Every Sandler Regular That Didn't Show Up In Hubie Halloween
Adam Sandler is one of the biggest movie stars ever produced by the comedic talent factory and training ground that is Saturday Night Live. In 1995, the same year Sandler left SNL, he started churning out films in earnest, and since the release of Billy Madison, Sandler has starred in more than 30 broad comedies. In October 2020, he returned to Netflix with Hubie Halloween, a spooktacular comic horror film in which Sandler plays a strict, rule-abiding resident of Salem who has to convince the town that the monsters that come out at night are real.
As is usually the case with a Sandler movie, the cast is packed with familiar faces — the "Sandman" tends to work with the same performers over and over, and Hubie Halloween features such reliable cohorts as Kevin James, Steve Buscemi, Tim Meadows, Rob Schneider, and Dan Patrick. In fact, it's a lot easier to list the Sandler cronies who aren't in it. Here are the usual Sandler co-stars who somehow don't show up in Hubie Halloween.
David Spade
Adam Sandler and David Spade got to know each other quite well while working on Saturday Night Live together. Their tenures overlapped, and the two frequently performed in sketches together. Along with Chris Farley, the trio played the three "Gap Girls" — superficial young ladies who hang out at the food court of the mall where they work, gossip, and harass other retail workers.
In 1995, the same year Sandler landed his first starring role in Billy Madison, Spade and Farley took their film careers up a notch with Tommy Boy, followed by Black Sheep. Farley's death in 1997 precluded that team-up from continuing, but Spade fell in with Sandler, who produced several of Spade's starring vehicles — Joe Dirt, The Benchwarmers, Grandma's Boy, Dickie Roberts: Former Child Star — and ultimately the pair shared screen time in both Grown Ups films, Jack and Jill, The Ridiculous 6, The Do-Over, and Sandy Wexler. Spade doesn't have a role in Hubie Halloween, but that could be because he was busy making another 2020 Sandler-produced project — he starred in The Wrong Missy.
Chris Rock
Including his time as the host of The Chris Rock Show, building a reputation as one of the most important and popular stand-up comedians as all time, writing and directing movies (Top Five, I Think I Love My Wife), taking on serious roles (the 2020 season of Fargo), and voice-acting in kids' movies (Madagascar), Chris Rock has crafted multiple successful parallel careers. After a couple of early roles in the comedies Beverly Hills Cop II and I'm Gonna Git You Sucka, Rock broke out in a big way as a cast member of Saturday Night Live. His 1990-1993 tenure coincided with Adam Sandler's, and more than a decade after they both left the sketch show, they started working together again. Sandler frequently casts Rock in his films in roles big and small. He was a co-lead in the two Grown Ups films and in The Week Of, and took on cameo-type parts in You Don't Mess with the Zohan (as a taxi driver) and Sandy Wexler (a celebrity providing a testimonial). Rock is one of Hollywood's busiest entertainers, and while he has several projects going, he couldn't squeeze in Hubie Halloween. Maybe next time.
Jon Lovitz
The loose collective of Adam Sandler's favorite actors is large and it includes a wide variety of comedians and performers primarily known for things besides Sandler movies — like King of Queens star Kevin James of Grown Ups, or enduring comedy legend Jon Lovitz. The actor was a breakout star of Saturday Night Live in the mid-1980s because of characters like an ineffectual Satan, the pretentious Master Thespian, Hanukkah Harry, and The Pathological Liar. Outside of SNL, Lovitz built up a long resume of memorable voice acting work (he starred on The Critic and has played numerous characters on The Simpsons) and supporting roles in movies like A League of Their Own and Coneheads and TV shows such as NewsRadio, Friends, and Seinfeld. Lovitz left SNL in 1990, just as Sandler was arriving, but their paths have continued to cross. Lovitz returned to the show to play the brother of Sandler's Opera Man, and he's also put in cameos in many of Sandler's films. He memorably played a sleazy wedding singer in The Wedding Singer, a janitor in Grown Ups 2, and the Phantom of the Opera in Hotel Transylvania 2. Unfortunately, Lovitz is nowhere to be found in the lengthy cast list of Hubie Halloween.
