Get Smart

Just for Laughs Chicago: Wrangling the Free-Wheelin’ Andy Dick

PatrickMcD — Sat, 20 Jun 2009 15:43:24 -0600

CHICAGO – Andrew R. “Andy” Dick is one of the most brilliantly infamous and misunderstood comic forces in the last twenty years. Appearing at Superstation TBS “Just for Laughs” Festival in Chicago, he combined farce, music and pure Andy in his show.

Andy Dick is very, very calm in Chicago on June 19, 2009
Photo credit: Joe Arce of Starstruck Foto for HollywoodChicago.com

During a rollicking interview with HollywoodChicago.com, Dick went over his career and philosophy, between bouts of singing Edie Brickell songs (”Where is she now?” he wondered, before speculating about her work on a part of Paul Simon’s anatomy).

HollywoodChicago.com: Your bio indicates that you moved around a lot as a kid. What area of the country most influenced your ever-evolving style of performance?

Andy Dick: Besides the first one, from Connecticut to Pennsylvania, which hurt and was emotionally jarring, the one that cracked my head open like an egg was moving from the United States to Yugoslavia. It was horse and buggies and a farmer’s market. It was a silver bullet train that went to the big city. I lived outside Zagreb for a whole year, and opened my mind up on every level. It was fantastic.

HC: Do you think some of your more notorious circumstances are merely performance art in real life that others simply don’t get?

AD: Let’s say that. I love that, and yes.

To be honest with you, I don’t know what percentage it is and over the years my real life took over and bled into my performance art. We can flash back all the way to the Aspen Comedy Festival, where I did a pre-planned vomit routine. I’m infatuated with vomit.

They thought it was all real and I’ve never been asked back to that Festival. So there are some things I do, and do well, that people don’t get.

HC: Is your character of “Queen of Pop” Daphne Aguilera based on anyone?

AD: It’s loosely based on on my Mom, because not really, because my mother wasn’t a whore (laughs). Daphne is a lush, and my Mom drank a lot. My Mom was a great woman, but she was married until she died. I love Daphne.

Andy Dick in Chicago on June 18, 2009
Photo credit: Joe Arce of Starstruck Foto for HollywoodChicago.com

HC: Where does the influence come from, family or performance experience, in your ability to step over the line sometimes?

AD: I think it comes from the fact that my Dad was a Lieutenant Commander on a submarine in the Navy and he ran his family like a tightly run ship. And I felt like I was on a sub under nine miles of water. And I couldn’t breathe.

I needed to get out and break the bubble. And I did. I got out and did my thing and ninety percent of my career is in retaliation against my Dad. I did love and respect him, who died before my career took off and I do wish he were here to see it.

HC: Since you were involved in the 1995 spin-off of the concept, what was it about “Get Smart”? What was your weirdest experience on that show?

AD: When I did the spin-off – it only lasted seven episodes – I was the son, Zach Smart, of Don Adams’ Maxwell Smart. I worked with Don Adams, and he was great, it was working with a legend.

He was getting older, and couldn’t remember his lines. There was one time, when all he had to say was ‘picky, picky’ in that Maxwell Smart voice. He forgot picky, picky and it came out as ‘ticky tacky’. I fell on the floor laughing.

HC: Didn’t you also do an episode of Star Trek:Voyager?

AD: Yeah, and I couldn’t remember those lines to save my life. You can’t improvise the names of phaser guns. You can’t say, ‘hand me the ticky tacky, Lieutenant Picky-Picky.’ You couldn’t do that on Star Trek:Voyager.

I was a hologram doctor, so I posted my lines on post-it notes, like Marlon Brando, all around the consoles, because we were on a space ship. But I wasn’t wearing my glasses, so I couldn’t see them. I was literally crying, saying I couldn’t do this. Beam me up, ticky-tacky (laughs).

HC: What type of scripts or roles are you offered now and do any of them make you wonder what the industry thinks of you?

