anchors and reference points to latch onto.
Speaker 1: So most prohibition crime stories center around the male bootleggers.
Speaker 2: But Boardwalk features a lot.
Speaker 1: Of extremely unique and morally gray and enterprising female characters,
Speaker 1: Margaret Thompson Jillian Darmody being a couple of standouts. What
Speaker 1: was the inspiration for those incredible characters?
Speaker 3: In the book Boardwalk Empire, Nelson Johnson fictionalized the meeting
Speaker 3: between the real Nucky and a woman from the neighborhood
Speaker 3: who came to ask to get her husband a job.
Speaker 3: And he said, this is a kind of thing Nucky
Speaker 3: would do. Like, you know, people worked in the hotel business.
Speaker 3: In the summer months, it was great, but during the
Speaker 3: winter people were out of work, and if your husband,
Speaker 3: you know, drank and didn't have money, you know, you
Speaker 3: were going without food. So he talked about a little
Speaker 3: fictional encounter between a neighborhood woman Nucky and Nucky would
Speaker 3: give her fifty dollars to tight her over for the
Speaker 3: month whatever. And I says, that's interesting, that's an interesting relationship.
Speaker 3: I wonder who that is. Who is that woman? And
Speaker 3: then I, you know, I just took it from there, like, Okay,
Speaker 3: what if he's interested romantically, and what if her husband
Speaker 3: is a creep and he beats her up and Knucky
Speaker 3: gets rid of him, and where does that go? So
Speaker 3: that became Margaret Jillian dormity just came. You know, I
Speaker 3: knew Jimmy Darmidy was coming home from World War One,
Speaker 3: and this was again, you know, one of those happy
Speaker 3: or not happy accidents of prohibition. World War one ended
Speaker 3: and you had a lot of disenfranchised soldiers coming home
Speaker 3: after horrific experiences overseas. And I think most Americas even
Speaker 3: to this day, have no idea how incredibly brutal World
Speaker 3: War One was trench warfare and just absolutely just horrific.
Speaker 3: Guys living up to their up to their waists in
Speaker 3: filth and rat infested water and you know, just shooting
Speaker 3: at each other and for no they didn't even know
Speaker 3: why they were there, but it was really horrible. So
Speaker 3: a lot of these guys came home.
Speaker 2: Chemical warfare, oh.
Speaker 3: Chemical, yeah, absolutely, And you know, and a lot of
Speaker 3: guys came home. And you know, our character on the show,
Speaker 3: Richard Harrow, who was the guy with the half face
Speaker 3: and the mask, you know, played by Jack Houston. That
Speaker 3: was the first time that you know, battlefield medicine got
Speaker 3: to the point where you could keep people alive and well,
Speaker 3: because it was trench warfare, there were so many then
Speaker 3: inordinate amount of facial injuries. Guys would poke their heads
Speaker 3: up from a trench and boom, get half of their
Speaker 3: face blown off.
Speaker 2: Normally, you know, twenty years earlier, you're dead.
Speaker 3: But now battlefield medicine got to the point where you
Speaker 3: could keep those people alive. So those guys were coming
Speaker 3: home alive. So some thousands of guys were coming home
Speaker 3: with facial injuries literally like half the face blown off
Speaker 3: or your job blown off. And then they had to
Speaker 3: get into society. So there was an artist in New England,
Speaker 3: the woman who was a sculpt her, who thought, I
Speaker 3: wonder if I could do like a half mask to
Speaker 3: mash their face, so these guys could at least go
Speaker 3: out in public, who out at night and just and
Speaker 3: that's where that character came from. But again it was
Speaker 3: just these little details in the research.
Speaker 2: There's another formidable female character in Boardwalk Empire, Assistant Attorney
Speaker 2: General Esther Randolph, who attempts to prosecute Nukie.
Speaker 1: Now she's presumably based on the real world Mabel Walker
Speaker 1: little Bread.
Speaker 3: Yeah, yeah, who fascinating character. Yeah, so we talk a
Speaker 3: lot about her in Snap Who. I'm just curious kind
Speaker 3: of what your research brought to light. What excited you
Speaker 3: about her as a character. She's such a mess of contradictions. Yeah,
Speaker 3: I Mean, the one thing I loved is that when
Speaker 3: provision end that she went to work for a wine company,
Speaker 3: just like and even like she wasn't averse to having
Speaker 3: a drink herself. But it's like once she became like okay,
Speaker 3: you know I'm doing this, she was really staunchly trying
Speaker 3: and forced those Oh and of course our bosses were
Speaker 3: just unbelievably corrupt Harry Doherty, Warren Harding, that whole administration
Speaker 3: was just like, you know, you can't. And that's another
Speaker 3: thing that just surprised me about the era. You know again,
Speaker 3: it's you know, the idea of corrupt politicians. These guys
Speaker 3: were selling shit right out of the White House. I
Speaker 3: mean you literally, you know, there were bootleggers who were
Speaker 3: showing up at the Capitol with suitcases full of stuff
Speaker 3: selling it, you know, selling their stuff to Congress people,
Speaker 3: and like you could buy anything you wanted from Harry
Speaker 3: Dherty and his guy Jess Smith, and just another fascinating relationship.
