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Adam Sandler The lovely, hilarious and charismatic comedian has been keeping audiences bursting in laughs ever since he has cracked mainstream entertainment. Born in Brooklyn, NY, in September of 1966, it may come as no surprise that Sandler was a shameless cl clown who left his clmates in stitches and his teachers with a handful. Never considering to utilize his gift of humor to pursue a career, Sandler eventually realized his potential when at the age of 17 his brother encouraged him to take the stage at an amateur comedy competition. A natural at making the audience laugh, the aspiring comedian nurtured his talents while attending New York University and studying for a Fine Arts Degree. With early appearances on The Cosby Show and the MTV game show Remote Control providing the increasingly busy Sandler with a growing fan base, an early feature role coincided with his "discovery" by SNL cast member Dennis Miller at an L.A. comedy club. As the unfortunately named Shecky Moskowitz, his role as a struggling comedian in Going Overboard (1989) served as an interesting parallel to his actual career trajectory but did little to display his true comic talents. It wasn't until SNL producers took Miller's praise to heart and hired the fledgling comic as writer on the program that Sandler's talents were truly set to shine. Frequent appearances as Opera Man and Canteen Boy soon elevated him to player status, and it wasn't long before Sandler was the toast of the SNL cast in the mid-'90s. While appearing in SNL and sharpening his feature skills in such efforts as Shakes the Clown (1991) and Coneheads (1993), Sandler signed a recording contract with Warner Bros., and the release of the Grammy-nominated They're All Gonna Laugh at You proved the most appropriate title imaginable as his career began to soar. Striking an odd balance between tasteless vulgarity and innocent charm, the album found Sandler gaining footing as an artist independent of the SNL universe and fueled his desire -- as numerous cast members had before him -- to strike out on his own. Though those who had attempted a departure for feature fame in the past had met with decidedly mixed results, Sandler's loyal and devoted fan base proved strong supporters of such early solo feature efforts as Billy Madison (1996) and, especially, Happy Gilmore (1996). His mixture of grandma-loving sweetness and pure, unfiltered comedic rage continued with his role as a slow-witted backwoods mama's boy turned football superstar in The Waterboy (1998), and that same year found Sandler expanding his persona to more sensitive territory in The Wedding Singer. Perhaps his most appealing character up to that point, The Wedding Singer's combination of '80s nostalgia and a warmer, more personable persona found increasing support among those who had previously distanced themselves from his polarizing performances. Continuing to expand his repertoire with the action-oriented Bulletproof (1996) and the even more affectionate Big Daddy (1999), Sandler's Happy Madison production company scored big by producing such efforts as Deuce Bigalow: Male Gigalo (1999), Little Nicky (2000), The Animal, and Joe Dirt (both 2001). In 2002, Sandler appeared busier than ever, and continued to surprise audiences with the announcement of the "Hanukkah Musical" 8 Crazy Nights, a re-imagining of Mr. Deeds Goes to Town titled simply Mr. Deeds, and a curious collaboration with director Paul Thomas Anderson entitled Punch-Drunk Love. In addition to his film work, Sandler's innovative web page (/http://www.adamsandler.com/) provides fans with numerous fun distractions in the form of video and personal messages to his fans. Returning to the screen opposite Jack Nicholson for the following year's Anger Management, the film seemed closer to Sandler's unhinged persona than his previous few efforts, though it got only a lukewarm reception from critics. Adam Sandler: Inside The Actor's Studio A dozen or so contest winners, a couple of publicists and a few other lucky guests are crammed into a megastar's recording studio, listening to one of the summer's hottest dance tracks. The beat is infectious and consumes a few fans, who start dancing, rubbing their rears together and smiling. "It's charting in the 20s on some of the club charts," a publicist whispers. Suddenly, the multiplatinum voice behind the track launches out of his corner chair and busts into a spontaneous dance routine, squatting like he's on the toilet, gyrating his hands uncontrollably. It's not pretty. Really, though, would you expect anything