The only director who ruined their career by working with Adam Sandler: “Nobody would touch me”
One of the many reasons why people love working with Adam Sandler so much is that it can often get them a job for life, or the closest thing Hollywood has to it. The actor’s inner circle has been expanding for decades, and if a director impresses him once, there’s a high chance they’ll get another shot.
Dennis Dugan helmed seven Happy Madison productions, along with Happy Gilmore and Big Daddy, Steven Brill tackled five, Frank Coraci and Tyler Spindell took the reins on four, Peter Segal directed three, with Fred Wolf, Kyle Newacheck, and Tom Brady overseeing two apiece.
When you include his recurring repertory of co-stars that includes Kevin James, Rob Schneider, Allen Covert, Drew Barrymore, Steve Buscemi, Jennifer Aniston, David Spade, Chris Rock, and the rest of the usual suspects, it becomes clear that Sandler is the kind of guy who appreciates both his old friends and the new ones he makes along the way.
With so many filmmakers having made their first picture with Sandler before going on to make at least one more, if not many, it’s unthinkable that anyone would rub shoulders with modern cinema’s favourite man-child and end up with their prospects lying face down in the gutter before being kicked while they were down. And yet, it happened.
Although the reasons remain unclear, Netflix’s current and ongoing golden goose decided that he wanted to try his luck at becoming an action star, which saw him team up with Damon Wayans for 1996’s Bulletproof. Since it immediately followed Billy Madison and Happy Gilmore, which turned him into Hollywood comedy’s fastest-rising star, the assumption was that it would follow suit.
However, it did not. The awful buddy caper made less money than Sandler’s two breakthrough hits, and it fared exponentially worse among critics. Since the two leads were known quantities who’d proven they could open a movie at the box office, the studio instead pointed the finger of blame at Ernest Dickerson.
“Working on that film was the only time I ever got mad enough to punch a hole in the editing room wall,” he told The New York Times. “It was supposed to be a raunchy, R-rated comedy slanted more for an adult audience. But I could see we had trouble when they were giving out tickets to 15-to-16-year-old kids at the first preview. Afterward, I had to really sanitize the relationships. It meant savaging the movie.”
It was his fourth feature, but thanks to “the worst reviews of my career,” he hit a roadblock. One of the potential future projects he was developing was Blade alongside Wesley Snipes, which became instrumental in ushering in the post-millennium superhero boom, but thanks to his most recent work, the opportunity slipped out of his hands.
“The producers looked to Bulletproof and thought I had completely lost my street cred,” Dickerson explained. “After that, nobody would touch me. I think I’m still in jail, in a way, because I’m doing television. I consider myself a filmmaker who’s working in television.”
That’s been the case for a while, and it can all be traced back to Sandler, even if he’s worked on some pretty big shows in the years since.
