James Carter's Music in the Moment

DATE May 30, 2008 ACCOUNT NUMBER N/A
TIME 12:00 Noon-1:00 PM AUDIENCE N/A
NETWORK NPR
PROGRAM Fresh Air

Interview: Denis Leary on his series "Rescue Me" and aging
DAVID BIANCULLI, host:

This is FRESH AIR. I'm David Bianculli, TV critic for Broadcasting & Cable
magazine and tvworthwatching.com sitting, in for Terry Gross.

Today's guest, Denis Leary, has come a long way since chain smoking his way
through his corrosive comedy shorts on MTV. He's starred in a number of film
comedies and dramas. He's co-creator, executive producer, co-writer and star
of the FX series "Rescue Me." And just last weekend he was seen as one of Al
Gore's chief campaign advisers in HBO's "Recount," a very good recounting of
the hotly contested 2000 presidential election.

Here's Leary telling another campaign chief, played by Kevin Spacey, that they
have to be more aggressive in the effort to tally uncounted votes.

(Soundbite of "Recount")

Mr. DENIS LEARY: (As Michael Whouley) Listen, there's a giant scoreboard out
there somewhere, and we can't play a gentleman's game here or we're going
to...(word censored by station)...lose. Whoever has the ball when the clock
runs out is going to be declared the winner. I'm telling you, Ron...

Mr. KEVIN SPACEY: (As Ron Klain) Gore wants to win as much as you. He just
doesn't want to set the Constitution on fire to do it.

Mr. LEARY: (As Michael Whouley) OK, well, right now we're down by less than
2,000 votes. Meanwhile, there's 175,000 balance that their count machines
have declared nonvotes. OK? So that's 175,000 uncounted ballots, Ron.

Mr. SPACEY: (As Ron Klain) How does a thing like that even happen?

Mr. LEARY: (As Michael Whouley) Because punch card ballots are...(word
censored by station). OK? They're primitive. You got cardboard chad that
get punched but don't go all the way through the hole so they're off the edge
of the ballot, the...

Mr. SPACEY: (As Ron Klain) Hanging chads.

Mr. LEARY: (As Michael Whouley) Chad.

Mr. SPACEY: (As Ron Klain) What?

Mr. LEARY: (As Michael Whouley) There's no S.

Mr. SPACEY: (As Ron Klain) The plural of chad is chad?

Mr. LEARY: (As Michael Whouley) That's great democracy.

Mr. SPACEY: (As Ron Klain) Jesus.

Mr. LEARY: (As Michael Whouley) Yeah.

(End of soundbite)

BIANCULLI: "Rescue Me" is Denis Leary's main showcase these days, but you
have to know when and where to find it. The DVD box set of season four comes
out next week. And five minute "mini-sodes" of fresh, stand-alone "Rescue Me"
material will appear this summer. But season five of "Rescue Me," with actual
one-hour episodes, has been delayed by the writer's strike and won't begin on
the FX network until April 2009.

In "Rescue Me," Leary plays Tommy Gavin, a New York City firefighter
constantly risking his life to save others. But when it comes to his friends
and family, he's constantly letting them down. He drinks too much, cheats too
much, lies when he thinks he needs to and gets into fights.

At the start of season four his personal life, as usual, is in shambles. He's
been separated from his wife ,Janet, but he's just moved back in with her, and
the baby--which may or may not be his. And he's just caught their teenage
daughter Colleen coming in from a date with her boyfriend at 3 in the morning,
not only drunk but smelling of marijuana. In this scene he's talking with his
wife about it. By the way, this exchange includes some brief crude language,
but all of it is language that sounds convincingly, compelling real.

(Soundbite from "Rescue Me")

Mr. LEARY: (As Tommy) Colleen is smoking pot.

Ms. ANDREA ROTH: (As Janet) I know.

Mr. LEARY: (As Tommy) You know? What do you mean you know?

Ms. ROTH: (As Janet) It was good pot, too, not that she...(word censored by
network)...wasted it.

Mr. LEARY: (As Tommy) Great! Great. That's a great attitude. I told you
years ago, pot's a gateway drug. So tonight she comes home, not only is she
high, she's drunk.

Ms. ROTH: (As Janet) What?

Mr. LEARY: (As Tommy) Oh, yeah...(word censored by network)...faced, puked.
Yeah.

Ms. ROTH: (As Janet) Was she driving?

Mr. LEARY: (As Tommy) No, I think her 50-year-old boyfriend was handling the
driving responsibilities.

Ms. ROTH: (As Janet) Oh, he's 26. That's good. That's good.

Mr. LEARY: (As Tommy) Why's that good?

Ms. ROTH: (As Janet) Because he doesn't drink.

Mr. LEARY: (As Tommy) OK. I'm pretty sure that she's banging this guy.
Yeah!

Ms. ROTH: (As Janet) I know. She's on the pill.

Mr. LEARY: (As Tommy) You put her on the pill? I--insane. Totally--I mean,
you got the whole toolbox going: booze, penises. I mean, I can't believe
that I'm finally the moral compass in this family.

Ms. ROTH: (As Janet) Yeah, right.

Mr. LEARY: (As Tommy) You're an enabler, that's what you are. Yeah. Yeah.

(Soundbite of baby crying)

Mr. LEARY: (As Tommy) Sh. When were you planning on telling me about this?

