“Get to the point. Tell me why you’re so pissed.”
“You’re too fuckin’ fat—that’s why. I’m not making this movie with a fat Ford Fairlane.”
“What are you talking about, Joel? Last week you told me how great I look.”
“That was last week. This week you look fat. I heard you been eating pizza. Get Hot Tub Johnny back in here.”
Hot Tub came back into the office.
“Did Dice eat pizza last night,” asked Joel, “or didn’t he?”
I broke in before Hot Tub could answer. “Is this what this emergency meeting is about—pizza? I had one fuckin’ slice.”
“We start filming in less than two weeks, and you’re out eating pizza!” Joel screamed. “Movie stars don’t eat pizza!”
“One slice ain’t gonna kill me . . .”
“I’ll tell you something else, Dice. I fuck better-looking women than you do. I fuck Playboy Playmates.”
“I’m not gonna listen to this shit,” I said. “I’m outta here.”
“Go ahead. Walk out, fat boy, and I’ll pull the plug on this fuckin’ movie.”
“Who the fuck do you think you’re talking to, Tubby? Any good-looking chick who’ll fuck you is only fucking you for your money. They’re fucking you to get into one of your movies. The chicks I fuck actually like fucking me. They like sucking my dick. After they fuck you or suck your dick, they’re running to the bathroom to puke.”
Joel ignored my last remark. In a weird way, it calmed him down. In a lower voice he said, “I got a doctor I want you to see in Pacific Palisades. He’s gonna give you something to lose that fat before you start shooting.”
“I ain’t taking no fuckin’ drugs. You know what, Joel—I ain’t taking no more of this shit. Period. I’m outta here.”
Joel turned to Barry and my other reps and said, “I’m not shooting this movie with some pizza-eating slob.”
I made a move toward Joel and said, “I’ll knock the fuckin’ teeth outta your head.”
Barry and his boys jumped up and grabbed me before I got to Joel. They dragged me out of his office while I was still yelling obscenities at one of Hollywood’s biggest producers. No one was gonna talk to me like that.
On the way out to the parking lot, Barry was laughing.
“What’s so fuckin’ funny?” I asked.
“That’s one of the best shows I’ve ever seen.”
“You think so?”
“I know so.”
Somehow Barry’s laughter changed my mood.
“He just wants you to look your best for the film,” he said.
The next day I went to see the doctor in Pacific Palisades, who put me on something called Medifast, a liquid diet. I started drinking this stuff on a Thursday—five times a day. By Monday I’d dropped twelve pounds. By the time we were ready to start shooting, I had the body of Atlas and the eye of the tiger. I was in the best shape of my life.
ROCK-AND-ROLL DETECTIVE
THE FILMING ITSELF went great. I was free to offer up suggestions to the writers, and the director, Renny Harlin, encouraged me to incorporate my Dice-isms and improvise many of my lines. Since I was a rock-and-roll detective, I figured we needed a big rock-and-roll number. That became “I Ain’t Got You,” produced by Don Was. The supporting cast was beautiful. Wayne Newton turned out to be one of the sweetest guys in the world. He was the complete pro—easy to approach with no attitude other than “How can I help?” Like me, he took his job seriously. So did Priscilla Presley. She was wonderful. I loved her sense of humor and her upbeat personality. We had some beautiful talks about Elvis. Just to talk to the King’s former wife was a thrill, and when she told me that she could feel the influence he had on me, that’s all I needed to hear. Harlin, who did Die Hard 2 with Joel Silver, was great. I was able to get my friend Gilbert Gottfried into the movie, along with Uncle Lee Lawrence, the bandleader who I met in the Catskills when I was just a horny teenager beating the drums. There were parts for Sheila E., Morris Day, the rapper Tone Loc, and Ed O’Neill, who went on to star in Married with Children and Modern Family. Even Hot Tub Johnny had a cameo.
