The lost demo that Brendan Fraser and Adam Sandler made with Rob Zombie
Adam Sandler and Brendan Fraser recently sat down to discuss the 1994 film Airheads, a project in which they both starred. The film was written by Rich Wilkes, directed by Michael Lehmann and told of a band of layabouts who plan to overtake a radio station so they can play their demo across the airwaves and gain the recognition they believe they deserve.
“You were in a movie called Airheads; remember when I discovered you?” Sandler joked. “You were just a kid. Remember when Pauly [Shore] discovered you, and I stole you from Pauly and said, ‘Get on over here?'” Fraser replied in jest, “Is that how it shook out? Get out of here.”
Fraser performed in his first leading film role in 1992 in Encino Man, alongside Pauly Shore, in which he played a frozen pre-historic caveman who is thawed out and released into contemporary society. Encino Man came out just before Airheads, which is why Sandler jokingly wondered whether he or Shore had “discovered” Fraser.
“I saw you and thought, ‘This guy shouldn’t just be a caveman; he should be in a band!'” Sandler continued. “Michael Lehmann was very against you. He was like, ‘I don’t get it. I don’t see the caveman being in this movie.’ I said, ‘He can do other shit. Adam Sandler ain’t gonna be in Airheads unless old Fraser is in it.’ He didn’t want ya; I did. You had a good life because of me.”
Airheads also starred the musician Rob Zombie as himself, and Fraser remembers recording a demo with both Zombie and Sandler. The actor revealed: “I have a cassette at home, an actual cassette, of the demo that we did with Rob Zombie. Serious. I found it in a box of crap in my desk.” Unfortunately, it looks as though Fraser’s tape is the only format of the demo in existence.
Delving deeper into the film, the acting duo remember that Fraser was the leader of the fictional band named The Lone Rangers, in which a joke in the film was “how do you pluralise ‘lone’?”. Sandler asked Fraser if he could remember the name of the song that the band were trying to get on the airwaves, to which Fraser admirably recalled, “Degenerated”.
Filming the movie sounded like an absolute blast, and Sandler claimed that it was “one of the best shoots” of his life, without a doubt. He said, “We would drive to the Fox lot, get there around 4:30 something at night, the sun’s going down. We’d have our snacks, get into our clothes, do our scenes, and man, was that the best party of all time.”
