Post by Skaggs on Mar 1, 2005 13:17:45 GMT -5
On ABC in HD on Tuesday, March 1, 2005
Saying Goodbye to a True 'NYPD Blue' Detective
By DAVID CARR The New York Times March 1, 2005
LOS ANGELES - A knock on an actor's trailer outside Stage 9 on the lot of 20th Century Fox Studios brought a hearty "Yo" from inside before the door swung open.
The head that poked out was large, short on hair and adorned with a beefy smile not often seen on the television screen. The smile belonged to Dennis Franz, who has spent the last 12 years playing one of America's favorite cops, Detective Andy Sipowicz on ABC's "NYPD Blue." The show is calling it quits, with its final broadcast on March 1. Of weekly prime-time scripted series still on the air, only "Law & Order" and "The Simpsons" have been on longer.
"NYPD Blue" arrived on television in 1993, and was a Nielsen top 20 show for seven years running. Today, still in the top 50, it has become the televised equivalent of an aging beat cop, eyes wrinkled against the sun. This makes it difficult to remember just how fresh its face once was. Before there were the multiple offspring of "Law & Order," before there was "CSI" (and its multiple offspring), "NYPD Blue" delivered a different kind of cop narrative - at once gritty and raw - that depicted the business and culture of crime and police work in a way that had not been seen before.
And of course it was daring. The show had one of network television's first running gay characters. It featured an enormous amount of swearing. Some characters, most notably Sipowicz, were shown baring their naked backsides, seemingly just for the thrill of tweaking the censors. Add a breakout star in Jimmy Smits as Detective Bobby Simone and an unlikely one in the gruff and often angry Mr. Franz as Sipowicz, and a show about homicide found itself getting away with murder, racking up 20 Emmys in a business where series most often come and go without a trace.
Although he plays a character who carries his ghosts into every scene, Mr. Franz, 60, was in a fine mood, surrounded in his trailer by cartons of pictures, farewell cards to be signed and old scripts, long since shot.
"Yeah, there has to be a certain amount of sadness," he said, working his way through a salad in his character's trademark short-sleeve white dress shirt. "This is a long period of time to spend with a television show."
The end will come in nuanced ways at the 15th Precinct. No aliens will land, no buildings will be blown up and no characters will disappear in a bloody fire-fight. Things will change, Mr. Franz said, but the squad, more or less, will continue to function.
That pleases Mr. Franz (pronounced fronz). "There is a note of change," he said, declining to elaborate for fear of spoiling the finale. "But for the most part, it is just another day in the life of the squad, and that feels right."
For more than nine months in each of the last dozen years, Mr. Franz has been on this set for 12 to 15 hours a day. With the herd of NYPD police cars twinkling in the bright California sunlight outside the place, it has an air of unreality, but to the long-running crew of the show, it is very much home. Mr. Franz clearly feels that way, and says he is grateful for what has happened here.
"I got four Emmys and a lot of money, among many, many other things," he said. "I have a feeling of gratitude that isn't all that easy to put into words."
Unlike his character, whose words seem to crawl up slowly from some hidden place - unless he is interrogating one of an endless string of hapless perps, that is - Mr. Franz is an easy, silky communicator. A native of a Chicago suburb who worked alongside Joe Mantegna at the Organic Theater Company in that city he picked up some local movie work in the 1970's, and slowly made his way to Hollywood. A year in the early 1980's as the rogue cop Detective Sal Benedetto on "Hill Street Blues" led to another, different role on that show two years later, as the crusty Lieut. Norman Buntz; this led to a short run on his own show called "Beverly Hills Buntz." And then "NYPD Blue" came along.
Mr. Franz, in the role of Detective Sipowicz, has been there since the first trademark drumroll that introduced the show to American audiences. At the time, its herky-jerky shooting style and willingness to show the grit of New York police life made "NYPD" seem transgressive. As conceived by Steven Bochco and David Milch, its creators, the show had an unwillingness to idealize its heroes that made them more durable in the long run. They got drunk a lot, slept with their partners when they should not have and were constantly getting in jams with the bosses.
And Detective Sipowicz, with a face that looks as if it were carved out of potatoes and the body style of a greeter at Home Depot, was an unlikely hero. Dark and complicated, with barely hidden racial attitudes that do not generally spell television success, as well as a visceral mistrust of authority and a bad past in the bottle, Sipowicz always seemed as if he might turn vigilante and rid the world of all the so-called "skells" that made it such a disgusting toilet to work in.
But he never did. Sipowicz outlived many squad leaders, co-stars, spouses and children. People who grew close to him - wives, partners, sons - had a disturbing tendency to end up dead, but he always lived on. In the final season, we see the lifelong homicide detective reluctantly deciding to take the sergeant's exam (his arrival for the exam is a classic example of Mr. Franz's gifts for the physical dimensions of acting), and the chronic rebel starting to accept the mantle of leadership.
