The Big Picture - Top Five Adam Sandler Movies and ‘Hustle’

Episode Date: June 8, 2022

Sean is joined by Rob Harvilla to discuss Adam Sandler, his new Netflix NBA drama ‘Hustle,’ and share their top Sandler movies of all time. Host: Sean Fennessey Guest: Rob Harvilla Producer: Bobby Wagner Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

The goal? Explain the 1990s in exactly 60 songs. The result? We did it. I'm Rob Arvilla. I host 60 Songs That Explain the 90s, which has, indeed, covered 60 fantastic songs thus far from Tupac, to Radiohead, to TLC. So let's do 30 more. Let's do 90 songs. No, we're not changing the name. More rad songs. more special guests, more astute critical analysis, more loopy nostalgic exuberance. That's 60 songs that explain the 90s every Wednesday, only on Spotify. I'm Sean Fantasy, and this is The Big Picture, a conversation show about the Sandman. Comedy legend Adam Sandler has a new movie out on Netflix, a little different from your standard Netflix Sandler movie. This one is set in the world of the NBA and it's quite serious. So we're talking Sandler movies today. And joining me to do so is

another legend of the 1990s. It's the host of 60 songs that explain the 90s, The Ringer's Rob Harvillo. What's up, Rob? Yo, I am so delighted to be here. I'll talk about the Sandman, as you say, with anyone at any time, but you especially. So this is nowhere I'd rather be. No one I'd rather be talking about. You're very gentle with me right now. That's sort of the opposite of Sandler. I'm just, I'm trying to build up to it, right?

I'm trying to pace myself, starting quiet and just building up into a rage. You know, that's the Sandman's way of things, is it not? Yeah, hopefully by the time we get to our number one Adam Sandler movies, we'll be screaming loudly at each other with all those cypresses. We're going to be destroying a miniature golf course. Before we get into the movies that we know we love, let's talk about Hustle a little bit. So Hustle, we're dropping this on a Wednesday.

Premieres on a Wednesday. This is, I want to say it's the eighth Adam Sandler Netflix film, which is just wild to me. And obviously he has retained, I don't know, a kind of popularity, a kind of relevance by being early on the Netflix curve. They kind of bought out his time very early on. And despite the varying quality of the movies he's had on Netflix, he's been present in our lives despite many of the comedy legends of his generation kind of falling by the wayside as movie stars. Hustle's a little different, as I said, directed by Jeremy Zagar and written by Taylor Maturne and Will Fedders. And it's a movie about a down on his luck basketball scout, a guy who works for the Philadelphia 76ers named Stanley Sugarman. And he discovers this Euro talent, this Euro wonder

on the streets of, is it Spain where he discovers him? I believe so, yes. And that person is played by Juancho Hernan Gomez, the actual NBA player, who's not bad in this film. And he brings the phenom back to the US. He tries to convince the Sixers to sign them. Shenanigans ensue.

And off we go into a journey of one older scout bonding with a younger player. Rob, what'd you think of this movie? I need to blow your mind immediately. I need to say this immediately. You need to know this. This is a soft, happy Gilmore reboot. Wow. This movie. Okay. Happy Gilmore, right? Golf movie. Adam Sandler plays a hockey player. He's recruited to be a pro golfer by a dude played by Carl Weathers. Carl Weathers is playing Chubbs Peterson. Carl Weathers, uh, an alligator bit off his hand,

right? He's got a wooden hand, right? There's like alligator amusing alligator content in happy Gilmore, right? Hustle 2022, uh, recruiting a player from Spain to play in the NBA.

Adam Sandler has got a scar on his hand, like a prosthetic or both, and like a big thing in the movie is like, oh, when's he going to talk about how he got the scar on his hand, right? It's the same thing. Do you see what happened there, Sean? Do you see the parallel?

What's the cinema term for that? I have no one else to talk about this with but you. My wife doesn't care. She's like, I don't know what you're talking about. This isn't interesting to me. I'm so glad that I get to reveal to you this connection that I made between these two movies. I was so excited. This is going to be the highlight of my week, and it's Monday morning.

Brilliant bit of film criticism. That's what I have to say. Really impressive. That means a lot to me to hear it coming from you. Absolutely. I think we can call it an echo. You know, we can see Adam Sandler shedding the larva, you know, emerging from the cocoon as a butterfly. He is the Chubbs of this story.

And I would say tonally, though, Hustle has something. It's not quite the same as Happy Gilmore. I'm not sure if that would have been a good thing if it was the same as Happy Gilmore. It would have been hard to replicate that in 2022. As I said, I don't even know if i could call it a dramedy it's pretty much a drama it's kind of a feel-good sports movie you know where it's headed most of the way through um you know i would say it is not his greatest work of dramatic acting and filmmaking but it's definitely not his worst either somewhere in the middle one of the things that i really enjoyed about it was the credibility of the world that they created.

There are a lot of NBA players in this movie. Trey Young is in this movie. Chris Middleton, Aaron Gordon, many of the Sixers from this past season. Seth Curry, Matisse Tybel, Tobias Harris, Doc, of course, very prominent in the movie. And probably most impressive of all is former number one draft pick Anthony Edwards, star of the Minnesota Timberwolves, who does not play anthony edwards he plays another guy and he's quite a villain he's got incredible villain energy he's the shooter mcgavin i i thought he was very credible i didn't know that wancho herman gomez was also an nba player like i thought he was just like an

actor who could convincingly be in so i was impressed when I learned that as well. They got NBA players who could actually act in this movie. I agree with you that it's more of a drama. What's funny about it is it's Adam Sandler, right? And not that he's doing funny Adam Sandler things. It's just everything that you project on Adam Sandler, and that's sort of gruff down on his luck, but everybody loves him, but he's sort of a loser, sort of role in the cliched sports

movie but like you've seen 15 20 25 adam sandler films like you're waiting for him to blow up like he sort of semi blows up a few times but never really in like any kind of happy gilmore way but i yeah it's just it's a it's a pretty good sports movie where the draw is like it's adam sandler in a pretty good sports movie. It's not his best work on Netflix, but it's far from his worst. And it's serious, but what makes it funny is just that it's him at all trying to be serious and succeeding. Yeah, I thought so too. I mean, he's obviously evolved quite a bit as a dramatic actor, which we'll talk about a lot in this episode. I thought this performance was interesting because

even more so than your Uncut Gems, your Meyerowitz stories, there are no Sandler tricks in this performance whatsoever. No mugging, no singing, no ridiculousness. Even when he yells,

it feels like it's born of a place of acting and not a place of SNL skit performance. So in that way, I thought it was pretty fascinating. I think it's kind of interesting that as he gets older, I wouldn't have guessed

20 years ago that he would have been somebody who thought it was important to get into this kind of performance work, but I think he's a little bit more curious and a little smarter, frankly, than people give him credit for. I like that he makes movies like this. Where do you stand? Would you rather he just be making dumb comedies at this point? Do you like that

he is experimenting with form? I think that my most loved movies of his are his dumb comedies, but most of them are older. I love his old dumb comedies a little more than his new prestige plays, but I love both of those more than I love his newer dumb comedies right like i it's i i don't hate any of the netflix movies even the ones that everybody else seems to hate you know they all have their moments you know and they're all just the platonic ideal he sort of invented the netflix movie right where it's just it's not the best movie you're ever gonna see you know but it's just a person you like you know in a movie format that you recognize you know and but it's just a person you like, you know, in a movie format that you recognize, you know, and you can devote between 30 and 60% of your attention to it and be totally fine.