AD: Precisely. I just got offered a role as a guest star in a pilot and they want me to play a Joe Francis type [Girls Gone Wild]. He’s a guy who goes around trying to get girls to take their tops off. I’m like, guys I don’t want to do that!

HC: Have you recorded the songs with your band [Andy Dick and the Bitches of the Century]?

AD: I have four albums on iTunes. The recordings are good, but the live version is better, because every show we do I add a new little ‘ticky-tacky’.

HC: Were you advised to change your name, like Tim Allen did, because he was originally Tim Dick?

AD: When I got to Los Angeles, my agent at the time said, ‘first things first, we’re changing your name!’ And I said, no we’re not, that’s like giving the middle finger to my family. So then I spent the next twenty years defacing the name anyway (laughs). I should have changed my name, they we’re right (laughs).

HC: Finally, how would you categorize yourself as a performer?

AD: I call myself a provocateur, not a comic. I use my acting skills to adjust the equalizer between emotion and action. To provoke an audience and get them to believe in something that is not happening. I also call myself a performance artist.

There is one bit I do where we freeze at the end, and there is about 3 minutes of silence. The audience is digesting it, in their mind and body and soul, they’re processing it. And that silence is not uncomfortable to me, I like it. I live in that silence.

TBS ‘Just for Laughs’ Chicago runs through June 21st, 2009. Click here for tickets and details. Find out all about Andy Dick here.

By PATRICK McDONALD
Staff Writer
HollywoodChicago.com
pat@hollywoodchicago.com

HollywoodChicago.com Podcast, Episode 2: ‘WALL-E,’ ‘Wanted,’ ‘The Love Guru,’ ‘Get Smart,’ Top 100 List

HollywoodChicago.com — Thu, 26 Jun 2008 00:21:39 -0600

CHICAGO – In episode two of the HollywoodChicago.com podcast, our staffers discuss the blockbusters “WALL-E” and “Wanted,” which both open on Friday. In this 32-minute podcast, staffers Adam Fendelman, Dustin Levell, Patrick McDonald and Lauren Fendelman also debate why moviegoers had such an irate reaction to last week’s “The Love Guru” from Mike Myers.

In addition to discussing “WALL-E” (review here), “Wanted” and “The Love Guru” (review here), the critics also discuss the recently released “Get Smart” (review here) film along with the newly published Entertainment Weekly list of the top 100 “new classics”.

Listen to the episode-two podcast immediately in streaming mode.
Download the full HollywoodChicago.com episode-two podcast now.
Subscribe to the free HollywoodChicago.com podcast RSS feed.
Subscribe to the HollywoodChicago.com podcast in iTunes.

Clockwise from left to right: HollywoodChicago.com staffers Adam Fendelman, Lauren Fendelman, Patrick McDonald and Dustin Levell discuss “WALL-E,” “Wanted,” “The Love Guru” and the recent Entertainment Weekly list of the top 100 “new classics” in episode two of the HollywoodChicago.com podcast.
Image credit: HollywoodChicago.com

By ADAM FENDELMAN
Editor-in-Chief
HollywoodChicago.com
adam@hollywoodchicago.com

In ‘Get Smart’ Lifeless Retread, Steve Carell Can’t Fill Don Adams’ Shoe

HollywoodChicago.com — Fri, 20 Jun 2008 11:37:59 -0600

CHICAGO – Observing the new “Get Smart” film, which is based on the 1960s TV sitcom of the same name, is to note how much has changed since the Cold War ended.

Rating: 2.0/5.0

KAOS and CONTROL – the U.S. and Russian spy agencies that square off in the movie – seem like relics of another era. In this age of homeland security and unlimited government wiretapping, it’s difficult to create fictional comedy that can compete with real-life absurdity.

The film version of “Get Smart” lives up to that truth. Combining dull action-movie elements, badly cast movie stars and an uncomfortable romance, the film has forgotten all about its TV roots and most of the humor.

Read Patrick McDonald’s full review of “Get Smart” in our reviews section.

View our full, high-resolution “Get Smart” image gallery.

