SPEAKEASY COLLECTIVE

WE ARE A GROUP OF BOARDWALK EMPIRE FANS SEEKING CREATIVE EXPRESSION AND INTELLIGENT DISCOURSE IN A JUDGEMENT FREE ZONE. ALL ARE WELCOME. SEND AN ASK TO JOIN.

[speakeasycollective]

I mean if you're gonna discuss shit then discuss the lemons Nelson brought for Lucy and the impact they had on the show and the historical events which led up to the characters to become who they are? The lemons are responsible for it all

yes, lemons. discuss.

[christianbail]

[noflowercrownforme]

#god i can’t even compose myself enough to tag-rant #that bitter little smile is just RUINING me #ETA: I LIED #DO YOU KNOW WHAT THE WORST PART ABOUT THIS WHOLE THING IS #THEY CAN’T GO BACK AFTER THIS #THIS IS ONE OF THOSE THINGS THAT LEAVES A STAIN #like yeah margate sands was bad but they both got fucked over there so there’s a kind of mutuality with that #this? #this BROKE them #for MONTHS #at LEAST #they get past it because they’re literally the most important person in each other’s lives #but charlie’s never going to forget meyer dismissing his fear and meyer’s never going to forget charlie walking out on him #and i really REALLY doubt they talked about it after so it will always be sitting between them #just #augh (via littlelansky)

[meyerlansky]

Tell us more about Meyer/Charlie and food!

oh GOD MY FEELINGS ABOUT MEYER AND CHARLIE AND FOOD UGH they’re not even all that well defined, really, it’s just all these nebulous emotions about it. I just feel like there’s something really important and intimate about eating with someone and giving someone you care about food, like it’s obviously essential to life and providing someone with essentials is an intimacy thing, plus when you factor in the element of knowing someone’s preferences it becomes even more of an indication of closeness, like you have to spend a good deal of time with someone to learn their tastes and if you care about them you’re going to take it into consideration, so, yeah, food is a big indicator of emotional intimacy for me. as a result I have a lot of feelings about, first off, re: BWE in particular, the one scene in Two Impostors where they’re discussing “Magaddino” because there’s half finished sandwiches on the table, so it’s like. this little insight into their daily routine and it’s domestic and cute and I love it

and then there’s the near CONSTANT mentions of how much Charlie liked Jewish food in the stuff I’ve read? like it was one of the top things he missed in prison and in Sicily, and Meyer brings him food when he’s transferred and he SPECIFICALLY BROUGHT THE PICKLES CHARLIE LOVED ENOUGH TO ORDER BY THE BAGFUL WHEN HE WAS LIVING IN THE WALDORF, and if Meyer was on the Laura Keene he brought him kosher food then too and he took Charlie to dinner in Havana and they met up for breakfast whenever they could in the MIDDLE OF THE CASTELLAMMARESE WAR and just ugh it’s so important to me, how often stuff on them mentions them eating together and especially how often it talks about Meyer bringing Charlie food because it’s a really obvious but really instrumental way to take care of someone, and there’s something to be said about Meyer taking care of anyone, the guy was categorically horrible at being a functioning human with feelings and healthy relationships, and yet. here he is. making sure Charlie’s got the food he likes whenever he can manage it. don’t even look at me I’m a wreck

ETA: AND ALSO in Charlie and Meyer’s particular case, they grew up poor and in relatively big families, so always knowing they’d have food and especially providing food for each other is even MORE significant with that as part of their backgrounds and because it’s a shared background the contextualization is the same for the both of them and I cannot BELIEVE I forgot to add that it’s ALSO SUPER IMPORTANT

[speakeasycollective]

TALKING POINT #6

This is an ongoing series of prompts to encourage thoughtful discourse about the show. If you have an idea for a prompt, send an ask or join the team! Submissions are always welcome.

Boardwalk had plenty of great feminist moments. Which was your favorite?

[notgrungybitchin]

[speakeasycollective]

head out to the White Horse Pike

[meyerlansky]

[speakeasycollective]

boardwalk empire meme: [7/10] quotes

And I think you’ll find us to be responsible partners both here or in Florida should you feel the need for eyes on your investment.

