New Haven Register (Sunday) (New Haven, CT)
Heffernans keepin’ it real
New series ‘Tacoma FD’ coming to TruTV March 28
In the new cable TV series “Tacoma FD,” one firefighter casually admits to being on Thinder, a website “for dudes with thinning hair.”
The jokes in Kevin Heffernan’s movies and TV shows range from clever (Thinder, hah) to charmingly idiosyncratic to dopey guy stuff.
“I think what people like about our comedy and the movies we make, like ‘Super Troopers,’ is just regular guys having fun,” said Heffernan in a phone chat from a Los Angeles editing room for the show. “It’s people you can identify with, and when you watch those characters ... you say, ‘I’d hang out with those guys.’ It’s an approachable thing.”
Heffernan, a writer, producer, director and member of the Broken Lizard comedy group co-led by Steve Lemme, is not only a West Haven product but hails from a family well-known in the city. His mother, Jane, was city treasurer; his father, Eugene Michael Heffernan, worked as a probate judge; his grandfather, William J. Heffernan, was mayor of West Haven.
And his cousin, Lt. William “Bill” Heffernan of the West Haven Fire Department, suggested the topic for Kevin’s new TV series on TruTV, “Tacoma FD,” and worked as technical consultant on the comedy. The show’s 10-episode first season arrives March 28 and was green-lighted after the modest success last year of “Super Troopers 2.”
Firefighter Bill, in an email exchange recently, said he first suggested a show about firefighters at the time of the first “Super Troopers.”
“I said to him ‘Forget all this police stuff. You should do a show about firefighters. I have a million great stories,’ ” said Bill Heffernan. “Well he ignored
me for many years but around the time that ‘Super Troopers 2’ was coming out, he called me and said, ‘You are not going to believe this but Steve (Lemme) and I just got a call and they want us to write a TV show, a comedy about a bunch of firefighters.’ So the three of us yakked away for a few hours and I told them a few great West Haven legends.”
Kevin Heffernan said Bill “came out to L.A., sat in our writers’ room with us, shared stories with us, and then when we shot, he came out for like four weeks... and he made us look like firefighters. He was just an integral part of us making this show.” Bill Heffernan said he helped on “how the firehouse should look. I helped out with the firefighting gear and the station wear (uniforms).”
Kevin and Lemme have been doing some comedy standup gigs (leading to Amazon Prime specials) and Kevin said it might have been in Tacoma, Washington, when he and Lemme were talking about downtime of cops and firefighters. “And we were like, ‘What would give a firefighter downtime?’ ... ‘Well, if they were in a really rainy city, that might be the way.”
Bill Heffernan is actually the historian for the West Haven Fire Department (in a city that is not particularly rainy). One of his stories makes a particularly funny bit in one of the early episodes (see the “Tacoma FD” trailer online).
“A guy is giving mouth-to-mouth resucitation... to a cat,” said Kevin, “and that’s a true story from him; that happened to them.” (Spoiler alert: The cat runs away.)
There is also fart humor, a sex scene or two and a gross-spitting llama (or alpaca; we can’t recall). Crude moments or not, Kevin Heffernan, 50, is actually well-educated: a graduate of Fairfield Prep, Colgate University and Brooklyn Law School.
“When you do the cable shows now, the directive you get from them is the push the envelope,” he said.
Heffernan’s character of Chief Terry McConky features shades of Ralph Kramden and Archie Bunker, he said. He has some amusing conversations with Lemme as Capt. Eddie Penisi, Eugene Cordero, Marcus Henderson, Gabriel Hogan and (as his daughter just joining the fire squad) Hassie Harrison. “We grew up watching ‘Taxi’ and ‘MASH’ and ‘Cheers,’ and, you know, it’s an ensemble of good characters and they have whatever conversation they have, and that’s (classic shows) definitely informed us,” he said of dialogue that goes from smart to silly in a blink.
“We say that we like to make dumb comedy for smart people and smart comedy for dumb people,” Heffernan said, laughing.
Firefighter Bill Heffernan, who became known as Cousin Bill on the set, said authenticity is in the details.
“It is quite different working with the actors who have no firefighting experience. They have to learn how we talk to each other and what our different firehouse slang means,” he said. “It can be tough remembering things that I just take for granted every day.”
Bill Heffernan said his wife was on the set one day and was watching the group shoot a scene between Capt. Eddie Penisi and his crew. “She turned to me and said, ‘Hey, they keep calling him Eddie. Shouldn’t they be calling him Captain?’ She was totally correct and we changed the script . ... I had to pay close attention to the little details. The little details are what make the difference between laughing with us and laughing at us.”
As for a female taking a position in the firehouse, the writers didn’t find much of that in real life, since firehouses are “one of the last bastions of maleness,” said Kevin Heffernan. But the addition in the show was done to throw old-school Chief McConky off his game and have a door into gender comedy. “The funny thing was, when we were making the show... they (at his cousin’s firehouse) got their first female firefighter,” Heffernan said.
Bill Heffernan said consulting was “a fantistic experience” and a “a great time... The chemistry and interaction between the (cast) is outstanding. Sometimes I actually think I am working in the firehouse with them.” He said he planned to fly out for the premiere party on Wednesday, March 20.