Words Of Advice For Young People

Clipped from the NYTImes Friday 9 September
Turn a Smoldering Mention Into a Four-Alarm Interview

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By COREY KILGANNON
Published: September 9, 2005

Turn a Smoldering Mention

Into a Four-Alarm Interview

The celebrities had come and gone from the splashy fashion show and party thrown by InStyle magazine at the Time Warner Center in Manhattan on Wednesday night. By evening's end, DENIS LEARY was sitting with friends on couches near the open bar and the free-caviar table.

We introduced ourselves to Mr. Leary, the star and creator of FX's gritty New York firefighter series "Rescue Me," and he agreed to an interview. We asked him what he was up to.

"You mean, 'What am I doing here?' " he said with a snort. We stammered and rephrased: What was he currently working on?
............

(Note of caution to Columbia J-School young'uns: Never rush headlong into a raging fashion party without having properly researched the expected celebrities, lest you run into one whose career, shall we say, has not enveloped the American consciousness. If it does happen, simply wave your hungry notebook, press pen to paper and ask the celebrity if he has anything to plug. Hopefully, if it's a regular Joe like Mr. Leary - a working class hero who holds fund-raisers with real firefighters and ice hockey players and has no sissy press person with him this night - he'll probably roll with anything. Maybe even give you a cigarette.)