BONUS: Recreating the 1920s with Terence Winter

Hey there, I'm Ed Helms and this is Snafu Season three, Formula six. How prohibitions War on Alcohol went so off the rails the government wound up poisoning its own people. Welcome to another bonus episode. You may recall in these bonus episodes, I bring in a guest and just have a great interview. So, after spending this season unraveling prohibition, I wanted to talk to someone who knows this era inside and out, someone who could give us a whole

Honestly, I didn't know you were a history guy.

You know, there's such a cool overlap of this season of Snafoo, which is all about prohibition, and we'll get into some of the really surprising things that I learned and research for this season that might even be surprising to you as an expert on prohibition because of your incredible series Boardwalk Empire. But let's start a little more broadly so our listeners can get to know you a little bit better. Where are you from originally? What was your sort of path to Hollywood writer?

I grew up in Marine Park, Brooklyn, which is an area that I usually have to describe by its proximity to other neighborhoods in Brooklyn that people have heard of. You may have heard of sheeps at Bay Suhich actually was an integral neighborhood in terms of prohibition because boats used to come right in there, and that's kind of your Coney Island. So you know, basically, blue collar family, blue collar neighborhood. I actually started to be an auto

I had a similar thing in growing up in Georgia. I harbored these deep aspirations from a very young age. But I knew I could never tell anyone were drass kicks. Yeah, either get beat up or crazy, or they would just crush your dreams.

Absolutely, which is what friends arefore can I curse on this?

Hell?

Yes or okay, because it's very difficult for me to talk with that. I do hold the record for the most uses of the word fuck in a movie, Wolf of Wall Street, which we're very proud of, So it's very hard for me to have a conversation, so that'll slip out occasionally. Anyway, once I came out of the closet as a writer, I just said, I'm moving to

So growing up in Brooklyn and then heading off to law school, did you then become a lawyer in Brooklyn?

Did you say I was a lawyer in Manhattan. I My only ambition as a kid was I wanted to be rich, because we were not, And the only two jobs I knew that could make you rich were doctor and lawyer. The doctor was out and I remember there was a quote by Benjamin Franklin and he said, pour thy person into thy head and no man can take it from you, and you know, get an education.

Basically, Yeah, that's a Peter Still.

I like that.

Yeah, I love that.

So I took creative writing and eventually I stumbled onto journalism. And you know, again, you know, my ambition was to make money. That was what a good job was. The concept of liking your job was something you know, you know, you just want to make money. So lawyer was the thing. So I had another professor journalism profession named Jerry Schwartz, who was a managing editor at the Associated Press, and I asked him to write a recommendation for law school

A good thing. He didn't submit that letter to the law school.

I should. I might have saved me a lot of time. Meanwhile, all my friends who became auto mechanics, were making a fortune, and they all thought I was the biggest idiot in the world. Joe College, you know, I'm already now in the whole student loan wise from n YU, and I said, all right, there's only one way forward, and that's the

So it was really, you know, it was really were You're making good money there? Yeah?

Yeah, it was great. I had everything I thought I wanted. I had an assistant, I had an office, I had a diploma written in Latin. I was like, holy shit, look at me, I'm a.

Lawyer, and was that new? And did you go to NYU law school?

Also?

I went to Saint John's Law School, which is the Harvard of Queen's sure and I was in the top five percent of the bottom third of my class, so I was very proud of that. Again, it was like I wasn't even thinking in terms of are you happy? And you know it was I was like twenty nine at this point, and I had that moment like, okay, you were going to either jump out a window in ten years from the depression of working somewhere you just don't like and you'll never be good at this because

Wow.

I wasn't particularly interested in being a stand up, but I wanted to see am I crazy? Or am I funny? Or I really am funny. So for a couple of months right around that time, I was doing stand up and catcherizing Star and this is what your strip ninety nineteen ninety.

Nineteen ninety. Wow, what a great time in those clubs.

Yeah, oh yes. And it was interesting too because it was like this young woman named Sarah Silverman. Sure, holy shit, Chris Rock was still around, you know.

I well, these are the real deal, you know.

And I was doing open mics and watching these people and going a man, you know, like a young Sarah Silverman was just great to see that, and then to watch her career after that was great. Wow, you know I did okay. You know, I get on at two in the morning, the three people and it's okay, I said something. They laughed, great that work this word that. And then once I once I've said okay, I'm not crazy, then I was like, all right, I'm doing this.

