There Will Be TV Blood

Every so often, America agrees to have a debate about violence in popular culture. There are few if any concrete results that emerge from these debates, but it's certainly a discussion worth having. There's no doubt that television is generally more violent and resorts to more graphic imagery than it did a decade or two ago. Whatever you think of the results of this trend, there are quite a few logical behind it, writes Maureen Ryan...

Every day, an ever-expanding array of networks flood the market with all kinds of programming, and new-media companies like Netflix and Hulu are stepping into the fray as well. So how do does a network stand out in a cluttered media landscape? One way to get eyeballs is to gouge them out, apparently. Monday's moderately successful debut of Fox's The Following not only showed or mentioned a couple dozen murders but also featured a disturbing scene with a mutilated dog. Not wanting to be left behind, NBC debuts Hannibal later this season; the drama tells the backstory of the serial killer from "The Silence of the Lambs." Gone are the days when a posse of good-looking lawyers or cops were enough to garner a reasonable audience -- at least that's what network executives concerned about audience erosion appear to be thinking. (Another example: Do No Harm, an upcoming doctor drama on NBC, is about a physician who moonlights as -- wait for it -- a murderer). To compete with all the noise in the marketplace, TV has gotten bigger, brasher and louder in a lot of ways (think of the dumb stereotypes on 2 Broke Girls or the four-quadrant blandness of Terra Nova as other exemplars of this trend). TV shows have to be brassy and have a hook these days, and even if the hook isn't vampires, there's a good chance there will be blood.

Television obviously isn't competing only with other networks and the Internet; it's also competing with other leisure pursuits, including video games and movies. I'm not here to dump on video games; I play them. But television executives are well aware that the video-game and film industries are peeling off potential viewers, and they have responded accordingly. Whatever we may think of the bleed-through among media platforms, it's not surprising that certain sequences in "The Walking Dead" resemble challenging levels on "Call of Duty" and that "Game of Thrones" makes the body count of "The Hobbit" look quaint.


Television audiences have seen a lot over the years, and television writers know that heeding the same old storytelling conventions may bore their audience. What's a sure-fire way to raise the stakes in a story? Threatening to kill or actually killing a characer. Life-or-death stakes are far more common than they used to be on television, as are cliffhangers, big twists and surprise deaths. When 24 killed off a key character at the end of its first season, it was a huge deal, and rightly so. But now that kind of thing happens weekly, on both prestige dramas and pot-boilery soaps, as writers and producers scramble to garner the kind of buzz that social media exists to feed.

Late last year, as I thought about trends within the shows I'd watched, one visual trope came to mind again and again: A character being held down, tied up, interrogated, tortured, menaced, taken hostage and terrified in some way. These kinds of scenes occurred (sometimes in multiple episodes) in Homeland, Revolution, American Horror Story, Revenge, Sons of Anarchy and Arrow -- a very wide range of programs. That's to say nothing of the time Don Draper strangled a woman in Mad Men (in a dream, but still) or the multiple deaths that occur on shows like Boardwalk Empire and Breaking Bad. There's a brutality at the center of many current dramas that may indeed reflect something dark and festering in our culture, and the damage that people do to each other is absolutely an idea that writers should be exploring in all kinds of stories.

But when is enough enough?

Everyone will draw the line in a different place, but one thing is clear: At a certain point, violent scenes become empty calories that offer nothing nutritious or tasty, even in the short term. A better analogy might be drugs -- nothing really matches the intensity of that first hit, and eventually a much bigger dose barely has any impact at all.

The approach to violence is key to working out whether it's being used to advance a show's plot and themes or merely to bludgeon the viewer. A significant death near the end of the first season of Game of Thrones was heartbreaking because it was told from the point of view of the victim and victim's family members, and very little of the actual death was shown. We saw the devastating effect it had on those who'd loved the character. It wasn't about the gore; it was about the empty space that person left behind.

Justified is another show that I don't think of as violent, even though people up dead in many episodes. If anything, the show is about how Raylan Givens and Boyd Crowder attempt to resist the easy solution of violence, and its greatest joy is the verbal combat among various characters. They strategize, they bamboozle, they banter and they reveal themselves in tantalizingly small doses. One of the best scenes of the show's third season featured Raylan throwing a bullet at a guy and saying, "Next one's coming faster!"

For its part, Breaking Bad is the most morally compelling show on the air, given its relentless aim to expose the selfish delusions of a man who won't admit how much damage he's done to everyone around him. The consequences of Walter White's increasing brutality are never ignored. American Horror Story, which more than lives up to its title, shows quite a bit of inventive gore, but its particular brand of melodramatic excess is grounded in character journeys, as loopy and surreal as those journeys are. The show's approach to horror is part of a unified aesthetic that actually works as a piece of storytelling, and the fact that "AHS" is not like anything else on TV -- and displays some black humor about what it does -- counts for a lot.

