20 Questions: Denis Leary

Denis Leary first captivated us with his one-man show, "No Cure for Cancer," a high-decibel diatribe on tobacco, meat and masculinity. Leary minced neither words nor music. The show's leadoff song was titled "Asshole." And through it all, he puffed butts and swigged from longnecks. "The New York Times" pronounced his efforts "terribly, angrily funny. "After its stage run, "No Cure for Cancer" appeared as a Showtime special and was issued as a CD and as a book.

Massachusetts-born Leary, who remains "blood connected and proud" of his Irish roots, is also proud of his dues-paying years in comedy clubs and as an actor, college instructor, rocker, poet and pizza deliveryman. The course of "life experience," he claims, made him a better storyteller and kept him out of the dreaded sitcom world and away from its corrupting big bucks. Leary insists he has turned down several television offers.

Although leery about selling out, he did have a price, and when MTV opted for an in-your-face series of promos, he signed. (He later did spots for Nike as well.) His MTV tag line, "I think you hear me knocking, and I think I'm coming in," proved prophetic. Nowadays others are writing much of his material. After several small movie roles, he's currently starring with Judy Davis and Kevin Spacey in "The Ref." Leary plays a burglar on the lam who takes refuge in the home of a bickering married couple. Another one-man show and several other projects are, as he puts it, "in the drawer."

Warren Kalbacker met with Leary in--what else?--a smoke-filled room. "The offstage Denis Leary is soft-spoken and thoughtful," says Kalbacker. "And tolerant. He confides that he finds male bashing funny and adds that he has no problem at all with Asians or Italians dressing in green on St. Patrick's Day."

1.

[Q] Playboy: You proudly savor red meat, beers and shots, and Marlboros. Have you ever considered having your cholesterol checked?

[A] Leary: Never had it checked. How do they do that, anyway? Do they take your blood? The things that you're not supposed to eat taste fucking great. Suck down a piece of beef, that tastes great. So the arteries get clogged that much more and maybe you gain a couple of pounds. Big deal. The detriment is balanced by the pure fucking pleasure of the taste. It relaxes you and makes you feel great for two hours afterward.

2.

[Q] Playboy: Share with us your appreciation of tobacco.

[A] Leary: Cigarettes tend to be much more about addiction and keeping your hands busy and nervous habit. There are cigarettes during the day that taste great and there are some that just happen to be there. A cigar is a whole different event. A cigar is about taste. You make a point of enjoying them after a meal or if you're out having a drink. It's not about inhaling. It's about savoring. Almost anything Cuban is great if you can get your hands on one. Especially if it's fresh. We should make a little deal with Fidel for cigars. He needs it now. He's getting old. Let him be part owner of a baseball team. They love baseball down there. They have some great players.

3.

[Q] Playboy: Do you ever have lunch with vegetarians?

[A] Leary: Vegetarians always have that look at the table when you're eating something else. They're looking at your food the whole time, thinking, Fuck, I really want to eat that meat. It's OK if somebody says, "I don't like the taste of meat. Never have." Fine. It's the ones who have been there and then try to convince you so there will be more people like them and they won't always want to be eating what you're eating. There are vegetarians who don't eat anything with a face. Paul McCartney said that, didn't he? What the fuck is that about?

4.

[Q] Playboy: Could a sensitive man lurk within that cloud of smoke, beneath that loud, leather-clad exterior?

[A] Leary: You speak from your own experience. Growing up Irish Catholic and working class, there wasn't a lot of hugging and kissing and talking about things. Italian guys were always hugging and kissing one another. Irish were very loud, but very staid. The men I knew expressed feelings in other ways. You'd beat the shit out of a guy and then stand him up and buy him a drink as opposed to kissing him on the cheek. It takes a little bit longer and it takes a little more out of you.

5.

[Q] Playboy: Are you going to be the guy who finds something good to say about a Catholic priest this year?

