"Rescue Me" will return, and in the meantime you can enjoy Tommy Gavin and the crew in the "Rescue Me" minisodes on FX, then encores will be made available online.
Denis Leary - © Chris Hatcher / Photorazzi
While "Rescue Me" may have some female character development issues, the show’s riveting epicenter is still Denis Leary’s Tommy Gavin, forever tortured by his Irish man’s disease: Wine and women.
Ghosts haunt him and his crew too, all of whom try to balance their fraternal camaraderie with personal loss, unresolved grief and overriding lust that derails their friendships at times.
Ten, five-minute minisodes are set to premiere Tuesday at 10 p.m. on FX and will be available on www.crackle.com the day after, and are visual Hors d'œuvres served up by the network for the rabid "Rescue Me" fans who are stomping for more of the firehouse gang and their whip-smart East coast banter.
Denis Leary and Peter Tolan are in the midst of getting the new season to bed.
Leary and Tolan
Monsters and Critics spoke to Denis Leary and Peter Tolan earlier on a conference call that illuminated the progression of the writing, and how FX President John Landgraf came up with the idea of the minisodes to keep the interest alive in the series.
We also chatted about Massachusetts and the great Yaz, Carl Yastrzemski, of the Boston Red Sox, whose words of wisdom kept myself and apparently Denis Leary on the straight and narrow too.
Peter, I’m from Little Nahant (Mass.) and now live in Los Angeles, and I really...
Denis Leary: Oh my god, Little Nahant?
Peter Tolan: You know, you’re the only person in a million years who said I’m from Little Nahant.
I bet, and I truly appreciate all the little touches you put into Rescue Me that remind me of home, especially mentioning Yaz, he came to my middle school and told me not to do drugs…
Denis Leary: Hey, he came to my school and told me the same thing!
He sold my dad a Pinto too from the old Yaz Ford dealership on the Lynnway, but that’s another story.
Carl Yastrzemski - kept us clean
Denis Leary: You know what? I didn’t do drugs for the longest time because he came into my eighth grade class and he said "Kids, don’t do drugs," and then he walked out. And I was like "Yaz said don’t do drugs."
Right behind Peter’s head as you’re saying that, there’s a full color framed picture of (Carl Yastrzemski) hanging on my office wall. I swear to god.
I’ve got one, too! That was my parting gift from Yaz when he told me not to do the white horse, which I had no idea what he was talking about. But I love your work. I’m living in Los Angeles so your show is like a beacon of home to me.
(laughter)
Peter Tolan: (laughing) Yeah.
What characters do you miss that have died or have been killed off?
Denis Leary: Oh boy.
Peter Tolan: They all tend to come back even if they’re dead, so it’s not a question of missing them I guess. I don’t know, who would it be?
Denis Leary: Well I got to…I don’t know. I mean, because they do come back - like we’re writing a big scene. I guess it’s sort of a tribute to the Iceman Cometh where Tommy is visited in the bar by several of the ghosts and, I always look forward to those scenes because you get to see - we’re the only show - actually, I guess the Sopranos did it too when Big Pussy would come back.
But, you know, you get to see Charles Durning come back for three days’ work and Dean Winters and Jimmy McCaffrey. So I don’t really - I don’t miss them because we know they’re going to be around.
Peter Tolan: Yeah, nobody dies forever on Rescue Me.
I have a question about your wife, Denis.
Denis Leary: Yes?
Ann Leary and Denis
She’s an accomplished author. She’s got a great new book out (Outtakes from a Marriage) and I’m wondering if she ever offers any ideas to you and Peter about developing richer character arcs for the women?
Denis Leary: She doesn’t offer ideas but she definitely mentions the stuff that she really likes or, this performance was great or that scene was fantastic. She’s not specific unless it’s that - in sort of that fashion.
Can you give us just an overall picture of how the season is going to wind up for Tommy?
Peter Tolan: You’re going to have to call us back in about a month and a half because we’re, as usual, flying by the seat of our pants. We have wonderful ideas for the entire end of the series as a whole.
We have what we think is an idea that’s never been done by anybody and I think we’ve committed to that. But that’s a little ways off for us now.
Denis and I have talked over the years several times about sort of the - where Tommy ends up and I’m not sure that’s entirely a happy end. But I think for some of the characters we would hope to see some positive finish to their stories as we tell them.
I mean, people always say to me why can’t you guys write a happy - a good - a happy, content male/female relationship or a happy ending for things? And which I always say well you write it and see if you can make it interesting.
