Denis Leary: No Cure for Cancer (1993 TV Special)

Denis Leary: Self

Photos 

Quotes 

• Denis Leary : Smoking takes ten years off your life. Well it's the ten worst years, isn't it folks? It's the ones at the end! It's the wheelchair, kidney dialysis, adult diaper fucking years. You can have those years! We don't want 'em, alright?

• Denis Leary : I recently read an interview in Rolling Stone, where he advocated that people should not do drugs, KEITH RICHARDS said that we should not do drugs. Keith, we can't do anymore drugs, BECAUSE YOU ALREADY FUCKIN' DID THEM ALL! There's none left, we have to wait until you die so we can smoke you're ashes, alright!

• Denis Leary : Stevie Ray Vaughan is dead, and we can't get Jon Bon Jovi onto a fucking helicopter!

• Denis Leary : [about cigarettes]  The filter's the best part. That's where they put the heroin.

• Denis Leary : Remember Jim Fixx? The big famous jogging guy? Jogged fifteen miles a day. Did a jogging book. Did a jogging video. Dropped dead of a heart attack when? When he was fucking jogging, that's when!

• Denis Leary : Happiness comes in small doses folks. It's a cigarette butt, or a chocolate chip cookie or a five second orgasm. You come, you smoke the butt you eat the cookie you go to sleep wake up and go back to fucking work the next morning, THAT'S IT! End of fucking list!

• [about people who complain that their lives haven't turned out the way they wanted] 

  Denis Leary : Hey, join the fucking club! I thought I was going to be the starting center fielder for the Boston Red Sox! Life sucks, get a fucking helmet, alright?

• Denis Leary : We live in a country where John Lennon takes six bullets in the chest, Yoko Ono was standing right next to him, not ONE FUCKING BULLET! Explain that to me God!

• Denis Leary : It doesn't matter how big the warnings on the cigarettes are; you could have a black pack, with a skull and crossbones on the front, called TUMORS, and smokers would be around the block going, "I can't wait to get my hands on these fucking things! I bet ya get a tumor as soon as you light up!"

• Denis Leary : What's the problem with just smoking a joint, eating a couple of twinkies, and going to sleep, was that a problem?

• Denis Leary : Sorry folks, I'm a little hyped up, I was smoking a big, fat bag of crack right before the show, AHHH!

• Denis Leary : I think Billy Martin said it best when he said "hey"

  [takes a drink of beer] 

  Denis Leary : "I can drive"

• Denis Leary : Do we need a two-and-a-half hour movie about the Doors? No, we don't. I can sum it up for you in five seconds, OK. I'm drunk. I'm nobody. I'm drunk. I'm famous. I'm drunk. I'm fucking dead. There's the whole movie, OK?

• Denis Leary : That's why I'm glad Jesus died when he did. Because if he lived to be 40, he would have ended up like Elvis. He was famous already at that point. If he lived to be 40, he'd be walking around Jerusalem with a big fat beer gut and black side burns going, Damn, I'm the son of God. Give me a cheeseburger and french fries right now.

• Denis Leary : New York teaches you to live life the way it should be lived. Moment to moment. Yes, because every moment in New York could be your last. Oh yeah. You could be walking down the street tomorrow, feeling good about yourself, drink free, drug free, looking forward to the future and somebody accidentally nudges their poodle off of a 75th floor ledge. And he's headed for the ground at a hundred-and-seventy-five thousand miles per hour. And curchunk he's imbedded in your head! You're dead on contact. The headline in the Post the next day reads, Man killed by best friend.

• Denis Leary : Explain it to me. Heavy metal bands on trial because kids commit suicide, what is that about? Judas Priest on trial because my kid bought the records, and he listened to the lyrics, and he got into Satan... ALLALALALALALLALA! Well that's great. That sets a legal precedent. Does that mean I can sue Dan Fogelberg for making me into a pussy in the mid '70s, is that possible, HUH?

• Denis Leary : I'm a little hyped up tonight. I smoked a nice big fat bag of crack right before the show. AHHH! I'm only kidding, folks. I would never do crack. I would never do crack. I would never do a drug named after a part of my own ass.

