Andrew Dice Clay is rolling again
JOHN LAW
Andrew Dice Clay is at a Starbucks in Los Angeles, doing one of his favourite things: People watching.
When people ask him how he comes up with new material, this is what he tells them. Just sitting there, observing the weird things people do every day. Occasionally someone catches ‘Dice’ staring at them, but it’s worth the awkwardness.
“Believe me, if I could build a house above a Starbucks, that’s all I need,” he says from a cell phone.
“I’m looking at someone right now walking into Starbucks, three quarters of her ass is out and she’s pulling the s--- down, like she didn’t know three-quarters of her ass would be out when she tried it on in the store.
“I don’t think they shrunk since she bought it. It’s just funny to watch. And trust me, I love it.”
This is how Dice Clay works in 2016. His life provided the fodder for the sixepisode first season of Dice on Showtime this year, in which he plays a version of himself that isn’t so exaggerated. Weird things happen to him all the time, and many of them ended up in the series.
“I always tell my friends, when I leave the house…I don’t know what’s coming, but something’s coming. It never fails.”
As he awaits word on Season 2, he already has another episode in mind based on a recent “war” with the guy who put carpeting in his house. Dice Clay changed his mind about having black carpet in the bedroom, and asked to have it made into an area rug instead. It was already paid for.
“So he wants to charge $750 for a seam around the area rug. I spent $3,000 on that carpet! I’m going ‘Doesn’t that seem a little extreme?’ And it becomes a war because of who I am, and they’re trying to rip you off.
“This guy’s a 70-year-old man, and he’s leaving me voice mails using mafia terms like ‘You shorted me on the new carpet for $250!’ He said ‘You better be at the store Monday with cash!’ Are you f---ing kidding me with this guy?”
After it was resolved, one thing was obvious: “I know it’s an episode.”
On stage, there’s a rolodex of crude stories he falls back on. The kind of material that made him one of the most popular — and reviled — stand-up comedians of the late ‘80s and early ‘90s.
If you missed it, Dice Clay was everywhere. On HBO (The Diceman Cometh, Dice Rules). In movies (The Adventures of Ford Fairlane). On Saturday Night Live (forcing regular cast member Nora Dunn to boycott the episode). He was the first comedian to sell out Madison Square Garden on back-to-back nights. He was massive. And then he was gone. Not completely, as he did a handful of movie and TV appearances, and another
A longtime fan of the show, Burke says there’s an “incredible team” working on the puppets — by the end of the story, Audrey II is a mammoth flower that overwhelms the stage.
The space required has forced the company to expand its stage with an added riser.
“It’s pretty big now,” he says. “This year has been a big production process for our company, so now we can do different show titles that we’ve never really thought of.”
Directed by Brian Vogt, the show stars Dalton Bolton as Seymour and Stacie Primeau as Audrey. Dan Mackie does the heavy lifting as Audrey II, the alien plant which craves human flesh and grows larger as the story progresses.
The show only runs for six performances on Fridays and Saturdays, Sept. 9 to 24.
As for next summer, Burke isn’t sure whether Rocky will return.
“Next season we haven’t planned yet, but we’ll be announcing it very soon,” he says. “We’ll have a lot of fun things involved.”
Want to go?
Who: Andrew Dice Clay Where: Seneca Niagara Casino; Niagara Falls, New York When: Aug. 27, 8 p.m. Tickets: Start at $25. www.senecaniagaracasino.com HBO special (Assume the Position). But it was a tumultuous time when he endured massive backlash while having two sons with his second wife.
“I’ve always had a rough career, as far as rising and falling,” he says. “It was never, like, just smooth going. I’m probably the most controversial comic ever, and that’s funny to me because I still look at myself as ‘I’m from Brooklyn.’ I never lost that.”
A key part of his recent resurgence has been his ability to laugh at himself. Most all of the Showtime series is Dice trying to reclaim old glory, and clueless about how to get there.
“I love making fun of me. Because I know I’m just a head case. I know myself really well, so I don’t mind making fun.”
At times, making fun of his painful rock bottom.
“When I first went back to Vegas, I really was in the back of the sushi restaurant,” he says. “You’re talking about a guy that headlined Bally’s hotel for 13 years, in the Celebrity Theatre where Frank Sinatra and Sammy Davis Jr. used to perform. Now, there’s a hundred chairs set up in a sushi restaurant.
“But I told Valerie, my girlfriend at the time, and my sons: ‘Wait ‘til you see what I turn this into.’ And now it’s all working.”
As he rolls into the Seneca Niagara Casino Aug. 27, Dice Clay — now 58 — is still most comfortable on stage. To the point he can go on with nothing to say, knowing it’ll come.
“I don’t even think of material until I’m on stage,” he says. “That’s my rehearsal. People say ‘Do you go to clubs? Write down thoughts?’ Are you kidding? If I don’t know me by now and how to make jokes…
“I just did Brooklyn two weeks ago, and the first 20 minutes was stuff I’d never said before and stuff I’ll probably never say again. It’s what I’ve become, it’s how my mind works.”
Though the old Dice Clay persona will always be there — the profane hoodlum in the leather jacket with a knack for nursery rhymes — he found his way back to the spotlight by diversifying, He was superb in the first episode of HBO’s Vinyl, directed by Martin Scorsese. He got the most glowing praise of his career for his dramatic work in Woody Allen’s Blue Jasmine. He was one of the highlights of Entourage’s dismal final season.
However notoriously he attained it, he’s enjoying the fruits of a 40-year career by outlasting his critics.
Now, he’s a showbiz vet giving advice to his son Max, whose band Still Rebel will tour with Ozzfest in September.
“It’s real simple: you’ve got to be able to accept the word ‘no’ to make it in show business. Because you’re going to hear it a thousand times before you hear the word ‘yes.’ But it’s a great business.”