The movie that made Paul Thomas Anderson want to work with Adam Sandler
When Adam Sandler accepted a role in Paul Thomas Anderson’s 2002 romantic comedy-drama Punch-Drunk Love, his performance marked a change in the direction of his career. Sandler had, of course, been known for his comic effort, but Anderson’s film was one of the first times Hollywood saw that there was an additional dramatic string to his acting bow.
Emily Watson and Phillip Seymour Hoffman star alongside Sandler in Punh-Drunk Love, which tells of a peculiar businessman with severe anxiety and anger problems called Barry Egan, who falls for his sister’s co-worker. Much of Barry’s issues stem from his seven sisters, who emotionally bully him.
It was a real change of pace for Sandler, but the project remains one of his best-ever efforts. Anderson had been drawn to working with the actor after he saw one of his previous comedy movies Big Daddy and one told The Los Angeles Times that one scene, in particular, made the director know that Sandler was the one.
“I love Big Daddy. Big Daddy had Sensitive Sandler, but there’s a scene in it where he’s screaming at his father over the telephone that I used to rewind over and over,” he said. “That’s when I really thought, ‘I have to find this person. I have to work with this person.'”
Big Daddy was released in 1999, directed by Dennis Dugan and starring Sandler (who also co-wrote the movie), Joey Lauren Adams, Jon Stewert and Rob Schneider, amongst several other stars. It tells of a 30-something man who gets broken up with for not being responsible. His response is to adopt a five-year-old boy with disastrously comic results.
It wasn’t just Big Daddy that had Sandler get the Punch-Drunk Love job, though. Anderson also caught some of his best moments from Saturday Night Live too. He once told Roger Ebert: “There’s this moment when he’s doing this talk show called ‘The Denise Show,’ about his ex-girlfriend who’s left him, and his father calls up and says, ‘What are you doing; you’re embarrassing the family.'”
The director went on: “And Adam goes into this fit of rage, screaming at his father, and honest to God, I saw this moment where it appears as if the whites of his eyes turn black and they roll back in his head. It was like, he just lost his mind. I would play it back, over and over again, and you can see him kinda snap back to reality.”