Speaker 1: And George Cassidy is a character that is a real
Speaker 1: life bootlegger who actually had an office in the Capitol
Speaker 1: building where he was distributing liquors to Congress people. That's
Speaker 1: very similar to your character Gaston Means in Boardwalking Empire,
Speaker 1: who was kind of a supplier to high level folks, right, yeah, and.
Speaker 2: A real guy.
Speaker 3: Yeah, I mean the more we would research this, the
Speaker 3: more incredible it became. You know, another detail too, al
Speaker 3: Capolin's brother, one of his brothers was moved out to
Speaker 3: the West and became a sheriff, and he was like
Speaker 3: a cowboy sheriff who would arrest bootleggers. And were like,
Speaker 3: we got to get this on the show, and we
Speaker 3: could never work it in.
Speaker 2: But it's like just these little odds and ends. He's like,
Speaker 2: holy shit, this actually was real.
Speaker 1: It's so cool to hear you touch on these things
Speaker 1: that that we also dig into in SNAFU and some
Speaker 1: of these these strange and more obscure connections.
Speaker 3: Or George Ramis too, another one, like one of the
Speaker 3: craziest stories here, like an incredibly successful defense attorney becomes
Speaker 3: like the biggest bootlegger ever and then loses everything, goes
Speaker 3: to jail, and then his wife completely steals all his
Speaker 3: money with in conjunction with a federal agent who she
Speaker 3: has an affair with, and then he gets out of
Speaker 3: jail and then murders her and then is found not
Speaker 3: guilty by reason of insanity.
Speaker 2: He represented himself and.
Speaker 3: With a temper insanity plea And it's like, if I
Speaker 3: made that up, you've got like, come on, and this
Speaker 3: absolutely all happened.
Speaker 1: And will Lebrandt prosecuted him, and he's part of what
Speaker 1: led to the federal government taxing illegal liquor, right, which
Speaker 1: is just another insane.
Speaker 3: Because why would you think you would have to do that?
Speaker 3: But yeah, I mean, I guess it's the same principle now,
Speaker 3: like you go, okay, well, I don't care how you
Speaker 3: earned your money, even if it's illegal, you have to
Speaker 3: still have debate taxes on it. And that's I guess
Speaker 3: how they get you know, they get al capone, you know,
Speaker 3: for tax evasions. Like I know you said you were
Speaker 3: furniture salesman, but you've got a million dollars here, So okay.
Speaker 1: I just was going to kind of bring it back
Speaker 1: to this this overarching theme.
Speaker 2: Throughout that era of hypocrisy.
Speaker 1: Sometimes it's kind of buried, and sometimes it's just outrageous
Speaker 1: and flagrant, like we discussed George Cassidy and these boots
Speaker 1: leggers supplying the lawmakers who are passing the laws of
Speaker 1: prohibition with alcohol. I'm curious if you're if you hit
Speaker 1: on in your research, are you familiar with formula six?
Speaker 2: I am not.
Speaker 1: Yeah, so one of the things we get into in
Speaker 1: this season of Snaffoo, is this really staggering realization that
Speaker 1: for a long time the government was putting additives into
Speaker 1: industrial alcohol to prevent people from drinking it. And these
Speaker 1: were things that made industrial alcohol. This process was called denaturing, right,
Speaker 1: and it made alcohol incredibly yucky to imbibe, but it
Speaker 1: also made people a bit sick, just enough to keep
Speaker 1: people from drinking it. And that was going on for
Speaker 1: decades before Prohibition. Industrial alcohol had a lot of uses. Obviously,
Speaker 1: Then during Prohibition, Formula six emerges, and in order to
Speaker 1: try to dissuade people from drinking alcohol, they start adding
Speaker 1: real poison to alcohol in levels sufficient to kill people.