Like he sort of invented that for better or for worse, you know, like Netflix movies, the rise and fall of like the prestige that Netflix has is very interesting. Like he was the first one, right. To really go all in on Netflix and have Netflix go all in on him. You know, I sort of, I don't remember when that was parallel to House of Cards, but I feel like Adam Sandler was the first time that a lot of people were like, huh, Netflix is really going to go for it in movies to an extent, not prestige at all. But he was early on that, and he was early to the idea of a movie

that's not quite a movie you'd go to a theater to see unless you really really loved him but like good enough for netflix on a tuesday night you know and i think that still holds true for his dumb comedies but i it is most of the time it's either very dumb or very serious and i think that hustle is closer to very serious but not all the way there right like i wrote down every time he yelled of course course, I wrote down everything, you know, kiss my fat ass and fuck your five-star hotels. I quit. It's like, that's an Adam Sandler line.

I agree with you that he says that as like a dramatic actor and not as like Adam Sandler, you know, but I still just his voice, you know, him yelling anything. It's just, there's a trigger that you have as a 90s kid i think where you're just it's it's just a warm feeling that you get adam sandler yelling profanity you know no matter the circumstances yeah part of the reason i wanted to talk to you about this is because i think we come from a very similar place with sandler um pretty critical 90s figure i think you could make a case that he is up there with the Kurt Cobains and the Tupacs in terms of iconic figures and voices who represent something pretty meaningful.

I think we think of characters from singles as the pinnacle of Gen X, but Adam Sandler's man-children really foretold the next 15, 20 years of movie comedy. Do you remember when you first encountered him was it snl was it from the comedy albums when did you first come across him it had to be snl i wasn't into the comedy album like that always i was always conscious throughout high school of that being a huge hole like i even knew like the outline of what it was like lunch lady land or whatever like just from people singing it like repeating it to each other like at the lunch table or whatever junior high and on like i sort of understood that i needed to get on that but i

never quite got around to paying 20 for that cd but i it had to be opera man right it had to be you know the prime early snl stuff you know and and sort of that was the era like for me snl people jumping into movies, right? And most of them sucked. Like Wayne's World, for example, which was like a huge movie to me when I was a kid. And it's like, wow, like somebody on SNL can make a pretty good movie. And then he comes along after that and makes a string of like, to me, at whatever, 16, 17, 18, 19, incredible movies. You know, he sort of epitomized for me the jump from snl to like movie star

and i you're exactly right i've always thought of him as tupac just the tupac the tupac of comedy that is exactly the way i have always framed him i think you know what i mean when i say that i do um i think i don't know if i saw him first on snl or heard the album but they're all gonna laugh at you it's 1993 that's the first record or excuse me is it is that the first record yeah they're all gonna laugh at you and yeah um that is the one that features the thanksgiving song and the subsequent album which i think is just a couple years later what the hell happened to me is the one that features the hanukkah song and it's a it was a two-pronged assault because he was very musical on SNL, obviously, and Opera Man is a perfect example of that.

But in New York where I lived, Z100, of course, is the king radio station, the pop music radio station, the pop music radio station of my youth. And they played the Hanukkah song and the Thanksgiving song non-fucking-stop on Z100 for like

three years. You don't need deck the halls or jingle bell rock cause you can spin a dreidel with Captain Kirk and Mr. Spock. Both Jewish. Local hero. He truly was.

And, you know, obviously all the sketches on that album, I thought were hilarious. Adam Sandler and the Jerky Boys paired together if you were 12 years old in 1994. That was pretty powerful stuff. And I'm with you on those first couple of movies. Those first couple of movies,

I was like, this is our Caddyshack. This is our Blazing Saddles. And looking back, he was really good at the high concept, low execution movie. Everything was kind of like, you would hear the at the high concept, low execution movie. You know, like everything was kind of like you would hear the explanation of what the premise of the movie was. And you'd be like, what the fuck? He's a hockey player who sucks and can't make money.

And so he meets a caddy and he's a good cop. Anyway, I do really have a serious fondness for those first few movies. And I remember thinking the same thing, which is that SNL is a machine to to make movie stars which wasn't necessarily the case in the 70s and 80s obviously chevy chase went on to great success and bill murray dan akroyd but there's a little bit of a lull you couldn't always count on somebody to emerge and then it just felt like in the 90s myers and carvey and then sandler and rock and spade and Farley. And it felt like all of these guys, Norm MacDonald were all kind of had their tickets punched. And Sandler didn't do movies adapted from his characters.

He did original movies, which was, that's right. I don't know if that was like impressive or not impressive, but it made, it did. It made him an outlier. At least at the time,

I thought it was interesting that he wasn't making Wayne's world. Did you, did you have a consciousness about something like that that's i had never thought about that he never did just the opera man movie like you gotta say that would have been the easiest thing to do it was like a conscious choice to not do that and you i think you have to be impressed by that you have to give him that i've always i thought of him and jim carrey together always i i guess that's more when they both start getting dramatic right like i just i'm very interested in the comedy drama you know stupid serious divide as it pertains to adam sandler you know the movies we're going to talk about are all sort of plotted on that spectrum and when it first starts it's

like wow adam sandler's in a serious movie like he's actually a good actor like this is actually a good movie like i feel like jim carrey did a similar thing and jim carrey just had like a very thirsty sort of oscar run right you know like he man on the moon you know he really wanted it you could just tell like that self-deprecating jokes he would always make about not getting it you know at award shows or whatever i i feel i've always thought of him and sandler together that way and i've always thought at least of sandler as a little less desperate for it i desperate is the wrong word but he didn't he didn't need that validation quite as much as it felt like jim carrey did in that moment it seemed like he was more satisfied

just to make dumb movies that everybody loved, even if critics hated them. And that sort of carried through the Netflix years, of course. But I had never thought about that. They never made a Schmitz gay movie, right? That would have been the easiest thing in the world to do. And that's a conscious choice to not do that. That's really interesting well i always thought he was an expert character creator but not an expert sketch creator you know like opera man cajun boy like those were sitting at the the desk figures you know canteen boy canteen boy like or cajun man and canteen boy i mixed up my two sandler characters um those those weren't deeply memorable sketches like when madonna appeared on wayne's world you know what i mean you're like this could have been a movie unto itself it felt Those weren't deeply memorable sketches like when Madonna appeared on Wayne's World. You know what I mean? You're like, this could have been a movie unto itself. It felt very weirdly cinematic for Saturday Night Live.

But Sandler wasn't about that. He was about the sheer force of his Sandlerness, his charisma. It was not about the idea. And so it's probably for the best. I think a little bit of it is the Stefan issue too, where Hader and Mulaney, you know, were pushed to make a Stefan movie and they never did in part because it was a one note joke. You know, Opera Man is kind of a one note joke.

It's an incredible note. It's one of the most beautifully sung notes in SNL history, but it's only one note. And so I'm glad that he did that. He leaned into, I guess, original storytelling. It's kind of weird to describe Billy Madison as original storytelling, but it is. As you say kind of weird to describe billy madison as original but it is as you say like trying to describe the water boy you know as just a plot beat it's just

like what like none of this makes any sense i think of also adam sandler and chris rock is like they were not as successful on snl as it seems now you remember them as superstars but like relative to their success certainly they were both failures on SNL like they both left you know I ignore McDonald is this way as well almost you know it's the prestige that they have now and the respect as superstars that they have now I think they're you remember it as like they are they were huge on SNL and everyone loved them but I don't think that's necessarily true yeah I agree with you it's interesting too because he was he was appearing in movies while he was still on SNL in a way that got my attention before Billy Madison he was in Coneheads in 1993 which is of course a Lorne Michaels production and then he was in Airheads in 1994 which is I

feel like this has got to be a Sean and Rob movie you must be an Airheads fan it's such a music movie it's it is you know yeah when they when they snuff out sniff out like the traitor because they ask like who's which Van Halen which version of Van yes that is that is absolutely the er Rob and Sean movie I agree with you I like that movie a lot he has a pretty he has a supporting role and he's yeah playing this sort of like I don't know the the childish doofus character it's kind of the ur childish doofus for him the drummer in other words but yes yes um but I I remember being excited about the idea of him being the the lead in a movie when I was a kid um and he's gone on to make over over 60 movies almost 70 movies in the last 30 plus years. And that's the thing is he doesn't,

I wouldn't say he is, he doesn't keep it rare. You know, Sandler is very present. He's made a lot of stuff. He's obviously well known for taking care of his friends. You know, he created this production company, Happy Madison after the first two films, and he is constantly making movies to support them.

