Filthy Truth (9781476734750)

by Clay, Andrew Dice; Ritz, David

  HEAVEN

  I THOUGHT HEAVEN was 8667 Metz Place, a two-level fifties-style house that sat in the high-priced West Hollywood hills just north of Sunset, not far from the Comedy Store. I knew the territory well. When I first moved to L.A. I’d drive up and down those quiet tree-lined streets with their cool-looking houses and think, One day this is where I’ll be living. Well, that one day had arrived. Back in the spring of 1989, a real estate agent was putting up a For Sale sign from the trunk of his car when Trini and I pulled up.

  “Mind if we take a quick look?” I asked.

  “By all means,” he said.

  It was love at first sight—the light and bright retro feel, the sliding glass doors, the rock fireplace, the pool that wrapped around the backyard, the relaxed California vibe that seemed perfect for having parties and also raising a family.

  “You can throw out that For Sale sign,” I told the agent. “We’re buying it.”

  They wanted 1.6 million but accepted my offer of a million. A million dollars seemed the perfect price for my first Hollywood home.

  Then came perfect joy: the birth of my first child.

  The day he arrived was a wild scene at Cedars-Sinai hospital in L.A. Trini was in one of those fancy suites. The room was packed with people, including Trini’s mom, my parents, and a bunch of my pals. My booking agent was on the phone making deals. I was running around filming the whole thing. When I stuck the camera in Trini’s face and asked her how she felt, she gave me a look that said, Get lost. We were having a party, and she was having a baby—a beautiful baby we named Maxwell Lee. I felt a joy and love like I’d never felt before. I’m not saying at that moment I could love anyone more than I loved my mom and dad and sister and Trini. But with that tiny child, the love felt different. The intensity was different. The connection was different. I’d long felt responsible for making my parents’ life better and buying them things they’d always wanted. But in my gut I also felt it was my parents protecting me rather than vice versa. Now, though, I had this precious little boy to protect. And I swore I would. I made an oath to God that I would give my son all the love, attention, and care that my heart could command. Looking at my newborn son, I cried like a baby. Selling out the Garden was a big thing, but man, the birth of Max was ten times bigger. I was a dad! I had a family! I was fuckin’ complete!

  Things couldn’t get any better or bigger. Until they did.

  Axl Rose and Slash, two of my biggest fans, asked me to do a guest appearance at their Rose Bowl gig. So it was Guns N’ Roses and Dice entertaining a hundred thousand screaming fans under the stars of Southern California. That shit was unprecedented.

  BABS

  NOT THAT THERE weren’t difficult moments. One happened at a party at the home of Barry Diller, head of 20th Century Fox, the studio putting out Ford Fairlane. I was especially happy that night because, in addition to Trini, I brought Mom and Dad. We were chatting with Neil Diamond, a fellow Brooklyn Jew, who couldn’t have been nicer, when I spotted Barbra Streisand, still another Brooklyn Jew. The Originals are big Streisand fans—the singing, the acting, the whole shtick. But when I went over to introduce myself and my family and let her know how much I admired her, she saw me coming, turned her back, and walked away. I’d never been snubbed like that before. Just to be pleasant, she couldn’t give me and my folks thirty seconds? I guess not. I guess she couldn’t say hello. That hurt bad, and years later on one of my specials, it caused me to put her in my routine.

  “Fuckin’ Babs,” I said, “with that one wandering eye of hers. While she’s getting fucked, one eye is on the guy fucking her and another is looking out the window to see if it’s raining. And talking about guys who fuck Babs, she used to be married to Elliott Gould. Lemme tell you something right now. Guys named Elliott don’t fuck good. The Vinnies, the Tonys, the Frankies . . . they know how to throw a good fuck. So maybe that’s why she’s so fuckin’ cranky and gotta lecture you about politics. Far as I’m concerned, Babs is a babbling fuckin’ idiot. When you go to her show and she starts in with her goddamn politics, you wanna scream, ‘We didn’t come to hear your bullshit. We came to hear you sing. So shut up and fucking sing!’”

