--- Tag: ["đ", "đ", "đșđž", "đ€"] Date: 2023-03-22 DocType: "WebClipping" Hierarchy: TimeStamp: 2023-03-22 Link: https://www.washingtonpost.com/arts-entertainment/2023/03/16/adam-sandler-interview-twain-prize/ location: CollapseMetaTable: true --- Parent:: [[@News|News]] Read:: [[2023-03-28]] ---   ```button name Save type command action Save current file id Save ``` ^button-AdamSandlerdoesntneedyourrespectNSave   # Adam Sandler doesnât need your respect. But heâs getting it anyway. Adam Sandler will be honored by the Kennedy Center with the Mark Twain Prize for American Humor. (Erik Carter for The Washington Post) ## In a rare sit-down interview, the former SNL star and comedy icon reflects on his career as he receives the Mark Twain Prize for American Humor PITTSBURGH â During every Adam Sandler stand-up show, he straps on his electric guitar and sings a song. Unlike the bite-size ditties heâs peppered through the set about selfies or baggy shorts, this one concerns his late, great âSaturday Night Liveâ buddy, Chris Farley. It is a perfect tribute. Sandler, singing softly as he strums in G, captures the complicated beauty of Farley as clips of his most memorable high jinks play on a giant screen behind him. The crowd roars as he references Farleyâs electrifying SNL turns as a Chippendales dancer and a motivational speaker âliving in a van down by the river.â There is a hush as Sandler slips into the bridge, a peek into his friendâs vulnerability. *I saw him in the office, crying with his headphones on* *Listening to a KC and the Sunshine Band song* *I said, âBuddy, how the hell is that making you so sad?â* *Then he laughed and said, âJust thinking about my dadâ* Sandler first performed âFarleyâ in 2015 during a guest spot at Carnegie Hall, a show that inspired him to return to doing stand-up tours. And he played it when he hosted SNL in 2019, choking up visibly. âOnly Sandler could do that,â says Dana Carvey, an SNL star when the younger comedian arrived in 1990. âThatâs another gear that Adam has. Heâll be really, really silly. But heâs not afraid to go for sentimentality and earnestness.â The song, with its mix of low- and highbrow, the profane and poetic, could serve as a four-minute-and-22-second window into why the comedian and actor is being recognized with the Mark Twain Prize for American Humor. And itâs why his friends are glad that, at 56, heâs finally getting his due. All of which may sound strange for someone whose films â generational comedies that include âHappy Gilmore,â âThe Wedding Singerâ and âGrown Upsâ â have earned more than $3 billion at the box office. But for Sandler, popularity and praise have rarely come hand in hand. That has changed some in recent years. Sandlerâs dramatic acting performances in 2017âs âThe Meyerowitz Stories,â last yearâs basketball drama âHustleâ and especially 2019âs âUncut Gemsâ brought unlikely (and ultimately fruitless) Oscar buzz. His 2019 stand-up special â100% Freshâ and 2020âs throwback comedy âHubie Halloweenâ confirmed why heâs been packing movie theaters and arenas since the Clinton administration. The Twain puts Sandler in the company of such figures as Eddie Murphy, Carol Burnett and Steve Martin. And the timing is perfect, says his old boss, Lorne Michaels, himself a recipient of the prize from the Kennedy Center in 2004. âThe nature of comedy is you get the audience, you get the money,â says Michaels, SNLâs creator and executive producer. âRespect is the last thing you get.â ### âCompletely new and freshâ Sandlerâs Happy Madison Productions headquarters is in a small building in Pacific Palisades, not far from where he lives with his wife, Jackie, and their daughters, Sadie, 16, and Sunny, 14. On a recent Friday afternoon, the bearded Sandler enters the room with a slight limp courtesy of hip replacement surgery he had in the fall. A few days earlier, he was in Boston, helping Sadie look at colleges. The next day heâll go to the Nickelodeon Kidsâ Choice Awards with his daughters who will watch him receive the King of Comedy Award and submit to the inevitable sliming. (Sandler is the first person to receive the top comedy honors from Nickelodeon and the Kennedy Center, let alone receive them in the same month.) Sandler typically doesnât do interviews like this. He will go on podcasts with buds, sit on the couch on âJimmy Kimmel Live!â or answer goofy questions on âEntertainment Tonightâ (âWho would be at *your* murder mystery party?â) but this â a three-hour drill-down about his career â is not his thing. He can tell you exactly why. Flash back to 1995 in the SNL offices. Al Franken, the veteran writer and future senator, confronts Sandler and tells him that nobody appreciated his quotes in that TV Guide story. Huh? Sandler checks and sees that the magazine ran a quote from him complaining that âthe writing sucksâ on the show. âI go, âI never f---inâ said that. I never would say that,ââ he remembers now. âSo I called the writer. I said, âWhy did you say I said that?