else from Adam Sandler? The fans, who won a chance to barbecue with the comedian and hear his new album before it hits stores, are eating it up like the baked beans being served outside. "Go, Adam! Go, Adam!" This is Adam Sandler in his element. With a dozen blockbusters under his belt, he's one of the world's biggest movie stars, but in his recording studio, goofing off, is where he really has a blast. A few weeks earlier, on a sunny Monday afternoon, I stop by the offices of Sandler's production company, Happy Madison, named after "Happy Gilmore" and "Billy Madison." Nick Goossen, one of the producers of Sandler's new album, leads me on a tour of the building, which is actually a house. Judy Garland stayed there, he says, when she shot movies on the old MGM lot, which now belongs to Sony. The bedrooms have been converted to offices, where Sandler's staff is watching dailies of "Spanglish," which is shooting on the lot next door, and finalizing the script for a remake of "The Longest Yard" with Chris Rock and Sandler. Many of Happy Madison's employees are also co-stars in Sandler's movies, like his old New York University roommate Allen Covert, most recently seen onscreen as 10 Second Tom in "50 First Dates." Goosen, or "Goose" as Sandler calls him, takes me to his office to hear Shhh ... Don't Tell, Sandler's first album since 1999's Stan and Judy's Kid. Concert stubs from Coachella and the Strokes are tacked to the wall, and British rock blares from his computer. After a few seconds, however, it becomes apparent that it's not really British rock — it's Sandler paying homage to the Beatles. The song is hilarious, like the rest of the album. By the end, my stomach literally hurt from laughing. This makes Sandler happy. "I heard you listening over there. I heard a few chuckles coming out of you," he says as we pull up on the couches in his office. "That's good." In person, Sandler is much like you might expect. He wears sweatpants and a T-shirt, talks in a lot of different voices and is always funny. He tells a lot of long stories that end in a punch line, after which he often adds, "There you go," as if he needs to punctuate them. At the barbecue, Sandler provokes laughs by putting on an arrogant front. "They keep telling me how great I am; that's always fun," he says of the contest winners. "That's what I live for, just to sit with people who love me." In reality, Sandler is surprisingly humble. He talks about his albums — which have sold millions on the strength of such clic sing-alongs as "The Chanukah Song," "The Thanksgiving Song," "The Lonesome Kicker," "Lunchlady Land" and "Red Hooded Sweatshirt" — as if anyone could've made them. "I sing dirty language over [music] and hopefully some of it rhymes," Sandler says. He especially downplays his musical talents, including his guitar-playing abilities, learned from his father when he was a child. "I play a little [on Shhh ... Don't Tell], but the guys who I play with are so awesome, I just said, 'You guys do it and I'll sing the stupid words and we'll move on.' " On the new album, Sandler conquers several styles of music, including hip-hop. "I can rap all right, but believe me, it's a lot of start and stop [in the studio]. I can't get the flow going that good," he says. "I run out of air." Though his albums have given birth to a string of memorable characters, Sandler insists his dozens of voices are just slight variations of each other. "I only can do so many voices, and so all my characters, you definitely know it's the same guy doing it. When I'm doing a voice for a character, in the back of my head I'm like, 'That's about 20 percent different from the character I did on the third album. So there you go." Later, he gives an example. "The excited Southerner [from 1996's What the Hell Happened to Me?] is basically Bobby Boucher from 'Waterboy.' It's the same damn voice." All these modest claims, though, are hard to believe when you look at Sandler's hugely successful catalog of movies and albums, or even just Shhh ... Don't Tell. Throughout the 20 tracks, Sandler transforms himself from a pushover college student to a blues singer to an overly adventurous old man named Pibb, the album's repeat character. ("There's nothing that makes us happier than an 85-year-old man getting hurt," he jokes of the skits.) The common thread running through most of the tracks is, fittingly, a blending of arrogance with reticence. Sandler's character in "The Boss and the Secretary," for example, is a pompous who happens to be extremely ill-equipped. And then there's the British rocker, "The Amazing Willy Wanker." "We