So you stopped doing stand up and then dove it. That's so interesting that that that crucible of stand up was your sort of testing ground, and.

It way I had a similar, uh similar path.

I knew that I wanted to work in comedy, and to me, stand up was sort of like, all right, if you're serious, you know, get into it. And I got right into that same circuit you were in, but like the next sort of time frame. So I started in about ninety seven ninety eight, and uh, and I love I still relish my years in the New York City stand up.

It's anybody who's never done it. I mean, you know, it's funny if you think like they say, like one of the biggest fears people have is speaking in public. Yeah, speaking in public with the agenda of also trying to get people who laugh. Yeah, is like, and it's funny. Do you do a bit or you say a joke and people don't laugh, It's like getting punched in the face. Oh yeah, it is like it is no sound louder than people not laughing. Yeah, they say, you think they're going.

To Let's say you're like a string quartet, or or like even a great professor at a university giving a lecture. Most performers will get up in front of an audience and the audience actually wants them to succeed. Not true in comedy clubs. A lot of audience members in a comedy club want you to bomb. They want they want to feel the train wreck. They're there to see the just car crash. But wow, that's that's awesome. Okay, So then then Hollywood and you just moved out and I jumped in down.

I did not know a soul. I literally sold everything I had. I was not in a relationship at the time, and I just showed up here. On May eighth, nineteen ninety one, I got a room in a horror Sro hotel is actually in MacArthur, Park, and now I was like, I have to figure out. So I went down to the Writers Guild and this was just complete luck. They had a list of new agents or young agents who were actually looking for clients. And on that list was a guy I went to law school with who sat

What are you talking?

I'm in la.

I'm right, I'm trying to be a writer. I need an agent, I said, So I'm going to create the Doug Vivianny Agency out of a mailboxes, et cetera. And we're going to get letterhead and a phone mail and I'm going to submit my work under your letterhead, and if I get anything, you get ten percent, like an agent.

He said, great, So that's what I did. So you were your own agent. He was just the sort of like nominal.

He was like, you know, the guy on Charlie's Angels. So I did that and I photocopied all my scripts and this is back you know, this is I'm like nineteen ninety two when you could do this.

I would just pull up to.

The Warner Brothers lot, for example, and say, yeah, I'm the messenger from the Doug Vivannie agency. I have some scripts I need to drop off. And I just hit every sitcom office in LA and there was like thirty of them at the time, and I addressed, you know, here's my scripts to the showrunner from an agent. And now at least my scripts are in the building where theoretically, if lightning struck, I could at least have a shot.

And I said, yeah, so Donald Trump of you?

Yeah, John Baron calling, so yeah, And I have no idea what agents did or said. The only agent I ever saw was Rubin Kincaid on The Partridge Family, and he didn't seem to do much. But I figured, you know, let me just I'm just gonna wing it. And she said, yeah, yeah, we read his stuff. He's really, you know, talented. So kid's amazing. So does he have like one more teenage oriented script, because you know, Fresh Prince is kind of

So it was Friday.

I can get it to you too, mon late Tuesday afternoon. If that were yeah, fine, great. So hung up the phone and cranked out a wonder Year's episode, went in, gave it in. Now he's the messenger of the lawyer. It was everybody, and they had me in the pitch an idea and that was that became my foot in the door. I sold him on an idea that ultimately never went anywhere. But that was my first shot. And a little after I got into a thing called the

Wow, incredible, incredible story. There's a thread here which is Grit and Moxie and I sort of never seeing an obstacle as an obstacle, but yeah, but it's just something to work around.

And yeah, especially with this, I was not taken no for an answer.

So where do you Where do you think that came from? Growing up?

Like, were you a scrappy kid in Brooklyn?

To do I mean, yeah, I mean I grew up.

When I was thirteen, I started working for a butcher shop that was owned by Paul Castellano, who's the head of the Gambino family. When I was sixteen, I worked in an illegal card game run out of a synagogue in our neighborhood that was run by a guy named Roy Demeyo who's the subject of a book called Murder Machine.

He and his.

Crew in the early eighties killed more people than the Iraqi Army at the time, I think was the statistic. He had a bar in my neighborhood, so by asthmosis, I just kind of knew those guys. I also just became fascinated with crime and criminals. Actually, somebody asked me this, like, what was the first thing, and it sounds quaint now, but.

It was the movie Oliver.

