Denis Leary

Now it's turned into my podcast. Ladies and gentlemen, it's Dennis Leary with my guest, Ted Danson. Welcome back to Where Everybody Knows Your Name. Dennis Leary amazes me in many ways as a stand-up comedian, actor, and writer. You know him from films like The Sandlot, Demolition Man, Bugs Life, and Ice Age. He also starred in and co-created the show Rescue Me, which earned him Emmy nominations for his writing and acting. These days, he's starring in and executive producing the Fox sitcom Going Dutch, which is in season two now. Dennis has this easy way about him that made this such a pleasure. I could have kept talking for another hour. I can't wait for you to meet him. Dennis Leary. just turned 78 damn it I know wow it is a bit of a wow it is no it's crazy because I never think like yesterday with Conan because I've known him for so long and he took off right after I got famous he got his talk show right in New York yeah and so I always forget like you just forget right so when you're hanging out with people we did a charity concert together earlier in the fall. And so, and I said, how old are you again? We were in the middle of the podcast. And he's like 64. And I'm like, fuck, I can't, or 62, whatever it was. And I was like, whenever, when he says that, cause I still think I'm 40, right? And when I'm talking to him, I think he's like 30 something, you know what I mean? Yeah, I do. I go around being kind of noble about pretending to be my age and I'm kind of going along with it. And then I look at myself on TV or I write a date somewhere when they ask me my age. And I write it down. And I was like, fuck. Well, listen, dude, you mentioned the candidate. Are we recording? We are. We're on. One of my first memory, my first really conscious memories are in 1963. I don't know why, but if you think about it, my parents are Irish immigrants, right? Well, yeah. And we lived in Massachusetts, right? And an Irish guy is president, right? But the big thing in my family was that summer, because they could never afford to go back, they came over in 1949, 1950 by boat. And they didn't have the money to fly back to visit their family. But jet travel took over in the early 60s. And finally, that summer of 63, they could afford to go back, but they could only afford to take one kid. So my older brother got to go and me and my sisters had to stay back. so I remember that summer being at Logan Airport in Boston and watching them get on this plane I just like they went to Ireland and and JFK was in Ireland that summer so it was like wow everybody was in Ireland except me and my my sisters we were stuck in these I got stuck in my Aunt Betty's apartment which and she went to mass every day so I had to go to mass every day for a month that summer and she made me read the bible it was oh it was horrible it was horrible and my sisters were at one of my cousin's houses a couple blocks away where it was all the kids hanging out having a blast every day. It sucked. When did you get to Ireland? I didn't get to Ireland until I was a teenager. That's when we could start to afford to actually fly everybody over in the summertime. But then I made sure when my kids were growing up when they were young that we went over every summer. We had a cottage that we would rent. My whole family, my parents are from Killarney. So that whole ring of Kerry is where my cousins are. So my kids went over and grew up with their cousins every summer. So they're still in touch as children. Yeah, yeah. As a matter of fact, we shoot going Dutch in Ireland. So all my cousins come to the set. Yeah, because it matches the Netherlands. The base is based on a real army base that was in the Netherlands that got shut down. So visually and weather-wise, it matches the Netherlands. so I envision that show being shot in Greenland in about three or four years well once we buy it yes oh my god oh my god Ireland's the next place he's gonna buy he's gonna buy Ireland or Scotland see I'm Scottish by grandfather it's the same Celtic it's different I don't think we're as Are you purely Scottish? No, English, Scottish. Both grandfathers. One was English. The other one was Scottish. But the Scottish grandfather was born in London, which pisses him off a little bit that that was true. And then got stuck over in America during World War II in the British consulate, which pissed him off a little bit more. So that he was ferociously Scottish. Yes. Yeah. Well, my cousins even now, my age and below, ferociously Irish. Isn't it the same Celtic? It is the same Celtic, and it's also both people enslaved by the British. So my cousin, one of my cousins my age is still so rabidly, because he lives there. He farms there. He took over one of the family farms, and he's like, I brought a British friend once over to visit with me, and he was like, this is Dennis's British friend. one of the good ones. Yeah. Like, they still, it's just, it's in the blood. Scotland's the same thing. Yeah, same thing. Scottish. Very much so. John Connery. He wanted to, he was like one of the supporters of like, let's just secede. Yeah. You know? So, anyways. I don't know why we're talking about that. Both very bloody. The land you can feel is soaked in blood. Yes. You know? Yeah. Yeah. And, and, well, you know, Dublin, it's, one of the beautiful things about Dublin is if you're walking through like St. Stephen's Green You know, there's statues commemorating the day of the uprising of nurses who, you know, patched soldiers up as they were being shot, you know, as they took over the government. So the neighborhood you grew up as a little boy, like five, six, seven-year-old, is it an Irish neighborhood in Worcester? No, it was my, we went, I grew up in a place called Main South in downtown Worcester. So it was all three-deckers. And you know what three-deckers are? They're wooden apartment buildings, like... Wooden brown houses kind of thing? Yeah, made out of wood. Yeah. Yeah. We lived in a two-and-a-half-decker, actually. We couldn't afford the third floor. It was an attic that me and my brother lived in. But anyways, it was a lot of immigrants. And we all went to the same school for 12 years. You could walk to the school. And the church was basically attached to the school. and there's a hockey, where you get a football field and a baseball field, everything. But it's all Irish, predominantly Irish and Italian, and then some French, some Armenians, one Russian couple during the 60s. It's crazy. And Puerto Rican and some black families as well. So we all went to the same school, but, and again, my mother died past this year. She lived to be 98. 98. Amazing woman. But the Irish, you know, we grew up with all this great food. Like you're in three-deckers. You go out on the back porch. You go out on the front stoop. You can smell great food coming from everywhere. Italian food. All the different, yes. All the different kinds of food, right? That all tasted, actually had a taste, as opposed to the boiled, tasteless stuff that my mother was making. So, oh my God, it was crazy. Because you'd want to get invited into the Corellis. Because, you know, they would have homemade pizza. Oh my God, the pasta. Yeah. I told this story a couple of times. This is so true. My brother, who ended up marrying an Italian girl, my brother and I were out playing street hockey or football or something in the street. Mrs. Corelli came out, as she often would, with pasta for us and her kids to eat, you know? And so my brother and I, we had it for lunch. We went into the house. We're having this, whatever it was, boiled, you know. Boiled something. Boiled something. And my brother says to my mother, because, you know, in those days, like, especially because, you know, we were working class kids. Like you ate at, when they served it, you had to be there and you ate what they had. That was it. You know what I mean? Like they're not making extra, they don't make different meals for different kids. You all eat the same thing and quickly so that somebody else doesn't steal the food off your plate. Anyways, my brother goes, you know, Mrs. Corelli makes, you know, great, you know, spaghetti and stuff and pizza and stuff. And it all tastes really good. And this, we can't even taste this. And I thought she was going to kill him. And she turned around and instead of killing him, she said, I can make, you think I can't make spaghetti? Even as a kid, when she said it, I was like, this is such a bad idea. Why did you bring this up? Right? So the next day we're outside and he said, hey, my brother says to me, hey, Ma said she's going to make spaghetti tonight. I'm like, dude, what kind of spaghetti do you think Ma is going to make? So we get called in for dinner that night. I swear to God, Ted. I can still remember this. It's so ingrained in my frontal lobe. She's got the spaghetti and the colander in the sink, but she has boiled it to the point where it's tiny little colander holes, but the pasta is coming through, like melting through, right? She dumps it back into the pot. My brother and I don't know anything about cooking, right? She puts it back in the pot. We're looking at each other like, well, and she shakes it around in the pot. She opens a can, a jar of ragu and pours it in cold, mixes it up. She puts it. And we're like, this can't be it, right? We sit down and my dad sits down and takes a bottle of ketchup, just like De Niro and Goodfellas