Here’s How Adam Sandler Got Revenge on NBC After Getting Fired From ‘SNL’
In the mid-1990s, NBC decided it wanted out of the Adam Sandler business. That is, until it wanted back in.
In January 1995, producer Lorne Michaels was summoned to the office ofBill Murray as the lounge singer,’ ” Michaels ed, according to Lorne: The Man Who Invented Saturday Night Live.
Michaels was able to shield Sandler for a while, but Ohlmeyer eventually got his way. Michaels worked out an agreement with their agents, and both Farley and Sandler were out, ostensibly to work on movie projects. Neither comic wanted to go, but at least their success at the box office (Billy Madison, Tommy Boy) served as revenge.
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The movies were so popular, in fact, that NBC realized that maybe it had made a mistake. Ohlmeyer later called Michaels about getting a copy of Happy Gilmore for his kid’s birthday party, itting that he’d been wrong about Sandler after all.
Movie success explains why NBC called Sandler’s agent just months after giving the Sandman the heave-ho. “I got fired from Saturday Night Live, and then that summer, my manager called me up and said NBC wants you to do Conan. It’s sweeps week, so they want you on there,” Sandler told Conan O’Brien 20 years later in 2015.
Sandler, understandably, was confused by the call. “I thought they don’t like me,” he told his agent. “They just fired me.”
“It’s for Conan, not Saturday Night Live,” his agent explained.
“But isn’t that NBC?”
“Well, yeah…”
Sandler, young and still stinging from the pink slip he’d received, decided to make a stand. Full of righteous anger, he directed his agent, “Well, you tell them I will do Conan’s show, but they have to buy me a fax machine.”
Wait, what? 2015 Conan didn’t get it. Why a fax machine? Was Sandler being serious?
“Swear to God,” Sandler replied. , this was the mid-1990s, and Sandler had been talking to his brother about the fancy fax machines that all the big-name stars seemed to have. “Can I get one?” he asked his brother.
“They’re like 400 bucks,” he replied.
“I went, ‘Whoa,’” Sandler ed. “‘Let’s wait on that, man, but eventually I want to get one of them fax machines.”
When NBC came calling, Sandler saw his golden opportunity to score. “I was like, there it is, baby.”
“Did you get your fax machine?” Conan asked.
Sandler confirmed that he did.
“Did you ever use it?”
Sandler grew sheepish. “I wasn’t great at it.”
But at least Don Ohlmeyer’s office was down one fax machine.