Speaker 1: We get into the really remarkable story of the New
Speaker 1: York City Medical Examiner's Office, Charles Norris and Alexander Getler,
Speaker 1: who kind of pieced this together by examining the corpses
Speaker 1: of a lot of people dying and starting to see
Speaker 1: patterns of different chemicals and poisonings, and also at the
Speaker 1: same time revolutionizing chemistry in the service of toxicology and
Speaker 1: medical examination as a practice. These were relatively new at
Speaker 1: the time, and Alexander Getler is credited with really kind
Speaker 1: of inventing a lot of processes to figure out what
Speaker 1: chemicals were in dead bodies or in human tissue anyway,
Speaker 1: It's just wild what they start.
Speaker 2: Having to assume.
Speaker 3: Formulas two through five were very decreased.
Speaker 2: I guess how bad is this going to be?
Speaker 3: Like why you got the formula before is like diarrhea.
Speaker 2: We got to really get like, you know, you know, blisters. Now,
Speaker 2: let's naxi out for like a week.
Speaker 3: Yeah, exactly, Formula six, you're.
Speaker 2: Not drinking anymore.
Speaker 3: So, you know, I was very aware of the fact
Speaker 3: that bootleggers would incorporate sometimes got to where they mixed turpentine,
Speaker 3: they'd mix wood, alcohol, you know, all of which you know,
Speaker 3: into their shitty you know, you know, home manufacturer stuff,
Speaker 3: and that was killing people, making people blind. Sure, there
Speaker 3: was a rash of people who went blind. I think
Speaker 3: it was in New York City, like eighteen people over
Speaker 3: the course of a weekend who all drank the same
Speaker 3: boot like alcohol. I'm wondering now if if was that
Speaker 3: some of the stuff that the government was actually now
Speaker 3: sneaking into the criminal Like how would people getting government
Speaker 3: poisoned liquor.
Speaker 1: There was a drink called derail because it was an
Speaker 1: alcohol that was used in the industrial railroad industry, and
Speaker 1: it was and it was making people terribly sick. That
Speaker 1: was basically bootleggers just using industrial alcohol to enhance their product.
Speaker 3: Yeah yeah, formaldehyde too is of course, actually did that
Speaker 3: on the show, actually showing me somebody using it and anything.
Speaker 3: And it's interesting too, like this is the people don't realize,
Speaker 3: Like the advent of the mixed drink came because of
Speaker 3: ProBiS because the bootleg alcohol was so vile they had
Speaker 3: to start mixing it with fruit juices and stuff. So
Speaker 3: all the stuff that we know today, you know, up
Speaker 3: until prohibition, it was you know, straight whiskey beer. You know,
Speaker 3: it was just straight alcohol, wasn't you know? And you
Speaker 3: do you just drank it to get drunk quickly, I guess,
Speaker 3: I don't know. There's a lot of sipping going on,
Speaker 3: but it was, you know, suddenly all the drinks that
Speaker 3: you hear about today, you know, are you know, come
Speaker 3: from the need to make this stuff palatable. And you
Speaker 3: know what killed me too, is I love the details
Speaker 3: the lengths bootleggers would go to in terms of creating
Speaker 3: fall labels, getting the bottle, filling it up, with alcohol too.
Speaker 3: There was one which the detail that blew my mind
Speaker 3: that they would create a whole false cretive alcohol, put
Speaker 3: them in fishing nets, like a bunch of them, and
Speaker 3: then take the fishing nets and dunk it in the water,
Speaker 3: leave it in seawater for a couple of hours, and
Speaker 3: come out. You know, you dump this big fishing net
Speaker 3: full of crates that say Johnny Walker or whatever it was,
Speaker 3: and there's still seaweed on it, and you go, nobody
Speaker 3: would ever think you fake this. But the lengths they
Speaker 3: would go to make stuff that was fake look real.
Speaker 2: You go wow.
Speaker 3: I mean then that appealed to the con man in me.
Speaker 3: You go, wow, what a brilliant little touchdown. You still
Speaker 3: smell the salt water. It's obviously came out off a
Speaker 3: boat in the ocean. Yeah No, that made in some
Speaker 3: guy's garage.
Speaker 1: That's no different than you calling up paramount pretending to
Speaker 1: be agent.
Speaker 2: Not at all.
Speaker 3: But yeah, I was like, wow, that's that's you know,
Speaker 3: And that's I think what people don't realize that criminals
Speaker 3: twenty four hours a day is people thinking about how
Speaker 3: to do this shit. You know, it's pretty pretty credible.
Speaker 3: And even though the hypocrisy too, and thinking like as
Speaker 3: you were talking, you know, the whole the Catholic Church,
Speaker 3: you know, sacrificial wine. Sure, suddenly they had unbelievable demand
Speaker 3: for sacrificial wine. And the Jewish Church is suddenly you know,
Speaker 3: everybody was a rabbi that because there was an ursion
Speaker 3: like you could do it for religious things or adoptors.
