Edward Burns takes on 1960s New York in ‘Public Morals’

Edward Burns, the actor and indie filmmaker, can talk for hours about old New York.

He’s obsessed with everything that has anything to do with his hometown: the people, the architecture, the folklore. In fact, many of his favorite movies showcase New York so prominently that the city is practically the main character.

So is it any wonder that when TNT executives asked Burns to create a TV series for the network, he cooked up a show like Public Morals?

The series, which premieres at 9 p.m. Tuesday, is a New York crime drama set in the early 1960s. A story about a blood feud between a family of Irish Catholic cops and a family of Irish Catholic gangsters, it’s also a love letter to a yesteryear version of the city — gritty and inviting at the same time.

In addition to wearing executive producer and director hats, Burns stars as Terry Muldoon, a Hell’s Kitchen cop and family man who’s attached to the NYPD’s Public Morals Division, which enforces laws having to do with vice and sin, i.e. gambling and prostitution.

It’s a world where police are easily corrupted, which means it’s often hard to tell whether Terry is a good guy or a bad guy.

Following is a brief Q&A with Burns about his ambitious new show.

After two decades of making independent films, beginning with The Brothers McMullen (1995) and She’s the One (1996), what compelled you to bring Public Morals to TV?

That’s where the audience is. To try to tell a story like this as a film, to try to get that financed and distributed, is almost impossible these days. But television networks have embraced this type of storytelling.

I sat on the sidelines as an indie filmmaker watching great shows get made. Finally I decided it was time to throw my hat in the ring.

What was the genesis of this show?

I had a number of unproduced film screenplays, including one I wrote for Steven Spielberg after Saving Private Ryan. It was a multi-generational family saga dressed up in cop clothes. I also had several unproduced Hell’s Kitchen gangster stories: a 1980s one, a 1960s one, a turn-of-the-century one.

I thought, ‘Why don’t I take my passions — why don’t I take all of these ideas that I’ve accumulated and all the research that I’ve done over the years — and build a new piece from it?’

That’s how I came up with the Muldoons, the family of cops of which I’m sort of the patriarch, and the Pattons, which is Brian Dennehy’s gangster clan.

Was 1960s New York a fun world to re-create?

Absolutely. And we were determined not to do it just on a sound stage, given that we were shooting in New York and that we had all of these great New York actors and a great New York crew that knew how to get around the city and maximize what’s available on the streets of New York.

So we went out and looked for those blocks that haven’t changed. We looked for old restaurants and bars that are the same as they ever were. All we had to do was walk in, set up some lights, start shooting and, as long as the extras were dressed appropriately, be transported back to the 1960s.

Michael Rapaport, who plays your partner, wears a porkpie hat that’s clearly an homage to Gene Hackman, Popeye Doyle and The French Connection. Is that a favorite movie of yours?

We pay homage to a number of my favorite films. We’ve got Popeye Doyle’s hat, of course, but also one of the gangsters wears Johnny Boy’s hat, Robert De Niro’s character from Mean Streets.

The pool hall we shot in with Tim Hutton, that was designed after the Ames pool hall where they shot The Hustler. We re-created a bar from The Friends of Eddie Coyle, which is not a New York movie, but we loved the look of that bar and we loved that film.

We used music references from Martin Scorsese films. We did a shot that cinephiles will recognize from The Godfather. We were constantly playing with our heroes and giving them nods.

How important was it to you to keep this show from being a murder-of-the-week-style cop drama?

I absolutely did not want to make a procedural. I wouldn’t even know how to write a procedural. Fortunately for me, great shows like Mad Men and The Sopranos have paved the way for a show like this, where we don’t have to do a murder-of-the-week. We can tell a more character-based story.

Can you say definitively whether your character, Terry Muldoon, is a good guy or bad?

I like the moral ambiguity. I like the idea that there are one set of rules at home with Terry’s family and then he plays by another set of rules when he is on the streets being a police officer.

That’s a fun character to write and an even more fun character to play because, in a way, he’s got to put on a performance half of every day. Which is the true Terry? Is he putting on a performance at home for the family? Or is he putting on a performance out on the street?

This story was originally published August 21, 2015 at 1:15 PM with the headline "Edward Burns takes on 1960s New York in ‘Public Morals’."