In Which Boardwalk Empire Gives Us All New Heroes And Villains

Competition? Yes I Would Love Some

by MOLLY LAMBERT

Situations that are superficially identical can often be completely dissimilar. That's why there are no hard and fast rules that always apply across the board, except the golden rule, and even then you learn pretty fast that treating other people the way you want to be treated is very often the best way to brutally and categorically fuck yourself.

So even though I told Matt Weiner that using anachronistic music was the worst possible idea for Mad Men, I think Boardwalk Empire would benefit tremendously from doing that exact specific thing I expressly told Mad Men not to do ever again. I'm also sorry I initially went so hard on Steve Buscemi's portrayal of Nucky Johnson for not being James Gandolfini or Jon Hamm. Those are good burgers, Walter. 

All I could think about during Boardwalk Empire's season finale ending montage was how much better it would have been with some rock music. I might have to resoundtrack it for YouTube just to prove my point. It reminded me of how much I love season closing montages, and how good they always were on The Sopranos. 

Boardwalk Empire's closing montage was so visually perfect, but I was distracted by the stupid olde tymey song with its overly literal to the plot lyrics. I just wished they'd gone the full Scorsese/Sopranos and used a fucking Springsteen song or something. I expect too much from things I like, especially art. I always want them to be better.

Like as much as I have complained about the Brian Jonestown Massacre song in the opening credits, and how it's dumb to connect the sixties psychedelic subculture to prohibition, they should totally do more of that. Stop digging so deep in the victrola crates. Hire Lenny Kaye to be the music supervisor before season 2 starts.

Less ragtime, more garage rock, no historically accurate standup comedians ever again. I joke reference the "Golden Years" scene from A Knight's Tale but that scene is AWESOME! And the only memorable part of that movie! Let's face it, sometimes the most "obvious" things are actually also the best ideas! Sometimes! Other times, worst.

David Milch said he figured out pretty quickly that using old tymey western slang would have made all of Deadwood's characters sound like Yosemite Sam. It's true that the period details are what most often yank me out of full Boardwalk Empire immersion. The jokes just aren't funny, and I'd rather they work harder on making the world seem cool than having it be entirely historically accurate. 

So is being a showrunner exactly like being a mob boss? Certainly both professions attract a particular kind of volatile personality type. Addictive types with big personalities who express emotions by throwing things at walls. David Simon doesn't even pretend not to be crazy. Plenty of sitcoms are more fucked up than procedurals.

Showrunners like to create an enormous façade of power and respect around themselves, and then try to disguise their private intense vulnerability and terror of failure by slipping it inside monologues in the mouths of the characters that act as their personal avatars, so that if anyone ever calls them out on it they have the caveat that it's just fiction and imaginary creations and what the fuck are you talking about.

Matt Weiner coined "there's no geographical solution to an emotional problem," but Terence Winter coined "remember when is the lowest form of conversation." Both were said by Tony Soprano, eternal symbol of the human ego and all its indestructible trappings, in the last season of the first greatest cable television show of all time.

I felt like both quotes were meant to be Tony repeating something he obviously heard somewhere else (whether from Dr. Melfi or elswhere). Both of them were added instantly to the Bartlett's of my mind, and come up all the time, occasionally in This Recording's tags. What was it like in the Sopranos writers' room when David Chase wasn't talking? Are Winter and Weiner each other's Black Swans?

We define ourselves against the things that we are not, but also very much against all the things we almost are. That is the basis of close friendships but also rivalries, and all the things that fall into the gray area inbetween. There is no doubt in my mind that Winter and Weiner are watching each other's shows, in search of the specific masochistic pain that is seeing something you wish you had done being done well.

Weiner will deny it to his grave, because he is Pete Campbell. But I know he's been watching Boardwalk Empire (because he is Pete Campbell), and that its improvement curve made him seethe like a Ted Chaough despite/because he has had the best show in town for four years, and now he has a genuine challenger. The only other true critical hit cable drama since Mad Men started has been Breaking Bad, and that obviously served as a companion piece to reflect Mad Men and AMC's rise to glory.