and puts it over the... But as I'm describing this to you, so we all did the ketchup because that's basically all you could taste was the ketchup and the ragu. Did you tell this story when your mom was alive? I not. You could not. She had a great sense of humor, but she had no sense of humor about that from the kid's point of view until we were older. And then we'd go like, mom, remember when you tried to cook Italian food? And she was like, listen, I did my best. And you know what she did. But my brother's wife is his high school sweetheart. So she was Italian. And so we started to get, right after high school, we started to get great because her family would come over or we'd go over there. And once you hit that food, like my mother once complained because after, they would come back to our place after a wedding or whatever. My dad was a mechanic, but he also was a good musician and he played in some Irish bands. He played accordion and stuff. They'd come back and my dad would play accordion. and one of my sisters was a fiddle player. So we would have a lot of music in the house. But everybody would bring Italian food and then my aunts and my mom would have this, the worst Irish stuff you can imagine. And then they'd complain like, you know, there was 40 people here and everybody, the Italian food just disappeared and nobody ate ours. And I was like, ma, you don't even need to put it out anymore. Like if there's Italian food, that's what they're going to eat. You know? Yeah. That would hurt though. Oh my God. Oh my God, that would hurt. But she had a great sense of humor. My mom, we lived in northern Arizona country, out in the country, and there were no vegetables to be had. You had great beef and great lamb, and that was it. So it was all bird's eye, this bird's eye. Ruined lima beans for me forever. I only thought lima beans were these little pasty gray, horrible-tasting things. It's tough. It's tough. Back then, food was not available. Well, I don't know about that. That's not true. Yeah. I think it was all about the approach. Listen, you can't fault, you know, the root of that thing of the Irish food being boiled, that it comes from the famine, you know, from the potato famine, which is afterwards eventually, because I asked my dad about it as I got older, and he said it comes historically from the idea that they then wanted to boil everything so there was no chance you could get, if there was something wrong with it, the disease and the germs would be boiled out of it. So, but it's crazy, man. It's like, and there's great food in Dublin now. There's great food in Killarney where my cousins live. All kinds of food. But when I went back, whenever I got back there with my ma, you know, if we went to a Spanish restaurant in Killarney or wherever it was, she would have to get fish and chips from across the street delivered into the restaurant because she won't eat the, you know, it's like. so tough neighborhood or not tough yes very tough my brother was a very tough guy you fought your way around the neighborhood I fought my brother because we shared a room until I was 18 fought fist fight fought my brother's a big guy my brother was a football player big big guy big round guy and a great fighter and I'm just going to make the number up I fought him 2,000 times I lost 2,000 times but I still won because my brother although he's funny he's not as quick as me. And I was always fast. So even at the end of the fight where he beat me up for making fun of something that he was doing or him, I would then make another funny remark about his weight or whatever and then take off and he couldn't catch me. But I had to come home to the room. That's where we slept. Anyways, and we're really close now. And nobody else was allowed to touch me, which was great because he was such a noted street fighter in the neighborhood that nobody touched you touched me because they knew that they would have to deal with him yeah so he was like i'm the only one who gets to beat him up which is like a big brother thing um but that led to trouble when i when i played hockey and i still play hockey but growing up i played hockey and um i was great at causing trouble especially like chirping on the ice because i you know i'm funny but i never had to be in a fight because i always had you know my brother and one of my brothers-in-law who married my sister right behind me is my best friend from childhood. He was a great hockey player and he was a tough guy and crazy like a bull. And I would just, I could say anything to anybody in the ice and even like face wash a guy. And as soon as they started throwing punches, I just went like this. And somebody was always there to step in, my brother or somebody. And I remember that one day I thought they were on the ice with me because we were on the ice as a line, right? And then there was a whistle and there was some scrum in the corner. And I, some giant guy, I said something and I face washed him and he started beating the crap out of me. He grabbed me and I was like, what? And I looked, my, my, my line mates, there was a line change. So there was nobody except me and the goalie at the other end. And some guys are coming on the ice. I got the shit beat out of me. So anyways, I had the exact opposite. I was, I was six foot and 120 pounds at 12 years old. That's me too. Yeah. Yeah. I think I was 90 pounds. People, I went away to a prep school in Connecticut. Where? Kent. Kent School for Boys. I know Kent School. You played hockey probably or something. Well, no, we didn't play against Kent because that's fancy for us. Fancy, but you would have kicked their ass. But I know where Kent is because I raised my kids at a certain point in their lives in Connecticut. Yeah. Yeah. in that area. Yeah. I was so skinny and all of that stuff that, and it was a very, uh, hand-pecking kind of, you know, if you were... Did you play sports? Basketball, my passion. I'm only an actor because when I went to Stanford, I didn't make, you know, such a joke. I didn't even bother to try. Do you still play? 45, I stopped. My knees are this or that. Yeah, that's rough. That sport's rough on the knees, dude. But you, you still playing hockey? Still playing hockey. Jesus. But how do you do that? That's contact sport. I'm an idiot. I'm a complete idiot. Michael J. Fox used to play. Yes. Good friend of mine. Yeah. Yeah. Cam Neely. Cam Neely, yeah. Neely. Yeah, that's how I met Woody. Yeah. Yeah, I met Woody for those guys. Yeah. Yeah, Michael was a great little hockey player. Yeah, I still play. My kids played. I used to have an outdoor rink at my house in Connecticut. I don't have it now, but I moved closer to the city so that the kids would come and visit us on the weekends because they have their own lives now. And a friend of mine named Rob Burnett, who was the head writer and a producer on Letterman for years, he had an outdoor rink as well. But now I moved, not because I wanted to be close. My wife thought that I wanted to be close to his rink. His rink is nine minutes from my house. So I get to skate outdoors now in winter without having to do any of the making of the ice or anything. But there's still a ton of actors who skate, you know? But are there like gentlemen agreements at this age? No, it's worse that it's, especially because most of us now, I play, one team I play on is, the first line is all the young people, which is basically our sons and, you know, daughters. And then the second line is like the older guys, right? And so the thing about hockey is people, some people know this if they're hockey fans. People who are close friends, even in the women's game, you're more likely to get into a fight with your brother or your cousin or your best friend on the ice than you are with like some random player. It's just, I don't know what it is. So we always start- How could you do that to me? Exactly, exactly, right? So, and then, you know, it's, it's a contact sport. So even when you say like, okay, you can't run a guy, it's light checking, you know, not major contact. It turns into that because it's a game where you're going on, you're on skates, you bump into each other, you get angry. Some guy beats you because he's faster than you. You start chopping on him. You have a stick. There's wet. So it's just crazy now. Like the fights that break out are just like, guys, you know, we're 60 something. You have to go to work in front of a camera tomorrow? I have to work in front of a camera. Then you have to go to the office. You know, come on. What are you doing? You know? And the other thing is, we're all so old. It takes us forever to get over where the fight is to break it up. You know what I mean? We're all so slow now. It's crazy. Did you break shit when you were bones things? Yep. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Playing sports. Playing. I literally, I played baseball and hockey predominantly. a little bit of football, but, uh, everything that's wrong with me is from hockey. Um, so, but I love it. I love it. I love it. I still love it. It's just, it's one of those things like basketball, like you have to, you have to forget all your troubles and every, your phone bill, whatever you're thinking about. Cause you, if you don't, you'll get killed because the ball, people are coming at you. There's a ball flying around or puck flying around. I love it. And so fast. That's a faster game. It's a hard game for me to even watch on TV. I miss see I think the two greatest live sports are actually basketball and hockey because you're so close to the action especially in hockey you can be right in the glass but in basketball and the games are so fast they're best live sports how big are professional hockey players now? well they're getting bigger my son's huge my son was a great hockey player when he was in school the generation of kids same thing with my daughter like everybody they generationally they get bigger my son is 6 yeah and big So like Cam Neely son Jack My son Jack He got a son named Jack His son, Cam's son, is like 6'6". Yeah. And on skates, you still can't hit what you can't catch, which means, like, in football, there's always a small guy who's always going to be able to get around you. Yeah. But players are just getting bigger and bigger, and people are getting bigger. Yeah. You know? It's crazy. so you're you're getting the shit beat out of you by your brother playing hockey how where did you go oh i think i want to be funny i think i want to do comedy i think i want to act well i was always funny right my parents were funny the household was funny i was not a great student that i liked the things i liked which was literally and that i was good at uh english and history that's it sorry right um so and also i know i was good at with a couple other guys i grew up with because we went to the same school so all the same kids i like there was three funny guys i was one of them in my class like we would just like that was the reason i went to school every day was girls and making girls and other people laugh like it was all nuns and and priests so it was all Catholic repression. It was easy to make people laugh because people, you're not supposed to laugh. You know what I mean? So this nun, Sister Rosemary Sullivan, there was a nun, a math nun whose name I can't remember. She was ancient. She couldn't remember a lot except math. But at the beginning of her class, if you raised your hand and said, sister, I got to go to the boys room, she would let you go. And then she would forget that you left. So you could, if you did it early, you could get out and not have to come back. And so we would do that, a couple of us, and then go smoke. So this one day I went, I started smoking when I was 12. So I did that and I went to smoke and I was just walking around the hallways. And this nun, Sister Rosemary Sullivan said, hey, Larry, you know, what are you doing? And I was like, nothing. She's like, I know what you're doing. Tell you what, I need you to be in a musical. I need boys. I don't have enough boys. I had a ton of girls, no boys. I need boys to lift the girls in a dance number. So you're in it or else I'm going to tell what you're doing. And I was like, so, and then you got, you got an hour out of class. Cause she said, you get, you miss an hour of school. So at two o'clock come, I'll tell the headmaster. So that's why I did it. And I walked into this room and it was literally all the hottest girls from all four classes were in the room. And she was like, grab her. under the bosom and by the rump and lift her up. And I was like, grab Mary St. Thomas by the... You want me to like... And I lifted her. I was like touching her boobs and I'm touching her ass. I'm like, this is unbelievable. What is this? So then she asked me to sing. I could sing, you know, with the piano player. For my dad, you know, Musical Talent. She's like, you're in the show. I can't even remember. I think it was Bye Bye Birdie. It might've been Mame or something. But anyway, it wasn't Bye Bye Birdie because I got a lead in that later. But anyways, so I went back the next day. First, I told my brother that night, I'm like, yeah, boy. He's like, what do you mean? I go, it's all the hottest girls. And she just wants to, like she told me to grab Mary's thing. So he's like, what? So I got this kid, Tommy Creamer. And I told him, he was in my class. So he joined up and he was like, this is crazy. It's like, it's just like every time, every girl is hot. And the nun's like, grab her and now kiss her. And they're like, this is unbelievable. And so, and I still remember my, when I made my entrance, I got a huge laugh, whatever the play was. And it was because my zipper was down. I didn't realize it. And I was like, why is this so funny? I looked and when I zipped up, I got it up. And I saw it from that moment on. You entered. I answered with my zipper down and I was like, okay, this. And the girl thing was like, this might be my thing, you know? And then I just did every play every year for, in high school, I did the musical. And that nun was taking drama classes and music classes at Emerson. She herself. That the school was paying for. And, and she said, uh, you know, when I was like a junior, she said, you, when you are thinking about going to college, your SATs aren't going to be great because you're not a great student. But I know a school where you do an audition, a written essay and an audition. And that's all you need to do. They don't care about your SAT. And if they like you, they'll give you a scholarship. And that's how I went to Emerson. She saved my life. At age 18, 19. 18. 18. I was still 17 when I did the auditions. Yeah. And then I got a full scholarship. And I stayed friends with her through most of my career until she died. She was a great nun. Really like made a, saved my life, you know? When did she pass away? She didn't pass away. She lived a long time. So I think it was, she was old when I knew her. So it was, and I got famous like probably 91, 92. She probably died around 2000, something like that. But she knew you. She would call up or have me call her. And she was, like, she was a fan of everything. And I was like, she's like, No Cure for Cancer, which was, you know, it's my first one-man show. But it became a special. And, you know, it's full of crazy subjects and language. And so I said to her, she was like, I loved it. I thought it was great. And I said, sorry about the language. She's like, oh, come on. You kids were saying that stuff when you were in high school anyways. I know. But she was a great nun. Yeah. She changed my life, you know. I had similar I was following a girl named Beth who I finally had the nerve to ask out to have a cup of coffee at Stanford she was going to an audition what were you studying the joke you know political science which means I have no fucking idea that anyone who did what they wanted to do in life majored in political science and I did nothing I did nothing at Stanford literally absolutely nothing I'd wake up at 11, turn on the Dick Van Dyke show and do a little dance on top of this wood stump I had because it was, you know, 60s go-go. I was a go-go dancer for myself in my room. And then I'd go see if a class was still available. But I fell in love with acting by following some girl into some audition. At Stanford. At Stanford. And to stay in the room, you had to do something. So I made something up and I heard someone laugh and it was like, oh, it ain't basketball, but that's not bad. That's not bad. And I just was smitten. So where does your sense of timing come from? Genetically. My father was this great source of embarrassment to us at a certain age because he was the kind of guy in a restaurant. he would land on a funny joke and he'd see someone out of the corner of his eye a table over, smile and then he had the whole fucking room and he would tell the rest of his joke story to tables around him to my horror as a 15 year old or something Was he getting laughs? Yeah and he loved people he loved all people because timing man you can't teach You can teach a lot of things. You can't teach timing in comedy. Jimmy Burrows. I mean, cheers. I grew up. I know, but you can't do that. Jimmy Burrows didn't teach you your timing. You just had that, right? I don't know if that's true. I mean... Listen, you cannot teach timing. You can turn the knobs a little bit on Ted Danson, like in terms of his time, but you have to have the timing. Thanks. There's no fucking way. There's no way. I've never fucking seen it. It's not possible. I did learn how on a, see, I never fought. I think I got into one fight in my life. And it was, he pushed me, I pushed him. He hit me, I hit him. You know, it was just very basic. And that man was Woody Harrelson, ladies and gentlemen. No, no, I would never take on Woody, motherfucker. He's one of those guys who escalate. You throw a pine cone at him and he'll throw a boulder back. Yeah, plus he's got all that crazy yoga wiry, you know. Yeah, no. And God knows how high he is. Mean-spirited human being. And by the way, that's his thing. He is a sweet human being. Oh, my God. You can tell he's one of my favorite people on the planet. Yeah, yeah. I want to go back to this. Yeah. Now it's turned into my podcast. Please. Ladies and gentlemen, it's Dennis Leary with my guest, Ted Danson. So you mentioned Jimmy Burrows, who's the, if people don't know, the most famous comedy director in television history. Still working. Right. Right? So he can't teach you. It's funny to me that you thought he was teaching you the timing. Because I'm just saying from watching that show, there was so many fucking amazing sets of timing, right? Because you have grammar. You have Norm, you know, I mean. John Ratzenberg, yeah. I mean, every character is walking in with incredible timing. Right. So, including