  Turned out that Gould was in the audience that night, which made me feel terrible. I think Gould’s a great actor, and I hated like hell that he had to hear that. If I had known he was there, I wouldn’t have said it. Years later I was shopping in a furniture store in Sherman Oaks when Elliott walked in. I went right up to him and apologized.

  “I respect you so much as an artist,” I said, “and feel awful about how I talked about you the night of the special.”

  “Are you kidding, Dice?” said Elliott. “It was your act. You were funny as hell. You’re a pro, and so am I, and I didn’t take it personally. I think you’re terrific.”

  And to be honest, I idolized Barbra. She hurt my feelings, that’s all.

  HAPPY FACE

  I BEGAN RUNNING around the country, working my ass off and making bank. In between the arenas, I was also playing clubs, just to keep my chops sharp. Sometimes Wheels opened for me, which meant Downtown Ronny was part of the entourage. At one point Ronny showed up in a beard, which wasn’t exactly his style. According to Wheels, Downtown had gone underground. Other times Noodles—another funny comic whose real name is Marty Levenstein—opened for me. The schedule stayed hectic because I liked it that way. Besides, I had all this nervous energy I had to work off. In just a few months, The Adventures of Ford Fairlane would be opening. Everyone—Sandy Gallin, Barry Diller, and David Geffen—was saying that it would be the kickoff of a spectacular movie career. They were already talking about two more starring roles for me: My Cousin Vinny with Marisa Tomei, and The Gossip Columnist with Daryl Hannah.

  To make sure I stayed in shape, I was hitting the gym harder than ever. In fact, it was at Gold’s Gym in Paramus, New Jersey, where I met the guy who’d be the newest member of my entourage. His real name is Mike Malandra, but I call him Happy Face.

  Unlike Club Soda Kenny, who was six foot five and obviously powerful, Happy Face’s strength was more subtle. He was five ten and extra lean. He didn’t have bulging muscles, but the man was made of concrete. He was the owner of Malandra’s Martial Arts Center. He’d been watching me work out while a particular asshole, a guy I’d never met before, was giving me a hard time.

  The guy was the size of a mountain. Must have weighed three hundred. He was a linebacker, a professional football player. He knew who I was, and for some reason didn’t like that I was working out at Gold’s. I have no idea why. He kept saying shit like, “You talk big shit, Dice, but I see that you can’t do shit with these weights.”

  Far as I was concerned, I was doing pretty fuckin’ good with the weights.

  “If you got a problem, pal,” I said, “take it elsewhere.”

  “And who’s gonna take me there, a big mouth like you?”

  “Look,” I said, “I know you’re a big guy and you’re a fuckin’ football pro who destroys grown men for a living, but do yourself a favor. Do your workout and go home. You don’t wanna fuck with me.”

  “For a little man, Dice, you talk big.”

  “I wouldn’t say it if I couldn’t do it.”

  “Don’t make me laugh.”

  I went up in his face and said, “If you really wanna push it, make your move and we’ll see who’s standing at the end of this fuckin’ thing. ’Cause there’s no way my son’s father ain’t going home tonight in one piece.”

  That was how I was thinking—This animal will not take down Max’s father. But I was also looking around for a ten-pound dumbbell. Because if we were going to go at it, I wasn’t just going at him with my fists. I was gonna bust him in the head with a piece of iron.

  Seeing all this, Happy Face stepped in and separated us.

  “All right, Andrew, you made your point,” he said. “But lemme give you a few tips about those stomach crunches.”

  Somehow Happy Face’s calm energy neutra
lized the situation. The football giant backed off—and so did I. I let Happy Face lead me through the rest of my workout.

  At the end of day, he and I got to talking. Happy Face asked if I needed a bodyguard. I told him, “The whole idea of bodyguarding a celebrity is that nobody gets hurt. But people get stupid drunk. Big guys, crazy guys, will stop at nothing to get past you so they can get to me. Can you stop them?”

  Happy Face just smiled.