Now HBO, who started this gangster shit, has rearisen like a Lucky Luciano/Stringer Bell/Tony Soprano swamp monster. Never forget that Matt Weiner pitched Mad Men to HBO first, and they turned his ass down. And now they are investing everything in Boardwalk Empire in an attempt to compensate for fucking up with Mad Men.

A few more Boardwalk thoughts before I go too much farther off the rails (no promises of a return trip back): I was weirdly excited to see Paz De La Huerta's Lucy again after raving about how the penultimate episode was the best of the season because it was Pazless and olde tyme orgyless. The writing for Omar is the least believable.

Michael Pitt is great, and so so so pretty. I can't wait until whenever he starts fucking Mrs. Schroeder and it turns into the R. Kelly video for Down Low, with Steve Buscemi as Ron Isley (YES). Michael Shannon instills the fear of god in everybody. Gretchen Mol really put it down in the Mary Harron movie about Bettie Page and convinced me that she can act. Everybody loves shattered face assassin guy (aka T-.00005).

Every microworld is equally incestuous and gossip-driven. Round up a group of people in [X] profession and it's a sure bet that they have all fucked or fought (or both!) whether it be porn stars, heart surgeons, or olympic athletes. And they're concerned somebody else is a better cardiovascular specialist, speed skater, or blowjob.

I made a grand statement recently that Boogie Nights is my favorite movie, and realized it was actually true the moment I said it out loud. My other favorite movie is Clueless, and the thing they share (besides Los Angeles based specificity, insanely good dialogue, and multiple perfect set pieces) is amazing ensemble casts. 

Ensemble casts para-socially replicate the experience of actual friend groups. Despite all the people you may know, the ones that actually personally matter to you could usually fit in an All My Children scrapbook. I have always felt the most comfortable in gender balanced environments, much more so than the times I have been the only girl in a boys' club or the times when I am one of many girls in an all girls' club.

Ensembles happen to also be a great way to trick men into identifying with female characters. It's possible to idolize and identify with somebody simultaneously. You want to fuck Bruce Springsteen but you also want to BE Bruce Springsteen. Nucky and Mrs. Schroeder both finally stepped down off the pedestals that attracted them to each other in the first place, and faced the reality that they might be into each other on a plane beyond the powers of physical attraction and symbolic representation.

Paul Thomas Anderson's black swan is the Coen Brothers. Darren Aronofosky's black swan is probably David Fincher. Christopher Nolan's is David O. Russell because of the time David O. Russell put him in a headlock for trying to poach Jude Law from I ♥ Huckabees over to The Prestige. Judd Apatow really needs one (HEY JUDD, SUP!)

Kanye's is Jay-Z but there's a whole weird There Will Be Blood father/son x mentoring/competition dynamic there. Beyoncé's is Rihanna (hence "Ring The Alarm"). How do you keep yourself from being Black Swancepted? You can't, and you shouldn't try to. You secretly want worthy competitors. Take comfort in the fact that your rivals and frenemies, much like spiders, are definitely at least as scared of you. 

Leonardo DiCaprio has gone on record a few times saying that Boogie Nights is the one movie he was offered that he still regrets not doing, even though Mark Wahlberg is the perfect Dirk Diggler, and Leo would have been a) nowhere near as good at playing somebody so cluelessly stupid as Wahlberg always is (he OWNS hotheaded dumb guy characters) and b) distractingly more famous enough than the rest of the cast so as to ruin the flawless balance of the multi-character based ensemble.

The takeaway is that Leonardo DiCaprio has spent some serious time wishing he were Mark Wahlberg. I can only imagine how much time Wahlberg has spent wishing he were DiCaprio. When will somebody make a Black Swan about dudes? A Fight Club where they actually end up fucking each other? I guess it'll have to be me.