Our boss Bill Simmons is fond of saying that he makes a lot of movies just so he and his friends can go on vacation which I just think is fantastic. No, that's true. I'd love to find a way

to get The Ringer to start doing some work like that now that we're coming out of the pandemic. Should we get an off-site in Tahiti? Do you think we can make that happen?

Let's get Grown Ups 3 going. I don't know if I would be top line there. That's you and Chris and Amanda and maybe Charity as a dark horse. Yeah, you and if i would be top line there that's you and chris and amanda you know and then maybe charity as a dark horse yeah you and charity would be like in um in in tubes like going down a water slide in the background in the poster you think yes absolutely i can do that

i can come in for a couple days work on that yeah just does he have the um the film career that you expected him to have when you were a fan in the 90s wow i don't know if i ever you know we'll talk about all these movies of course but punch drunk love you know was the moment where it's like oh he's going to be serious now you know and then for a while it's like he's trying to be serious you know and then he you know by a couple years later he's doing what like grandma's boy Boy, you know, and Click or whatever. And I now pronounce you Chuck and Larry. He's like, oh, never mind. He's going to be dumb again.

You know, he's sort of wavering back and forth. You know, I'm impressed by how hard to pin down he's been. And I'm impressed, as you say, I wouldn't have put that number at 70 plus movies he's made. Like just down to the way he dresses. Like he's just so synonymous with leisure, right? Like it never seems like he's made like just down to the way he dresses like he's just so synonymous with leisure right like it never seems like he's working hard like his entire brand is that you know he just shows up and makes a movie you know in real time you know he disguises his effort very well i think he disguises how hard he works and how much he works and for some reason in that sense you never get tired of

him the way you might get tired of someone who's in like six movies a year you know there are some people like go away you're in too many movies right now i feel like jude law had a period like that you know it's just as a random example but i for some reason i think that the very specific combination of how chill he is versus how hard he's worked has allowed him to disguise both sides of that very well. It's a really interesting observation. It makes me think of the fact that for most actors,

especially most comedy actors, and I think of Mike Myers. We talked about Mike Myers on the Rewatchables a few weeks ago. We talked about the love guru and how that effectively kind of torpedoed the Mike Myers brand

where we were just like, well, this guy sucks now and I'm not interested in anything he's going to do. Adam were just like, well, this guy sucks now and I don't, I'm not interested in anything he's going to do. Yes. Adam Sandler, you know, this is not a dick. He's made a lot of movies that are not very good.

And he's asked about this routinely. And he says, well, you know, we tried and this one didn't work. And then we move on to the next one. And then all of a sudden you make an uncut gems or, you know,

you make, I, I, I'm trying to think of what's like a, a very successful recent comedy that he's had. He hasn't had a ton of really successful recent, I guess, murder mystery. People liked murder mystery. But he just kind of keeps going and we accept that they're not all going to work in a way that we don't with many other performers because he is so steadfast and it's just kind of cranking one, two, three movies a year. Can you think of another example of a person for whom this is true?

He reminds me of like a fifth starter on a baseball team in some ways, or is this like he's an innings eater? Is that what you're saying? I mean, his ERA is four, eight, but like we really need to get five innings out of him no matter what. So Netflix is just going to put out the wrong Missy or the ridiculous six. They just got to get another one out there. I think the other thing that helps him there

is he's on Netflix, and Netflix does not have data the way Box Office has data, right? They'll just put out a thing saying, 9 billion people watched Hubie Halloween, and you're like, wow, that's a lot of people. I think that that's sort of covered for him. You sort of assume, because Netflix tells you that these movies are really successful.

And I'm sure that they are, honestly, because lots of people use Netflix this way. Just to put on a movie with a person I like and then I make dinner and I'm not really paying attention. But just to hear his voice wafting in from the next room, even if the movie sucks, even if I think the movie sucks. It's Adam Sandler. You get what you paid for i i have to say that i as as a parent of young boys i do really enjoy hotel transylvania oh sure i think as any sort of box office draw like i think those have been his most successful movies probably you know he's made three or four of them at this point i don't know if you're getting to

this point yet in your own parenting but you come to appreciate as a parent like superior voiceover work right like above replacement level you know celebrity like oh i recognize that person like whenever maya rudolph is the mom is the harried mom in a movie it's like oh thank god my rudolph's here and i i really do enjoy adam sandler in the Hotel Transylvania movies. And part of that, and I think we'll talk about this, it's like I enjoy watching Adam Sandler parent. I enjoy him being a dad in any context.

That's not the strongest part of Hustle by a long shot. Like it's the fact that he's married to Queen Latifah in this movie and he's like, he's sitting on a couch and he's rubbing his wife queen latifah's feet like that's a lot for me to absorb as a 90s kid but like his his rapport with his daughter is very quietly excellent right and like he just wants his daughter to hug him and he won't it's like oh you know i i just i always enjoy adam sandler parenting with regardless of the circumstances and so i enjoy him parenting as

dracula and selena gomez is his daughter and like andy samberg is his doofy but lovable son-in-law like i really enjoy those movies for him and again i think that's just the sound of his voice and this association that i have with him and family. I've always been fascinated by the grandmas in his movie. There's always a lovable grandma who he dotes on. Very often his parents are not around or they're dead, his character's parents. There's something really interesting

happening with Adam Sandler as a family man that's sort of blurring into his real life that always makes me curious and always makes me a little more interested even if the movie is like Happy Gilmore. That's a really interesting observation that I hadn't considered

how deftly he transitioned from the man-child of the 1990s to a very reliable parental figure at the movies. Probably Click is the movie where I think he first did that because in the, in the early two thousands, I was in college, Adam and I were not as,

we're not on the same page. I wasn't racing out to see Mr. Deeds. I wasn't racing out to see anger management. I wasn't racing out even to see 50 first dates, which I know a lot of people really like. Uh, he closes Oh four with Spanglish,

which is a problem, not a problematic film, is a problem not a problematic film just a problem as a film it's really it's like a it's a shockingly bad movie from considering all the people who are involved and then longest yard in 05 and then click in 06 and then from there many of the films that he stars in he he plays what you're describing he plays a dad and he's a good dad on screen and you can tell he's obviously a very he's a very engaged parent in real life if you're in interviews with him he's really interested in his kids and talking about what his kids are doing and going through and how they're seeing the world which is really sweet um but he has made a full transformation in a way that very few comedy actors can too and i guess multiple transformations

if you consider his ability to work dramatically, his ability to work on multiple platforms. He's a real survivor. He's a very unusual comedy figure in the 21st century. Let me ask you just as a music critic about him quickly. Is he a good singer? I think so. I do think so. We'll maybe talk about the Wedding Singer in a second. But what I remember so specifically about seeing that movie in the theater is him singing Dead or Alive's You Spin Me Round like a record over the opening credits of The Wedding Singer. And I even thought at the time, this is like a perfect, not professional singer, but good enough singer to star in a movie called the wedding singer voice

