 |
One group of off-duty officers relaxing by the brick wall snaps to attention at the arrival of NYPD Blue co-star Kim Delaney.
"Welcome back," one hulking cop offers shyly, shaking her hand and blushing.
"Yeah," actor Dennis Franz jokes to me later, "They immediately lose interest in Sipowicz when Kim comes on."
Not likely. This series and these characters are icons here, especially to the members of the police force on which it is based. They'll count among the show's most avid watchers when it starts its new season on ABC and Global Tuesday night at 10, two months later than usual.
ABC held it out in favour of rookie relationship drama Once And Again. That snub and executive producer Steven Bochco's angry public reaction to it have left NYPD Blue's future beyond this season in question.
Still 'vigorous'
"Obviously a seventh season is regarded in Hollywood as one of the last laps of a show, but I don't think that's inevitably the case," executive producer David Milch says of a franchise he calls still "very vigorous."
"On the other hand, we certainly don't want to stay past the point where we're either unwelcome in America's homes or on ABC's schedule."
Their welcome here in their 'home' city is never a doubt. Seven years into his role as Andy Sipowicz, the troubled and tragedy-stricken senior detective, Franz still wonders at the near-constant stream of real police officers -- past and present -- who come by to pay their respects.
"It's so flattering to us," he says. "Humbling, really. But so appreciated that they accept us and approve of what we're doing. I have to acknowledge that we feel like pretenders sometimes."
The drama has become such a part of the fabric of this place that if you step into a cab, a recording of Franz's low growl might instruct you, "This is Detective Sipowicz reminding you to gather all your belongings and get a receipt. Are we clear on this?"
What has been less clear to viewers is that, except for a few days each year the show shoots on a studio lot in L.A., not on these streets. This season, on-set days in New York were budget-trimmed to a mere five. It's a tribute to the show's creative team that this comes as a surprise even to those who might know better.
"When I watch the show, I think that it is New York. It's amazing," says police officer Tommy Cronin, assigned for the past four years to the city's movie and TV unit.
Cast and crew reciprocate the welcome. The producers pride themselves on shooting without closing down streets or stopping traffic. They even shoot a scene in an open diner, as late lunchers come and go.
"Dennis and Rick (Schroder) and the girls, they must pose for 500 photographs," executive producer Bill Clark says. "They're very good. They love being here and they understand how important it is that people want them here."
The New York foray has been the first week of shooting each season, an opportunity to reunite, climb back inside fictional skins and soak up some atmosphere.
"It's a big fix," production designer Richard Hankins says. "It allows everybody just to kind of experience New York and remember what it's all about. The hustle, the bustle, the movement, the noise, the smells."
Especially the smells, since this is August and a heatwave has the city in a sticky grip.
The day before, as temperatures soared above 30 degrees, they shot on Canal Street's fishmongers row.
"Some directors, when they're doing a period piece, will actually put the actors in period underwear. You don't see it but you see their reaction to it," Hankins says. "Yesterday, we were in a spot where it was just the worst smell I've ever smelled in the 13 years I lived here. You could just see it in everyone's face. Everyone was more tense because of it. It all helps."
Nobody is more responsible for keeping NYPD Blue real than Bill Clark, the veteran city detective who has been with the show since the beginning.
Among visitors to the set today is Bob DiVagno, former Det. Sgt. of the Queens Homicide Squad and, for two years, Clark's boss.
"What I see in the show, I see a lot of Billy in Dennis. A lot," says DiVagno, now retired and working as an insurance investigator. "Billy was a no-nonsense guy. When I told Billy, 'Go in there and get a confession,' Billy got it."
Clark stayed with the force through NYPD's first season, unsure about hitching his future to something as uncertain as a TV program. After all, he knew that Bochco's credits included not just the acclaimed Hill Street Blues but also the short-lived 1990 police musical, Cop Rock.
"My thought was, 'What were they thinking about?' That set me back a little. That obviously was not my kind of show. I like reality," says Clark, not a man you can easily imagine breaking into song.
In Milch's and Clark's 1995 book, True Blue: The Real Stories Behind NYPD Blue, Milch recounts a tale well-known in the force about Clark's interrogation of a man who had just shot a cop and was concealing the whereabouts of his accomplice.
As Milch tells it, in that unmistakable NYPD Blue police patois: "Bill drove his thumb into the skel's open shoulder wound -- the skel having been shot while fleeing -- grinding bullet against bone until the skel gave up where the other perpetrator was hiding."
For years, Clark sent birthday and Christmas cards signed with a murdered child's name to a man he believed, but could not prove, was her killer.
But Clark is also the person who cried when NYPD Blue won the best drama award at the Banff Television Festival. And today, he's wearing a stiff new Yankees ball cap, hurriedly acquired after his wife phoned to check he was protected from the blazing sun.
"I said, 'Yeah, I'm wearing a hat.' She's an ex-detective so what do you think she says? She says, 'What kind of hat are you wearing?' Being an ex-detective and a good liar I said, 'A Yankee hat.' Now I had to get a Yankee hat because if I go home today and I don't have a Yankee hat, I'm in trouble."
There are equal parts affection and admiration in Franz's voice when the subject of Clark comes up.
"The evolution of Bill Clark is a story in itself," Franz observes. "I remember the first time I saw Bill on the set, totally out of his element. It was like a kid going to Disneyland and not knowing exactly how to be involved in it. Being a little timid -- if you can imagine Bill Clark being timid about anything -- about how to become involved and how to offer the valuable information that he had to offer. Now he's in control. He and David (Milch) are joined at the hip. They complement each other perfectly."
Rising through the ranks from consultant to coordinating producer to supervising producer, Clark was elevated to executive producer last season.
'Never planned on this'
"Who'd a thunk it, huh?" says Clark, Newfoundland-born and Brooklyn-raised. "I always figured at the end of my career, whenever that was, there'd be a book about my life. Maybe or maybe not. I worked a lot of big cases. I never planned on this. This came out of nowhere."
Not entirely. Clark's longtime media pals include Dick Schaap and Jimmy Breslin, both of whom he met while working the Son of Sam murder case. Over the years they had informally referred producers and journalists to Clark.
When Milch asked Clark what he thought of TV cop shows, he didn't hold back.
"I said, 'I hate them. I hate watching a show where it's so inaccurate.' A lot of shows just knock cops or they make them out to be stupid, you know. We really try to do the right thing and show what a hard job detectives do. We've locked up cops on this show. We've shown cops with drug problems. We've shown cops to be murderers. But at the end of each episode you always get a sense that the average cop or detective really cares about people."
Clark takes the actors to the police parties known as 'rackets,' as well as educates them on the grimmer aspects of the cop job. Jimmy Smits won his respect by not backing down at the sight of a minister burned to death by church burglars. Last season, it was Schroder's turn.
"I saw, I don't know how many bodies," Schroder says of his eye-opening week under Clark's wing. "Five or six fresh bodies and then another 20 at the morgue. I think he was trying to give me a shock dose of reality. There's no substitute."