Gossip is meant to entertain, but sometimes gossip can also teach us an important life skill via live, has-been comedian example. This item in today's Page Six about a fight between Jon Lovitz and Andy Dick, for example, does just that.
How To Cast Your Movie, The Andy Dick Method (as reported by Page Six):
1. Make an enemy. (Everyone knows that enemies make the best cast members!) This shouldn't be too hard. Just call someone a mean name, or, you know, precipitate a series of events that inadvertently causes their good friend's tragic death:
Lovitz and Dick have been at loggerheads since a 1997 Christmas party at Hartman's house, five months before his troubled wife Brynn flipped out, fatally shooting Hartman, then killing herself. "Andy was doing cocaine, and he gave Brynn some after she had been sober for 10 years. Phil was furious about it – and then five months later he's dead," said Lovitz, adding that when he filled in on Hartman's "Newsradio" sitcom, "I told Andy, 'I wouldn't be here now if you hadn't given Brynn that cocaine.' "
2. Drunkenly taunt said enemy about their good friend's tragic death in public. This forges a steely bond made out of deep-seated hatred between the two of you–just the kind of bond that will make your enemy want to work with you in the future!
Last year, Lovitz related, a drunken Dick strolled up to his table at Ago in West Hollywood, rudely downed his guests' peach liqueur drinks, and "looked at me and said, 'I put the "Phil Hartman hex" on you – you're the next one to die.' I said, 'What did you say?' and he repeated it. I wanted to punch his face in, but I don't hit women."
3. If your enemy asks you to apologize, first deny, then backtrack, then remind them it was all their fault in the first place. This primes your enemy for what is sure to be a good working relationship!
When the two ran into each other at the Laugh Factory last Wednesday, "I wanted him to say he was sorry for the 'Phil Hartman hex,' " Lovitz told us. "First he says, 'I don't remember saying that.' Then he leans in and says, 'You know why I said it? Because you said I killed Phil Hartman.' Which I never said."
4. Finally, when your enemy is properly seething with anger, ask him to be in your new movie:
"Then he asked me to be in his new movie," Lovitz said. "I grabbed him by the shirt and leaned him over and said, 'I don't want to be in your movie! I don't want to be in your life!' I pushed him against the rail. Then I pushed him again really hard. A security guard broke it up. I'm not proud of it . . . but he's a disgusting human being."
5. You'll be able to tell if your enemy wants to be in your movie by the number of times they hit your head against the bar at the Laugh Factory: one to three times is a yes, four to five times is a maybe, and anything over six is "I'll do it pending script approval."
Laugh Factory owner Jamie Masada, who witnessed the assault, said, "Jon picked Andy up by the head and smashed him into the bar four or five times, and blood started pouring out of his nose." Lovitz told Page Six, "All the comedians are glad I did it because this guy is a [bleep]hole."