right and and again like it's weird that i didn't come into him through the comedy albums but i you know in ohio they played the hanukkah song on the radio as well and so you do you did think of him i did think of him as like a rock star yeah like quote unquote and it's his voice was never like rock star perfect you know or bad for opera perfect for opera man i guess is the only real way to say it like he had the perfect like every guy voice as a singer and so yes absolutely i think he's a good singer he's perfect for what he tries to do when he tries to be musical have you considered the hanukkah song for 60 songs to explain the 90s not until this moment but now that i have i think it's got to happen where where does it chart that's that's a good question it

probably did if it was played on the radio that much you know and even played out of town out of new york i it it i'm sure lots of people but yeah obviously millions of people bought that record and so it it must have charted i don't know about top 40 40 but it must have must have charted top 40 there you go that's a sailor joke shout out adam sandler that's right i'm in the zone now i believe this song charted at number 80 on the hot 100 nope notably it charted at 28 on the u.s adult top 40 the adult top 40 just wonderful uh 80 is perfect wow 80 exactly is so perfect. One thing that is fascinating is what the hell happened to me in the second album that features the Hanukkah song? Sold 2.1 million copies in the United States,

making it the best-selling comedy album since SoundScan launched. Pretty remarkable. That's right. I had never thought to put him and the Jerky Boys together, but of course that makes perfect sense. He was like celebrity, like quote-unquote prestige Jerky Boys jerky boys but yeah i mean he had the good fortune of having you know putting out these records in the 90s you know in the early sound scan era and the pre-napster era i guess right

like mid mid 90s is the perfect time to sell millions of records one thing i wanted to talk to you about quickly before we get into our top fives is and you mentioned this when i asked you to do this is the um the netflix special that he did the comedy special which i know you love can you maybe talk about it a little bit that's my favorite thing he's ever done period i just it's it's easily for me the best netflix comedy special and i i do think it's the single best adam sandler thing that i have ever experienced i was lucky enough i'm here in columbus and i saw a show on that tour like i at the osu basketball arena at the shot so one of the bigger arena uh settings for that movie like the first thing it's

not the first thing but like the way that movie shifts between sizes of venues like there's club stuff and there's arena stuff and everything in between like it's very artfully done but i the whole thing 100 fresh it's called it's on netflix i think it was 2018 and i the the the journey from my uber driver smells bad which is a very funny comedy song and then there's phone wallet keys yes which is a very funny and very you know a poignant observation about life in 2018 and then the chris farley song yeah at the end which is beautiful which is just just outright beautiful i believe he did it when he one of the better snls of the past five years was him hosting and i i i don't it wasn't the monologue but he did it he did the entire chris farley song

and it's it's it's really it's really something that song it's beautiful it's touching it's tear jerking he plays a guitar solo and every time i I watch it, I just watch his face. And again, I think about effort with him and how he's sort of slouching in his movies a lot. And the whole point is that he's not trying very hard, but he's still awesome because he's Adam Sandler. And I watch his face while he's playing this guitar solo to honor his friend, Chris Farley. And he's trying. And this really means something to him. And he really wants to nail this. And even in the serious movies, even in the great movies that we'll talk about, I just have never seen so much effort and intensity on his face than in that moment. And he just really wants to nail this

for his friend, Chris Farley. For a very, very silly and very stupid Netflix stand-up special. It's like a really emotional hour of Adam Sandler. And it takes you through all these binaries that we're talking about.

He has really managed to elevate himself in the, I guess, the lore of comedy. And I never would have guessed this after I saw The Waterboy. But he is really like in the tradition of guess, the lore of comedy. And I never would have guessed this after I saw The Waterboy. But he is really like in the tradition of Groucho Marx or Mel Brooks. He's a lifer.

He's a person who's going to do this until he's 70 years old. He's got more money than God right now. He doesn't have to do this. He doesn't have to share his feelings about his late friend Chris Farley with millions of people on netflix but he's a born performer he loves doing it he's still cranking out one or

two movies a year because he loves to work he defines his life by the work that he's doing sometimes it's really funny sometimes it's not that funny sometimes it's really serious i guess do you think he do you think he'll win an oscar do you think he'll be recognized in the way that many so few comic figures are when they attempt to do this? I don't know if he will. And I'm surprised how little that matters to me. My heart still breaks when I think about Bill Murray not winning for Lost in Translation. I didn't have the same feeling about Jim Carrey, but I felt bad at how much it clearly mattered to Jim Carrey. And it's like, oh, that would have been nice. It would obviously be fantastic. Like something I rewatch periodically

is him, Adam Sandler winning. It's the Independent Spirit Award. That was an amazing speech. That was an amazing, like he does it in an Adam Sandler voice. Like he jokes about being snubbed by the Academy. Like everybody in the crowd, all the celebrities,

like Elizabeth Moss is just laughing her head off. It's one of my favorite speeches of the past five years but i don't feel the like oh i really wanted to have this and i'm really sad you know but i'm gonna make a joke about it but this joke is gonna hide like genuine hurts like he really does seem less invested in like this is a career capper it doesn't seem to matter as much to him as the usual sort of comedy person trying to win an oscar matters to the comedy person and i i guess i go off him there i follow his lead and i'd be thrilled obviously if it happens but i i don't think it it changes how much people love him i don't think he needs to win an oscar to have the prestige

associated with winning an Oscar, I guess is how I'd put it. How about you? Do you think it's going to happen? Do you really want it to happen? Well, I mean, I love him. He's given me a lot of happiness as a person. So I think it would be nice. And I obviously have an unhealthy relationship with the Oscars. And so it would be wonderful if it happened. It's very unlikely to happen, I would say, just given how the Academy organizes itself historically. I will say, I've spent a little bit of time with him because I was very present for a lot of the Uncut Gems work. I interviewed him and the guys, the Safdies a couple of times. And I spent a little bit of

time with him at the Telluride Film Festival. It was the first time I'd ever met him and couldn't have been a nicer guy. And I witnessed something really funny, which is, I don't know if the movie premiered at, it did premiere at Telluride. And so it was the first time many people had seen the movie and we were out at a party or a dinner or something. And I watched someone approach him somewhere between a fan and like an industry gadfly person. And they raced up to him and they were like that was fucking awesome bro you're definitely winning an oscar that was me actually uh that was unfortunate rob that you did that uh but you know i would say that sandler handled it well because he's got

30 plus years of experience of bros running up on him saying you're the best bro but he did not seem very interested in that line of conversation you know he was just like that's very nice but that's not really why i do it you know what i mean like didn't really and even in the promotion of that movie i didn't feel like he was working the award circuit hard he was doing the stuff you know he would do the actor on actor conversations but he's actually quite i don't want to say withdrawn but he's he doesn't seek a claim in this interview or publicity no he doesn't i've heard historically he doesn't love the press which is one of the reasons why he often does interviews with safe partners um but you know he has a lot to protect obviously and i think he got a lot of bad reviews at the

beginning of his career and it's a real testimony to something that i've talked about many many times which is that like most comedies over the last 60 years are made for people who are under 25 years old and most people who review comedies in america are over 25 years old and we have this historical bizarre critical disconnect between the criticism about comedy and the actual relationship that the audience has to it. Sandler might be the pinnacle example of this. And that'll come to the fore when we talk about this. And I've thought about this myself.

I think I've hopefully forged a little bit of a reputation for myself as a stuck-up up pretentious movie asshole but um thanks rob uh but if i if i saw billy madison today how would i feel about it for the first time would i like it what you would feel is that if peeing your pants is cool then i'm miles davis is the funniest line in a movie in either of our lifetimes, I think. When you were talking about the grandmas of the Sandler oeuvre, I was thinking of that woman in Billy Madison, that elderly lady. Shout out to that woman. Yes.