â And he kind of didnât want to talk to me. I should have taped the conversation.â Then, a few months later, came the New York magazine article titled â[Comedy Isnât Funny](https://nymag.com/arts/tv/features/47548/).â Michaels gave Chris Smith, a writer with the magazine, unfettered access to Studio 8H for weeks. The resulting article mashed the writerâs disgust for the show with anonymous quotes attacking its cast. The harshest mockery was reserved for the boyishly sensitive Farley. âHe came and fake buddied up with us,â says David Spade, who was also in the cast. âWe let him in on all these meetings and dinners, and he wrote a s---ty piece to get himself notoriety.â Asked about his article today, Smith says SNL âwas not a happy place at the time.â By then, Sandler had starred in âBilly Madison,â an instant entry into the teenage canon that debuted at No. 1 at the box office. It also got terrible reviews. *Terrible* reviews*.* It was one of the last times Sandler read what the critics had to say, good or bad. âWhen âBilly Madisonâ came out and I realized Iâm going to be in the newspaper, that was a big deal,â he says. âWhen I was a kid, if I got a couple of hits in baseball and was [in the Union Leader](https://www.unionleader.com/sports/concord-outlasts-goffstown-for-state-little-league-title/article_8b8a6919-f218-5669-beff-61b3b0043e7d.html) â Adam Sandler, you know, shortstop got a single and a double â I got excited. And then I read a couple reviews and I was like, âWoof, that hurts.â I thought they would have a good time with it like I did. And then âHappy Gilmoreâ was getting trashed and my friends were getting all riled up, and I just said, âNo, I donât need to read that stuff.ââ Ultimately, Sandler would respond. Just not to the critics. âI decided I wanted to talk through what I like to do,â he says. âI like to do my stand-up. I like to do my movies. I was just happy doing that.â Sandler grew up in Manchester, N.H., the youngest of Judy and Stanleyâs four children. They were supportive parents. Judy praised his singing, and the boy would sometimes entertain her by crooning Johnny Mathis from the back seat. Stanley, an electrical contractor, coached his sports teams and bought him an electric guitar at the age of 12. Sandler still takes that Strat out onstage. He named his character in 2022âs âHustleâ after Stanley, who died in 2003. Growing up, Sandler played basketball for the local Jewish community center team and guitar in bands called Messiah, Spectrum and Storm. He also fell in love with comedy, listening to Steve Martin and Cheech & Chong records, watching âCaddyshackâ and âAnimal House,â and seeing Eddie Murphy on SNL. He headed to New York University in 1984 to study acting and was setting up his room in Brittany Hall when Tim Herlihy walked in. Sandler told Herlihy he wanted to be a comedian. Herlihy told Sandler he wanted to study economics and get rich. That first weekend, though, he handed Sandler a few jokes he had scribbled down for him. Heâs been a regular writing partner since, from 1995âs âBilly Madisonâ to âHubie Halloween.â Elsewhere in the dorm, they met a business major, Jack Giarraputo, and his roommate, Frank Coraci, who was studying film. Another NYU acting student, Allen Covert, also joined the crew. All remain essential partners with the exception of Giarraputo, who left the business in 2014 to spend more time with his family. Sandler did his first stand-up at 17 at an open mic in Boston. He didnât realize you had to write material and remembers riffing about his family. At NYU, he became a club regular. At first, he struggled and sometimes even turned on the crowd, until some older comics told him yelling at the audience wasnât a great strategy. What he had going for him, even before he had great material, still works for him onstage. There is a natural ease and a likability. He will chuckle as he tells a joke, as if youâre playing pool or getting a burger and your buddy has a funny story to tell you. âItâs not an affectation,â says Herlihy. âItâs the way his mind works. When heâs laughing, itâs like, âOh, this is a good part.â Like this guy who lived it canât even get through it without laughing.â âAs a young person,â adds director Judd Apatow, who roomed with Sandler after NYU but before SNL, âeverybody that encountered him thought, âThis guy is going to be a gigantic star.â Because he was making us so happy when we hung around with him.â That personality captured Doug Herzog, then an MTV executive who would later launch âThe Daily Showâ and âSouth Park.â In 1987, Herzog had gone to a club to see another act as he scouted for MTVâs âRemote Controlâ game show. He ended up hiring Sandler, who was still living in his dorm. âIâm waiting and this kid jumps onstage â sneakers, old-school sweatpants, end-of-the-â80s ratty T-shirt, backwards baseball hat,â says Herzog. âI would say an idiosyncratic kind of vibe and tone. Youâre also, like, in the heyday of the Beastie Boys and I was like, âOh, he kind of looks like a Beastie Boy and heâs funny and heâs charming.