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Welcome to the Behind the Shield podcast.
As always, my name is James Gearing and this week it is my absolute honor to welcome back
onto the show, actor, volunteer firefighter and friend, Bobby Burke.
Now in this second conversation, we discuss a host of topics from the recent actor's strike,
some notable calls in uniform, firefighter and mental health, fitness, the inability
to save, the importance of experts on film sets and so much more.
Now before we get to this incredible conversation, as I say every week, please just take a moment,
go to whichever app you listen to this on, subscribe to the show, leave feedback and
leave a rating.
Every single five star rating truly does elevate this podcast, therefore making it easier for
others to find.
And this is a free library of over 850 episodes now.
So all I ask in return is that you help share these incredible men and women stories so
I can get them to every single person on planet earth who needs to hear them.
So with that being said, I welcome back onto the show, Bobby Burke.
Enjoy.
Well, Bobby, I want to start by saying firstly, obviously, welcome back to the behind the
shield podcast.
The last conversation we had was episode 529, which was October of 2021.
And the beautiful thing about the way that interview ended after we'd heard about a lot
of the acting side, your journey into Hollywood as it were, but also how 9-11 sent you into
the fire service is at the very end of the interview, you got banged out on a call and
that was it.
Music fades in and you're off to respond.
So firstly, I want to welcome you back, but secondly, that was by far the most epic ending
of the podcast I've done in 852 so far.
Well, I'll tell you, thank you, James.
It's great to be back.
It's an honor.
It's a privilege.
And anytime anybody wants to talk to me about anything, I'm humble.
If I remember correctly, and I could go back into my calendar, I think it was a medevac
for an elderly woman who had broken her hip and if you break a hip or if there's any nerve
damage or anything of a certain order, the calibration and the designations of the medical
calls here, you're going to go out by helicopter.
So we do a lot of medevacs.
We've done 30 this year, the year's not over.
But yeah, I specifically remember wrapping up with you and getting toned out.
Yeah, it was amazing.
Now since then, we're talking almost two years now, what have been some of the career calls
that you remember the last couple of years since we chatted?
Oh, you mean like big jobs?
Yes.
We had a couple of good jobs.
I had a job toward the end of September.
It was 93 degrees out and I just happened to be really able to turn out quite quickly,
gearing up and one of the other members convinced that we have a working structure taxpayer
and it's going.
So we got there, we hooked up.
I had this brilliant pump operator chauffeur who was one of our assistant chiefs, Drew
Becker.
Communication between he and I was really good.
So I've been practicing the Minuteman deployment for the crosslays, the inch and three quarters.
And some guys are good, some guys are not.
What I found out on that call is you need some clearance on the side of the truck to
get it off the truck.
And I was like, uh-oh, there's this like wall in front of me.
So I said to Drew Becker, the chief, I said, can you help me get this load on my shoulder?
And somebody was videotaping us.
I suppose you see the work together.
And I said, no, really help me get this.
So I was able to stack 50 feet and carry another 50 and then have them stretch another 50.
We knocked the rooms down pretty effectively.
It was on the second story.
One of the fire marshals said, somebody says this is your nightmare box because there's
a lot of migrant kids who live upstairs, seasonal workers, and they sleep many to a room.
And I always tell the guys when we drill or doing a building inspection, throw ladders.
If we ever get anything, throw ladders, throw ladders.
These kids won't be able to get out.
And it was two o'clock in the afternoon, quite hot.
So that was a good job.
And then, you know, a couple of residential structure fires.
One I described as a large volume of fire, but not a dangerous fire somehow.
And the other was just smoke coming out of all parts of the house and you couldn't, we
couldn't find the fire.
So that's a dangerous fire.
And they dedicated the first line in the back.
I went in the back and the camera was up, couldn't find any fires to get this line out
of here.
We're going in the front door, closed that door on the way out.
We went in the front door underneath the stairwell.
It was a good fire going.
We knocked it down.
The fire had climbed up the wainscot all the way to three stories of the house.
So we had good stairs and we just made our way up.
So and then the rest is just, you know, your basic bread and butter, you know, down power
lines, odor or gas, dumpsters, things like that.
But every once in a while you get a good residential structure.
And you're lucky when you have good guys with you that, you know, are dedicated and trained
and know their jobs because it's come as you are, you know.
You may be a good nozzle man, but you're throwing a ladder today or you may or vice versa.
So you know, on all those calls, everybody was pretty heads up and there was absolutely
no one injured, resident or member of the department.
So that was, that's always good.
When you talked about trying to clear the minute man, that reminded me, and I don't
know if it's a minute man fold or a triple layer.
I think it was a minute man.
They used to call it the freeway pool in Anaheim.
So if it was the minute man and forgive me, some people listening and the engine companies
are probably screaming at me now, but my brain is like a colander.
Once I stopped doing the job, everything fell out.
You grab one loop each and you walk opposite directions.
And I think whichever lay it was, it was obviously a cross lay.
It would actually put a perfect S on the ground and now you deploy, but you can literally
do it in an alleyway.
Even the same as when we were taught ladders in the Florida Fire Academy was ladders on
the floor.
You know, you walk over, you, how do we do it?
Oh my goodness.
It's like suitcase carried it to the wall.
Then you laid it flat against the wall.
Then you climb the rungs up.
Well, that works so well on a concrete draw ground with no bushes, cars, fences.
But then I went to Anaheim and they showed me how to, how to actually shoulder a ladder,
you know, high shoulder, you know, single man throw, single person throw.
Don't worry about rotating it.
Just tie it off and get your ass up there.
And then again, it's like, okay, we're taught these things in fire academy, but then you
get in the real world.
It doesn't mean it's the wrong one specifically, but some things work really well and have
in a very versatile, but some you're like, okay, that, that does work, but only in that
one situation.
And maybe this different, this different hose load or this different ladder throw is actually
more universal when it comes to the fire ground.
Because I've to this day still haven't been on a fire in a concrete building with no obstacles
in the way.
Yeah.
And, you know, no obstacles and Mr. Murphy showing up.
What did I do?
I got off the rig without a pack on.
I had two newer members with me who came upstairs, no tools, no nothing, no camera.
So the recordings of the operation, you hear me say after I have a good meal, hey brother,
can you send me a pack up?
And then you're like, Oh, how about a couple of hooks in a small roof ladder?
Oh, and, you know, bring your camera up.
And door dash all this shit to the second floor.
I'm so preoccupied with that statement as the first line goes, so goes the fire and
getting it dedicated with composure, get it dedicated with, you know, accurately and seamlessly
and so you can, I got a little tunnel vision there.
You know, I just did not want to wait another because we had good chunky smoke work in and
I didn't want to wait another minute.
I knew I could operate exteriorly for the first few minutes to keep it out of the cock
loft, this common loft.
And then, you know, have a pack brought up to me, which is what happened.
I mean, I was only up there for five minutes before I sent one of the kids to get a, you
know, a back, a pack and some hooks.
So it's the volunteer fire service where, you know, that's the side of the street that
I'm on.
And you just hope that no one gets hurt and that everybody goes home and that, you know,
you do the job as efficiently as possible and as professionally as possible.
When we think of the professional fire service, the more progressive, more humble firefighters
are really starting to understand now, you know, clean cab and again, it's like calling
National Health Socialized Medicine.
Clean cab doesn't mean surgical.
It just means not having off-gassing gear all over your, you know, your cab and putting
the pack in a separate compartment, which as a tiller man in California, I'm a huge
fan of because you can't wear a pack in the back of a tiller truck.
So you get down and then you throw it on, you realize it takes, you know, six seconds
to snap an SCBA on your back.
But you know, we were starting to get there.
We're realizing that we're already immunocompromised just through the shift work and everything
else.
And now we're talking about PFAS in our gear so that the fewer insults to our immune system
we can get, the better.
So you know, having as clean a gear as you can, whatever that looks like is important
these days.
How is that being received in your space, in the volunteer world, in your department
specifically?
It's being received very, very, very well.
I came into my department at a kind of a transitional time where the older members were, you know,
phasing out and the younger people were coming in.
I was 41, but I'm talking about, you know, people 18, 19, 20.
You don't have to explain to them, you know, the whole salty thing to them, that's ridiculous.
Why would I wear, you know, gear with toxins on it?
You know, in the old days when what was off-gassing was wood and cloth and cotton.
Yeah, sure, you get sooty all you like.
But they're just more aware that there's, you know, pyroplastic dripping on them and
petroleum-based, you know, fuel.
So and I speak for myself, I've seen way too many of my friends die of crazy cancers.
You know, you talk about, you know, washing your hoods and, you know, cancers around the
neck, cancers, skin cancers, testicular cancer.
I mean, it's never ending.
There's always somebody in the on deck circle just like, you know, he died, he died, he's
got, he's, there's so many people sick now that I think that's what's, you know, you'd
be, you don't have to impress anybody any longer with the data.
You know, it's 2023, the data is here, this shit's killing us, wash your gear.
Absolutely.
Well, what about from your world?
I want to get to the acting strike and, you know, moving forward as well.
But while we're on this topic, our profession on the professional side, on the career side,
excuse me, that's the wrong term, the career side, not professional side, because you guys
are as well.
We're having a real problem recruiting at the moment.
And through my eyes from the career side, there's many reasons, everything from a shrinking
population that actually can because of the obesity crisis and screens and gaming and
all that stuff, but also there's a lot more transparency now in what it's really like
to be a professional, excuse me, a career firefighter, you know, and the things that
come along with that, you know, the pay actually when you break it down isn't great.
