“We’re so f–ked. How are we gonna do that?” Veteran TV director Jeremy Podeswa said was the first reaction he and a colleague shared after seeing an early cut of Martin Scorsese’s Boardwalk Empire pilot for HBO. “It was huge, very expensive, and took a long time to make.
It took 33 days to shoot and 35 million dollars, which is a lot now, but then, it was even more.” Podeswa recounted the story during a career masterclass at Greece’s Thessaloniki International Film Festival, telling the packed audience that he had been summoned to Scorsese’s personal screening room to view the episode because he’d been hired to direct a follow-up episode for the network. “To give you a comparison, 33 days and 35 million dollars, and then I was coming to do an episode in 10 days with 10 million dollars, which also sounds like a lot of money, but it’s not 35 million,” Podeswa said.
The Canadian filmmaker said it was an “amazing experience and challenge” to find his own directorial path on Boardwalk Empire following Scorsese’s pilot, adding, “You just figure things out.” “You can’t be Scorsese.
That’s not what I’m gonna do, but somehow, it will still feel like the same show,” he said. Shadowing Scorsese on Boardwalk Empire was just one of the anecdotes Podeswa shared during his early morning masterclass at Thessaloniki, the centerpiece of the festival’s AGORA industry sidebar.
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