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I would like to make one argument in defense of The Ridiculous Six, which I believe to be the first Netflix movie. If I remember this correctly this i think it was 2015 it was the first netflix movie it is overall very bad it is probably i i don't think you can even say it aged poorly i think it arrived poorly it's like the super bowl of racial stereotypes like i seem to recall there was like there was a huge controversy like there was a revolt of extras about the way it was portraying native americans in general like this is a bad movie that's probably worth skipping except for the fact that for the first half of the movie they're like running around in the old west

like whatever's happening like we got to get to sweet hog rock all we got to do is get to sweet hog rock we'll meet up at sweet hog rock and they to Sweet Hog Rock, and it's just shaped like a giant penis. And somebody says, wow, that's a sweet hog. That's the funniest shit. That is my second favorite line after peeing your pants. It's cool. That's Miles Davis. Just watch The Ridiculous Six for that one line and then bail.

That is my advice. You just spoiled the joke. I'm sorry. I did. I did. I did. This movie is like eight years old and nobody should watch it. That's the thing is,

even in the most dire of Sandler projects, you usually get a Sweet Hog here and there. Yes, exactly. The Sweet Hog rock line always appears somewhere, even in Sandy Wexler or whatever okay here's your time to talk about sandler the singer some more uh what's your number five movie number five i'm going the wedding singer i think we need a representation for the rom-com sandler i think that adam sandler and drew barrymore are one of the better matched like energy rom-com couples in history,

like just the lovable goofiness. I just, they just work perfectly together. As I say, like I love him. He's perfectly cast as a wedding singer. Like he's at the exact right level of, of aptitude,

you know, and prestige, just his character. He's wearing an electric blue suit that sort of echoes punch drunk love, even though nothing else in the movie does, you know gets sad and he sings holiday my madonna and he's very sad and everyone's yelling at him but it's just the chemistry between adam sandler and drew barrymore and it carries over into 50 first dates which, which is not as good a movie. All I remember about that movie is that

311 covers The Cure. I think. That's a really weird thing to be the only thing I remember. Your favorite band, 311. You love them. Yes. 311, number one. The Cure, number two. So that was perfect. I just love seeing Adam Sandler and Drew Barrymore on screen together. I just

can't imagine two people better matched in terms of just their temperaments and it's just you know and it just i another scene i re-watch you know just to just to jazz myself up or whatever is him singing to drew barrymore on a plane right and billy idol is there and it's just an incredibly sweet you know that's him in in hanukkah song mode right like that's the the kind of song the goofy semi improvised lullaby that Adam Sandler sings and like he turned those into like radio hits and he turned those into climactic like rom-com like heartwarming moments like in its own way that's a tremendous range all on

its own so this is probably my number six the wedding singer I will say I went on a pretty bad date to this movie um so i don't okay i don't have the fondest memory of seeing it in that way we're sort of like after the movie i was like i love adam sandler i really liked this movie a lot and the girl that i went on the date with did not like the movie and did not like Sandler and that was that was a red flag and so

you were not well matched no we went separate ways but maybe that's for the best you know that was extremely for the best I think everything turned out alright for you at least

I couldn't speak to her she's probably you know if she doesn't like Adam Sandler movies you know I don't really care what happened to her I hope she is uh living in destitution right now that woman no i don't no i don't think that i think she's perfectly happy um my number five is is i don't know if it's a classic it's on your list too it's your number three so i'm excited to talk to you about

it it's the myer with stories new and selected which I think has now been kind of pushed to the back burner in the Noah Baumbach filmography because he had so much success with Marriage Story right and this of course was his big collaboration with Sandler and Dustin Hoffman and Emma Thompson the number of people big sprawling kind of short story-esque compilation a little jd salinger-esque a little bit of like a um an episodic story of a family kind of coming together and breaking apart very very delicate interesting performance by adam sandler here very different i think even from his most acclaimed kind of quote-unquote dramatic works he and bombumbach are a real match I think tonally for a certain kind of New York New Jersey Jewish man and this

movie does do what he doesn't do in Hustle Witches he does do some of his tricks you know he sings in this movie he he does have a couple of rageful breakdowns but there's

a real inherent sweetness and he is a beautiful father in this movie too very supportive very thoughtful and he has this complex relationship in this movie too very supportive very thoughtful and he has this complex relationship with his father i think of that sequence where they go to moma for you know the art opening and he kind of has to support his dad even though his dad is this kind of ground down frustrated kind of failure of a man i just love this movie this was one of

my favorite movies that when it came out um i'd want to say in 2017 and um i'm just such a huge fan of it and i i thought it was an awesome step forward for sandler as an actor but why is it so high on your list what do you like about it i mean first of all within the 10 minutes within the first 10 minutes i think you get my favorite scene from an adam sandler movie which is him as you say singing with his daughter with grace van patten you know a song that they i think she says they wrote when she was nine. And again, it's the same thing. It's an Adam Sandler song now transferred to a drama, like a really effective, serious family breaking down volcanic rage,

but it's not very funny type movie. But it's just an incredibly sweet scene of him sitting with his teenage daughter, you know, playing piano together and singing this. It's my favorite scene from an Adam Sandler movie. It's probably where, you know, I get this thing about just loving watching Adam Sandler be a dad. That's peak dad to me right there. I'm on the cusp of saying this is my favorite of his serious movies. I think it's my favorite performance of his.

Because I do think I agree with you that it's supposed to be funny. And it's supposed to be there's Adam Sandler when he's rolling around on the ground with ben stiller right and like you can go there's like youtube compilations of every time he blows up in this movie you know it's sort of like nicholas cage in that way right and it's it's just like yes he blew up like he did it like there's happy gilmore whatever like you could he shows just enough of like the adam sandler characters we know and love him but like he's also very quiet and very subdued and i just very hurts in a way that's very believable he doesn't ever oversell you know the i'm trying to get an oscar thing it's not about the big dramatic speech for him it's just this hang dog look that he gets in his eyes you know and your brain does the work of imagining like

billy madison now it's like oh you can do this as well like i'm really emotionally invested because i love this guy from like 50 different comedies i just i feel like this is the perfect balance this movie between comedic adam sandler and dramatic adam sandler and it's tilted toward comedic but there's just enough of like those heartbreaking and heartwarming moments like the thing at the end i i don't remember the context of it but like he they keep zooming in on his face when he leaves his father for the last time and he's like i'm sorry forgive me and it just keeps getting closer to his face like it's a very it's a very movie guy sort of scene you know i don't

know if i'm as big a noam bomb back fan as you are but i i do he plays it really well and he underplays it really well like you don't you don't get the thing of like a comedy person trying really hard to be a dramatic actor with him it just comes very natural to him and this is the most natural and beautiful you know essence of that for me i yeah i agree with you that makes a lot of sense. I'm reminded of something that's going around in the world of movies right now, which is that there was a report that Noah Baumbach's new film,

I don't know if you saw this, is an adaptation of DeLillo's White Noise, which reportedly has a $140 million budget. And there was a little bit of hand-wringing and emotional concern about that. Let me tell you something, that's fucking awesome. They gave Noah Baumbach 140 million dollars to make white noise that's incredible why is anyone complaining or concerned about this that's it's gonna be a hell

of an airborne toxic event i can't wait i gotta say are there stills from that movie out already i think there are right yes and isn't that that book is set in ohio is it not is it pennsylvania maybe it's penn Pennsylvania. I wanted to say it's Midwest. I'd like to think I'd remember if it was Ohio, but yeah, it's like a Midwestern college. Okay. It could be Ohio.

