Actor and Comedian Denis Leary

DATE August 8, 2003 ACCOUNT NUMBER N/A
TIME 12:00 Noon-1:00 PM AUDIENCE N/A
NETWORK NPR
PROGRAM Fresh Air

Interview: Denis Leary talks about his stand-up comedy
BARBARA BOGAEV, host:

This is FRESH AIR. I'm Barbara Bogaev, in for Terry Gross.

This Sunday on Comedy Central, Denis Leary will be roasted by friends and
colleagues. Once known for his acid-tongued, chain-smoking stand-up routine,
Leary is now better known for his acid-tongued, chain-smoking movie roles.
His films include "The Ref,” "Wag the Dog" and "The Thomas Crown Affair."
Leary's also starring in the new film "The Secret Lives of Dentists." It
follows the marriage of dentists David Hurst, played by Campbell Scott, and
Dana Hurst, played by Hope Davis. At the beginning of the film, Leary plays
one of David's worst patients, a belligerent trumpet player with bad teeth.
As David becomes more and more suspicious of his wife's affair, Leary's
character becomes an imagined representation of David's crudest impulses.
This imaginary character follows David around, trying to goad him into
confronting his wife. Here Leary makes his first appearance as David's alter
ego.

(Soundbite of "The Secret Lives of Dentists")

Mr. DENIS LEARY: David, let me explain something to you, OK? People hate
you. You're a dentist.

Mr. CAMPBELL SCOTT: (As David Hurst) Is that right?

Mr. LEARY: Yes. They can't wait to get out of your office, OK? They think
about you, they think pain, all right? They would like nothing more in the
world than to never have to see you again, all right? And your best work
never even sees the light of day.

Mr. SCOTT: (As Hurst) Boy, you're going to lose every tooth in your mouth, my
friend. You got one of the worst cases of gum disease I've ever seen. So you
can forget about your lousy little embouchure.

BOGAEV: Terry spoke with Denis Leary last year.

(Soundbite of interview)

TERRY GROSS, host:

Most of us knew you first as a stand-up comic through your show "No Cure for
Cancer" and from your MTV stand-up spots. Had you intended originally to act
or to do comedy?

Mr. LEARY: I went to school to become an actor and a writer, and then, you
know, once I graduated--I went to Emerson College up in Boston--once I
graduated, you know, it's pretty obvious--I think it's probably the same way
now--there's not a lot of work for actors and writers. And then Steven
Wright, the comedian, who went to school with me at Emerson, had started doing
stand-up, which was extraordinary because he was one of the most shy,
painfully shy human beings on the planet.

And I went and I saw those guys, and I thought, `Well, if they can do it, I
can do it,' you know? And, of course, I tried and failed desperately, and I
spent another three or four years trying to get acting work. And then finally
I just said, `I'm just going to try this thing, because I'll have some stage
time,' you know? So by the time I hit, it was hard to convince people, `No,
no, I can act. I've got a background in acting.' And that was the tough part
of the first part of my career.

And I can remember even after we did "The Ref," we got some great reviews, but
we also got a lot of, you know, knee-jerk critics who were astounded that, you
know, this MTV stand-up comedian had been paired with the great theatrical
actor Kevin Spacey and the Oscar-nominated Judy Davis, because they have to
pigeonhole you somehow, you know?

GROSS: Well, I want to talk about your persona in your stand-up act. In "No
Cure for Cancer" and in your MTV spots, I mean, you are this really, like,
loud, in-your-face, you know, often obnoxious personality. Let me play a
little clip from "No Cure for Cancer."

(Soundbite from "No Cure for Cancer")

Mr. LEARY: We live in a country where John Lennon takes six bullets in the
chest. Yoko Ono was standing right next to him, not one (censored) bullet.
Explain that to me!

(Soundbite of laughter)

Mr. LEARY: Explain it to me, God. Explain it to me, God. I wanted her to
take--oh, Jesus!

(Soundbite of applause; laughter)

Mr. LEARY: Now we've got 25 more years, (makes noise). Yeah, I'm real
(censored) happy now, God. I'm wearing a huge happy hat. Jesus Christ! I
mean, Stevie Ray Vaughan is dead, and we can't get Jon Bon Jovi in a
helicopter. Come on, folks.

