Debbie Egan-Chin/New York Daily News
Terry Winter, a Brooklyn boy who made good by writing Emmy Award-winning "Sopranos" episodes and then creating "Boardwalk Empire," used to work as a security guard at Lutheran Hospital in Sunset Park.
Terry Winter says he owes everything to Brooklyn.
The Marine Park native has four writing Emmys for The Sopranos. Hes the creator, head writer and executive producer of HBOs Boardwalk Empire, which has won eight Emmys. He wrote the script for Martin Scorseses Wolf of Wall Street, starring Leonardo DiCaprio, which will shoot this summer.
Oh, did I mention hes writing a screenplay about Boston gangster Whitey Bulger to be directed by Ben Affleck and starring Matt Damon?
Not bad for a former security guard at Lutheran Medical Center on Second Ave. in Sunset Park. Winter visited there Monday morning accompanied by Sopranos pals Tony (Paulie Walnuts) Sirico and Dominic (Uncle Junior) Chianese in preparation for the hospitals annual fund-raiser on May 19, where Winter will be honored.
From midnight to 8 a.m., Id walk the floors here till my feet swelled, says Winter. Its how I paid my way through NYU after graduating from Grady Vocational High. A Grady English teacher named Lainie Gilbert told me I had writing talent. It inspired me. But becoming a writer was a deep dark secret because my literary education was limited to Popular Mechanics and spending an entire year of English at Grady studying Death of a Salesman. So I decided to become a lawyer.
When I went to Grady, the most you learned how to make was zip guns, says Sirico, pulling an imaginary trigger.
But they learned something, because the two old Grady students would eventually collaborate on The Pine Barrens, many a Sopranos fans favorite episode.
When Winter transferred from floor-walking to being security guard in the Lutheran ER, he says he received a master class in human drama. Brooklyn in the early 1980s was pure mayhem, he says. All through the night wed get deranged and damaged people from Sunset Park and Bay Ridge in here. Knifings, shootings, bar brawls, domestic fights, O Ds, murders, police shootings. Id have to guard true crazies before we transferred them to Bellevue in a special ambulance we called the Disoriented Express.
After graduating NYU, Winter tried law. I hated it, he says. Then I saw Martin Scorseses movie Taxi Driver and it changed my life. Made me want to write for the movies.
So he flew to Los Angeles. But the Catch-22 was that if you didnt have an agent, you couldnt get writing jobs, he says. And without credits you couldnt get an agent.
Winter met an old law school pal who had an agents license that he didnt use. So Winter created a bogus talent agency and sent out his own scripts under the friends letterhead.
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