Ms. ROTH: (As Janet) Well, I was going to drop the sex bomb on you awhile
ago, but then this whole platonic living arrangement thing has been going so
well. You know?

Mr. LEARY: (As Tommy) Yeah.

Ms. ROTH: (As Janet) And then you always take the word sex as an invitation,
so I didn't want to risk it. And as for the pot and booze, well, check her
birth certificate. The last name's Gavin.

(End of soundbite)

TERRY GROSS, host:

Denis Leary, welcome back to FRESH AIR. "Rescue Me" was inspired by a couple
of firefighters you were close to. Would you tell us something about them?

Mr. LEARY: One is the technical adviser to "Rescue Me," old, old friend of
mine named Terry Quinn, who's been a New York City firefighter for 20-some-odd
years now. And he is one of my oldest friends and, because he's still a
working firefighter--and, much like Tommy Gavin, has no interest in becoming
an officer or anything other than a truck guy, which means the guys who
actually, you know, run off into the fire, you know, when they jump off the
rig at an event, he's an action guy. So he's also our technical adviser in
charge of all of our big fire scenes.

And the other guy, who shall remain nameless, who's a good friend of mine, as
well, is--you know, I just saw him last night. We had the premiere here in
New York, and whenever I see him, whatever he's talking about in terms of his
personal life becomes fodder for the upcoming episodes of "Rescue Me" because
he lives such a rich and interesting life.

The two of those guys combined are who Tommy Gavin is. And he, again, is just
a firefighter who's been in a very busy house, you know, for 20-some-odd years
and has no plans on leaving or retiring, or--he just lives and dies to fight
fires.

GROSS: You have a cousin who was killed in a fire.

Mr. LEARY: Yeah.

GROSS: And do you think he ever thought that that would happen to him?

Mr. LEARY: He used to say, when his wife or his mother or anybody would say,
`You know, what are we going to do if something happens to you?' because he
was considered a quote-unquote "fireman's fireman," like he was the first guy
in. The night that he died he was filling in for a guy who had done a favor
for him and he was supposed to be driving the truck, but he hated staying with
the truck while guys went into a fire. So he traded off with another guy and
said, `You know, I don't want to sit with the truck if something happens
tonight. I want to be in the building.' So he wasn't supposed to be working
that night and he wasn't supposed to be actually going into the building, but
he was because that's where he wanted to be. He was looking for two homeless
people. He used to say, `You guys are just going to have to deal with it if I
get killed.'

See, the amazing part of that story with my cousin is, not just that he went
into a burning, you know, inferno of a cold storage warehouse building that
the windows had been bricked up, he went in looking for two homeless people.
He got trapped with another guy. The kid that I grew up with, that we grew up
with named Tommy Spencer, who was outside when they closed the building down.
The chief said, `Nobody else is going in, it's too big, we're shutting the
building down.' Tommy Spencer tied three other guys to himself and he walked
up to the chief who was blocking the doorway and said, `Get out of the way or
I'll knock you down. I'm going in to get Paul and Jerry.' And they went in.
And within, you know, minutes the building went up a second time.

That is an amazing amount of courage. And there was a sense of brotherhood,
and just to begin with, the sense of brotherhood towards your fellow man, two
homeless people that you don't even know; and then the sense of well, `We know
this is probably not going to work, but we have to make that last stand to see
if we can get those guys out.'

GROSS: I'd imagine that, you know, starring and doing some of the writing and
of course also producing the series "Rescue Me" has you thinking a lot about
death and about kind of self-destructive impulses, because like your character
Tommy, he deals with life and death every day in putting himself in
life-threatening situations to rescue people. At the same time he flirts with
death through smoking and alcohol and really stupid risks he takes in his
personal life.

Mr. LEARY: Yeah. Yeah, I think part of the attraction to writing these guys
was the male ego as it exists in almost every man, and then the male ego as
required for the type of courage that this job takes. One of the things that
the male ego does when mortality bumps up against it is you want to have sex,
you want to prove, `Ah, I'm vital, I'm alive. Look at me, I'm alive.' And
these guys are living this crazy job that has everything to do with life and
death, but nothing to do with life as we know it: love, death and taxes, you
know, the way we look at it. So that's where I find it to be very rich. And
it never ceases to amaze me, the stories.

Like a buddy of mine told me a story today, who's a firefighter. He was at
work, he got a phone call from his brother, and his brother said, `I've got
some bad news.' And he said, `What is it?' He said, `Dad died.' He said,
`When?' `About five minutes ago.' And he said, `All right.' And he went back
into the bunk room, he feel asleep, the alarm went off an hour later, he went
to a fire. Never dealt with his father's death because he dealt with death.
And then one day he was reading "Flags of Our Fathers" last year and he
collapsed for two days and basically couldn't stop crying, you know, 10 years
after his father had died, because he's so afraid of letting the other
emotions about the girl that he didn't save here, or the guys that came out of
9/11 like him and the guys who didn't, guys that he knew and loved, and so
many emotions, that they're like--you have to be an animal. You have to be
like a shark. You have to keep moving forward, `Yeah, everything's behind me,
everything's behind me, everything's behind me.' That's an interesting story.
I mean, what's going to happen? What's going to happen to Tommy Gavin when he
stops moving?

GROSS: Yeah, well...

Mr. LEARY: You know, what--you know.

GROSS: ...well, his character's really attracted to extremes. You know, so
like, you know, rescuing people and fighting fires and stuff. But those
extremes don't match in, say, life as a spouse or as a father, and he has real
trouble in those areas.