"It is an interesting approach," Mr. Franz said, a string of Christmas lights incongruously ringing the interior of the trailer just above his head. "He has had this bizarre love-hate relationship with his bosses. He has never been one to go along with the program, and now he is facing the possibility that he is going to be one of those guys."
Although the public could hardly be blamed for seeing only Sipowicz when they see Mr. Franz, he, more so than anyone, is deeply identified with the character. So much so that even though he never joined the chorus of those who criticized David Caruso for leaving the show when he had a star moment in the early years, he is openly disappointed by the decision of Charlotte Ross, who played his wife, not to return from maternity leave for the last season. Her absence left Mr. Franz's character without a domestic backdrop, which has always been the place where Sipowicz become a softer, more complicated character.
"I don't blame her, she needed to make her own decisions, but it has been a major disappointment for me," he said. "It is a huge part of what makes Sipowicz interesting, and when you take that away, it makes it very hard to show him working out this big change in his life."
Mr. Bochco may be worried about Sipowicz, but sitting in his office elsewhere on the lot, he has no such concerns for Mr. Franz.
"Dennis is one of the great American actors," Mr. Bochco said. "He will work anywhere he wants, whether it be on Broadway or in another show."
"And I think as we talked about it, it became clear," Mr. Bochco said of the decision to end the show this season. "It is much nicer for everyone on the show to come up with that sweet, sad closing show than to find out on May 14 that it's canceled without having had the chance to say goodbye."
Mr. Bochco does not have much time for withdrawal pains. He is making "Blind Justice," another New York cop show - this one with a blind detective. It will have its premiere on ABC on March 8.
Nor does Mr. Franz. He said he was interested in seeing what life is like without having the majority of the day invested in another character's life. As someone who lived in Chicago, he added, he has never lost interest in playing Al Capone, a bad-guy role he thinks he could nail.
Crammed into a booth that adjoins the sink in his trailer, Mr. Franz seemed content to keep talking, but then another knock came, this one telling him they were ready for him on the set. He rose to leave, gun on his hip, and pulled a distinctly unfashionable tie into place.
It was Detective Sipowicz who stepped out into the bright Los Angeles sunshine and took the short walk to the place, where, for the time being, Precinct 15 still lives.
Saying Goodbye to a True 'NYPD Blue' Detective
By DAVID CARR The New York Times March 1, 2005
LOS ANGELES - A knock on an actor's trailer outside Stage 9 on the lot of 20th Century Fox Studios brought a hearty "Yo" from inside before the door swung open.
The head that poked out was large, short on hair and adorned with a beefy smile not often seen on the television screen. The smile belonged to Dennis Franz, who has spent the last 12 years playing one of America's favorite cops, Detective Andy Sipowicz on ABC's "NYPD Blue." The show is calling it quits, with its final broadcast on March 1. Of weekly prime-time scripted series still on the air, only "Law & Order" and "The Simpsons" have been on longer.
"NYPD Blue" arrived on television in 1993, and was a Nielsen top 20 show for seven years running. Today, still in the top 50, it has become the televised equivalent of an aging beat cop, eyes wrinkled against the sun. This makes it difficult to remember just how fresh its face once was. Before there were the multiple offspring of "Law & Order," before there was "CSI" (and its multiple offspring), "NYPD Blue" delivered a different kind of cop narrative - at once gritty and raw - that depicted the business and culture of crime and police work in a way that had not been seen before.
And of course it was daring. The show had one of network television's first running gay characters. It featured an enormous amount of swearing. Some characters, most notably Sipowicz, were shown baring their naked backsides, seemingly just for the thrill of tweaking the censors. Add a breakout star in Jimmy Smits as Detective Bobby Simone and an unlikely one in the gruff and often angry Mr. Franz as Sipowicz, and a show about homicide found itself getting away with murder, racking up 20 Emmys in a business where series most often come and go without a trace.
Although he plays a character who carries his ghosts into every scene, Mr. Franz, 60, was in a fine mood, surrounded in his trailer by cartons of pictures, farewell cards to be signed and old scripts, long since shot.
"Yeah, there has to be a certain amount of sadness," he said, working his way through a salad in his character's trademark short-sleeve white dress shirt. "This is a long period of time to spend with a television show."
The end will come in nuanced ways at the 15th Precinct. No aliens will land, no buildings will be blown up and no characters will disappear in a bloody fire-fight. Things will change, Mr. Franz said, but the squad, more or less, will continue to function.
