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Terence Winter visits screenwriting class

"Boardwalk Empire" creator shares his story, advice.
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Screenwriter Terence Winter, whose credits include “Boardwalk Empire,” “The Wolf of Wall Street” and “The Sopranos,” visited LREI’s Screenwriting Class on Wednesday. Winter, who didn’t imagine a career as a writer until about age 30, told students about his journey to Hollywood.
 
Movies were far from what Winter says he thought would make for a lucrative career as a young adult. He described growing up in Brooklyn in the 1960s and '70s, attending a vocational high school where he studied to be an auto mechanic, and holding every odd job he could find in New York City—from an overnight doorman to a security guard to a delicatessen worker.
 
Winter studied political science and journalism at NYU and had a career as a lawyer, but eventually was dissatisfied. Instead, he followed his love for movies and TV to Los Angeles to focus on writing. As he worked to find an agent, he studied television intensely, taping sitcoms like “Home Improvement” and “The Fresh Prince of Bel Air” and dissecting them scene by scene. “I read every script I could get my hands on—‘Cheers,’ ‘Frasier,’ ‘Seinfeld,’” Winter told the class. It was during these study sessions where Winter realized how easy it is to write the dialogue and how much work goes into outlining. “The work is the story,” he told the class.
 
Winter became a sitcom writer, then moved to dramas, where he has had much success. His career-making job, a writer on “The Sopranos,” won him four Emmys, and led him to his next big project: creating the series “Boardwalk Empire” for HBO. Winter told the students that growing up in Brooklyn and knowing a little about the mob helped him conceptualize the characters for the mob drama set in Atlantic City, New Jersey. 

Big fans of the show, LREI students asked Winter how he made decisions in the Boardwalk storyline season to season. Winter described the importance of surprising today’s “very sophisticated TV audience.” For example, writing in reoccurring roles for actors who vibe well with the cast, or killing off characters at unexpected moments.
 
Around the same time Winter was developing “Boardwalk Empire,” he was adapting “The Wolf of Wall Street” for the big screen with director Martin Scorsese. Winter is one of a handful of screenwriters who have been able to maintain successful careers in both television and film. “With TV, writers are always at the helm,” Winter said to a student who inquired about the differences in writing for both mediums. “Writers oversee more in TV.”
 
As for his future, Winter shared news about creating and being the showrunner for an upcoming project with both HBO and Scorsese, a drama about the music scene in 1970s New York. As for their futures, Winter advised LREI students interested in film to perhaps reconsider a college major in film, and instead open themselves up to learning more about other subjects before settling on film.

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Learn more about Terence Winter's work: 
http://www.imdb.com/name/nm1010540
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