Violent encounters, murder and the harm done to human bodies -- all those things are and should be tools in the storytellers' arsenals, but those tools grow dull with overuse. Dexter started out as an interesting exploration of the moral grey area in which a "good" serial killer resided, but the show is now a cautionary example of how violent fare can come to feel rote and mechanical. After a while, all those bloody acts become little more than white noise. The Walking Dead, on the other hand, has gotten better -- and its ratings have increased -- not because it kills more zombies in every episode but because it made the audience care more about the desperate survivors at the center of the drama. Contrast that with the approach of The Following; in next week's episode, the victims of the blank-faced acolyte of a "charismatic" killer are presented as a bunch of naive, interchangeable coeds (and they're dead coeds, of course). As I said in my review, the whole enterprise adds up to little more than a collection of serial-killer clichés.

Nobody wants to see stories told inside a plastic paradise in which people's darker, uglier instincts are never acknowledged. But television may be reaching the point of diminishing returns when it comes to on-screen gore and artificially pumped-up stakes. Violence is part of who we are, but so are love, altruism, selfishness, ambition, curiosity -- there's a whole realm of subjects to explore, and not all of them involve axes and knives. There are many interesting stories that can be told about the human nature, but it takes hard work to create suspense and audience investment the old-fashioned ways -- through expert character development and first-rate storytelling.

It's hard not to wonder if the stories that make the most noise or shed the most blood are just a little too fashionable these days -- and a little too easy to sell.
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Under The Boardwalk

Rusty-voiced, sweet-natured, a tin mask covering up his facial World War I wound, Richard Harrow, as played flawlessly by Jack Huston, is the type of vigilante one might find in a DC Comic book, warts and all. But in HBO’s 1920s epic Boardwalk Empire, he’s a supporting character that creator Terence Winter and his writers transformed from late gangster Jimmy Darmody’s trusted sharpshooter into a human being. For the bulk of this season, Harrow refrained from killing off any bad guys as he wooed a war veteran’s daughter and acted as the surrogate father to Darmody’s orphaned son, Tommy. "Richard knows how to kill. He doesn’t do it well; he does it great," says Huston about Harrow, who even puts fear in lead Atlantic City kingpin Nucky Thompson (Steve Buscemi) "I reminded Terry that I was getting an itchy finger, and he said, 'Just wait.'"

And then the Timothy Van Patten-directed season 3 finale, 'Margate Sands,' arrived. In a riveting swinging-camera four-minute gun ballet, Harrow rescues Tommy from his duplicitous grandmother Gillian Darmody’s (Gretchen Mol) whorehouse, which notorious gangster Gyp Rosetti has seized. The payoff: Just as Harrow fakes his surrender, he annihilates the hitman who has a gun to Tommy’s head. "Tim told me, 'You’re going to be happy with the finale. It’s very Tarantino-esque,'" says Huston, who carried around 40 pounds of fake guns, earning cuts and bruises during the scene. 'I was meant to shoot nine people, but they kept adding."

The character of Harrow, from Huston’s nuanced acting to his fireworks finale, is just one example underscoring the cinematic huzzah that punctuated Boardwalk’s third season. So what made this season better than all the others? While the media has long drawn stylish similarities between The Sopranos creator David Chase and his protégé Winter, especially after Boardwalk’s abrupt season 2 finale in which Nucky kills Darmody, it’s clearly evident that Winter came into his own. "David (Chase) didn’t often engage in wish fulfillment for the audience. If it didn’t work for him for the storyline, he didn’t feel obligated to pay things off. I don’t necessarily feel obligated, but I enjoy setup and payoff," explains Winter, who would sometimes encourage to payoff storylines on The Sopranos. "I knew Harrow going into the Artemis Club would be a great crowd-pleasing moment. That’s what I’m waiting to see all year is Harrow be the bad ass that we know him as and rescue Tommy. (In season 3), it’s all about that ride and the entertainment and the catharsis."


Adds executive producer-director Van Patten: "We promised war at the end of episode 11 between Nucky and Rosetti. The last image is of Al Capone and his troops arriving (to help Nucky), and we felt that we had to deliver. I wanted (episode 12) to be part Sam Peckinpah, part Sam Fuller, part Sergio Leone, part Arthur Penn, while referencing Raoul Walsh’s films. When Nucky and (his brother) Eli are trapped in that lumberyard, it felt like a western."

Nonetheless, one can see Chase’s influence throughout Boardwalk, and it’s that mixture that enables season 3 to rival the gangster and western genres to which it pays homage. Winter told Deadline’s Mike Fleming Jr. 
in a spring AwardsLine interview that one of the takeaways from working with Chase was 'dismissing the first five things that occur to you" in the writers’ room in order to keep the story fresh. Case in point: It would have also been a crowd-pleaser to see Nucky enlist Harrow’s help to mow down Rosetti’s gang. However, Harrow operated on his own accord. "That was certainly on the table, and we dismissed that for the very reason that you’d expect that to happen," Winter says. Likewise, starting season 3 a year later in the characters’ lives and glossing over season 2 cliffhangers were also nontraditional means of handling unraveled plot. "Starting in 1923 put the characters in a different place physically and psychologically, and this was way more challenging," says Winter.