ââ Sandlerâs biggest break came two years later. He and Chris Rock auditioned for SNL with a group of comics. Michaels remembers there were others in the room who were more versatile. But nobody as original. âMost people audition in the style of things that have already been on the show,â Michaels says. âBut what Iâm looking for is something that makes you laugh because you havenât seen it yet. Both of them had that. Adam was truly funny but in a style that was completely new and fresh.â ### Friction at SNL In 2019, Sandler returned to host SNL for the first time and centered his monologue on how much he loved being a cast member. Then he mentioned a question his daughter had asked. âIf it was the greatest, Dad, then why did you leave?â As the piano kicked in, Sandler began a ballad: âI was fired.â Which is not exactly true. But Sandlerâs SNL run, from 1990 to 1995, would see two factions emerge inside 30 Rockefeller Plaza. Those who got it and those who didnât. Executives were known to lodge complaints about his work. And within the cliquey cast and writers room, there was also a split. âAt read-through, Adam would do an \[Weekend\] Update piece, like where he was a travel guide and the joke would be that he was just not doing what a travel guide is supposed to be doing,â says Robert Smigel, a writer on the show for eight years. âBut he was delivering the information with a blissful idiotâs enthusiasm. And it was incredibly funny. And I just remember me and Conan \[OâBrien\] and the nerds â Greg Daniels and \[Bob\] Odenkirk â giggling uncontrollably in one corner of this room. This room that otherwise had a black cloud hanging over it.â Jim Downey, the legendary writer who had worked with John Belushi, Gilda Radner and Bill Murray, decided early on that Sandler was the closest thing SNL ever had to Jerry Lewis. Those wacky voices, the off-kilter characters. He could also sing, bringing his acoustic guitar onto Weekend Update to do his irresistible tributes to Thanksgiving and Hanukkah (âO.J. Simpson, not a Jew. But guess who is? Hall of Famer Rod Carew â he converted.â) As Downey watched the split, between appreciators and disparagers**,** he developed a term to describe Sandlerâs critics. *Half-brights*. âOrdinary people had no problem with him, and really smart people had no problem,â says Downey. âBut there was this group in the middle who would just take great offense at this kind of thing. They thought it was self-indulgent and infantile. And the thing about Adam was: ⊠Most performers â itâs very important that they be respected as intelligent and often more intelligent than they really are. Adam was a guy who did not care if you thought he was smart and, in fact, went out of the way to obscure the fact that he is, Iâd daresay, a lot more intelligent than 90 percent of the performers Iâve worked with.â Sandlerâs greatest bits were deceivingly multidimensional. âThe Herlihy Boy,â named after his college roommate, was a commercial you would never see. A needy, potentially sociopathic man-child pleads to housesit (âPleeeeeze ⊠it would mean so much to me if you just let me water your plantsâ) or walk your grandmother across the street. Every minute or so, the camera pulls back to show Chris Farley as an exasperated older relative who wants you to give the damn kid a break while screaming, pleading and generally Farleying at full blast. âTo me, that was a rhythm piece,â says Sandler. âIâm going to calmly talk, Farleyâs going to go f---ing bananas. Camera will zoom back in â calm energy â then widen to a sick man screaming. I knew that had a comedy rhythm to it. I learned that from SNL. I learned what made me laugh. Like [Dan Aykroyd on âFred Garvin, Male Prostitute.â](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jphfMd4_LCs) That rhythm influenced me.â Sandlerâs most famous character may have been Canteen Boy, a voice and persona he would adapt for his hugely successful 1998 film, âThe Waterboy,â and bring back nearly 25 years later for âHubie Halloween.â Canteen Boy is a misfit â always dressed in Boy Scout attire with a baby-talk voice â who is universally mocked but still exudes a boastful pride. âIt wasnât like a single joke that escalates,â says Smigel. âIt was a conversation between a somewhat strange guy and a couple of other people who were perceived as normal. And the other guys are just kind of smirking and making ... comments that they think are going over his head, but theyâre not. And the weird guy doesnât want to let them know that theyâre hurting him. So heâs acting like theyâre going over his head, for his own dignityâs sake. So thatâs a lot going on in a âSaturday Night Liveâ sketch.