you. So, and, you know, I'm forgetting her name, the original Diane. Shelly Long. Shelly Long. And not to mention her replacement. Yeah. Oh, my God. So, he's not teaching you the timing. He's twisting the knobs to adjust the timing But you guys have to have comedy timing It's like fucking Woody didn't come into that show And take over from the coach By the way, the coach Nick Colasant He's from your part of the world Un-fucking-believable timing on that guy And the heart and soul of the show And then Woody walks into that With his fucking timing So Burroughs is just a genius who goes Okay, I've got Everybody here is timing I need to make the mesh happen I'll tell you what benefit you do get from really good writing. Yes, great writing. You don't have to carry the joke uphill. My voice thought the joke should be kind of homeopathic. You should reduce it down to it's barely a joke. Yeah. And it still works if you can reduce it down. Yeah. And that writing was so good. You could play it like a drama and it'd still be fun. God, it was good. Yeah. It's so funny too because it still holds up. If you see, you probably don't watch it, but you do watch it? No, I haven't watched it for a while, but here's what I do. If I'm depressed and I'm on a- Ted Danson goes home and watches. Oh, I would. I would if I could remember. Yeah. I would, but I do. It's funny because I worked, I did a movie with George Wentz. Ah, Georgie. that was a mammoth movie, which was kind of a nightmare because I'm not a mammoth guy. And everybody, it was directed by Montagna, who is a mammoth guy. Yeah. Joe Montagna, great guy. That's a tough, mammoth's tough. It's tough. And it was his script. It was based on his original play, his first play, Lake Boat. And it was full of the guys that normally, like Peter Falk. Yeah. That's why I took it with Joe. I was like, I'm, you gotta, I had a scene with Peter Falk. Yeah. That was like, oh my God. It was so crazy because George was in it as well. All these great actors. But for me to do like- Peter Falk. Peter Falk. Yeah. And he was, did you ever meet him and work with him? I walked for three blocks with him one night in Manhattan randomly. Go on. I was just thrilled. So I told Montagna, who's one of my dearest friends, I said, I'm taking it. And I love Mamet, but I'm taking it because of Peter Falk. Yeah. And he said, Mamet's going to pump up a scene between you two guys. if you did the movie. So I did the movie. And it's Peter Falk. It's Charles Durning. It's when I met Charles Durning, who I then, I know, right? And all these guys I'd seen on stage in Mammoth plays and all the other actors that are in his universe. And Peter Falk. And I'll never forget this. Did you ever do a Mammoth piece? No. Okay. So, and I love his stuff, but we were on a, it's a lake bar. it's about a boat on one of the Great Lakes. And we were shooting in a boat on the lake in Toronto. My first day, I was coming from another movie. They had already shot for two days. And my first scene is like, I'm working a wrench on this actual valve in an actual boat. They're like two stories up on metal stairs where Video Village is, right? And I have a monologue in response to this question that I think George Wendt asked me. and but then I gotta really turn the thing so I go I go whatever my line is bubble about and then the wrench sucks I went um uh god damn it hang on a second okay and then I went and it's an rest and I hear cop and then and I'm going like Jesus what the fuck is he walking all the way back then he comes up and he goes and Joe Mantegna the director and he goes what are you doing and I I go, what do you mean? He goes, you can't, I told you this. You cannot improvise. We are doing the dialogue as scripted, like in the play. And I went, oh, oh, no. I don't know if you noticed, but the valve wouldn't turn. My wrench slipped off. So he goes, I don't give a fuck if the wrench slipped off, okay? A hyphen is a pause. Two hyphens together is a double pause, okay? A comma is a breath. That's it. You can't put it. And I went, really? And he went, Not a fucking word. I promised him. Dink, dink, dink, dink, back up the thing. And I was like, and that night on the way home, Peter Falk in the van goes to me, kid, yeah, you got it. You got to do everything. You can't tell you what we're going to do in the morning before they pick us up, meet for coffee, and we're going to go. And I was like, okay. And every morning we made sure that every- That's so cool. I know. And so anyways, the thing was so amazing was, Montagna tells me, he goes, listen, when we do scenes with Peter, he fucking will not stop rehearsing. He loves to rehearse. And he also is, to this day, a little gun shy of the camera. He wants to kind of direct the scene himself. So, you know what I mean? And I was like, yeah. And he's like, I'm just telling you, you have to be on my side when we block. Like we run through it twice, that's it. And you back me up. Because I love to, I don't want to burn the scene out in rehearsal. Yeah. Yeah. And so sure enough, we go in for this one big scene with Peter and he's just, we block it. We run it once. Let's do it again, Joe. Let's do it again. Do it again. And Joe goes, okay, we got it. Dennis, you got it. Yeah, I don't want to over-rehearse it. And Peter goes, I want to do one more. Rehearsal. And anyways, but it was amazing to watch, to be in a scene with him. And one day, because we used to be, he smoked still. I smoked at that point. We went out and smoked in between scenes. And he said, kid, you got to come see my, you got to come to my mansion. And when you come to LA, when we're done. And I was like, I'd love to do that. And my wife's a huge Peter Falk fan as well. And a huge Columbo fan, everything. And so at the end of the movie, he said, you got to come and see me? I said, yeah, sure. I mean, I thought it was all bullshit, right? And the movie wrapped. And Montagna calls me up, you know, like a month later. And he goes, hey, Peter Falk is having whatever the birthday was. He wants you to, you know, to come. And I was like, what do you mean? To come to the birthday party? He's like, yeah. I was like, fuck, are you going? He's like, I'm going. He goes, it's like, it's not everybody gets invited. So me and Ann, my wife, flew out and went to his house. It was fucking crazy. I love that. It was crazy. I never forgot this line. We got to the front door of the house. He wanted us to come early so he'd give us a tour. We got to the front of the house, the front door, and he goes, and he was so nice to Ann. He's like, I want you guys to come in. I'm going to give you a tour of the mansion. and this house is and he goes it's a mansion which is such a working class guy thing like a mansion God he was a great actor unbelievable oh my God and funny funny great dramatic amazing artist what was the Apple Annie the thing Betty Davis was in Ann Margaret God he was so funny so funny yeah isn't that the best part of whatever success you have in life as an actress, who you get to meet. Listen, dude, I said this to you when I walked in today. When I was in acting school, I saw you in The Onion Field, which was an amazing fucking movie, but full of so many great performances. And I was like, you were so great. And then when they, I don't want to give anything away if the audience is going to watch it. There's a great movie called The Onion Field. It's Ted and... John Savage. John Savage. James Woods, Jimmy Woods, and... Franklin Seals. Franklin, yeah. And it's such a great, scary... Real, true... Real, true crime story. Yeah. You would like it, because you do like gritty. I mean, you do... I do like gritty. You like real gritty. Yeah. Gritty. I mean, all the stuff you've been doing around fire, firemen, is so fucking gritty. But that was written by a cop, Joe Wamba. Yeah, yeah. I read the book first. Yeah. That's the first time I saw you. And then I saw you shortly after that in Body Heat, which is another, I told you this. My wife and I watch that movie at least once a year. That movie is fucking great. But you're fucking great in that movie. Thanks. Your character could have just been sort of very straight and narrow. And you brought like a light touch to the very dark situation for your character. We had one of those fortuitous, couldn't count on it. we had two weeks rehearsal that turned into a month and a half because of a writer's strike right before we started. So I was dancing off car bumpers with this choreographer and learning how to do all these little dance moves for about six weeks instead of two weeks. And we just kept rehearsing. And so when he shot it, this was Larry Kasdan, he would shoot three quarters of a master, you know, half a close-up because he knew literally and you could take the script today that we auditioned with go watch the movie and conduct it like a score literally everything on the page is on the screen as read it's so well done and so sexy and scary and great performances if people haven't seen it it really was the first appearance of Bill Hurt Bill Hurt and also Mickey Rourke. Mickey. The original flavor Mickey Rourke with the original face. Yeah. He was fucking astounding in that movie. Everybody was. She was. Kathleen Turner was fucking so. Mickey was very powerful. Yes. He said to me, I was sitting there. He's still a great actor, man. Yeah. You know? Yeah. That fucking movie, The Wrestler, come on. Are you kidding