Peter Dante
The first time Peter Dante appeared in an Adam Sandler movie was in the 1998 retro romantic comedy The Wedding Singer as a drunken wedding guest. From there, audiences could count on at least a bit part in Sandler movies for the striking Dante — he showed up in The Waterboy (as quarterback Gee Grenouille), I Now Pronounce You Chuck and Larry (as a firefighter), Big Daddy, Little Nicky, Mr. Deeds, and Just Go With It, among others. In 2013, Dante showed up in Grown Ups 2 as "Officer Dante," which still marks the actor's most recent outing in a Sandler project of any kind — he didn't break that hiatus for Hubie Halloween.
It probably bears mentioning that Grown Ups 2 hit theaters right around the time that Dante made some unfortunate headlines. In 2013, TMZ reported that Dante was tossed out of a Los Angeles hotel after hurling ugly epithets at a staff member and threatened to have "Suge Knight, Busta Rhymes, and Adam Sandler" wage an attack.
Jonathan Loughran
The only person who has been in more Adam Sandler movies than Jonathan Loughran is Adam Sandler himself. He's been a diehard member of the actor's tight-knit circle of collaborators since the mid-'90s. Loughran's first Sandler movie was Bulletproof, a 1996 action comedy that's one of the SNL vet's few that he didn't have a hand in writing or producing. Loughran played "Rookie Cop" in that film, and from there it was on to small but memorable and often physical roles in The Waterboy (as football player Lyle Robideaux), Big Daddy (as Mike), Little Nicky (John), 50 First Dates (Jennifer), I Now Pronounce You Chuck and Larry, Bedtime Stories, Grown Ups, Just Go With It, Jack and Jill, Blended, Pixels, and Murder Mystery. The actor additionally lent his voice to the animated projects Hotel Transylvania and 8 Crazy Nights. Those movies are associated with holidays — Halloween and Hanukkah, respectively — but Loughran didn't continue his seasonal Sandler streak with Hubie Halloween.
Henry Winkler
A veteran of nearly 50 years of television, Henry Winkler received a standing ovation when he won his first Emmy Award in 2018 for his role as acting coach Gene Cousineau on HBO's Barry. Winkler has played a lot of roles, but he's best known for one very big one — he was Arthur Fonzarelli, a.k.a. Fonzie, a.k.a. The Fonz, the coolest guy on TV (and the known world) during his stint on Happy Days in the '70s and '80s. Winkler enjoyed a post-Fonzie comeback, free of his leather jacket and aloof attitude, in the late 1990s thanks to a role as Principal Himbry in the meta-horror movie Scream and as beleaguered small-college football team leader Coach Klein in The Waterboy. That began a long working relationship between Winkler and Sandler. The former Fonzie has continued to put in cameos every so often in Sandler's movies, including Little Nicky, Click, You Don't Mess With the Zohan, and Sandy Wexler. He didn't, however, film anything for Hubie Halloween — perhaps because the busier-than-ever Winkler had a lot of projects in the works when it was filmed.
Robert Smigel
As the creator of the SNL segment "Saturday TV Funhouse," Robert Smigel was responsible for some of the most incendiary, boundary-pushing material ever aired on the show, including "The Ambiguously Gay Duo" and "Conspiracy Theory Rock." His most visible post-SNL contribution to the culture is most likely Triumph the Insult Comic Dog, a foul-mouthed, audacious puppet who savagely mocks stars, politicians, and pretty much everyone else via his appearances on Conan O'Brien's talk shows and some standalone specials. Adam Sandler frequently employs Smigel to help write his movies — and they're surprisingly his tamest and most family-friendly ones, such as The Week Of and the first two Hotel Transylvania installments. Smigel performs as much as he writes, and he's been a fairly regular member of the Sandler crew over the years, usually playing small roles as authority figures and professionals, such as an IRS agent in Happy Gilmore, a reporter in Pixels, and doctors in The Do-Over and The Week Of. As for Sandler's family-friendly 2020 feature Hubie Halloween, Smigel isn't around — neither as a writer nor actor.
