OTHER TECH

It must be a different animal now, dealing with FX for Rescue Me. You can go pretty much as far as you want. We definitely have more latitude. But we still try and push the boundaries that they don't want to cross.

I don't think the viewers mind, because it feels more real, not like you're being forced to do something you don't want. Stuff like that takes a viewer out of the situation. You think, "You know, a real person wouldn't say that here." Sometimes your first reaction is a little more visceral, and perhaps you even use four-letter words. It's more honest. On a show, when you hear a euphemism that's so tame, it's almost as if the scene is interrupted while the censor steps in, plays a small part, then steps back out.

CROSSOVER DREAMS You have at least three Job cast crossovers on Rescue Me in Leary, Lenny Clarke, and Diane Farr. Will anybody else be getting in the mix at some point? Well, we love everybody from The Job, and we want to try and get them all. We always want to use Bill [Nunn, who played Leary's partner, Pip], but we gotta find the right role for him.

Would you actually be able to bring the characters from The Job right to Rescue Me? I think we'd be able to do it, but there might be some legal issues with ABC. But because we created the characters, we might have some recourse.

I always thought that Bill should appear as Pip and show up and say to Tommy [Gavin, Leary's character on Rescue Me], "You remind me of this partner I have who's f---ing crazy. You gotta meet this guy."

Maybe he works with Tommy's brother [a cop played by Dean Winters] in some capacity... Yeah, exactly! That's it.

On the DVD, probably one of my favorite moments is during "The Bathroom" [Season 1, Episode 3], in which Denis does "the walk." [Tolan laughs] I think we've all probably had to do that on one occasion or another... [continues to laugh] The great thing about that is he's not afraid to look like a complete idiot, you know?

Good thing there wasn't Smell-o-Vision for that episode. Sometimes being "real" has to take a back seat, so to speak. [both laugh]

MEMORY BANKING TV on DVD in general: Is it a good thing? Do you watch a lot of it yourself? I think it's fine. Are you like me - you come up with a really, really good idea but keep it to yourself? Years and years ago I thought, "Why can't there be a TV network that plays old shows? Some of those old shows were great." So that was one brilliant idea I had...

If you're a fan of a show, by all means get the DVD. I bought all five seasons of The Dick Van Dyke Show as they came out. It's my favorite show of all time. And my son is a big Simpsons fan, so I'll buy him those as they come out.

It's a great thing with shows like Dick Van Dyke where they really take care with the transfers and the extras. Some of those extras are good. And yet, as a show gets older and the people involved get older, they don't remember much about the process. There was some review of the Job DVD that said, "Well, for the most part, the show is good, but these two mokes [Tolan and Leary] just laugh their way through the commentary." Which we did, because, frankly, we hadn't seen the show for so long, and we just enjoyed it. Even though it's only been about three years, you don't remember everything, though certain things will come back to you. In a way, though, you guys laughing through the commentaries does work because there's no laugh track for the show. And as a viewer, even after watching an episode five or six times, you can't help but laugh anyway because the lines are so good. The viewer laughs along with your laughing, so it all makes sense. It's funny: Now that we're doing Rescue Me, I look at The Job and think, "Geez, how did we cram all that stuff into 22 minutes?" It was really jammed in there, wall-to-wall funny. I loved that show. I really did. In some ways, I think I did better work there than on The Larry Sanders Show.

And certainly, shooting it handheld and on the fly gave it a really good... It was much more immediate.

Had you always thought about shooting that way? That show was very tough to produce. We only had so many days, and we shot multiple shows together, so it just made more sense to shoot it that way.

FAME? FUGGEDABOUDIT Now that you pretty much know you have to produce a DVD while you're working on Rescue Me, does that factor into your work creatively? No. The demands of a production - you're really just trying to get through the damn thing. You're just trying to get those shows out on time.

I had a conversation yesterday with Marc Cherry, who created Desperate Housewives. We were congratulating each other on our Emmy nominations. And I said, "You know, you just gotta enjoy it. Because you can't think about it too much - but the show's going to live forever."

I don't remember who told me this, but somebody said to me, "You know, you're a celebrity in Kansas. There are a bunch of young boys there who just think you're the greatest writer of all time." And I'm like, "Really?" You just don't think about that stuff. I know for a fact the guys who were writing, say, Get Smart weren't thinking that, 40 years down the line, people would still be watching and enjoying those shows. But they are.