me? Yeah. Jesus Christ. That performance in Body Heat, I still remember. Again, I was an acting student. I was like so enamored of what all you guys were doing. He popped. You popped. Huge. Yeah. It's a really, it's great. I was sitting around with him between setups or something and he was in a bunk top bunk thing for the scene or whatever And he was saying if I hadn been for acting I'd be in prison. Yeah. Or dead. Yeah. And I went, I kind of started to smile and laugh and then went, no, he's serious. Yeah, no, he's not fucking around. No, he's the real deal. I did a movie with Hurt. Kathleen. No, with William Hurt. Years later. in, I can't even remember the fucking title of it. It was a foreign movie. We shot it in the Netherlands, actually, in Amsterdam. Me, him, and... Oh, God. Jennifer Tilly, who's fucking fantastic. Do Not Disturb. Yeah, that was the English title, right? Yeah. I used to... I did a terrible thing to Bill. He was so... He's such a good actor. Really good. and we had this talk conversation early on. Which one? Body Heat. What I did was I would use him to make myself feel bad later in life by going, would Bill do this? Because Bill, when he heard I wanted to do Cheers, you know, and that James Gardner was kind of a hero of mine and things like this, he was very down on it because it wasn't film. And also because he was a fucking snob. Yeah. Bill Hart. Yeah. But you should never put somebody in the position, even if they don't know it, of being that voice in the back of your head judging you. Yes. But I did that to Bill until way later in life where I was able to laugh about it and tell him about it and everything. But yeah. James Garner is a great guy to pick. Yeah. To model yourself after because that guy did big screen drama, big screen comedy and his television work was endless and really well done the thing about Hurt was I really admired him as an actor but he was he's passed on so I don't want to speak too well but he could be a dick and I had good and bad experiences with him in scenes on that movie I don't play any bullshit I'm serious when I go to work Even when we're doing comedy, I'm serious. And I love it. And I'm not there to be a fucking jerk-off and treat people like I'm an exalted. He had that sense about himself. Like, I've won Oscars. Go fuck yourself. You know what I mean? I don't give a fuck. I play hockey. I'll kick your ass. No, it's not that. It's like, we're in the scene. You know what I mean? Like, let's go. We're here today on a boat. Let's go. What's the fucking scene? Yeah. Did you bring your Oscars with you? Great. We don't give a fuck. Right? You got to be your character. I got to be my character. Yeah, yeah. And Jennifer Tilly, too. She was great. She didn't take any shit from him. And in the end, because he's a great actor, he was great. But he had to learn that we're not, like, he's not the boss. Because he was, like, trying to take over the blocking. No, dude. What the, what are you doing? You know? Yeah. You don't block. You're not the director. You know what I mean? Thank God he's dead. We can talk like this. No, stop. He's a great actor. And we'll cut that. But what a great actor he was. Yes, he was. Truly. Hugely. Broadcast news. Just take that, right? Because that's a light comedy, really, with real feeling and heart. And he's great in that movie, right? Still is an amazing performance. Kiss of the Spider Woman. He went for that, didn't he? Yes. Yeah. Right? Yeah. I mean, a series of amazing performances from that guy. I picked a good actor to beat myself up in my head. You did. I did. But you made the right decision. Yes. You were following your instincts. Go backwards. How'd you meet your wife, Ann? I've told the story a million times, so people aren't bored by it, but it's, I went to Emerson College. I was a writer and an actor there. I started a theater group with a bunch of my friends so that we could get more stage time. Still as a student. Yeah, it's still there. It's the Emerson Comedy Workshop. We were contracted to do three shows. To get credit, we had to do two to three shows a year, which we did all original. You couldn't do existing plays or musicals. And we loved it. It was great. There were so many talented people in that group in its original form. Mario Cantone, so many great people. My girlfriend at the time, Lauren Dombrowski, who went on to be one of the producers of MADtv. I mean, just really talented people. And when we graduated, the guy who had been our sponsor, the uh english professor a writing teacher named uh jim randall called me up and said would you want to teach this class with it's like comedy writing where writers and actors are in the same playwrights which i think is brilliant brilliant like put them in the same room and everybody learns about each other's craft yeah right and uh and it was the first day and every we had started the class and uh and this girl walked in late and asked me if this was the class like the writing class. And the two women I had crushes on when I was growing up, Charlotte Rampling. Good crush. And Julie Christie. Great crush. All kinds of women, but that was my wheelhouse. This was a woman who literally was a combination of the two. My wife is beautiful. Gorgeous. And she was holding a puppy. And I'm like a dog guy. Right? and I was like and I'm not a religious guy right but I literally went my knees kind of buckled and I literally went are you are you doing this to me right now like are you sending this are you making this happen because I knew this is it really hit me just visually yeah and then I was like she asked if it was the class I said yeah she's going in I was like if this girl's funny like I could be fucking dead right and sure enough within five minutes she's really fucking funny in the class and I'm like fuck how old are you i was 25 she was she had just turned 20 i think and um so anyway she worked by the bull and finch which is the bar that cheers was based on a few blocks away she worked her job uh was uh she worked in a flower store so like an idiot you know i would stop into the flower store to just discuss things from the class, right? And I would, at first, I bought a couple of flowers when I went in. So later she tells me like, I just figured you had a girlfriend because every time you came in, you bought flowers. And this buddy of mine at the time was with me one time. And I went in, he waited outside and I talked to her for about 10 minutes and bought some flowers and came out. And he was like, what are you fucking doing? And I was like, what? He goes, you're fucking buying flowers while you're talking to this girl. She's going to think you have a girlfriend. And I was like, oh, fuck. shit so the next time I went I was like yeah I'm buying these flowers are from my mom you know I just go oh anyways we didn't date until after the class was over when she tells the story when did she go oh look at him she she had the same she didn't have the earth shattering moment like me but she thought oh this guy must be the teacher's assistant right and you know she thought it was cute whatever, but she was the same thing. Like if this guy's funny and I, I, I just am right. Yeah. I'm teaching a comedy class. So it was pretty apparent. And then we just, once that term was over, um, yeah. And it wasn't against the law at the time. It was frowned upon. Now it's against the law. 25 and 20. That's not like 45 and 20. 25 and 20 is totally. Exactly. Yeah. Exactly. What do you expect? What am I supposed to do? God, I don't believe in God, But God sent that, if there is a God, to me. And here we are, 40. Oh, I do believe that, by the way. What? Somebody sent that, made that happen. Listen, it's happened. Well, you've been married twice, right? Yes. Yeah, so. No, three times. Sorry, but who's counting? Three times. Yeah, once in college. You got married in college? Yeah, and if we had been emotionally mature, the conversation would have been, I'm scared to go to New York by myself. Are you? Yeah. Oh, good. let's share an apartment together. That would have been the emotional truth of our relationship. Why did you get married then? Why did you just move in together? I don't know. I'm one of those people, literally, oddly, I played Sam Malone, but if somebody kissed me, we were married. Somebody would have to be, the girl would have to be standing naked in front of me, and I'd be still going, me? You want me? It's ridiculous. My upbringing. I don't know. Whatever. So how long were you married for? Five years. I last a long time. Five years. And then... That's not a long time. What are you talking about? That's dropping a bucket. How long have you been married to Mary? 33. Yeah, that's... Speaking of great actors, by the way. No, but that was... Speaking of amazing actors. Yeah. Thank you. Say that again, because she is outrageous. She's fucking unbelievable. I just started watching because I couldn't find it. a BBC production of Tender is the Night that she was in. Unbelievable. No, it's crazy because she has been in period pieces where she's just, like, you can't, it's so exquisite a performance you cannot find any moment that's not a diamond, right? Then she does like Back to the Future with fucking, you know. Michael. Yeah. Who's like, you want to talk about timing, right? And she's, and fucking Chris Lloyd. Chris Lloyd. I mean, what a fucking... And then one of my... I mean, there's so many