So I think we can’t be mean forever. I think we’re going to give some of our characters a nice way out.
Thank you both.
Denis Leary: Go Yaz!
Peter Tolan: Yeah. Go Nahant. You know, that’s a very funny thing. I’m from Hull (Mass.).
The minisodes stories – will they be feeding into the new season?
Peter Tolan: Well there’s a couple of things as we’ve been writing them that not only foreshadow stories that we know are occurring in Episode Five, but they also weirdly, psychologically tie into some of the past knowledge that we have of these characters and that the audience has too.
Some of them are just out there for laughs and some of them are - we just shot one that is a little more dramatic. And again, it’s interesting - if you watched all ten of them in a row, I think you’d start out laughing and then somewhere in the middle you’d go, oh that was an interesting thing.
I wonder what that was. And then by the end you’d go hey, I wonder if this is stuff that’s going to be happening in Season Five. And some of this stuff actually will be.
It’s particularly inevitable that we would have ended up writing in little clues and hints, and things like that that sort of bridge the gap, you know.
Denis, what about Timo and Rosemary?
Denis Leary: Well because it’s a very large Irish family and as there’s (all want), we can’t cover everybody’s story because we have about eight guys in the firehouse and we have the love interests which includes not only Janet and Sheila from season to season but in general, a couple of guest stars or one guest star a season.
Then you got the other guys and their lives. I think as a natural course of events, focus more on dad which is Charles Durning’s character and Johnny Gavin, Dean Winters’ character, because that’s where the strengths fell.
But, it’s like I said, a large Irish family. You have to have a (systemic planet) but, you know, like Uncle Mickey - I mean, cousin Mick - Father Mickey -- Bobby Burke’s character who has been with us since season one -- he is very busy at the beginning of season five.
It depends on where we’re at story-wise, you know. So Timo and Rosemary - they’re sort of satellite siblings at this point.
Peter Tolan: We’ve also established just like a lot of families -- even beyond Irish families -- there are a lot feuds going on and people who have a falling out. And clearly, Tatum’s character had that with Charlie and the Rosemary character had that with Charlie’s character.
So that was probably a very contentious household, I get the feeling.
What are the challenges of writing and filming the minisodes versus a regular 44 minute segments?
Denis Leary: The challenges? Well the challenges, I guess physically we’re adding them into the schedule that we’re already shooting and because we’re shooting 22 episodes we have a lot of work in front of us.
But the (fun) of it is that we know like the first few are just purely comedy for comedy’s sake. And even, I guess yesterday we finished shooting one that has a more dramatic element to it.
Like Jimmy McCaffrey who plays Jimmy Keefe came in yesterday and worked in a scene, and it just kind of makes you hungry to do some more things with him and he’s not really doing a full blown episode until the next block.
It’s like you take a person at work that you haven’t seen in awhile, you might want to see more of.
Peter Tolan: If there’s a challenge, it’s just that we usually have all that time to tell stories and you’re sort of not forced into a beginning, middle and end thing in that short of timeframe.
But it’s a fun challenge and more than anything we just want to have a good time with those and have them be comedy heavy, and really show off our guys.
Back in May you announced on The Daily Show that the fifth season of Rescue Me was going to be delayed until March 2009. How have the fans responded to that news?
Denis Leary: I’m spending a lot of time working on rescues so it’s not - usually if I see the fans it’s like outside The Daily Show or the David Letterman show the other night.
They want us to be on the air. But when you tell them listen we’re coming on for 22 weeks straight, they go oh, that’d be great.
I know when I was a Sopranos fan, when the Sopranos was off for like a year and a half or two years at a time, everybody would complain and say, I’m so mad and I’m so pissed and how can they do this?
I would just go yeah whatever because it was my favorite show. So when it came on, I would watch it. So look - we wish it was on, too but I think when it comes back on it’ll be so - such a giant bunch of episodes, I think it’ll be very - hopefully not sated - not completely sated, but somewhat satisfied.
Peter Tolan: And what I’m saying to our fans now - it’s certainly not hyperbole, it’s the absolute truth -- the first six episodes that we’ve finished here are some of the best episodes we’ve ever done in the life of the series.
So when we come back, we’re coming back very strong and in a relentless way. All these episodes are really, really strong. So people will definitely be rewarded for their long wait. And that’s a totally unbiased opinion from the co-creator of the show.
Denis Leary: My wife said that she felt they were really good.
Gina Gershon and Denis Leary
What keeps Tommy together after all the deaths he’s experienced recently: his son, his brother, his chief and now his father?