[opheliaintherushes]

If anyone has never suffered the pleasure of reading Isaac Babel’s Odessa Stories, I highly encourage you to head over to your local library and check them out immediately.  Not only so you can experience a world of Russian literature where the sun actually rises, not only so you can mourn a terrarium lost so soon after, but so you can understand the background of one of Boardwalk Empire’s most literary characters.  I’m talking about Manny Horvitz, of course, who might borrow from a Philly gangster here or there, but whose legacy is carved definitively from characters of eras bygone.

Curiously, of all the Jewish characters of Boardwalk Empire, including those substantially less overt in their appearances and observances, Manny Horvitz is the one whose arc is not dictated by the fact.  Sure, he speaks Yiddish, sure, he hides out in a synagogue, sure, Charlie gets to call him Sammy Sabbath once or twice, but those are just window dressings, really.  I think there’s a reason for that.  Unlike heavily-assimilated Arnold Rothstein, whose partners still wipe their hands after closing on a deal; unlike Meyer Lansky, whose enemies reduce him to a type and never a name; unlike Benny Siegel, prideful and swinging for the fences; unlike noodle-slurping Eric Sebso, who is accused of one crime but drowned for another; Manny is not a guy struggling with his identity, not for many, many years, at least, once upon a time in Odessa.  His identity, however, does inform him – his family values, his ruthlessness, his perception of debt and honor.

It is impossible to talk about Manny without talking about Angela, but it is also impossible to talk of her death without talking of he who stamped its approval – William Shakespeare.  Yes, the scene was written long before, in a courtroom in Venice, where a beleaguered and cornered old Jewish man finally bares his teeth and refuses to settle for anything less than revenge.  Behold, listen as Portia pleads with Shylock –“Be merciful: take thrice thy money; bid me tear the bond” – and Shylock, extolling the laws of earth and heaven, rebuts – “by my soul I swear, there is no power in the tongue of man to alter me: I stay here on my bond.”  Sound familiar?  The back-and-forth of Angela’s final moments maps almost eerily onto their dialogue.  “Do you want money?  He can get it, lots of it…I can make him.”  “The most important thing in life, darling? Your health.  Your husband did this to you.”  In an age where Shylock is either held at arm’s length or buried scornfully, Manny Horvitz resurrects him.  Like his predecessor, the money is beyond the point now.  The bond, the bond, the bond – as Shylock repeats endlessly.  He is sympathetic to Angela’s pleas as a mother, for he, too, is a family man.  He is not a monster, after all, only a man who thought that America would make him Benya the King, not a two-bit crook covered elbow-deep in calf’s blood.  It is only when the bond turns from familial to monetary that his resolve does, as well.

Because no one can escape their legacy. Manny Horvitz is what happens when the watercolor wash of a Babel vignette finds himself cast as the villain of an Elizabethan comedy.  Oh, he’ll state his case, oh, he’ll justify, oh, he’ll beg for empathy and then reject it, but in the end, he lives just long enough to land as the punchline to another character’s triumph.  You have to make the best of it, right?

[beannysiegel]

There are people who are pushing me on the train

Screaming from the top of buildings

“You’re gonna get what’s coming”

And I don’t know how to react

(Or if I should fight back)

[adriennefrombrooklyn]

Have some belated Gillian-as-siren meta.

So, Gillian is introduced in The Ivory Tower dressed as a siren.

In Sunday Best she drowns a man after seducing him.

And in Eldorado, as Nucky dies, and Gillian beckons to him, we get the last shot of young Nucky underwater, and he doesn’t surface before the cut. 

[columbiaskies-deactivated202210]

Owen’s death.

This is something I needed to understand because when I watched it the first time, I was literally sobbing at that scene. I think Kelly’s acting might have had a bit to do with it, but I think I understand why seeing him die was so upsetting to me.

He was a character who tried to get out of that life. The whole crime/murder/gangster thing and not many of the characters really try to do that, and I was really rooting for him. I was. I didn’t care who he ran away with, if it was Margaret or Katie, but I wanted Owen to fulfill that wish. To get out, go work a steady, safe and legal job with a wife and kids and for everything to be normal and happy for him because then it would at least be that way for one character. And the fact that he wasn’t one of the original main characters made me think maybe it could happen. And he was so ready for it, too. Everything was going great and you could tell he was done, but not only is he killed, but then he gets sent back to the place he was trying to escape trapped in a box that he had been metaphorically trying to break out of. 