Speaker 2: How many doctors were writing.
Speaker 3: Prescriptions yeah yeah, or selling it out your back door.
Speaker 3: And how many you know, neighborhood people had stills in
Speaker 3: their kitchen. You know, you could make you know, extra
Speaker 3: money by you know, you'd have guys like entire tenement buildings.
Speaker 3: Everybody had a little still and you know you can
Speaker 3: make an extra twenty bucks a week in nineteen twenty
Speaker 3: that was a fortune. That was your grocery money, I'm
Speaker 3: assuming or more. And you know, local gangsters just come
Speaker 3: around to pick everything up and sell it. And this
Speaker 3: went on for years and again, you know, all unintended
Speaker 3: consequences of this, and again back to me, back to
Speaker 3: what the point I made before about this making millionaires
Speaker 3: out of criminals over this is how organized crime infiltrated
Speaker 3: legitimate business. They needed a place to put all that money.
Speaker 3: It's like, great, let's buy trucking companies, which they initially
Speaker 3: did to transport all this stuff. Then it was like,
Speaker 3: you know, let's buy warehousesless by real estate, let's get
Speaker 3: into other things. And this, over that twelve year period
Speaker 3: enabled them to infiltrate every other area of American life.
Speaker 1: It's almost like the scale of the stupidity of Prohibition
Speaker 1: as a law is commensurate with the scale of how
Speaker 1: how much organized crime then penetrated American society. In other words,
Speaker 1: the fallout of Prohibition is commensurate with the stupidity of it.
Speaker 2: And absolutely, yeah.
Speaker 3: I mean, up until Prohibition, most organized crime was you know, gambling, prostitution, extortion,
Speaker 3: things of that nature that were I guess lucrative, but
Speaker 3: not This was just a windfall that they couldn't have
Speaker 3: even possibly predicted. And I mean, I guess yeah, I'm
Speaker 3: certainly not the first person to make the observation that
Speaker 3: the drug business today is exactly the same thing.
Speaker 1: Well, I can't help thinking that there's a really cool
Speaker 1: prequel to Boardwalk Empire in the story of the New
Speaker 1: York City medical examiners who uncovered Yeah, some of this insane,
Speaker 1: you know, because they're they're right at the interface of
Speaker 1: law and crime, basically right because they're examining. The corner's
Speaker 1: job was just to rubber stamp all of the police misconduct,
Speaker 1: and you know, the police were just you know, they
Speaker 1: kill somebody that they didn't like, or because they were
Speaker 1: in some crime lord's pocket. This was a suicide, even
Speaker 1: though he's got like six gun shots in the back
Speaker 1: of his head. But then Charles Norris came in really
Speaker 1: turned things around, and Alexander Getler turned out to be
Speaker 1: quite a genius of chemistry and put it to good use.
Speaker 1: It It is an incredible story. We're recording this interview
Speaker 1: before season three of Snapho actually comes out, so I
Speaker 1: really can't wait for you to hear it.
Speaker 3: No, I mean, there's so many details you were that
Speaker 3: I hadn't heard of, and it's it's again, it's just
Speaker 3: endlessly fascinating.
Speaker 1: Well, Terence Winter, this has been an absolutely delightful, very
Speaker 1: enlightening conversation.
Speaker 3: Thank you so much for jumping on absolutely my pleasure.
Speaker 3: Is so fun to do. I can't wait to hear
Speaker 3: season three. Awesome, Thank you so much, Thanks so much, Ed.
Speaker 2: Take care.
Speaker 1: SNAFU is a production of iHeartRadio, Film Nation Entertainment and
Speaker 1: Pacific Electric Picture Company in association with Gilded Audio. It's
Speaker 1: executive produced by me Ed Helms, Milan Papelka, Mike Falbo,
Speaker 1: Whitney Donaldson, and Dylan Fagan. Our lead producers are Carl
Speaker 1: Nellis and Alyssa Martie. Additional production from Stephen Wood, Olivia
Speaker 1: Canny and Kelsey Albright. Our story editor is nicky Stein.
Speaker 1: Our production assistants are Nevin Calla Poly and A kemeny
Speaker 1: ekpo Facts checking by Charles Richter. Our creative executive is
Speaker 1: Brett Harris. Our associate producer Tory Smith. Edited this episode,
Speaker 1: editing music and sound design by Ben chug Engineering and
Speaker 1: technical direction by Nick Dooley Andrew Chugg Is Gilded Audio's
Speaker 1: creative director. Our amazing theme music is by Dan Rosatto.
Speaker 1: Special thanks to Alison Cohen, Daniel Welsh and Ben Rizak