Andy Dick Session

Andy Dick is the perfect photo subject. He wants to go to dark and terrible places, and for me to photograph it. I suppose that this says as much about my character as his.

For one scenario, he even said, “When I die tragically and prematurely, this would be a great photograph to release!” This is a picture of him peeing into a bowl that his girlfriend was holding. It’s not a particularly interesting picture, but he’s right that it’s pretty fun and weird.

One thing we did was to get milky-white contact lenses for him. I personally took him to the optometrist to have them inserted, and he cried for 15 minutes straight because it hurt so much. But once they were in, he wouldn’t remove them because they are so beautiful and strange, and freaking people out everywhere we went.

The best scenario was right at the end when I had him lie in the gutter outside the photo studio, surrounded by dirt and filth, with a fake black eye from our makeup artist. I had this idea from the beginning, and he was game to execute it. He even went so far as to smash a beer bottle next to his head to add extra texture. But once he did so, he started screaming in pain, saying, “Oh my God, I got a piece of glass in my eye!“ I responded, “ Okay, let me just finish this roll.“

This was our last setup, and afterwards, the makeup artist came over to me holding a Q-tip with an engagement ring-sized piece of glass on the end, and explained that this is what was in Andy‘s eye.

When the story came out in Details Magazine, they led with the gutter shot, and when I saw him next, he told me that his psychologist told him to carry that picture around, as a reminder of what the bottom looks like.

Andy and I stayed in touch, and I would sometimes meet him and his girlfriend for dinner when I was in Los Angeles. He’s one of the few celebrity subjects whom I’ve actually spent time with socially, and I always found him decent and respectful, as well as a lot of fun. I know that his troubles are real, but he’s never made it my problem, and I wish him only the best.

Top Image: Andy Dick, photographed April 28, 1999, Los Angeles, CA.

Second Images: The contact lenses scenario.

Third Image: A transcript of Chris Buck talking about this session in late 1999.

Bottom Images: Contact sheet frames of Andy in an undersized cheap Halloween devil costume.