  “You mind if I test you?” I asked. “You mind if I see how you’d handle a moose like me trying to get past you?”

  “I don’t wanna lay a hand on you, Dice.”

  “It’s all right, Happy Face. I need to see you in action.”

  “I don’t want to hurt you.”

  “You don’t have to hurt me. You just have to stop me.”

  So I made a move at Happy Face, and the next thing I knew he had me by the wrist, and with this intense pressure had me down on my knees, but he picked me up before my ass hit the ground. It was amazing. I’d never seen anything like it.

  After I recovered, I turned to him and said, “I’ll pick you up here tonight at seven.”

  “Where we going, Dice?” he asked.

  “The Comedy Alley.”

  “And what am I gonna do?”

  “You’re gonna work for me, Happy Face. You’re on the team.”

  It took Club Soda Kenny a while to get used to Happy Face. There was always a little thing between the two of them. But when Kenny learned that Happy Face was an eighth-degree black belt who taught martial arts to the FBI, he had to be impressed. Besides, Dicemania was getting wilder every day, and everyone realized I needed extra protection.

  HELL

  THE PREMIERE HAD been planned months in advance. It was gonna be the most spectacular in the history of Hollywood—and that’s saying something. It wasn’t enough to premiere Ford Fairlane at some movie palace on Broadway or in Westwood. Nothing less than the eighteen-thousand-seat L.A. Forum would do. That’s right—for the first time ever, a premiere would take place in an arena. Not only that, before the film started, I’d ride in driving a cherry-red Ford Fairlane and do a short stand-up routine.

  “The film is going to break box-office records,” said Diller. “You’re raising the commercial bar for comedy movies. Dice films will be to the nineties what Jerry Lewis films were to the sixties. You’ll be dominating for years to come.”

  To build up the buzz on the film, Lorne Michaels asked me to host Saturday Night Live. Naturally I knew about the show—who doesn’t?—but I can’t say that I was a fan. I didn’t follow it religiously. Sketch comedy is fine, but it just isn’t my thing. Actors adapt—and that’s how I looked at it. Besides, I was curious to see how the SNL writers would play with the Diceman character. Since I made a living out of making fun of other people, I didn’t at all mind making fun of myself.

  When Michaels called me to his office for a Monday-morning meeting before starting rehearsals, I was in a good mood. My mood changed, though, when he made me cool my heels in his reception area for an hour. Was he playing some kind of power game?

  When I was finally called into his office he didn’t apologize for the wait. He just said, “Look, Dice, I need to tell you that Nora Dunn has decided she can’t appear on the same show as you.”

  “Who the fuck is Nora Dunn?”

  “She’s a cast member. Don’t you watch the show?”

  “Not too much.”

  “Well, she’s boycotting.”

  “I really don’t give a shit.”

  “Sinéad O’Connor, who’s slated to be the musical guest, is also boycotting.”

  “I don’t really understand, Lorne,” I said. “Hasn’t your show always been about making fun of different shit?”

  “Ostensibly, that is our purpose.”

  “And don’t I fit into that kinda thing?”

  “These women think you’ve gone too far.”

  “And what do you think?”

  “I think you’re funny—or I wouldn’t have booked you on the show.”

  “Then what’s the problem?”

  “I just felt that it’s fair to warn you that you’ll be receiving an inordinate amount of bad publicity.”

  “What else is new?”

  Later I learned the real truth behind the Nora Dunn boycott. Next season she was being dropped from the show, and she wanted to bring some positive attention to herself. She figured attacking me might help spin the story from “comic gets fired” to “comic attacks woman-hater.” Far as Sinéad O’Connor, she just went along with what her management told her to do. She actually said on The Arsenio Hall Show later that if she had to do it again, she would have appeared on the show.

  As you’ve probably guessed, the media shit storm boosted SNL’s ratings for the week. I had no problems with the skits, and there were nice compliments all around. But this anti-Dice thing didn’t go away. Among certain critics in the media, it was getting stronger every day. The sharks were in the water, and the sharks were smelling blood. My fuckin’ blood.

