Buscemi’s contribution to this body of work was, characteristically, primarily in the documentary mode: factual rather than fictional, sustained over time rather than concentrated in a single production, focused on the people of the FDNY rather than on a fictionalized account of the events themselves. His acting career intersected with the post-9/11 cultural moment primarily in the fact that he continued working — that the career went on, in New York, across the years of the city’s processing of its loss.
The Boardwalk Empire period (2010–2014) placed him at the center of a major cultural production during the years when the Zadroga Act was being passed, reauthorized, and implemented. The simultaneity was presumably coincidental, but it illustrates something about the structure of his public life: the major commercial work and the civic commitments ran in parallel rather than in sequence. He was not a person who turned to advocacy after his acting career peaked; the advocacy was continuous with the career across its full arc.
## The Question of Heroism and What It Gets Wrong
The word “heroism” appears frequently in accounts of Buscemi’s Ground Zero work, and it requires some examination, because its use tends to obscure rather than illuminate what actually happened.
Heroism, in its most common usage, implies exceptional behavior that goes beyond what circumstances require or what can ordinarily be expected. A hero does something that most people would not or could not do in the same circumstances. The application of this standard to Buscemi’s Ground Zero work is problematic in two directions at once.