Denis Leary: Well the thing I think that’s always kept him together -- as with a lot of firefighters in real life who - especially in New York, guys who lived through 9/11 and have been through a lot of life and death -- is the idea of work.
It’s just keeping themselves off the truck and therefore, they don’t get a chance to think about the past because they’re so involved in the present and the fire that might happen in five minutes or the fire that they just arrived at.
They sort of have that at present sense of like there’s a game tomorrow, and I got to be ready. But I think in a strange way his father’s death is kind of the final straw for him because he doesn’t really - it’s the death that you most expect because it’s a person who is old or a person who is ill that can sometimes be the most effective one because it’s - you think it is going to be easy and it’s not.
I think that’s - the first six episodes, seven episodes that Peter is talking about this year underneath everything that’s happening is around Tommy.
I think in the first episode we established the fact that Tatum’s character, his cousin Mickey, his Uncle Teddy, even the guys on the crew - they’re all sort of kind of still upset about the loss of his father and he seems to be unaffected by it.
Then gradually it comes to literally haunt him to the point where he has to finally deal with not only his father’s death, but his father’s death is kind of like the exclamation point at the end of the sentence.
Can you give any insight to the episodes for new season?
Denis Leary: Well listen, you know, I’m a sports fan so I think of it this way.
Hockey and basketball next year - into those playoffs and back. We’ll be finishing probably at the end of the basketball playoffs next year.
Peter Tolan: Okay, all right.
Denis Leary: So I’ve never done even a movie that lasted that long. So I think we’re approaching it really like episode by episode. It’s a 12-step program. It’s 12 episodes and then 12 more episodes. So it’s almost like we’re in TV rehab at this point.
We don’t really get to see much of the outside world except when we’re shooting in the streets of New York and - but I’m not complaining. Believe me, this is way better than sitting around waiting for a strike to end.
Peter Tolan: But we have worked in enough time over the next year that we can sort of have some room to breathe. So it isn’t like the Bataan Death March. I mean, we’re going to get through it.
Denis Leary: We’re having a good time, actually.
Peter Tolan: Yes, definitely that.
Denis Leary: Regarding the scripts, we have written six and we are about - well actually we’ve written - I’ve written into eight. Peter has written into seven, but we have six full finished and we’re going to have seven and eight done probably this week.
We’ve always done Rescue Me the same way, which is we’re two episodes ahead of ourselves as we shoot and a lot of that has to do not just for the storytelling, but we’re watching the actors as they play out what we’ve written already.
And they almost always bring something extra and make us go oh, that’s really interesting. Let’s stick with that for a little bit longer or we hadn’t thought of that, you know, so it’s almost - it’s a very exciting process.
It’s scary and everything else, but because we have such a terrific core set of actors in our main characters, it’s not only comedically, but dramatic.
Last night John Scurti did something at the end of a very funny scene that was supposed to be dramatic and he did something with it that was really unbelievably scary and good.
It came out of nowhere. It was an idea that he had in his head and he - I stopped cameras because I was in the scene with him and I - and as soon as he did it, I thought my God this is great.
So that raises the stakes a little bit in the relationship between Lou and Tommy this year.
Do you have any guest stars or cameos that are going to be appearing in season five?
Peter Tolan: Yes.
Denis Leary: We do, probably by the end we’ll have three or four but we have - one I can’t tell you yet because we’re not legally allowed to tell you.
I mean, one is Karina Lombard who, in this country, is probably most famous for The L Word. SHe is playing a French journalist who is working on a tenth anniversary 9/11 book and she...I’m not going to tell you what she gets involved with.
It might be a surprise to you, but she gets involved with everybody in the firehouse to begin with because she’s trying to get their feelings and their experiences of 9/11 written down so she can put them into this coffee table book that’s due to come out on the tenth anniversary. So...It’s complicated, but it’s really interesting.
I would go out on a limb and say that in terms of another bit of stunt casting, given what we’ve written for that character and given the person that we hope to get to play it, I would fully anticipate an Emmy nomination for best guest starring role.
Peter Tolan: No, once again I’ve been found out.
Whose idea was it to do the minisodes?
Peter Tolan: I think John.
Denis Leary: John Landgraf who is the head of FX, who has come up with a lot of good ideas over the year - more than Peter and I would like to admit because he has (done) so many times on Rescue Me, he has said but if you guys did this and we go goddammit, why didn’t we think about that?
