Speak Softly and Carry a Big Shtick

In the end, I got no closer to Adam Sandler than lunch with his manager, Sandy Wernick. The lunch was meant to convince me of the futility of attempting a Sandler story in the first place. Sandler doesn't do print interviews, hasn't done them for two years, although there is no apparent flash point for his having gone silent. There is instead the general sense among what is known as "Team Sandler" that Sandler doesn't need the media--and by media they mean the harder-to-control film writers who have dismissed Sandler as a fluke, or worse, a public health risk. Their criticism, for now, is irrelevant: Combined, Sandler's last three movies, all made at relatively sane prices, have grossed about $400 million domestically. As Sandler's publicist, Cindy Guagenti, told me, explaining why it didn't matter where I was from: "His fans don't read" these articles.

By virtue of the wall around him, though, Sandler automatically becomes more interesting than any number of stars who sit down with interviewers to parcel out the quotes and the charisma. Even if the answers aren't provocative, as Sandler's people maintain, the questions are: What is he hiding? Why boycott print interviews when critics hardly need access to him to continue to trash his movies? At a screening for "Little Nicky," his new movie that opens Friday, I spoke to some of the foreign TV press who would be sitting down with Sandler for five minutes of promotional sound bites. Press junket veterans, they all agreed that Sandler doesn't give print interviews because on the cold, hard page, he is out of context, a goofy-shy person whose behavior is inevitably misconstrued or not construed at all. One reporter said she wanted to use quotes from Sandler's "Big Daddy" junket for a magazine article. They were the same quotes Sandler had given to her in front of the camera, but the star's representatives nixed it.

Sandler himself has been quoted in the past as saying ". . . when I talk about me and comedy, I've never heard anything come out of my mouth that sounds too interesting." But Sandler is no longer just a movie star, he's a genre-unto-himself--a brand--and it is clear that he understands how best to reach his customers. For "Little Nicky," a big-budget, special-effects-driven comedy in which he plays the son of the devil, Sandler would take his case straight to the people on demographically friendly shows like "Late Night With Conan O'Brien," MTV's "TRL" and an infomercial program on Comedy Central called "Canned Ham."