🎙️ Listen to this episode:
Full Transcript
The Shark Deck. I haven’t even looked at this yet. From The Washington Post, your headline, Adam Sandler doesn’t need your respect. Well, he came to Alora. He plays Adam, but he’s getting in anyway.
In a rear sit down interview with The Washington Post, the former SNL star and comedy icon reflects on his career as he receives the Mark Twain Prize for American Humor. I am in Baby, I’m Johnny Mac with your Daily Comedy News, The Post writes, for Sandler, popularity and praise have really come hand in hand. That’s right. There are people in the world who think most of the Adam Sandler movies are really, really, really terrible, but the Post writes that’s changed in some recent years. Sandler’s dramatic acting performances in twenty seventeens The Myerwitz Stories, last year’s basketball film Hustle, which as you know, is probably the second best Adam Sandler movie of all time, and especially twenty nineteen’s Uncut Gems, which as you know, is the best of the Adam Sandler films.
Those brought unlikely and ultimately fruitless Oscar Buzz twenties throwback comedy Huby Halloween and we’ll put that one in the garbage pole. Confirmed why Adam Sandler has been packing movie theaters and arena since the Clinton administration. The Mark Twain Award puts Adam Sandler in a company of such figures as Eddie Murphy, Carol Burnett, and Steve Martin. Lauren Michael says the nature of comedy, as you get the audience, you get the money, respect is the last thing you get. Jimming ahead a few paragraphs until all the time when Adam Sandler had started.
Billy Madison debuted at number one of the box office. It also got terrible reviews, and then the Post writes for a second time terrible reviews with terrible and italics. Sandler said, when Billy Madison came out and I realized I’m going to be a newspaper, that was a big deal. When I was a kid. If I got a couple of hits in baseball and was in the Union leader, Adam Sandler, you know shortstop, I got a single into double, I got excited, and then I read a couple of reviews and I was like, woof that hurts.
I thought they were gonna a good sign with it like I did, and then Happy Gilmour was getting trash when my friends were getting all riled up, and I just said, nah, I don’t need to read that stuff. I decided I wanted to talk through what I like to do, to do my stand up, I’d like to do my movies. I was just happy doing that. Lauren Michael has talked about Adam’s SNL audition. Lauren said, most people audition in the style of things that have already been on the show.
But what I’m looking for is something that makes you laugh because you haven’t seen it yet. Both of them had that. Adam was truly funny, but in a style it was completely new and fresh. During Sandler’s SNL run from nineteen ninety to nineteen ninety five, there were two factions emerging inside thirty Rock, those who got it and those who didn’t. I didn’t work at thirty Rock at nineteen ninety five, but you can count me in the those who didn’t.
Executives were known a lodge complaints about his work, and within the clicky cast and writer’s room there was also a split. Robert Smigel was a writer on the show for eight years and said it read through. Adam would do a weekend update piece like we was a travel guy, and the joke would be that he was just not doing what a travel guy is supposed to be doing, but he was delivering the information with a blissful idiot’s enthusiasm, and it was incredibly funny. I remember me and Conan and the nerds Greg Daniels and Bob Odenkirk giggling uncontrollably in one corner of the room, the room that otherwise had a black cloud hanging over it. Jim Downey, writer on the shows, that Sandler was the closest thing s and l ever had to Jerry Lewis wacky voices off Gilter characters he could also sing down.
He said. Ordinary people had no problem with Sandler, and really smart people had no problem, but there was this group in the middle who would just take great offense at this kind of thing. They thought it was self indulgent, in infantile. Hi, Jim, nice to meet you. That’s me I think about.
Adam was most performers, it’s very important that they’d be respected as intelligent and often more intelligent than they really are. Adam was a guy who did not care if he thought he was smart, and in fact, when out of the way to obscure the fact that he is, I dare say a lot more intelligent than ninety percent of the performers I’ve worked with. Dan Olmeier, a network president, targeted Adam Sandler, Chris Farley and David Spade. He would tell Lauren Michaels, these guys aren’t funny. Michael said, I think they are the exacts long for the past for Rosanna, Rosanna data where Chevy Chase’s prat falls.
They didn’t understand Sandler singing a turkey for me, a turkey for you, Let’s eat turkey and a big brown shoe. I like these executives. They sound like smart people, Lauren Michael said, whether it’s in painting, or in music or in writing, style changers are disruptive and their action to Adam on the show in the world was growing, but it wasn’t visible in the mainstream because they were all baby boomers in occasional gen xer with a podcast in his pastment, Sandler said, I don’t think I ever met Don all Meyer. I shook it off. It’s not what I heard when I walked down the street, and some kids talk to me about crazy pickle arm.