wanted to do like a proud English rock and roll tune, like the guys from Oasis and a lot of the English dudes, when they sing they look very cool and believe in the words so much," Sandler explains. "And we wanted to write a song where the guy is very confident about what he was saying and it meant a lot to him, but it was about whacking it. There you go." Whether it's Billy Madison or Henry Roth in "50 First Dates," Sandler's movie characters share the same sort of confidence paradox as those on his albums. The biggest difference is that the albums are far, far more obscene, especially Shhh ... Don't Tell. "I think I curse more on this record than ever before," Sandler admits. "Yeah, the album's not too tame. In real life, though, I'm a little tamer at home. I don't curse as much. [Jackie Titone, his model wife of less than a year] yells at me for that, 'cause we're gonna have a kid [eventually] and I guess I can't curse [then]. I'm in trouble when my kid grows up and one of his friends goes, 'Hey, listen to your dad's album.' I'm dead. There's no way I could win any fight with that kid. 'You did this! You did that!' And I'll be like, 'Eh, eh ... You win.' " To Sandler, a lot more than the amount of cursing separates his movies from his albums. While movies have certainly made him more money, the albums are more fun for him to make. Still, after starting Happy Madison and signing on for a string of too-good-to-p-up movies (such as director Paul Thomas Anderson's "Punch-Drunk Love" and "Anger Management" with Jack Nicholson), he went four years without being in a recording studio. With his film schedule looking as full as ever, he decided the best way to get back to making albums was to build a studio on the Sony lot, behind Happy Madison's offices. "I said, 'Let's just slowly do it while we're shooting movies.' We started out slow and then all of a sudden got excited and [started] skipping work on the movies and going, 'We'll get to the movie tomorrow; we've got to get this song.' " "I guess there's less pressure on you," he says later. "It doesn't cost so much money. We're making movies every minute, it's money, and you've got to move on and everyone wants you to get done and blah, blah, blah. When making the album, I have all my equipment here, I've got all my friends here, I know how to work the equipment, so we can take our time and it was a great process." "It felt a little psychotic because my character's a little nasty and Maya's a real nice girl," he says, thinking back. "Why would I want to be talking that way in front of her? But through concentration and vodka, we got through it." Nowadays the studio has become a welcome release for Sandler during movie shoots. "It's better than the movies because you don't have to put makeup on, worry about the lighting," he says. "Just hang out, get loose, be funny ... hopefully be funny." Making albums also allows Sandler to get back in touch with the kind of sketch comedy he launched his career with. "I'm not on 'Saturday Night Live' anymore, so if I think of an idea that I think could be funny for a couple of minutes, I don't have any place to do it except the album." The title Shhh ... Don't Tell is a reference to the punch line of the dance track, "Secret," which was inspired by the techno music he heard on the radio constantly while visiting his parents in Florida. "That was a real tough thing to go through," Sandler says. "He was definitely the leader of my family, and I worshiped ... I still do worship him. I was doing 'Letterman' and I had a movie coming out, '50 First Dates,' and I felt weird going out and telling jokes after my father had just ped away. So I wrote a song with my friends about my dad and sang it on 'Letterman.' We had to cut a few verses out to keep it shorter, so I figured we'd do the whole thing and keep it on the album. "I love the song and I love that it's on the album," he continues. "I know that my mother's not a big fan of my albums. She is disgusted by what I say. In fact, when I was driving here, she said, 'You're doing press for this? You told me you were just going to release it and no one would know.' And I said, 'Well, it's MTV, don't worry about it.' So the fact that a song about my dad is on the record, it's great for me, but Mother's a little disturbed by it." Judy, his mother, has heard the song, but that's about it from Shhh ... Don't Tell. "That was the best thing [about] when my dad was here," Sandler recalls. "My other albums, my dad would go, 'Judy, sit down, you can [safely] hear track seven.' And then he'd go, 'All right, now here's track 16. All right that's it, that's all you can hear.' " Back in the studio, Sandler is playing the role of his father, shielding the contest winners from some of the album's filthiest material. Afterward, he leads the pack back through Happy Madison to the back porch, where tables are set up on the basketball court. One of the publicists follows with a surprise for the fans — acoustic guitars signed by Sandler. One girl pulls out the instrument like a child on Christmas morning and plucks it with little know-how. Sandler, without missing a beat in his conversation with her, grabs the guitar, tunes it and strums a couple of chords. "You're good," she says. "Nah," he responds.