He wasn’t a super-swell guy and he certainly was in the habit of toying with women but he did his job and bided his time until he was ready to leave. And there was such a sad darkness in him. Like he regretted everything he’d ever done. “Everything’s off. The air, the water, the people, and yourself. You’re off too, bit by bit. And you think, if I vanished now, who’d care? Or even notice?”

Owen wanted so much to be a different person, to lead a different life that he’d fallen into. The joke in Ourselves Alone “How dark it is in this hole I’ve dug for myself," though not intentionally meant to me more than that can be applied to Owen whole character. A cattle inspector turned IRA militiaman with a vengeful soul, who then became entangled in the underground of Prohibition America. But after all that, the killing and secrecy and constantly having to watch your back can weigh so heavily on a person. So here’s this one last job. Off Masseria and be done/ Run away with one of or neither of your girls. Finally be done. Vanish. No one will care, and no one will notice. Nucky, Margaret or Katie or both, Teddy, Emily, Mickey, Eli, everyone. They’ll all move on with their lives. 

You can be free.

But no, there’s only one way out of a life like that. And both Owen and I were fool enough to believe otherwise.

And that’s why Owen’s death was the 2nd most emotional scene in all of Boardwalk Empire for me to watch.

[notgrungybitchin]

Friends Since Childhood and a Friendless Child. The penultimate episode of Boardwalk Empire was a story of two young people in need of rescue. In the past, the young Gillian Darmody offers Nucky a chance to save an innocent as a pure act of charity. Instead, he betrays her utterly and seals his damnation. In the present, the kidnapping of the youngest of the young gangsters challenging his reign is a last desperate attempt to guard a kingdom already slipping from his grasp. Both Gillian and Benny were victims of Nucky’s willingness to exploit the younger generation to protect his success.  The difference is in those around them. Gillian was an orphan with no one — a true friendless child. “You’re the only one left who knows me,” she begs Nucky in her letter. Benny, on the other hand, is a member of a strongly bonded found family. Meyer and Charlie love him and will protect him at any cost. Because of this, Nucky’s act incites more than it solves, backing him into a corner and forcing him to give up everything. In fact, the act of rescuing Benny is one and the same with Meyer and Charlie’s victory. Now, Nucky is faced with nothing but memories of a child he could have saved, but chose instead to destroy. He resolves at the end to seek redemption in Gillian again, failing to understand that his first sin will also be his last. His last act against the younger generation assured the victory of those he previously exploited, and in returning to Gillian for redemption, he only seals his doom.

[opheliaintherushes]

Enter Manny Horvitz.  Or Munya, if you like.  Stage directions say he laughs huskily and fries up thick slabs of liver he sliced with his own knives.  His every joke is a threat, but his every threat is really a cautionary tale – what you see is what you get.  A handshake is a handshake is a handshake.  You promise, you best deliver the goods.  Because he’s got a freezer full of guys strung upside down by their toenails. And that’s what makes Manny so dangerous a predicament – not his single-mindedness, not his the fact he’s a trained shochet with a grudge, but because he’s the only one without pretense.  Look at how Charlie, who surrounds himself with Jewish partners, calls Manny “Sammy Sabbath” and a “cafone” even while employing words from Horvitz’s native tongue.  Is he a boor for his actions as adversary or his unashamed and inescapable shtetl mannerisms?  Is he a boor because he shows only one face to the world and that is his own?  

Makes sense that Manny’s introduction appears tucked in the swirl of a masquerade that is What Does The Bee Do?, an episode which begs the question – are you your mask, or have you become it, and if so, is it only because the world has no use for the person behind it? 

So you can’t be half a gangster, Jimmy, but which half are you? A businessman with a suit cravat and a bold proposal or an Oedipal brigand in the woods?  Is Gillian the manipulator or the manipulated?  Lady Macbeth or Lavinia, daughter of Titus?  Can she even be one without the other?