movies, but fucking Step Brothers. Oh. You know, that's just like as big as you can get. Big, broad comedy. Fucking amazing. That is one of the funniest. She really just blows you away in terms of... I'm with you on that. You know that. I do. So let's go back to your side of the table. Can we talk about somebody that we share? Yes. Jason Schwartzman. God. I did this Christmas movie that was just out this past Christmas with a great cast, with like Michelle Pfeiffer. Michelle, yeah. And he was my son-in-law. And I'd never met him before. I'd only seen his work. And what a fucking great human being. I met him creatively. I mean, I first saw him creatively in his first movie, Rushmore. Yeah, which he was a drummer. That's what he was. He was a rock and roll drummer. Yeah, before you mean. Yeah, his band is the band that did the theme song to the show The O.C., right? Yes, yeah. And then he goes into Rushmore. Yeah, having never acted. Amazing. And was just brilliant. He is the most untouched by fame, famous person I've ever worked. Because I've been watching him for decades, it feels like. I got to work with him and Zach Galvin actors for three years. I know, I know, I know. That was fucking delicious. Talk about fucking timing. Jonathan Abes. Yes. Who's the writer. Great. Yeah. How are we lucky, Dennis? No, I mean, especially, well, I think I'm really, I mean, I am unbelievably lucky that it's crazy that I went from where I was to like working with, you know, anybody. But at this point in my life, like I was coming in here today, like I take some people for granted that got famous like as i was coming up who were like conan i'm just like yeah i've been with done stuff with conan for so long that so many of my friends became talk show hosts you know john stewart and i or they knew the writers at these shows yeah um so like when i'm coming in today i was here you know yesterday with conan but i was coming today like i fucking i've never met you so which is so weird i know yeah uh so it's it's a big thing for me to like walk in like i'm fucking doing, like when I told Ann, she's like, oh my God, you're meeting Ted Danson? I'm like, yeah, I'm fucking doing this podcast. So that's a big, I'm still getting surprises and I'm 68 years old, you know? So it's fucking crazy what we've done. And I love our tribe, our tribe of, you know, in my case and yours, it's like looking for the giggle in life, looking for the funny, being creative i just love that lineage of people that we've all come from who did you look up if you were to go this is kind of the place that i am as an actor do you look back and go oh yeah this person was a hero or an influence well it wasn't um it was weird because i didn't know anybody my dad like i said played music and was in irish bands and stuff and they loved you know our house was, everybody was funny. All my aunts in Ireland and in America and my uncles, everybody was funny, especially the women. Sorry, can I interrupt? And to me, I don't mean to, I'm being presumptuous, but Irish recently coming from Ireland and starting a life here, That's tough. And my vision of that is it's hard, it's tough. And yet you are funny as all get out. That to me is my favorite kind of funny. Funny that's earned out of a life that's not necessarily easy. Did I just paint a picture that's wrong of where you came from? No, we didn't know that, right? Like we, as kids, we didn't know. As we got older, especially in Worcester, which is a college down in Boston, And you start to like, our prejudices were, we knew everybody. We knew all these immigrants, all these people that are, everybody's. So the preppy kids that went to the colleges nearby and the prep schools. Yeah. Those are the kids we hated because they hated us and they looked down on us. And we were like, we didn't, we thought we were rich. We didn't know. And then you start to realize, oh, you don't have any money, but we didn't care because we, there was no choice. Right. Yeah. And plus my parents loved comedy. Like they loved Dean Martin. They loved the Dick Van Dyke show. Dick Van Dyke. I mean, I still remember watching Dick Van Dyke. Like what? And Mary Tyler Moore. Are you fucking kidding me? Like the women. The Mary Tyler Moore show with Cloris Leachman and fucking Valerie Harper and all these funny women. I was like this. And then SNL, which is a big thing. Monty Python. Huge. Huge. Huge. And in the movies, like my dad went to see, we went to see like the Beatles movies because he liked the Beatles. But my dad saw the big like Westerns, Clint Eastwood and John Wayne. Those people didn't, I didn't know anybody like that. And then I saw Mean Streets. And I still remember the first time I saw Mean Streets. So that's like 74 when I saw that. 74, yeah. me and my friends were like, oh, we know guys like that. That's, I'd never seen those guys in the movies. And that was the first time we were like, what is that? The hell, what is going on? We didn't know you could be. That real. Yes, right? So that's when, and then, you know, within two years maybe I'm in acting school and I'm like, oh yeah. And like now you're watching, especially in the case of De Niro like you're watching performances and Al Pacino I guess where you go in like oh wow this is things are changing do you remember Beat the Drum Slowly? Bang the Drum Slowly Bang the Drum thank you yeah yeah I remember thinking going well this is this is awfully good they're both amazing but what the guy who plays the catcher why didn't they why did they just why did they get a baseball player why didn't they get a real actor he was so I know so realistic that character right I know Couldn't believe he was an actor. Amazing. And then also Richard Pryor was a big influence on me as a stand-up. Yeah. Python and George Carlin. And then I'm in college with all these funny women and these funny guys. And I'm like, oh, wow. This is like, because the funny thing was always like. So for me to be like, to go from there to like I'm doing movies with De Niro and, you know, I did a movie with Clint Eastwood. It's crazy. My mother, this is like the two most famous things from my mother was when I first got famous, I got a phone call from my agent and he said, you're not going to believe this, but Dean Martin, he was still alive, is a huge fan of yours because he's a comedy fan and he saw No Cure for Cancer and his 18-year-old nephew, grandson, grandson is a huge fan of yours because of the MTV spots. He wants you to come to his house and have dinner and sign a bunch of stuff for the grandson. Meanwhile, Dean Martin, he had that show in the 60s and my parents thought he was hilarious. I ended up going to Dean Martin's house. He was with his original wife at the time, Jeannie, who was back with her. And they were living in separate houses in Beverly Hills. And I went in and signed all this stuff for his grandson and then had dinner with him. And then I hung out with him a couple more times. But that night, it was like three in the morning when I got done, when I left his house. But the next morning, I called my mother. I go, Ma, last night I was at Dean Martin's house. And she was like, oh my God, what did you wear? What did you say? And the other guy was Clint Eastwood as well. that was like yeah you've made it now you know he direct what you were in yeah yeah it was called true crime and uh that changed my life because that was early enough in my acting career where i was still trying to learn about film acting and and had started to be okay in there right i had met de niro already because he he he had somebody from his company he had just formed his company, they saw No Cure for Cancer and he brought me in and wanted to develop, he wanted to work with young artists. So we were, he was producing a movie that I was going to be in, an Irish gangster film. And then, you know, we were right before we did Wag the Dog, which he produced as well. So that was a big thing for me, right? But in the middle of that, you know, I still was learning about how the filmmaking process, I wanted to learn. and so on his set I was like can I ask you he said I stay on the set and I work fast if you want ask me any questions as we're going so that's where I learned how to work fast keep the set comfortable for the actors because that's all he cared about and that was a master class in that he knew people were nervous the first day they came on his set to work with him, actors so he would, the tricks he did One kid was going to come in the next day in the Oakland Tribune newspaper. That's we were shooting on the actual floor. And he said to me, like the second week, he goes, I'm bringing a young actor to sit next to me when you come and yell at me in that scene tomorrow. But I can tell he's nervous. So I'm bringing him in today. And he thinks he's shooting that scene with us today. So he's going to get all made up. While we're shooting our scene in between and the lighting breaks, we're gonna go over and rehearse with him, but we're not gonna shoot it today. I'm trying to make him come. And I was like that so fucking smart The guy came in young actor very fucking nervous Like he made up And you could tell I mean we all know the jitters right God yes And he right next to Kurt Clint at a desk And I have to come over and yell at him. We did three rehearsals, right? He got more and more comfortable. And then in between, he's hanging out with us. And