The firehouse years were, in his later descriptions of them, a formative period that never fully receded. He had friends there who remained friends. He kept track of the department’s news. Engine 55 was not merely a place he had worked for four years; it was a community he had been part of, and in the culture of the FDNY, membership in that community did not expire with the employment.
## The Spring of 2001, Before September
In April 2001, Steve Buscemi was in Wilmington, North Carolina, filming Domestic Disturbance, a thriller starring John Travolta. Around 2 a.m. on April 12, Buscemi was at the Firebelly Lounge in Wilmington when a brawl broke out between his group — which included actor Vince Vaughn and screenwriter Scott Rosenberg — and several Wilmington locals. By the time police arrived, Buscemi had been stabbed in the throat, head, and arm. He was treated at a hospital and released. Timothy Fogerty, a local resident, was charged with assault with a deadly weapon with intent to kill; Vaughn, Rosenberg, and two others were charged with misdemeanor assault.
Buscemi flew back to New York to recover. The incident received considerable coverage — actors in barroom stabbings are newsworthy — but Buscemi gave limited comment on it. He healed. By the summer of 2001 he was back at work.
He was forty-three years old. He had been a professional actor for seventeen years. He had, in the hierarchy of Hollywood character actors, achieved something unusual: genuine prominence and critical respect without ever having played a conventional leading man. He was in demand. He had projects. He was living in New York with his wife and son.