And, you know, you get told at 730, you can't go home for your kid's birthday.
And this generation now is able to access the raw truth about the fire service.
And you and I love this profession and I stayed a firefighter my whole life, never promoted
because I loved kicking indoors and cutting cars and sawing roofs and everything else.
So it's not about the love of the job, but, you know, the love of the job doesn't stop
someone ending up in a casket with bagpipes playing and someone playing the last call.
Nothing fucking heroic about that at all.
So I think on our side, people when they're comparing professions now are weighing it
up and going, I love the idea of it, but the reality doesn't seem to fit where I want to
be in the next 10, 20 years.
So until we change the career side and make the work week more conducive to health and
actually pay these men and women enough so they don't have to have second or third jobs,
that is, you know, one of the barriers I think that's created or such an issue with us.
Now you come out of a pandemic where community and togetherness and service wasn't exactly
the buzz topic.
It was stay at home, protect yourself, everyone else is a murderer, you know, pretty toxic,
divisive conversations.
So now we're coming out the other end and we're asking for volunteerism and community
when it comes to the volunteer firefighter.
So what have you seen as far as the impact of recruitment on the volunteer side the last
few years?
Well, it's a great question.
I have to be honest and say I haven't given it a lot of thought.
But you know what, when we're done with this, I'm going to look into it.
I have one observation to make and I think I hope it's an accurate one across the board.
And I say kids, I don't mean to be disparaging or the young people because essentially they
are young people and volunteer.
The people you are getting are of a higher quality.
We have like several members who, you know, they're new, they come in twos and threes.
I'd love for them to come in eights and tens and twelves, but they don't.
Or initially they come in, you know, a class of eight and then, you know, of course that
guy's not going to make it, that guy's and they pair down and the guys that you're and
gals that you're left with and I'm going to say gals too, because it's unbelievable the
quality of people that we have joining.
So the ones that you are left with have been just stellar, outstanding.
Like I can't even, this is my own little volley corner, have been fantastic.
So yeah, fire service is not, you know, a work from home, you know, prospect.
It's just a proposition.
It's the exact opposite.
There was a time when yourself, James and me and Jimmy, we could get a, you know, rent
an apartment or a house and, you know, we could afford it.
Those times were gone.
Everything is very, very expensive.
So to make a living as a firefighter, firefighters traditionally always had, you know, a side
job.
But yeah, and then I think a big turnoff is the amount of material that they are responsible
for.
I remember in my community, we don't have a lot of hazardous materials.
We don't have hazardous materials, a great deal of them coming through.
We have chlorine, we have propane, I guess, various others, but it's not like we have
railroad cars of, you know, trichloro-trifluoroethane driving through.
All by way of saying, I think that there's just so much material that these kids are
responsible for.
You know, Joey didn't want to go to college.
He wants to stay in his town and be a mechanic and he's going to be a volunteer firefighter.
But now he finds out he has 148 hours of classrooms and three weeks of hands-on training all at
night in a row.
So, it's got to be there.
You know, I don't mean to disparage it or split the difference, but there's got to be
some way.
There is no way.
You got to do it.
You just got to do it.
You know, because you never know what's going to be asked of you.
That's the nature of the service.
So you know, when I took my written, it was 50 questions, then it was 100.
Now it's 150.
It just exponentially keeps getting more and more.
I joke sometimes if you break your fingernail, they're going to send you out to the county
academy for eight hours.
How not to break your fingernail?
You know, a little bit of it can be overkill.
But I guess it all serves a purpose.
You know, the National Fire Protection Association is always just trying to render, you know,
a safe algorithm over what is inherently an unsafe vocation.
So you know, there's going to be push and pull, I suppose, in that griping.
But yeah, it is hard to recruit.
I see, you know, when we tell kids, oh yeah, every time that horn blows, if you're a pro
bee, you're expected to show up.
And they're like, every time I'm like, bro, you don't get to, there is a self-centeredness
in the newer generation.
But I suppose every generation says that.
But nowadays, I think it's more just pervasive in terms of I, I, I, me, me, me.
But then the other hand, you know, kids these days are always looking for, you know, aggressively
minded kids like, oh, to volunteer and to change the world and to help out.
And it's a wonderful way to do it.
It's just you're not, it's not a half measure.
You're in 100%.
And you're learning how to do it 110%.
So that might be not as attractive to them as they initially had thought.
Absolutely.
Well, since we spoke, it's funny for people listening, we recorded, what was it, like
a month ago now?
And both of us were mentally wrecked.
So we literally trashed that interview and here we are doing part two.
At that time, there was a actor's strike.
Now I'm glad, you know, that we're at the other end and you guys are ramping up again
for the new year.
So now retrospectively, talk to me as an actor about that experience.
And then I'm curious from the union point of view, because as a volunteer, as you said
to me before, you know, in a union as a firefighter, but you are as an actor.
So it'd be interesting to see the parallels maybe between your union and the union is,
for example, FDNY's union and what you've observed in your brothers there and sisters.
Well, as I mean, just this afternoon, I voted yes on the new contract.
I'm not entirely happy with it, but I'm a business person.
So I'm always looking to compromise, not my values or ethics or anything like that, but
you know, agreements, let's say.
I would like everybody to get back to work fairly.
The problem sometimes is that, you know, if these were not, if these were tough times
for movie studios, networks, I could understand their, you know, not wanting to give in or
give a little more, but these are banner, record shattering profit years.
And the fact that there is very little profit sharing, you know, when we're asking things
like a little bump into our healthcare, a little bump here, a little bump there, there
are certain scales over which actors get paid that haven't changed in 30 years.
Now, the other side of that is I hear my immigrant dock worker, bartender, superintendent of
the building father in my head going, get a real job.
But the fact of the matter is, you know, entertainment is, it can be, you know, it's impervious to
depression or recession, you know, like booze.
You know, people want to go watch movies, watch television and it's long hours.
You know, it can be 16, 18 hour days.
I've had people on sets with me, freeze their ass off or sweat their ass.
Like when, oh my God, when is this over?
It's like when it's, when they tell us and you have to be up at four o'clock to come
back.
Yeah.
So, you know, it can be a grind.
It can be a grind.
Then there's the memory aspect.
You know, you have to go, I have 22 pages of memorization and I get there and I'm ready
to go, but they tell me, oh, you're not memorizing that.
You're memorizing this.
We're changing it all.
You know, a lot of stress.
You want to do your best.
The strike, one of the big sticking points was artificial intelligence.
They get to scan Robert Burke.
He can stay home tomorrow.
We'll just use his image.
It's like, you know what I mean?
Robert's going to do four takes and the producer says, that's it.
No more.
We'll just use the computer to get it right.
Cause he flubbed the line.
Well, you know, I'd like to do a fifth take because it's all money.
It's all, you know, they calibrate it down to the last little nickel and you're making
art pretty much.
You hope that it's artistic.
And so to, you know, lay this artificial intelligence in this computer, this robotic type of machination
over it is, it's kind of ridiculous.
You become indignant.
You're like, really?
You know, how do you get AI and, you know, the work of, you know, John Gielgud or Lawrence
Olivier or how are they synonymous?
Not that I'm either one of those guys.
I'm just saying, you know, you want to go see a movie made by robots and a computer
or do you want to go see a movie made by humans?
It'll be up to you pretty soon to tell you the truth.
I'd rather see movies made by humans and, you know, do special.
I don't want to see backdrafts.
And that was made by humans.
I think I saw bits and pieces of Backdraft 1 and I couldn't, you know, I had no idea
what was happening.
I said, this is, I just didn't understand what was happening at all.
You know, guys hanging from pipes and I'm like, really?
You know, I just didn't get it.
You know, the funny thing about the fire service in movies, people don't understand.
When the fire is really going, this is what you see, okay?
That's about it, right?
So it's very hard to make movies about fire.
I remember when we were doing Rescue Me and the fire gag people were, you know, they were
very cognizant because they had FDNY guys on the set with them all the time, you know,
trying to help and enhance and make it as real as possible.
But getting back to the contract, I think we got, you know, incremental bumps.
It's a three-year deal.
The union has always been really good at keeping you safe, you know, just in terms of, you
know, getting to the set, getting home from the set with enough sleep.
You know, the conditions of the working conditions, protecting yourself, children who work, that
they should have tutors, that they should not work so long.
Because obviously, we're in a business that they will take anything they can get.
And you need to have these union, you know, what's the labor, you know, united labor for
protection, or otherwise you'll be just taken advantage of.
It harkens back to the days of, you know, Mary Pickford and United Artists.
These actors were getting worked into the ground and they said, you know what, we're
going to start our own studio and make our own films.
And they did.
But unified labor, I don't think there's anything wrong with it.
Sometimes it goes off the extreme end.
Unions can ask for crazy things, but as actors, we weren't asking for anything crazy.
We were just asking for a fair deal.
One of the things that had a few stump people on there, obviously, that was my side hustle,
as they say.
But I never really worked as a stuntman on movies.
I worked on the World Trade Center film, but it was really as a glorified extra playing
an FDNY firefighter.
So I got to experience what you're talking about.
Like, oh, wow, this is not fast or exciting.
It is near those things.
The final result is amazing.
But yeah, hurry up and wait is definitely a thing there.
But some of my friends are, one of my good friends, Steve Dunleavy, who actually worked
in Japan 22 years ago as a stuntman.
