Michael Shannon Quotes

Yeah, I love 'Boardwalk Empire.'

Among the many things 'Boardwalk Empire' is, is a gangster show.

They are superpower of villains. They are superpower of Al Capone.

I went to high school with Al Capone.

I love 'Boardwalk Empire.' I really love that world. I love that style. I love all the actors on it.

Terre Haute. They used to call it 'Terrible Hut' because it was so wide open. Gambling, red light district, speak-easies. I entertained for all the gangsters. Can't name a gangster that didn't come into the place where I worked.

I grew up in the South, and our way of dealing with each other was teasing, ribbing, making fun and scrapping in the street. Criticism doesn't bother me so much. It actually made me, when I was younger, more aggressive. But you get into middle age, and you lose interest in that stuff. It's not serious.

I'd been doing the Chicago theatre thing for years. The money was kinda good - thanks to a push by my old pal Capone, who, let's say, persuaded theatre owners to book me.

Dancing in speakeasies was a job, and none of us knew for sure who were gangsters. No one told us, so how could we know? My mother used to come and take me home. We thought nothing of walking home together at two in the morning.

There'd never been a more advantageous time to be a criminal in America than during the 13 years of Prohibition. At a stroke, the American government closed down the fifth largest industry in the United States - alcohol production - and just handed it to criminals - a pretty remarkable thing to do.

Everybody calls me a racketeer. I call myself a business man. When I sell liquor, it's bootlegging. When my patrons serve it on a silver tray on Lake Shore Drive [in Chicago] it's hospitality.

Old Americana vintage gangster stuff has a fantastical feel; it feels less dirty in a way. It feels like the opera of crime.

The last copy of the Chicago Daily News I picked up had three crime stories on its front page. But by comparison to the gaudy days, this is small-time stuff. Chicago is as full of crooks as a saw with teeth, but the era when they ruled the city is gone forever.

The Prohibition era is so vividly depicted in 'Lawless.' John Hillcoat does a remarkable job of rooting his film in such a tangible reality.

The Capone era. That was my time. Capone was a big baseball fan. He'd walk into the ballpark like the president walking in today, with bodyguards all around him.

One of the things is that the good intentions of Prohibition, from reading over the years and from becoming obsessed with the research of gangs in New York City, seems to have allowed crime figures at the time, like Luciano, Capone, Torrio and Rothstein, to organize to become more powerful, which pulled all the way through until the '70s.

I never put my arms around John Gotti, Al Capone or Lucky Luciano.

I was raised in Chicago and I guess that was one of the special breeding grounds for gangsters of all colors. That was the Detroit of the gangster world. The car industry was thugs.

I started with the book 'Boardwalk Empire' and then immersed myself in the history of Atlantic City, World War I, the temperance movement, Prohibition, pop culture. I even read the news and magazines of the period just to soak in it. That was before I even started thinking of the story.

I was always interested in the 1920s and the gangster world, in general.

The Capone gang was actually a public utility; it supplied what the people wanted and demanded.

I love 'Boardwalk Empire.'

Al Capone's my uncle. The old days were a lot different. The Latin Casino was the big time. When I got there I figured that I was doing pretty good, because remember, I started in nothing but after hours joints. I can't even name them now, but that's how I got noticed.

During Prohibition, Atlantic City created the idea of the speakeasy, which turned into nightclubs and that extraordinary political complexity and corruption coming out of New Jersey at the time. The long hand that they had-and maybe still do-even had to do with presidential elections.

When I was growing up in the mid-'50s, the Roaring Twenties were a huge part of the culture. There were a number of films and a bunch of television shows that dealt with the mythology of the underworld from that period.