As I try to get back in the swing of things blog-writing-wise, I am faced with the unpleasant reality that I have already written about every unique or memorable chapter of my life. And quite a few that are neither unique nor memorable.
But! I do have this one story….
Fall of 1995. SUNY Brockport (my alma mater) is preparing for Parent Family Weekend. The highlight of this annual event is a performance by a well-known stand-up comic or rock band. And in 1995, our campus was to be visited by…
Twelve bucks to see Adam Sandler! Those were truly the days. At the time this was all going on, I was the news director of student radio station 89.1 WBSU (currently branded as 89.1 The Point). As such, I was given the choice gig of interviewing Billy Madison himself after his performance. This was not the first such interview I conducted; I talked to one–hit-wonder band Wanderlust…remember this one?
Neither do I.
So it’s the night of the show, and Adam Sandler does his thing. In talking to some old friends about that night, the general consensus seems to be that Sandler was a little sloppy, and certainly more…eh…saucy than what the college was expecting. There was a 10 or 11-year-old kid in the front row and Sandler made him a pretty big part of the show. That kid (who, according to urban legend was the college president’s son) got an education of a different sort that evening.
The show is over. And now, it’s time for my pal Dan Connelly (aka “Dan-O At Dawn” during his summer morning show on ‘BSU) and me to go backstage and interview Adam Sandler. I don’t know why, but I think I would be about a hundred times more nervous if I had to do an interview like that today. There’s something about youth, that feeling of being bulletproof, you know?
Well, that bulletproof feeling drained from my body when Dan and I realized the tape recorder wasn’t working.
Fortunately, Warren Kozireski, our college radio faculty advisor–and the man who said to me the magic words, “You will work in this business”–had a portable recorder in his car. Dan and I (or, let’s be frank, probably just Dan) got the palmcorder and we hustled back to the dressing room.
In the time it took us to switch recorders, pizza had been delivered to Sandler’s room. He was very, very friendly to us. We did the interview which ran, if I recall, all of four minutes or so. Very short answers. But I don’t believe it was any kind of rudeness on his part. For one thing, he let us chow down on some of his pizza. How cool is that!? Also, he signed our tickets:
As to why the answers were so short? Any number of reasons. My questions may have been lame. (I am, after all, the man who asked Conan O’Brien if his show would start a mission to locate Ralph Malph.) He may have been wiped out after the performance. Or hungry. I can take some solace in the fact that my college newspaper pal Todd Hess did a print interview with Sandler and also got monosyllabic responses.
It was a memorable experience. One of many in those Brockport years. And a disclaimer: If any of my friends who were around back then are reading this, feel free to make any corrections. I’m getting older…I bought a box of Prevagen but I keep forgetting to take it.
Thank you ladies and gentlemen, tip your waitresses, enjoy the veal!