I was going by the response of my New Hampshire friends calling me up, my father telling me his buddy’s kid thoughts such and such was funny, or my brother what he liked. I didn’t take it personally. I didn’t sit there and go, maybe I should change. By nineteen ninety five, Adam had been on SNL for five seasons and Lorne Michael said, listen, I could protect him at the show at least for now, but they’re so adamant about his not being funny and not being good, so I think he can go. He can leave, and so Adam Sandler left Saturday Night Live.
He wondered if he would keep getting opportunity. Sandler said, maybe the other companies are gonna say don’t hire him because of this. They don’t like him over there, and maybe there’s a reason. And I was probably nervous about that, but I didn’t doubt myself. Billy Madison comes out.
Ticket sales keep increasing. The water Boy made one hundred and eighty six million dollars on a twenty three million dollar budget. Big Daddy from nineteen ninety nine made two hundred thirty million dollars. Queen Latifa It talked about one of the very few, rare, actually good Adam Sandler movies, fifty First Dates. That’s probably the third best Adam Sandler movie.
The queen said, I love fifty First Dates. Adam knows how to play the romantic comedy. And I think a lot of it is because this is a guy I’d like to meet. This is a guy that would make me laugh. This is a guy who’s sweet.
This is also a guy who has real feelings and gets ticked off. Josh Safty talked about Uncut Gems, which is of course the greatest of the Adam Sandler films, and there’s only like five good ones. Does the Basketball one, Uncut Gems and the ones with Drew Barrymore. Josh Safty said, there’s this rage and deep sweetness to him, and he’s the only person who could have expressed what made Howard lovable for us. Jennifer Anniston has made three movies with Sandler, including Murder Mystery two.
She remembers watching Adam Sandler Rhyme Delhi with Arthur Fonzarelli when he did the Hanakah song. Anniston said, and personally, I think you Don’t Mess with the Zohan is one of the funniest movies that he has the Mark Twain Prize for American Humor Airs eight o’clock tonight. If you like what I do here, you’re probably not Adam Saidler. But the rest of you can go to Buy me a Coffee dot com slash Daily Comedy News. There are a couple of bucks in the tip jar.
I would take your money. I won’t go to an Adam Sailor movie. Nope, That’s not what I’m gonna do with your money. I’m going to go to the National Donuts chain and I’m gonna pick up my large ice coffee with caramel and almond milk that I ordered on the app Come Home. Probably won’t watch an Adam Sailer movie, but if I do, it would be uncut Jams, although I like the Basketball one a lot.
That was kind of fun. Buy Me a Coffee dot com slash Daily Comedy News. Hey, Jim Gaffagan, do you prefer doing stand up at arenas or theaters? Jim said, I think the technology has advanced so much that arenas aren’t a bad experience, but a smaller venue in a theater setting, I think that’s ideal because comedy clubs are great, but at a theater you’re not disrupted by waiter service or anything like that. There’s a focus.
The environment kind of makes people behave better. But yeah, I would say that theater is are probably the ideal thing. That’s why whenever I tape a special, I always do it in a theater setting. Yeah. Can you imagine, like Jim Gaffagan live at Giant Stadium.
That wouldn’t work. Jim, who would you cite to some of your influences other than David Letterman? Jim said, gosh, you know, since I started, it has changed so dramatically. But I would definitely say that Seinfeld and Brian Reagan were influences once I started. But I think that growing up listening to George Carlin was a big thing.
It’s ever evolving. I’ve been doing it for thirty years, so what inspired me before? I’ve gotten to this very much self assignment thing. So like, I really love the observational comedy when I started, but now very much in a storytelling. I also want to deal with different topics in an interesting way.
It’s a very strange thing because after you do stand up for so long, it’s really this evolution of this relationship you have with your audience. Like the big advantage is that know your sensibility. But then it’s like any good friendship, the conversation has to evolve. We’d like to think we have the same conversation with our friends, but we really don’t. It’s always kind of evolving, and that’s what makes some of our friendships so interesting.
So some of it is delivering the show, but also challenging myself and not just being repetitive with the type of comedy I’m doing. If that makes sense. That does make sense. Jim Gaffing, And that’s your comedy news for today. Follow the show for free on Apple Podcasts or Spotify YouTube wherever your shows.
See you tomorrow. Hello, I am Mark Francis, host of a daily podcast about the British royal family called Palace Intrigue. Did you see what Megan Michael did in her latest documentary or what Prince Harry said in his new book? While the Kings and Queens and Princes and princesses are ready to explode, Andrew is ready to implode, Royal sources are jumping at the bit. The inlaws just can’t stop the UK tabloids are about to burst.
Americans can’t get enough, the kids can’t get any cut, the press can’t get any uglier. And Wills and Kate, well, they’re just wonderful. Get your daily dose of gossip and news from the world’s most royal family. Follow Palace Intrigue on Apple Podcasts, YouTube, or wherever you get your shows.