Page 3
How much fun did you two have in that jam session?
Adam Sandler: “That was great. I had no idea how great he was. He is unbelievable on drums, on horns, on base. It was cool.”
Don Cheadle: “I had a ball.”
So you just went in and got crazy?
Don Cheadle: “Mike said, ‘And then you guys have a jam session.’ How do you direct exactly what to do? As soon as I met Adam I was like, ‘Well I want to do it because there was an immediate friendship.’ It’s just kicked off and it’s been that way since. There’s another scene in the movie theater where I really almost peed on myself laughing. That’s one of the hardest things to do in a movie. It’s much easier to cry or be angry, but to really laugh and genuinely be buoyant and laugh….that’s hard if you don’t really feel that way. We would just look at each other and it would just kick off. So that was another great part of the film was to have a movie about rekindling friendships and happen to actually like the guy you’re going to do that with.”
Mike Binder: “I have a yearly hot dog party in my backyard and these guys were both there. They were laughing about something and I could just see in their eyes that they really liked each other. I was so happy. You can’t fake some of this chemistry, even when you get a guy and a girl and they’ve got to be together. These guys really liked each other and the more I got to know them, they have so much in common.
When we did that jam scene, they were really good together. They’re both really musical. What was great was, they actually went in and made up this song. It was so funny. They went on and on. It didn’t work for the movie, but these guys wrote a song. They were just sitting there and they wrote the song, and it’s great.”
The film has a very interesting look. Why did you choose to shoot New York that way?
Mike Binder: “I’m not a New Yorker. I grew up in Detroit. A lot of people out there think it’s one big city but they’re completely different. I think not being a New Yorker helped. I was in New York that day and I was stuck there for five days after. My sense of the movie…I’ll tell you how this movie came about. I was stuck there. I was actually on ABC with Diane Sawyer doing an interview when the first plane hit. I was sitting next to Sarah Ferguson, Fergie, actually. It’s a little known fact. She said, ‘I just left the World Trade Center.’ We thought it was a small plane that hit. Her office was there. If she hadn’t left to go be on Good Morning America, she’d be dead.
We were there and we were stuck there for a while, and that night there were all these people walking around. I remember seeing this woman in Bryant Park and she was just crying hysterically. People were trying to calm her down and I could only imagine who she had lost. I went back there a few years later with my family and I thought, ‘I wonder if there are still people walking the streets that that day has never ended for?’ So, when I wanted to tell that story and do that research, I remember my brother and I talking. We didn’t want to get any helicopter shots. We wanted to shoot the movie from the sidewalk up so you always felt like you were inside a canyon of buildings and you really felt what it was like to be walking the streets. When we found out about this Genesis camera, we did tests and realized that we didn’t have to light blocks and blocks to see blocks and blocks. So we were looking for that, but I just started to like the look. It looked so stark and so much like what it is really like when you’re walking down the street.”
Did you write it with Adam in mind?
Mike Binder: “No, I didn’t write it with Adam in mind. But when he wanted to do it, I thought he would be perfect. Then he didn’t want to do it and I thought, ‘He’s an a**hole (laughing). I hate Adam Sandler.’”
Don Cheadle: “We’ve all been through similar things.”
Mike Binder: “And then when he wanted to do it again I thought, ‘You know, he’s not such an a**hole.’”
Don Cheadle: “Then, in the negotiations, he thought again…”
Mike Binder: “But as soon as Adam’s agent brought up the idea, I thought, ‘That’s a great idea,’ because I loved Punch Drunk Love. And I also like how vulnerable Adam is, even when he’s at his craziest. There’s something about Adam… We’ve gotten really close working on this movie and I know why Adam is such a big star. There’s no mystery about it. When you get to know Adam you don’t think, ‘Boy, this guy got lucky.’ Or, ‘This guy’s been smart.’ There’s a humanity to this guy that people are smelling and seeing coming off the film, and I was getting that. I thought Adam would be the perfect guy to play Charlie Fineman. Whatever that is coming off the film…”
Adam, after this are you looking for more things that scare you?
Adam Sandler: “No. I was hanging out with Cheadle the other day and Don said, ‘Any other serious stuff coming?’ I was like, ‘You know, after that one, I’m cool with just staying away from that for a while.’ I had a headache almost every day on the set. I was in my trailer. Normally on movies, I go to my trailer and have ten guys hanging out with me and we’re laughing. They’re like, ‘Adam, come to set,’ and I’m like, ‘Aaah, I gotta go do this.’ On this one, I was there all alone.”
Liv Tyler: “With your iPod.”
Adam Sandler: “With my iPod. I was learning how to play the drums every day. It was a lot of work, man and, emotionally, I don’t cry in real life. I’m just pretty light and I don’t get too heavy. I snap a lot, but I get over it pretty quickly. With this guy, he had to hold his pain. I tried to do so throughout the shoot as much as I could, so I’m in no hurry to do it again.
