Ex-Rent Hell presents… The Adven­tures of Ford Fairlane

Ex-Rent Hell is a col­umn ded­i­cat­ed to the seami­er side of the 1980s VHS boom. Each week, ERH selects a film from this cursed era and asks one sim­ple ques­tion: what went wrong?

Mis­un­der­stood bar­rack-room racon­teur whose rag­ing Dice­man alter-ego over­ran the sty­gian mon­ster truck ral­ly of his tiny, frac­tured mind? Or a shit-for-brained har­bin­ger of the New Reich? What­ev­er lin­ger­ing opin­ion you might nurse about ​’80s com­e­dy behe­moth and walk­ing Rorschach Test Andrew Dice Clay, his immense whoop-n-holler pop­u­lar­i­ty goes to prove that democ­ra­cy, that oft-shaft­ed Judas goat, sim­ply doesn’t work.

Clay’s stage act ver­i­fied that what audi­ences want­ed from an enter­tain­er was not to be edu­cat­ed, informed or regaled with coked-up blar­ney, but to be insult­ed, belit­tled and, above all, offend­ed. And though he endures as a com­ic touch­stone for each new gen­er­a­tion and a peren­ni­al playground/​YouTube favourite boast­ing more inter­net hits per day than Turk­ish Star Wars, his sign o’ the times pan­der­ing and unremit­tent fag’n’hag bait­ing meant that by 1990 he bestrode Madi­son Square Gar­den like a goom­bah colos­sus and was rack­ing up more PC-gone-mad col­umn inch­es than Rob Lowe’s ​‘nature films’.

Hollywood’s ears were being well and tru­ly pricked… Prob­a­bly the Ex-Rent Hell entry in which the bud­get to enter­tain­ment ratio reach­es its most harsh and cre­pus­cu­lar aspect, it is per­haps more sat­is­fy­ing to spec­u­late on the meet­ings that led up to Clay’s first star­ring vehi­cle than to con­sid­er the sple­net­ic, misog­y­nist vod­ka advert that was sub­se­quent­ly vommed across our screens. Meet­ings, one sens­es, that were held in a New Jer­sey jacuzzi show­room and con­cen­trat­ed less on sto­ry or tone than opti­mum side­burn length and the loca­tion of the cast­ing couch.

The film itself sees Dice’s tit­u­lar LA music indus­try detec­tive Ford Fair­lane wad­dling up and down the Sun­set Strip, mak­ing end­less queasy quips about ​“rap­ing somebuddy’s mud­der” while decked out in hand-tooled cow­boy boots, skimpy mus­cle top and a vari­ety of hideous, gaudy leather jack­ets that make him look less like the been-there, done-that rock­a­bil­ly hep­cat he imag­ines and more like the fabled Welsh Rodeo Clown char­ac­ter that was left on the cut­ting room floor of the Vil­lage People’s Can’t Stop the Music.

The puta­tive com­e­dy spins around some miss­ing CDs and pounds to the 4/4 beat of des­per­a­tion as an ERH Camelot of Wayne New­ton and Priscil­la Pres­ley col­lect pay­checks they don’t need from a film nei­ther will ever see. Clay breezes through a series of elab­o­rate­ly point­less ERH sta­ples – back­lot night­club, gar­den par­ty, the ever-depend­able pier – spout­ing a lo-cal ver­sion of his shit­ty schtick that will hope­ful­ly play in the boonies.

A camel, they say, is a horse designed by com­mit­tee. The lessons learned by Ford Fairlane’s fren­zied attempts to shack­le the buck­ing bron­co of Clay’s stage act to the fly­blown demands of Tinseltown’s eter­nal char­nel wag­on would ulti­mate­ly allow such pot­ty-mouthed mud-jug­glers as Adam San­dler and Will Fer­rell to genet­i­cal­ly mod­i­fy that par­tic­u­lar­ly con­fused equine enough to become improb­a­bly big stars.

Like a born-to-lose street hood, the Dice­man had gone straight for the chump change. His know­ing suc­ces­sors would strate­gi­cal­ly bide their time and hold out for long mon­ey. Of course San­dler, that cal­cu­lat­ing lit­tle bas­tard, would have the advan­tage of hav­ing grad­u­at­ed from Yale. Exact­ly what school Dice went to school is hard to judge – but wher­ev­er it was, they taught some fucked up nurs­ery rhymes. OHH!!!

This arti­cle was orig­i­nal­ly pub­lished in LWLies 13: the Con­trol issue.