He's now phenomenal.
He works with Keanu Reeves and all kinds of people at a very high level.
But you realize that that organization has very little representation.
They don't even get awards in the Oscars.
Now when you look at how many action films there are, and we're recognizing everyone
from makeup to costume to set, etc., etc., but the person that's almost dying, the actor,
is not getting recognized.
So what about that?
Have you had a kind of perspective on that side?
You mean from the settlement?
Well, just as an actor, I mean, what's have you heard rumblings or, you know, of that
group of people?
No, but I've worked with a lot of stunt guys.
I've worked with the top, top, top people, you know, the Stuntman's Association within
the community of the Screen Actors Guild, within the community of filmmaking.
They're venerated.
Do you know what I mean?
I perceive them as almost scientists because you need to calibrate and measure and weigh
and understand a lot of stuff to make certain of these stunts come off well.
The stuntmen I've worked with over the years, I found to be probably some of the most interesting
guys I've met in the business.
I'm in touch with one fella.
He's also a judge, a UFC judge.
Listen, you know, when I did Robocop, it was my third movie and Russell Towery was my,
he just told me to make, I forget what he used to say, make my dialogue sound good,
Burke.
You're working for him?
Oh yeah, I was working for him.
This guy took shots like you couldn't believe, you know, blown up in the air because they
did everything to Robocop because they figured, well, here's an actor, here's a stunt guy
with all this body armor on, let's just shoot at him.
Let's shoot zirconium bullets right at him.
That happened to me one night and they just thought by virtue of wearing the costume that
I'd be protected.
Well, I was yelling because they were cutting me in half with these, they're like paintballs
but when they hit something hard, they spark.
There's zircs.
They don't use any of this stuff anymore because it can all be computer, you know, image graphic
in, but yeah, I don't know.
I suppose the stuntmen know who they are and you know, they've always done such a great
job but again, the level of what's being asked of them in terms of danger and you know, spectacle
and thrill is always going up.
You know, it just seems to me that when I read about or find out about some stunt, you
know, in this film, they did this or you see some of these stunts that Tom Cruise has been
able to affect himself.
There's a funny story somebody tells, I think it was Matt Damon telling a story about Tom
Cruise and Tom is telling the stunt coordinator, I don't want to do this and the guy says,
no, no, that's just too dangerous.
So Matt says, well, what did you do?
He goes, well, I got another stunt coordinator.
It's game on, it's game up.
I'm 63.
I hope not to be involved in many more stunts.
I've done a lot of my own fights.
I've done a good share of my own stunt work but again, I hope these guys get what they
need and what they want because it's very, very, very dangerous what they do.
I had a guest a while ago now, English stunt woman, Olivia Jackson and she worked on Resident
Evil 3, I think it was, which I'm assuming was still SAG but they shot in, I think it
was Romania and she's on a motorbike.
She actually had a motocross background.
So she's on a motorbike and going towards the camera on a boom, well, the boom operator
didn't lift it up for the kind of over the head shot and she slammed into it at God knows
how fast it literally ripped.
Her arm was still attached but everything internally, the blood vessels, I think they
were able to reattach but all the nerves were severed.
I mean, all kinds of damage and she's an amazing woman.
She's gone back to martial arts and riding and all kinds of things but I mean, completely
life catastrophic life changing injuries to the point where her arm was numb so she opted
to have it cut off.
It was still, you know, had blood supply and everything but it's just annoying.
I can't feel anything, I can't do anything with it.
It's never going to work again.
So she's got to amputate it.
Yeah.
So that was the big thing I think with the stunt world was the protection, like the insurance.
If something goes wrong, do you have our back?
And I think it's certainly in that production, she was kind of left high and dry somewhat.
So yeah, this is the dark side of the stunt world.
Yeah, there is a dark side, especially when you're off campus, like you're not shooting
in Culver City or, you know, one of the studios or one of the lots, you're in Sofia, Bulgaria,
the guy says action, you know, and they blow up 50 canisters of plaster and gasoline mimicking
a B-52 arc like strike.
You know, I've seen that and I just thought to myself, Jesus, something's wrong.
These explosions are way too big.
But those explosions that I'm speaking of happened in actually Thailand and they were
replicating a B-52 strike.
What did I expect?
Were they within the parameters and the boundaries and the safety issues of OSHA?
I don't think so.
I think they were just, you know, it was unbelievable.
My third night on RoboCop, Robo comes into a command center.
He points his hand at something.
It's going to spray gasoline at this command poster display and it's going to ignite it.
What happened is I walked in and I pointed my hand where this spigot comes out, but some
of the spray bounced off this partition and back onto me.
And the effects guy is like he's hiding behind something going three, two, one, and he ignites
it and I go up in flames.
Well, the only thing that was exposed was my mouth, but I didn't shave for a week.
I had no hair in my nose.
I had some blistering and they put me out pretty quick.
The UFC judge, I'm going to say his name, his name is Douglas Crosby and I did a fire
gag in a movie where the spigot was here and I was breathing fire out of my mouth.
I was playing a timeless, ageless monster who lived on an island off the coast of Iceland.
Julie Christie, Helen Mirren, Sarah Polly were all in this film.
It was called the unbelievable, it was called No Such Thing.
Anyway, three, two, one, the monster breathes fire.
I had all this effects makeup and hairspray.
Nobody counted on it.
My whole head went up.
James, I literally went down to editing months later because I wanted to know how fast Douglas
Crosby, the stunt coordinator, got, he got like about 15 feet across the room with a
towel and wrapped it around my head, knocking me over.
He jumped across the table to do it and he got to me in less than one second because
there's 42 frames per second and he got to me in 23 frames because I was counting and
you just see him and you see my head go up, boom, and he's right there.
I told this story like last weekend to his son.
So yeah, it can be dangerous.
It can be foolishly so, foolishly because you're not curing cancer.
You're not creating world peace.
You're just making a movie and to become injured like that is just foolish.
I did a stunt show.
It's still going in Orlando and it was a good show to watch and it was an awesome show to
learn how to be a stunt performer because it was a pirate show.
So there was rope swings and sword fights and high falls and there wasn't any fire in
that one but we were firing pistols and all kinds of stuff.
But one of the guys that I worked with, we did this big sword fight on the mast.
I think it was like almost 30 feet in the air and you had a little circus loop.
So you would still fall but you'd be hanging on by your wrist because that's going to feel
super awesome.
But anyway, he made it back off that but then tripped on the rigging, bounced off the crow's
nest and then went down into the high fall pit but missed the pad, hit the concrete on
the way and landed on his back and he broke his back but not to the point where he actually
severed the spinal cord so he ultimately healed again.
But like you said, for a dinner theater show that we got paid, what do we get?
Something like fucking $60 a show or something.
I don't think, was the risk worth the reward?
Probably not but this is the thing is that there are places out there that treat their
people like gold and then there's the rest of the entertainment industry where corners
are cut and safety is maybe kind of disregarded a little bit.
So yeah, that was the one.
I was amazed.
It was like an hour and a half of solid stunts as well.
I mean, you were fighting and running around for 94 minutes, sometimes like two, three
times a night if it was a Christmas season.
So yeah, I mean, kudos to all the live action theme park and dinner show stunt people out
there because yeah, they're the unspoken heroes I think at the stunt world.
I think they are because they come up with some crazy shit themselves.
You know what I mean?
When you see some of these, I was just in Tombstone, not just in August I believe and
I watched a street battle there.
It was pretty good.
I was telling a story during Tombstone during the shoot at the OK Corral.
I have my right hand extended way far away from me and I'm bringing my chin over to the
right side because I have a double load squib on the shoulder and I want it to project out
that way.
Three, two, one, action.
Bang, bang and I have my, you know, away from it.
They packed the squibs on this side.
Bang.
So that was bad.
I had to agree to a double load above the heart because it can be dangerous.
I said, if it's going to just spray out that way, it will be fine.
I'll keep my head away.
Packed on the wrong shoulder.
So that was, they fired that fellow though.
One of the other actors said, Burke, he was on a plane going home before you hit the ground.
It was just really inexcusable.
But there's so many stories, depending on how long your life is in this business, you
have plenty of stories.
Like myself, if you're playing military or police officers, somebody joked recently,
they said, Burke, you'll probably be chasing the bad guy from a wheelchair at this point
because, you know, as an actor who plays characters who are in the police department, those types
of things are always running after somebody, but anyway, those days are coming to an end
too, I suppose.
It was interesting talking to Steve off camera, you know, off mic, you know, the backstory
of some of the tragedies we have on the set.
Obviously, you know, the Alex Baldwin film most recently, and I'm not going to disclose
what was discussed, but, you know, you see the bigger picture and you see how avoidable
it was and lack of communication and again, shortcuts, you know, Brandon Lee and some
of these other ones.
And that's what actually Universal did a good job.
They hired, I think it was Brolin Productions?
I got the name wrong.
Anyway, the same guy has been teaching me for 22 years and they're so diligent and they
tell some of the stories and it doesn't matter if it's a rubber gun or whatever, you're not
ever pointing it towards someone.
And God forbid you are actually firing around like the Terminator show we used to.
Terminator is, you know, supposed to be 45 degrees from T1000, which I was, so you're
taking that shot, but you know, you get some nervous new guy and it starts getting a bit
close.
So you realize, yeah, all it takes is just one momentary lapse of concentration on a
set and it could be life or death.
