'Boardwalk Empire' creator says TV has the edge

He'll make an exception for Martin Scorsese, but for Terence Winter, the creator of the hit prohibition-era television show "Boardwalk Empire", Hollywood just isn't up to scratch these days. The Emmy-award winning writer-producer, who co-scripted "The Sopranos" before launching his own drama series three years ago, was guest of honour this week at a festival devoted to the booming genre, held at Paris' Forum des Images. From the likes of Scorsese who co-produced "Boardwalk Empire", Steve Buscemi who stars in it, or A-list actors like Dustin Hoffman and Glenn Close, screen talent now flows freely between film and television. But for Winter, the series format pioneered in the US by cable network HBO since the mid-1990s in what has been dubbed a "Golden Age" of American television, has the creative upper hand over the movie studios. "Back in the 1970s, the Academy Award nominees and huge box office hits were things like 'The French Connection', 'Midnight Cowboy' or 'The Graduate' -- really interesting character studies," the 51-year-old told AFP. "Now, the big box office successes are superhero stories. It seems there's a lowest common denominator mentality, in terms of movies that are almost purely visual, that anyone can understand anywhere in the world. "Good robot, bad robot: they fight. You don't need to know anything apart from that. And then we can make toys that look like that robot -- and sell those toys or video games," he said. Until the advent of cable, he says, US television writing was pretty much geared towards the needs of advertisers: "It was: 'We caught the murderer, we solved this crime -- and you should buy this soap." But along came cable's advertising-free model, which let the genie out of the bottle, allowing teams of writers to brainstorm for days, crafting challenging drama series "with almost no restrictions". "And there clearly is an audience out there, of people who want to be engaged, who are willing to pay attention, and follow a story that requires a little effort," Winter said. -- 'Only way to tell a story' -- In "Boardwalk Empire", for instance, that freedom means tackling an ultimate taboo like incest, or letting a gangster storyline play out to its logical conclusion of killing a lead character. "Sometimes that leaves people feeling very ill at ease -- but for me that's the only way to tell a story," Winter said. Does he view his work as art? "We try to hold ourselves to that standard, to elevate it to a level of artistry," he said. "Hopefully we succeed." Winter cites Scorsese as a major influence, and clearly views him as the exception to the rule when it comes to movie-making. In between series episodes, he wrote the script for "The Wolf of Wall St.", starring Leonardo Di Caprio as a corrupt stockbroker, which Scorsese is to start shooting later this year. "It's a different set of muscles that you use to tell that story, as opposed to a series," he explained. "You don't have the luxury of saying you've got 80 hours with this person. You've got two." Winter and Scorsese also have a new series on the boil, with Mick Jagger as co-producer: set for broadcast in 2013 it is built around a New York record industry executive in 1973, "the year that punk, hip hop and disco emerged". "New York at the time was really at a low point, the city was bankrupt and it was just a crazy time," Winter said. "And as is often the case in political and economic upheaval, it's a very fertile time for artists." Winter himself grew up in working class Brooklyn, working as a lawyer until his late 20s when he finally realised he was "miserable" and upped sticks for Los Angeles to try his hand at writing for television. "People told me' You're crazy'," recalled the writer, who hit the big time as co-writer of "The Sopranos", the now-cult Italian-American mobster series which ran from 1999 to 2007, "a magical time" he remembers as his own "Golden Age". Now father to two small children, Winter says he doesn't watch "near as much television as (he) should", but cites "Mad Men", "Breaking Bad", "The Wire", "Homeland" and "Game of Thrones" as examples of programming at the cutting edge. "Courage and surprise are two things that a lot of these series have in common," he said. "Because of what I do, I can see things coming, but there have been moments on all of those where I almost fell out of my chair."