And I got to sing and dance in the film, and rehearsed for days with top-notch Hollywood choreographers. While I was singing and dancing and acting up a storm during the making of Ford Fairlane, Ed Weinberger, the big-time TV producer, kept coming by the set. I had just signed a sweet pay-for-play sitcom deal with him worth a potential quarter million an episode. But I didn’t wanna see Weinberger. I needed to concentrate on the film, so I had Joel Silver, now acting as my watchdog, keep him away. The more I heard about Weinberger—how he controlled every last bit of his sitcoms—the more leery I became of doing the show. Finally, in spite of the big money, I bailed on Weinberger. With my feature film coming out and the demand for me in ever-bigger venues, TV looked less like an opportunity and more like a prison.
THE BIG BAN
“YOU WATCH MTV?” asked Sandy Gallin.
“Who doesn’t?” I answered. In the eighties, MTV was the hottest thing going. MTV was the center of red-hot pop culture. “They want me on MTV?” I asked.
“They want you as a presenter on the MTV awards. Prime-time national telecast. Arsenio Hall hosting.”
At the time Arsenio was also riding high.
Naturally I accepted.
I got to the Universal Amphitheatre for the afternoon rehearsal. It was insanity. Because I was the hottest comic in the country, I had cameras chasing me everywhere. They were ignoring the rock stars and TV stars. They were after me for some crazy quote. I had nothing to say. My job was easy. I was introducing Cher. I was going to walk out, play with the crowd for a minute, and then say something like, “Ladies and gentlemen, the last Puritan—Cher!”
Rehearsal was a breeze. I figured the actual performance would be the same. Keep in mind, it was live, and there was no tape delay. What you said went out to the world.
The show started. This was the year of Madonna’s “Like a Prayer” and Paula Abdul’s “Forever Your Girl.” Paul Reiser got up and did some shtick. He was promoting his sitcom—My Two Dads—but he was really digging himself a ditch. He was talking about all the different hats Sinatra wore. No one wanted to hear about Sinatra’s hats. No one was laughing—not the six thousand people in the audience, not the millions at home. I was backstage thinking, I gotta get this crowd going.
Dick Clark, who was producing the show, called me over. I love Dick Clark. Like the rest of America, I grew up on American Bandstand. Far as I’m concerned, Dick Clark was cool his entire career. Besides, he looked younger in 1989 than he did in 1959.
“Look, Dice,” he said, “Cher isn’t ready to go on. So you go out there, say a couple of short things, and I’ll send Arsenio out as well.”
“Why?”
“So you can play around with him.”
“I don’t think that’s necessary, Dick. I’m a stand-up. I can handle it alone. It’s what I do.”
“It’ll be better with Arsenio.”
“No, it won’t. It’ll be awkward. It’ll be another one of those stupid award show encounters when two presenters trip over each other. I love Arsenio, but this isn’t the spot for him. I don’t need him.”
I’m thinking, My career’s going through the roof right now, and the last thing in the world I need is to bomb with some dumb-ass banter with Arsenio. I need to do my job. And my job is to be fuckin’ funny.
As I heard my name announced, a huge roar went up. The last thing I did was tell Dick, “Don’t send anyone out there.” I said it with such fuckin’ menace that even Dick Clark, great producer that he was, would not challenge me.
In my animal-skin zebra-striped jacket, I swaggered out to the podium. I took my time reaching for my pack of cigarettes and lighting up. I wanted the anticipation to build. I was still pissed that Clark thought I needed help out there. But rather than let my anger distract me, I used it to motivate me. Come hell or high water, I was gonna say some funny shit.
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br /> “I met this chick last week,” I said, “wheeled her back to my apartment, got her in bed, started brushing the hair on her back, braided it, spiked it, got her all excited. And you wanna talk breasts? Lemme tell you something—I grabbed on to a set of tits where I didn’t know where the tits begin and belly ends. I mean, it was like one big glob of shit.”
As you can imagine, the crowd was hysterical. To push the hysteria even higher, I went right into a rhyme: “Jack Splat could eat no fat, his wife could eat no lean. So Jack ignored her flabby tits and licked her asshole clean.” All this before I introduced Cher.
When I got offstage, there was pandemonium. My man Barry Josephson had turned white.
“I don’t know what’s gonna happen,” he said.
“What are you talking about? It’s already happened. They loved me.”
