Real-Life Paramedics Don't Think Much of New Movie.

How realistic is Martin Scorsese's new film, "Bringing Out the Dead," the story of a New York paramedic wrestling with issues of life and death?

Not very, according to some L.A.-area paramedics.

In the film, Nicolas Cage plays a paramedic wrestling with mortality and spirituality in New York's Hell's Kitchen in the early 1990s. The on-screen paramedics drink while driving an ambulance, go after an abusive patient with a baseball bat, and engage in sexual innuendoes with the dispatch officers. Cage's character unsuccessfully begs to be fired, is haunted by the ghost of a homeless girl he couldn't save, and even enters a hospital's intensive care unit and commits a mercy killing on a patient.

As of late last week, many local paramedics hadn't yet seen the movie, due to fire department staffing shortages and busier-than-usual work schedules. But those who had said that, unlike the characters in the Scorsese's film, real-life paramedics are not out there beating up people with baseball bats.

"You'd be terminated," said Pacific Palisades paramedic Dale Coyle. "You'd be fired, boom, gone, history."

While conceding that the movie contains some truths, paramedics worry that the exaggerated portrayal might leave the public with a warped perception of their profession.

"It is a stressful job, and there have been occasions when paramedics have abused drugs, but not to the extent that they showed," said fire fighter lead paramedic Paul Terris, based at Fire Station 65 in Watts. "We don't hit people with baseball bats. My wife said, 'Paramedics don't do that. Do they?'"

Ricky Herrera, who is based at Station No. 1 in East L.A., said he was amused by the reaction of his neighbors, who ran into him after seeing the film. "They looked at me and said, 'Is that what you guys do out there?'" he recalled. "I said, 'This is just a movie, and that's all it is. This stuff doesn't happen. Don't get any ideas. Sometimes we'll turn the radio up real loud when we're on the way to a call. That's our stress relief."

Virginia Hastings, head of Emergency Medical Services for Los Angeles County, seemed eager to refute any public misperceptions the film may cause.

"Tell your readers not to worry about that kind of behavior in this county," she said. "If they go see this movie, they're going to be terrified to call 911. The unprofessionalism of the paramedics (in the movie) - even their dirty shirts, the drinking in the vehicle, the picking fights - does not occur. And if that occurs in New York City, God help them."

The director of "Taxi Driver" and "Goodfellas," Scorsese adapted "Bringing out the Dead" from a 1998 novel by Joe Connelly, who spent 10 years as a New York paramedic.

Connelly, who served as a technical consultant, said in prepared press materials, "There's nothing like saving a life; it's a high like no other. Yet it's a high that fades. I found that watching people die, losing people, being witness to so many tragedies - those stories stay with you and don't leave. They built up in me to a point where I needed to tell them, get them out."

As a result, the film portrays a series of paramedics coping with burnout in their own unique ways - detachment, religious fervor, violence, substance abuse. Paramedics suffering from burnout in real life are typically transferred to a less-stressful station, upon their own request or a partner's recommendation to a supervisor.

While many aspects of the movie exaggerate the real-life experience, some of the scenes are quite realistic.

"Picking up the smelly, stinky people, and going on multiple runs with not very much time in between, going into the hospital and it's so busy that there are no beds for the patients, that's pretty realistic," said Terris, who has been a paramedic for 17 years.

Another paramedic pointed to the ghost of a lost patient that haunts Cage's character. "Generally speaking, all of us have some ghosts we have to deal with. We think, 'If we had gotten there sooner, if the family had started CPR, if we'd been able to get the I.V. in...'" said Coyle.

But most are not nearly as haunted as Cage's character.

"We all do have some ghosts, but generally most of the paramedics I know believe that if they're on the scene, the person has the very best chance they have of surviving, and if they don't make it, then it's just their time to go," Coyle said.

Overall, moviegoers seem to be having the same reaction as the paramedics who've seen the film - tepid. In its first 10 days of release, including two weekends, the film only took in $11.4 million in revenues.