Making An Adam Sandler Movie Is Just As Haphazard As You’d Think

According to regular Adam Sandler co-star Nick Swardson, getting a role in one of the Sandman’s movies is roughly equivalent to him calling you up to join a game of pick-up basketball. (Sandler might do that too.) Take, for example, the time Swardson was cast in Just Go With It alongside Jennifer Aniston.

“Sandler called me, I remember exactly where I was,” Swardson told David Spade and Dana Carvey on their Fly on the Wall podcast. “I was at Baby Blues BBQ in Venice, and Sandler calls me and he goes, ‘Hey, what are you doing?’ And I go, ‘I’m having dinner. Why? What’s up?’ And he goes, ‘Can you do a German accent?’ And I go, ‘What? Like this?’”

Here Swardson said something unintelligible in Germanic gibberish. 

“And (Sandler) goes, ‘Okay, perfect. Call you tomorrow.’”

The next day, Sandler called back as promised. “We’re doing a movie in Hawaii. You, me and Aniston. You’re playing a half-German dude.”

And that, ladies and gentlemen, is the casting process for a Sandler comedy: Call one of your usual gang of idiots (Swardson, Spade, Rob Schneider, Kevin James, Jon Lovitz, the Sandler kids et al) and tell them to pack their bags. 

“I was like, what the hell?” laughed Swardson. “It was like the most Sandler thing.” 

That’s how it works, confirmed Spade. You get the call: “Hey, I might need you for this.”

Swardson’s first gig in the Sandlerverse, co-writing The Benchwarmers based on a Sandler idea, also started with a random phone call. “I was in Nashville and I was doing a gig, and he called me in my hotel room,” Swardson remembered. “He was like, ‘Hey, I sold an idea to Sony.’” 

Swardson wanted to know more — what is it? Well, it didn’t have a title but it was about three Little Leaguers. “He gave me the premise. He’s like, ‘I want you to write it.’” And boom, Swardson, with one low-budget comedy script to his name, was writing a Sandler-backed screenplay. Nice work if you can get it.

Sandler isn’t simply an idiot genius when it comes to casting and hiring screenwriters either — he’s also an acting coach. Lovitz, who played Mel in The Benchwarmers, was a bit of a problem because he didn’t want to do his same old shtick. “When we were doing Benchwarmers, Lovitz would fight about it,” explained Swardson. “He’s like (insert Lovitz voice here), ‘I don’t want to do Jon Lovitz! I don’t want to do that! I have range! I’m going to do a whole other character!”

Leave it to Sandler to solve the problem with a simple question: “Are you fucking dumb?” Lovitz then delivered the lines as requested.

When Carvey asked Swardson about the biggest hit he was ever in, his debt to Sandler was obvious. While Swardson didn’t exactly know the answer, the candidates — Grown Ups, Grown Ups 2, Just Go With It, Click — all had one thing in common. They all started with a haphazard “Hey, what are you doing?” phone call from Adam Sandler.