But the lifeblood of season 3 belongs to the über-villain Rosetti—a twisted, short-fused, perverted gangster with a fetish for S&M who has his eye on taking over Nucky’s Atlantic City bootlegging empire. Having played lovable lugs like Vince D’Angelo, the boyfriend of Will Truman on Will & Grace, Bobby Cannavale owned Rosetti’s ferociousness, outstripping such hothead turns as James Caan’s Sonny Corleone in The Godfather, and yes, even James Gandolfini’s Tony Soprano. "People told me that they covered their eyes when Gyp came on screen," says Winter, adding, "Bobby never read for the role." Cannavale was one of the few Italian-American actors who Winter never had the chance to work with on The Sopranos, as their schedules never synced. After seeing Cannavale play a heavy, blue-collar type in Stephen Adly Guirgis’ play The Mother**cker With the Hat, "It reminded me why I wanted to work with him," says Winter. "In the play, he had veins popping out of his head. When you meet Bobby in person, he’s physically intimidating. He understands that predatory way that gangsters have to keep people off balance."

Unlike the standard HBO villain, Rosetti lacks any redeemable qualities. Heck, in the opening sequence of the third season’s first episode, Rosetti bludgeons an old man to death with a tire iron after he helps him fix a flat, and then steals the guy’s dog. "We never start off with a cold opening like that, introducing a strange character, but we wanted to interject someone in the show that would distinguish it from last season," says Van Patten. The birthing of Rosetti by Winter and his team stemmed from the fact that as Prohibition progressed, the decade became darker. The average person began relying on bootleggers for their liquor, especially as their stockpiles ran dry. Competition and profit margins were greater, and the game got dirtier. "As things got competitive, we needed to put Nucky under the most possible pressure. He needed a nemesis like Gyp. Nucky creates a monster in a subtle moment when he decides he’s not going to do business with him. One misstep with a guy like Gyp, and a mountain grows out of molehill," Winter explains.

With gangsters running around at a fever pitch, one would assume that executive producer Martin Scorsese had a heavy hand this season, however, "He isn’t involved in story," says Van Patten. "He reads and notes the scripts, sees and notes the cuts. His notes are precision bombing: He identifies the problems right away, as he has an eye for these things." While Boardwalk has been a below-the-line juggernaut in terms of wins at the Emmys over the last two years—with directing wins for Scorsese’s pilot and Van Patten’s second-season finale 'To the Lost' — the series has also rallied at SAG over the same frame, with back-to-back drama prizes for best ensemble and best actor for Buscemi. This awards season, both are eyeing their third charms in the two categories. The show won at the Golden Globes in its first year out, along with Buscemi, and both are nominated again this year. For the third year in a row, the Writers Guild recognized Boardwalk with a TV drama nom, but the show has only won once in the new series slot last year.

And if the last season of Boardwalk could be considered mind-blowing, season 4 promises to be even more unhinged as Boardwalk heads into 1924, the year that earned the decade’s moniker, 'The Roaring ’20s.' It’s a time when fellow gangsters Al Capone, Meyer Lansky, and Charlie Luciano galvanize their reputations as kingpins, and Nucky goes underground to form his own gang. It would seem that Winter and his team’s M.O. is to outstrip the thrills of such gangster forefathers like The Untouchables, but that’s mere flattery, as Boardwalk’s rule of thumb for mastering the genre is quite simple. "We pull out the stops, and sometimes it does take us three or four episodes to peel the onion," says Van Patten, "But at the end of the day, we look at each other in the writers’ room and ask each other, 'Is this entertaining?'"
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Boardwalk Empire S02E07

"I’ll just sew up my dress and go..."

Gretchen Mol caught another case of 'Thug Love' on "Boardwalk Empire" last night. There was a time when Paz de la Huerta was the foxiest femme fatale around, but the real badass babe of Atlantic City is Gretchen "Hasn't Aged A Day Since 25" Mol. She clearly has a thing for gangsters, and the gangsters evidently feel the same about her. I'm not saying Lucy Danziger is completely out of the running— she did make a surprise visit to Nucky this week, and we bet she still has a few tricks up her sleeve— but Gillian exercises a strange control over the men she sleeps with, even using her nurturing, motherly powers at times. Maybe things didn't work out with the Commodore, but that wasn't her fault, it was a stroke! Anyway, on a week when the sub-theme was seemingly cougar-boy love, what we learned from one particularly vigorous assignation is Gretchen clearly needs to be sleeping with gangsters her own age or preferably younger. Although I'm afraid this is only going to make things even creepier between Jimmy and mom, when he finds out.


What follows is essentially a redux of the scene last night where Lucky is a speedster and Gillian has pheromone manipulation...

A year ago, Gillian put her mouth on his, and for a few weeks he was gone.

It was like something pulled loose - not like he was used to, for all he let go in sex. It was different - like he needed her, where she could hold him still for more than a moment and kiss him, and all he tasted for days but for cigarettes was strawberries. She smelled like heat and something carnal under all the sweet scent and clean soap and it made him want to swallow her whole.