(Soundbite of laughter)

Mr. LEARY: `Get on that helicopter, Jon. Shut the (censored) up and get on
that helicopter. There's a hairdresser in there. Yeah, go ahead in there.
Yeah. Yeah.'

(Soundbite of laughter)

Mr. LEARY: I don't get it. I just don't get it. I missed the (censored)
point someplace. The boat left and I wasn't on the boat. Explain it to me.
Heavy metal bands are on trial because kids commit suicide? What is that
about? Judas Priest on trial, `because my kid bought the record and he
listened to the lyrics and he got into Satan la, la, la, la, la, la.' Well,
that's great. That sets a legal precedent. Does that mean I can sue Dan
Fogelberg for making me into a pussy in the mid-'70s? Is that possible? Huh?
Huh?

(Soundbite of laughter; applause)

GROSS: Denis Leary, can you talk about the persona you created for the
stand-up act and how, if at all, that coincides with who you were at the time?

Mr. LEARY: Well, I do for stage, both with "No Cure for Cancer" and my last
one-man show, which was "Lock and Load," I create the material from bullet
points of ideas that I have written down in a notebook, and I have to get up
on stage and sort of improv and talk them out loud over and over again. And
then from there, after a couple of months of doing it, I start to create what
is, I guess, a fairly scripted performance in my head, even though it's never
put down on paper.

So with "No Cure for Cancer," because I knew I wanted to do a show that was
about death in all its forms, in order to be really comfortable on stage when
you're creating it, you have to feel like you're in your living room talking
to your friends on a roll, so to speak. And so I ramped it up a little bit in
"No Cure for Cancer" because the show was so full of violent, rapid-fire
imagery and discussions about, you know, pop culture and death in general.

I mean, "Lock and Load," there's still a lot of, you know, fast-paced talking,
because that's the way I talk when I get going, but it's just the way it comes
out of my head, you know? And that's just--you know, it's like Chris Rock,
when he talks about wife in his stand-up act, he says, you know, `There's my
comedy wife and then there's my real-life wife,' you know. So I think you
want to feel like you're in the living room talking to your friends, but at
the same time, you know, I happen to be a guy who talks very fast, and I get
very angry about certain issues. And, you know, sometimes people who know me
really well, if they're driving in the car with me and I get upset about
something, it could seem to them like I was the stand-up comedy guy or the "No
Cure for Cancer" guy, whatever you want to call it. But I'm obviously not
like that all the time.

GROSS: What about figuring out where the line is between, you know, something
that you could say on stage and something that's in such bad taste that you
wouldn't say it?

Mr. LEARY: I don't think there is a line, but I think there's a line as
regards certain events. You know, I never personally to this day found a way
to make, for instance--God--the death of Eric Clapton's son--that never was
funny to me. It still isn't funny to me. Whereas, you know, talking about, I
don't know why, but about John Lennon being assassinated in "No Cure for
Cancer," that was funny.

GROSS: Did Yoko ever write to you and say, `How could you have said that
about me?'

Mr. LEARY: No. I've never actually met Yoko. I've seen her. I have friends
who live in the Dakota, so I've seen her from a distance here and there.
I've run into many people over the years that I discussed in my stand-up
shows. So...

GROSS: And you're still alive, so it couldn't be too bad.

Mr. LEARY: Well, I mean, if you don't have a sense of humor about it, you
know, then I'm just going to make fun of you again. You know what I mean?
That's the way--I mean, if you're a public figure especially, obviously you're
up for grabs, you know?

GROSS: In "No Cure for Cancer," you tell a story about your father having a
carpentry accident when you were 10 and he kind of saws off his thumb. His
thumb's hanging by a thread.

Mr. LEARY: Yeah.

GROSS: He tapes it back onto his hand, drives himself to the hospital, where
it gets repaired. Did you think that that's how you were going to be, too?

Mr. LEARY: No, I thought my father was some kind of a superhero, which I
guess is what probably all boys think about their dads. But, you know, it was
also that generation of men from...

GROSS: What, stoic?