That pleases Mr. Franz (pronounced fronz). "There is a note of change," he said, declining to elaborate for fear of spoiling the finale. "But for the most part, it is just another day in the life of the squad, and that feels right."
For more than nine months in each of the last dozen years, Mr. Franz has been on this set for 12 to 15 hours a day. With the herd of NYPD police cars twinkling in the bright California sunlight outside the place, it has an air of unreality, but to the long-running crew of the show, it is very much home. Mr. Franz clearly feels that way, and says he is grateful for what has happened here.
"I got four Emmys and a lot of money, among many, many other things," he said. "I have a feeling of gratitude that isn't all that easy to put into words."
Unlike his character, whose words seem to crawl up slowly from some hidden place - unless he is interrogating one of an endless string of hapless perps, that is - Mr. Franz is an easy, silky communicator. A native of a Chicago suburb who worked alongside Joe Mantegna at the Organic Theater Company in that city he picked up some local movie work in the 1970's, and slowly made his way to Hollywood. A year in the early 1980's as the rogue cop Detective Sal Benedetto on "Hill Street Blues" led to another, different role on that show two years later, as the crusty Lieut. Norman Buntz; this led to a short run on his own show called "Beverly Hills Buntz." And then "NYPD Blue" came along.
Mr. Franz, in the role of Detective Sipowicz, has been there since the first trademark drumroll that introduced the show to American audiences. At the time, its herky-jerky shooting style and willingness to show the grit of New York police life made "NYPD" seem transgressive. As conceived by Steven Bochco and David Milch, its creators, the show had an unwillingness to idealize its heroes that made them more durable in the long run. They got drunk a lot, slept with their partners when they should not have and were constantly getting in jams with the bosses.
And Detective Sipowicz, with a face that looks as if it were carved out of potatoes and the body style of a greeter at Home Depot, was an unlikely hero. Dark and complicated, with barely hidden racial attitudes that do not generally spell television success, as well as a visceral mistrust of authority and a bad past in the bottle, Sipowicz always seemed as if he might turn vigilante and rid the world of all the so-called "skells" that made it such a disgusting toilet to work in.
But he never did. Sipowicz outlived many squad leaders, co-stars, spouses and children. People who grew close to him - wives, partners, sons - had a disturbing tendency to end up dead, but he always lived on. In the final season, we see the lifelong homicide detective reluctantly deciding to take the sergeant's exam (his arrival for the exam is a classic example of Mr. Franz's gifts for the physical dimensions of acting), and the chronic rebel starting to accept the mantle of leadership.
"It is an interesting approach," Mr. Franz said, a string of Christmas lights incongruously ringing the interior of the trailer just above his head. "He has had this bizarre love-hate relationship with his bosses. He has never been one to go along with the program, and now he is facing the possibility that he is going to be one of those guys."
Although the public could hardly be blamed for seeing only Sipowicz when they see Mr. Franz, he, more so than anyone, is deeply identified with the character. So much so that even though he never joined the chorus of those who criticized David Caruso for leaving the show when he had a star moment in the early years, he is openly disappointed by the decision of Charlotte Ross, who played his wife, not to return from maternity leave for the last season. Her absence left Mr. Franz's character without a domestic backdrop, which has always been the place where Sipowicz become a softer, more complicated character.
"I don't blame her, she needed to make her own decisions, but it has been a major disappointment for me," he said. "It is a huge part of what makes Sipowicz interesting, and when you take that away, it makes it very hard to show him working out this big change in his life."
Mr. Bochco may be worried about Sipowicz, but sitting in his office elsewhere on the lot, he has no such concerns for Mr. Franz.
"Dennis is one of the great American actors," Mr. Bochco said. "He will work anywhere he wants, whether it be on Broadway or in another show."
"And I think as we talked about it, it became clear," Mr. Bochco said of the decision to end the show this season. "It is much nicer for everyone on the show to come up with that sweet, sad closing show than to find out on May 14 that it's canceled without having had the chance to say goodbye."
Mr. Bochco does not have much time for withdrawal pains. He is making "Blind Justice," another New York cop show - this one with a blind detective. It will have its premiere on ABC on March 8.
Nor does Mr. Franz. He said he was interested in seeing what life is like without having the majority of the day invested in another character's life. As someone who lived in Chicago, he added, he has never lost interest in playing Al Capone, a bad-guy role he thinks he could nail.
Crammed into a booth that adjoins the sink in his trailer, Mr. Franz seemed content to keep talking, but then another knock came, this one telling him they were ready for him on the set. He rose to leave, gun on his hip, and pulled a distinctly unfashionable tie into place.
It was Detective Sipowicz who stepped out into the bright Los Angeles sunshine and took the short walk to the place, where, for the time being, Precinct 15 still lives.