Mr. LEARY: Yeah. And most of the guys that I know, even the guys that this
character is based on, have those same issues.

GROSS: Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm.

Mr. LEARY: But you know what? If you ask them, if you cornered them--you
wouldn't even have to corner them, you could just ask them--they'll say that's
what makes them a great firefighter. One of the things, they talk about women
compartmentalizing emotions and approaches and how they live, and that's one
of the things about--like even my cousin Jerry, he knew that there was a
chance every time he was, you know, at work that he wasn't going to come back.
And he was OK with that, even though he loved his kids and his wife. And his
wife understood when she met him that that's what he wanted to be. He knew.
That was a box in his head that this is always a possibility and it doesn't
matter, `I still will take the chance.' It's like rolling the dice, you know.

GROSS: In some ways, you are the, you know, actor, comic, writer who has
taken on like the male ego out of control as your subject.

Mr. LEARY: Mm-hmm.

GROSS: You know, it was kind of that as a comic, you know, in some of like
your rants...

Mr. LEARY: Yeah.

GROSS: ...and some of your movie characters, but certainly, you know, in your
character in "Rescue Me." And I guess I'm interested in finding out why that's
your territory, why you're so interested in like male ego out of control.

Mr. LEARY: I don't know. I think--as a comedian I hope I had enough of a
tongue in my cheek sometimes so that people knew I wasn't just taking the piss
out of individual politicians or pop culture icons or attitudes that I found
pretentious, but also a little bit out of that macho thing, you know. In "No
Cure for Cancer," I talked a lot about my father and the John Wayne, `we don't
go to the hospital even though we might have cut our own fingers off with a
saw' mentality. And, you know, and how the sons of that generation of men
were supposed to deal with being a man. I just, I guess because I am a man, I
find that territory interesting.

But as a comedian I love to hit--I mean, for instance, you know, I do like
four or five gigs every fall. I don't have that much time to go on tour now
with "Rescue Me," but I do a couple of charity gigs as a stand-up, and I do
the New York Comedy Festival every year. And I refuse to do anything that's
material I've done before. And I don't write all my jokes, I don't write
jokes. I have bullet points and I just improvise. So when I saw Mel Gibson's
thing happen where he got arrested and said those anti-Semitic remarks, I had
10 minutes of material automatically from that. When I saw the enumeration of
things that Paul McCartney supposedly did to Heather Mills McCartney, I
immediately started practicing hopping around on one leg because she said Paul
would force her to go to the bathroom instead of using a bedpan. I mean,
these are--I get up and I have 10 minutes of material about how difficult it
is to be a one-legged woman married to a Beatle. That's, you know, I just go
by what I find funny.

And it relates to why firefighters became available to me and the show was
funny and heartbreaking, is because in the kitchen, in the firehouse, there's
a lot of black humor, because that's how they avoid the real emotions and get
around the corner, you know, from what they just saw. And I relate to that.
And I relate to sort of, you know, I guess as they say in Ireland, taking the
piss out of whatever the subject might be, you know.

BIANCULLI: Denis Leary speaking to Terry Gross last year. More after a
break. This is FRESH AIR.

(Announcements)

BIANCULLI: Let's get back to Terry's 2007 interview with
actor/writer/producer Denis Leary. Season four of his FX series "Rescue Me"
comes out next week on DVD.

GROSS: So talk a little bit about shooting the fire sequences on "Rescue Me,"
where--I mean, there's sequences where, you know, where you or other
characters are surrounded by, you know, a wall or two of fire.

Mr. LEARY: Yeah.

GROSS: You're falling through buildings and so on.

Mr. LEARY: Yeah.

GROSS: So like every week there must be a lot of like serious special effects
you have to...

Mr. LEARY: Well, yeah, there's a lot of special effects. What we've done
this year, which I'm--you've probably seen the first...

GROSS: Three episodes.

Mr. LEARY: ...yeah, the first evidence is in the first episode where there's
just that one long take with no edits where we walk into the building...

GROSS: Mm-hmm.

Mr. LEARY: ...and into a room and then the room catches on fire, and then
the building basically explodes. And there's no stuntmen in that scene, and
there's no cuts until the floor collapses. And that's the beginning of this
upping the ante that we did this year. As the season goes on, there are
longer sequences--some are four, some are five, some are seven minutes
long--where we go into a call, there's no editing. And the camera follows us
into the building and the fire explodes and the action continues and there are
no stuntmen. It's the real actors. And it's really very difficult to shoot,
but it's fabulously, I hope, entertaining and on the edge of the seat for the
audience. Because we wanted to make it even more realistic than we've done
before about how it feels for these guys when they go in.

GROSS: Well, in the scene that you're describing, you know, three or so of
the guys--including you--basically are, it's as if you're like sliding down a
chute right into the fire...

Mr. LEARY: Yeah.

GROSS: ...right into a wall of fire...

Mr. LEARY: Yeah.

GROSS: ...when the floor collapses beneath you. So what exactly are you
being chuted into?

Mr. LEARY: In the original take the floor actually, we rigged the floor in
the building to go up. And we slid down onto pads--which is still pretty
scary, because it's a three story drop. And, you know, all the things in the
room go first and then the actors come afterwards. So it is a little
dangerous. And then in the special effect department we slid down that just
as high into a green screen with pads.