Kevin Nealon
The cast of Hubie Halloween includes eight former and current Saturday Night Live cast members, among them Adam Sandler, Maya Rudolph, Tim Meadows, Mikey Day, and Melissa Villaseñor. Notably absent from that list: 1986-1995 alumnus Kevin Nealon. Sandler frequently casts people who were on SNL at the same time as he was, and Nealon fits that description. The pair often appeared in two-man bits, with Nealon serving as host of the "Weekend Update" segment where Sandler would come on to sing a song like "Red-Hooded Sweatshirt" for "The Thanksgiving Song" or play a character like Opera Man, Cajun Man, or a version of himself suggesting weird, last-minute Halloween costumes. Both Nealon and Sandler left SNL at the same time, and Sandler has often found a place in his movies for his old screen partner: Nealon makes brief but memorable appearances in a long list of Sandler films that includes The Wedding Singer, Little Nicky, Just Go With It, You Don't Mess with the Zohan, and Blended. The last Sandler project in which Nealon appeared: the 2018 David Spade vehicle Father of the Year.
Nick Swardson
Nick Swardson made his entry into the world of Adam Sandler films with the 2006 cult favorite Grandma's Boy. Executive produced by Sandler and starring recognizable Sandler movie stalwarts like Allen Covert, Peter Dante, and Kevin Nealon, the movie featured Swardson as an actor as well as a co-writer — jobs he'd repeat on the Sandler-ushered The Benchwarmers. Outside of this particular sub-genre of film, Swardson built up a following as a stand-up comic and comic actor, enjoying success as the star of his own Comedy Central sketch series Pretend Time and recurring on Reno 911 as Terry, the roller-skate-wearing hustler who is very bad at lying to the police. Sandler movie viewers can also virtually count on Swardson popping up onscreen — he was part of the cast of Click, I Now Pronounce You Chuck and Larry, Bedtime Stories, Just Go With It, Jack and Jill, That's My Boy, Grown Ups 2, Pixels, and The Ridiculous 6. It's somewhat surprising, then, that Swardson doesn't show his face in Hubie Halloween to steal a scene or two.
John Farley
As proven by the touching tribute song he performed on Saturday Night Live in 2019, Adam Sandler adored Chris Farley, his castmate on that show in the early 1990s. After appearing in countless sketches together, they shared the big screen just a couple of times — in the rock n' roll comedy Airheads and Billy Madison (in which Farley played an unhinged school bus driver). Chris Farley died in 1997, but Sandler remained connected to the comedian's family, frequently casting his brother, John Farley, in many of his films over the years. John, who bears a striking resemblance to his brother, plays Tony Dodd in The Waterboy, the "Human Dartboard" in Little Nicky, a hot dog vendor in Jack and Jill, a singing waiter in Sandy Wexler, and Roscoe in The Ridiculous 6. Hubie Halloween, unfortunately, is not part of that list.
Drew Barrymore and Salma Hayek
Most of Adam Sandler's live-action comedies contain some element of romance or a romantic relationship — either the actor's character is pursuing love, rekindling a romance, or venting about his problems to a supporting and understanding wife. And, as he prefers to fill out the casts of his films with tried and true comic performers with whom he's already worked a number of times, Sandler seems to like to act opposite a few women above all others. His three most flat-out, mostly traditionally-structured romantic comedies — The Wedding Singer, 50 First Dates, and Blended — all feature the eminently likable Drew Barrymore, a master of romcoms such as Never Been Kissed and Music and Lyrics. For the two Grown Ups movies, the actor selected to play Sandler's character's wife and the mother of his children: Academy Award nominee Salma Hayek. Sandler even landed fellow TV star turned A-list movie star Jennifer Aniston to portray the main female part in two of his movies, Just Go with It and Murder Mystery.
Despite their familiarity with the Sandler process, none of these stars got the call for Hubie Halloween. The role of Violet Valentine instead went to Emmy Award-winning Modern Family star Julie Bowen, who last acted with Sandler in the 1996 classic Happy Gilmore.