  How to respond? I didn’t have a clue. All I knew was that the Diceman would always be the Diceman. That’s who the fuckin’ character was.

  • • •

  Some people say it was the Nora Dunn incident that energized the anti-Dice forces. I don’t know if that’s true. I don’t know if you can cite a date on which the media attacks turned from negative to out-and-out vicious. But it came with a vengeance.

  There were signs of things to come. I’m talking literally. Wanted posters with pictures of Barry Diller were put up in the gay community. The rest of the Gay Mafia—David Geffen and Sandy Gallin—were also getting calls from gay activists. How could they, as gay men, support my career? They were being called traitors.

  One day I had the most powerful team in Hollywood backing me. The next day that team was being threatened.

  “You got nothing to worry about,” said my dad, the only manager who would never drop me, no matter what.

  “I got everything to worry about.”

  “These managers are making a fortune on you. They’re gonna stick by you.”

  “I ain’t so sure.”

  I was even less sure when Barry Diller called me to his office for what he said was a big meeting. For whatever reason, Gallin made an excuse and said he couldn’t be there. That wasn’t a good sign. I was so uneasy that I flew my dad in from Brooklyn so he could be by my side.

  “It’s gonna be fine,” said Fred Silverstein, always an optimist.

  “I got a lousy feeling,” I said.

  “The movie’s done, Andrew. The premiere is set. The ads are already out there.”

  “That’s just the point. All over the city people are out there destroying the posters. They’re ripping them off the telephone poles and off the sides of buildings.”

  “It’ll pass,” Dad said, trying to reassure me. “It’ll all be okay.”

  Remember—my guy Sandy Gallin was the most powerful manager in Hollywood; my record deal was with David Geffen, who had the hottest label; and my three-picture deal was with Barry Diller, who ran the behemoth 20th Century Fox. And, if you go by the numbers, I was easily the most popular comic in the world. In a single three-day weekend, I could sell sixty thousand tickets. I could command a half million dollars a performance. When I remembered this, I got to feeling that Dad was right. Why would the studio buckle under the pressure of a few angry nuts when my fan base had proven to be not only huge but loyal as hell?

  All these thoughts were running through my head when Dad and I showed up at 20th Century Fox, where we were sent into Diller’s office, an impressive suite befitting of one of the kings of Hollywood.

  “This isn’t going to be easy to say,” were the first words Diller said, causing my fuckin’ stomach to do flips. “But I’ve had to make some very hard decisions. Let me tell it to you straight, Dice.”

  “Shoot,” I said, eager to get this over with.

  “I’m canceling the
premiere.”

  “That’s crazy,” said my father. “You’ll be hurting your own movie.”

  “I’m afraid that’s not all, Mr. Silverstein. I’m also going to buy your son out of the other two films left on his contract.”

  I stayed stone silent. I knew what was happening. Dad, though, couldn’t believe it. He kept pushing Diller until Diller finally told us the real reason behind all this.

  “The pressure is too much,” he said. “I’ve gotten death threats. These people—these insane protesters—are dead set on ruining my life, and to be frank, it simply isn’t worth it.”

  “But what about Ford Fairlane?” I asked.

  “The film will be released, but I can’t promise much promotion.”

  “Without promotion, what good is a film?”

  “Good word-of-mouth can keep it alive.”

  But I knew it was dead. If they were pulling the premiere and killing the promotion, it didn’t have a chance.

  • • •

  When the film did come out, the critics did more than attack the movie; they attacked me. It was personal and nasty as nasty could be. And it didn’t even matter that it made $14 million the first week and by the second week had grossed $21 million. By the third week, it was gone. Diller did what the protesters demanded: he killed the fuckin’ film.

  The critics did everything but put a gun to my head. I didn’t mind their criticizing the film—that’s fair game—but they went after me personally. A publicist I hired at the time said, “I’ve never seen anything like it, Dice. It’s an orchestrated campaign to knock you off. One critic is even screaming about how you’re really not good-looking and everyone needs to realize that. Where the hell is he coming from?”