A lot of filmmakers strive for realism in their movies, but that’s not usually the case when the project they’re working on is a goofy comedy. Adam Sandler, as it turns out, had different feelings on the subject while 1995’s Billy Madison was in production. Remember that scene where Sandler destroys the kids he’s in school with in a game of dodgeball?
Should you need to refresh your memory, you can check that part out right here:
So, funny story about that sequence: Sandler was legitimately hitting those kids with an actual dodgeball; no stunts, no props, no trick shots.
According to director Tamra Davis, she had everything planned out so that the game would look authentic without the need for Sandler to genuinely let them have it. However, the night before they were set to shoot the scene, Sandler called up Davis and told her that he really wanted to hit the kids.
When Davis pushed back and reminded Sandler that they were children, Sandler responded by saying, “Line them up, and ask who would be okay getting hit. Make sure you get the parents to say yes, and I’m really going to hit them hard.”
Davis thought Sandler was crazy for suggesting it, but Sandler assured her that “hurting kids is funny,” and convinced her to go along with the idea. As Davis tells it, she ended up cutting the shots in such a way that you don’t see the kids start crying, which apparently happened more than once.
The reason for the editing, from her perspective, was that the throwing of the ball and the hitting were funny, but the kids’ reactions to it weren’t. And, not surprisingly, some of the parents who were there that day agreed.
During a 2017 interview with Conan O’Brien, Sandler confirmed that he did, in fact, genuinely pelt those kids, but he also revealed that it didn’t go quite as he was expecting. After one boy started crying, a group of parents who seemingly weren’t aware of Sandler’s arrangement confronted him about it.
Sandler jokingly asked if the children read the script, to which one parent replied, “They’re six. They don’t read yet.” He then promised he wouldn’t do it anymore and proceeded to continue nailing the kids anyway once the cameras started rolling.
You can hear Sandler tell the story himself in the clip below.
The post Adam Sandler Got Permission to Actually Clobber Kids for This Beloved Comedy: ‘Hurting Kids Is Funny’ appeared first on VICE.