It's a barn. They go to the most photographed barn in America, et cetera. It's somewhere around here. Pennsylvania sounds right, but no, that movie is going to be rad. What do they think the budget for that movie should be?

It's $130 million. Shit, that's a lot. $140 million was the report. Michael Bay. Michael Bay's White Noise would also be a film I would watch. Okay, I'm going to skip my number four because we'll talk about it later in this episode. Your number four.

We can talk about it right now. Your number four is my number three. What is it? It's Uncut Gems. Yeah. Uncut Gems. Uncut Gems. Yeah. Uncut Gems. Uncut Gems. Oh, God.

Oh, God. I respect this movie more than I like it. What? This is a very stressful movie for me, Sean. I don't like people yelling at one another. I saw this movie twice in the theater because I missed the first 10 minutes the first time I watched it because I walked in the theater. I put my coat down. I went to the bathroom. I returned to the wrong theater, and it took me 10 minutes to realize, and then I had to run back to the right theater.

I'm sitting in the movie. Kevin Garnett had just shown up at the point in the movie, and I'm like, oh, shit, I missed stuff. I don't know where my coat is. It was a very stressful additional element, and i had to watch uncut gems right i had to just watch people scream at each other for two and a half hours and then i had to do it all again just to get with the 10 minutes that i missed like this movie is a lot dude this is like a movie engineered to like stress me the fuck out and so i respect the hell out of this movie and i sort of understand that like this is top one or two best dramatic movies that he's ever made but like i find it just very unpleasant to watch you know which is on purpose which is absolutely by design and he's great in

it you know and just the adam sandler voice again for two two and a half hours however five hours however long this movie is his rapport with julia fox is really good like he's his rapport with kevin garnett is excellent like he's really really good in it he's perfect for it but it's just it's it's just tailor-made for me to not enjoy this movie so you just reminded me of one of the things that i think is impressive about it and why it's so high on my list. Obviously, the movie itself is explosive and hilarious and scary and depressing and it is racked with tension and it is the peak, this movie gave me anxiety movie of the 21st century. But he is surrounded by inexperienced or unlikely actors throughout most of the film.

Julia Fox does not have a long resume. Kevin Garnett, of course, is not a professional actor. Many of the surrounding figures that the Safdies cast are non-professional actors or people who have not been acting very long. They love real people, real looking people. So that means there's even more weight on Sandler's shoulders in that performance. He has to carry this thing. He has to make everyone around him good. He has to play the kind of point guard role in a way. So in addition to the fact that the character that he plays in this movie is, I think, one of the most fascinating, most tragic, most interesting characters he's

ever played, and that the movie itself is this really dynamic and explosive you know depiction of a man coming to his wits end and and even more than that you know how ratner is a great character but sandler has so much burden in this movie and he's so good in it um maybe in like a less stressed period of your life maybe wait like 18 or 20 years watch and then watch let's get these kids out of the house and i will try again and he's a bad family man he is right you know it's well he loves his sons but he doesn't that's true he's not present for them really is the issue the moment when his son is trying to go to bed in like the race car bed and he's watching the basketball game i remember thinking that on his phone right he's like swearing and waking his eyes like this is extremely relatable content right here. But I it's yes, Adam Sandler is like not the perfect I less, you know, not the perfect husband more than not the perfect father. You're right. But yeah, it's I don't like seeing him as not like the ideal family man, I guess is another thing that makes me turn on this movie a little bit but i get what you're saying well you know let me put it this way as a kid from long island who was a

hardcore nicks fan whose father worked nights it was a very relatable experience let me tell you he really wanted to be there he just couldn't be there you know this is this is this is cinema this is true true storytelling um i love uncems. I'm glad you at least acknowledge the performance here on your list. Yes. So here's what we've got so far. I've done five and three. You've done five, four, and three. This is very confusing.

Why don't we do your number two? No, let's do my number two. God, I'm getting terrible at this. Wow. My number two is not on your list, which I just think is a my number two. God, I'm terrible at this. Wow. My number two is not on your list, which I just think is a travesty. And it's Billy Madison. Billy Madison, for a long time,

was the funniest movie I'd ever seen. I'm sure that's in part because I was 12 when I saw it. I saw it in a movie theater when I was 12 years old. And this is a movie about a rich kid, a fail son i don't think we had the phrase fail son back then not but this invented you're exactly right fail son perfect he's a he's a fail son who um to prove to his father that he is worthy of the multi-millions coming his way he goes back to school and starts in the first grade. And he has to complete all 12 grades of school with two weeks for each grade to prove he's competent enough to manage the company.

Now, that is an amazing test that would prove that somebody is worthy of managing a multi-million dollar company. This movie is deranged. It is so funny, so sweet, so stupid. Kind of the hallmarks of all Adam Sandler movies. And every single person who's in it isn't on the joke it features not just an all-time performance from sandler but also from bradley whitford as the the ostensible villain from uh norm mcdonald as his pal frank from bridget wilson as his ostensible girlfriend veronica vaughn and also his third grade teacher

i think um from darren mcgavinavin, the great Darren McGavin, as his father, Brian Madison. I love this movie. I will not apologize for it. Stop Looking at Me, Swan is something I have said many times in my life, and I am not ashamed of that. I think Billy Madison is awesome. I love you so

much for just reading the plot of this movie straight in your most serious podcaster voice. It's like, the plot of this movie straight in your most serious podcaster voice. It's like, the plot of this movie is that he goes back to school. That is the exact right amount of seriousness to bring to this movie. It is not on my list.

To try and represent the full oeuvre of Adam Sandler, I decided that I was going to decide between this and another movie, which is probably obvious but i i i just i i left this one off in out of respect for another movie okay but it was close it could have been either as i say if peeing your pants is cool then i'm miles davis is the funniest thing that anybody's ever said on camera in my lifetime i can picture so many scenes from this movie so vividly i don't know if i was 12 but i i might have been 12 but yes i remember seeing this in the theater vividly and that's

another thing about adam sandler overall is like i remember being in the theater for the water boy i remember being in the theater for 50 first dates and the wedding singer i just these are formative memories for me all of these movies and i i would absolutely billy madison is one of the most formative for me i yes this this is one of the weird things that it's number six for me but it easily could have been number two or number one you know most of these movies especially in the early going are very short at billy madison is 89 minutes 90 90 minutes yeah and it feels very short to me, even though it's quite episodic. I will say I rewatched The Waterboy last night, which is also

89 minutes and felt as if it were Kieslowski's The Decalogue. I was like, this is the longest movie I've ever seen in my life. When will this thing end? And so that's the thing is like, sometimes they don't work. The Waterboy for me was kind of a break point where I was like, oh, maybe he's not the Lord and Savior. I didn't love that one. I didn't like that voice. I didn't like that character. But, you know, keep taking swings. Keep chopping wood.

That's what Sandler does. Henry Winkler, though. He was good. Yes, he was. It was on cable like a week ago. And I was like, oh, my gosh, Barry's Henry Winkler is in this movie. I completely forgot. But is that where the downturn happened?

In my memory, I mean, it's not on the tier with Billy Madison, but I remember liking the Waterboy fine, and I remember everybody else liking it fine. It felt like Big Daddy, like right there in 99 is where the turn happened, but did people start turning on him after the Waterboy?

So the Waterboy was a huge hit. It was his biggest hit by far. It was significantly bigger than Billy Madison and Happy Gilmore, which is, I think, part of what I held against it because I thought Billy Madison and Happy Gilmore were so much funnier. And then the Wedding Singer was very successful, but it was like a slightly different tone. It was more rom-com.

