Wednesday, August 31, 2011

T Winter - Five Points


Terrence Winter
Photo Erik Madigan Heck
Wired.com magazine – Profile

http://www.wired.com/magazine/2011/08/pl_player_winter/

NAME: Terence Winter

GIG Creator, executive producer, and showrunner on HBO’s Boardwalk Empire, returning in September for a second season of Prohibition-era malfeasance.

Strategy for the comments section:
“Early after Boardwalk’s premiere, I was reading Twitter and HBO’s site, but it’s so all over the map that it ultimately becomes pointless. Still, the temptation is always there. You have to remind yourself: There is no water in that well. You’re not going to come away happy. You could read a bunch of positive things, but you’ll only focus on the negative shit. Why do that to yourself?”

On Research and Authenticity
“I started with the book Boardwalk Empire and then immersed myself in the history of Atlantic City, World War I, the temperance movement, Prohibition, pop culture. I even read the news and magazines of the period just to soak in it. That was before I even started thinking of the story.”

Favorite Discovery
“All this piano music used to accompany silent films. But once talkies came in, it became obsolete. Our music supervisor found these music rolls and gave them to an orchestra to record—music that nobody’s listened to for almost 100 years.”

Writing Tic
“If I hear an interesting turn of phrase on TV, I’ll repeat it back—I just like to roll it around on my tongue. The same goes for dialog: I’ll either speak it aloud or whisper it. I definitely sit in front of my computer and mutter. People have mentioned it.”

Mentor
David Chase, creator of The Sopranos. “He’d say, ‘Dismiss your first five ideas. Skip ‘em.’ His other big thing was, be entertaining. We used to throw in the kitchen sink on The Sopranos—violence and sex and comedy and music—and it all added up to a really fun hour of TV. I think about that with Boardwalk.”

Boardwalk’s Atlantic City: Hell or heaven?
“It’s like America: On the surface it’s the greatest place in the world, but there is a dark side. And to make that world function, some dark things need to be done. Some people are going to get screwed.”

Sunday, August 14, 2011

Boardwalk Empire - the Music Soundtrack




Boardwalk Empire Volume 1 – Music From the HBO Original Series hits stores September 16th.

Boardwalk Empire Volume 1 – Music From the HBO Original Series Tracklist

01. Vince Giordano And The Nighthawks – Livery Stable Blues
02. Stephen DeRosa – The Dumber They Come The Better I Like Them
03. Regina Spektor – My Man
04. Vince Giordano And The Nighthawks – Dark Town Strutters Ball
05. Catherine Russell – Crazy Blues
06. Vince Giordano And The Nighthawks – Mournin’ Blues
07. Kathy Brier – Some Of These Days
08. Vince Giordano And The Nighthawks – Margie
09. Loudon Wainwright III – Carrickfergus
10. Nellie McKay – Wild Romantic Blues
11. Kathy Brier – After You Get What You Want (You Don’t Want It)
12. Leon Redbone – Sheik of Araby
13. Vince Giordano And The Nighthawks – Japanese Sandman
14. Kathy Brier- Don’t Put a Tax On the Beautiful Girls
15. Martha Wainwright – All By Myself
16. Stephen DeRosa – Life Is A Funny Proposition

Wednesday, August 3, 2011

Ken Burns PBS "Prohibition"




"Prohibition" Film makers Lynn Novick and Ken Burns

Ken Burns Readies “Prohibition” documentary for PBS

http://communityvoices.sites.post-gazette.com/index.php/arts-entertainment-living/tuned-in-journal/29621-press-tour-ken-burns

BEVERLY HILLS, Calif.
– PBS documentary filmmaker Ken Burns is a fan of HBO's "Boardwalk Empire" -- he hasn't missed an episode yet -- and he's hopeful interest in the HBO 1920s-era series will help gin up interest in his latest PBS program, "Prohibition,"airing Oct. 2-4. ("Boardwalk Empire" returns for season two on Sept. 25.)