[A] Leary: All the shit they're finding out about the priests is not only frightening but unbelievable. We used to have a headmaster, Father Reynolds, who came from the neighborhood. A tough, Irish, Golden Gloves boxer. We were scared shitless of him. When he told us to cut our hair and tuck our shirts in, we did it. But at the same time he was one of those guys who, if you were a troublemaker, would pull you aside and have a little talk with you. "Let me tell you something," he'd say. "I used to be a troublemaker." So you got the tough-guy thing, and by the time you were ready to graduate you felt this guy was all right. It was always about growing up a little bit and being careful. He'd say, "It's fun now but you've got to watch that stuff. You have to get a job."

6.

[Q] Playboy: Your passion for playing hockey is well known. Are those front teeth your own?

[A] Leary: Oh, yeah. These are all real. Hockey is, without a doubt, the most exciting sport to play. It's the speed. It's the best workout in the world. Every part of your body is working and it's a very improvisational game. You're not thinking about what you're doing. It's hard to describe to somebody who hasn't played it. It's like basketball but more extreme. In basketball contact is not as constant and intentional as it is in hockey. There's also the chance you're going to get belted up against the boards a couple of times. That's a great wake-up call for several enzymes in the body that get released only when you're seeing stars. I'm eager to play against Gretzky. Apparently he's the same size as me, but he never gets knocked down. (continued on page 152)Denis Leary(continued from page 115)

7.

[Q] Playboy: Are the citizens of Worcester, Massachusetts relieved and delighted that Denis Leary has taken his show on the road?

[A] Leary: Some of them are. My brother and sister and one of my best friends, who married my sister, still live in the old neighborhood. You still end up late at night down at Breen's having a drink, talking and playing pool. You're not allowed in unless you know one of the guys who usually hangs around there. And then you can hang around after the place closes. It's an anchor. It's funny being as Irish as I was brought up to be. My parents came over on the boat in the early Fifties. I grew up in the Irish and black section of Worcester. It gives you perspective. There's a lot of fucking characters that you grow up with, run into, owe money to. They come into play later in life.

8.

[Q] Playboy: You're an avid student of the human male. Have you reached any conclusions?

[A] Leary: Simple. If you cut open a guy like a tree, what you'd find from the feet up to about mid-chest is just semen. It's old semen mixed up with new semen and brand-new semen. The rest of a guy is usually beer and pieces of meat like hot dogs, roast beef and some chicken. And different statistics--Yaz hit 44 home runs in 1967 and stuff like that. That's pretty much it. If they tested men the way they should be tested, they'd find that even their blood is full of semen. There's a reason that healthy guys wake up in the morning with an erection. If God decides that every morning it should be tested to make sure it's working, it's obviously the most important part of the body. Every morning you start out behind in the game because all the blood that should be circulating up to your brain and giving you the power of thought is actually concentrated right there in your cock. That's why I'm a really bad morning person. I think that most guys are. We start the day fucking way behind.

9.

[Q] Playboy: To paraphrase your own line, we've heard you knocking. Is Denis Leary just about to come in?

[A] Leary: Getting the right meetings. Meeting the right people. I'm 36 and it's happening for me late in life. I never got to make money during the stand-up comedy boom because at that time comedians dressed in suits. There were a lot of guys who were mimicking Jerry Seinfeld's middle-of-the-road comedy. He could work in front of any audience because he was clean and talked about the small things in life that all ages understand. I started to hear from club owners, "Don't say fuck." What do you mean don't say fuck? Don't say fuck! I wanted to get up in front of an audience and rant. I didn't want to do The Tonight Show. I didn't want to do Letterman's show. There's an easy way to do it, there's a hard way to do it. I didn't want to get pigeonholed. If I'd done a show like Beverly Hills 90210 when I was 21, I'd be fucking dead. Because I would have hated the work and ended up in a Mercedes with a bag of crack and a gun, on top of a fucking drug detox thing. I know I'd be dead. Guaranteed. I turned down television shows when I was starving. But I don't regret that at all.

10.