Mr. LEARY: Yeah. They looked at John Wayne as sort of like, you know, their
be-all and end-all. My father was, you know, an Irish immigrant who came to
this country--you know the old cliche--in 1950 or '51 with no money in his
pockets. And he came to New York and, you know, started to make his living.
So it's hard for me to look at my dad and not really admire everything that he
made out of his life, because, you know, basically the day that one of my
sisters was born, he was at work and they called and said my mother was at the
hospital going into labor, and he drove downtown to where the hospital was and
parked at a meter, and he literally had no money. He was waiting, you know,
paycheck to paycheck. And he got out of the car and he thought, `Well, I'm
going to have to, you know, make do with a ticket here because, you know, I
have no change to put into this meter.' And he looked down and he was
stepping on a $5 bill.

And I've always remembered that story as being, like, evident of my dad's
approach to life, which is that, you know, you have the luck of the Irish,
something good will happen. You just keep moving forward and moving forward
and moving forward, you know?

GROSS: Why did he come to the country when he did, to the United States?

Mr. LEARY: Because back then, you know, at that time he came from a huge
family and his mother died giving birth to the last child. And all they had
was the family farm and, you know, not everybody was going to be able to make
a living off of that farm. It was going to have to be given to the oldest
boy. So he had to come here to make money, because, you know, there was no
economic boom in those days in Ireland. And he came, and not only did he end
up making a living, but, you know, he got us fed and clothed, and we all had
college educations. So, you know...

GROSS: What kind of job did he have?

Mr. LEARY: He was a mechanic. He was a car nut.

GROSS: You went to Catholic school?

Mr. LEARY: Yeah.

GROSS: For all of your school years?

Mr. LEARY: Twelve years.

GROSS: Wow.

Mr. LEARY: Yep, same school, same nuns, same priests.

GROSS: Were you afraid of the nuns? Do you think you were any more or less
afraid of the nuns than you would have been of lay teachers?

Mr. LEARY: We were more afraid of the nuns than we were of the priests,
except there was one priest, the headmaster, Father Reynolds(ph), who when you
were young you were afraid of him because he was a real tough guy. He was an
ex-boxer who grew up in the neighborhood and became a priest and then the
headmaster of the school. But the nuns were to this day, you know--I had one
great nun, Sister Rosemary Sullivan(ph), who passed away last year, and she
was the one who first put me into a play in high school. And she was the nun
who told me about Emerson College, which, you know, saved my life, because
that's where I basically learned everything I know about acting and writing.
So...

GROSS: Did you have to get disciplined a lot, and what was the discipline?

Mr. LEARY: Yeah, I was a terrible student. Terrible.

GROSS: Uh-huh. But what kind of punishments were you subjected to?

Mr. LEARY: Oh, you know, we had--the nuns used to love to hit you on the
knuckles with a ruler. And it got to the point, I mean, they would just whack
you in the head, you know? This is back in the days when they were allowed to
hit you without being taken to court, you know. But I look back on it and I'm
really glad, because that kind of repression where, you know, you're always in
a situation where you're not supposed to be laughing just leads to more
laughter. I mean, some of my fondest memories are my friends and my cousins
and my brothers and sisters, we were just, you know, laughing because you're
not supposed to, whether it was in church or school or--you know?

GROSS: Were you at all religious during that period when you were in Catholic
school?

Mr. LEARY: Well, we were forced to be. You know, we had to go to Mass every
Sunday, and then eventually you got $200 taken off your tuition if you were in
the altar boys or the choir. So that was, you know, a lot of money for my
parents. So I was kicked out of the altar boys, and then kicked out of the
choir boys. I'm kind of proud of that.

GROSS: What were you kicked out for?

Mr. LEARY: Altar boys, for drinking the holy wine...

GROSS: Yeah?

Mr. LEARY: ...before the Mass started just to see what it tasted like. And I
was told that was a mortal sin and I was going to hell, so at that point, I
was like, `Well, I'm already going. I might as well just take as many people
with me as I can.' And then I went into the choir boys to try to get that
money taken off the tuition again, and I think I got kicked out of the choir
boys because--and I'm not trying to point the finger--somebody was smoking and
they passed me the cigarette. I had never actually took a hit off the
cigarette, but it was right at the moment when the choir director turned
around and caught us. So...