Yeah, that wattage that's packed into a full loaded blank will just, you know, blow your
skin off or your skull or whatever it is that's in front of it.
I don't really, I'm not going to really speak to Alec or Rust.
I wasn't there.
I would only let those who have worked with me in the countless, you know, firearm scenes
that I've been in speak to my attitude and my, you know, the way I conduct myself with
firearms.
Absolutely.
Well, you mentioned about having subject matter experts on Rescue Me.
I watched a film not too long ago since we last talked called Paramedic and it would
have been a great film.
Jake Gyllenhaal was in it and the idea was these two bank robbers hijacked an ambulance
and that was their getaway.
It was kind of like speed.
You're in the ambulance for most of the film, but they must not have asked any real paramedic
to actually come and advise.
So this woman is, I mean, the dialogue is absolutely fucking nauseating for a start,
but also she's doing compressions while he's still got a jacket on, you know, a vest and
just everything was wrong.
So talk to me about that.
You know, what's the magic combination that some films get it right with the right people
and why does some production still refuse to get the real people on and add some authenticity
to it?
I've been very lucky with the consultants that have been hired.
In a lot of my experiences, 90% of my experiences, I've had the top, top, top people.
You know, I talked to you, I just mentioned that B-52 strike that they were trying to
simulate.
That was from an HBO film called Bright Shining Lie that we did.
Bill Paxton was the lead.
He was playing John Paul Vann, which was a civilian two-star general, civilian two-star
general in the later parts of the Vietnam War.
Bill was a great buddy of mine and we think about him all the time.
There was a colonel named Richard Cassidy.
He's mentioned in the book.
The book Bright Shining Lie was by Neil Sheehan.
It won the Pulitzer Prize recounting this particular man, John Paul Vann's actions
and life during the Vietnam War.
Anyway, we were out there in Chiang Rai and we're stimulating a B-52 strike and, you know,
here comes the NBA and boom, boom, boom, boom, boom.
And I turned to Colonel Cassidy, who is the senior ranking expatriate in, was it Bangkok?
Yeah, he lived in Bangkok.
I said, so Colonel, you know, is this, I mean, are we getting it at all?
Are we close?
And he goes, what?
And I said, like, is this somewhat like it was in Doctau in 1972?
He goes, oh no, no, no, it's nothing like that.
So, wait a minute, you're supposed to be here informing.
You're like, oh no, you kids are having a ball.
I'm not going to say anything.
So there's that side of it, you know.
But then there's other sides of it like Captain Dale Dye, who worked with Oliver Stone and
he would have a boot camp if you were playing a young Marine or soldier or whatever type
of military service you were in.
He wanted you holding the rifle absolutely properly, sighting it properly, everything
about what you were doing absolutely properly and authentically.
Because in his eyes, as not only a former Marine, captain, combat decorated, Purple
Heart recipient, multiple Purple Heart recipient, he's also an actor and an artist, do you know
what I mean?
So he understands that the whole amalgam of the two, his consultation and the script and
the story is art, you know, and homage.
You're paying tribute, you're paying honor to the men who fought in that war, that they
were wanted to be there, did not want to be there, believed in it, did not.
Besides the fact, we're telling a story here and so we want to get it as authentically
as possible.
So Dale Dye, I learned so much from him in terms of dedication to playing it right, but
doing a lot of the military stuff.
So I've had a lot of military consultants.
When I was playing General James Mattis in Generation Kill, and I was really nervous
about that, I had wanted to play this other Colonel, part went to somebody else and I
didn't think I was going to be in the series.
Then they called, they said, well, would you play James Mattis?
And I said, no, I think I'm a little too young and that would be dishonorable.
And they said, no, everybody signs off on you.
So I show up in Namibia, Southwest Africa, my fourth, third time being in that country,
and I'm on the Chao Line at lunch and there's this jacked Marine who's in the book.
He was a scout sniper recon Marine named Rudy Reyes.
And Rudy goes, yo, who are you?
I said, I'm Robert Burke.
And he goes, who are you playing?
I said, General Mattis.
Motherfuck, oh fuck, fuck, all right, bro, you look.
So he was all about me, but I was like, okay.
This is the day that I'm shooting this scene in Nasiriyah and they're simulating mortar
strikes.
The first Marine division is bottlenecked.
There's a problem.
It is a historic day in this operation because this is the day that a very revered Marine
Colonel is being relieved of duty by myself, by my character.
And then you have like eight, 10 Marines who were actually in the book, who were actually
there on that day with their arms crossed watching you perform.
And you're thinking, okay, actor boy, how do you play James Mattis?
So I just started barking very similar to how I am on the fire ground, to tell you the
truth, when things are not going properly.
But everybody was a consultant on that job because everybody's mentioned in the book,
generation kill, first Marine division going into Baghdad, Operation Rocket Freedom.
And so from that to like detectives, I had a guy, Jimmy Bodner, he does Blacklist, he
does a lot of shows, former Brooklyn homicide detective, guy's seen it all, done it all.
And I'm doing a scene where I knock on this woman's door and she opens the door, I put
my foot in the door.
I'm like, hey, is you know, Joey Smith live here?
And she's like, no, he's not here and everything.
So he didn't show up yet on the set.
And I forget he was delayed for some reason.
And then finally on the third take, I put my foot in the door, you know, just so she
doesn't close it.
And it cut.
And I'm like, Bobby, yeah, I'm Jimmy Bodner.
Hey, Jimmy, how you doing?
I just drove all the way in the Queens just to tell you to put your foot in the door and
you put your foot in the door anyway.
Okay, brother.
So it's like, you never know.
These little tweaks, these little things that inform your character, the authenticity of
what you're doing.
I like it.
I like to find out these things.
But again, I've been very lucky with consultants one after the other in a lot of films that
I've done.
I find it interesting to meet these people.
Joe Pistone, Donnie Borosco himself.
We worked with him on a show called Falcone.
I got to be friends with him personally.
The last time I was ever in the World Trade Center was in May of 2001.
Lou Schillero was the retiring boss of the New York FBI office and Joe calls me.
He's like, hey, you beat my date.
Come on, throw a suit on.
So I get down, I get off the elevator.
There's 800 FBI agents in me and they all know I'm not an FBI agent because they all
seem to know each other.
But he was just, it was fascinating to find out.
Here he is, Donnie Borosco, one undercover in this crime family and successfully to the
point where there's old timers in this crime family who went to their grave not believing
he was an FBI agent, just won't hear it.
He was Donnie.
He was a good fellow.
He was not an FBI agent.
That's how good this guy was.
So Joe is still teaching at Quantico and these types of places, lecturing and fascinating
to meet these type of people in my career work.
Amazing.
Is he still alive now?
Yeah, I spoke to him just a couple of weeks ago.
Oh, good.
Actually, I sent him a message on something the other day.
It's not his name anymore.
We used to joke when we were shooting a television show and we'd be all going to dinner somewhere
and there was a hit still out on them.
There was a contract.
Maybe some young Turk wants to make his bones in the mafia and maybe he takes out and we
say, Joe, walk a little bit ahead of us.
But a gentleman, consummate professional, brave.
You can't even define what this guy brought to his dedication in the Federal Bureau of
Investigation and did a lot of good, I think.
Locking a lot of people up.
I wonder if he'd be interested in doing a podcast.
I'll ask him.
That'd be a hell of a story in a long time since the film.
Yeah, but people remember it.
It's part of the culture, I think.
That aspect of undercover, when you think of undercover, it's a go-to immediately.
How many people went that successfully undercover and almost had it blow up a couple of times.
Yeah.
I had Jay Dobbins on.
He was the one that infiltrated the Hells Angels.
Amazing story.
Oh, amazing.
It's a great story because then it was ATF after all the stuff he did and the danger
he put himself and his family in.
Let's just say he was not well supported by his department after it all went tits up.
So a little organizational betrayal going on there too.
Wow.
Yeah.
I remember when I showed up with Joe at the World Trade Center at this dinner and it was
like you showed up with Babe Ruth or Lou Gehrig.
His whispers, living hero.
That's the term, living hero.
Because usually heroes are not living.
But yeah, he continues to be very impressive.
Well, you mentioned Dale Dye.
I can't remember if we talked about this in the first interview, but I worked with Dale.
He did the same thing.
We had a bootcamp for the Terminator show in Osaka, Japan.
So it was him and then Julia was our, not our director.
I forget what term.
We had a director, Adam Bizarre, but then Julia was second in command and was one that
we spent most of the time with.
So we did this kind of mini two-day bootcamp with Dale.
So we got to do all the cadence stuff and then separate it into our roles and everything.
So I had him on the show when I started this podcast and it was incredible.
Oh, Dale?
Yes.
And then he came back on because he's just wrapped up his new kind of Band of Brothers
series, the next one that they're doing.
So now this is all ramping up again.
I got to reach out and see if he wants to come on.
But yeah, amazing.
I stood in a bar in Osaka years ago hearing Vietnam stories for him.
I have a story I can tell you, but I'll tell it to you off camera.
Okay.
Well, the other one you mentioned was Rudy, Rudy Reyes.
He was on the show as well.
It's funny because you watch your show, Generation Kill, Fruity Rudy and everything.
But that is probably one of the nicest human beings I've ever met.
I mean, spiritual and the way he is physically.
But who he is is not what you think when you first see this model looking dude.
But yeah, another amazing human being and so humble after the role that he played too.