He’s a very bright guy and obviously a big fan of the show. And so when he said to us look, the best programming idea for us is to - we have the last season of The Shield which is kind of the flagship show for that network and that needs to run in its entirety.
Meanwhile, we had been pushed back already in terms of - Peter and I and Evan Reilly, the other writer on the show, we’re not the kind of guys who actually wrote anything for the show while we were on strike.
We would talk but we didn’t actually punch any keys on the computer. I love this thing when the strike ends on a Sunday night and Monday morning some of these shows have four scripts ready to shoot that they saved - apparently wrote Sunday night.
So we were pushed back on the writing anyway. John wanted to run The Shield after the two conventions and the Olympics which occur in August and September this year - which automatically meant that we would have to go in either January which when I think 24 comes back after having like a long hiatus because of the strike or we would wait until the springtime which is closer to when we normally air.
And that would leave 18 or 19 months with us off the air. And so this show is built on comedy and drama. That’s always been one of our things from the beginning which is organic to any firehouse, the idea of black humor versus absolute black sudden death.
So we have something that other dramas don’t have. I don’t think you could do a three to five minute mini episode of the Sopranos because you’d have to what, like wax somebody, have a meal, you know what I mean, and then have Tony having sex with a prostitute.
It doesn’t work. But on this show, because we have these comic conversations that occur in the firehouse and in the truck, it was a natural element that we could pull off.
I think when John said I’d like to have you guys go on the air and give people something to remember the show by while we’re on hiatus, we thought it was a really, really good idea.
Were you afraid of losing your audience with the hiatus?
Denis Leary: Yeah but everything happens for a reason so I kind of - especially when it involved the strike, your first reaction is wow, that means we’re not going to be on the air.
The second reaction as a writer is well we’ll have more time and Peter’s a director on this show, too. We’ll have more time, which we don’t normally have, to write and to dwell on things.
And the truth is - I mean, I can’t speak for other people, but I was a Sopranos freak and I don’t care if they took three years off between (strike) because I still would’ve watched it with - I was really invested in that series.
So I think it’s - for people who are really into it, they will come right back to it. And I’m totally biased about this and so is Peter. But I’m telling you, Peter has a lot more experience than me and way more Emmy’s by the way because I have none.
When I tell you that I got to believe that layoffs and the strike, not only did it help us to come back with a lot more energy, the actors came back and the thing is really cooking.
So I really think that the extra time has, for some reason -- and the strike -- reminded all of us of how lucky we are. And it’s really - the episodes are really good - really strong and the actors have brought an extra - I think they were on steroids, actually, the actors at this point because they’re just - they’re better than they’ve ever been, that’s the secret acting - they’re on acting HGH. I don’t know where they’re getting it. I think they’re getting it from (Clemens).
What about Tatum’s issues?
Denis Leary: We don’t have a legal issue. She has been in for a couple episodes already. She did great work and she immediately went back to work herself in terms of taking care of whatever she needed to take care in her private life.
So she’s doing terrific and she’s got a home here. I mean, we’ve got - she’s supposed to come back to work soon because we’ve got her next round of stuff coming up in, I think, the next one or two episodes.
Our concern was mostly about her private life and making sure she was okay. But in terms of her work here, she was terrific when she was here at the beginning of the season. We can’t wait for her to come back. So we don’t have any issue with her.
Tommy is the longest time you’ve played a character- any unique challenges to doing that?
Denis Leary: Well I’ll be honest with you. I’m old enough and experienced enough with movies that I turn down almost everything that people offer me because I enjoy doing Rescue Me.
When I have time off, I’d rather be producing and not in front of the camera. Yeah, there are certain people like Martin Scorsese or Peter Cohen - certain directors that I’d work with and even if they were shooting in Thailand.
But like anybody, the truth is everybody gets pigeonholed so you’re only going to get - I’m not going to get called up for the flaming gay, homosexual parts in the next Meryl Streep project.
Peter Tolan: As he mentions that, I’m sitting here praying that the phone rings any minute.
Denis Leary: So, I want to do something different. I want to like any actor get pushed in a different direction. But I’m also a selfish, greedy son-of-a-bitch so I’ve - basically shows and film projects that only shoot in New York and involve friends of mine.
I did Recount because Kevin Spacey called me up and said come on, it’s mostly me and you. We’ll be working together. And I like Kevin, and he’s funny. And I thought the script was good.
But I’m pretty selfish. I like to work with - I like to have a good time at work. Most movies suck because no matter what happens, the odds are against you so I’d rather do it with somebody that I’m really going to laugh my ass of with every day and then take my chances on whether it’s good or not, you know.