GROSS: Well, I'll point out you've taken hits off of plenty cigarettes since
then.

Mr. LEARY: Oh, yeah.

BOGAEV: Comic Denis Leary talking with Terry Gross. He's in the new film
"The Secret Lives of Dentists." And this Sunday he'll be roasted on Comedy
Central.

More after a break. This is FRESH AIR.

(Announcements)

BOGAEV: If you're just joining us, we're featuring an interview Terry
recorded with comic Denis Leary. When we left off, Leary was talking about
his time in Catholic school.

(Soundbite of interview)

Mr. LEARY: But I came from a neighborhood school. You know, I walked to
school every day. It was about a block and a half, two blocks from my
apartment. All the kids I grew up with, we all went to school together for 12
years. We felt like we were a big gang.

GROSS: Right.

Mr. LEARY: I mean, we felt like, you know, we knew how to handle, like, the
nuns and the priests in terms of what we had to do and what we didn't have to
do to get by. But I loved it because it was, like, I grew up in a
neighborhood where you could, you know, basically walk anywhere. And we loved
playing sports, and we loved, you know, everything about our school. And we
kind of knew by the time we were, you know, 14 or 15 that we weren't buying
into what they were teaching us anymore in terms of religion. We were just
getting through until we went to college, you know?

GROSS: Before you developed your really kind of like sarcastic, loud,
on-stage stand-up persona, did you ever, like, sing in school versions of
Broadway shows?

Mr. LEARY: Well, yeah. That's what saved me because I did. That nun, Sister
Rosemary, put me in when I was--I think I was 13. She forced me to be the kid
in "Mame," the musical. And I ended up thinking it was great because you got
the afternoons off from school to rehearse, which is the reason I really liked
it. And then I guess about--probably three years later she put me in another
musical with a friend of mine who's a fireman now. And then by the time I
started to realize I wasn't going to be a hockey player because, number one, I
wasn't good enough and, number two, my grades were horrendous, I started to
think, `Well, maybe I'll do this acting thing,' because it was a great way to
meet girls, which I discovered in high school.

And I hated musicals. To this day I'm not a guy that goes to see musicals. I
thought it was always kind of strange that people just started singing out of
the blue. You know? I could not get the non-reality of that out of my head.
To me, a musical was like when I saw "Help!" or "A Hard Day's Night" where The
Beatles would be, like, characters. And then when it was time to play or
sing, they'd walk over and pick up the instruments and start singing. You
know what I mean? But it was a good thing because it put the bug in my ear
about acting.

GROSS: In No Cure For Cancer, you talk about drugs and you say, `I did my
share. I did my share and your share.' When was the period in your life when
you were doing that?

Mr. LEARY: Well, you know, I was a teen-ager from 197--well, the entire '70s
but--I mean, I went to college from '75 to '79. I mean, that alone right
there, you know, growing up in that time period especially when punk and New
Wave hit. There was a--it was a completely different approach to life, I
guess. But it's also part of growing up and it's part of the rock 'n' roll
life as well, you know.

GROSS: Well, what drugs most suited your personality?

Mr. LEARY: Oh, God. None of them, quite frankly. The only thing I found
that suits my personality is beer, which I like. But, you know, one thing I
never did was--just from watching it, from watching--from a fashion point of
view and also from a practical point of view, I just never saw any reason to
take acid or any kind of drug that would alter your mind like that. I didn't
like The Grateful Dead, I didn't like the whole hippie thing, which I just
missed in terms of fashion and music. And I just didn't--it didn't appeal to
me. So by the time, you know, when I--the kind of music I liked kicked in,
which was the Ramones and The Clash and those fashions I liked as well, I was
kind of like, `Thank God for that.'

GROSS: It sounds like you're afraid if you took acid you'd suddenly be
wearing like pants with bell-bottoms or something.

Mr. LEARY: Yes, I was. Yeah, exactly. You know, wearing a beard and
listening to, you know--I'll never forget the guy who was the keyboard player
in Yes, Rick Wakeman, put out a live double album of him playing the organ.
And my brother used to--and his friends used to sit around and listen to it.
And I was like, `This is a live double album of the organ player from Yes. I
mean, this is really--we've reached the breaking point here, OK?' So
that's--I was glad I missed that boat.

