Denis Leary: Making Hay

A brief review of earlier projects he signed up for suggests Leary wasn't always quite so discriminating. Following his debut in the 1991 buppie dud Strictly Business (''Jesus, I forgot about that. I never actually saw the film"), he turned up in three dubious attempts to initiate big-screen double acts. He did a cameo, spreading some Hefner oiliness across National Lampoon's Loaded Weapon I, a brilliant but doomed attempt to start a franchise with the comedy team of Emilio Estevez and Samuel L. Jackson. Then, too, there was Who's the Man?, a brilliant but doomed attempt to turn hip-hop personalities Ed Lover and Doctor Dre into the next Abbott and Costello. You may have missed him as the bad guy in Gunmen-- a brilliant but doomed attempt to alert the world to the special brand of chemistry shared by Mario Van Peebles and Christopher Lambert--because the release was delayed almost a year.

While we're accustomed to poring over reports about the calamitous effect of sudden fame on callow youngsters, Leary was in his mid-'30s, married (to writer Ann Lembeck), with children, when success struck. Was he ever a victim of temptation? "Temptation's something you have to deal with even if you're not famous." he says. "It's harder when you're famous because it's a lot more in your face, and that makes it a little more difficult to walk away from sometimes. There have been moments of temptation, but nothing that would make me act on them. With me, it was always, 'So, you're interested in me? Was that because of the MTV thing or do you just think I'm a really interesting, funny guy?' Then again, I grew up in an age when you could have sex with anyone, anywhere, anytime and the worst thing that could happen was you'd have to get a shot up the ass. I came up in a different time. There's a lot of famous guys I know who aren't married who are always saying, 'I wish I could meet a girl who didn't know who I was.' I would hate to be in that position."

Perhaps in deference to his familial position, Leary played a dad in the kid-pic The Sandlot. Next, he took on a bad guy role in Judgment Night, a suburban-guy-stranded-in-urban-hellhole actioner that found few takers. "I had a good time with those guys," says Leary of co-stars Emilio Estevez, Stephen Dorff and Cuba Gooding Jr. "There was a lot of carrying on. I think Chicago was glad to see us head home. We were always going out in this big mass of guys, showing up in clubs and restaurants. We started to get those kind of looks, 'Oh, no. It's them!'"

Although Leary pronounces a distaste for translating a stand-up persona directly onto the big screen, that's essentially what he did when he showed up as the grubby rebel leader in the greatly underrated Stallone cryonic cop action-comedy Demolition Man. "I did it because I wanted to work with Stallone and try one of those big movies. I would have preferred to have had more freedom with it, but I was the guest star popping in, so that's the gig." All the same, the film was remarkable for Stallone's never-before-or-since displayed willingness to be the butt of jokes. ''Yeah, I got to give him credit for that. Even with me and Sandy [Bullock] and [Wesley] Snipes, he was really eager for us to steal the spotlight, more than willing to stand there and watch us shit on him in our characters. He was a really funny guy. Sly had his golf pro on the set, just standing around all day. He'd be like, 'You wanna hit some balls?' So we'd be there wearing these futuristic outfits with this golf pro going, 'You know, you're pulling your left elbow up,' and I'd be saying, 'I can't help it, I've got a suit of armor on.'"

About the side-splitting black comedy The Ref--with an inspired Leary playing a burglar driven to distraction by the constant bickering of hostage husband and wife Kevin Spacey and Judy Davis--he says, 'That was a dream come true." Leary's Who's the Man? director Ted Demme was on hand, and, Leary says, "writer Richard LaGravenese is an old friend of mine from acting school. Kevin Spacey's a friend, too. Judy Davis none of us knew, but she was the dream choice for that role." The only problem was that The Ref was viewed by the studio as a vehicle designed to prove that Leary could carry a film on his own. "I thought the film was an ensemble piece," he remarks dryly, understating the obvious. "It was like a play set in a house. I never really got the sense from the marketing guys that they understood that. They were thinking, 'College kids are gonna love this,' 'No,' I tried to tell them, 'they're going to love Pauly Shore. We're looking for college graduates.'"

Leary views The Refs speedy exit from theaters with some bitterness: "It's such a crapshoot. Nobody knows what's going to be a hit or how it's going to work or what weekend it's going to open and they're all married to the box office, which just kills me. If it doesn't have its due immediately, they chop its head off. And some things [need time] and have to grow."

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