Oh and hey that was a good season ender to Boardwalk Empire. I have a feeling the second season is going to be great and it'll also make for a spectacular next season of Mad Men, because Matt Weiner's going to work that much harder to win.

Molly Lambert is the managing editor of This Recording. She tumbls here and twitters here. She's got the touch.

"Don't Let It Bring You Down" - Annie Lennox (mp3) 

"A Whiter Shade of Pale" - Annie Lennox (mp3)

"Put A Little Love In Your Heart" - Annie Lennox & Al Green (mp3)

In Which It Feels The Same But Different Somehow

Half-Awake

by ALEX CARNEVALE

Boardwalk Empire

creator Terence Winter

The list of things that would never have existed without The Sopranos grows longer by the day. Mad Men, Ryan Gosling, the Brown University class "Middlemarch & The Sopranos," Michael Imperioli's career, 326 instances of James Gandolfini having sex with women, some of my fashion choices during 1998, and now Boardwalk Empire. People enjoy comparing these shows to novels, and since novels usually have terrible beginnings, we shouldn't be surprised that Terence Winter's version of the Roman myth begins slowly. As someone remarked, they should have just had a title card that said "Prohibition Begins."

Let's not let that discourage us from what appears to be an astonishing new show with a few severe but not unfixable problems. No one remembers that the first season of The Sopranos was a cartoonish melange compared to what followed. You usually need a season to work out the kinks in a concept, although Weeds only needed one season to completely ruin one.

Fictional depictions of historical life either adhere devoutly to realism or descend into wild fantasy. No one can take anything Chuck Bass says seriously anymore, but in contrast Boardwalk Empire seems fairly keen on not having anyone wear out his welcome. Many Gentiles struggled to tell the faces of the Italian foot soldiers apart in Winter's previous television effort, and there are no shortish of burly, mustachioed guys here. Al Capone looks more like a NJ extra than a crime lord on the come.

But no matter — you can always recast, or just kill people off, especially when one of those people is being played by Gretchen Mol. (Unfortunately for a lot of people, you can't kill off Al Capone.) The number one problem foreseen with Boardwalk Empire was whether audiences could tolerate Steve Buscemi's pasty face, and it's generally been concluded that he's at least competent in the role. Here's what I don't understand — other actors gain and lose weight for roles, and Joaquin Phoenix performs an accidental bj on Casey Affleck for the sake of his art, and yet Buscemi can't hit the tanning salon on the way to the set?

In The Sopranos Buscemi played a convict relation to Tony who returned to the family as an awkward accoutrement not long for this world. (They had smuggled his character's semen out of jail, and it became two twin boys. Remind you of anyone?) Here he is the most permanent fixture of life, a googly-eyed reproduction of a boss that is itself new enough to garner our attention. The fact that the real life Nucky Johnson more resembles James Gandolfini is a sad reminder that life is not usually as novel as it appears on television.

Does Boardwalk Empire attempt a simulacra of the period in which its action rests? Occasionally; but it is more insistent on a steampunk aesthetic that makes its denizens more like aliens than real folk. The show's real protagonist is Jimmy Darmody (Michael Pitt), a up-and-coming thug who returned from the first World War lacking a healthy fear of death. His relationship with his wife is easily the highlight of the show so far, as she is the proto-New Jersey Jew and they get along in a funny way.

Sopranos production designer Bob Shaw creates a wonderworld of unlikely lighting and subtly changed interiors given the limitations of stage sets to represent entire whorls: Atlantic City, New York, and Chicago, the three centers of crime. When Buscemi's Nucky hits the boardwalk, it's more reminiscent of Disney's hotel than the actual degrading atmosphere of that troubled city, but let's face it, the bright and pastel fantasy is more interesting than the reality.