GROSS: So this is what you didn't want drugs to do, to turn you into a fan of
that album.

Mr. LEARY: Yeah. I remember that we--in my day, what we needed drugs for was
to fuel us, to keep us up so that we could dance. And you know, we would go
to clubs to see bands and dance. So the whole, you know, sort of double live
album approach to life didn't suit--this is in the era when, you know, Rick
Wakeman was doing the double live album, but you know, Elvis Costello and The
Clash were writing three-minute songs. I mean, much the same as kids growing
up now. I mean, teen-agers now would be, I guess, taking a lot of ecstasy is
probably their--you know, and the music they listen to reflects that as well.
So, you know.

GROSS: When you broke into films after doing stand-up, you, you know, pretty
early on started making films with really great actors.

Mr. LEARY: Yeah.

GROSS: De Niro, Kevin Spacey, Judy Davis. Recently you were directed by Joe
Mantegna, who I think is a terrific actor.

Mr. LEARY: Yes.

GROSS: Are there things that you've learned from, you know, on the job
working with great actors that go beyond what you learned when you were in
school when you were really getting your ...(unintelligible)?

Mr. LEARY: Oh, yeah. Definitely. And one of the things--you know, I met De
Niro fairly early on. He had come to see No Cure For Cancer and he was trying
to develop some, you know, younger talent through his company, Tribeca. And,
yeah, he was obviously a hero of mine. I mean, one of the reasons I wanted to
act was when I saw "Mean Streets" the first time, it was the first time I
thought at the movies, `Wow, I know guys like that. I can do this.' You
know?

GROSS: So what did you ask De Niro?

Mr. LEARY: Oh, I've asked him so many questions over the years it's not
even--I have to really think about that.

GROSS: Right.

Mr. LEARY: But I mean, he's the kind of guy, he's got a big production
company and he's been at it for years. So he's a good source, as is his
partner, Jane Rosenthal. He's a good source of any kind of question from
financing to, you know, budget to location. I mean, it's all practical stuff,
you know.

BOGAEV: Denis Leary spoke with Terry last year. This Sunday, Comedy Central
airs their roast of Denis Leary. He's also in the new film "The Secret Lives
of Dentists." We'll hear a review of the film in the second half of the show.

Trombonist Grover Mitchell died earlier this week at the age of 73. He began
his career in the '50s with Lionel Hampton and Duke Ellington. He joined
Count Basie's band in 1962 and eventually became Basie's lead trombonist and
trusted lieutenant. In 1995, he became the Count Basie Orchestra bandleader.
Here's the Basie band under Grover Mitchell's direction and featuring Mitchell
on trombone. I'm Barbara Bogaev, and this is FRESH AIR.

(Soundbite of performance by Count Basie Orchestra)

(Announcements)

BOGAEV: There's a new special edition DVD of "Casablanca." Coming up, the
making and the writing of the film. We feature interviews with Alijean
Harmetz, who wrote a book about the production, and with Leslie Epstein, whose
father and uncle wrote the screenplay. And David Edelstein reviews "The
Secret Lives of Dentists."

(Soundbite of music)

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Filler: By policy of WHYY, this information is restricted and has
been omitted from this transcript

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

Review: Movie "The Secret Lives of Dentists" worth seeing
BARBARA BOGAEV, host:

Director Alan Rudolph is best known for stylish, free-floating ensemble mood
pieces in the manner of his mentor, Robert Altman. But he hasn't had much
critical or commercial success in the last decade, with movies like "Trixie,"
"Breakfast of Champions" and "Afterglow." Now he's teamed up with playwright
Craig Lucas for "The Secret Lives of Dentists," based on the story by Jane
Smiley. Film critic David Edelstein says it's a good match.

DAVID EDELSTEIN:

Jane Smiley's novella, "The Age of Grief," is a melancholy meditation on loss
in which almost nothing happens, at least nothing that the narrator can see.
His name is David Hurst, or Dr. Dave, and he's a dentist who suspects that
his dentist wife, Dana, is having a torrid affair. But he's so bottled up
that he doesn't want to know. Not only does he not confront her, he goes to
desperate lengths to keep her from blurting out the truth because
acknowledging it would mean he'd have to do something.

