Brian Dennehy

I mean, we had a wonderful time together, when we were together. He was an amazing writer… probably his most famous thing was the thing about the disease, The Singing Detective. He had that disease himself…he had this thing called….it was a combination of arthritis and … psoriatic arthritis. So that not only were his hands and his muscles withered, but his skin was covered with scales. And he was constantly itching and scratching himself, to the point where he would bleed. His fingers broke off because the psoriasis had gotten under his nails, and they disappeared. He had the most horrific…and he had it from the time when he was in his 20s, until he died in his mid-60s. He slept, probably, an hour or two hours a night, and then only with very heavy medication. He was always tortured by itching or pain or both. He was one of the funniest human beings I’ve ever known in my life. He was hilarious. He always was laughing. Now, at the same time, he was always smoking and drinking and working. And he did a series of interviews when he was dying of cancer. He was actually dying because he was on steroids for so long, and the steroids killed him. He did a series of interviews for Melvin Bragg, pretentious, pompous asshole from BBC, but they are great, great interviews because it’s Potter knowing he’s dying, summing up. If you get a chance, you can get them, they’re absolutely wonderful to watch because he says exactly what I’m going to say to you: “Whatever you’ve done in the past has virtually no meaning. It’s only what you are going to do today, tonight, tomorrow, next week, next month.” That’s the way I feel about it. It’s nice when people come up to you and say, “I like this,” or “I like that,” or “this was moving.” But, I guarantee you anybody who is serious about what they do, whether it’s writing or acting or music, is only looking forward to the next job, the next problem to solve, because it’s the solution of the problem that’s interesting. What I did ten years ago, five years ago, two years ago is literally of no interest to me. None. Now, most people won’t tell you that, but it’s true.

Audience: Thank you for answering.

Dennehy: It’s true. I mean, it’s nice to hear. Don’t get me wrong. It’s better than somebody coming up and going, “Man, I saw you and you really stink.” My favorite is the guy come up at the airport a couple of weeks ago and said, “Didn’t you used to be Brian Dennehy?” “Yeah, I did.” “What the hell happened to you anyway?”

Moderator: Leon.

Audience: …You were talking about Emperor Jones. For some reason, I don’t know why it happened, I guess it was George White’s involvement, but we had, up at Connecticut College, as part of this [inaudible] Festival, we did a production of…..[Dennehy: Wooster came…?] No, it wasn’t Wooster. It was a director who stuttered. His name was Frankel. Was it Gene Frankel? And the actor who was playing Emperor Jones was James Earl Jones, who at that time stuttered like crazy. So having the director and the actor both going through rehearsals of…and both stuttering…

Dennehy: I never knew Jimmy ever had any speech impediment. [Audience: But, anyway, it was just funny to be sitting here and listening…] Do any of you… they don’t do this play now regularly, but they do revive it from time to time, and, you know, it’s hard to do avant-garde, deconstructive productions of Eugene O’Neill, but this one really works.