â Canteen Boy, like so many of his ideas, was polarizing. But it was, in a way, a microcosm of Sandlerâs time on SNL â the smug, self-assured grown-ups looking down on the goofy kid who was much smarter than they realized. âSomebody like Franken is like, âReally, Canteen Boy?ââ says Smigel. âAnd I literally said to Al, âItâs the most complex sketch in read-through.ââ Franken wasnât the only doubter. NBCâs executives complained, too. Don Ohlmeyer, a network president, targeted Sandler, Farley and Spade. *These guys arenât funny,* heâd tell Michaels. *I think they are*, Michaels would respond. The execs longed for the past, for Roseanne Roseannadanna or Chevyâs pratfalls. They didnât understand Sandler singing, âA turkey for me, a turkey for you, letâs eat turkey in a big brown shoe.â âWhether itâs in painting or in music or in writing, style changes are disruptive,â says Michaels. âAnd the reaction to Adam on the show, in the world, was growing, but it wasnât visible in the mainstream because they were all baby boomers.â âI donât think I ever met Don Ohlmeyer,â says Sandler. âI shook it off. Thatâs not what I heard when I walked down the street and some kid talked to me about [Crazy Pickle Arm](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Lza3Q57t7YQ). I was going by the response of my New Hampshire friends calling me up, my father telling me his buddyâs kid thought such and such was funny. Or my brother. What he liked. I didnât take it personally. I didnât sit there and go, maybe I should change.â By 1995, he had been at SNL for five seasons when Michaels talked with Sandlerâs manager, Sandy Wernick. âBilly Madisonâ had come out a few months earlier. Wernick told Michaels that Sandler was filming âHappy Gilmore,â in which Sandler played a temperamental failed hockey player who joins the golf tour to save his grandmother from being evicted. âI said, âListen, I can protect him at the show, at least for now,ââ says Michaels. âBut theyâre so adamant about his not being funny and not being good. So I think â go. He can leave.â ### Winning audiences Losing SNL was scary. âBilly Madisonâ had done well, but it wasnât exactly âGhostbusters.â He wondered whether he would keep getting opportunities. âMaybe the other companies are going to start saying, âDonât hire him because of this. They donât like him over there. Maybe thereâs a reason.âââ Sandler says. âI was probably just nervous about that, but I didnât doubt myself.â By now, Sandlerâs NYU team was humming. Herlihy would write with him. Giarraputo would help produce, do marketing, pitch in on jokes. Coraci came on board to direct âThe Wedding Singerâ and âWaterboy.â He would later do âClick,â âBlendedâ and âThe Ridiculous 6.â Following Sandlerâs lead, they focused on the audience, not the critics. Test screenings would be key. âAdam would sneak into the back of the theater and he would listen,â says Giarraputo. âAs a comedian, itâs like a live audience â which jokes are working. Sometimes, we would have to open up spaces for jokes because they were laughing so hard.â So when âBilly Madisonâ came out and was savaged by critics â Herlihyâs 84-year-old grandfather tried to comfort him after a Long Island Newsday writer compared the film to the horrors of Auschwitz â the gang jumped in a car and sneaked into theaters to watch audiences roar. Ticket sales kept increasing. Home viewing on videotape, then DVD, was huge. âThe Waterboyâ made $186 million on a $23 million budget. âBig Daddy,â out in 1999, topped $230 million. âEverybody wants to be loved,â says Tamra Davis, who directed âBilly Madison.â âBut sometimes, itâs like when your parents donât get your music. I kind of saw it as a badge of glory.â ### Moving beyond comedy In between his career-defining epics âMagnoliaâ and âThere Will Be Blood,â Paul Thomas Anderson decided to write a movie for Sandler. Anderson loved watching a particular Sandler sketch on SNL, â[The Denise Show](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=twIgfEhXvXg),â where Sandlerâs scorned ex-boyfriend, Brian, would throw a petulant, self-pitying tantrum. In 2002âs âPunch-Drunk Love,â he cast Sandler as pent-up lonely man Barry Egan opposite Emily Watson, and Sandler was the unexpected recipient of critical praise. He then branched out into more romantic comedies, including â50 First Datesâ with Drew Barrymore and âJust Go With Itâ with Jennifer Aniston. That made perfect sense to Queen Latifah, who played his wife in last yearâs âHustleâ and remembers laughing at him on SNL. âI love â50 First Dates,ââ she says. âAdam knows how to play the romantic comedy, and I think a lot of it is because this is a guy I would like to meet. This is a guy that would make me laugh. This is a guy whoâs sweet. This is a guy who has real feelings and gets pissed off.â Sandlerâs dramatic side returned in Apatowâs âFunny People,â the 2009 film in which he played a darker, Rodney Dangerfield-ish version of a comic, and in 2017, when Noah Baumbach wrote a part for him as a musical and sweetly underappreciated house-dad opposite Dustin Hoffmanâs narcissistic, insecure patriarch in âMeyerowitz.