"The Age of Grief" is a haunting interior monologue, but if someone had told
me it would be gangbusters on screen under the title "The Secret Lives of
Dentists," I'd have thought they'd had too much nitrous oxide. And I'd have
been wrong.

The movie, which stars Campbell Scott and Hope Davis as the traumatized
dentists, is terrific. It's buoyant, it's funny and it jazzes up the Smiley
novella without vulgarizing it. It's like "Scenes From a Marriage," if Ingmar
Bergman had a sense of humor; or a Woody Allen movie, if Allen could write
with so much ruthless emotional precision. The screenwriter is the
playwright, Craig Lucas, and the director is Alan Rudolph. They have great
chemistry. Rudulph makes Lucas seem less off-Broadway slick. And Lucas is a
check on Rudolph's delusions of poetic grandeur.

The setting is a three-ring circus of the psyche. Over in ring number one is
the couple's joint dental practice with its vacuous chatter during drilling,
and its sinks of swirling blood. In the second ring sits their rambling
Colonial with the three young daughters who flit in and out of the frame, each
girl making different and distinctive demands. The third ring is Dave's
fantasy life, which features an alter ego called Slater, played by Denis
Leary.

Slater begins as a real patient, then turns into the macho devil perched on
Dave's shoulder--his inner lout. Those sequences, which are less central in
Smiley's novella, are a little broad. And Leary's wild man shtick isn't as
fresh as everything else in the movie. Yet, Slater might be the key to the
film's success. His raunchy Vaudeville act with Dave takes a lot of
pressure off the scenes between Dave and Dana, which can now be as oblique
as Smiley conceived them.

My favorite of the couple's exchanges comes early after Dana has performed
with her local choir in a Verdi opera. That's where she might have met her
lover. And the day after the show closes, she sits in mourning at the
breakfast table talking of music while Dave tries to warn her about his
patient, Slater.

(Soundbite of "The Secret Lives of Dentists")

Ms. HOPE DAVIS: (As Dana) I can't believe it's over, you know? So
beautiful. I could sing it every night forever.

Mr. CAMPBELL SCOTT: (As David) You'll sing other things.

Ms. DAVIS: I don't want to sing other things.

Mr. SCOTT: OK. Well--I saw that Slater guy last night. His filling fell
out.

Ms. DAVIS: Mine?

Mr. SCOTT: No. No. He's the one I told you about. Impacted upper and
lower more than halfway up to his eyeball. Won't have them out until they
hurt. Needs to see a periodontist. Anyway, if you get him, don't charge him.
OK?

Ms. DAVIS: It's a waltz. That's what's so tragic.

Mr. SCOTT: Uh-huh.

Ms. DAVIS: I mean, you could dance to it, but--but you can't.

EDELSTEIN: It's devastating, that combination of Verdi and Dana's realization
that her life is a waltz you can't dance to. The distance between Dave and
Dana seems so vast in that moment, you wonder how they could ever have
inhabited the same emotional universe. Hope Davis is gorgeous in that scene,
and I love the way Campbell Scott's Dr. Dave watches her, with maximum
alertness and minimum comprehension. Scott has the morbid edge he honed in
last year's "Roger Dodger," with some of the self-effacing sweetness of Kyle
MacLachlan. As an actor, he seems ready to break into the heavyweight class.

But not everything in "The Secret Lives of Dentists" clicks. Dr. Dave's
fever dreams of dental assistant Laura, played by the adorable Robin Tunney
as a vampy chanteuse, are just odd. And the long sequence in which the family
is stricken with flu doesn't achieve the lucid delirium that the filmmakers
must have intended. But even when the movie misses its marks, you can see
what it's going for and be delighted by its loopy ambition. The music by Gary
DeMichele gooses you past the rough spots. He uses some sort of electronic
instrument to approximate the sound of a dentist drill, and at times it seems
to be keening while the filmmakers drill for fresh nerves.

BOGAEV: David Edelstein is film critic for the online magazine Slate.

(Credits)

BOGAEV: For Terry Gross, I'm Barbara Bogaev.
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