Waterboy is massive. Didn't love it. Big Daddy did very well. I liked Big Daddy better than the water boy personally but then he goes on this interesting little he makes little nicky in 2000 which is not very good um and then a couple of years go by and then he makes a movie that we're going to talk about very shortly in fact why don't we just talk about it right now you're number two my number one what is it let's do it it'sunk Love. This was my number one until this morning.

Oh, wow. I couldn't do it. I made a last minute change. This is another one that I respect more than I love. I remember being in the theater for this. I remember I'm going to smash your head with a sledgehammer in the theater very well. And again, I remember thinking like, I think this was my first real experience of experience of like oh a comedy guy i love is going to be in serious movies now i feel like for our generation this was a big turning point in that divide as people thought about movies in general you know like this is this pta's third movie this is is this before boogie nights it's his fourth okay

all right so this is still early PTA. And we're sort of getting used to the idea, my generation at least, of the prestige auteur director. He's not quite PTA as we know him now. But we understand that this is Adam Sandler working with different people. I understood that he was being stunt cast. And I came into that movie. I don't think i would have been able to articulate this but like they better not be making fun of adam sandler in this movie and

like the whole movie better not be like look how weird it is they're like adam sandler who's in these movies i don't respect is now making a movie that you're supposed to be you're supposed to respect and i i enjoy this movie it is not in the same way but it is stressful it's not uncut gems stressful but like john bryan's score i re-watched it last night like john bryan's score throughout is very stressful and it just the moments of rage like he's just he's sort of slouched and he's mumbling and he's put upon and then he has these moments where he blows up and he's trying to pull the soap dispenser off the wall he smashes the windows there's there's something i still watch this movie and i'm still watching comedy superstar adam sandler try to be

in a serious movie and i understand that it's beautifully made on a level beyond any other movie he ever made and i i do love his chemistry with Emily Watson, but it never quite clicks for me emotionally. I still feel like I'm watching an exercise. I'm watching him try to be serious. I'm watching a serious director try and take a comedy actor and prove that he can be serious. There's just a lot of effort happening for me that kept it off the top spot, even though I sort of respect that it's probably his most like most watchable movie so it's interesting to hear you say that because i do think that you hit on something right which is the idea of stunt casting the idea of like subverting an audience's expectations by implanting this chaotic comedy figure into a very tightly wound story about a guy with social anxiety. On the other hand,

you know, this is very memorably a kind of a reimagining of what the Paul Thomas Anderson aesthetic is. So after Heartache and Boogie Nights and Magnolia, there was this recognition that maybe he had gotten a little too big for his britches, a little too ambitious. And so he was meant to make something a little smaller. He wanted to make a love story. He wanted to do something that was a little bit more colorful and beautiful and a little bit less, I don't know, like doomsaying. Then, you know, Magnolia was like an apocalyptic movie.

Magnolia is a whole lot. Yeah. I didn't know. I forgot it was post-Magnolia, but that makes perfect sense as the next movie after Magnolia. And, you know, I think it's, maybe I'm just too in the back for PTA, know i think it's um maybe maybe i'm just too in the back for pta but i think it's a really sensitive portrayal of a guy who doesn't really

know how to connect to the world and that's really the point of the movie and the idea of taking someone like sandler who in real life seems very sweet and and kind of relatable if not totally knowable you know in the movies he was always this this head of steam building and building and building until he exploded and so the idea of using that skill as an actor but taking out all the jokes i thought was a really really clever choice and he's really really good in this movie and you can feel him being directed in a lot of in a lot of ways it's a very mannered performance in a way most of his performances are not but the world that he surrounds him with, you know, not just Emily Watson, but Marilyn Rassob and Louis Guzman and Robert Smigel as his brother-in-law.

And then especially Philip Seymour Hoffman as this explosive kind of adversary, Dean Trumbull, the great Philip Seymour Hoffman. It just makes for a world that is off kilter, but feels real. And it was exciting to see him for me in a real world. Now, there are a million other reasons to love the movie, but I think his performance

is very, very good. And I don't know. It's one of my favorite movies of all time, obviously, so it's going to be at the top for me. But I think it also... If he didn't make this movie and if PTA didn't approach him

to make this movie, I wonder where his career would have gone. I wonder if he would have been the Uncut Gems guy, if he would have been the guy who could make the Meyerowitz stories. I don't know that it would have happened for him in quite this way. The fact that he was certified

in a project like this and that he was able to explore a different kind of creativity as an actor, I love that. And so I see it as very significant and it's one of the reasons why it's so high on my list. Is it as pure a joy machine as Happy Gilmore or Billy Madison?

No, of course not. But I also saw it at the right time. I was in college. I went to the local art house theater in Ithaca. It was a packed house and we were already- Was it a date? Can I ask? No, I was dating my wife

and she was living in Baltimore at the time. So who did I go with? It's very plausible. I went alone. I love to go to the movies alone, Rob. Do you go to the movies alone? I do. I did.

I would go in the mornings, you know, I would get the 10 a.m. screening. So it's me and a lot of, you know, senior citizen types, you know, seeing motherless Brooklyn, you know, in Dublin, Ohio. That is, it is absolutely. Our friend Tom Bryan told me once that I'm way before I became a father. He's like, you're the most dad person I know and you don't have kids yet.

And that has stayed with me all my life. It's like, these are my people. I sat there watching motherless Brooklyn and I was like, these are my people. We're going to go to Denny's after this. We're going to get a French slam. You taught me back in a punch drunk love actually in the same way in the same way that i wrote down every time he screams in hustle

because i was like there he is i kept writing down his quietest you know and most vulnerable lines in this movie he says i don't know if there is anything wrong because i don't know how other people are yeah like that's a really beautiful line that again like he doesn't like slam on it he's not like this is my oscar he just says it and he just says it in the perfect every guy beaten down kind of way he's sitting at a table on a beach in hawaii with emily watson he says it really looks like hawaii here It's like one of the strangest. I just laugh my ass off in like a Billy Madison way at that line.

I do think he really does do vulnerability really well in this movie. It is very touching and you do really feel for him and feel protective of him in a way that you certainly don't

for Uncut Gems because he's sort of an anti-hero. I think Meyerowitz is in a similar that you certainly don't for uncut gems since he's sort of an anti-hero like i think myowitz isn't a similar thing where you just want to give the guy a hug you know and i think that he does that really well in a really beautifully underplayed kind of way so yeah you might have taught me back into it but i'm gonna i'm gonna keep going with my number one but i i feel you i understand what you're saying. I'm happy to hear that. I'm reminded of something I wanted to share with you. I could have shared it off mic, but I'm sharing it on mic. I'm listening to your pod every week. You just mentioned our friend, Tom. You and I have known

each other for a long time. I think probably 15 years at this point, maybe more. I mean, it was New York. It was late 2000s New York. So yes. So we've been in and out of touch intermittently over the years, but I feel like I know you pretty well. And I hear you on the pod every week and you tell some story and I'm like, I didn't know that story. I didn't know that story. I didn't know that story. Every week is a new diary entry from the life of Rob Barvilla. And I'm like, who is this guy? I'm running out of anecdotes.

I'm going to run out of anecdotes before songs. It's a race against time, Sean. Careful how you sell your life. I've thought about that many times over the years i know i know i know okay let's uh let's let's sell our lives one more time what's what's your number one uh adam sandler movie happy gilmore yeah i re-watched it this morning and i was like this is number one this is fucking number one reject reject the prestige versus dumb comedy binary sean fantasy Fennessey. This is a better movie than Punch Drunk.

