In the new HBO series Vinyl, Bobby Cannavale plays Richie Finestra, the drug-addled CEO of a major record label, trying to save his company in 1973, as massive changes were underway in the music industry.
Terence Winter is the co-creator and executive producer of Vinyl. He's an old hand at HBO: he wrote iconic episodes of The Sopranos, and worked with Martin Scorsese creating the series Boardwalk Empire and writing the movie The Wolf of Wall Street. He's teamed up with Scorsese once again, along with Mick Jagger for Vinyl.
Winter is a law school graduate who passed the bar in New York and Connecticut. He practiced corporate law until he realized, in his late twenties, that this definitely wasn't what he wanted to do with his life.
He tells us how he quit his job, moved to LA and started writing sitcoms. His path wasn't without some bumps along the way, but shares how one particular rejection led, in a roundabout way, to him meeting David Chase, the creator of The Sopranos. After that, everything changed.