"I'm always amazed how many of the films we make seem to fit into the zeitgeist of the moment," Burns said. "We hope audiences who have been enjoying ["Boardwalk Empire"] might look to us and we hope audiences who might be enjoying our thing will go to them and that might represent the possibility of some symbiotic relationship."
Read more after the jump. ...

Burns made a lot of allusions to current-day issues that will be explored in "Prohibition" but he said he'd leave drawing any direct lines to viewers.

"We are not political filmmakers, we don't have a political axe to grind or make," Burns said, noting that at one point sauerkraut became known as "liberty cabbage" (shades of "freedom fries"). "One begins to understand human nature always is the same. We leave it up to our audience to forge those connections. We make a very strong point about prohibition and that it's an abject failure and didn't do anything about alcoholism. The impulse at the beginning of prohibition, the problem to solve, remained at the end of the prohibition era."

One of the best lines from a "Prohibition" clip shown is writer Pete Hamill's observation that making prohibition the law of the land is to "pass a law that would imprison Jesus if he turned water into wine."


BEVERLY HILLS, Calif.
- At a time when reality shows seem to be overrunning the TV landscape, PBS President Paula Kerger says her network provides an increasingly critical oasis.

"Channels that were supposed to replace PBS by offering history, drama and arts programming have increasingly turned to reality television," she told TV critics here this weekend.

"If the rest of the media continues on its current trajectory, PBS will be the only enterprise whose sole purpose is to provide content of consequence both nationally and locally to all Americans."

She cited A&E and Bravo as networks that have changed their focus from arts to reality, and she pointed to History as a channel that is covering its subject differently.

"As we look at how History is building out its work," said Kerger, "we see more and more opportunities for content they're not covering."

If this sounds like Kerger has added trash-talking to the PBS repertoire, she stressed she isn't criticizing other networks' programming, just saying their change in focus makes the mission of PBS more important.

Kerger took a more upbeat tone this weekend than she did in January, when public broadcasting was under heavy fire from legislators who wanted the government out of the media biz altogether.

PBS survived that one, and while Kerger acknowledges nothing in the federal budget could be called fully secure these days, she said most of the PBS news now is positive.

Viewership is up 7% over the last year, she said, or about 129,000 viewers at any given time. PBS Kids is up, Web hits are way up and "Masterpiece Theater" is up 44%, thanks largely to the new "Upstairs, Downstairs" and "Downton Abbey."

She said the experimental science programming bloc on Wednesday nights has had "great results," and she praised upcoming specials that include the new three-part Ken Burns/Lynn Novick "Prohibition" series in early October.

Other specials will include a Cameron Crowe film on Pearl Jam, a New Orleans music trip featuring Hugh Laurie of "House," an "American Masters" on Woody Allen, an Ed Sullivan comedy retrospective and a second season of "Downton Abbey" in January.

All is not perfect in the PBS universe, Kerger acknowledged. She said state cutbacks in PBS funding have presented "challenges" for some stations and warned that "even aside from anything that could happen in the next election, every organization that gets government funding may be susceptible to cutbacks."

She says she is "talking all the time" to foundations and other alternate funding sources.

But she also said that contrary to some reports, she doesn't see PBS accepting traditional commercials.

"That could potentially impact some of our programming," she said, noting shows like "Frontline" that rely on an independent viewpoint.

Still, funding is a major consideration in every PBS move. Kerger pointed to HBO's "John Adams" miniseries, which she said she would have loved for PBS "except that it would have taken my content budget for an entire year."

Replica of "Boardwalk Empire" Facade





It's a real shame that when casinos first came to town they were allowed to destroy everything historical - the old hotels, the old boardwalk, the old bars and restaurants, Kentucky Avenue, even the Sands Casino, all gone and in their place, for the most part, parking lots.

Even when they decided to make the multi-million dollar Boardwalk Empire production, instead of just giving them a few miles of the boardwalk north of Resorts, where there is nothing, and allow them to build their old style boardwalk facade there, they went and built it in Brooklyn, New York.

And now, thanks to local radio talk show host Pinky Kravitz, they made a replica of the facade, which means its a fake two times.