• Denis Leary : There we were in the middle of a sexual revolution wearing clothes that guaranteed we wouldn't get laid.

• Denis Leary : Folks, I'd like to sing a song about the American Dream. About me. About you. The way our American hearts beat down in the bottom of our chests. About the special feeling we get in the cockles of our hearts, maybe below the cockles, maybe in the sub-cockle area. Maybe in the liver. Maybe in the kidneys. Maybe even in the colon, we don't know.

• Denis Leary : I'm sick and tired of our generation being called the TV generation. What do you expect? We watched Lee Harvey Oswald get his brains blown out all over. How could we change the channel after that?

• Denis Leary : [Introducing himself]  Thank you! Thank you, thank you, thank you, and fuck you!

• Denis Leary : I can remember a time in this country when men were proud to get cancer, goddammit! It was a sign of manhood! John Wayne had cancer twice. Second time, they took out one of his lungs. He said, "Take 'em both! I don't fuckin' need 'em! I'll grow gills and breathe like a fish!"

• Denis Leary : I don't do illegal drugs anymore. Now I just do the legal drugs. Tonight I'm on NyQuil and Sudafed. Let me tell you something, folks. Forget about cocaine and heroin. All you need is NyQuil and Sudafed. I'm telling you right now, I took NyQuil five years ago. I just came out of the coma tonight before the fucking show!

• Denis Leary : I tried eating vegetarian. I felt like a wimp going into a restaurant. "What do you want to eat sir? Broccoli?" Broccoli's a side dish, folks. Always was, always will be, OK! When they ask me what I want, I say: What do you think I want? This is America. I want a bowl of raw red meat right now.

• Denis Leary : I take music pretty seriously. You see that scar on my wrist? You see that? You know where that's from? I heard the Bee Gees were getting back together again. I couldn't take it, OK!

• Denis Leary : Heavy Metal fans are buying Heavy Metal records, taking the records home, listening to the records and then blowing their heads off with shotguns? Where's the problem? That's an unemployment solution right there, folks! It's called natural selection.

• Denis Leary : Cocaine, we started that. You're welcome.

• Denis Leary : [Imitating a whining vegetarian]  "Yeah, well, if you eat red meat, it stays in your colon for fifteen years!" Good! I paid for it; I want it in my ass, okay? I want them to find a meat sweater from my esophagus to my asshole when they open me up in the end! "This guy's covered in meat! He's Meat-Man! He's Meat-Tracheotomy-Man!"

• Denis Leary : You know what I'm gonna do? I'm gonna get myself a 1967 Cadillac El Dorado convertible. Hot pink! With whale-skin hubcaps and all leather cow interior and big brown baby seal eyes for headlights! Yeah! And I'm gonna drive around in that baby at 115 MPH, getting one mile per gallon, suckin' down Quarter-Pounder cheeseburgers from McDonalds in the old-fashioned non-biodegradable Styrofoam container and when I'm done suckin' down those grease-ball burgers, I'm gonna wipe my mouth with the American flag, and I'm gonna toss the Styrofoam containers right out the side, and there ain't a goddamn thing anybody can do about it. You know why? Because we got the bombs. That's why! Two words! Nuclear fuckin' weapons, okay? Russia, Germany, Romania, they can have all the democracy they want. They can have a big democracy cake and walk right through the middle of Tiananmen Square and it won't make a lickin' difference cause we got the bombs, okay?

• [about people who complain about getting hit by their parents] 

  Denis Leary : My parents used to beat the living shit out of me, okay? And I'm glad they did, and I'm looking forward to beating the shit out of my kids!

• Denis Leary : NyQuil, NyQuil, NyQuil, we love you, you giant fucking Q!

• Denis Leary : You know why the French hate us so much? Thay gave us the croissant. And you know what we did with it? We turned it into our croissandwich, thank you very much.

• Denis Leary : Remember that friend in High School, who wanted to make bongs out of everything? Making bongs out of apples and oranges and shit. One day you find your friend goin' "Hey look, man, I made a bong out of my HEAD! Put the pot in this ear and suck it out of this one, go on take a hit!"

