America’s jester Adam Sandler awarded the Mark Twain Prize for Humor
Those who spoke at the ceremony included Conan O’Brien, Judd Apatow, Steve Buscemi, and Ben Stiller
Aux News Adam Sandler
After 30 years of upholding goofball comedy and baggy basketball shorts, Adam Sandler has been honored with the Mark Twain Prize for American Humor for his contributions to the art of making people laugh. In a ceremony at the Kennedy Center, the Saturday Night Live alum was celebrated by his former castmates and collaborators, including Conan O’Brien, Judd Apatow, Rob Schneider, Robert Smigel, Steve Buscemi, Ben Stiller, Jennifer Aniston, Drew Barrymore, and Chris Rock.
Over the course of the evening, Sandler’s friends and colleagues took the stage to not only take some digs at the comedian, but reflect on the communal nature of his career, and how’s he created work for himself and those around him for the last three decades.
“Have you asked yourself why so many of Adam’s friends were available?” O’Brien said (per The Hollywood Reporter). “Because if Adam isn’t working, they aren’t working.”
During his speech, Apatow added, “Apparently, the best job opportunities at NYU were living in the vicinity of Adam Sandler.”
Sandler’s career has not always been on the receiving end of acclaim. Despite his box office success over the years (with a combined $3 billion in sales, according to NPR), his dopey and playful comedy stylings have not made him a critical darling by any means. Over the years however, his singular presence has become applauded, with his turns in non-comedic roles further bolstering his reputation as a distinct talent.
In his toast, O’Brien joked that the Mark Twain Prize is the “first award he’s ever received where he hasn’t been slimed.” Earlier this month, Sandler attended the Nickelodeon Kids’ Choice Awards where he received the King of Comedy Award, in addition to a healthy dose of slime. When you’re Adam Sandler, you can earn a Kids’ Choice Award and one of the highest comedic honors within the span of a few weeks.
“His work feels effortless,” Stiller said of Sandler’s comedy. “I don’t want to say ‘lazy,’ because that’s not the right word… but I don’t have a better word right now, so let’s go with it.”
Once again attesting to Sandler’s affinity for taking care of others in his circle, Buscemi took the stage and said, “Nobody makes me laugh like you and nobody has taken better care of me in this business than you. He does this for all his friends. He’s done this for so many people. … But for me, I think the best part of working with Adam, with you, is just getting to hang out with you, man.”
When it was finally his time to approach the stage, Sandler said, “As I look at this goofy award I’m holding, I just can’t help but think this just may be the weapon used to bludgeon me, by an angry intruder… or Mr. Rob Schneider.”
He continued, “When someone asks me: Those bad reviews you get—how does that make you feel? The reason they don’t hurt me is because [my friends and I are having so much fun making these movies]. Everything we do together makes me feel like the critics don’t know what they’re talking about.”
In an retrospective on Sandler’s varied career, SNL creator and staunch Sandler supporter Lorne Michaels said, “The nature of comedy is you get the audience, you get the money. Respect is the last thing you get.”
40 Comments
JFC I’m old.
KFC I’m hungry.
Are you Adam Sandler?
If I was Adam Sandler, that product placement would have been 900% more obnoxious and involved either David Spade or Rob Schneider.
Dirt-ster! The dirtmeister! Dirty-Gerdy-Birdy! Makin’ comments!
They’re sanctioning his buffoonery.
Obviously Tommy Lee Jones was not consulted.
He’s been in the business for decades. He’s an institution at this point you dork.
this would’ve made more sense about 20 years ago
I remember listening to Sandler’s comedy albums back in the day. They were funny to a teenager, but now in my 40s, I wonder where I found the humor. There was nothing insightful about, just dick and fart jokes, with some silly voices.I can give credit for a few funny songs, and some of his more dramatic performances, but I don’t think he deserves a prize like this.
How come history doesn’t remember Twain’s deep and abiding love of fart and dick jokes?
Mop mop mop, all day longMop mop mop while I sing this songGonna wax that floor, gonna make it shineGonna clean off the spray paint with turpentine.
I’m gonna go piss in that guy’s gas tank.
Huh. Well, I’m sure glad you’re not in charge of awarding the prize. I get that we grow up and our sense of humor evolves, but dick and fart jokes and silly voices will never not be funny and, hopefully, never go out of style.
“I wonder where I found the humor. There was nothing insightful about, just dick and fart jokes, with some silly voices.”
Seems pretty simple: You used to have a sense of humour.
He truly captured the voice of the affable, below-average-intelligence American rube.The goat sketch just says so much.