Replica of 'Boardwalk Empire' facade goes up in Atlantic City
http://www.pressofatlanticcity.com/news/breaking/replica-of-boardwalk-empire-facade-goes-up-in-atlantic-city/article_1671c494-b9dd-11e0-9ec0-001cc4c002e0.html

By DEREK HARPER, Staff Writer Press of Atlantic City.

ATLANTIC CITY — There’s hot, and then there’s wearing-a-black-pinstripe-suit-in-the-blazing-sun hot. But for Rich Francesco, 37, who portrays the “real” Enoch L. “Nucky” Johnson on an Atlantic City bus tour, there was no missing Monday morning’s debut of the “Boardwalk Empire” facade.

Francesco and cohorts Shelly Damiano and Carla Myers, each of them dressed in their Roaring ’20s finest, were among several hundred people in attendance as longtime area radio host Pinky Kravitz formally unveiled the Boardwalk Empire facade.

The 180-foot long display is in front of the West Hall of Boardwalk Hall, near the intersection of the Boardwalk and Florida Avenue. It is a re-creation of some of the sets for the HBO television series, which is itself a translation of Atlantic County Superior Court Judge Nelson C. Johnson’s history of Atlantic City.

The show has led to a local cottage industry as businesses and individuals seek to cash in on the series, which returns to television with new episodes next month.

This display is the brainchild of Kravitz, who also is a columnist for The Press of Atlantic City. “It is just an unbelievable feat that we have here accomplished,” he said Monday.

Before the 10 a.m. grand unveiling, the display was sheathed in a white covering with towering capital letters that spelled out “Boardwalk Empire.”

Part of the point of the facade is to hide the industrial front of the West Hall addition to Boardwalk Hall. City officials don’t know what to do with the long expanse of yellow brick and debris, exposed to the elements and tens of millions of visitors since the former Trump World’s Fair casino was demolished in 2000.

A colorful printed mural by Peter Max hung in front of the 1970 structure for about five years before it faded and was finally dismantled by a January 2008 winter storm.
This new coverup comes from Interstate Outdoor Advertising, which created the images from designs from the show provided to them by Kravitz. The company said the frames that hold up the facades are similar to their billboards.

The storefronts are re-creations of the Ritz-Carlton, Steel Pier and a store that put premature infants on display, among other actual places. It is unclear how long they will remain on display.

Speakers on Monday said that the Atlantic City Special Improvement District would have an employee stationed nearby to keep the facade safe. And Kravitz said that special anti-graffiti paint was being tested on the facade.

After the unveiling, Carol Boyce Heinisch, 69, stood near the infant store. She was once an infant on display, living in a store incubator through the summer of 1942, she said. She was grateful today for the care she received then.

On Monday, she posed for photos with people who wanted to have their pictures taken with one of the real premature infants.

“We weren’t freaks,” Boyce Heinisch said. “We were babies. We were just little.”
Visitors also clustered around the costumed Francesco, Damiano and Myers.

“We tell the true story of Nucky Johnson,” Damiano said of the Atlantic City bus tours.
“‘Boardwalk Empire’ doesn’t do Nucky Johnson justice,” Myers added later.

Unlike Steve Buscemi, who portrays the show’s “Nucky Thompson” as a sickly looking violent criminal, the broad-shouldered Francesco resembles the real “Nucky” Johnson.
Tom Verba, of Vineland, was one of the people who attended the facade unveiling. Verba, 65, said he and his wife are extras who have attended several Boardwalk Empire casting calls but have never gotten a role.

“I like the show Boardwalk Empire and think that its great Pinky got this done.”
Within a half-hour of the unveiling, the crowd had scattered, leaving city employees to stack the chairs and clean up the Boardwalk.

One of the people stacking chairs, Shaheed Salaam, 46, said he enjoyed the show.
“I didn’t realize so many political things were going on behind the scenes,” he said. “I think it put Atlantic City on the map a little bit.”
Contact Derek Harper:

Friday, July 29, 2011
By DEREK HARPER, Staff Writer |

ATLANTIC CITY — Cathy and Megan Murphy were out for a morning walk when they saw Atlantic City’s past — or at least the version created for HBO’s “Boardwalk Empire” — coming to life before their eyes.

