Sandler Defends Don’t Mess with the Zohan

Don’t Mess with the Zohan? More like Don’t Waste Your Time on the Zohan.

Adam Sandler's latest opus of gross out humor is one of the most offensive, tedious, unfunny films we’ve seen in years.

We know Sandler loves to push the limits of taste but this film crosses the line, falls down the cliff on the other side of the line, and then spits in the line’s face.

Sandler stars as The Zohan, an Israeli counter-terrorist commando who fakes his own death in order to pursue his true passion, hair dressing in New York City.

The film is rife with horrendously racist, bigoted humor pointed at Jews, Arabs, Palestinians and other Middle Easterners. It forces one to ask, did Sandler think he could get away with it because he’s poking at his own heritage? Even when it is your people, to paraphrase Sandler’s friend and SNL castmate, Chris Rock, it’s not always your joke to tell.

The film re-teams him with Robert Smigel, Saturday Night Live’s longest tenured staff writer (25 years) and SNL alum Rob Schneider (who doesn’t seem to be able to book any work outside of roles Sandler hands him these days).

The three seemed thrilled to be sharing each other’s company as they sat down to discuss the process of making a comedy whose central theme is the Palestinian-Israeli conflict, a subject rife with tension, and they came prepared with justifications.

Smigel describes working on the script as “a long process, and we were careful. I had some friends I would occasionally send scripts to, Arab-American and Jewish friends, just to get a sense of if it was too much or appropriate.”

Schneider jokes, “You have to be equally offensive to both sides.”

“The last thing we were doing was trying to antagonize anybody,” Smigel continues, “Anytime you do comedy about a sensitive subject matter, there are going to be people with passions on both sides who are going to ultimately find something offensive because they have something invested in it.”

Sandler seems wounded even by the implication that the film might cross the line. (“Might” being a mighty understatement.)

“My intention is never to hurt anybody,” Sandler says adamantly. “I’m happy when people are having a good time. And if someone comes up to me and is offended by anything I’ve done in the past, I listen to them and I get bummed out,” he says, “When we’re working our asses off on the script and making the movie, I’m just picturing people having a great time and the fact that anybody walks away saying ‘Oh, man, I wish they didn’t say that.’ That breaks my heart. We just want to make a funny movie.”

So then why choose such a delicate subject?

“As a kid you always heard about the Israeli army,” explains Sandler, “You always heard they were this tiny little country, everyone surrounding them wants them gone and anytime someone comes after them, they take care of business. As a Jewish kid, you were proud of that. I just admired them.”

Playing an Israeli badass was more difficult than Sandler anticipated. He explains, “Working out that long, I had to do it everyday, and not eating. I hated that.”

The film’s stunts were far easier.

“Whenever it got dangerous,” Sandler explains, “there were about 15 other Zohans on set. So you just go, ‘That guy! You! Come ‘ere.’ Next thing you know, he’s jumping off a building and then I would just land and go ‘The Zohan.’”

For this threesome, the best part about Zohan was getting to work together again.

“On SNL,” Schneider offers, “some of my favorite memories are [Sandler and Smigel] coming into the room and trying to read their sketch to me at 3am and not being able to get the words out because they’re laughing so hard and drooling on themselves.”

“[Sandler]’s the most instinctual guy I know in show business,” Schneider continues. “It comes from a place of joy. When he’s excited about something he bounces out of his body. Smigel has the same thing.”

We’ll see whether the audience feels the joy or the outrage when the film opens June 6th.