But we've just finished shooting a maze fire that took--it was five and a half
minutes long from beginning to end in which the fire escalates as we go
through and there's no cuts, there's no stuntmen, and the special effects are
happening within the scene. And it was scary as hell, but it looks great on
camera.

You know, basically, what we do, when I do those scenes is we come up with an
idea and I say to Terry Quinn, you know, we're not even going to write the
dialogue. `You tell us what we should be saying and what the radio calls
should be,' and then Terry designs it, you know, because he's still a working
firefighter. One time last year we had a bus fire. I called him up and I
said, `Peter and Evan and I are thinking of doing a bus fire,' and he said,
`I'll call you right back; I'm at a bus fire right now.' And he called us back
and he said, `All right, here's what we just did.' So I love when you're
watching something and you realize, `My God, there's no--this is the scene
that just started, there's no cuts here.' Like that movie "Children ff Men"
that was out last year. There were a couple of sequences where I went, `Oh my
God, these are the--that's Julianne Moore, there's no cuts here.' You know,
and you just even breathe you're so taken in by what you're watching.

GROSS: Now, you were roommates with Mario Cantone at Emerson College or
classmates.

Mr. LEARY: Well, no I wasn't actually his roommate, but we were in the
same...

GROSS: Same place.

Mr. LEARY: ...theater group together.

GROSS: OK.

MR. LEARY: And his roommate for a brief time was Gina Gershon, who was
younger than us, but by happenstance ended up being sort of being Mario's
roommate. And for Mario's family, his supposed girlfriend, you know.

GROSS: Right.

Mr. LEARY: Even though Mario--from the first time I met Mario, there was no
question, you know, we went to Emerson College, which is a fabulous college,
creatively. And, you know, there were three women to every man and two out of
every three guys was gay. So it was--but his parents ran a
nightclub/restaurant, and his brothers used to work the door, very tough
Italian family. And, you know, it used to be funny. We'd go in there and
Mario was as--Mario never pretended to be anybody but who he is. And his
brothers would go, `That Mario, he's so creative, right?' And we'd be like,
`Oh yeah, he's real creative. He's real creative.' You know, `That Gina, boy,
she's pretty.' `Yeah, she's pretty. Yep.' So he was--I tell you, that was a
very talented group of people at that school. And out of all of them--and
myself included--nobody was funnier than Mario Cantone.

GROSS: Well, it amuses me to think of you as being friends because your
onstage character or, you know, like the Tommy character tends to be kind of
like homophobic. But obviously you and Mario Cantone, who's very gay and very
out, were good friends. So obviously you're not like...

Mr. LEARY: No, no, not at all. As a matter of fact--I don't think Mario, by
the way, was ever in...

GROSS: Right.

Mr. LEARY: ...there was never any closets in any building that Mario lived
in. No, of course not. I think it's like when people through the
misogynistic label at "Rescue Me," and Peter and I sort of rankle under that
because...

GROSS: He's you're co-producer?

Mr. LEARY: ...and my co-writer, Peter Tolan, because you know, we always
say, `Well, I guess you should ask Susan Sarandon and Marisa and Gina, you
know, how they feel about this,' because we get these great actresses to play
these roles. You know, it's contained within the element--it's very organic
to the element of the show that firefighters are considered homophobic or that
they don't want a gay firefighter in their midst. But ultimately it really
doesn't matter. There's a gay chief in the FDNY who's one of the most noted
firefighters who ever put on his bunker gear because he was a terrific
firefighter. And as a very young chief now, is looked up to as, you know, a
guy that the guys really trust. Ultimately, they don't care. They really
just want to make sure that you can do the job and that you've got their back,
and that's really what they care about in the end.

You know, in the newspapers or in the media when they start saying the FDNY
is, you know, racially unbalanced and prejudiced. And the truth is it's like
playing in the NFL. `Can you block that guy? You want to play middle
linebacker?' You've got to be able to block the guy. So that's all they care
about. And the greatest answer to the idea that they might be prejudiced
racially is do you think they actually consider the color of the people in the
building before they go in and get them, you know? Tommy Gavin says in one
episode this year, he goes, `I'd have to go back and count how many Hispanic,
fat, ugly, black, yellow, green people I've saved over the 20 years I've been
in this department, because I didn't keep track because all I wanted was to
get whoever it was out.' And I think that's the answer to the racial question
in the FDNY is they don't care, they don't really care.

BIANCULLI: Denis Leary speaking to Terry Gross in 2007. The fourth season of
"Rescue Me" comes out on DVD next week. More of their conversation in the
second half of the show. I'm David Bianculli, and this is FRESH AIR.

(Announcements)

BIANCULLI: This is FRESH AIR. I'm David Bianculli in for Terry Gross, back
with more of Terry's 2007 interview with comic, writer and actor Denis Leary.
He co-starred last week in the HBO tele-movie "Recount," and he's co-creator,
executive producer, co-writer and star of the FX cable series "Rescue Me."
Because of the writers' strike, season five of "Rescue Me" won't appear on FX
until next spring. But a box set of season four is coming out on DVD next
week.

On "Rescue Me," Leary plays a fireman who is constantly risking his life to
save the lives of strangers, but when he's off duty, he's constantly letting
down his friends and family, and his personal life is out of control.

GROSS: Are you still smoking? I know you're...

Mr. LEARY: I'm smoking right now.