â Then came 2019âs âUncut Gems,â a film by Josh and Benny Safdie. They had grown up with Sandlerâs comedy albums from the 1990s. They spent years recruiting him to play the deeply flawed Howard Ratner, a jewelry dealer with a gambling addiction and a dissolving marriage. âThereâs this rage and this deep sweetness to him,â says Josh Safdie. âAnd heâs the only person who could have expressed what made Howard lovable for us.â That range has also impressed his co-stars. Jennifer Aniston, who has made three movies with Sandler, including the new Netflix adventure comedy âMurder Mystery 2,â remembers watching Sandler rhyme âdeliâ with âArthur Fonzarelliâ when he did âThe Chanukah Song.â âI mean, you couldnât keep a straight face,â she says. âAnd personally, I think â\[You Donât Mess With the\] Zohanâ is one of the funniest movies and then he has âUncut Gems.â Itâs very rare for actors to be able to hit it out of the park in every genre.â âI donât know how he gets there. I have no idea,â says Eric Bogosian, who was [portrayed by Sandler on SNL](https://www.nbc.com/saturday-night-live/video/wfpas-monsters-of-monologue-94/2872689) in 1994, and who acted alongside him in âUncut Gemsâ 25 years later. âBut he does drop into a very centered place and speaks from a kind of authenticity when you watch his scenes.â Sandler does not look for dramatic roles. He says his wife ultimately convinced him he was right for âUncut Gemsâ after he expressed apprehension about the role. âWhen I see him like that,â says Jackie in an email, âI let him know why I think he would be great at that specific part and why I think his fans would like to see him be that character. Because people coming up on the street and telling him how much one of his movies meant to them, thatâs what drives him.â Sandler can also take a different approach on a project heâs hired for as an actor than one under Happy Madison Productions. He focuses on his part, not punching up the script or talking through shots or casting. One thing he doesnât take these roles on for is to show something to his critics. âBut I do think heâs trying to prove something to himself,â says Dustin Hoffman. âAdam does compete â with himself,â writes Jackie. âHe wants to come up with something new that he hasnât done before.â In âThe Meyerowitz Stories,â Hoffman says, there were times when Sandler would seem unsure of his performance and the older actor would find himself reassuring him. âWhat I think he does that is similar to what I try to do is that you think a lot about what youâre to do with this so-called character,â says Hoffman. âAnd then when you get there, forget it all. What sticks is what then comes out. Heâs very alive in the moment and not preplanned.â Sandlerâs material may have changed, but his personality has not. His primary mission is to make you laugh. Whether onstage or in his office, he will talk about his excitement over a project â that âHustleâ is the first Happy Madison production that wasnât a comedy â but there will never be any whining about not getting an Oscar nomination for âUncut Gemsâ or âMeyerowitz.â âHeâs not looking for pats on the back,â says Spade, who remains a close friend. âHeâs already won.â When Sandler was a kid, he just wanted to make it like Rodney, Eddie or Aykroyd. And he did. Then he got to do the roles James Caan or Robert Duvall could pull off. And then he got married and suddenly he had a family. Heâll celebrate his 20th anniversary with Jackie this summer, and more than anyone else sheâs the one who counsels, pushes, advises him on what to do. With what roles to take and with the girls and their birthday parties, bat mitzvahs and college tours. At 56, he is both the king of comedy and the dad with every intention of taking off 10 pounds. Back onstage in Pittsburgh, âFarleyâ comes late in the gig, but itâs not the finale. Instead, Sandler tells the crowd he loves them and says the next one is for Jackie. And then heâs strumming a familiar tune, âGrow Old With Youâ from âThe Wedding Singer,â only this time heâs not sporting a mullet and Billy Idol isnât there to offer vocal and moral support. The verses have been changed to match his real life. *⊠Now when I get chubby* *We do the couples cleanse* *You tell me I should have been nominated* *For âHustleâ and âUncut Gemsâ* *I said, âIâll stick with the Kidsâ Choice Awards* *As I grow old with youâ* They are cheering now, with their âHappy Gilmoreâ hockey jerseys, their memories of Opera Man and that Hanukkah song, and Sandler, from the stage, turns the final line in his song back to the crowd. *Thanks for growing old â with me.* The Mark Twain Prize for American Humor ceremony will air at 8 p.m. March 26 on CNN.     --- `$= dv.el('center', 'Source: ' + dv.current().Link + ', ' + dv.current().Date.toLocaleString("fr-FR"))`