The minisodes, were they all filmed together or did you do those separately?
Denis Leary: No we do them as we go along. We shoot fast and furious and we’re all over the place. I mean, one day you wake up and you’re in Harlem putting out a fire, a fake fire and then the next day you wake up and you’re at the studio and you’re shooting a scene elsewhere.
And then somebody says by the way, we got to shoot minisode number five, so we are doing them as we go along. I think we have what, three or four done. So they have the energy that’s on the set at any given moment working for them.
Peter Tolan: Yeah, definitely jamming them in, but they’re good. We are doing ten of them.
What do you make of the new media platforms to watch your show?
Denis Leary: Well I have a hard time. I have teenagers and they watch stuff on their iPods and on their telephones. And, to me it’s like for the first time in my life pretty much wherever you go there’s giant plasma television screens which are barely big enough for me.
I really like gigantic televisions. So the idea of going back to look at something on my - I can barely see the telephone numbers on my phone... I really don’t care how they watch them, as long as they watch them.
But I like to watch stuff like on the - remember when we used to go to the drive-ins?
Peter Tolan: Sure.
Denis Leary: That’s the size screen I want for the living room.
Peter Tolan: I have a movie coming out, it’s called Finding Amanda. It stars Matthew Broderick and Brittany Snow, and the lovely Maura Tierney. Then somebody said to me -don’t you feel awful that you’ve spent so much time and color correction and everything, and people are going to be watching this on their phone and whatever?
And, really I’m not that much of an artist that I’m - it can only be one way. And - but at the same time, I’m not going to be shooting a show or a movie with the idea that it’s going to end up on a little screen.
I mean, somebody at one point said to me don’t do like long shots and stuff like that because they won’t play on those tiny screens. I’m like that isn’t going to work. I’m just going to make it the way I’m going to make it.
Denis Leary: Imagine watching Lawrence of Arabia on your phone?.
Peter Tolan: I didn’t think that desert was that big.
Denis Leary: Well yeah. I mean, obviously the attention span - well I have a very short one myself, but kids today have a very short attention span. That whole You Tube thing, which I’m guilty of - going on You Tube and watching the overly dramatic squirrel and all that stuff.
So if you can get something that works in our favor again, the comedy element of Rescue Me. The fact that we’re a drama that has comic elements in it. If you can get three to five minutes or six or seven minutes and people can get on and watch it, and all of a sudden you go I’ve heard this show was good and I just watched this really funny thing, it’s - that’s a form of advertising I guess.
It may hopefully bring some people to the show that haven’t been there before.
Peter Tolan: That would be a great side benefit to pick up some extra viewers. I’ve always sort of look at these as our - as a little gift to our fans to say, here we come. Don’t worry, we’ll be back. But yeah, it would be great if we could get some other interest in the show.
Denis Leary: It never ceases to amaze me. You know, my wife never watched the Sopranos but I was a freak for it. And then my wife decided because it was so hot as it was approaching its final season, she’s like I’m going to watch the final season.
And I was like how could you watch the final season without knowing what was going on in the other seasons? But people do that stuff.
So if they just join us up for season five, hey welcome in.
Denis. Your Leary’s Firefighters Foundation does a lot of work with firefighters across the country. Can you please talk about any recent projects you’ve undertaken with the foundation?
Denis Leary: Yeah, the project that we’re -- amongst other things -- we’re finishing up rebuilding a number of firehouses in New Orleans which is an ongoing project. But the thing that we are working on in New York right now is building the first high rise simulator.
A high rise simulator is what it sounds like. It’s a building that allows firefighters to reenact or enact circumstances that involve going up into a skyscraper as they did on 9/11.
And this building that we’re building for them will allow them to change the outline on the floors of the simulator so that it can actually almost match any setup that they would find in any given old building or brand new building that’s, 20, 30 or higher story wise in the city.
They’ve never had one, which is really hard to believe that in the biggest city in the world with the biggest fire department, they’ve never had a high rise simulator and it was something we set out to do years ago.
We broke ground last spring. We’ve already got two or three stories up and it’s really - I mean, the firefighters can’t wait for this thing to get under full operation.
But that’s one of those - the more you investigate this in whatever city you live in, the more you’ll find out that every single fire department in North America has a lack of equipment and a lack of training facilities.
So I’m proudest of that one right now in New York. We can’t get it done soon enough. And as soon as it’s finished, they’re going to be using it around the clock.
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