It's been said numerous times before but it can't hurt to say it again. David Spade is not the snide, manipulative Finch from Just Shoot Me. He's not the acid-tongued Spade in America from Saturday Night Live's Hollywood Minute. He's not even the snobby Rand McPherson from PCU. Instead, he's one of the nicest guys you could meet, or at least talk with on the phone.
In Joe Dirt, your character was abandoned by his parents, and in Dickie Roberts, your character tries to buy a childhood he never had. I know your childhood wasn't the best. Are you working some issues out?
I don't know if it's that. It seemed the best way to go with these movies but there has to be some sort of sympathy factor. I did have the dad that split and I would rather not have had that. It's tough, kind of a ripple effect when you grow up. But I think those kinds of things I can play just because, in my head, I know that it's more important than people sometimes even realize. And so, in Joe Dirt, when you don't have both parents and I try to find them, I think that's a legitimate goal and that can kind of drive a character through a movie. In Dickie, it was more coming from a showbiz aspect, we kind of stumbled into that thing. We interviewed a few of these people, and they're like, "Yeah, even my parents turned their back on me." And we thought, "Wow, that's got to be the ultimate, because you're a kid, and you think everybody loves you, and you're a star, and then your agents goes away, and then jobs, and then even your parents." So that kind of made sense. I don't think it's really a reflection on my own background; it just kind of made sense.
You grew up with guns and rattlesnakes.
My mom—that's another thing about not having a dad—but she hates these stories. But when were 10, 12 and 14, she dropped [my brothers and I] off at one end of the desert, we lived outside of Phoenix about an hour, a tiny town, so to keep us busy, she'd drop us off and pick us up seven miles away at a Chevron station when she got off work. We'd have the day, it was like a picnic, but we all had guns and ammo, and a lunch and a canteen. And we'd just wander around and shoot stuff, and we'd bring our friends. She would be in jail right now, but you know what, she also smoked when she was pregnant, and sometimes those things are fine.
It was a different time.
It was a different time, and it was not weird and everyone did it in our town. You got guns for Christmas, and it was just funny. We seemed to navigate through it all right.
You were born in '64 and the Surgeon General's warning came out in '63, so you've got to forgive them for some stuff.
Yeah, I think she thought that was a bluff. The whole Surgeon General bullshit.
Back in the '80s, you said you were nervous about making politically incorrect jokes and pissing people off. Are there any jokes now you're nervous about making?
I think I'm more nervous. I do my act and there's some dirty parts. I do have opinions about certain political things but I don't think the act is where I need to put them, because sometimes it gets less funny and more like just listening to my opinions. And I think my job there is to just be funny and do some jokes. If I work in some sort of politics, it's more like making fun of Hussein coming out of his bunker hole, it looked like he was on Cops. It was like Cops in Tikrit, coming out with Dolphin shorts on and one sock. That's about as political as I get.
Do you have any plans for your off-hours when you're here in town?
Well, no. I usually like going out there anyway, but it's a little tricky because every single person in Las Vegas has a camera. That's why, when you walk around, it's a lot of starting and stopping.
Any buffets you want to hit, or you got a jones for video poker?
Yeah, I put aside $4.99 so I can have an all-prime-rib buffet at 7 a.m. But no, there's great restaurants there and probably great weather right now. Might even be pool weather.
I guess it depends what you're used to.
I don't know if America's ready for that. My pale, winter, sitcom body. I tell the girls, "Look, I'm not the guy with the body; I'm the guy on TV, all right? If you want the guy with the body, you go down to Crunch and find him."