GROSS: In the studio? They're letting you in the New York studio.

Mr. LEARY: Yeah. I smoke everywhere.

GROSS: And I shouldn't be saying this, because now everybody's going to want
the privilege of smoking in there.

Mr. LEARY: I know. But I figured that there's been people on this show that
probably did the same thing. I don't smoke anywhere near as much as I used
to, and I'm actually getting ready to quit, but, yeah, I...

GROSS: Wait, wait, wait, you're getting ready to quit. What...

Mr. LEARY: I am getting ready to quit.

GROSS: What makes this a turning point?

Mr. LEARY: Well, I...

GROSS: Because I think people have been on you for a long time to stop
smoking for obvious reasons.

Mr. LEARY: Well, especially my daughter.

GROSS: Uh-huh.

Mr. LEARY: But I'm almost 50, and I play a lot of ice hockey and a lot of
street hockey. That's what I do to stay in shape. And I play with a lot of
young guys, and I haven't yet--I still am pretty fast for my age and able to
handle myself, but I don't want to lose that step. But also, my daughter
wants me to quit and, you know, I'm at that age where I just think, `OK, you
know what? Let's try it without it and see what happens.' You know what I
mean? It's one of the things that--50 is a weird age, because even though I
don't feel it, I look and I go, `Wow, man, I can't believe I made it this far,
and I may have another 25 to go. So I better start thinking about what I want
to do.' You know what I mean?

GROSS: You're not used to looking ahead like that?

Mr. LEARY: I'm not, actually. I've always been a sort of, you know, today
type of guy. But now, you know, my kids are going to be up and out of the
house soon and going to college and, you know, I like my job a lot, but you
know, once I come out of--when you're on a television show, it's kind of
accepted--and I know it's true--that people see you in that character for a
while. So I'm going to have to disappear from television for a while and
maybe do some movie parts or whatever. But there may be some downtime coming
up where I have to just direct and write or whatever--and produce--and I'm
trying to figure out--I just--because, for "Rescue Me," I have a stunt coming
up where I have to drive a motorcycle with no helmet on. So I've started
driving motorcross to get ready for this stunt sequence. And I was afraid of
it, but now I'm really in love with it.

And I just started riding horses. I've had them for years, but I've never
rode them. And I just started riding horses last weekend, and all of a sudden
these two things I always thought were too dangerous for me, I'm doing. And
I'm going to be 50. And I'm like, `You know what? Paul Newman's racing, you
know, cars and he's 82.' So I got a lot of time. I might have another 30
years here, and I want to do some dangerous, crazy stuff now that, you know, I
shouldn't be doing. I'm always--unfortunately, when people tell me not to do
something, it's the first thing on my list to do. It started with the nuns
telling us not to laugh and, you know, `Don't touch yourself.' Well, you know,
I tried both, I liked them.

GROSS: Too late for that, huh?

Mr. LEARY: Too late for that, and now, you know, there's a certain, `You
shouldn't be doing this at 50.' Well, I'm going to try it. So riding that
horse this weekend was just exhilarating. And this motorcross was just
exhilarating, you know?

GROSS: So what's your plan for stopping smoking?

Mr. LEARY: I have these fake cigarettes that, they're made of plastic and
they give you a nicotine fix, so you're not getting the smoke, you're getting
the nicotine. And then you wean yourself off. And I also have a hammer, I'm
just going to hit myself in the side of the head with the hammer every time I
want a cigarette. I figure that'll probably work. But, then again, I'm
Irish, so you never know.

GROSS: Now, because there's a new baby in Tommy's family now, in your
character's family now.

Mr. LEARY: Yeah.

GROSS: And the baby is really colicky and he's crying all the time.

Mr. LEARY: Yeah.

GROSS: This is a little further down, so I'm giving something away, but I
think it's OK.

Mr. LEARY: Yeah.

GROSS: He takes a tip from a friend and is going to try putting some whiskey
in the baby's bottle. Just like a little drop in the hopes that it quiets him
down.

Mr. LEARY: Yes.

GROSS: Now, I've heard this before.

Mr. LEARY: Yes.

GROSS: Do you think that you were brought up that way?

Mr. LEARY: Well, the old Irish thing was--and I'm not saying--my wife and I
didn't give our kids whiskey, but, you know, we were very hands on with our
kids. My wife was a fantastic mother, and my son was born very, very, very
extremely premature. My wife actually wrote a terrific book about it called
"An Innocent, A Broad." Instead of "abroad" being one word, it's "A Broad,"
meaning her. And it was--you know, once he was through the tough times, you
know, we were very, very much of the mind, which is the way we were both
raised, like put the kid on the floor and let the kid walk around. And all
the things that fly around the floor, the kid will become immune to.

People are so protective of their kids, like, they're, you know--it's like
that old thing of, `Well, how do they learn how to swim?' `Put them in the
water and stand close to them. They'll figure it out and you'll save them if
they have a problem.' You know, they're meant to bang their heads and fall
down and, you know, there's a reason when a kid falls down that he looks at
you first after he gets up, like he doesn't know whether to cry or not. It's
based on your reaction. If you panic, he'll panic.

So when I was growing up, you know, my mother tells us about it. They had
dirt floors in the houses when they were growing up, and they just, they
crawled around, you know? Basically, it's like puppies. If a puppy's in the
way, you don't just go like, `Ooh, little baby puppy, ooh.' You go, `Get the
hell out of the way.' Or let him try it and see if he gets hurt, he won't do
it again. If the puppy touches the stove, he won't do it a second time. So I
really believe in that kind of stuff. I think kids are too coddled in this
country. And that's why we have so many fat kids now, you know? Just bad
food and television.