Adam Sandler: , Dating and Bacon In the comedy "50 First Dates," Adam Sandler is a Hawaiian who preys on vacationing women — that is, until he falls for Lucy, played by his former "The Wedding Singer" co-star Drew Barrymore. The problem is that Lucy suffers from short-term memory loss, and thus every day she must be won over again. MTV News' Vanessa White Wolf sat down with Sandler to find out how much he remembered about making the movie and what kind of a guy he is on a first date. MTV: So in keeping with the title of the movie, what are your requirements for a good first date? "I like when they knock 'em back and stumble out of the place." — Adam Sandler MTV: That leads to the next question: Do you think it's OK to have on the first date? Sandler: That's a great question. Not with me, because if they do have with me they call me the next night and say, "What was that all about? You hurt me, it was painful." So for me, on the first date is terrible. MTV: So why did you choose this movie to pair up with Drew again? Sandler: Well, I read the script and [saw] the amount of times I'd be making out with somebody and I said, 'You know what? My wife is cool with Barrymore. I might as well not get yelled at every night if I make this movie.' I just love her. She's a nice girl. I've been friends with her a long time now. We have fun together, and she's great in the movie. I knew she'd be great as that girl, and I m just psyched to do it with her. MTV: How was it working with "Anger Management" director Peter Segal again? Sandler: He's smart, he's a very smart guy. He knows when I get on set to walk away and just release all control. That's what I like about him. I just like to bring a lot of fear, you know? It's like, "What's the matter with Adam? Why is he walking so fast at me?" So then he kinda splits and I get to call "action!" MTV: Well, I'm getting the wrap signal. Sandler: No! Just go on, you can ask one more. MTV: What else are you working on? Sandler: I'm doing "MTV: The Movie." I'm going to play a guy that created MTV and created you and wired you to fall in love with me ... sorry. MTV: What about a movie called "Spanglish"? Sandler: Yeah, I'm doing a movie called "Spanglish" right now. You know, Jim Brooks, [executive producer of "The Simpsons" and producer of countless TV shows and movies,] he wrote this movie and he's directing it and he threw me in it. I play a chef in it. I learned how to cook. If you want some bacon I can make some of it for you. MTV: I'm a vegetarian. Sandler: Oh, if you want some veggie bacon, I can slap some of that out for you too. I can cut the cucumbers good. Adam Sandler: Anger Management Adam Sandler graduated to film after appearing in wacky US sketch show Saturday Night Live. "The Wedding Singer" remains one of his most succesful film comedies, but his recent collaboration with director Paul Thomas Anderson for romantic drama "Punch-Drunk Love" earned him the best reviews. Rageaholic comedy "Anger Management" finds him back on familiar ground. Marisa [Tomei] tells us you stole all her jokes and made them your own! Is that true? What happened is that Marisa would say her lines during rehearsal and then I would put this little pill in her drink. She would fall asleep in her trailer and then I'd say what I wanted to say... her stuff, my stuff, some of Nicholson's stuff, and then I'd go home! Guess that made you look good as producer of the film, right? Producer! Manipulator! Everything! What surprised you about working with Jack Nicholson? I don't know. I didn't have many expectations. I loved his movies and I knew in his movies he could be lots of different personalities and express lots of different emotions, so I wasn't sure what it was going to be like hanging out with him. What I got from him, though, was a real funny guy, an incredibly smart guy, very sweet to his family, just very personable. I enjoyed hanging out with him. Did you improvise much or stick with