I loved the idea of being part of that gang of pickpockets that was like so big. I want to be the I wanted to be the R Dodger. That looks so cool to me. And right around that time, I read Abby Hoffman had this book called Steal this book course Yeah, which was my bible, and it was the first time of like, oh, wow, you can scam shit. And then the Sting came out and I was like, oh my god, I'm using your brain to psyche people

Well that's a pretty good transition point for us because you had a kind of bosure to that criminal element in Brooklyn. Is that what made you such a perfect candidate for one of your biggest staff jobs at the Sopranos there?

I think, so yeah. When I when I saw that pilot, my agent at the time sent it to me, and you know, like most people, I thought, opera, what is this? And I don't even think I finished watching it, and I was like trembling. I was like, I know these guys. I know these people. I know how they talking to her. They think I called him up. I said, you got to get me on this show.

So the real life mob life was not for you.

It was not something that that even attracted you from a sort of like romantic or exotic sense, which I think is draws a lot of people into that space. But the fictional mob space was right where you felt at home, and.

That yeah, that I love. I love that stuff, and.

It's like all the fun of the mafia with none of the danger.

It's like, I say, why people ride roller coasters. It's like you feel like you're about to die, but you're.

Not going to die. How exhilarating.

Yeah, so writing about it, you know, was much preferable for me.

All Right, I could go on for hours. I love hearing about your career and all the machinations and steps you took. It's my favorite thing is just learning about how people got where they wanted to be. And you have an incredible story. But let's turn the page and get into kind of where you and I actually have this interesting overlap, which is in our shared fascination with the Prohibition era. I think most people assume they know what prohibition is. Liquor was made illegal. It was a

Yeah.

I mean I was given a book by HBO called Bordwalk Empire about the history of Atlantic City, and they said, maybe there's a TV series in here. Okay, the history of Atlantic City. That sounds great. But on the way out to Doortsy Martin Scorsese is attached to that book, and I was like, oh, okay, well that's a different story. I will find the TV series in here.

You're right.

So you started reading and there was a chapter about this guy named Nukie Johnson, who I later fictionalized as Nuckie Thompson. But Nuckie was the corrupt treasurer of Atlantic City during the Prohibition era, where you know, you have a corrupt politician in charge of a city on the eastern sea board where all the alcohol comes through, and suddenly overnight he was friends with Lucky Luciano and Arld Rostein and Al Capone and everybody else. I went, this

You know.

What was also interesting to me too, is that even though it's one hundred years ago, it still felt modern. People dressed in suits, they went out to restaurants, they talked on the telephone, they drove in cars. You know, it's still felt cool. It still felt like accessible. It wasn't like ten years earlier, would it felt like you know, down n abby. But this was modern people. You know, you could wear some of those clothes today. And I said, wow, this is such a great setup and it's really not

That's his name.

I meant to be Marty when I went to be mister Scarsese, and believe me, that's what I called him initially that he was like, oh, this is great. I've never done anything in this era before. So once he gave me the blessing, you know, we were off to the races. And then you know, the real work started.

They had to.

You know, we had a protagonist who was like fifty years old in nineteen twenty, so I was like, okay, so he was born in eighteen seventy, so what books did he read what was his pop culture references? What was happening in nineteen twenty, there's the war, World War One just ended, he had all these guys coming home, women just got the right to vote. Prohibition itself, what were the movies? So it was like a ton of research. You know, Also, how did people actually talk? I'm sure

It is truly a wild moment in American history. The sort of moral panic on one hand, and then there's the anti German sentiment kind of like flaring up, and then that gives the teetotalers ammunition to go after the brewers. Ye to go after all these Germans.

Was a perfect storm. I mean, yeah, you're at you're at war with Germany, and now suddenly you know, Coleslaw is liberty cabbage and Hamburger's or liberty sandwiches. And I mean, I think half the brewers got shut down. And I got where it came from. You know, there were it was. Alcoholism was devastating.

You know.

The cliche is the data you know got paid on Friday and then you didn't see him and spent all his money at the bar, and you know and your family went destined to this is been days before social programs or even before AA was a thing, I guess, So there was a real it was.

A real problem. So Nukie Thompson is a character that that was played by Steve Buscemi. How close to the real Nukie Johnson was he?

Not at all?

Not?

I mean, if we were to cast the real we were to somebody who looked like Nukie Johnson, Jim Gandlofini would have actually been perfect. Knuckie was a big, burly, bald headed guy.