• Denis Leary : We tried to be nice to you non-smokers. We fucking tried. OK? You wanted your own sections in the restaurants. We gave you that, huh. But that wasn't enough for you. Then you wanted the airplanes. We gave you the whole godamn plane! You happy now? I will guarantee you if the plane is going down, the first announcement you're gonna hear is: "Folks, this is your Captain speaking. Look, uhm, light 'em up, 'cause we're going down, okay. I got a carton of Camel non-filters, I'll see you on the ground."

• Denis Leary : I'm gonna get one of those tracheotomies. So I can smoke two cigarettes at the same time. I'm gonna get nine tracheotomies all the way around my neck. I'll be Tracheotomy Man! "He can smoke a pack at a time! He's Tracheotomy Man!"

• Denis Leary : We didn't have rehab back in the seventies. Back in the seventies rehab meant you'd stop doing coke, but kept smoking pot and drinking for a couple more weeks.

• Denis Leary : Every time you hear about some famous guy overdosing on drugs, it's always some really talented guy. It's always like Len Bias, or Janis Joplin, or Jimi Hendrix, or John Belushi. You know what I mean? The people you wanna have overdose on drugs never would! Like Motley Crue would never fucking overdose man, never!

• Denis Leary : Yeah, I'd like to do some cocaine. I'd like to do a drug that makes my penis small, makes my nose bleed, makes my heart explode, and sucks all my money out of the bank.

• Denis Leary : I'm gonna open up my own place. Open my own restaurant and get away from you people. I'm gonna open up a restaurant with two smoking sections; Ultra and Regular, OK! And we're not gonna have any tables or any chairs or any napkins. None of that pussy shit.

• Denis Leary : You all have that friend who's quitting it. I quit smoking. I quit drinking. I quit meat, and I feel great. I get up in at six in the morning and have a nice big bowl of oat bran. Then I go to the bathroom for three and a half hours. I eat another bowl of oat bran and go back into the bathroom for six more hours. All I do is eat and shit, I'm gonna live forever! My colon's the strongest muscle in my body right now. I could pass Elvis through my colon!

• Denis Leary : Not eating meat is a decision. Eating meat is an instinct!

• Denis Leary : This is the most exciting place in the world to live. Oh yeah! There are so many ways to die in New York City! Race riots, drive by shootings, subway crashes, construction cranes collapsing on the sidewalks, manhole covers blowing up and asbestos shooting into the sky.

• Denis Leary : Yeah, I love living in New York, man, and people who live in New York, we wear that fact like a badge right on our sleeve because we know that fact impresses everybody! I was in Vietnam. So what? I live in New York!

• Denis Leary : I'm gonna get famous. Then when my career starts to flag, I'm gonna go into a three month fucking bender, OK? Coke, and fucking pot, and smack, and fucking booze, and drive over people, and beat up my kids, go into therapy, go into rehab, come outta rehab, be on the cover of People magazine, and go Sorry! I fucked up!

• Denis Leary : Most people think, "Life sucks, and then you die." I disagree. I think life sucks. Then you get cancer. Then you go into chemotherapy. You lose all your hair, you feel bad about yourself. Then all of the sudden the cancer goes into remission, and then all of the sudden you have a stroke. You can't move your right side. And then, maybe, you die.

• Denis Leary : We love the muppets. They're so cute!

• Denis Leary : This is America! I want a bowl of raw red meat, right now! Forget that! Bring me a live cow over to the table! I'll carve off what I want and RIDE THE REST HOME!

• Denis Leary : I believe Mama Cass said it best when she said...

  [makes choking noises] 

• Denis Leary : [Immitating a whiny person]  "I'm just not happy."

  [to that person] 

  Denis Leary : Shut the fuck up, okay? That's the name of my new book; "Shut the Fuck Up" by Dr. Denis Leary. A revolutionary new form of therapy. I'm going to have my patients come in and be like, "Doctor I..." "SHUT THE FUCK UP! NEXT?" "I don't feel so..." "SHUT THE FUCK UP! NEXT?"

  [as one patient talking to someone else] 

  Denis Leary : "He made me feel so much better about myself, you know? He just told me to shut the fuck up and no one ever told me that before. I feel so much better now." Whining fuckin' maggots.