So it is with much of the milieu. When Boardwalk Empire gets historical, or tries to make fun jokes for tenured professors with unique portrayals of Lucky Luciano and gags about Arnold Rothstein fixing the 1919 World Series, it gets a little bogged down by its details, letting the background of the characters speak more loudly than their actions in the drama. Then again, part of the fun of The Sopranos was constant set-up with unexpected payoff — it was never too certain if your favorite hood was going to make it through another episode or become the next boss.

Deadwood experimented with the same time-shifting, and gradually morphed from hard-boiled western to a gaudy fantasy world of death. Boardwalk Empire is violent, but death and dying is not savored in a sadomachistic way. Wildness is celebrated, is cherished, as an expression of freedom. Once you start dating a call girl and gambling in the six figures every night (adjusted for inflation) a lot of joy is sucked out of things, a happiness that can only be regained by continuing to behave as if nothing else mattered. These are the feelings even a contemporary journey to Atlantic City invariably elicits.

Nucky rules the roost, taking kickbacks from every commissioner in his bureaucracy. Jimmy is his driver, and when he meets up with his mirror image in Chicago Al Capone, blood runs thick. Scorsese shoots the whole thing exactly the same way he would have in 1988, adjusting for inflation. Actually the Ray Liotta of 20 years ago would be a great add here. As in all Scorsese productions, the unattainable women are blondes and your sister and wife are brunettes.

The show is already better at creating convincing storylines for its women than its northern NJ cousin. It was genius to cast No Country for Old Men's Kelly MacDonald as a battered wife in Nucky's parish seduced by his power. Her inclusion was a master stroke; things will likely improve when they discard her immigrant accent and have her journaling about how much she loves Henry James. Her romantically-challenged storyline with Enoch has yet to be very convincing. No matter how many times they show Steve Buscemi pleasuring a woman, it never gets any easier to believe.

The rest is easy to fabricate, because our ideas of these times is already bound up in films like The Untouchables. (Mamet's influence on the dialogue is almost painful.) The way of speaking is neither too foreign or too modern, and the show takes advantage of the fact that modernity lurks 75 years in the future in Bill Gates' garage. Misunderstandings and isolated incidents affect life in unexpected ways. The freedom of doing whatever you want during a restrictive time in America is literally intoxicating.

Sometimes we forget how restrictive the society we live in now is. It's disappointing to live in a world where there is not more than an outside chance you will not be caught after committing a murder. The inherent chaos of perpetrating crime in this context creates a sprawling pastiche of action and character that is unlike even Boardwalk Empire's obvious progenitors.

Comparing any television show to a novel is an unserious analogy. No novel written in this period or any other had the luxury of so much action or such a spread of characters. Boardwalk Empire is more reminiscent of The Canterbury Tales, an epic poem with many individual endings and stories.

Eventually the show will focus on who really possesses power — basically men in ballrooms stroking dogs — and will soon become a not-very-veiled attack on the indiscretions of the financial industry. All shows about criminals seek to prove that the taint of crime touches every sphere of life. It is tough to equate the actions of America's early entrepreneurs with offenses against the SEC. The first was the inevitable byproduct of the wild American economy, the second was the inevitable failure of a bureaucracy that was itself unregulated in a regulated industry.

In fact, there is a great danger in judging the past by the standards of the present. We live perpetually with the idea that this is the only age, but in reality the ancient Egyptians pursued the dream of flight and may have even constructed airplanes, the Indians of central America built massive suspension bridges, and indoor plumbing in Crete far predates the birth of Jesus. The tumultuous but vibrant life of another America is proof that these times look straight at their antecedents, not down at them. We have come not far at all.

Alex Carnevale is the editor of This Recording. He last wrote in these pages about the double life of James Tiptree Jr. He tumbls here and twitters here.

"Don't Wake the Dead" - Guards (mp3)

"Crystal Truth" - Guards (mp3)

"Long Time" - Guards (mp3)

Time Has Been Kind To You My Friend