[Q] Playboy: You have done promotions for MTV and commercials for athletic shoes, and we've spotted your photo in ads for a clothing chain. Are the pitchman and the storyteller comfortable with each other?

[A] Leary: I didn't have to hold the products up. I didn't have to say the names of the products. And they were all limited runs, so I felt I could get in and get out without doing too much damage. Getting trapped in advertising is even worse than getting trapped in a television show. You get sucked up, and before you know it, when people see you, they say, "Hey, you're the Nike guy." That was my nightmare when I was doing it. But I had to take the money anyway. I had to pay the rent.

11.

[Q] Playboy: Are you up to date on your student loan payments?

[A] Leary: Yeah. There was no question at this point that I had some money, so I paid them back. I lost them for a long time. And then, unfortunately, in the past year they called me. "Mr. Leary?" "Yes?" "This is Vinnie Burke from the collection agency." I remembered his name from years ago. No question they got me because I started to get known. If you're a dentist or a doctor, they know they're going to get it back. In a way, I was a better investment, because by the time I paid it back, the fucking interest was incredible compared with the original cost of the loan. They lost me for like ten years or something, but when they finally got me back, they had a nice fucking profit.

12.

[Q] Playboy: Pardon us for asking, but have certain personal habits taken a toll on your hockey prowess?

[A] Leary: I've started to notice in the past couple of years. But it's like Mickey Mantle. Would he have hit more home runs if he'd stopped drinking and carousing? You start to hit a wall in your early 30s. Playing against 17- and 18-year-old Junior A kids doesn't count because of the age gap. But you start to notice that some of the guys in their late 20s can shift into this higher gear. I have the puck and I'm at the blue line and I'm coming up on a guy. I'm skating as hard as I can and I'm thinking: I've got this guy beat. Then all of a sudden he just shifts into high gear and he's right on top of me. Wait a minute! But you can always clutch and grab in hockey. A little trip. A little elbow.

13.

[Q] Playboy: Some feminists accuse men of merely exchanging information instead of seriously discussing their feelings. Share your deepest thoughts with us.

[A] Leary: Guys like to watch other guys banging into one another and chasing balls and pucks, because when you're doing it you're usually with a bunch of other guys and you're staring at the action and you can pretend you're making eye contact. You talk to one another out of the corner of your mouth, but it's never what you actually want to talk about. It's "Yaz is having a great year, isn't he?" Which translates into: "I really like you, Bob. I really like spending time with you." "I really like you, too, Jim. I really like spending time with you. You're my best friend." It's all subtitles. "That second baseman sucks" reads "How's the wife and kids?"

14.

[Q] Playboy: You've professed great admiration for Cindy Crawford. Are you distressed by the current fashion trend away from supermodel glamour and toward waifs in Sixties-style bell-bottoms?

[A] Leary: I didn't like bell-bottoms the first time. It's hard to believe they're back. I can remember when you couldn't even buy straight-legged pants. You had to buy small bells and then have them fucking pegged. Fortunately, when punk happened, there were black straight-legged pants again. Thank God. Cindy Crawford. Put Cindy Crawford in almost anything, and you go, "You know what? I never thought of it this way before, but baseball uniforms are really sexy."

15.

[Q] Playboy: Do you follow the male instinct to find a place by trial and error, or do you cop out and ask directions?

[A] Leary: I'm not going to stop and ask for directions. Usually the only time I drive nowadays is in New York, and I know where I'm going. I had a four-wheel-drive for a couple of months. I never got to drive it. It got ripped off. I'm going to buy a cab. No meter. I won't pick anybody up. They're the best vehicles, because everybody gets the fuck out of your way.

16.

[Q] Playboy: Since you often ride in New York cabs, and many are driven by recent immigrants, do you find cabbies ask you for directions?