My fire department for 14 years did what we refer to as a warrior appreciation event.
We worked with Wounded Warrior, Wounded Warrior Project, Vet Hack, different organizations.
Actually we now only work with organizations that don't pay their staff.
But I remember one time I emailed Rudy, I said, because we would get together, we would
have Generation Kill, mini reunions in Manhattan, Chance Kelly would come down.
A couple of the other actors whose names are escaping me, Peter Sarsgaard, and we'd all
get together.
But I texted Rudy and I said, hey, listen, we're doing this warrior appreciation event,
July 14th, I don't know if you're in New York area.
And I never heard back from him.
And then the day comes and we had a little parade for them and then an event where they
could eat and go to different bars and just have a day out at the beach.
All of a sudden the event is kicking off and I see this dude standing by a garbage can
looking at his phone.
It's Rudy.
I'm like, dude, what are you doing?
He's like, hey, what's up?
I was like, you made it.
He goes, and he looked at me like the innocence of a child.
And he goes, yeah, of course I made it.
And the organizer was this former Marine named Gene Wu.
And he goes, Gene's my brother.
Of course I'd make it.
Like the fact that I would even begin to question would he make it or not was absurd.
And I remember that moment, the dedication, like he flew from like, I think Kansas City
to LA, LA to somewhere, somewhere in New York to make this event.
And he was on time.
So yeah, Rudy is, and it was a great event.
We had a blast.
We had a great time.
He had a great time.
I was proud of my department, you know, but he is, and we've been watching him on his
new show, Special Ops, I believe it is.
Yeah, SAS, who dares wins, I think it is.
Is that right?
Yeah, my wife says, maybe if they have a geriatric, you know, part, you could go.
You could go.
Anyway, yeah, but yeah, like, but where would I ever like really get to meet a Rudy Reyes
except to, you know, in this life of being an actor and being on different sets.
And truthfully, one of the things I love about acting is when I get to do something that's
historic, you know, then you really get to jump in and read what happened, who they were,
what they were like, what they experienced.
And every time I've ever done a war movie, not one time has anybody ever shot at me in
anger so you can act all you like, but you're never ever, ever, ever going to know what
it's like.
I talk to people who have been shot at the indignant indignity of it.
It's like, why is that dude, you know, it's this crazy mind thing where somebody's trying
to take your life and that's a whole other jump off.
You know, you can act all you like, but you're never going to get there somehow.
But I'm just always in awe of, you know, I remember getting off the plane in Thailand
in the heat and I'm like, how can anybody, I can't even, you know, my tummy doesn't feel
good.
But nobody's shooting at me.
I could barely breathe.
One of the years I was in Thailand, there were these crazy fires and the sun was always
gone and smoke everywhere, but it was even the Thai people were passing out.
It was particularly hot that particular year.
I'm just meandering and babbling now.
Sorry, James.
No, you're fine.
I was just turning over my shoulder because my dog had pushed away into my office and
my son just took her out again.
She was making all kinds of noise in the background.
What kind of dog do you have?
German Shepherd.
Yeah.
Oh, nice.
She's amazing.
Actually, that's kind of a good segue.
I just came back and we were touching on it before we hit record, but I just came back
from England and I went back to take care of my daddy, had full knee replacement.
He was on his own, so kind of met him in London, staying with his brother's apartment.
So there for a couple of days, drove him all the way back to his home and then some other
stuff happened anyway.
So I finally kind of get him settled, get on the plane in London and doors are closed.
We're getting ready to push off and I see commotion.
I got my headphones on and I look in front of me, people are kind of just doing abnormal
things.
So I take my headphones off and then I look back and there's a whole crowd around this
area.
For anyone listening, okay, we know what it looks like when there's a thing going on.
So I kind of ran back there.
The lady right in front of me was like, I'm a nurse and I was like, okay, I'm a paramedic,
expecting to be flooded with other-
Eustincable episode.
Exactly.
Yeah.
So, and I've done that before.
I've been a medic on a plane before.
Interesting, because when they say, is there a doctor, lots of people put their hands up,
but then you realize that a doctor in dentistry or podiatrist may not be the right person
for an emergency.
But anyway, this was a legit cardiac arrest guy face-plotting in the aisle.
So I think I was the only one from an emergency background at all on the entire plane.
The nurse was helping, she was checking the pulse.
And then there's another guy that kind of found his way on one of the seats and did
compressions for a little bit, but ended up running this code with a bunch of people that
never really done this before with very limited equipment because bless the crew of this plane.
And they had to ask permission to open each piece of equipment.
So that delayed things too.
So initially, it handed just a bag of, I mean, sort of a bag of a non-rebreather and a tank
that only went up to four liters a minute.
So I'm like, well, this is not going to work.
So we're doing what we need to do, but slowly equipment starts filtering in and the people
around were incredible for the lack of experience with this kind of thing.
The AD was put on properly.
We went through our sequences without being too specific.
Then fire arrived initially and in England fire are not EMS as well, but they do have
a BLS training.
I ended up dragging this poor gentleman up into the galleys.
We have more space to work, carried on then working in, then the medic showed up.
And so I think I want to say it was like 20 minutes in of working CPR on a plane that
I finally, the medics are ready, the airways in place and okay, I think I need to step
back so you guys can do what you do now.
Yeah.
But that was it.
And it was the most jarring experience because if we were running a call, we'd clean up our
gear, we'd shoot the shit a little bit, we'd pack everything up.
Maybe we would get time to go to actually go back to the station.
Then you talk about it maybe over the dinner table.
But all I did was go to the airplane bathroom, wash the blood off my hands and then go take
my seat again.
And it was really, really weird.
And then time goes on.
They were incredible.
And I could see that a lot of the crew were shaken.
Two of them went home because we hadn't actually left yet.
And then the rest of them, they cleaned up and then they started serving tea and sandwiches
and everything for 10 hours and I was blown away.
And I did actually did a post on my social media today about this whole story because
I wanted to give credit to the people working that weren't paid to see horrible shit like
we are.
But you could see they were shaken.
So I got to kind of talk to them and gave them my information and everything too.
But then the next couple of days, it really shook me.
And I was like, wow, this is so fucking weird.
I did this for 14 years.
Like as you know, in the book, one shift was three separate dead people.
One was on fire, another one was rotting in the woods, a homeless person.
And that was just like, oh well, that was a shit shift.
On as we go.
But now five years later, without that support structure, without a group of trained people
around you, without a box or a bag that you know every single compartment pocket, you
know, you've got meds, you've got your algorithms, everyone's kind of doing their part.
It was a whole load of imposter syndrome questioning.
They put in a thing called a gel, an eye gel.
It's a BLS airway.
I'd never seen it before.
So I'm like, am I bagging the right ratio now?
I'm assuming it's every six, not 30 to two.
You know, with the compression, did we stop too long?
But then, you know, after the next day or two, I'm like, no, we did what we could.
Everything went right considering, but you didn't have that group.
So what I did in this video was what I realized, this is what it feels like to lose a person.
Normally, this is how it's supposed to feel.
He expired?
Yeah, I don't think he made it.
No, it was one of those things, to be fair, when you're doing a lot of this, you can tell
if someone's possibly savable and someone's already like, so gone.
Or they have that artificial pulse.
But you know, it's just the chemicals and the telemetry keeping them.
Exactly.
So that's kind of what it was.
But a really interesting perspective was when we are in the job and a call bothers us, we're
like, what the fuck is wrong with me?
And it's like, and it made me realize, oh, that's how you're supposed to feel.
Actually, the fact that we can clean up after a call, knowing that dispatch is going to
bang us out to another one after we just scraped a 15 year old gunshot victim off the floor
or slayed a gangbanger with all his intestines in an ER, and you wash your shit up and then
you go out and do it again.
That's abnormal.
And so when you get those little moments of something bothering you, that's your humanity
peering through that gap and going, hey, you're still human, by the way.
So I did a little video just to kind of tell that story because five years later, having
not worn the uniform with none of the support structure that we have around us, it was crazy.
And I leaned into all the healthy cocoa mechanisms that I have and did Newcombe a couple of times.
I spent time with my dog and my son and two days later we're good again.
But it was really powerful.
And the reason I'm segueing into this long old monologue about my plane flight is that
I can imagine that parallels probably the volunteer fire service more so than the career
fire service.
The short answer would be yes.
The first time I did compressions, I worked the guy 31 minutes.
I think I lost five pounds of weight.
We were up in an attic.
It was over 90 degrees in the attic.
County police officer is like, dude, I'll take over.
I was like, I was just like, and then the next day at the firehouse, I just happened
to be there in these two.
They were marshals.
They're like, is Robert Burke here?
I was like, yeah, they're like, hey, Rob, I'm Joe.
I'm Jim.
I was like, hi.
They're like, so how are you feeling?
I was like, what?
They're like, how are you feeling?
And I was like, I'm fine.
Why?
They're like, well, we heard you had a, you know, a arrest yesterday and you worked pretty
hard.
And I'm like, oh, you guys are here.
So I said, and I was truthful.
I said, I'm fine.
And then they relaxed and they were funny.
They're like, oh, that's good.
Yeah.
He's, you know, what are you, Jimmy?
You're over 16 with compressions, right?
Yeah.
No, he's never said that.
And then they started being funny.
But and then I had another guy compressions echo, echo call designation.
Go right to the call.
If you're, if you're, and I get in there and girlfriend six, 60 year old girlfriend is
giving compressions, but she's really not, she doesn't seem too enthusiastic about it.