The episode bloats, in a marvelous way, with reinforcements of that theme.  Look at Richard Harrow, unmasking himself before Angela.  (Oh, Richard, who suffers callbacks to so many other false facades.  Phantom.  Tin Woodsman.)  It is here he reveals that he is neither the half of himself masked or the half unmasked, but the scar that lies in shadow.  He is a past kept distant, a relationship mangled.  Even Jimmy, who would fight for him to the last bullet, says that he can’t tell what’s going on under there.  But is that because he only ever sees Richard masked?  (Harrow’s most truthful moments, both those directed inwards and towards the audience, are always filmed sans-mask.)

Or have Arnold Rothstein, bantering gently with his wife before he practices his greeting like a player reading through his lines.  So which is it, AR?  Are you a family man forcing yourself to be a gangster, or are you a gangster forcing yourself to be a family man?

Chalky exhibits the same internal dissonance at his family dinner from hell, shamed for his provincial manners, separated from his family but absolutely right in that those manners put food on their table.  How about that shot of him whittling the stake, looking on his family from the inside out because he can no longer pretend?  And then there’s Margaret and Owen standing awkwardly by as Nucky Thompson, Irish-American, cracks jokes about those Irish-born.  Owen feigns good-naturedness but at the end of the day shows Nucky that what he really learned on those turbulent shores was how to blow things to bits.  And, sure you could judge Margaret for sneaking money away, but can’t you also feel her realizing that she is only grasping at make-believe as mistress of house, can’t you also see her looking at those maids and wondering if that’s who she really is underneath and ensuring that her children are provided for should she be returned to it?

The past is always there, always dogging at your feet, threatening to reveal who you really are when you strip away the mask.  Which finally brings me around to the reason of why I really love the watch pun, beyond Charlie’s abysmal (and by abysmal I mean fabulous) sense of humor and the fact that I will never get over gangsters sipping from teacups.

Of all of Boardwalk’s imposters, Meyer is its greatest – and I mean this in the best possible way.  What do you talk about when you talk about Meyer Lansky?  You talk about his smile.  His deadly, deadly smile that looks like he wants everyone to get along but really means that he wants you in the ground.  But it’s a not a real smile.  So catching a glimpse of the real Meyer, no fronts, is a rare gift, and it seems the only environ that allows it is the Darners and Weavers.

You already know how much I love this set and how I wished it had been used for more than two scenes, firstly, because it shoots in such a gorgeously dingy fashion, all corners and low lamplight and smoke, and secondly, because it really is Meyer’s office, Meyer as the man with the plan, Meyer as the head honcho, Meyer in his element.  Notice how Meyer’s always sitting relaxed at desk while Charlie lurks in the background.  As Meyer says, “it’s the old neighborhood,” and it is here that you see less Meyer the polished businessmen and more Meyer the jagged-edged street punk.

When Charlie brings up the watches, Meyer protests: “we schlep around with a box of watches, what do we look like?”  Now, as I’ve said, Meyer uses Yiddish only two other times in the series.  One, when he’s trying to gain AR’s backing.  Two, when he’s breaking the poker player’s face.  Meyer is distinctly uncomfortable baring his Jewishness openly in a way Manny is not.  I draw the comparison because even amongst Jews in America, there was a critical distinction between the uptown Jews like Arnold Rothstein, debonair, suave, and most importantly, assimilated, and the downtown Jews like Meyer Lansky, obvious castaways of old world Yiddishkeit.  See how Meyer’s attitude changes not when Benny intrudes, but when Meyer catches sight of AR hanging outside the glass.

You get the sense that the Darners and Weavers is the one place Meyer lets himself settle among his own people.  Not the glitz of uptown Manhattan or AC, but the grime of the Lower East Side. Grime on the windows, grime on the wallpaper, grime under the fingernails.  Hence the ‘pushcart’ crack – typical Jewish merchant, pottering around, scraping for a living.  A joke.  I touched on this in an earlier post, but one of Meyer’s sore points in my opinion is his desperation to avoid the stigmas of Jewish money.  But, here, in the old neighborhood, where he acutely feels that cultural connection more than any other place, his own internal dissonance is also too much to bear.  How can he match his upward ambitions with his desire to escape his past?  How can he escape his past where his past is the only place he can let the mask fall away?

Charlie sweeping the watches away from the table is a mark of his growing frustration with subordination.  A slip of the mask.  But Meyer sinking into his chair, sparing Charlie just a flicker of a glance before lighting up?  That’s the mask coming back on, and it will never, ever come off again.

