This joke is based on the fact that the phrase “call you back” is a double entendre, which can mean either “return your call” or “call you ‘Back’” (in the sense of the addressee being named “Back”).
When Dice says “I’ll call you back in an hour”, he is using the second meaning of “I’ll call you ‘Back’ in an hour.” After an hour elapses (indicated by a small pause in the routine) he yells out “Back”, which is exactly what he said he would do.
Hour back… get it?
Looks like our Thread is BACK! OUR! BACK!
Now I want to hear it again. Because I never got it the first time.
An old roommate of mine used to quote that “hour back” thing over and over. We just ignored him. (Other things he liked to quote were “me so horny, me love you long time”, “Black Betty, ram-a-lam” and “sweat from my balls!”)
I wasn’t a big fan in the day but knew of him well enough to watch the Showtime series that is out now On Demand.
Adrian Brody does Dice (Ep 2) is the best.
I never thought much of him as a comedian, but he was sublime in Blue Jasmine.
I think that many here are being to hard on him. “Hard on…him!”
No, but, seriously…
He was revolutionary at the time; non-PC, irreverent, shocking, great delivery, the dashing, studly Italian toughguy that the babes in the audience want to get down and dirty with, and the guys could look up to.
It was either The Diceman Cometh or the one after that, that was his last funny one.
After that, he was living on his rep. His big problem was that he stopped being funny. He got fat. He even got the balls to start *singing *in his act. He started balding, and wearing some over the top hideously loud sky blue sport jacket, that made Eddie Murphy’s red suit look sedate, which made him into some fat wanker, instead of the macho stud. He stopped working on his delivery, and correct comic timing. At that point, everything that made him famous was gone. He wasn’t even a caricature of his old self. The Diceman was dead.
Of course, he always had a good amount of talent, so he didn’t disappear.
I still can’t listen to any of that without being embarrassed for humans everywhere. I stand by my post, number 7, from 3+ years ago. What a complete fucking idiot.
PC wasn’t particularly big at the time, and there were a crowd of irreverent comics who were better than he. Lenny Bruce, Redd Foxx, Richard Pryor, SAM! (I love him 
), and numerous others.
But I’ll still and always love his rendition of “I Ain’t Got You.”
He’s just not funny and I sort of want to like him but, you know, not funny.
Rick Rubin considers it one of his top 21 recordings, FWIW. YMMV. I completely get why most people wouldn’t consider it funny.
I thought he was kinda funny, when I was like 12. Not a big draw for me, just if I happened to see him somewhere or some one repeated some of his material.
If people like/liked his shtick, meh, so what. Offensive shmafensive, some people could stand getting offended now and then instead of reeing like jackasses at the drop of a hat
I was going to comment on how little I liked his comedy, but how much I liked him in Blue Jasmine. But I see I already said that two years ago, so never mind.
Clay was good in One Night at McCool’s, a movie I think is criminally under-rated.
“You, [points shotgun at Paul Reiser] I’ll kill just for annoying me.”
I really liked Ford Fairlaine. I think it was under-rated too, snapperhead.
He was also in A Star is Born, if you haven’t seen that.
He’s just boring, in every way.
We need to realize that stand-up comedy is an empty ritual, that rarely is actually funny.
It’s almost never clever.
I was actually at his concert at MSG around that time, so maybe it was the one used for the film that Ebert so thoroughly trashed. I’m glad you like “handicap humor.” I actually usually don’t, but his routine that night had me laughing as hard as I ever laughed, either before or since. And everyone in my group felt the same when discussing afterward: “That was so terrible. So wrong. But SO F’ING FUNNY!” That’s what comedy is all about. A lot of comedy is going to offend Someone.
His Nursery Rhyme jokes that night were kind of MEH, and that’s what he was most famous for. In my opinion his career went off the rails because he took all of the criticism too seriously–I remember he went on a talk show and cried.
I agree with the above posters that Eddie Murphy’s standup was probably more offensive, and in my opinion not as funny. And I actually think Murphy can be as funny as just about anyone. He was actually funnier when he was “clean,” like in his SNL days.
Whole lotta Banned posters in this thread.