It's a better movie than The Godfather Part II. Honestly, just the sequence, the three, the triptych of him fighting Bob Barker. He punches out Bob Barker and says, the price is wrong, bitch. And then Bob Barker's arm comes up from the bottom of the screen and chokes him. And then it cuts to Bob Barker and says, the price is wrong, bitch. And then Bob Barker's arm comes up from the bottom of the screen and chokes him, and then it cuts to Bob Barker and he opens his eyes. It's the funniest three things in a row that

have happened in a movie that I've ever seen. I just laughed my ass off through this entire movie. I think Christopher McDonald as Shooter McGavin underrated as one of the best performances in a comedy, one of the best comedy villains of all time. I did not know until this morning that you eat pieces of shit for breakfast. No, that is an ad lib. Wow. right there. I could not believe that. That is a perfect ad-libbed line. Julie Bowen was the love interest? I forgot about that.

Adorable in this film. Adorable. Absolutely adorable. It's so tied to Billy Madison for me. They're the same movie in so many ways, just down to the way the love interest appears. Just beat for beat. What you said about Uncatch Gems, he's surrounded

by non-actors or non-famous people. Like that's what he's doing. As you say, like he created a community around him and like Rob Schneider, you know, David Spade, et cetera, a part of that, but also are these, all these eccentric characters down to, if you're peeing your pants, it's cool, Miles Davis.

It's the ensemble in Happy Gilmore and just every single thing that happens and every single person who appears on screen. It's just such a tightly wound, surreal comedy machine for me. This movie just held the fuck up

for me this morning. I was like, this is the best movie ever made. Just as I thought when it came out in 1996 when I was 18. This was perfect for me in 96. It's perfect for me now. Yeah. I love it too. It's my number four. Uh, we did a rewatch. It

was on it a couple of years ago with, uh, Ben and Josh Safdie, which was really fun. And it's, it's kind of the perfect fusion of the manic screaming Sandler with the very sweet kind of vulnerable sandler like i think of that scene when he screams at his ex-girlfriend through the speaker to the apartment and then he starts yeah and then he starts trying to seduce her back and then he's sort of vulnerable and really wants her to come back and then is lonely and you know I think that it seems like that the PTAs of the world saw him like this guy kind of has something he's going for something that some of his

contemporaries are not going for no disrespect to the Rob Schneiders of the world but that's not something I mean nobody looked at Rob Schneider movies and was like this guy should be in my prestige film and so he could bring that stuff to even the silliest movies in the world I really love happy gilmore um i want to ask you as a final question is there a stanler movie that you don't

necessarily love but that you're like this was a hard cut it's an honorable mention you know you did mention the ridiculous six and the sweet hog uh that's not it joke i assume that's not it is there what's on the outside what's an honorable mention for you i think the last movie we should probably talk about is funny people yeah which was on the cusp for me that's from 2009 and that's an interesting piece of connective tissue i'm mulling over the what happens if he's not in punch drunk love conundrum like if he's never seen as serious and funny people was the moment like he's playing himself right he's not his character is not adam sandler but you're you're to understand

that movie as being it's adam sandler you know reckoning over the wreckage he's caused in his personal life like making these dumb comedies and he hates himself and it's like it's very meta in that way and like this movie actually is i think six hours long like it's like, it's very meta in that way. And like this movie actually is, I think six hours long. Like it's just a limited series. I remember being in the theater and being like, I'm enjoying this, but this is a huge fucking long movie. You know, I, as a Judd Apatow, you know, it's not top tier Judd Apatow for me. The funniest person in funny people by far is Eminem.

I rewatched the scene where eminem yells at ray romano periodically um but i i think this movie is an important piece of the puzzle of adam sandler as a more complicated figure as a possible dramatic actor it's not his best movie it's not his best performance but i think that that did you know this is in the midst of the judd apatow sort of comedy revolution and this is him, Adam Sandler sort of showing that he can hang, you know, with Seth Rogen at all and like he can handle it. And I do think that this was important for him getting, I people saw him. And it sort of re-complicated him as this very goofy, lovable, beloved figure. But he also has this darkness or this sadness or this self-loathing to him. And the other thing I keep coming back to is the fact that I do love so much that he is like a real-life family man. And the stories about his daughters and about his wife in 100 fresh in that comedy special or part of why i love it so much and sort of mapping the

fact that i know him or i think i know him to be like this this wonderful off-camera person and i'm so glad that you confirm that a little bit too but mapping that onto funny people you know where he's alone you know and he basically tries to break up this family like to get back with his ex-girlfriend or whatever the plot of that movie is it's there's just a lot of complicating factors to that movie that makes it really fascinating and really important to sort of his filmography without ever quite working you know as a nine-hour movie yeah it's funny because i feel like it's a that's a canard now right it's like a trope that every judd apatow movie would be significantly better if you just

cut out the 20 minutes that we all know he doesn't need in it and on the other hand like that's kind of what makes him for lack of a better word an auteur you know he's like yeah it's actually important to me to make these maximalist personal broad comedies no one's really ever done that this movie funny people in particular reminds me a lot of al brooks movies or excuse me al brooks movies which um are often very thinly veiled semi-autobiographical dramedies where like the laughs are very funny but they're movies themselves you wouldn't describe as purely funny like Like, Defending Your Life has a lot of great jokes, but it's definitely

about being dead. And Funny People is about a guy who's dying, you know, who has a terminal diagnosis and what he does in the aftermath of that.

And some of it really doesn't work, as you say, and it is long. Most Judd Apatow movies are long. But it's a real good performance from him.

It's a really good ensemble of actors. And it's actually the movie that I think is eight, the Apatow movie that's aging the best, you know, it's actually the, it's the 25th anniversary, or excuse me, it's the 15th anniversary of knocked up this week.

Jesus. Oh, that's fucked up. I know we're really old, but, but funny people is the one that I'm most curious to return to. I didn't return to it for this podcast, but maybe I will as soon as we're done recording.

Well, Rob, this was fun. Do you feel, do you feel like we did justice to the Adam Sandler experience? I'd like to think that we did. Let me ask you one last question. What is,

my sons are 11 and nine. Okay. My, I don't know if I told you this, my wife put on defending your life and tried to get them into defending your life and after 10 minutes they were like no i think the nine-year-old was like this movie is about death hell no what is setting aside hotel transylvania which they don't really associate with him at all what is the ideal first adam sandler movie for a kid that

will not immediately corrupt them. You know, like, when can you show a child Happy Gilmore? This is a tough onboarding experience. I was 13 when I saw it. Okay.

You turned out alright. Did I? Yeah. What about like a 50 First Dates? Yeah, I think that's the move. They don't like romance. Yeah, that's the move. But like Rob Schneider's in it.

You know what I mean? Like there's jokes, there's gags. There's stuff that would amuse them and it wouldn't be too corrupting. At 11, you can show an 11-year-old Billy Madison. Come on. I saw it when I was 11. It was great.

Really? It was formative. I don't... Not in a good way, though. I have to admit. Like, we put on Spaceballs once. And it's like... This isn't really a problem for Adam Sandler's era,

but, like, 80s PG movies are not 2020s PG movies. Interesting. Right? And I don't... It's... What is Happy Gilmore rated? gilmore 13 right yes it was pg and that's right like i i think they finally they figured it out by the time of adam sandler like what's actually appropriate but like i'm having a hard time imagining you know my son's

processing you know the billy madison scene where she strips every time he gets a question right etc like i don't want to have these fucking conversations that's a fair point but think about how great that was for us when we got to see it back um let's talk about that off mike but yes yes rob thank you so much please listen to 60 songs that explain the 90s please read rob's writing on the ringinger.com. Thank you, sir. Thanks to our producer, Bobby Wagner,

for his work on this episode. Stay tuned to The Big Picture. Later this week, we're talking about Jurassic World Dominion and ranking the Jurassic films with our pal, Brian Curtis. We'll see you then. Thank you.