Played by Steve Carell, Maxwell Smart is a Russian interpreter and communications administrator in the secret government spy agency CONTROL.

The chief (Alan Arkin) wants Smart to stay in the administration even though he longs to join spies like Agent 23 (Dwayne Johnson) and work in the field.

After KAOS – a rival Russian agency – infiltrates and wrecks the CONTROL offices, Smart is promoted to field agent and partnered with super-spy Agent 99 (Anne Hathaway). Their mission is to find out who’s behind KAOS and identify their evil plans.

“Get Smart,” which stars Steve Carell, Anna Hathaway, Dwayne Johnson, Alan Arkin, Terence Stamp, Bill Murray and Ryan Seacrest, opened everywhere on June 20, 2008.

Steve Carell stars as Maxwell Smart (left) and Anne Hathaway stars as Agent 99 in “Get Smart”.
Photo credit: Warner Bros.

Anne Hathaway (left) stars as Agent 99 and Steve Carell stars as Maxwell Smart in “Get Smart”.
Photo credit: Tracy Bennett

Read Patrick McDonald’s full “Get Smart” review.

HollywoodChicago.com Podcast, Episode 1: Summer Blockbusters

HollywoodChicago.com — Sun, 15 Jun 2008 19:37:53 -0600

CHICAGO – In the inaugural HollywoodChicago.com podcast, our staffers debate 2008’s summer blockbuster films. Staffers Adam Fendelman, Dustin Levell, Patrick McDonald and Lauren Fendelman all chime in and cast their predictions on this 24-minute podcast.

Our discussion covers the full gamut of summer blockbuster films including “The Dark Knight,” “Wanted,” “WALL-E,” “The Incredible Hulk,” “Get Smart,” “The Happening,” “Hancock,” “Hellboy II: The Golden Army,” “Iron Man,” “The X-Files: I Want to Believe,” “The Rocker,” “Step Brothers,” “Pineapple Express,” “Star Wars: The Clone Wars” and “Tropic Thunder”.

Listen to the episode-one podcast immediately in streaming mode.
Download the full HollywoodChicago.com episode-one podcast now.
Subscribe to the free HollywoodChicago.com podcast RSS feed.
Subscribe to the HollywoodChicago.com podcast in iTunes.

Clockwise from left to right: HollywoodChicago.com staffers Adam Fendelman, Lauren Fendelman, Patrick McDonald and Dustin Levell discuss 2008’s summer blockbuster films in episode one of the HollywoodChicago.com podcast.
Image credit: HollywoodChicago.com

By ADAM FENDELMAN
Editor-in-Chief
HollywoodChicago.com
adam@hollywoodchicago.com

First-Look Production Stills: New ‘Harry Potter,’ ‘Get Smart,’ ‘10,000 B.C.’; ‘Speed Racer’ Poster

HollywoodChicago.com — Fri, 14 Dec 2007 14:00:16 -0700

Following our Dec. 11 post, which featured a slew of new production stills from 2008 Warner Bros. films, even more have just been released by the studio. We now see the first stills from “Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince,” “10,000 B.C.” and “Get Smart”.

Steven Strait as D’Leh in the epic adventure “10,000 B.C.”.
Photo credit: Warner Bros.

Daniel Radcliffe as Harry Potter “Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince”.
Photo credit: Jaap Buitendijk

Anne Hathaway stars as Agent 99 and Steve Carell stars
as Maxwell Smart in “Get Smart”.
Photo credit: Tracy Bennett

Steve Carell as Maxwell Smart in “Get Smart”.
Photo credit: Tracy Bennett
Also, I’m adding a sweet “Speed Racer” production still from Dec. 11. Below it, we see a new lenticular “Speed Racer” poster that – in person – is literally in 3D. /Film says: “The helmet under [Speed Racer’s] arms pops out at you and the background is also in 3D.”

Emile Hirsch as Speed Racer in the Mach 5 in the film “Speed Racer”.
Photo credit: Warner Bros.

Lenticular “Speed Racer” poster in 3D.
Image credit: FirstShowing.net