“Not MTV. MTV wants to kill you. They had to restrain Dick Clark from running out there and grabbing you.”
After awards shows, the producers set up tents for interviews. That’s when the press shouts out questions. Well, I went from tent to tent, and not a single reporter had a question. They were already writing furiously in their notebooks. It turned out that, in the end, I was the story. But they didn’t want no comment from me. The story was better without any comment. The story was simple: MTV BANS DICE FOR LIFE.
When I got home that night the phone was ringing. It was Sandy Gallin.
“I saw it,” he said.
“What’d you think?” I asked.
“It hit me so hard I actually started to believe that someone was playing a joke on me. Someone had messed with my TV and put in a tape. No one could have said on national TV the things you said.”
“The things I said were funny. The audience went nuts.”
“The audience always goes nuts, Andrew, but that’s not the point.”
“Then what is the point, Sandy?”
“Typically, an awards show incident is talked about the next day and then forgotten. But this incident is going to be talked about for years to come. MTV has never issued a lifetime ban before.”
“And I’m supposed to feel sorry about that?”
“I don’t know how you’re supposed to feel.”
“Well, I’ll tell you how I feel. I feel that MTV can get fucked. Those videos are pushing the line as hard as they fuckin’ can with tits and ass. Michael Jackson is grabbing his dick, and Madonna is practically grabbing her pussy. MTV is all about raunchy rock and roll. But if a comic gets on there with some raunchy rock-and-roll humor, that’s no good? That deserves a lifetime ban? Well, good. Great. If MTV wants to go after me, I’m ready. ’Cause I’m going after their fuckin’ ass. They’re now a permanent part of my act. I’m the comic banned by MTV. That’s gonna raise my price, it’s gonna raise my profile, and it’s gonna make me bigger than ever.”
DICEMAN COMETH
BUT THE BIGGEST news of all had nothing to do with showbiz.
Trini was pregnant, and I was ecstatic. It was the best news I could have gotten—better than making a movie with Joel Silver, better than selling out arenas across the country, better than making money hand over fist. My dream of having a family—of being a dad and raising kids with a loving woman like Trini at my side—was coming true.
Family was also on my mind when I played the big arena in Miami. There are hardly any New York Jews who don’t have relatives in Miami. And naturally mine came out in force. Besides Mom and Dad, they all showed up—Grandma Shirley, Uncle Ernie with his sister, Sandy, and her twin daughters, Dad’s sister and his brother, Sammy Sunshine, who, at eighty, was so inspired by my act he started doing his own stand-up routine.
Some people asked me whether I felt bad about doing such blue material in front of my family. My answer was that my family didn’t give a fuck how much I cursed, since they cursed up a storm themselves. They understood that humor is humor and entertainment is entertainment. Just as I entertained them when I was a little boy banging the drums, I entertained them as a grown man making funny jokes.
What I loved most about that night in Miami was the presence of the godfather. Rodney Dangerfield came to see me. Dennis Arfa, who booked Rodney as well as me, suggested that I call him up to the stage.
“As long as he’ll like it,” I said.
“He’ll love it,” Dennis assured me.
I went out onstage in my sleeveless Dice leather jacket with seven thousand studs and rhinestones. I drank in the thunderous applause. And then, before getting deep into my routine, I said, “There’s a man here who’s responsible for introducing me to the public. In turn, it’s my honor to introduce him to you. He’s the only man in America who had the balls to put me on TV. He never asked me to water down my material. All he said was, ‘Be yourself.’ For those words of wisdom and for the faith he had in my talent, I’ll be grateful to him for the rest of my life. I consider him one of the greats—and I know you do too. Show the man who can’t get no respect all the respect and love you got. Get up on your feet and salute the one, the only, the godfather—Rodney Dangerfield.”
Rodney came out, gave me a hug, waved to the audience, and left.
