Hear our full chat on my podcast “Beyond the Fame with Jason Fraley.”
Rob Schneider cracks up Hollywood Casino at Charles Town Races in West Virginia on May 27.
It’s technically billed as the “I Have Issues Tour,” but he says another name would be just as fitting.
“I’m actually changing the tour name to ‘We’re Not All In This Together’ because when I moved a couple years ago, I didn’t see any of you guys come help me move my couch,” Schneider told WTOP. “I’m looking forward to it. The crowds have been really great. They want to hear what you think of the world because they feel like everything’s filtered for them. … It’s fun to laugh and hear people say what you think but can’t say on Facebook anymore.”
Schneider recently visited D.C. to honor his longtime pal Adam Sandler at the Kennedy Center’s Mark Twain Prize for American Humor, singing a spoof of “Growing Old With You” from “The Wedding Singer” (1998).
“Everybody was going to go for laughs and I wanted to go for the heart,” Schneider said. “It’s so nice to be able to honor somebody in their lifetime when they’re still at the height of their career. … I did it to honor my friend. It was nice to just be out there with people who love Adam and have a good time. I’m shocked that he let us do it. The Academy Awards don’t recognize comedy, so the Mark Twain award is the only award we have for comedians.”
Born in San Francisco in 1963, Schneider grew up admiring all the greats of 1970s comedy.
“Standup was such an exciting thing at such an exciting time,” Schneider said. “I never laughed so hard watching something as I did watching Mel Brooks’ ‘Blazing Saddles’ or seeing Richard Pryor pop up in the back seat of the car in ‘Silver Streak’ with Gene Wilder. They were amazing together. … Silly is king, man.”
Schneider’s big break came on HBO’s 13th Annual Young Comedians special hosted by Dennis Miller in 1987, before landing a spot on “Saturday Night Live” (1988-1994). He delivered hilarious sketches including Richard Laymer (“The Rich-meister!”), Hubs Gyros (“You lika da juice, eh?”) and the Il Cantore Restaurant (“Bellisima!”). The cast included Sandler, Chris Farley, David Spade, Chris Rock, Dana Carvey, Mike Myers and Phil Hartman.
“That was the best cast that show ever had,” Schneider said. “I like the guy who put the weed in there because that was more obscure. … I wrote that with a terrific writer named Lew Morton. I was a guy who was a hippie running one of these African antiquities stores. ‘What is that?’ ‘Oh, this is Senegalese loot. It’s carved from deer wood. It’s used for fertility rituals. I make one every seven years.’ ‘What do you do with it?’ ‘You put your weed in it.'”
When Sandler pivoted to big-screen blockbusters, he began casting Schneider in bit parts that often stole the show, starting with the crazy Cajun fan in “The Waterboy” (1998) shouting from the stands, “You can do it!”
“He had me come in and do this line in like 15 different scenes,” Schneider said. “I didn’t know it was going to turn into anything, to be honest. I just went out there because he asked me to and he’s such a good dude. … The guy who thought of it was Tim Herlihy. Herlihy’s an awesome dude, so I said, ‘Yeah.’ I said, ‘What does it mean?’ He said, ‘Just say it and it’ll be funny!’ … You can make anything funny, you just have to find the craziness in it.”
Schneider reunited with Sandler for “Big Daddy” (1999) as the delivery man Nazo, competing with the adopted kid in a montage of learning-to-read flashcards.
We’ll never forget Schneider pronouncing “hippopotamus” as “hip-hop-anonymous,” then proclaiming with frustration, “Damn you, man! You give him all the easy ones!”
“That was Adam’s all the way,” Schneider said. “He knew that character was working and that we needed another funny little thing in the montage. He’s just a genius. He knows how to make a movie and space it out. To make a movie, you’ve got to have the small picture, medium picture and big picture in your head. The small picture is the jokes, the medium picture is how it works together: the scenes, the order, the pacing, but also how to sell it.”
He returned with Sandler in just about every movie with supporting roles in “Little Nicky” (2000), “Eight Crazy Nights” (2002), “Mr. Deeds” (2004), “50 First Dates” (2004), “The Longest Yard” (2005), “Click” (2006), “I Now Pronounce You Chuck & Larry” (2007), “You Don’t Mess with the Zohan” (2008) and “Grown Ups” (2010).
“He’s created some wonderful, generational movies that people who grew up with that they now can watch with their kids,” Schneider said. “I don’t know if that’s ever happened for such a long period as Adam’s had and it’s just incredible, his run. … I mean, there’s Adam Sandler Day at schools where they dress up like the character. No one else does that! ‘Billy Madison,’ ‘Happy Gilmore, ‘The Waterboy,’ they’re equally pretty remarkable.”
Schneider soon got his own leading role in “Deuce Bigalow: Male Gigolo” (1999), the first film ever produced by Sandler’s Happy Madison Productions, followed by its sequel “Deuce Bigalow: European Gigolo” (2005).
“I was happy being a small bit player, but (Sandler) just said, ‘Write a movie,'” Schneider said. “I started watching TV and ‘American Gigolo’ was on with Richard Gere and I was like, ‘This handsome guy is with these beautiful women, they don’t need gigolos!’ If I played some loser guy cleaning fish tanks of a gigolo and had to take over for him for some reason, we might have a movie. Adam read it, I was on a plane with him, and he was laughing so hard.”
He parlayed that into more leading roles in high-concept comedies like “The Animal” (2001), playing a man who suddenly gets animal powers, and “The Hot Chick” (2002), playing a man mystically switched into a woman’s body, to the point that “South Park” spoofed him saying, “Rob Schneider is a Stapler! Rob Schneider is a Carrot!”
“(‘The Hot Chick’) was the brainchild of a terrific writer named Tom Brady,” Schneider said. “We wrote it together in eight days, laughing our tails off. … Just the line, ‘You think you’re so cool because you can pee with your penis.’ … I made it for my daughter, who was 13 at the time, for one line. I said, ‘You’re beautiful, don’t think you need boys to make you think you’re special or beautiful because you are, you’re enough.’ That was for my daughter Elle.”
Elle King grew up to become a smash singer with four Grammy nominations, two for rock, two for country. The entire world can sing every word to “Ex’s and Oh’s,” a song that Schneider remembers hearing before anyone else.
“I was there with the producer and her,” Schneider said. “I said, ‘There’s nothing like this out there. This is like country, it’s like Roy Orbison, it’s got a meanness to it, it’s like Elvis, there’s nothing like it.’ It became a worldwide smash and still gets played everywhere. She hasn’t gotten to that Taylor Swift level, but I think she’ll get to playing arenas and stadiums because she’s that good. … She’s phenomenally talented. I’m so proud of her.”
Does his daughter have a favorite movie of his? Maybe the bellhop in “Home Alone 2: Lost in New York” (1992)?
“She was the Girl Scout in ‘Deuce Bigalow,’ but she probably likes ‘The Hot Chick’ the best,” Schneider said.
Hear our full chat on my podcast “Beyond the Fame with Jason Fraley.”
