Bloopers That Make Us Love Adam Sandler Even More
When you're a comedian filming scripted content, you have to be funny, but not too funny ... or else you might make yourself or your fellow actors laugh and have to do the take over a few times!
Actor Adam Sandler has brought joy to countless audience members for over three decades, making multiple generations laugh with his unique style of humor and often outlandish characters. While mostly known for his comedic work, like "Happy Gilmore," "Big Daddy," and "Grown Ups," Sandler has also impressed with dramatic films like "Uncut Gems."
Across his filmography, he's had many hilarious screen partners, and inevitably plenty of mess-ups while trying to get a scene right. Sharing a scene with Sandler (or simply being Sandler and working with some of the talent he rubs shoulders with) is like the world's hardest try-not-to-laugh contest. Here are our favorite bloopers that make us love Adam Sandler even more.
Just try not to break
In most scenarios, if you're an actor and you mess up a take when shooting something, you can just re-do the take until you get it right. Live television is a different beast entirely. Everything has to be perfect because the worldwide audience is seeing everything at the exact same time it's being recorded. Sometimes the results can be amusing.
Adam Sandler rose to fame during his five seasons on "Saturday Night Live," where he befriended many co-stars who he'd later cast in many of his movies, including Chris Rock and David Spade. In a 1995 sketch, the late Chris Farley played opposite Sandler as his wife, Beverly Gelfand, reading options from a New York restaurant guide. Farley's enthusiasm for each place of business in contrast to Sandler's delivery as a decidedly unenthusiastic husband makes for a funny sketch in and of itself. Things get funnier as Farley gets a little more hyperbolic with each new entry he reads and Sandler visibly struggles not to laugh. By the time Farley reads a particularly romantic selection and reaches for Sandler's thigh, Sandler has a huge grin across his entire face. His character's curmudgeonly façade is gone, but the audience loves it.
Building — and eating — a snowman
In 1995's "Billy Madison," Adam Sandler plays the titular character, who must make his way through all 12 grades of school as an adult. When Billy is in first grade, one of the class projects is a crafting activity in which the students make snowmen out of paper, cotton balls, and glue. The finished scene from the film shows Billy tasting some of the glue for a moment, but that's the beginning and end of the gag.
While shooting the scene, Sandler took it to the next level to get a few more laughs, even if it was just from the child actors he shared a table with and not the audience who'd see the finished movie. When crafting his snowman, Sandler stuffed his mouth with the pretend (we hope?) glue and proceeding to drool all over his snowman. The children scream, "Eeeew!" and giggle.
'Where am I looking?'
As an actor, remembering your lines and delivering the dialogue believably as your character is only part of the job. You also have to remember your blocking, or the way the scene is staged among the actors, which includes movement and camera visibility. Sometimes a scene between two actors isn't even shot with them in the room together. The person the character is supposed to be talking to isn't present on set for whatever reason, and the actor being filmed that day has to imagine their screen partner is there by talking to a stand-in or simply look at a designated spot.
This seems to be the case for a scene in 1995's "Billy Madison" in which Sandler's character has a conversation with his father. The camera faces Sandler, who appears to be shooting the scene alone for this particular take. He delivers his line, "Is this for real, Dad?" while looking somewhat upward beyond the camera. Quickly realizing that looking in that direction wouldn't make sense when the scene was pieced together, and perhaps remembering his blocking direction, he goes, "Where am I f****** looking? Oh!" The crew and Sandler laugh, and it's back to one.
Acting through the pain
Anything can happen on a film set, and no matter how many times something has been rehearsed, sometimes things don't go according to plan. In 1996's "Happy Gilmore," Adam Sandler plays the title character, a former hockey player who finds unlikely success playing golf using unusual techniques. He is mentored by Chubbs, an older golfer played by Carl Weathers.
As Happy finds himself in a professional tour, Chubbs gives him a present: a hybrid golf club/hockey stick. When the duo shot the scene, Weathers handed the stick to Sandler, and in doing so the stick accidentally hit Sandler between his legs. Finding it impossible not to break character, he did what pretty much anyone would do, reflexing and emitting a noise somewhere between a grunt and a moan. Sandler laughs it off, thankfully not seriously hurt. Probably want to wait a minute or two before trying that take again, though!
'Suspended?!'
You know how when you say the same word over and over again, it starts to sound odd? A similar property seems true for actors. After saying the same thing so many times in trying to film a usable take, the word becomes funny, even if it's not a punchline or intended to be a joke in the script.
That was certainly the case for Adam Sandler and Christopher McDonald when shooting a scene for "Happy Gilmore." Their characters just heard the news that Happy, played by Sandler, will be suspended from the golf tour. They're supposed to both shout "Suspended?!" in simultaneous shock and rage, but those weren't the emotions channeled by either actor when attempting to get it right. At the sound of the word, they both go into fits of laughter, take after take. It gets so bad that McDonald essentially renders each take unusable before the word is even spoken by peering over at Sanders and hiding a smirk, anticipating the two of them bursting into laughter again.
A friend to all creatures
In 2004's "50 First Dates," Adam Sandler's character is friends with Jocko the walrus. Rather than relying on puppetry or computer graphics to bring Jocko to life, filmmakers opted instead for him to be portrayed by an actual walrus. As can perhaps be expected when working with animals, there were occasional on-set shenanigans when it was time for the walrus's close-up.
