Online: Official Rescue Me Home Page
In the new firehouse drama "Rescue Me," which has its premiere Wednesday on F/X, the comedian, actor and writer Denis Leary plays a gritty but emotionally fragile New York fireman in the wake of 9/11. Created by Mr. Leary and Paul Tolan, the same duo that was behind the much-praised, short-lived series "The Job," "Rescue Me" centers on a rattled man who acts tough by day but is reduced, at night, to spying longingly on his ex-wife. The show's writing recalls Mr. Leary's manic, pacing stand-up performances. Recently, he spoke to Alison Powell about the inner lives of fire fighters.
ALISON POWELL Why are there so many cop shows but so few firehouse shows?
DENIS LEARY I don't know. I think it's a really dramatic setting. Since 9/11 people have really shied away from them, but as a writer I find life-and-death situations fantastic. It goes beyond almost any job you can think of that deals with danger and death. You don't know, it could be right now. It could be a half an hour. It could be tomorrow.
POWELL Does it seem to you that right now it seems as if firefighters are held up as the American heroes, even more than our armed services?
LEARY Yeah, but as I've always said, this country has A.D.D. There's a backlash in New York right now with firefighters getting arrested for drunk driving and testing positive for drugs. The spotlight was shone on these guys and we thought they were so heroic. But they're just human beings and the tendency for them is to self-medicate rather than go see a psychiatrist so that they can keep going into these buildings and saving people. This is something we're going to deal with in the course of the show.
POWELL Is putting themselves in that kind of danger in itself a form of addiction?
LEARY Yeah, I think that's why a lot of these guys are married to the job and going home becomes a mess. We get into that on the show. It's like yeah, they're heroes and they perform a job that it's hard even for me to imagine how much courage you have to have, but at the same time they're like 12-year-olds when it comes to dealing with the outside world.
POWELL Do these guys talk honestly with one another?
LEARY When you come back from a fire you sit around in the firehouse kitchen and you go back over who was where and what happened. There's no lying in that situation. You've got to tell exactly what you did wrong. "I'm sorry, I was on the fourth floor and I didn't know what I was doing and I got scared." And that's O.K. to say
