Interview with Adam Sandler

By George Lang | Published: June 12, 2008

LOS ANGELES — It is a time of exhaustively reported bad behavior in Hollywood — stiff a waitress on a tip, and 20 paparazzi blogs will be on the offender like poolside mosquitoes. Thanks to such screechy gossip mongering, hardly anyone comes off like a saint these days.

Except for Adam Sandler, the grand poobah of gross-out. Sandler stars in “You Don't Mess With the Zohan,” just your everyday Israeli-commando-becomes-a-hair-stylist comedy, and when Sandler gets in a room with his best friends and about 50 reporters at Los Angeles' Four Seasons Hotel, the palatial digs just fill up with love.

Sandler made his bones with ultra-adolescent slob comedies such as “Billy Madison,” “Happy Gilmore” and “Big Daddy” after breaking out on “Saturday Night Live,” and his best work brings out the snickering 13-year-old in everyone. But the guy who starred in “I Now Pronounce You Chuck and Larry” has a heart that bleeds.

“My intention is to never hurt anybody,” Sandler said. “I'm happy when people are having a good time. And I've got to tell you, if someone comes up to me and is offended by anything I've done in the past, I listen to them.

“And I get bummed out, because when we're working our a-s off on the script and making a movie, I'm just picturing people having a great time,” he said. “If anybody walks away saying, ‘Oh man, I wish they hadn't said that,' that breaks my heart. We just want to make a funny movie.”

“Zohan” co-writer Robert Smigel, the man who created “Saturday TV Funhouse” on “SNL” and supplies the voice for Triumph the Insult Comic Dog on “Late Night with Conan O'Brien,” isn't much for sentimentality.

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