then Clint turns to him like four hours in and goes, ah, we're not going to make it to shoot that scene today. I'm so sorry that I had to bring you in. please forgive me. And the kid's like, no, no, it's fine. He's like, we're going to shoot it tomorrow. We'll shoot it first thing tomorrow. I'm sorry. He's like, no, it's fine. Kid came in the next day. Boom. I was like, what? He's so actor friendly. You know? Is it true he basically does one take? He, this is what he does. Or he would prefer to. And I do this as well. When I'm in charge, I do this. I shoot the rehearsal. So I learned that from him because we went into a room. unbeknownst or you just say i i i knew in advance because somebody else i i had spoken to maybe it was somebody who had worked with him i said listen he shoots the rehearsals i don't give a fuck i was going to learn and it was me him and james woods and woods had never done a film with him even though they knew each other and uh and we went in and he goes all right so listen you two were his bosses he goes you two are arguing i'm standing here and then i don't have really any lines to the end you guys can do whatever you want you can keep the dialogue you could these are the important information is this do whatever you want improv whatever you want i'm here waiting i'm gonna have two cameras up blah blah so let's just try it so we we and i knew it because i'm standing next to him and woods is behind the desk and i saw he just went like this to one of the cameraman so i saw that yeah so i know that we're rolling yeah and you you know jimmy woods right so he's a great actor but he he grabbed a baseball that was on his desk and while i was talking he was going like this but we know we're improvising so he it was funny because every time he was really improvising he was just holding the baseball so he threw it up one time and clint just caught it and he put the baseball down he said don't do that let's start again because he knew it. He was just like trying to steal focus. Yeah. And then, and so we did and Jim, I said, oh, okay. And we did it again. And then, and then at the very end, he's got the closing little piece. He does his little closing little piece and he goes, okay, cut. All right, guys, what'd you think? And I knew that we were rolling. He didn't, Jim didn't know. He goes, I don't know. Can we, can we do one more? And he goes, I think I got what I want. He goes, what you were shooting? He goes, yeah, I shoot the rehearsals. He's like, oh, I thought we were just blocking. He goes, we were, but I shot it. He goes, let me have one more. And he goes, okay. So we do one more. Right. And at the end of that, he goes, let me do one more. And he goes, uh, I don't think we need it. And he goes, oh, okay. He goes, let's go out in the hallway for the next thing. So he goes out in the hallway and this camera guy is going by woods and he goes, he likes to do just one. Right? So now we go out to smoke a cigarette because Wood smoked at the time. So did I. We get outside. He's very nervous. He's like, what do you think? Was he upset? Was he pissed? And I goes, well, I think he was pissed about the baseball thing. And he's like, no, no, no. I know I picked up on that. But when I asked for when I asked for the other take, I go, listen, somebody told me, you know, we're coming in. He only likes to do one, maybe two. And he's like, so we're never going to do like a third row. I said, I don't think he likes it. So the next scene, we went out there, same thing happened. Now we're in the hall, we're in the, in the office and same thing. He, he shot the rehearsal and he went, okay, cut. Um, I want to do closeups now. So you guys okay moving in? I was like, yeah. And James is like, well, wait, was that the master? And he goes, that, that's not the master. I got your coverage basically, but I want to get close. and he's like, okay. So, and when it was on him, he would do, we would shoot the rehearsal, his closeup, shoot the rehearsal and he would, he'd literally go, he'd do whatever he was doing and then when he was done, he'd go, it's enough of that shit. Moving on. Like every time. And I loved it, especially with comedy, but I, even drama. I like to, if I can have two cameras going so that we're both on camera for emotional scenes or funny scenes. Both of those. Yes. Both of them can dry up real quick. Yes, and people don't understand. Spielberg does that as often as he can. Two cameras go. Scorsese does it. You know, that fucking scene, the famous scene in Goodfellas. You think I'm funny, Boba. He had multiple cameras going. Yeah. That was happening in the room. Part of it was they were improvising from a story that Joe Pesci told them that they changed the script. But, you know, there's multiple cameras. You know, the scene in The Irishman, which is a great, whether you like the movie or not, I love it. when De Niro is talking, when De Niro's character is talking to Jimmy Hoffa, Al Pacino, and they're very close together. There's two cameras going, and it's a five-minute scene where he's trying to tell them, like, don't fuck with Joe Pesci's character. You know, they killed the president. They can kill you. Very amazing acting scene. Like, it's two cameras. Yeah. You know? It's the theater. It's like recreating the theater on a film set. You know? I love that shit. How much have you directed? Pardon my name. I directed a thing that my wife wrote for Showtime back in the late 90s. That was a great piece that I won a, you might remember these awards. I won the Cable Ace Award for, remember those awards? I won the Cabalache, as I like to call it, to make it sound fancier. I directed that and I directed- Were you in it as well? I was, yeah. And did you win as a director? As a director. That's cool. That must have been nice. It was good. It was fine. It was a great piece. My wife wrote it and Annabelle Siora played my wife in it. She was great. It was a great little film. And then... Are you always looking to do more? Directing? Not really. If I don't have to. On Rescue Me, I didn't have to direct because my writing partner and the co-creator, Peter Tolan, who did Larry Sanders with Gary Shanley, he directed the big episodes and a lot of them. and other friends of ours were directors that we used over and over again. So I didn't have to be behind the camera. I've directed another show I did for FX and I've directed here and there. I like directing, but I'm fine. It's all about creative comfort, like comfort on the set. So I try to work with friends of mine now or hire directors that I have worked with before. so that I don't have to direct, you know? It's all about making the actors comfortable to me every day on the set, you know? God, I've done so, I've done one, I did a show with Mike Schur for four years and I'm doing two or three years with Mike Schur in the similar-ish styles. And I'm thinking, well, I'm going to have to go off and do something else one of these days. Am I even capable? Do you ever doubt yourself as an actor? Oh, all the time. Yeah. I'm one of those guys, the first day on a new project, I can't sleep the night before. I'm nervous. It's like a big game or a live show. Like when I'm doing a live show, man, it's like I get the butterflies, which you should. Because it makes you, it's your body and your mind telling you like, yeah, this shit's important tomorrow. It could go south. It could go south. And I don't know, like especially with a new character, I'm like, fuck. How am I going to be with this character and the other actors? And a lot of great actors I know have that same thing. Like, I think it's a good thing to have. Yeah, yeah. Nervous on the first day at the new thing. Like, if I was going to work with you, even having met you now, if we were going to work together or I was going to be on your show, I'd be fucking nervous until I get that first blocking in. I find also the first time out, it's embarrassing. Yeah. It's embarrassing to go from, you know, hi, Dennis. We talked that time, remember? Now we're going to go pretend together. This is going to be embarrassing that we're going to both be pretending. Yeah. Until you do it a couple of times, then it's like, okay. Yes. To give yourself permission. Let me switch subjects with you just for a second and talk about fire, all the stuff you've done for firemen. over the years. And I know there's a history of family loss. I don't remember where that big fire was. Was it in Worcester or no? Yes. So when I, growing up, like I said, we were same school, same kids, same nun, same priest, 12 years, very few changes in the kids. You know, it's like we're all, we all, and all of, like I had 17 cousins. We all grew up basically in the same neighborhood. I think there was two cousins that weren't in that neighborhood and at that school. That's the way everybody was. So the nuns hated you even before you got in because they already hated your older brother. Right? So when we graduated, most of your choices were basically cop or a teamster, like a union job. Cop, firefighter, teamster, or, you know, gangster, criminal, whatever. But so like 35 guys between my class and my brother's class, like became firefighters. You know, my cousin, Jerry Lucy, was was one of those guys that became a firefighter. And and he was and man, that's all he wanted to do since, you know, when we were young, he would talk about that. So he loved it. He was a great