GROSS: You have two teenage...

Mr. LEARY: Although I'm not telling fat kids not to watch my show. If
you're already fat and you're out there with a big bag of cheese puffs and you
want to watch "Rescue Me," by all means stay on the couch. Don't leave the
house unless you--your exercise should be to go to the store and buy the DVD
of "Rescue Me" and then come home and sit down and watch that. Stay fat.

GROSS: You have two teenage children.

Mr. LEARY: Yes.

GROSS: What is the most hypocritical thing that you are doing in terms of
trying to regulate their behavior that you wholeheartedly engaged in when you
were that age?

Mr. LEARY: Well, smoking. Yeah, smoking, bad.

GROSS: Mm-hmm.

Mr. LEARY: Smoking not good. Swearing, taking the Lord's name--I feel like
I'm in the confessional now, Terry. Bless me, Terry, for I have sinned. I
have taken the Lord's name in vain. Yeah, I try to be--and my wife reminds me
quite often, you know, to be careful about--you know, I think I've been good
about getting over my rage. I don't fight taxi cab drivers anymore and try in
traffic not to get into battles. And, you know, I do have a black Irish
temper, which I think I've come to control fairly well recently. And then I
just--I think we try to be honest with our kids. I mean, we're very, you
know, in terms of our political beliefs and what we believe in religiously,
you know, and family and stuff like that, we try to lead by example and make
them--certain things are expected, like good manners, like, in general. And
I'm sure there are huge faults that I just--big potholes I've left in the
roads of my children's childhood, but they seem like really good kids, and I
think that says a lot about my wife and, hopefully, me.

BIANCULLI: Denis Leary speaking to Terry Gross last year. More after a
break. This is FRESH AIR.

(Announcements)

BIANCULLI: Let's get back to Terry's 2007 interview with
actor/writer/producer Denis Leary.

GROSS: Has it been like oddly therapeutic to write your character of Tommy in
"Rescue Me"? Because like he has so many of the extremes of the male ego that
you've written about and probably some of which you've had...

Mr. LEARY: Mm-hmm.

GROSS: ...and probably some of which you've tried to like undo. But like by
putting all of these extremes, you know, like the fighting, the...

Mr. LEARY: Yes.

GROSS: ...the drinking...

Mr. LEARY: Yes.

GROSS: ...the inability to have a like really enduring emotional relationship
and so on.

Mr. LEARY: Yes.

GROSS: By putting that in him, can you stand back and say, `I see what the
problem is'?

Mr. LEARY: Well, it has helped me, definitely. It has helped me, certainly,
in terms of grief. I lost so many people in such a short period of time from
the time my cousin was killed in that fire through 9/11, and then one of my
best friends on the planet, Ted Demme, dropped dead...

GROSS: Yeah.

Mr. LEARY: ...January of 2002, right after 9/11. It helps in that regard.
It does--what's good is that the two guys I said that I based the character on
are like my same age, and we--I was talking to one of them this morning just
about some very, very personal stuff and the two of us were comparing notes on
stupid things that we've done in relationships and talking about our kids and
raising our kids. The good thing is that, at this age, we're starting to
realize what idiots we have been and are potentially capable of being again,
and I think that's a thing that was never a part of my father's generation of
men. Like, you got--even me--I'm talking to this really tough, great, New
York City firefighter, and he's telling me things--it's like I'm talking to my
shrink--and he's telling me things that are ringing bells in my head and I'm
going, `Yeah, yeah, God, are you right. We do need to be more emotionally
available for the women in our lives in for our daughters and for our sons,'
and then I hear an alarm go off because he's at the firehouse and he's like,
`Ah, I'll call you back later,' and he's going out on a call.

So there's hope that we, as men, that we will actually--I can't believe I'm 50
and just learning a lot of this stuff that I'm learning.' I mean, I look back
and I think, `What a moron I was.' I mean, what did I think?

GROSS: Give me an example. Give me an example of what a moron you were.

Mr. LEARY: Well, I mean. I'll give you an example. A year ago I got into a
fight with a cab driver. It was just ridiculous--downtown--which ended up
with nothing except him locking himself in the car and me trying to get in and
then me realizing that there are people with camera phones and that I've
achieved nothing, except if I wasn't in shape I'd probably have a heart
attack. And then I was late for work. So I drove away going, `Now, what did
I gain there? My face is red. My blood pressure is high. My heart's racing.
I'm angry as hell, and all I've got is a, you know, a bruise on my hand and
nothing else.' So that--I was 48 years old when that happened. So, you know,
here I am, 49 years old. Wow, did I learn a great lesson. I learned not to
beat up cab drivers.

By the way, you know, living in New York, or London or Rome, where are you not
going to want to, you know, punch a cab driver? It just makes no sense.

GROSS: What...