“I love ‘Boardwalk Empire,’” said New York City resident Megan Murphy, 29, “I was just telling my mom she needed to rent it.”

In town for the Atlantic City Food and Wine Festival, the pair found themselves in place Friday morning to watch as crews began erecting the 108-foot-long replica of the Boardwalk stores seen on the HBO series.

As gulls flew overhead and morning joggers and bikers passed by, workers from Interstate Outdoor Advertising and Acord Outdoor Services set up the 18-foot-tall facade in front of the West Hall of Boardwalk Hall, near Florida Avenue.

The “Boardwalk Empire” facades are designed to hide, or at least partially obscure, the ugly yellow brickwork in front of the West Hall building, itself an out-of-place,
industrial-looking shed attached to the side of the more elegant 1929 Boardwalk Hall.
They are about 75 percent life-size, and take the place of a 280-foot Peter Max mural that partially covered the wall for about half a decade until finally shredded by a 2008 storm.

Casting off wooden blocks that held down a protective black tarp shortly after 7 a.m., crews on Friday unveiled images of some of the stores and shops that appear in the fictionalized version of the city during the Roaring ’20s. For Atlantic City, a place that has spent much of its history re-creating itself to put its best face forward, Friday was just the latest step in the process.

A formal unveiling is planned for 10 a.m. today, with parking available from 9 a.m. to noon in the West Hall.

People on the boards Friday morning got a preview of the exhibit. Like the show, all of the stores reflect real institutions, with some circumstances changed to fit the story.
Radio host Pinky Kravitz watched as his brainchild came to life.

Kravitz, who is also a Press of Atlantic City columnist, persuaded show producers to provide a disk of facade drawings that Interstate developed into the vinyl display.
“This is it,” he said admiring the display from inside erected police barricades Friday morning. “And I tell you, it looks like you could walk right into these places.”

He pointed out small changes from the television show originals: every storefront except for the Steel Pier has “Atlantic City” written somewhere on it. And the sign at the end above the palmist that reads “Welcome to Atlantic City” on the Boardwalk, in the show advertises “nuts and Tootsie Rolls.”

People will be able to stop and have their picture taken in front of locations such as Babette’s Supper Club, the primary drinking and dining location in the series. In real life, Kravitz said, the place was once near the intersection of Pacific and Michigan avenues.
Other locations on display include Fralinger’s candies and the Steel Pier, which still exist elsewhere in the resort.

One long-vanished attraction re-created here is “Atlantic City’s Baby Incubator,” a freak show-type Boardwalk exhibit that actually put premature infants on public display from 1902 to 1943. Signs tout “Living Infants,” adding “Come see babies that weigh less than 3 lbs - 25 ¢.” The fake door entices people to “Come see what Science has done for Nature’s little weaklings.”

“It was located just two blocks from here,” Kravitz said, gesturing toward the inlet, “in front of the Million Dollar Pier, now the Pier at Caesars.”

He recalled going in as a child, seeing the tiny babies, and throwing a nickel into a bucket at the end that collected donations for baby food.

Kravitz said the new facades are designed to remain at least until a long-vacant tract nearby is built on.

The facades were built to last, said Steve Gura, Interstate’s director of operations. He said it was designed similar to some of the company’s billboards, some of which are “oh, 100 years old, so I think it will hold.”

Kravitz said that special anti-graffiti paint is being tested on the facades.
Marcy Lipher, of Margate, stopped and watched the crews as they worked. “Oh, how cute,” said Lipher, 57. “It’s something good.”

But she wondered how long it would last.

Lynne LaPointe, 47, and Richard Massicotte, 57, of Montreal, Quebec, rode their bikes in the early morning mist. As the new display was explained, LaPointe nodded her head, saying “C’est bon, c’est bon”: It’s good.