During a scene when Sandler brushes Jocko's teeth, the walrus burped in his face. Sandler retched his face away in playful disgust. The walrus seemingly trying to communicate something to Sandler, then proceeded to waddle forward and speak, or speak as best as any walrus can. The on-set trainer stepped in to settle the animal back down and focus. This moment, particularly with the walrus burping on Sandler, was especially amusing, considering a scripted scene in the movie called for Jocko to vomit on another character.
'At least I'm not Paul Blart'
In 2010's "Grown Ups," Adam Sandler's character gives a speech at the funeral of his high-school basketball coach. While speaking, he engages in some banter with Kevin James' character, a fellow former classmate/athlete. When Sandler jokes that two players used to be even shorter than they are now, James retorts, "Yeah, but those guys had a skill you never mastered. They knew how to pass the ball!"
On the day this scene was shot, Sandler took this bit and ran with it. His scripted line (which did eventually get filmed and appears in the movie) was, "Looks like somebody has to learn how to pass the Kentucky Fried Chicken." Instead, Sandler broke the fourth wall and snapped back at James, "At least I'm not Paul Blart!" This, of course, refers to the two "Paul Blart: Mall Cop" movies that James starred in. Ouch! James (along with the hundreds of extras gathered for the funeral) laughed it off.
Hard not to laugh at Steve Buscemi
Actor Steve Buscemi joins Adam Sandler in "Grown Ups" and, typical of Buscemi's growing list of characters who can't catch a break, spends a portion of the movie wearing a neckbrace and full-body cast.
In one scene, Sandler's character, Lenny, throws a football at Buscemi's character, Wiley. Stuck in his cast, complete with both his arms facing straight upward, Wiley has no chance of catching the ball and it hits him in the chest. What's more, since he's still recovering, getting hit in the chest by a football causes poor Wiley a great deal of pain. Buscemi plays it off hilariously, emoting comic pain of Looney Tune proportions. In watching Buscemi pretend to be hurt (all the while trying to remain standing, in itself funny), Sandler couldn't help but laugh. Turns out it's hard to keep a straight face in the presence of the greats, even if you're one of the greats yourself!
Some words are hard to say
Sometimes a word seems fine in the script itself. It makes sense on a page and doesn't strike anyone as problematic, even if it's got a few more syllables than most words. It's only when the actors start saying the words out loud that some issues might be found. Certain words or combinations of words don't roll off the tongue easily when spoken aloud.
Adam Sandler plays opposite Jennifer Aniston in 2011's "Just Go With It." Through an extravagant series of circumstances, Sandler's character and Aniston's character pretend to be a married couple getting a divorce. When shooting a scene in which their characters talk about faking the divorce together, Sandler, try as he might, could not say the word "manipulative." Despite the relatively serious tone of the scene they were filming, he and Aniston kept laughing. Sandler admitted with a smile, "I have a hard time saying that word."
Don't try this at home
Adam Sandler plays Andy Samberg's estranged father in 2012's "That's My Boy." When Sandler's character, Donny, hears screaming coming from the room occupied by his son Todd and Todd's fiancé Jamie (Leighton Meester), he barges into the room wielding nunchucks. After things calm down (since she was screaming because her wedding dress was covered in vomit), Donny is apparently supposed to give the nunchuck a little twirl as he speaks his dialogue, but Sandler wasn't able to master the technique quite right.
Repeatedly fumbling in trying to speak while also giving the nunchucks a spin, Sandler either doesn't flail the nunchucks hard enough and they flop pitfully, or he gives them too much of a kick and they nearly hit him in the face. He tries again and again, not even waiting for the scene to reset. It would seem that he wasn't ever able to get it right, as the finished scene doesn't show Donny twirling the nunchucks at all when he speaks the line in question. It's the thought that counts, right?
Don't come any closer
In the wise words of Kel Mitchell, as spoken in "Good Burger" to a customer, "Dude, you need a Tic Tac." We've all been there — when someone's talking to you, but you can barely stay tuned into the conversation because they have bad breath.
Adam Sandler shared a scene in close proximity to Blake Clark in "That's My Boy." Clark's character whispers in the scene, so his face is pretty close to Sandler's. When Clark finished saying his line, rather than continuing with the script, Sandler remarked, "Speaking of s*** breath ..." He laughed and quickly apologized, fearful that not everyone present might understand that he's referencing another scene from the same movie they're filming. In that scene, Andy Samberg's character tells a priest, "I can't hear a word you're saying. All I can focus on is your s**** breath." In the wake of dragging Clark, Sandler repeated, "The priest! The priest!" in hopes his crewmates would understand he was joking.
You can dodge a ball
Sure, there's loads of safety precautions whenever a movie has a big stunt involved, but sometimes the most dangerous (or expensive) mistakes happen at the least suspecting moments.
2020's "Hubie Halloween" is a love letter to the assortment of fun activities that families partake in each fall around Halloween. Adam Sandler plays Hubie, something of an honorary safety patrolman of Salem, Massachusetts (which just so happens to be the home of some of our other favorite Halloween stars).
When Hubie visits a school and the students start a food fight, he remarks, "Now you're all in big, big trouble" before throwing a dodgeball into the mix of screaming kids and flying cafeteria food. When shooting the throw, Sandler accidentally sent the dodgeball straight into the camera, which titled sideways. Surprised, Sandler quickly shouted, "Oh, sorry!" as he and the crew shared a laugh. Hope they had insurance on that camera!