So I feel like Steve Buscemi's casting was such a stroke of genius for Boardwalk Empire because it is against type and in a way that you know, can this guy who's who's sort of a slight build, not an intimidating presence, and whose face to me just has a sort of kind of warmth and sadness and a sort of tenderness, can this guy carry a mob show? Tell me a little bit about why Steve Buscemi was so perfect for Boardwalk Empire.

You know, it started with with Marty. You know, we said, all right, who are you going to get to do this? And you know, I said well, this is what the real guy looked like. And Marty said, no one's ever heard of this guy. Which is also funny because when I went down to do my research in Atlantic City, the real Nucky between like nineteen ten and nineteen thirty was hands down the most powerful guy in Atlantic City.

Worker I was.

Suddenly everybody knew who he was, but nobody knew who this guy was. So Marty's you know, very you know, correctly said it doesn't matter. We can cast anybody. And then he just said, well who, let's let's just name actors we like and hell yeah, at helm a help came out available, not available, and I said, well, Steve

Yeah, he is. I would imagine, you know, your collaboration as a showrunner with the wardrobe department and the production design department and the props department was so fun on a project like this and so cool. And then of course your music team both the score and you know, your needle drops and throughout the episodes. What are some things that stood out to you that in that research process that were either surprising or especially exciting or fun

Like loved like the all the wardrobe stuff, the hair stuff. One of the things I loved was a little detail that in somewhere in nineteen sixteen, the Gillette Company invented the safety raiser. Up until that point, men shaved themselves with a straight raizer, so facial hair was a big thing. A lot of guys had beards and mutton chops and all these crazy everybody had facial hair up until nineteen seventeen.

Yeah, you know, so I needed, we.

Needed a smattering of that, and everybody took such pride in it too. I remember even once a big debate about a chain link fence. You know, I didn't even bring it up, or a production designer he said, you know, we had a chain link fence somewhere, And he said, before you say anything, yes, they had chain link fences in nineteen twenty. They're invented in nineteen oh five. Take it easy, he goes. I didn't know myself and I had to check this out, but yeah, they had chain

Ah. I love that, And it just informs all the the actors on the set. It gives them all these these kind of anchors and reference points to latch onto. So most prohibition crime stories center around the male bootleggers, but Boardwalk features a lot of extremely unique and morally gray and enterprising female characters. Margaret Thompson, Jillian Darmody being a couple of standouts. What was the inspiration for those incredible characters.

In the book Boardwalk Empire, Nelson Johnson fictionalized the meeting between the real Nucky and a woman from the neighborhood who came to ask to get her husband a job. And he said, this is a kind of thing Nucky would do. Like, you know, people worked in the hotel business in the summer months, it was great, but during the winter people were out of work, and if your husband you drank and didn't have money, you know, you

There's another formidable female character in Boardwalk Empire, Assistant Attorney General Esther Randolph, who attempts to prosecute Nukie. Now she's presumably based on the real world Mabel Walker Little Bread. Yeah.

Yeah, who fascinating character.

Yeah, so we talk a lot about her in SNAPHU.

I'm just curious kind of what your research brought to light, what excited you about her as a character. She's such a mess of contradictions.

Yeah, I mean, the one thing I loved is that when provision end that she went to work for a wine companys, like and even like she wasn't averse to having a drink herself, but it's like once she became like, Okay, you know I'm doing this, she was really staunchly trying to enforce those Oh and of course her bosses were just unbelievably corrupt Harry Doherty, Warren Harding, That whole administration was just like you know, and that's another thing that

And George Cassidy is a character that is a real life bootlegger who actually had an office in the Capitol building where he was distributing liquors to congress people. Right, that's very similar to your character. Gaston means in boardwalking Empire, who was kind of a supplier to high level folks, right, Yeah, and a real guy. Yeah.

I mean the more we would research this, the more incredible it became. You know, another detail too, Al Capolin's brother, one of his brothers was moved out to the west and became a sheriff and he was like a cowboy sheriff who would do rest bootleggers. Yeah, and we like we got to get this on the show, and we could never work it in. But it's like just these little odds and ends. You's like, holy shit, this actually was real.

It's so cool to hear you touch on these things that that we also dig into in SNAFU and some of these these strange and more obscure connections.

Or George Ramis too, another one, like one of the craziest stories here, like an incredibly successful defense attorney becomes like the biggest bootlegger ever and then loses everything, goes to jail, and then his wife completely steals all his money with in conjunction with a federal agent who she has an affair with, and then he gets out of jail and then murders her and then is found not

And will le Brandt prosecuted him, and he's part of of what led to the federal government taxing illegal liquor, right, which is just another insane.

