Q 13

PLAYBOY: Your younger brother is in the FBI. Does that make you more positive or more cynical about federal law enforcement? Did you see this coming with him as a kid?

Brian Dennehy: [Laughs] He's the most liberal person I have ever known. We have arguments. I'm always kidding him that it's the hardest thing in the world just to get him on the phone, just to get anybody to answer the phone at FBI headquarters.

It's always been real simple for us to take the obvious examples of police inefficiency or brutality and then beat up on an entire group of people. The Rodney King case is the most obvious. But being an Irish American from New York, I've known cops all my life. These are guys who get up every day and do this terrible, fucking dangerous, fucked-up job for no money. And, in a way, my brother's one of them. Are there assholes? Sure. But most of them are not assholes. Most of them are decent people placed in extremely difficult, dirty circumstances. And if they make a mistake, they're fucked. We can't wait to fuck them. That is, if they don't get killed first.

My brother always wanted to be in the FBI. And in the mid-Sixties, that was a real honorable thing. It just shows you how the world has changed.

Q 14

PLAYBOY: Among the Irish's national characteristics are a fondness for alcohol, the beauty of their women, explosive tempers and their ability to hold a grudge for a really, really long time. Care to comment or add any we missed?

Brian Dennehy: I have a little cottage in Ireland on the coast. I love the place. The Irish are an interesting phenomenon. Wonderful people, talented and glowing and funny. They have a wonderful, dark, absurd sense of humor. But like most people in that category, they're also very self-destructive. The real analogy for the Irish would be the Russians. Both have subjected themselves for the past couple thousand years to one orthodoxy or another. And both are just now emerging from the orthodoxy of the Church. The Irish, of course, are also masters of melancholy. It's more than sadness. It's the sense that if your heart hasn't been broken yet, sooner or later it will be. You're just waiting. I know some deeply black melancholy Irishmen who are truly terrifying. I've never been one of those, thank God.

Q 15

PLAYBOY: Should the world stop picking on Sinéad O'Connor?

Brian Dennehy: Whatever the world does, as far as the Irish are concerned, it's wrong. If the world makes you a big star, the Irish trash you to death. But if the world kicks you around, then you're one of them. Sinéad O'Connor is a real tough Dublin kid with a terrific voice, very much in touch with her emotions. She created a sensation. But while she was a star in America and Europe, they hated her in Dublin. I was there. They were trashing her on the talk shows and radio. Then she made this enormous gaffe on television--ripping up a picture of the Pope--and it blew up in her face. She fled back to Dublin probably not fully understanding what she'd done. And the Irish, being the Irish, took her in. They welcomed her back and smothered her with love and affection, and all was forgiven.

Q 16

PLAYBOY: You served one five-year tour in Vietnam and were injured twice, though not seriously. Ever kill anyone? Is there a Vietnam film that nails the experience best?

Brian Dennehy: It's funny how we're all fascinated by Vietnam right now. Fifteen years ago no one wanted to deal with it. I find this current fascination as worrisome as our former tendency to deny the problem existed. As for killing someone, anyone in combat would agree that it's pretty much accidental. It's not what you're thinking about. You spend a considerable amount of time just trying not to be in combat situation. You're trying to avoid coming face-to-face with anything. So when something bad happens, it's usually accidental. But the implication in war movies is that war has this rational beginning, middle and end. And of course none of it does. It's absolutely fucking chaos. Apocalypse Now is the movie. Even more interesting is that it was made so soon after the war was over. It was about the war and a parable about the war. It was and is the most sophisticated overview of the experience.

The only important thing to say about Vietnam now is that there is one thing we have not come to terms with: It was a class war. President Clinton found a way to get out of it. On the other hand, I think the American military is one of the great institutional success stories of the past 15 years. If you knew, as I knew, how demoralized and screwed up and devastated the American military was in 1975, that some 15 years later it would have managed to become an all-volunteer Army, to incorporate major social change, put women in many more positions than ever before and become this razor blade of an organization that could pull off Operation Desert Storm is a great thing.

Q 17

PLAYBOY: You've been in motion pictures, theater, and TV and cable productions. If you could write a memo to all those industries describing what's wrong and what's right, what would it say?

Brian Dennehy: [Laughs] It would be a long memo. What's fascinating is that at one time all the childish, moronic shit was on television and all the really interesting and provocative stuff--and people--was in films. So what's happened in 15 years? The movies now are Dennis the Menace, Batman, Gilligan's Island, The Flinstones. And I'm not talking $5 million movies. I'm talking $30 million, $40 million movies. Even Jurassic Park, as incredible an achievement as it is, by the greatest filmmaker in the history of the business, is still a popular diversion. But on TV there's real interesting stuff. Instead of making new versions of The A-Team, the networks and cable are going to people such as Oliver Stone, Barry Levinson, Walter Parkes and saying, "Here's a million dollars, do something, help us."

Q 18

PLAYBOY: Can you describe the excesses of the Santa Fe style?

Brian Dennehy: An unhealthy preoccupation with ceramic chili peppers would be one. And howling coyotes. That stuff is silly. Anybody who spends any time in Santa Fe knows it. But unfortunately, neckerchiefs on dogs have spread all over. The tragedy of a place like Santa Fe is that it is so wonderful and so special, all kinds of people will eventually move there and it will become something else. And I can't complain, because, you know, I moved there myself. It's just that I was there five years ago, so I consider myself something of an old-timer.

Q 19

PLAYBOY: You've acted with Gene Hackman, Bill Hurt and Harrison Ford--all known for being quiet men. What can you say about them that they wouldn't say for themselves?

Brian Dennehy: Gene is the great American actor. Also a very nice, very private man. I can't think of too many people I respect more than him. He's also my neighbor in Santa Fe. Bill Hurt was actually very helpful to me. We did Gorky Park together. I had always been kicking around, just trying to survive, and Bill was the first guy to say, "You have something special and you should treat it that way." I don't know if I've always listened to that advice, but he was the first person to say that to me. Harrison Ford is positively shy. With him it's not just modesty. He puts on those glasses, and people just don't recognize him. It's amazing. And he uses it.

Q 20

PLAYBOY: What's the best advice you've ever gotten from a bartender?

Brian Dennehy: It was always a variation of the same phrase: "Don't you think it's time to go home now, Mr. Dennehy?"