Adam Sandler earned the highest praise of his career when he starred in the Safdie Brothers’ Uncut Gems. With another pairing between the actor and directors coming up, Sandler is teasing what goes into Josh and Benny’s process.
During an interview on The Hollywood Reporter’s Awards Chatter podcast, Adam Sandler went into his process of working with the Safdie Brothers and how even he can’t keep up with their method of writing. “They’ve been writing this movie we’re supposed to do together for a couple years. They just write hundreds and hundreds of pages. I’ll read them and I’ll say, ‘I like the part when this…’ And they’ll be like, ‘Oh, that’s not in it anymore. We did a whole other thing. We’re going to send you a new draft.’”
Adam Sandler continued, saying the Safdie Brothers actively avoid traditional screenwriting structures and page counts. “They just don’t stop writing and thinking and coming at every angle they can, and this movie we’re going to do is pretty amazing. The first draft of the new one was 340 pages! It was insane and it was great.” Since one page of a screenplay traditionally comes out to one minute of screentime, that would mean the first draft would have made a movie running over five-and-a-half hours. May as well go with a Netflix limited series at that point.
While Adam Sandler was at that point the closest he would get to Oscar recognition, he didn’t get an Academy Award nomination for the Safdie Brothers’ Uncut Gems–which is how we got Hubie Halloween–it could happen for his latest film, Hustle. Sandler earned his first Screen Actors Guild nomination for his performance, and since the actors branch makes up the most members of the Academy, it’s in the realm of possibility he earns his first Oscar nomination.
Adam Sandler was at first quite skeptical of working on Uncut Gems, saying, “I was scared in the beginning, just of being that big of a dicky human being, a guy who only gave a shit about himself. But [wife] Jackie read it, and she was just like, ‘You’ve got to do that movie. It’s so different for you.’”
Are you looking forward to Adam Sandler’s next collaborations with the Safdie Brothers? Do you think he should have been nominated for an Academy Award for Uncut Gems? Let us know your thoughts below!