Mr. LEARY: You know, so, I hope that's true. And the same thing with--I
said this last night about, you know, when people are photographing you and
photographers--when you're famous, you know, I've found that instead of
throwing a can of beans--like Hugh Grant did--or kicking them or yelling
or--it makes no sense. It's actually better to just actually turn to them and
say, you know, `This is kind of ridiculous. Do you really need to keep taking
pictures of me as I walk?' And they kind of get shamed and they go, `You're
right. I don't need these pictures of you.' I mean, one of my favorite things
to say is, `I'm not Brad Pitt. Do you think you're photographing Brad Pitt?
These pictures are worth nothing. It's Denis Leary going to get a cup of
coffee. I'm guaranteeing you. Call WireImages. It's worth 25 cents,' and it
seems to work, so, you know.

GROSS: What was the fight with the taxi cab driver about?

Mr. LEARY: Oh. All right. So now you want to get to the core of the male
ego?

GROSS: Yes.

Mr. LEARY: I'm on my way to work. I'm driving. It's early, early in the
morning. I'm driving to the set of "Rescue Me." You know, this is why they
really don't allow me to drive myself to work anymore, by the way. I'm
driving myself to work and there's nothing but green lights in front of us
because there's no traffic. It's like, you know, it's 5:45 or something in
the morning, and he's strolling along at like 10 miles an hour. He's looking
to find a fare, and I beep the horn because we've got four green lights in
front of us and he short-brakes me. He puts the brakes on, and I just miss
hitting his back end. Then he speeds up to the next--still a green light--the
next block, and I come up behind him and he short-brakes me again. So I
squeal to a stop. And he goes a third time.

Well, the third time--I'm not proud to say it, but it was--I think any jury of
my peers would be on my side, you know, like 12 Denis Learys--I hit him, I
tapped him from behind, and of course we both got out and he started screaming
in half-English, half-Pakistani because he's not an American citizen.
Actually, that's where I started. I was like, `Get your license and
registration.' That's when he panicked because he doesn't have one because
he's not a citizen of this country. So he locks himself in the cab, and I'm
ranting and raving and ranting and raving and holding up my wallet and my
license and registration, you know, wearing a 62 truck "Rescue Me" T-shirt.
You know? Could I have more of an advertisement like, `I wonder who that is.'
And it went on for like 15, 20 minutes, and I gained--actually as a workout, I
probably lost, you know, a few calories, but that was it. I got to work. I
was pissed off. It made no sense.

GROSS: That's a long time, 15 to 20 minutes.

Mr. LEARY: I know! Out of my life.

GROSS: Think of all the traffic you were holding up while you were doing it.

Mr. LEARY: And, yeah, and you know, here I am sometimes in a bad movie,
going like, `I can't believe they wasted two hours of my life.' You know, this
is--it makes no sense. It's stupid. It's stupid! It's so stupid. And by
the way, thank God my kids weren't with me so they could see what an example
their dad is for yelling and screaming at a guy who can't even understand
English, you know. But I was in the right. See, there's the male ego part.
I was right because there were green lights and he was--it's stupid, stupid.

GROSS: Well, Denis Leary, I wish you good luck in being mature.

Mr. LEARY: All right.

GROSS: And it was great to talk with you. Thanks a lot.

Mr. LEARY: Thanks. Bye.

BIANCULLI: Denis Leary speaking to Terry Gross in 2007. The fourth season of
"Rescue Me" comes out on DVD next week.

* * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * *

Review: Kevin Whitehead on the new James Carter album, "Present
Tense"
DAVID BIANCULLI, host:

When jazz saxophonist James Carter came along in the late 1980s, he was so
obviously talented and so versatile he was hired by two trumpeters who agreed
about little else: Wynton Marsalis and Lester Bowie. Then came Carter's
knockout solo release, "J.C. on the Set," so good it was hard to top. Jazz
critic Kevin Whitehead says Carter's new CD shows he's still got the gift.

(Soundbite of music)

Mr. KEVIN WHITEHEAD: James Carter has always been something of a hot dog and
a boaster. He radiates a joyful exhibitionism more common to top trumpeters
than saxophonists. Carter doesn't just play one horn well enough to make your
ears pop. He made his initial rep as a tenor saxophonist, but these days he's
even more acclaimed for his baritone. Fair enough. With a bigger horn, he
can crank it up even more.

(Soundbite of music)

Mr. WHITEHEAD: Some folks gripe James Carter goes too far, that he clubs you
over the head with his power chops. Carter's flashy, but he's not shallow.
His bag of saxophone tricks pulls in influences from vaudeville novelties to
the avant garde. And he learned a lot from swing and be-bop masters about how
to shape a statement and navigate through fast-moving chord changes.

(Soundbite of music)

Mr. WHITEHEAD: This music's from James Carter's new album, "Present Tense,"
a good showcase for his prodigious talents, abetted by guitarist Rodney Jones,
trumpeter Dwight Adams, pianist D.D. Jackson and bass and drum champs James
Genus and Victor Lewis.

Not content to blow you away on tenor and baritone, Carter also plays soprano
sax--not too whiny--and sweet bass clarinet, as on this salute to '60s hero
Eric Dolphy.

(Soundbite of music)

Mr. WHITEHEAD: Even there, Carter eventually erupts from tender balladeer
into fire-breather. He also plays flute, a tricky instrument for the
nonspecialist. But here again, he hits the mark, avoids that faint,
insubstantial tone part-time flutists often get. Flute also allows for a
frothy change of pace. "Dodo's Bounce," by be-bop pianist Dodo Marmarosa:

(Soundbite of "Dodo's Bounce")

Mr. WHITEHEAD: On the CD "Present Tense," James Carter switches up styles,
too. There are ballads, blues, a bossa nova, and a hip-hop-inflected version
of 1949's "Song of Delilah." Some musicians make albums where they check off
different styles to verify their jazz credentials. With Carter, it's about
his voracious appetites as a player and a listener. He wants to devour it
all.