Everybody in the house seems very enthusiastic about this guy on the grass.
And I'm like working him like, you know, a rented mule.
I'm like, not on my watch and he expired.
But those, you know, like it or not, I'm being glib and I don't, not disrespectful, but I'm
just saying those calls, they don't leave your mind.
When you're in a very public compressed place, like an airplane, it's compounded.
You know, people are watching you're out of your element.
If I had my, it's a, you know, there's, there's the dualistic quality of the rescue beast
that's within us.
You know, you're, I'm going to save this guy, but I can't say it's like a bad dream.
I can't say because I don't have my stuff.
I don't have my guys.
I'm not, I'm not on the job anymore.
So that's a really vulnerable place to be.
I think psychically.
Do you ever see the Lucas device that gives compressions by itself?
That's where they took him off the plane with, and I think it was very optimistic to be honest.
That's I think that's the most traumatic traumatizing, even when I see it, I'm like, oh my God, it's
a chong chong chong chong chong chong.
You know, it's funny, my department bought one and within a month we had two saves, two
legit saves with this device, you know, kept the heartbeat and kept the blood flowing.
I just think, you know, your thorax is going to be coming out the back of your head.
But anyway, the fact that you were equipped to, you know, to deal with this because you
never know it takes the can or it takes the lid off, but you never know what's going to
fly out.
You know, a lot of times what flies out with me is resentment that I had, you know, from
former bosses or members, you know, coming at me from the back with the knife, you know,
and that boy I can get up, take a piss at three o'clock in the morning and that's what
I remember.
And you know, it's gotten a lot better, but for a long time, my life was really just not
good mentally surrounding that.
So we have to be really careful, you know.
My friend Pat Brown, who passed away on 9-11, his brother was a firefighter.
His brother was an emergency room physician.
His brother was in New York for some 9-11 thing, takes off in a plane, old lady codes
in the bathroom.
Is there a doctor?
Mike's an ER doctor.
Yeah.
He's an ER, he's giving a this that the other plane lands.
Oh, thank you, doc.
Doc, do you want to wait for a different plane?
We'll put you on a- they put them on a different plane.
James, somebody else had a code on another plane.
Same day.
I thought I was a shit magnet.
I'll send you the article.
My friend Mike Daly used to write for the Daily News, two different planes, same day,
one doctor, two codes.
But Mike was of a- he was a different type of guy.
I don't think those things got to him as much.
Maybe I'm misspeaking, but you know, we didn't laugh about it.
Oh, he was on like Katie Couric had him on the Today Show.
And we were joking.
He had this big mustache.
And if you played his interview at Fast Forward, he looked like Speedy Gonzales, you know,
trying to get out of our- he was so shifty looking.
Did not look like an emergency room physician.
Referred to himself as master of the universe.
You did not die on his watch.
You know, one of these super, you're not dying, baby.
You're going to be fine.
He was a tremendous, tremendous physician.
He passed away October 30th, 2020 of directly, you know, 9-11 directly related cancer.
Yeah.
So I don't know, you got to be very cautious with this business.
You know, you and I are being a little flippant, a little glib.
But we understand the seriousness of it and we accept the seriousness of it.
It's one thing to understand it and say, well, it's over there.
No, no, no.
The scenario you describe, you know, again, if you hadn't been five years away from it,
oh, okay, James is on a plane.
Wow.
He got to work a guy.
But being away from it, not having your guys, it's just that vulnerability that we don't
like that.
And that you, I'm happy for that guy.
He had every chance with somebody like yourself there, but it wasn't meant to be, I suppose
that day.
No.
Well, the other thing was for me, and I talked about this on the show, I don't know if we
discussed it last time, but kind of like that one cop, I'm over whatever, 14 years, I'm
when it comes to cardiac arrest, lots of pre-code saves, you know, and codes that went really
well.
But I had the brain bleeds, the GI bleeds, the shaken babies, the shat stabbings, the
shootings, you know, and every time I showed up like, all right, well, if you're in cardiac
arrest, I hate to tell you, but you're fucked because paramedic James is here and he's
over whatever now.
And so there was a little thing in the back of my mind as well, like, all right, well,
there's another one you didn't save.
And I've talked about this a lot because obviously you're not God.
And that's an important conversation.
Like we are not supposed to save everyone, but we do a disservice in the fire service.
And in paramedicine, when we teach our people, we're like, if James and Bobby go in with
a hose line, do a primary, you know, pull the kid out, every, you know, they made it.
Beautiful.
Good job.
Or mega code, you know, we're going to defibrillate, we're going to push, you know, epi and go
through his algorithm and oh, you got rhythms back.
Beautiful.
Well, that's not what happens most of the time.
Some people are lucky, you know, where I used to work theme park, they had a lot of code
saves because it was witnessed arrest.
But even then five years, not a single one.
But you know, we do kind of set ourselves up for failure too.
And TV and movies are the same, you know, shock and they wake up and they give someone
a hug.
And, you know, when NASA or expectation or the public's expectation, when the reality
is they all die, that is another way that you've got to kind of have an internal dialogue
with and remind yourself, look, you, you can't climb inside that person and unclog their
arteries in their heart or fix their aorta or whatever it is.
You can just do your best.
And I think we talked about this before.
If you train diligently, that will give you some peace.
But if you didn't train, you know that you missed the tube or missed on, you know, missed
a body on a primary surge.
That's when it's going to haunt you even more.
I suppose I don't render medical care.
But I've been around a lot of people who do.
I've watched out a, what is it, the lowest of the low, CFR, certified first responder
class like three times because I had got a job, I had to go, you know.
I had this very venerated CFR teacher in Suffolk County here, you know, it's COVID and we have
the masks on and he looks at me and he's like, is that you again?
I'm like, yeah, it is.
I'm like this, I'm trying to like disguise myself and get through this class.
Once again, I was able to, you know, I'm lucky the people that work here volunteer.
We have a paid paramedic.
They're very top flight people.
You know, they're going to, you're going to get really super good care, concerted, intelligent
care, which is, you know, you know, when we drive for rescue.
The first time I ever jumped in on compressions, I wasn't supposed to be driving, but they
said, let's go.
So I just jumped in and they said, we need to start compressions.
And I said, I'll jump in.
I jumped in.
I started compressing the guy and, you know, I was really self-conscious, you know, like
do it right, you know, make every compression count, you know, and this guy's going to come
back to life.
And he was, you know, he could have been expired for an hour up in that attic.
Who knows?
But you try your best for a favorable outcome.
And the lesson will be if it's favorable, you worked hard and if it's unfavorable, you
tried your best.
Sometimes you do better than your best.
Yeah, exactly.
There was a history channel film.
What was it called?
Dead the Fire, was it?
Anyway, it was a great show, a great film because it had career, paid on call, volunteer.
And there was a volley.
I can't remember what it was.
It was maybe Kentucky or something.
I might get it completely wrong, but they were having, you know, turkey fries to pay
for the engine and all that kind of stuff.
Full on volunteer fire service.
But he made a statement and he goes, every time a firefighter makes entry into a building,
they're taking the same risk.
He's like, sometimes they come out with a kid and I always stuck with me because it's
the same with every time you initiate CPR, every time you try and extricate someone from
a car or, you know, attempt a road rescue, whatever it is, every single time, you know,
you're making that same exact sacrifice.
Now, some people might emerge with a child and end up on, like you said, Katie Couric's
TV show, but we've all got to remember that every single time that we initiate that, it's
worthy and you don't have to emerge with the child, you don't have to do the code save
because you did everything you could to try and mitigate that situation.
And that's what's important.
Two things in Ireland, they don't give medals.
After you put your hand up and put your hand down, everything you do after that is expected
of you.
I love that.
I love that too.
And then I know an awful lot of city guys, FDNY, actually a lot of them are retired now.
I have to accept that I'm 63.
I don't really know as many as I used to.
But we get a job here, multiple structures, not even in our district.
We're just going for mutual aid, but there's nobody there.
So it's our job.
And a city guy will say, how does that work?
How did that work?
The other night.
And I'll tell him.
And he's like listening and he goes, yeah, well, he goes, just remember, he goes, you
have volunteered the fire, isn't it?
You know, and I remember a guy saying that to me, that stuck in my head.
And another guy said, Berkey boy, you'll get killed out there just as quick as, you know,
quicker because it's a communist you are, you know, I joked on a podcast getting salty.
I made some kind of a disparagement, but like, you know, Joey's a florist.
You can't expect him to take a door.
I mean, you know, he's a florist in real life.
It's not very good at forcible entry.
I mean, but you call 911.
You didn't call for flowers.
You want a door taken.
You got to get in.
You got to operate.
I'm lucky the guys and gals that are in our department are pretty, you know, conscientious
and understand that the conditions here while they're, you know, benign in some districts,
you know, a conflagration could happen here very quickly.
That's what's always in my head.
One go, they all go.
And so we train everybody's very good about training attitudinally.
Boy, we had, we had people come in, get through what we call firefighter one and then go right
onto firefighter to sign up for the Joseph DiBernardo seminar, get into the Eckert fire.
He's a Camden guy, runs this very extensive comprehensive training program.
So they're trained, trained, trained, trained, trained, trained, you know, and it's never
going to work.
Training is never going to work against you.
Do you know what I mean?
It's going to work for you.
Composure, taking your time, you know, making it count, whatever your actions are on the
fire ground.
