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