BIANCULLI: Kevin Whitehead teaches English and American studies at the
University of Kansas, and he's a jazz columnist for emusic.com. He reviewed
"Present Tense," the new CD by James Carter.

(Soundbite of music)

* * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * *

Review: David Edelstein on the "Sex and the City" movie
DAVID BIANCULLI, host:

In 1998,the series "Sex and the City" premiered on HBO with a script by
creator Darren Star based on a book by Candace Bushnell. For 94 episodes,
through 2004, the series was a hit and a star turn for Sarah Jessica Parker.
Now there's a movie, and we get to see how the four gal pals at the center of
the series have aged and changed. Film critic Dave Edelstein has this review.

Mr. DAVID EDELSTEIN: A much anticipated movie is opening this week, and oh
boy--and oh, girl--what a rush, because instead of comic book fan geeks
fighting for tickets, there are women lining up in awesome numbers. It's "Sex
and the City," the motion picture.

If you loved the TV show, it's a joyous two-and-a-half-hour wallow. If you
hate it, think Chinese water torture. Now, I love the show, but I hated it
once, so I see both sides. They can be very annoying, these overprivileged,
materialistic women who depend on men for their self-esteem while also
treating them as objects. On the other hand, what a hoot to watch women for
once doing the objectifying, and talking dirty, sleeping around and wearing
fabulous clothes.

The movie opens three years after the series, and in case you missed the
finale--or the show--newspaper relationships columnist Carrie Bradshaw, played
by Sarah Jessica Parker, brings you up to date over the credits.
Miranda--Cynthia Nixon--lives in Brooklyn, which here means Siberia, with her
kid and mousy husband. Charlotte--Kristin Davis--and her hubby have adopted a
Chinese girl, now a toddler, whose presence makes it hard to babble with her
friends about sex. Samantha--Kim Cattrall--is wilting from monogamy with her
hunk-of-burning-Hollywood loverboy. Carrie has finally settled into the arms
of Chris Noth's "Mr. Big" and can afford even more shoes. But Miranda
wonders whether the new, shared penthouse apartment comes with a hidden price.

(Soundbite of "Sex and the City")

Ms. CYNTHIA NIXON: (As Miranda) So you're keeping your own place, right?

Ms. SARAH JESSICA PARKER: (As Carrie) Oh, Miranda, I haven't figured out the
details yet, but I'm a smart girl, I'm sure I'll figure out something that I'm
very comfortable with.

Ms. NIXON: (As Miranda) I just want to be sure that you're being smart here.

Ms. PARKER: (As Carrie) And I love you for that, but for now, can't you stop
worrying for me and just go ahead and feel what I want you to feel, jealous?
Oh, jealous of me living in this gorgeous penthouse in Manhattan.

Ms. NIXON: (As Miranda) All right, I'm jealous.

Ms. PARKER: (As Carrie) Oh, thanks.

Ms. NIXON: (As Miranda) You live in real estate heaven and I live in
Brooklyn.

Unidentified Actor: (In character) New York Magazine says Brooklyn is the new
Manhattan.

Ms. NIXON: (As Miranda) Oh.

Actor: (In character) Whoever wrote that lives in Brooklyn.

(End of soundbite)

Mr. EDELSTEIN: I won't spoil what happens, but the wedding of Carrie and Big
midway through is a heart-stopper, a farce without mirth, where cell phones
and limos function as agents of the unconscious.

Parker is spectacular. She's come in for monstrous derision lately, maybe
inevitable given how she's pushed on billboards as the personification of
sultriness. But on screen, you can see the fragility beneath the poses.
She's a little girl dressing up, wriggling from one eye-popping outfit to the
next, elated but likely to wither in the face of rejection or self-doubt.

Of course, the heart of "Sex and the City" is not any one character, but all
four together. And it's possible the friendship is the biggest romantic
fantasy of all: they complement one another perfectly, they're never too
competitive. But what an inspiring fantasy it is, an haute couture design for
living. If Cattrall's high-style vulgarity borders on camp, it doesn't drown
out her down-to-earth moments of pain. Nixon makes Miranda's prickly
ambivalence so real it's wrenching, and her bitterness over the sacrifices she
made for her marriage is the movie's bleak subplot. The balance between dark
and light tips to the dark, which makes Kristin Davis' old-fashioned ditzy
double-takes all the more welcome.

The movie was written and directed by Michael Patrick King, an executive
producer and writer on the show. And the hetero men are lesser entities and
the product placements irritating. The pacing sags in the last half hour.
But when you're this invested, it barely matters. This is what the show's
finale should have been, the ultimate exploration, as these women settle
edgily into their 40s, of independence vs. commitment, the fairy-tale
trappings of modern romance smashing against a sobering reality, which is
where those pink cocktails come in.

I hazarded to a friend that "Sex and the City" theater lines would be great
places to meet babes, and she said, `Not so fast, slobberpuss. There's going
to be serious female bonding there.' She's probably right. I'd be much less
cowed by overweight teenage boys with plastic light sabers than roving bands
of Cosmo-pickled women finally getting their day in the multiplex.

BIANCULLI: David Edelstein is film critic for New York Magazine.
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