'The Sober Truth of Dr. Jekyll'

In the second part of my interview with Andy Dick, we strayed away from his new film and upcoming projects to concentrate more on the demons that have haunted him for some many years.

Wildly creative, politically incorrect, compulsively left-of-center, and yet when sober from drugs and alcohol - as he claims to be now - one of the sweetest, most self-motivated people that I have ever spoken with in this business, an interview with Andy is always fun. Sure you may not get to ask all your questions, and sure there are many mid-stream tangential avenues that get explored by the 41 year-old. But at the end of the day you get one hell of an exposé into the life of someone that the unforgiving media gave up on as a serious entity way too early.

Did you ever have a handle on a daily drinking routine? "My drinking schedule is so namby-pamby. Like now I'm not drinking and I haven't drunk for a while. But, I know I will drink again. I'm not like a Hitler about it like I used to be any more. I literally have been to rehab nine times, much like my character. But rehab just doesn't work if you're not the guy who isn't willing to have it work. And what I want to be able to know is that if push comes to shove and if I really do believe that I need it - as I'm the kind of person that believes that nobody needs anything - but I wanna know that my old friend liquor will be there if I truly believe that I need it. Knowing that I really don't need anything."

"When I'm drinking I can maintain myself upwards of sometimes three months. And I'm talking about really maintaining it, doing a great job. Just having one or two glasses at dinner and really just being even keeled. Every once in a while tipping a few back and getting a little tipsy. But then eventually and ultimately the wheels do come off and then I'm pretty much at the point where I'm chemically addicted to alcohol. Where when I wake up in the morning if I don't have a little shot of something I got the shakes. I think that's how it is with a lot of people. Maybe not with everybody. But, that's just how it is with me."

Rather like Jekyll & Hyde, how much of a daily struggle is it for you to be one more than the other? "Well, things have been so more Hyde-like lately that I actually for the first time ever - and I'm 41 years-old - I've been considering and really trying to implement an early retirement. And so for about a year and a half - taking the odd movie here and there - I've really not done anything for literally a year and a half."

"'Cause I don't need to. I've got enough money. My lifestyle would have to come way down. I wouldn't be able to eat out as much. But, I've been trying to do that because of my own demons. I can't seem to get away from them. If I go out to a club I'm going to be in the papers the next day. And it's not going to be 'We saw Andy Dick having a good time' it's gonna be 'Andy Dick was pissing on somebody again!' And that's not good," he laughs.

"But people need to see more of the Dr. Jeykll. I'm only a monster 1.7% of the time. Mostly I'm just this nice guy, you know. But what you see in the paper is such a monster that I think people have a bad taste in their mouth. Which means if they don't want to see me so why would I want to be selling what they're not buying anyway. So, I was just like gonna quit and if they clamored at my door to do more than I would. But, like I said, if they're not wanting it then f**k it," he heavily sighs.

"But now I'm getting the sense that there is this space that I fill, as you were saying, that I don't think people have the capacity in their brain, in their emotional and mental capacity to do what I do. Because what I do is very odd, but I do screw with people. I screw with their brains and that's what drew me to Andy Kauffman in the first place. And that is why this movie 'Danny Roane' is very semi-autobiographical. No, it's not even semi-autobiographical it's a very autobiographical movie," he laughs. "There are some things in that movie that I actually toned down and there are some things that I turned up. People won't know what's real and what's not in terms of what I pulled from my own life. And that I like."

What gets me is that you have this tainted stigma within certain areas of the industry you work, and yet still manage to get a butt load of stars to agree to appear in ‘Danny Roane’! "Well, that's the point. The people who really truly know me and the people who are either a) my friends or b) who have worked with me, they will continue to be my friends and they will continue to work with me. They know the true, real me."

"But the other people who are looking in on my life are just looking in on those moments of the Mr. Hyde syndrome; the monster Andy which are really just wrinkles of moments here and there. Those people looking in are just highly, highly judgmental, or jealous, or they think I'm a bad example for everyone. But they don't know me. They don't know the hell I'm going though, that it's not fun. Or how hard I've worked and how hard I continue to work. They just don't know anything about me."

"That's why I think this new show for VH-1 will be helpful in turning that around. Because I can't do interviews like I'm doing with you with every single person in America. I'd have to sit down with each of them in their living room to let them in on my life. Which is what I'm gonna do on this show. I'm gonna let people in a little more on my life. Because I had no control over what people were seeing of my life. The only parts they were seeing is pretty much when I would go out of my life. I have my life and then I would go out drinking and then cause a ruckus ... and that is the part that has them saying, 'Oh look how he lives all the time!' No, not at all."

It's funny that you are on the Jimmy Kimmel Show tonight (Halloween night) ... especially as last time you had to be physically carried off! Not to mention that he appears in a quick chat show skit in 'Danny Roane'! "Yes, tonight I'm going as a giant bee. And the joke is that I'm making a movie about bees and I just have no awareness whatsoever of the Bee Movie that's coming out! Which is impossible. They have shoved that movie up our butts to the point that I don't even wanna see it anymore," he laughs.

"And in that other episode when I got carried away because I was groping onto Ivanka Trump, that happened one year after we filmed my scene where I pee'd on Jimmy Kimmel and got carried off! That is a perfect shiny example of life imitating art. I filmed that scene and wrote that scene a year before. And it was one scene that didn't need much improvising. He graciously let us film on his set and ABC had to sign off on it. It was a big, big, big to-do. We did it and then one year later almost to the day I got literally carried off by security in real life. And that is so trippy to me." he laughs, for one final time.

Interviewed by Russell A. Trunk

Part I of the Andy Dick Story

'Danny Roane' DVD Purchase Link

www.AndyDick.com