The next stop was the L.A. Forum, and the stars came out. My shows became Hollywood events. Sly. Mickey Rourke. Cher. They all came out. And I wasn’t just doing comedy. I actually sang a soul ballad: Major Harris’s “Love Won’t Let Me Wait.” And if that wasn’t enough, I got behind a drum set to do battle with Frank Diorio, a man who could rival any of the greats. We went back and forth on this double drum duel. If I got the best of him—which I did—it was only because Frankie let me. One night I even called to the stage Duff McKagan and Slash from Guns N’ Roses. They were both huge Dice fans, and just for the love of it, they came out and pulverized the crowd with their searing rock-star riffs. For years I’d been calling myself the rock-and-roll comic; now I was proving it. The edgiest rock and the edgiest comedy were all coming together. The energy was unbelievable. With me behind the tubs drumming up a storm with Frank Diorio, with my bass player Sal Iuvare matching funky licks with Duff, and with my guitarist Carmine Diorio going toe-to-toe with Slash, we blew the roof off the fuckin’ Forum. You had to be there.
• • •
You also had to be at the Nassau Coliseum.
When Dennis Arfa called to say I was booked into that huge arena on Long Island, I predicted I’d sell it out in fifteen minutes. It pissed me off that the sellout took an hour.
“Schmuck,” said Arfa, “do you realize what it means to sell out a venue like that in just an hour?”
“Yeah,” I said, “it means it took forty-five minutes longer than I predicted.”
It turned out to be another one of those nights. There was hysteria in the air. I felt terrible for my opening act, Lenny Clarke, a terrific comic. The crowd wanted no part of him. They just wanted me, and had no patience for anyone who stood between us. Fact is, at one point Lenny stopped standing and sat on a stool, where he started clipping his toenails—that’s how he reacted to the boos.
Backstage, I felt bad for him, but what could I do? I kept pacing around the hallways as the crowd screamed, “Dice! Dice! Dice!” preventing Lenny from saying another word.
When the crowd saw me take the stage, they exploded; everyone was standing and screaming while I raised my arm in the air, my hand in a fist of recognition and defiance. They knew I was gonna say some shit. They knew I was gonna be raunchy and funny and not give a fuck who I offended. They knew the Diceman character was uncensored and unafraid. He said things they only said in their minds. When he said ’em out loud, they roared. They loved this character—not because he was the ideal American with the ideal American virtues. They loved him because he was honest. They loved him because he loved pussy and he was not afraid of saying so. They loved him because they loved being shocked.
A VISIT FROM THE PROFESSOR
THERE HAD BEEN blue comics before me, but none of them could have even imagined selling out arenas. I knew that the clubs and
the theaters were too small. They couldn’t contain me. I needed something bigger. But when I finally got something bigger, when the arenas started selling out left and right, the reaction during the shows—the stomping and screaming, fans standing on their seats and cheering like I’d just thrown the winning touchdown in the Super Bowl—those were things I hadn’t expected, things I didn’t see coming. The other thing I didn’t see coming was how the critics were going to come after me.
But how could I worry about the critics when the only people who mattered to me—the fans—were running over themselves to get to my show? And how could I worry about the critics when the artists I admired the most—like Jerry Lewis—were coming to meet me? You heard right: Jerry Lewis.
When I had my manager tell Jerry’s manager that I wanted to star in a remake of The Nutty Professor, my manager wasn’t all that sure how Jerry—who wrote and directed the original and controls all rights to the story—would respond. Well, Jerry responded right away. He wanted to meet me and was willing to come to my suite at Bally’s, where I was performing in Vegas.
Naturally I went nuts with anticipation. I knew I was perfect for the role—that was a given—but the idea of actually speaking with the great Jerry Lewis, whose professor character inspired my whole career, was too good to be true.
Remembering how on his telethon Jerry smoked like a fiend, I got Club Soda Kenny to fill my suite with bowls of cigarettes, all different brands, so Jerry would feel at home. This didn’t turn out to be a good idea. When, accompanied by his people, Jerry entered the suite, he looked at the cigarettes and said, “Is this some kind of joke?”
“No, Jerry. I’m trying to be a good host.”
“No one told you that I’m recovering from a heart attack?”
“I had no idea,” I said. “Sorry.”
Not a great start, but the mood turned better when we sat down to discuss the project. Then the mood turned great. I told Jerry about the beginning of my career and how for years I riffed on the nutty prof turning into Buddy Love.
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