the script? We worked very hard on that script with Jack. We just made sure we liked every line in the movie. Then when we got on the set and we're rehearsing the scene and it's working, you try and come up with things on the fly, sure. How about balancing your two characters? I wasn't worried about that because Nicholson himself is a movie maker, and in order to make this movie right, it had to be give and take - and that was the way we wrote the script. I know that when I watch the movie, I stay focused on him. I'm fascinated every time he walks in the room. What scene made you laugh the most? I laughed my off at every take where Nicholson takes his plate of eggs and throws it against the wall! I enjoyed hearing him scream: "I said over easy!" I don't know why that made me laugh but I couldn't hold in my laughter. And another great moment is when you two are singing songs from "West Side Story" in the car on the bridge in the middle of all the traffic... That was nice, singing "I Feel Pretty". Nicholson could hold a tune and I was happy to jam with him! What about Peter Segal as a director? I think he's just a nice man. I like the way he shoots movies and I like the look of them. I'm pretty insane. I have a lot of different thoughts and he can tolerate me pretty good and stay in a nice mood. And he keeps the set fun. I just like him as a person. What are you most proud of with this film? Mostly relieved. When I started it and Jack said he would do it with us, the thing I wanted to do least was to let him down. We didn't let him down. He likes the picture and I'm psyched! Adam Sandler Talks About "Spanglish" Playing a Dad Onscreen and Working with James L. Brooks Adam Sandler stars as John Clasky, one of the best chef's in America. John's a good man who is solidly devoted to his family, quietly putting the wants and needs of his family above his own. In casting Sandler in the role, writer/director Brooks felt Sandler could handle the dramatic aspect of the part, and knew Sandler's personality and strength of character would bring the right touch to the role of John. "I tried to cast Adam for a small part in a picture back when he was on ‘Saturday Night Live.’He came into the office and there was a quality about him that really stuck with me,” recalls Brooks, adding, "He’s one of the best human beings I’ve ever met. You get a lot of pleasure from working with him. He’s a walking tutorial on how we should deal with each other." INTERVIEW WITH ADAM SANDLER (‘John Clasky’): Are you looking to get away from the kind of comic roles that launched your career? Do you ever fear too much success like your chef character in this film is worried about getting four stars? You have a history of playing characters who don’t hold anything in. How hard is it to play a character who internalizes so much? You’ve played a dad before on screen and you play a father in this movie. Do you have any aspirations to be a real-life dad? I study dads more. I watch what they go through. I admire my father more than I ever did at my age, and my brother and my sister. The thing that I always think about with my parents, and what I think John Clasky is similar to, is when my parents would get a phone call, their friends would say, “Hey, we’re going away to Bermuda this weekend. You want to come?” And my parents would say, “Oh, really?” And the other people would say, “We’re not bringing the kids though.” My parents would go, “No kids? Oh no, we can’t go then.” That was my father’s sacrifice and my mother’s. They didn’t care about anything but the kids, and I feel like that’s a big part of John Clasky. Do you plan your career step-by-step or just do whatever grabs you at the time? Do you think your character is a hero? Can you speak Spanish? How are your cooking skills? Do you have a specialty? Your character is really close to his daughter and knows what to say to help her out. Did you get any similar advice from your family growing up? Did you get your sense of humor from your dad? Do you know what do audiences want? How was working with Paz Vega, Tea Leoni, and Cloris Leachman? They each represent very different types of characters. Is there a great dramatic actor inside every comedian? Do you make a distinction? Do you ever think about winning an Oscar? Is this a particularly creative period for you? In heavy drama scenes do you stick totally to the script? Like when Tea admits she’s had an affair in this film. What was it about Paz’s character, the family’s nanny/housekeeper, that made your character fall for her? Will you ever direct a movie? Did you learn anything from working