[notgrungybitchin]

#uGH GOD #KILL ME NOW #okay a couple of things: a. it’s really important to me that meyer responds to charlie’s ‘fellas who know what time it is’ crack with the pushcart joke #because on the one hand it’s covering his genuine anxieties about how he’s perceived with some level of humor #but on the other hand that he can joke AT ALL about it with charlie specifically gives me emotions #[because if anyone else had made the joke meyer would ice up in a second - but at the same time NO ONE ELSE WOULD] #[just charlie] #b. uGH his reaction to ar hurts me on like eighty different levels and it’s even worse because in the first d&w scene with jimmy he gives this air off of being proud of the game #there’s a little bit of annoyance when he mentions ar gets half the take but otherwise he’s very comfortable in there and very good at what he does #the familiarity of his little gesture and shoulder pat to one of the men gambling after masseria’s nephews leave speaks to that #and then ar comes in#and meyer straightens up and clasps his hands together and he does this little glance down at the detritus on his desk as ar’s talking and you can just see him realize how… small time he looks [or thinks he looks] to ar #and he spends the rest of the scene standing just a little sideways and not facing ar directly the same way charlie does with petrucelli in north star #[and then we never see d&w again and the roulette office is somewhat more polished hmmm i wonder why] #aaand c. the fun thing about seasons 1-3: there’s a visible difference between meyer’s fake smiles and his real ones #his real ones are closemouthed and generally reserved for charlie and benny #his fake ones are literally just him baring his teeth #but after season three all his smiles are closemouthed and you can’t tell the difference between the real and the fake anymore #learning to hide the sharpness (via littlelansky)

[therestisdetail]

for columbiaskies

It’s funny; some people, how they say they’d never steal? But you’ve got a family, kids to take care of. You’d do anything. That’s why I’m not angry.

[cealtrachs]

.

[adriennefrombrooklyn]

#started by making a joke abt. benny being a qt in s5 #ended up thinking about surrogate limbs #and how we wear our everyday clothing - whether it’s a sweater or a hat or a fucking shoulder holster - as armor #to comfort us and protect us emotionally #like there are obvious logistics involved in wearing one as a gangster#especially with the logical need to safety #but some part of me can’t help but wonder if there’s a part of benny that takes emotional comfort in wearing one #not just in a ‘great i have a gun’ sense #but i a 'this is who i am’/literally being cradled and supported by death sense #especially when there’s also the fact that he’s usually seen just wearing it out in the open? #again…there are logical advantages to this #after all…benny probably gets a lot of street cred walking around with a fucking gun holster out in the open #but i also him doing that is partially an extension of benny’s need and struggle for agency #or rather…recognition? #just as he spouts yiddish and chirps like a bird in jimmy’s face #he wears the holster out in the open as if to say 'you want to call me violent? you want to call me chaye? all right all right’ #he’s trying to own these labels and make them into something that earns him fear and respect #(just don’t call him cr*zy. that will send him over the edge.) #(cr*zy is fists and teeth and a dark alley that benny used to use before he could wear a gun in a holster strapped across his back)\ #(cr*zy is benny when he was just a punk kid) #(a gun in a visible holster may be violent) #(but at least it’s a symbol of a powerful violence. a violence with purpose) #(the fists were benny’s childhood and the holster is benny on his way to the top) #(he won’t let anybody try to take that away from him) (via cealtrach)

[beannysiegel]

power is always dangerous; it attracts the worst and corrupts the best.

[meyerlansky]

having a lot of emotions about how… decent? Meyer comes across in the scene after The Breakup, like his little “Delighted to have you on board” to Sally feels pretty genuine, and then he offers condolences about Eddie by name even. McCoy worked with Nucky directly for years and he got Eddie and Eli mixed up.

I think we as a fandom, myself included, kind of tend to fall prey to the characterization of Charlie being good at people and Meyer being good at business, but we kind of gloss over stuff like this and Charlie talking about running the numbers in Two Imposters, but I really enjoy the little bits when the show acknowledges that yeah, Charlie is as involved in the business end of things as Meyer and Meyer knows as well as Charlie how to keep people on his good side. it’s conducive to good business, after all

[the-code-of-silence]

Boardwalk Empire