The New York Times
May 14, 1990, Monday, Late Edition - Final

'Saturday Night Live,' With Andrew Dice Clay

By CARYN JAMES


   ''I want to say Happy Mother's Day to my mother and every other mother out
there,'' said Andrew Dice Clay at the end of his appearance as host of NBC's
''Saturday Night Live.'' Making mothers and other women happy has never been one
of his priorities before, of course. It was the unrelenting misogyny of the
comedian's enormously popular stand-up routine that led Nora Dunn, a regular
cast member, and Sinead O'Connor, the scheduled musical guest, to boycott
Saturday's show. But even misogynists have moms, and he sounded like he meant
it. Can it be he can really act?

   It's impossible to tell from his ''Saturday Night Live'' appearance, which
was apparently meant to be the next shrewd step in the mainstreaming of Andrew
Dice Clay. With two movies (a comedy and a concert film) coming out this summer,
he can no longer afford to spit out expletives on live television, the act that
got him banned from MTV and bought him just the kind of bad-boy publicity that
has propelled his career. But instead of testing whether he can be more than a
one-note performer, the show turned into a media event that gnawed at the
controversy in one toothless skit after another.

   The most clever was the opening sketch, a parody of ''It's a Wonderful
Life,'' with Mr. Clay threatening to throw himself off a bridge because of the
fuss about his appearing as host. His guardian devil reveals what ''Saturday
Night Live'' would have been without him: Ms. Dunn would have shown up and been
squashed when Ms. O'Connor's amplifier fell on her. A distraught Ms. O'Connor
would never show her nearly shaved head to sing in public again. ''That's too
bad; she was a cute bald chick,'' says Mr. Clay in the Jimmy Stewart role.

   This mild self-mocking does not begin to suggest the offensive tirade of
sexism that is typical of Mr. Clay's stand-up routines, and anyone who turned on
''Saturday Night Live'' without having seen him at his most vile might have
wondered what the fuss was about. His usual comments about women are mostly
unprintable, but a typical one involves whiling away time in line at the bank by
molesting the woman in front of him. The chain-smoking, leather-jacketed
''Diceman'' is clearly a persona, but it is a role without any redeeming irony.

   When Mr. Clay was briefly heckled during his opening monologue on ''Saturday
Night,'' though, his response was to call the heckler ''the type of guy that
hangs out in the men's room'' inhaling the aromas all day. This may walk the
line of network television standards, but it's not the kind of scabrous dialogue
that provokes boycotts. And given the chance to skewer the protesters and to
parody the Clay image, the writers could do no better than an ''Afterschool
Special'' with Mr. Clay as a father giving a sex talk to his son, with certain
slang terms bleeped out.

   Mr. Clay and the writers must have thought they were capitalizing on the
controversy, instead of being sunk by it, but they made the wrong choice. The
one truly funny episode was ''Ridiculous Bull,'' a black-and-white-parody of
''Raging Bull'' with Mr. Clay doing a mean impersonation of Robert De Niro as
the out-of-shape boxer Jake LaMotta saying, ''Hit me with the sledgehammer,
Joey. I'm your older brother, Joey, hit me with the refrigerator,'' in Mr. De
Niro's nervous, repetitious delivery. The Diceman disappeared and a comic actor
took over, raising new questions. Does Andrew Dice Clay have a future in the
mainstream after all? And if he does, should women ever forgive him for the way
he got there?