And of course, he realized too late (with a face full of scalding coffee he barely evaded even with his speed) that she’d used him, and with something not like his own gifts - hers, you could only see if you knew where to look.

(Like the way her hair glows red-gold in lights it shouldn’t and she looks at you all pink lips and bright eyes and doesn’t have to say a word for you to want her—)

So when she raps on his door in a tight floral dress, all tilted head and smiles and she smells just the same, all want me, want me, want me, he tells her-

“Fuck off.”

Her smile only falters for a second.

“Now, Charles. I don’t think you want that, really.”

Her hand reaches up to touch his cheek and the contact bolts through him like fire - but he bats her away.

“Fuckin’ quit it. I’m done with your shit.”

But she steps through the door anyway - too late to catch him around his waist like she wants to, because he’s across the room scrounging for cigarettes to block out the warm smell of strawberries and skin.

“Charles?”

She comes close, doe-eyed and seeming for a moment doubtful, and he’s all smoke and burning ember when he turns back.

“The fuck do you want? I’m on your kid’s side already, you don’t gotta spy on me for shit.”

She smiles again, like she’s glowing, reaching up to touch his arm - and yet he’s behind her, circling, letting the tension in his chest vibrate through the floor so she’s the one shaking.

“I’m not here for business, baby.” she tells him, twirling an orange curl lightly and watching him over her shoulder. And, quieter - “I missed you.”

He snorts. “You don’t even fuckin’ know me.”

And she catches him around his waist, so when he does try to move her heels skid on the floor - and her mouth close to his ear, from behind, want me want me want me.

“I didn’t say I missed you like that, dear.”

But his gun is at his hip and he will not do this again.

He spins her so she faces the mirror - her back to his chest and she’s wide eyed enough he knows she barely even felt them move.

“The fuck you miss me for, then?”

He says it knowing already, how she shivers when he puts hands on her hips - because he chooses to and nothing else, so out of range of her hands and mouth.

She watches him in the glass and says,

“I think you know what I want.”

He skates his hands up - slow enough for her to feel it, but once he hits her neckine he just finds a strap and tears.

I only know what I want.

“You think you’re fuckin’ cute with this crap?”

He pushes up against her back, digging nails into her exposed breast until she pushes back against him, moaning.

“Nn— cruelty is - ah - unbecoming on you, dear.”

He shoves her against the counter - drags his tongue up her spine, tastes the cloying sweet on his tongue and growls.

“You’re full a’ shit.”

She tries to turn - kiss him, press deceptive fingers into his mouth - but he pins her, hissing close in her ear.

“I’m gonna tan your hide so fuckin’ hard you ain’t gonna sit for days.”

And she doesn’t have time to respond, because he’s shoved the torn remains of her dress up around her waist and hits her.

“Ahh!” She’s all wide eyes and hands pushed to the mirror, legs shaking. “Charlie—”

And she’s pink skinned and shaking by the time he’s done - and he does let her turn, then, dripping damp down the insides of her open thighs and smiling.

“I really did miss you, Charles.”

He pushes her down - hand on her throat when she tries to kiss him, so he’s still just tasting tobacco and his own bitten tongue. Not yet.

“I can fuckin’ see that.”

A finger inside her that he throws the roll of his shoulder through - a pulse and speed of movement that makes her shake and claw at his back, keening.

“Oh fuck—baby—-”

He does let her take his mouth - once he pushes inside her, damp thighs hitched around his waist. He tastes fruit, milk, the wet heat of her cunt and breaks off snarling.

“You ever do a fella without doin’ that?”

He makes sure she’s trembling when he asks - in his hands and around his cock, his watch rattling against his wrist as he plants hands on either side of her. She whines, biting him in rough return before telling him, sharp and loud -

“Did you ever fuck a girl with - ahh- ah- without doing— this, Charlie?”

She manages to dig nails into his backside and hiss in his ear (saying with words instead of the heat she leaves in his throat), “fuck me baby, come on, come on come on oh God yes—” and breaking apart with a scream as he buries inside her.

She winds her way around him after they both come - a tangled mess of limbs and drawn loose strawberry hair, and she smells more like his tobacco and sweat than the warm sweetness she’s left under his tongue.

“You oughta go.” He huffs into her chest, though in straightening up he still carries her with him, not mindful of all the raw skin his handprints have left behind or the vicious red lines she’s left along his back.

“I know, dear.”

She straddles him on the bed - both of them too spent and sore to go again yet, but they will if she chooses to stay. She just knits fingers into his curls, making him growl low and smack at her thighs til she moves so he can grab for a smoke again.

She does manage though, to fill his mouth with her tongue before he lights it - and all he tastes is honey, miss me, baby?

And he does.


Television Series: Boardwalk Empire (S02E07- Peg Of Old)
Release Date: November 2011
Actress: Gretchen Mol
Video Clip Credit: Zorg & DeepAtSea










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Boardwalk Empire S02E06

"I gotta eat lemons!"

