FRESH AIR
HBO’s Boardwalk Empire, set in Atlantic City in the 1920s, is about organized crime in the era of Prohibition. The show stars Steve Buscemi as Nucky Thompson, an Atlantic City politician who sees the coming of Prohibition as an opportunity to make even more money from illegal activities and kickbacks. Buscemi’s co-star, Michael Shannon, tells Terry Gross that when he signed up to play the righteous federal agent Nelson Van Alden, he didn’t know his character would succumb to the temptations of Atlantic City — and so quickly. In the show’s first season, Van Alden cheated, lied and even drowned a fellow federal agent. “I do believe he ultimately has good intentions, and he wants to do the right thing — and he goes to Atlantic City believing that he can do some good in the world,” Shannon tells Fresh Air‘s Terry Gross. “[But] he also is surrounded by people thwarting him at every turn, so that act of drowning [his fellow agent] is the culmination of a great deal of frustration.” Shannon explains that before portraying Van Alden, he created a back story for the character in his head. He imagines that Van Alden grew up in a very strict household where he was told to never slouch and to sit up straight. “That is the seed of what grows into the adult Van Alden,” he says. “But he’s a sad character. … I think it is a Frankenstein scenario in a way, because I think inside of Van Alden is a child — that arrested child — that never really got to develop its own identity. I think as much as he believes that he’s operating from these deeply held beliefs, he’s actually in a way very hollow.” MORE
RELATED: Paul Thomas Anderson’s The Master is both feverish and glacial. The vibe is chilly, but the central character is an unholy mess — and his rage saturates every frame. He’s a World War II South Pacific vet named Freddie Quell, played by Joaquin Phoenix to the hilt — the hilt above the hilt. We meet him at war’s end on a tropical beach where he and other soldiers seek sexual relief atop the figure of a woman made out of sand.No, it’s not your father’s war — at least, the war portrayed in most sagas of the so-called Greatest Generation. Alcoholic, sex-addicted Freddie can’t adjust to a society that Anderson portrays as homogenized, repressed. Then he stumbles into something extraordinary — a burgeoning cult called “The Cause.” The Cause is allegedly modeled on Scientology in the days before its leader, L. Ron Hubbard, rebranded it as a religion. Why allegedly? Anderson won’t officially admit the connection, perhaps because the church is so given to suing its critics. MORE