Yeah, why would you think you would have to do that? But yeah, I mean, I guess it's the same principle now, like you go, okay, well, I don't care how you earned your money, even if it's illegal, you have to still have debate taxes on it. And that's I guess how they get you know, they get al capone, you know, for tax evasions. Like I know you said you were furniture salesmen, but you've got a million dollars here, So okay.

I just was going to kind of bring it back to this this overarching theme throughout that era of hypocrisy. Sometimes it's kind of buried, and sometimes it's just outrageous and flagrant, Like we discussed George Cassidy and these bootleggers supplying the lawmakers who are passing the laws of prohibition with alcohol. I'm curious if you're if you hit on in your research, are you familiar with formula six?

I am not.

Yeah. So one of the things we get into in this season of Snaffoo is this really staggering realization that for a long time the government was putting additives into industrial alcohol to prevent people from drinking it. And these were things that made industrial alcohol. This process was called denaturing, right, and it made alcohol incredibly yucky to imbibe, but it also made people a bit sick, just enough to keep people from drinking it. And that was going on for

Anyway, it's just wild what they start have to assume.

Formulas two through five were very decreased.

I guess how.

Bad is this going to be?

Like, why the formula four is like diarrhea. We got to really get like, you know, you know, blisters.

Now, let's five naxi out for like a week, Yeah, exactly, Formula six, you're not drinking anymore.

So, you know, I was very aware of the fact that bootleggers would incorporate sometimes got to we where they mixed turpentine, they'd mix wood alcohol, you know, all of which you know, into their shitty you know, you know, home manufacturer stuff, and that was killing people, making people blind. Sure, there was a rash of people who went blind. I think it was in New York City, like eighteen people over the course of a weekend who all drank the

There was a drink called derail because it was an alcohol that was used in the industrial railroad industry, and it was and it was making people terribly sick. That was basically bootleggers just using industrial alcohol to enhance their product. Yeah.

Yeah, formaldehyde too is of course, actually did that on the show, actually showing me somebody using it and anything. And it's interesting too, like this is the people don't realize. Like the advent of the mixed drink came because of ProBiS because the bootleg alcohol was so vile they had to start mixing it with fruit juices and stuff. So all the stuff that we know today, you know, up

That's no different than you calling up Paramount pretending to be agent.

Not at all.

But yeah, he's like, wow, that's that's you know, and that's I think what people don't realize that criminals twenty four hours a day is people thinking about how to do this shit. You know, it's pretty pretty incredible. And even though the hypocrisy too, and thinking like as you were talking, you know, the whole the Catholic Church, you know, sacrificial wine. Sure suddenly they had unbelievable demand for a

And it's almost like the scale of the stupidity of prohibitions as a law is commensurate with the scale of how how much organized crime then penetrated American society. In other words, the fallout of prohibition is commensurate with the stupidity of it.

And absolutely, yeah, I mean, up until prohibition, most organized crime was you know, gambling, prostitution, extortion, things of that nature that were I guess lucrative, but not This was just a windfall that they couldn't have even possibly predicted. And I mean, I guess I'm certainly not the first part to make the observation that the drug business today is exactly the same thing.

Well, I can't help thinking that there is a really cool prequel to Boardwalk Empire in the story of the New York City medical examiners who uncovered Yeah, some of this insane, you know, because they're they're right at the interface of law and crime, basically right because they're examining. The corner's job was just to rubber stamp all of the police misconduct. And you know, the police were just you know, they kill somebody that they didn't like, or

No, I mean, there's so many details you were up I hadn't heard of, and it's it's again, it's just endlessly fascinating.

Well, Terrence Winter, this has been an absolutely delightful, very enlightening conversation.

Thank you so much for jumping on Absolutely My pleasure is so fun to do. I can't wait to hear Season three.

Awesome.

Thank you so much, Thanks so much, Ed. Take Care.

SNAFU is a production of iHeartRadio, Film Nation Entertainment, and Pacific Electric Picture Company in association with Gilded Audio. It's executive produced by me Ed Helms, Milan Papelka, Mike Falbo, Whitney Donaldson, and Dylan Fagan. Our lead producers are Carl Nellis and Alyssa Martino. Additional production from Stephen Wood, Olivia Canny, and Kelsey Albright. Our story editor is nicky Stein. Our production assistants are Nevin Calla Poly and A kemedy ekpo