Gentle readers, the terror is upon us. Forget the scalpings; forget the throat slashings. The truly terrifying plot line from I Tolerate Lucy- the best sitcom on TV right now- is here: the spawn of Lucy Danziger and Nelson Van Alden has arrived. Has there ever been a child in the history of television with a scarier genetic heritage and greater innate potential to become a psychopath? Last night's episode was called "The Age of Reason," and explored the notion of forgiveness as well as confession. The birth of the child has so far brought out the best we’ve seen in Lucy who pulled herself together and behaved quite sensibly after the initial shock; and it also showed us a kinder side of Mrs. Van Alden who showed real compassion for Lucy rather than dismissing her as a harlot. The hour started with Paz de la Huerta, bigger and blowsier than ever, begging for lemons and spreading her knees in a sad wooden chair. It ended back at the ragtime crash pad with Lucy holding the baby beatifically, saying "I did it all myself."

FOX411.com have taken the opportunity to find out out how the experts of the Boardwalk Empire makeup department made the enviably flat and toned tummy of Paz de la Huerta so completely nude and heavily pregnant...


“The majority of it was done with makeup,” Michele Paris, the head of the “Boardwalk Empire” makeup department revelaed. “With Paz’s body language, the lighting and the way she turns and carries herself, we were able to conceal the edges. I know that visual effects may have done a little bit near the edges of her back bra strap line in post-production, but from what I understand, there were minimal visual effects.”

Lucy’s faux belly took a lot of prep work. “We sat down with the writers and the director to discuss how far along Lucy was in her pregnancy. Then, we sent Paz to a prosthetic house, W. M. Creations, where they did a bust impression of her stomach,” Paris said. “We needed the impression because even though it is a mass-produced belly, we wanted the edges to be nice and clean.”

Once the prosthetic was made, it took almost three hours to apply, all before a 12-hour day of shooting. “It was a two-person job, it’s a pretty big prosthetic piece,” Paris explained. “It’s foam, so it weighs about 3-4 lbs. My assistant, Craig Lindberg, and I attached the prosthetic to the front of Paz’s stomach with glue, and then wrapped it around to the centre of her back. We centered the edges with the curvature of her back, so we were really able to conceal where the prosthetic begins and ends. We also airbrushed and painted on veins to give it life and texture.”

De la Hurta, for her part, was a good sport during the prosthetic’s application. “She was a trooper, she embraced it,” says Paris. “She loved playing pregnant, studying to be pregnant. It’s not easy to be pretty, sexy and pregnant. But for Paz, she had to hide her sexiness and really take away from who she is to become the Lucy character.” For De la Huerta, it’s all in a day’s work. “I consider myself one of the rare artists that are left,” she recently told Flaunt magazine. “I don’t even consider myself an actress. I consider myself a channel. I kind of live through every character I play.”


Television Series: Boardwalk Empire (S02E06- The Age of Reason)
Release Date: October 2011
Actress: Lisa Joyce
Video Clip Credit: Zorg & Wimsey










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Boardwalk Empire S02E05

"You'll get me into trouble..."

This week's episode, written by Howard Korder and directed by series vet Tim Van Patten, elevated the 'Empire' game. While we've been building on character nuances from the get-go, elements are starting to fall into place, the action is amping up in a big way and Heather Lind's boobs made their spectacular entrance. The result? Chatter for the water cooler for the 'boysie' show that is gradually developing a greater female focus.

Boardwalk Empire returned for a second series boasting a clutch of awards but also some critical opprobrium. The show's creator Terence Winter remains understandably sanguine. "You can drive yourself insane reading reviews whether people like the show or hate it," he told the Independent. "We've had everything from the highest praise to people just trashing the show but we've also had an embarrassment of awards, which bears out what we're doing."


Winter feels that perceived problems were in part caused by the difference between the show he is creating and that which audiences expected to see. "I think when you see a poster and it says directed by Martin Scorsese and written by Terence Winter of The Sopranos then you expect a certain type of show, you automatically think gangsters," he says. "And that's reasonable but the story we're telling here isn't just a gangster's tale. To me violence is meaningless if it's simply killing for killing's sake. If you're not interested in human emotions and dynamics between people then maybe Boardwalk Empire is not your type of show. It's not aspiring to be a slam-bang action fest."

Yet there are issues surround the show's depiction of female characters, who last season came in only two sizes: Madonna or Whore. Winter remains bullish about suggestions that his women come a poor second – "I'm not interested in writing an alternate reality just to make people feel comfortable... in rewriting history to suggest these women had a power that they didn't," he says – but the problem isn't so one of power or the lack of it so much as it is of screentime or even reaction shots.

When the show's most problematic character, former showgirl, Lucy Danziger (played by Paz de la Huerta) is on screen we are rarely allowed to know how she feels, instead our reactions to her are entirely filtered through the male gaze, whether that of Nucky or repressed Federal Prohibition Agent Nelson Van Alden (Michael Shannon). It's arguable that this issue is partially due to de la Huerta's opaque performance but it's also the case that while we have no idea how Lucy feels about being pregnant, we're well aware of Van Alden's on-going battle to square that pregnancy with his conscience.