That just comes with time and experience.
But if you're, while you're training, you're cognizant of, you know, real life while you're
responding to automatic fire alarms and you're looking up at the building saying, what if
it was ripping out of those three windows?
What would I do?
You know, I couldn't get, you know, there's, there's hotels here.
When you walk down some of the hallways, both of your shoulders are touching the hall, you
know, both sides of the hall because they've been grandfathered in, they were built in
the twenties or and, and you'd be screwed, you know, you'd be screwed if you got into
a job there, you'd have to like make a hole in the side of the building to get down that
hallway.
So anyway, it's all by way of saying how you want to play the game.
You know, if you want to be as professionally proficient as possible, keep your training
up, keep your bodily, you know, your physicality up.
Huge important issue, I think, and I also stress that, you know, there's a lot of content
out there, how to train to do the job, how to physically stay in shape to do the job
and you should be doing it.
You should be doing it because anything else less to me is irresponsible and it's, it's,
it's, it's like a slap in the face to your brother and sister members.
Absolutely.
Well, I want to hit one more area and then we'll go to some closing questions.
Yeah.
Come out of the strike now.
I know Wakanda Forever was one of the ones you did Boston Strangler somewhat recently.
What can we expect from you in this next year as you kind of wind back up again?
Gosh, I don't know.
They're not going to be cranking anything up significantly between now and the new year.
It just is untenable to think that you can do that unless you have jobs like, you know,
Law and Order, Chicago Fire, Med.
Those types of things are ensconced.
They're a system.
They're a machine.
They just flip the switch and they can turn it on.
For myself, you know, we'll see what comes across in the new year.
Hopefully there'll be some, something interesting that I can get going on.
An old colleague that I started out with, Hal Hartley, will be doing the film in April
called Where to Land with myself, Bill Sage, Edie Falco, Parker Posey.
A lot of the actors and actors, well, the actors who he gave their start to.
We were all colleagues at this one university.
The actors were in the acting conservatory.
He was in the film program and we made films for 30 years.
I did his first film, his third film, his fifth film.
This man, Hal Hartley, if he called me tonight and said, I need you to do a film at two o'clock
in the morning, I would go and do it.
It's all, it's, you know, dark humor, indie kind of quality material, but it's fascinating.
It's high minded.
It's funny as hell.
And a lot of great performers have come out of his work.
So that's going to happen in April.
But other than that, you know, just now the scripts are feeding in mostly indie work.
So I'm reading a lot of stuff, but nothing very good yet.
I'm just trying to keep the bar as high as possible.
Well, I want to move some closing questions.
It's been two years since we chatted.
The first one, is there a book that you love to recommend or books that can be related
to our discussion today or completely unrelated?
I read different things for different reasons.
I read a lot of theology, a lot of megalithic investigation, ancient architecture, history.
I love history, any type of history, American world, Irish mythology.
I just read a book called This is Happiness by Niall Williams.
It talks about electricity coming to this West Clare, County Clare, West Clare town
in Ireland in the early 50s.
It's so reminiscent of the conversations my parents used to have about Ireland because
they left Ireland in the early 50s.
So unless you're like a first generation Irish kid, maybe you wouldn't get such a great kick
out of this.
There's another guy, Kevin Corliss, My Father's Wake, another Irish.
I like rhythms and layers and fabric and textures of literature that I identify with.
Do you know what I mean?
I say do you know what I mean a lot?
But right now I'm reading Strong Men by Ruth Ben-Guyette.
She's a political commentator.
I think she's brilliant.
1619 is behind me.
Thomas Merton, The Seeds of Contemplation.
That's a great one.
Yeah, my wife says a Burke never throws away a book or a picture.
So the pictures are on the phone.
But I don't do Kindle or anything like that.
I buy the book.
I like book.
And you know what, to that point, I have to pick up my reading a little more.
My focus has gotten a little scattered.
The phone, you know, that can take away from the focus of reading.
But I was lucky that my parents and my sisters and my brother, we all were pretty good readers.
And that's where your world, my world opens.
Brilliant.
What about obviously you're in this industry.
What about films and or documentaries that you've loved the last couple of years?
I quite like that Beckham documentary.
That was really good.
I don't know what it was.
I just kept asking the question why?
You know, I'm not a big football.
I'm not a football follower.
You know, I enjoy watching a good football match every once in a year.
But the you know, the British fans, you know, I understand the whole religious aspect to
it and cultural tribe identity and all these types of things.
But man, they pull this poor guy and he has this.
Very hard to describe characteristically what you see is a thing.
He was he was so formulated and put together early on with his father and this game and
these skills that was almost in his DNA.
And so his DNA is coded to just get the football in the net.
And the rest is just this exterior determinant.
It has nothing to do with getting the ball in the net and it's almost in the DNA.
And I love that that he it weighed on him, I'm sure.
Listen, I'm not going to go off on this.
I just thought it was Fisher Stevens did it and it was very well put together.
The tone was very, very, very impressive, I thought, because it was so compelling.
My wife said, do you want to watch this one, I guess.
Then all of a sudden I'm just hooked in.
So when things are possessive of these types of characteristics in a work, in a documentary,
in a painting, in a music, I'm always like, why was I so compelled?
Why was I so focused?
Why was I so hooked?
I always I always find it fascinating to answer those questions.
And then you want more of something like that.
But that's just popped out to me.
Other than that, I can't think of any movies that I've seen.
I've wanted to see, you know, Oppenheimer and I'm trying to think of what else.
I just haven't gotten to see a lot of stuff.
The one with the David Beckham, the one that restruck me was just like you said, you know,
you've got this guy, world class footballer model, you know, all the things.
But then there's one scene, I know it kind of did the rounds on social media, too.
But Victoria Beckham is on a couch being interviewed and talking about her working class upbringing.
And he peers out the door and was like, tell the tell the car that your father drove.
Tell the truth.
Tell it.
And she says, thank you.
And he just seemed like so down to earth.
I was like, I could literally probably be friends with this bloke.
It doesn't seem like a lot of the, you know, the the people that we see chasing the paparazzi,
I'm not saying fame or acting makes you a bad person, but people that chase the fame
is different.
And he's always been he's been on the in the limelight a lot, but he actually seems like
he just wants to just be a bloke.
And I think that's that's really endearing.
And I think that's exactly true.
But you see, what you just spoke to was a moment, a very good moment, a very honest,
genuine, authentic, funny moment.
And Francis Coppola and Martin Scorsese, when they talk about editing and filming, so you
have that moment and now you want another moment attached to that moment that's real
and honest.
And I don't care if a guy's opening a door that it would be genuine and honest and compelling.
The next moment and then all of a sudden you have this string of moments, you know, and
that's what makes for a great work.
When you string them together, you know, there's no gap.
That's when they usually give you those little golden trophies, you know.
But it's very difficult to do.
My mother in her Galway accent used to say to me, Robert, it's going to be a good film.
I'd say, ma, we make the good ones the same way we make the bad ones.
We show up, we try our best, you know.
They'd be like, oh, that was great.
They pat you on the back.
And then, you know, you go to the screening of it and it's like, what?
It's a disaster.
Or you go to say, hey, you know, this is pretty good.
You never really know.
See, sometimes you can get a feeling.
When they were shooting Tombstone, it just was so authentic.
And some of the work that the other actors were doing was just so, like, so unbelievably
good that I felt I said this movie is going to turn out OK, I hope.
And it did through all of the drama and, you know, struggles that went on during that filming.
The director, writer, producer, Kevin Jarre being fired four or five weeks into production.
And then Kurt Russell just begged, borrow, steal anything to push it through.
And he's the unsung hero of that film.
The production, the acting, everything.
He really just dragged it across the finish line.
So yeah, the question is, you know, have I seen anything recently?
And that's about it.
I can't even tell you what I watch.
I watch a lot of basketball, to tell you the truth.
NBA.
I like the NBA.
My son, my younger son got me into that.
So we watch basketball 10 years now.
Well we have already discussed this and I'm not there yet, but I am writing a book that
I want to turn into a series or a film.
So I hope a few years from now we might be discussing, you know, working together and
how we made it happen and all that stuff.
Because I am determined.
Like to me, the way that you access the minds of most of us in the West is through the screen.
And you know, you hear Bander Brothers, you hear Tombstone, you hear Platoon, you know,
all these stories that really grab someone's heart and they couldn't turn away.
I feel like the fire service is due a story that's compelling that educates people on
what we do today, but also highlights other areas that we see that most people never get
to see, you know, the lens that we have.
So yeah, I'm putting it out there publicly now, but that's my goal one day is to have
a conversation down the road and have it already put out.
Well, they've seen a lot of it, but they haven't really seen any of it.
You know, a lot of what they're shown is not the job.
I mean, a lot of what they're shown is not the job.
There's one show, no matter what the commercial for the show is, I always yell from the kitchen,
it's gonna blow.
And then one of the actors goes, watch out, it's gonna blow.
It could be anything.
I mean, no matter what the call is, it could be a cardiac arrest and something's gonna
explode.
It's always exploding.
I'm like, you know, I find that to be troublesome.
You know, it's just like, you want to just scream.
It's like, that's not, that's, you know, and there are ways to show it.
I think, you know, you sit down in a production meeting and you say, okay, you know, we have
a trapped mother and daughter, you know, how are we going to show this?
And if you want to show it realistically, I think it's really easy.