[A] Leary: Getting into a cab in New York is still the greatest experience in the world. Thrilling. Scary. Frightening. I got into a cab with this driver a couple of months ago. The name on the license was John O'Connor. No teeth. Smoking a pipe. Three miracles in one: American, Irish and smoking. A commercial came on the radio with Tracey Ullman doing an American accent. He says, "That fuckin' Tracey Ullman, she's a horror." What? I thought. According to the demographics this guy shouldn't even know who Tracey Ullman is. And he goes on, "I watched her TV show. Some of the stuff she does is pretty funny, but with American accents she's always one or two syllables off." And he goes, "I'll tell you something. I went to see her and Morgan Freeman in Taming of the Shrew in the park. That Morgan Freeman, I'll tell you, technically great actor, emotionally great actor. But I don't want to go see Shakespeare in the Park and see a fuckin' TV actress." Who is this guy John O'Connor? From Queens? Brooklyn maybe. I just had this great picture of him sitting in Central Park with a quart of Miller in a paper bag, smoking a butt, watching Shakespeare and enjoying Morgan Freeman every time he opens his mouth. You don't get these conversations anymore in cabs, and if you do, you have to really cherish them.

17.

[Q] Playboy: AS a keen observer of the Irish in America, do you have your own take on the Kennedys?

[A] Leary: I've said a lot of nasty shit and funny shit about Teddy Kennedy. But I've never made fun of him just to make fun of him. I always used to get pissed off when comics would just write jokes based on the fact that he was down so you might as well kick him. He's ours. I've always admired Teddy Kennedy, even in the Eighties when he was the butt of jokes. I could see-- because I was voting in that district--how his power as a senator directly affected people's lives. Whatever you say about him, he's still for the working class and for health needs. So I've always had respect for him. The Kennedys embody the great elements of the Irish personality and their politics--the idea of knocking down people you need to get out of the way as well as the ability to compromise on certain levels. But they also have liberal ideas about helping people. And that pure stubborn element. But they also got caught in that huge fucking tragic element of Irish history.

18.

[Q] Playboy: Tell us something surprising about the Irish.

[A] Leary: The real Irish colleen has jet-black hair. It goes back to sailors coming ashore from the Spanish armada. People think about the Irish colleen and the Irish guy as being red-haired. Irish guys have mostly pink or translucent skin. It's not even white. It can be white at certain times of the day. But when you first wake up you're see-through and you can actually be a pink guy. So, of course, if you get into a fight, you're going to bleed immediately. All the great Irish fighters were bleeders.

19.

[Q] Playboy: Do the Irish really have a taste for corned beef?

[A] Leary: Not really. But the idea is right: boiled food. Boil the shit out of it. Back in the days of the potato famine, when they had bad potatoes, the idea was that if you boiled them until you couldn't boil them any more, then all disease would be taken out. So you could eat a bad potato because you'd basically cured it in the pot. When you finally get Italians involved in your life or in your family--my brother married an Italian girl--you realize, 'Jesus Christ, food can taste good! You don't have to boil it. You can actually enjoy it!" That's one of those problems at Irish--Italian weddings. All the Irish guys end up over at the Italian tables going, "I'll have some more of that...." And as soon as the food shows up we're all asking, "Do you have any sisters or cousins?" The Italians have all the good food. And we have all the good jokes.

20.

[Q] Playboy: Can you put the word fuck--which you use with great frequency--in the context of popular discourse?

[A] Leary: It's a word of action. It's a word of description. It's a word of--you know, it's an object. It's, "That fuck." It's a person. It's everything. I think it's the only word that functions as an adjective, noun, adverb and expletive. It may be the best word in the English language. The most powerful. The most oblique, depending on the moments you use it. I don't think there's an equivalent of fuck in any language. There isn't a Gaelic equivalent, though there's a Gaelic word for asshole. I'm happy that people still find it offensive, because it retains its power. All the words--like suck, which the censors passed for network television--will eventually pass through. Except for fuck. It's a fucking great word.

comedy's angry young man defends red meat, condones tough talk and explains the real difference between irish and italians

"If you cut open a guy like a tree, what you'd find from the feet up to about mid-chest is just semen."