It's a criticism with which Kelly Macdonald who plays the widowed Margaret Schroeder partially agrees. "I get the concerns about the treatment of women," she says. "I think it's a very boysie show... but there is more for the female characters this year, last year was more about the men, it wasn't good or bad, it's just what it was. This year there's more of a concentration on the family, we see more of the character's personal lives."

Winter agrees that this season will have more of a family focus. "We get a chance to broaden and go deeper into our female characters lives, it's a function of where the stories are taking us," he says." We learn more about Margaret's background, spend time with Lucy... We have a new character called Esther Randolph played by Julianne Nicholson who is based on a real historical figure, a woman who was the assistant attorney general during the 1920s. When we get to these women's stories then I'll be writing them to the best of my ability."

Television Series: Boardwalk Empire (S02E05- Gimcrack & Bunkum)
Release Date: October 2011
Actress: Heather Lind
Video Clip Credit: DeepAtSea










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Boardwalk Empire S02E04

Open your eyes if thou darest...

It's a good thing the men who run Atlantic City have a penchant for kinky sex – because their illicit activities are putting Nucky right back in charge. After publicly humiliating the Commodore in last week's episode, Nucky continues his rampage against his detractors in "What Does the Bee Do?" by scoring two major victories. First, he manages to find a loophole in his grim election-fraud case, and second, he destroys the Commodore's (and by default, Jimmy's) stash of liquor courtesy of Irish Republican Army-trained bomb-maker Owen Sleater. And this is all without the knowledge that the Commodore has been incapacitated by a stroke.

So we go inside Louis Kaestner's palatial mansion to find a diaphanous and delightfully topless Gillian entertaining him with a sultry fireside striptease. Gretchen Mol has always been superb at acting with her nipples and she clearly still is. In her dance, she claims to be 'Diana,' daughter of Jupiter, which is a mighty interesting goddess to emulate. In Roman mythology, Diana was the goddess of the hunt and moon and birthing, being associated with wild animals and woodland, and having the power to talk to and control animals. She was known to be the virgin goddess and looked after virgins and women. She was one of the three maiden goddesses, Diana, Minerva and Vesta, who swore never to marry.

Often appearing as a young woman, age around 12-19, it was believed that she had a fair face like Aphrodite with a tall body, slim, small hips, and a high forehead. As a goddess of hunting, she wore a very short tunic so she could hunt and run easily and is often portrayed holding a bow, and carrying a quiver on her shoulder, accompanied by a deer or hunting dog.


Anyway, the Commodore enjoys her show and mentions that he never approved of her dancing.

"You could have married me," Gillian says.

"I had a city to run," The Commodore answers.

The alluring dance continues as she picks up a mini bow and arrow... "Prepare for the righteous punishment of the gods..." she says.

And then, The Commodore starts shivering, his whiskey tumbler quivers in his hand as he seizies in his chaise. Drool trickles out of his mouth. Paralyzed and unable to speak, he can only grunt out the words “Cock!” and “Fuck!” He is placed at the mercy of Gillian, who is finally able to acknowledge her long-dormant feelings toward the father of her son in the episode's closing scene.

In discussing her onscreen nudity, Mol stated that hopefully you have an instinct by knowing and talking to the director. "You can't just blindly go into it," she said. "You have to have the conversation. I don't know what to say to that, it's totally an instinctive thing. Some people might look at [my nude scenes] and say, "What's she talking about? That's total exploitation!" I guess if you don't feel exploited, then you aren't. In this there was no question to me that it was well-intended. I don't think it should be something that's so taboo, yet certain violence... you know, people don't bat an eye about decisions to be in films with brains splattered all over the backseat of a car, or what-not. That's considered "cool," somehow. I think America definitely has a funny relationship with nudity and sex."

Television Series: Boardwalk Empire (S02E04- What Does The Bee Do?)
Release Date: October 2011
Actress: Gretchen Mol
Video Clip Credit: DeepAtSea










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Boardwalk Empire S02E03

Paz de la Huerta may be locked in pregnant purgatory as Lucy Danzinger on HBO's Boardwalk Empire, but the sultry 26-year-old remains a superstar in the making. Part of her success will be because of her raw acting skills. As Lucy, Paz's abilities are, ahem, exposed every episode. The oft-nude character has become so close to Paz that she insists, during the off-season, she misses her.

Part of Paz's success will, undoubtedly, be because of her smoky features and a voice to match her taut figure. In conversation, her tone curves from a deep husk to a sweet soprano. Similarly, Paz's full lips and dark eyes, acquired through her Spanish ancestry, suck you in to her scenes. Her body and voice are acting entities of their own. On set of her latest photo shoot, it took only minutes for Paz to embrace the Coney Island sunshine— and her own sexuality— and strip for the photographer.