with Jim Brooks that you’ll apply to your own movies? Will you ever go back and host “SNL?” What do you think of Jimmy Fallon’s impersonation of you? What’s next for you? Do you have any more Hannukah songs in you? In the romantic comedy "Mr. Deeds," Adam Sandler returns to the sweet, goofy 'every man' type of role that's his bread and butter, steering clear from any reference to the generally disliked, "Little Nicky." Surrounding himself with a wickedly funny supporting cast, including scene-stealers John Turturro and Steve Buscemi, Sandler's Longfellow Deeds is a guy we can relate to, a guy faced with tough choices who stumbles a little while just trying to keep it all in perspective. Loosely based on the Academy Award-winning clic, "Mr. Deeds Goes to Town," which starred Gary Cooper and Jean Arthur, this rendition moves the film into the corporate world of greed, big money and tabloid TV. Sandler's Longfellow Deeds is a decent enough guy, popular throughout his small town of Mandrake Falls, New Hampshire. He's obliviously happy as the owner of a pizza restaurant who tries out his sappy greeting card prose on a captive pizza-eating audience (he aspires to write for Hallmark). Life goes along peachy-keen until big city businessmen, Chuck Cedar (Peter Gallagher) and his istant, Anderson (Erick Avari), blow into town. Cedar and Anderson notify Deeds that he's inherited $40 billion, a couple of sports teams, and a chain of media outlets from a long-lost relative, Preston Blake (Harve Presnell). Yanked from his peaceful "Mayberry RFD" existence into a world of corporate backstabbing, Deeds finds himself at the center of a media feeding frenzy. Babe Bennett (Winona Ryder), a reporter for a trashy tabloid TV show, leads the pack of sharks circling Deeds for any sign of vulnerability. Uncovering his weakness for women in distress, Bennett goes undercover as a small town girl who needs rescuing in the big city. Deeds, predictably, falls madly in love with her, blinded by her batting eyes and damsel in distress act. With Babe secretly filming all of Deed's most embarring moments for "Inside Access," Deeds is soon the laughing stock of Manhattan and a disgrace to his dead relative's corporation. When Deeds discovers those he thought were on his side are actually working against him, he has to decide whether to flee or stay and fight the corporate baddies. He also has to figure out if Babe's truly after his heart, or only after a news story. Adam Sandler's Deeds is a familiar character, likable, if not just a bit too perfect. This character harkens back to Sandler's Robbie Hart in "The Wedding Singer," without that character's misery. Director Steven Brill sees many similarities between the actor and Deeds saying, "Adam's a funny guy, and when the camera stops, he's pretty much the same. He doesn't really change. In that sense, Adam is very similar to his character, Deeds." This is Sandler's movie but he stands no chance in scenes opposite John Turturro. As the sneaky, quick-as-a-cat butler, Emilio, Turturro provides the movie's funniest moments. Is there any character this guy can't play? He's done it all, and in "Mr. Deeds" he steals scene after scene. Frequent Sandler movie cast member, Steve Buscemi ("The Wedding Singer," "Big Daddy," "Billy Madison"), plays the aptly named 'Crazy Eyes' - a kind of local oddball who orders bizarre combinations of toppings on his pizza and who offers even more bizarre advise. Buscemi is always first-rate at portraying these 'off' characters, bringing that extra dimension to roles that are pretty flat on paper. As Deeds' love interest, Winona Ryder doesn't really sell the part. There's not much chemistry between the two however it's not so bad that it detracts too much from the film. Though the movie does slow up during the romantic parts, it's able to regain speed whenever Sandler interacts with Turturro, Buscemi, or Peter Gallagher. The film delivers as promised on most levels, however it does help to be an Adam Sandler fan to begin with. "Mr. Deeds" takes full advantage of the sort of gags and humor Sandler's previous films have called on with success, while showing sparks of originality and mostly avoiding that 'cookie cutter' feel. With an endearing character the audience can actually get behind, "Mr. Deeds" cashes in on jokes while mildly delivering a lesson in morality. "Mr. Deeds" serves to show that Sandler is trying to recapture that audience that slunk away after "Little Nicky." This film is funny enough that it should be able to pull back in any wary Sandler fans.
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