This has been a very good year for Adam Sandler, as IndieWire Honors host Vinny Thomas pointed out. He was nominated for two Emmys, had one of the biggest hits of his career with “Happy Gilmore 2,” and gave a universally praised performance in Noah Baumbach’s hilarious and moving “Jay Kelly.”
On Thursday night, when Sandler took the stage to accept the Vanguard Award from IndieWire, he reflected on his early days in Hollywood.
“I never thought about awards,” Sandler said. “This is great, and I have stuff in my house — Nickelodeon awards and all that stuff — but it’s not why I came out here. I was very young when I moved to L.A. — 22 — and my life’s been very good ever since I got here.”
Sandler noted that on his third day in Los Angeles he was performing at the Improv when he got offered his first movie, a comedy ultimately released as “Going Overboard.” “They came up to me after I got off stage and they said, ‘Hey, do you want to star in a movie?’ And I said, ‘Yeah.’ And they said, ‘OK, we’re shooting one.’ I said, ‘That’s great. I’ll do it.’ And then they said, ‘We shoot on a boat. We’re leaving next week,’” he recalled.
Sandler’s roommate at the time, Judd Apatow, asked if he was nervous — especially since Sandler hadn’t gotten a script and had no idea what the movie was about. But Sandler dove in and shot the movie in six days with a cast that included other up-and-comers like Peter Berg, Steven Brill, and Billy Bob Thornton.
“One thing we all had in common was that we moved out here to do good stuff,” Sandler said. “Ever since that, every movie I’ve ever done, every standup show, every album, ‘Saturday Night Live,’ every time I did something I said, I just want to be as good as I can be. And that’s it. That’s all I worried about. I didn’t want to let anybody down on that first movie, I just wanted to be good because these guys believed in me. And that’s the same way I feel about my projects. I’ve had a very cool career and I work my ass off. I believe in everything I’ve done, and if it’s not perfect when it comes out, the intention was to make it as good as possible.”
Sandler said that desire to do his best extends to his most recent work, on “Jay Kelly.” “When someone like Noah Baumbach invites me to be in their movie, I just want to be the best I can be for him and not let him down and not let my family down, not let myself down,” he said. “‘Jay Kelly,’ I really love that movie. I’ll never forget how good George Clooney has been to me and Laura Dern. And I give it up to Baumbach, he worked his ass off. Every word of it meant something to him, and that made it mean the world to me.”
The event took place on Thursday, December 4, in Los Angeles with an intimate cocktail reception and awards ceremony. Stay tuned for more exclusive editorial and social content from the night, including video interviews, outtakes, and more.
You can watch Sandler’s full acceptance speech in the video above.