Alluring, seductive and sexually charged, the New York actress is also a real-life bad girl. Her brazen attitude towards nudity follows from on screen to the sidewalk where she is frequently seen exposing her breasts (notably at the Golden Globes in January where she was denied access to the after-party for being too drunk) and flashing her wares. Last month she pleaded guilty to one count of second-degree harassment after a bar brawl with fellow actress Samantha Swetra and was ordered to sober up with a 10-12 week alcohol treatment programme. She will soon be appearing on screens opposite Matt Dillon in ' Inferno ' a film about the life of porn actrees Linda Lovelace who starred in Deep Throat .

It is only fitting therefore that Huerta is also the new face of Agent Provocateur for autumn/winter 2011. The former Zac Posen muse takes over from French actress Josephine de la Baume in a series of paparazzi-style photographs and films that mock her bad girl reputation. As the director of the shorts Johan Renck explains, “Aside from being a stunning and brilliant actress, Paz de la Huerta has not risen to the status of it-girl by chance; she has perfected the art of revealing her assets in a cheeky way at the opportune moment.”

Ultimately, Paz will be successful because she is a true artist, well-rounded in both her interests and her skills. She has written and directed a series of short films- The Momento Mori Project- to be released in 2012, has compiled a book of photography with her childhood best friend, and did all this while also shooting the second season of Boardwalk, which premiered last month. “I love the direction that [Lucy is] taking,” Paz says about the upcoming season. “So many people can't get past the nudity. They can't get past the tits and the ass. It's a pity. Because a lot of very emotional and dramatic things happen out of the bedroom. The 20's were a type of sexual liberation! More of a revolution than the 60's, really.”

Of course, we aren't distracted by the nudity but doesn't it bother Paz to be undressing for the camera all the time? “Oh, I love taking my clothes off,” Paz gushes breathily. “Every character I play, I pull out a part of myself and exasperate it. I take the feeling I have at any given moment and manipulate it to fit the scene.” And if that moment means stripping shirtless, well, hell, we're not going to be the ones to stop her.

Television Series: Boardwalk Empire (S02E03- A Dangerous Maid)
Release Date: September 2011
Actress: Paz de la Huerta
Video Clip Credit: El amigo











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Boardwalk Empire S02E01

New York native Paz de la Huerta has had one of the most remarkable years of her career. Her show "Boardwalk Empire" has been showered with Emmys and Golden Globes, and there has been lots of buzz over her scantily clad character, Lucy. Outside of the show, she's gotten attention for her eclectic fashion choices and occasionally wild behavior. With "Boardwalk Empire" returning to HBO Sunday for its second season, Paz chatted with Wonderwall about her character, being comfortable in her own skin and what she's looking forward to out of her career...

What is in store for Lucy this season?

Paz de la Huerta: "The audience is going to see the real side of Lucy, kind of stripped of everything she had, because one, she is not with 'Nucky' [Steve Buscemi] anymore. In the first season she was very insecure; in those ages, it wasn't like women could have the opportunity that women have now. She thought the only way to get what she wanted was through her sexuality. This season, she is still very sexy, but the audience will see her more vulnerable and just stripped of everything materialistic. They will realize how courageous she is: She will not stop at anything to get what she needs."

Are you comfortable playing such a sultry character?

"Why should I be uncomfortable? In order to be a good actress you have to be able to get naked, and when I say that I mean naked emotionally. America is such a prude country; I am European and nothing is wrong with nudity. Its natural to be sexual; sex is a big part of life."


Do you enjoy dressing up in the period costumes for the show?

"John Dunn [costume designer] is a genius. They are the most impeccable costumes. You go into the costumes department and it's like 200 people. The '20s is an era of clothes that I wouldn't say its my favorite. … I personally like '40s, '50s style more. Lucy Danziger definitely embodies [a sexual revolution] because right before the '20s, it was all about corsets, and then the '20s came along and women stopped wearing bras and wore these loose dresses, so that they felt very free and open."


Television Series: Boardwalk Empire (S02E01- 21)
Release Date: September 2011
Actress: Paz de la Huerta
Video Clip Credit: El amigo










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Hollywood's Most Private Accessory

Sunday night’s premiere episode of Boardwalk Empire, Martin Scorsese’s new HBO series, featured two scenes that included female frontal nudity, in which the women— one a cadaver, the other Steve Buscemi’s lover— displayed fully forested pudenda. The look was in keeping with the show’s Prohibition-era aesthetics; the ladies of 1920s Atlantic City would not have been bare courtesy of a Brazilian, writes Claire Howorth. But actresses living in today’s world of landing strips and the J-Sisters (the infamous aestheticians who render total baldness) can’t be expected to get all that hair down there naturally. Instead, they can use one of Hollywood’s oft-employed but little-celebrated wardrobe items: the merkin, or pubic wig.

Nicki Ledermann, Boardwalk Empire’s makeup director, confirms that a merkin was used on the dead body in the mortuary, though the living lover’s hair was apparently real. “The first thing I thought when I read the script and saw ‘naked cadaver’ was, merkin! Merkin!” said Ledermann, who has worked on other inguina, including Gretchen Mol’s in The Notorious Bettie Page (in which no merkin was used).


