I moved to NY in '89. I was a little Canadian kid, and Dicemania and its backlash were in full swing. Like a lot of things, we didn't have that in the small town I'd left outside Ottawa. Dicemania went hand-in-hand with all the things that jumble together from that brief time I was there: the Central Park Jogger, crime, those fires in trashcans under overpasses, Donald Trump, David Dinkins, Rudy Giuliani*, George W. Bush, Dan Quayle, the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles, and MC Hammer. Almost all of it was over by the time I left New York in 1992.
As manias go, to my mind, Dicemania followed Hulk-a-mania, and was soon supplanted by Hammermania. But unlike those bookends, Dicemania, I was told again and again, was really bad and dangerous. I'm pretty sure I remember TV news coverage of the Madison Square Garden concerts filmed for Dice Rules! Like Dice Rules, the TV coverage was all about his audiences.
I kinda thought that every outer-boroughy working class guy aged 17-35 that I encountered with an accent was one of these bad Dice guys. Everywhere I went, I saw Dice guys. Then one day they were gone, too. We know where they went.
* PS--I vividly remember the first time I heard about Rudy Giuliani. It was during the 1989 election campaign, the one he lost to David Dinkins. There was an ad that featured his wife walking along a body of water (pond? river?) as if at picnic, and she intones something like, "A lot people think they know Rudy Giuliani. They say terrible things about him, but only I know the real Rudy Giuliani." It went on a bit like this, then shows his picture Rudy Guiliani. I was like who is this guy and why are people saying unnamed terrible things about him that are so bad that his wife has to defend him. It was my first taste of US dirty politics.
(Can't find it anywhere on the internet, but this ad from 1993 is similar https://youtu.be/k0xKoSN6BR8?si=iSV4QZsWRehCUXL_, and worth watching knowing that a few years later he'd cheat on and leave her for a pharmaceutical sales rep. The only 89 ad I could find does give you a really good sense of the tone of NY at the time, and the backdrop for outer-borough Dicemania ► https://youtu.be/UzNM68_mluc?si=vZ0ZZ_wtPEerhQXS)
I saw the Diceman in Vegas over a decade ago. A staffer invited me and my buddy down to the front row, and the Diceman subsequently called us gay. I'm not, but fair point considering i was seated next to a male friend in the front row of a Dice show.
That wasn't even the most offensive thing he did to me at the show, which was repeating verbatim a joke I had heard him tell on a podcast mere days earlier. Haaaaaaaaaaaack!
I moved to NY in '89. I was a little Canadian kid, and Dicemania and its backlash were in full swing. Like a lot of things, we didn't have that in the small town I'd left outside Ottawa. Dicemania went hand-in-hand with all the things that jumble together from that brief time I was there: the Central Park Jogger, crime, those fires in trashcans under overpasses, Donald Trump, David Dinkins, Rudy Giuliani*, George W. Bush, Dan Quayle, the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles, and MC Hammer. Almost all of it was over by the time I left New York in 1992.
As manias go, to my mind, Dicemania followed Hulk-a-mania, and was soon supplanted by Hammermania. But unlike those bookends, Dicemania, I was told again and again, was really bad and dangerous. I'm pretty sure I remember TV news coverage of the Madison Square Garden concerts filmed for Dice Rules! Like Dice Rules, the TV coverage was all about his audiences.
I kinda thought that every outer-boroughy working class guy aged 17-35 that I encountered with an accent was one of these bad Dice guys. Everywhere I went, I saw Dice guys. Then one day they were gone, too. We know where they went.
* PS--I vividly remember the first time I heard about Rudy Giuliani. It was during the 1989 election campaign, the one he lost to David Dinkins. There was an ad that featured his wife walking along a body of water (pond? river?) as if at picnic, and she intones something like, "A lot people think they know Rudy Giuliani. They say terrible things about him, but only I know the real Rudy Giuliani." It went on a bit like this, then shows his picture Rudy Guiliani. I was like who is this guy and why are people saying unnamed terrible things about him that are so bad that his wife has to defend him. It was my first taste of US dirty politics.
(Can't find it anywhere on the internet, but this ad from 1993 is similar https://youtu.be/k0xKoSN6BR8?si=iSV4QZsWRehCUXL_, and worth watching knowing that a few years later he'd cheat on and leave her for a pharmaceutical sales rep. The only 89 ad I could find does give you a really good sense of the tone of NY at the time, and the backdrop for outer-borough Dicemania ► https://youtu.be/UzNM68_mluc?si=vZ0ZZ_wtPEerhQXS)
I saw the Diceman in Vegas over a decade ago. A staffer invited me and my buddy down to the front row, and the Diceman subsequently called us gay. I'm not, but fair point considering i was seated next to a male friend in the front row of a Dice show.
That wasn't even the most offensive thing he did to me at the show, which was repeating verbatim a joke I had heard him tell on a podcast mere days earlier. Haaaaaaaaaaaack!
Hey, I’ve started an account where I collect some out of context moments of great films in cinema history. Just wanted to share it with the cinephiles around here : https://substack.com/@pariscinema?r=1x6h4r&utm_medium=ios&utm_source=profile