firefighter, but he was also like he trained probies in the training programs and young firefighters coming up. And he was involved in the scuba and rescue when he wasn't working in rescue divisions of the fire. I mean, he just loved it. It was his life. There was a famous fire, December 3rd, 1999, at the Worcester Cold Storage Warehouse, which was this old abandoned factory downtown close to where we grew up. And there was a homeless couple. This is, you know, cold weather at night. There was a homeless couple that lived in there. and they thought they were trapped inside the building when it caught fire. So they went in to try to find the homeless people. The homeless people had started the fire to keep warm and then left when it got out of control. They didn't know that. One of my best friends from when we were growing up and from my class, Tommy Spencer, was the lieutenant. Once my cousin and his partner got lost and all the other firefighters came out of the building, Tommy said, I'm going to take some guys and go in and find them. So he had three other guys. They went in. then the whole building blew up and collapsed. I can't remember how many stories high it was. It was a big building. So anyways, there was a crazy amount of kids, like 15 kids between the six firefighters that died. It was a big fire. And it was big news at the time. Like their funerals, once they got the bodies out, their funerals were held together. this memorial service at the hockey arena downtown. And President Clinton came and spoke and Ted Kennedy, because he's a senator at that time. So it was a big deal. Anyways, my brother and I, my brother was like, we have to do something to help the families and the kids left behind. So I started this Larry Firefighters Foundation first to help the Worcester Fire Department recover and the families, right? Some friends of mine, one of my close friends at that time was in the FDNY. When Jerry had become a firefighter in Worcester when we were in our 20s, he had become a member of the FDNY. With firefighters, whoever their crew is, they become like part of your family. So the FDNY had come up to help dig out the bodies in Worcester. So, you know, I think it's like a year and a half later, it's two years later that 9-11 happens. And the Worcester guys are down digging for the FDNY guys. So my friend survived the World Trade Center attack. And it was his idea. He's like, we got to bring the foundation to New York. So we did an event in New York. And then it just, at that point, we just thought, let's see if we can start helping fire departments all over the place. Because this is true, was then, 25 years later, my foundation is still in business because there's the departments all over the country, volunteer departments and professional departments, like big city departments, are all constantly being underfunded because they never go on strike. So of course, it makes sense. Local government, you know, small town and big city government, when they're cutting their budgets every term, they go, if you cut the garbage, man, then the streets pile up with garbage and people complain. You can't, you have to pay the teachers when they go on strike because otherwise the kids are home and people complain. You cut the fire department, they still go to work. So that's why they're always going to get their budgets cut. So it's crazy. Which has an impact not just on salaries, but on equipment and all. Equipment and training and, you know, it's everything from actual new fire trucks for the FDNY, the biggest fire department in the world, to tools like halogens, to breathing apparatus. I mean, it's crazy. And every year, like we're still giving out grants every year. This year we're giving out, I might be slightly off in the numbers, we're giving out 45 grants in 37 different states. Big city departments and small town departments because the requests for grants go up every year because they keep getting their budgets cut. By the way, when they talk about first responders and everybody salutes them and says all the greats, you need to know that almost every single fire department, except in very wealthy small towns, every fire department is in dire straits in terms of equipment. Some of these departments, even big city departments are driving trucks that are 30 years old. It's crazy. A new fire truck costs about a million dollars, sometimes more. So what we do is every year I have this event with the FDNY at the ROC, their training facility, called We Can Be Heroes, which is you can come down and be a firefighter for a day or hang out with the firefighters as they go through their training. Or you can put on the bucket gear and hang out and do some of the training. And you donate the money to our cause. And within six months to a year, we have, we can actually show you pictures of the building or the vehicle or the equipment that we have purchased for these departments because they tell us what they want in their grants. We raise the money and we literally build the building or, you know, we buy the vehicle and have it made or, um, we get, we buy the tools and deliver them. And every time you give them a new piece of equipment or a vehicle, it goes to work that day, especially in the big cities. you know so i thought we were going to go out of business but now we're we're making we're raising more money and giving out more money than ever before because the the need is so great i've always loved your work as an actor i really admire that this is part of what you do with your life i didn't have any choice i i hear that i had to i hear that yeah but uh that's amazing i know i'm an amazing human being aren't i i mean i'm just there must not be a fire department a fire station that you can't walk into and have people full of gratitude it's it was back in the days when rescue me was on the air um you know the reason that we were able to do that show is because of my my buddy terry quinn who's who's retired now um i knew his crew and his guys so yeah it was sort of, I had a lot of experience. We could, and he was the technical advisor on the show. So he would, he would give us the stories, funny and dramatic, you know, and other firefighters. But we were still, you know, we were young. The older guys that had survived 9-11 did not like the head officers, did not like the show because they didn't want the secrets and all that stuff, the behavior getting out. So they did not like the show. So I had to be careful which firehouse I was going in because sometimes I, even out here in LA, I might stop in by a, to a firehouse where I knew a guy, but the, the, the head officer would be like, you know, I don't want him in here. I don't like your show. I don't think it's funny. Right. But now that's changed. Those guys are all retired. So now it's, I can walk into any firehouse cause now I'm old and those guys are, but it was funny cause they did not like, especially in New York, the FDI, the senior officers were like, I don't like that behavior. I was like, I know you don't like it because it's true, but you know, that's the show, you know? Um, they were always like, well, can't you do a show that's just about the heroes? And I was like, that's not what the show that we're doing. We're doing the, like what we know. Cause if you know anything about firefighters and especially the FDNY, but firefighters anywhere, part of an EMTs, part of why they, they can survive mentally in their job and emotionally is because they can laugh about it. Right. You need to, they need to be able to, to, to find the heart and the, and the, uh, humor and what they do. And they do it all the time. It's like they constantly bust each other's balls and they, you know, you make a mistake. You're never, you're never going to hear the end of it. Um, and I'm proud of that show, man. We really, we love doing that show. It was a great cast. It was a great Peter Toland. It's just a genius writer and a great director. We had such a good time. And the young firefighters loved it. So that's what our aim was, you know? That's really cool. I'm so happy to sit down and talk to you. I'm so happy to meet you. Yeah, I got you. I don't know why we haven't, but... We have to find a way to work together. I would love that. Yeah, yeah. Yeah. And I'll keep my eye on you and that rolling on rehearsal thing. Well, I mean, you never know, man. Your wife can write it My wife can write it Your wife can Can act and do the music for it Do the music for it And she loves a chord So why do I need you? Thank you, Dennis The second season of Going Dutch is airing now on Fox That's it for this week Special thanks to our friends at Team Coco As always, subscribe on your favorite podcast app and maybe give us a great rating and review on Apple Podcasts if you're in the mood. If you like watching your podcasts, all our full-length episodes are on YouTube. Visit youtube.com slash teamcoco. See you next time, where everybody knows your name. you've been listening to where everybody knows your name with ted danson and woody harrelson sometimes the show is produced by me nick leau our executive producers are adam sacks jeff ross and myself sarah fedorovich is our supervising producer engineering and mixing by joanna samuel with support from eduardo perez research by elissa grahl talent booking by paula davis and Our theme music is by Woody Harrelson, Anthony Genn, Mary Steenburgen, and John Osborne.