After discussions with Scorsese, Ledermann decided that most of Boardwalk Empire’s frontal-nudity scenes would need to involve merkins “to keep it real,” since “nobody really has hair anymore.” Actresses frequently have contracts that stipulate raises if they must wear prosthetic vulva fur, but “they’re usually amused by it,” said Ledermann.

Boardwalk Empire’s cast members are hardly the pioneers of nether-wigs. Jake Gyllenhaal recently told Jimmy Kimmel that his sex scenes with Anne Hathaway in Love and Other Drugs were bare-bodied, save a couple of merkins; Kate Winslet told Allure she wore one for her Oscar-winning role in The Reader, unable to fully grow out her own hair; and Gawker had a field day with Sienna Miller’s au naturel appearance in the yet-to-be-released Hippie Hippie Shake.

“There are different qualities of merkins,” said Rhonda Thaut, vice president of sales and marketing for World of Wigs, a Los Angeles-based wig supplier whose vast inventory of hair products includes ready-to-wear and custom merkins. “However, most merkins are made from various forms of lace, ranging from low-end mesh to high-end French silk lace. Most clients prefer it to be made with human hair [from the head]. The hair is treated to give it a kinky (no pun intended) texture, so it resembles pubic hair. Each hair is hand-tied to the lace.”

To fit and attach a “postiche”— as merkins are sometimes called, though the word is a catch-all term for any hairpiece— the area must be completely shaved. Then, the merkin is applied with an adhesive; Ledermann uses a matte substance by Telesis. Other people use spirit gum, an old-fashioned concoction of alcohol (the spirit) and resin (the gum), but Thaut stressed caution: “Do not cheap out on the specially designed adhesive for merkins!” She then related an anecdote involving industrial glue and pelvic burns.

Thaut, whose company is under contract not to name the films or costume designers it supplies, explained that there are even reverse-merkins: polyurethane made to look like skin and cover up existing pubic hair. World of Wigs sells ready-made merkins for $36 but can custom-create pieces that cost hundreds of dollars, depending on the materials. Ledermann has merkins for her projects custom-made; her good friend Amanda Miller, a New York City-based wig-maker, designed the Boardwalk Empire merkin, which actually had to be trimmed prior to filming.

Those readers who already knew what a merkin is probably find it hard to imagine that anyone can not know about it; the truth, according to an admittedly unscientific poll, is that most people do not know what a merkin is, despite its 400-plus-year existence. The intimate toupée’s original purpose was to disguise the symptoms of genital-disfiguring diseases of the Middle Ages, like syphilis.

Perhaps merkin awareness is growing as more actors are mentioning their unmentionables. Heidi Klum has gone on the record about her merkin in the 2001 film Blow Dry; Jane Krakowski claims she will donate her hair to “Merkins for Hope” on an episode of 30 Rock. The writer Daphne Merkin, who has covered ribald territory herself, proved just how game she is when contacted for this article. “One thing I’ve noticed is the widening scope of those who know what the word means,” said Merkin. “When I was in my twenties, the only people who understood the word’s sexual/erotic implications were a boy from my high-school class and my Shakespeare teacher at Columbia.”

It would make sense that Merkin’s Shakespeare professor knew the word, given that it has been in use since that era. Wikipedia’s completely unsourced and error-riddled entry says, incorrectly, that William Shakespeare used the word in The Winter’s Tale. Georgianna Ziegler, head of reference at the Folger Shakespeare Library, located only the root word, “malkin,” and not in The Winter’s Tale, but in Coriolanus (circa 1605-1608) and Pericles, Prince of Tyre (circa 1607). “Malkin,” Ziegler clarified, “was a low Scots reference to the female pudend from about 1540. This is from Partridge’s Dictionary of Slang. ‘Malkin trash’ was ‘a person dismally dressed,’ from about the late 1600s to the early 1800s.” Commentator Michelle Malkin did not respond to request for comment.
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Gretchen Mol joins Boardwalk Empire

Gretchen Mol has joined HBO’s upcoming drama series Boardwalk Empire in a recurring role, according to The Hollywood Reporter. "Empire," written by Terence Winter and executive produced by Martin Scorsese, who directed the pilot, is set in 1920 at the dawn of Prohibition and chronicles the life and times of Nucky Thompson (Steve Buscemi), the undisputed ruler of Atlantic City who was equal parts politician and gangster. Mol, who has been hotly pursued for series roles since her starring turn last season on ABC's "Life on Mars.", will play Gillian, a showgirl.

At last night’s 'Darker Side of Green' debate, a launch for Lexus’s new hybrid car, Mol warned that even though she will be playing a twenties-era dancer in the series (currently filming, and slated to air next fall), we should not expect Showgirls II. "Showgirls then didn’t dance," she explained, "because it was all about looking nude without being totally naked. So you didn’t move, because that was considered to be too titillating and too pornographic, because then stuff would shake and move. This was supposed to be art. So it’s like, posing, and then you shift and pose again."





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