The one that really holds up for me is The Adventures of the Cow. Just the sheer absurdism for its own sake.
***FARTS***
Way to downplay his career.
A win for mediocrity.
Oh did you win too?
His movies were not ALWAYS my cup of tea, especially as I get older, but he’s been successful at making people pay money to laugh for decades. Nobody who knows him has EVER had anything bad to say about him as a person, which is very rare in this business. Good for him.Is the ceremony airing on PBS, or has it already aired?
Its especially interesting that no one says anything bad about him when you consider all the serious and award winning actors he has worked with and continue to work with him. People like Kathy Bates, Pacino, Jack Nicholson, Henry Winkler, Brian Cox and Nicole Kidman. It’s not like it is just his buddies like Spade and Lovitz working with him, it’s people who don’t need to be in his movies but do it anyways.
I imagine that reporter who got fired for being in one of his movies would be the one who has something bad to say.
Oh yeah, THAT guy!??
Apparently the ceremony will be on CNN(??) on March 26 at 8:00 p.m. ET.
Unfortunately it’s not on PBS anymore and has moved to CNN. On the upside, they don’t seem to be waiting as long as PBS always did to edit and air it, and it’ll be on next week, 26 March at 8pm.
Absolutely deserved. Sandler is one of the greats. Though reading the comments I’m reminded how the vast majority of Kinja users don’t seem to understand what comedy is. It’s like a battle over who can say “I never liked (insert name of comedian), they were never funny” the fastest.
Sorry mate. He’s a hack. when you look at previous winners of the Mark Twain prize they were all comics who tied they’re funny to larger issues i.e. satire. Nothing Sandler has ever done touched on that. silly voices and fart jokes work but don’t speak to any larger purpose.
Comedy is a highly subjective art-form. I can honestly say Sandler isn’t to my taste because I find him grating and overbearing. Good for him for getting an award, but it doesn’t change my opinion of his work.
The majority of the commenters on this pop culture site think they’re better than pop culture.
Sandler had a moment. Is that all it should take, though? This is a comedy award, specifically, so the stuff I would most want to see him lauded for — Punch Drunk Love, Uncut Gems, and Hustle, to name my top three (and, yes, to throw some shade on his remaining dramatic roles, including Reign Over Me, so fight me) — isn’t really in the mix. Instead, it’s a decent SNL career, a comedy album or two, and then a few iconic movies several decades ago. All of that was followed up by, well, decades of lazy shit.Oh, and, Click — right there in between drama and comedy. Okay. Click.I dunno, man. It just seems a little thin on the great stuff, and a little heavy on the garbage.I’m going to go ahead and admit that I’ve got a bias towards guys who do the work to put together multiple truly excellent standup sets, which I personally don’t think Sandler ever managed to do. I just cannot put him in the same league as Louis CK and George Carlin when it comes to an admittedly oxymoronic “serious award for comedy.” Jon Stewart blazed his own incredible path that didn’t involve much standup at all, so he’s definitely in there, too. That’s three guys, then, that I’m just not comfortable putting Sandler next to when we’re just talking about comedy.Here’s a ponderable: if you crunched the numbers on Larry The Cable Guy and they came up close to Sandler’s, would you want him in the room with those four guys?
I don’t think he understands what critics do.It’s great that he and his friends have fun but that’s not particularly relevant to a substantive discussion of the work itself.
I don’t think he gives a shit what critics do.
I think you’re probably right. Which is why he probably shouldn’t talk about them at all.
I think he does, but not for his comedy. Dude’s actually got a point, though. Way too many critics dock his dramatic work points because of their opinions on his comedic work. That’s flat-out not fair.
Sandler’s dramatic roles are just Boy Who Cried Wolf. People are impressed when he’s NOT being an obnoxious, loud idiot. Of the comedians who pull the drama move, he’s the least convincing to me because he’s the most obvious. I know people love him in Punch Drunk Love, for example, but that’s just every other rageholic dick he’s ever played but with strategic quiet moments.
You’re describing why it’s such an amazing performance, though. At a bare minimum, a director got Sandler to unwittingly do a postmodern deconstruction of his own career — and I contend that it simply would not have worked if the director had gone “guerrilla filmmaking” and tried to build that kind of a film concept around Sandler while Sandler thought he was doing the same old shit as always.
So what kind of ethnicity was Rob Schneider dressed as?
staunch Sandler supporter Lorne Michaelsah yes, he was staunchly supporting Sandler when he fired him from SNL. anyway, i’m glad the pendulum is swinging back around to his sense of humor. it was rough going there in the 00s hipster years when he was considered all that was wrong with comedy.