You know, some kid fumbling to get a space mask on, you know, properly and sliding down
the stairs because the first line has already opened up and he's the only one who knows
they're in that room.
And you know, the rescue guys are blocking the, you know, there's a myriad of ways to
show how potentially this rescue can be affected dramatically and realistically.
But usually it never portrayed that way.
Usually it's portrayed like they say in a Hollywood way.
And funny enough, ironically enough, the ones we remember are the ones that are portrayed
realistically.
Do you know Jason Patton?
Have you had him?
Yes, I have.
Yep.
Yeah.
So he does this, you know, the Instagram, the satirical sketches about first responders,
fire service paramedics and stuff.
And it's hilarious because he's going way over the top, but you know what?
It's all real.
It's all true.
It's all based in reality, but he's going so over the top.
And then he does a critique of certain of these shows where, you know, he'll stop the
camera and he'll interject, hey, why don't you just open up the hose?
You know, your problems will go away.
So he's really, really funny with his, you know, cut up of certain of these shows that
just don't really have any basis at all, even remotely in the reality of fire service, fire
response, fire ground operations.
Like not even remotely.
Every once in a while, yeah, but how many kids are you going to, you know, come out
of the building running with, you know?
How about if somebody's 400 pounds and, you know, they're in the stairwell with you, then
what does it look like?
It doesn't look so heroic, dramatic and heroic.
No, it's very sloppy.
It's very scary.
It's very horrible.
But that's the job.
That's the job.
You know?
Absolutely.
Well, yeah, we will see.
Watch this space.
But, all right, well then the next question, I'm pretty sure I asked you this and you've
sent me some people as well, but since the last couple of years, is there a person you
recommend to come on this podcast as a guest to speak to the first responders, military
and associate your professions with the world?
Who you haven't had on already?
Gosh, I'd have to think.
I'd have to think about that.
You haven't had Dennis.
Dennis Leary?
Not yet.
Yeah.
See, I don't even know if he does first responder or firefighter.
He's very humble.
He's always said, you know, I'm just the face, you guys do the job.
But he's been around the fire service for a long time since the Worcester Cold Storage
Fire.
This man has shaken the hands and stood by and given emotional support to so many people.
You have no idea.
I mean, it's just overwhelming to tell you the truth.
I'm not even sure if he's cognizant of all the help and I say emotional support and,
you know, the laughter and the comedian and the comic aspect of it.
But his fire service and all the money and all the material and all the training that
he's supported over the years has gotten, you know, his service, I mean, this is going
on over, you know, it's almost, it's over two decades.
Never got mission fatigue.
Never said, you know what, I think I've had enough.
I'm not going to do it anymore.
Just let it die on the vine.
With Dennis, it's exactly the opposite.
He keeps up in the ante.
Like seven or eight years ago, it's like, Burke, we're not having a fucking dinner anymore.
We're going to have people come to the FDNY Academy and bust their ass.
I'm like, okay.
Like, that's what happened.
So now he invites executives and companies and you pay X amount and you push a line and
you repel and you drag, you know, the dummy out and you, you know, knock down three, four
rooms of real fire.
You know, you respond to subway emergencies, MVA extrication, you know, using the tools.
So his concept was, you know, it's easy to write a check, but if you've actually had
the cutters and, you know, you sweat all day long at the fire Academy, next time you hear
a siren, you've got a little more skin in the game.
You know what I mean?
He's very, very, very sensitized and cognizant to what goes into being a first responder.
So he is a guy, I cannot say enough, you know, in the fire service community, he's venerated
and again, you know, you wouldn't think he, you wouldn't say he's a humble guy because
I don't think he's aware.
I don't think he sits down and thinks about it to tell you the truth.
He just keeps doing it.
And for any man to never have fatigued because I've seen it, I've seen it with veterans,
I've seen it with a lot of different people who, you know, their intentions are good,
but they flame out, they get fatigued.
They don't want, I did my piece.
That's not been his experience.
He just keeps pushing it more and more and more.
And yeah, so I would think he would be a great guest.
Beautiful.
Yeah.
And I'm working on a few and, you know, obviously that would be amazing.
If we made it happen again, like you said, very busy and pulled a thousand ways, but
I think him, obviously Steve Buscemi, you know, Gary Sinise, some of these people that
have been so embedded in fire and military, you know, it would be great to hear some of
their stories.
Because like you said, they are humble, but I don't think they realize how grateful our
communities are for what they've done.
So it wouldn't be a, and what was it like?
Horace Gump, it would actually be, you know, talk to me about, and how did you become this
amazing human when so many people are self-serving and you've been altruistic with the opposition?
Those are the kind of views I'd love to hear.
Yeah.
You two great examples, Steve Buscemi and Gary Sinise.
Gary played Lieutenant Dan and probably met a bunch of wounded veterans and disabled veterans.
And then just, you know, something probably clicked, you know, and I totally identify
with that.
He has been, I can't even say enough about, I used to think there was six or seven of
the guy, cause one minute he's in Afghanistan, the next minute he's building a house in,
you know, Pennsylvania, the next minute, you know, he would just seem to be everywhere,
really super effective, getting a lot done.
And again, no mission fatigue keeps up in the ante.
And the same thing with Steve Buscemi and his work with friends of firefighters.
He always turns out for Dennis Leary at the FDNY Academy each year.
And yeah, I think, you know, when you're directly affected sometimes by loss, you know, you
have to make sense of the loss and that's what informs, you know, Dennis lost his cousin,
Jeremiah Lucy and, you know, his good friend firefighter Spade.
And yeah, so that loss, you have to make sense of it.
And action is a good way to make sense.
You know, you can say, oh, I miss Jimmy.
Well, yeah, you know, maybe you can show me how much you miss him rather than tell me.
And all those men, Leary, Sinise and Buscemi are men of action, I believe.
Absolutely.
All right.
Well, then the last question before we make sure people know where to find you, what do
you do to decompress these days?
I'm at the firehouse a lot.
I have contractors who drive by and say, hey, Bob, I'll give you a job.
I'll pay you to do it.
I train, I work out a lot.
Decompression.
I'm going to let the ocean get a few more degrees colder and then we'll go for swims,
winter swims.
I like doing that.
I started doing that with my sons.
Decompress.
Well, I live on the coast of the Atlantic Ocean, you know, and all I got to do is go
outside and walk on that beach and you know, you're decompressed.
Yard work, housework, carpentry, that type of stuff.
But I like the service.
Like we were just in the firehouse.
We're getting this new bay door and the place is a wreck.
We're cycling off engines for maintenance.
Put together these new racks for our gear, you know, and how to transport everybody's
gear properly onto the new racks and just, you know, just being over there working and
doing stuff.
I really enjoy it.
It's fun.
It's community.
It's fellowship.
It's a little bit of ball-breaking.
So, it's a lot of fun.
It's a lot of fun.
Beautiful.
Well, for people listening, where are the best places to find you online?
James Comey, the former head of the FBI said the internet is like a large dark parking
lot.
It's like, you know, that you should be very wary about walking.
So, I don't really push that aspect.
You find me, you find me.
Yeah, I'm, you know, very circumspect about a lot of it.
You know, it's, oh, Jimmy has a hundred thousand followers.
Yeah, well, you know, 70,000 of them are robots, you know, it's like or bots.
It's a very strange prospect.
So, I try to keep my foot on the brake.
Beautiful.
Well, I want to thank you so much.
It's been another great conversation, arguably better than the one that we deleted.
Yeah, well, yeah, we'll see.
What happened?
I can't remember.
I was exhausted.
I remember that day.
And I remember just trying to come up with answers and I just wasn't feeling myself.
Yeah, well, I wasn't on the other end.
I forget now.
I think I'd done a load of recordings prior to, I think, going and knowing I was going
to be gone for a few weeks.
And so, I had front loaded as well.
So, it was just both of us being tired.
This is a beautiful thing about this.
We can have a great conversation.
It doesn't matter if it's recorded or not.
You want to do another one?
Yeah, let's do another one.
That code was out of Heathrow or Gatwick?
Heathrow, yeah.
Heathrow.
Jeez, the waist.
And what airline were you flying?
Virgin, Virgin Atlantic.
And they, again, amazing respect to all the men and women that were on there.
Two went home and respect to them for knowing that they needed to go boo their families
at that point.
And then again, huge respect for people that stayed.
And then, huge respect to the people on the plane too, because from what they told me,
the people that were working, they said that the whole passenger group, everyone was super
understanding and pathetic as well.
So, I got to see humanity that day.
And a little part of the video I made was like, that's humans.
That's what we're supposed to be.
We need community, not division.
Boy, is that true.
Yeah.
Wow.
What an experience to have had.
But you did your part during that day.
So good man.
Good man.
You could have just sat in your seat and just said, I'm not in the game anymore, but you
didn't.
Yeah.
I don't think we have that capacity in this job.
That's why I never say I'm a retired firefighter.
If you pass a wreck or a kid's choking, you're not going to be like, well, I'm collecting
my pension, which I don't have, by the way.
But if I did.
My wife was like, we can't have one more fire extinguisher in our car.
I've got the whole rescue Randy set up in mind.
Yeah.
She said the lithium ion, they're impervious to chem anyway.
So it's like, unless you're carrying copious amounts of water, you're not going to be
effectual.
But anyway, well, James, really good to speak with you and glad your father is doing better
and that you were able to be there for him, super important and glad you're doing okay
as per the fallout from that plane ride.