[lounge music] ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ [Narrator] "On Story" is brought to you in part by the Alice Kleberg Reynolds Foundation, a Texas family providing innovative funding since 1979.

[waves] [kids screaming] [wind] [witch cackling] [sirens wail] [gunshots] [dripping] [suspenseful music] [telegraph beeping, typing] [piano gliss] From Austin Film Festival, this is "On Story," a look inside the creative process from today's leading writers, creators and filmmakers.

This week on "On Story," we're joined by former Saturday Night Live head writer, Tim Herlihy, for a retrospective conversation on his romantic comedy, "The Wedding Singer," which Herlihy wrote for his longtime collaborator and former college roommate, Adam Sandler.

- You know, Billy and Happy were sort of similar in tone and similar in the story, and we were definitely looking to mix things up a little and do something maybe a little more sophisticated.

I think we kind of had settled on the idea of more of a romantic comedy and more of a two-hander.

Adam had the idea of a guy who sings at wedding who gets stood up at his own wedding and how that would work out.

And I wanted to do a movie set in the '80s.

So, we argued about which idea to do, and then one of us said, "Hey, why don't we do a movie where it's a wedding singer in the '80s who gets stood up at the altar and then has to go continue on with his life?"

[paper crumples] [typing] [carriage returns, ding] [typewriter dings] - So, Script to Screen, we're doing on "The Wedding Singer," which is a film I just love.

I think he went through a series of these romantic comedies.

What would you call that movie when you were making it?

Did you think of it that way?

- I want to give a little background, a little defense of myself beforehand.

I came from, I did not go to film school.

I was a lawyer.

I helped Adam with his stand up, just, you know, he was my college roommate.

- So you were a funny lawyer, which is almost an oxymoron, right?

- I was, you know, maybe in the top half of funny lawyers.

I wasn't, you wouldn't say, "Hey, that guy shouldn't be a lawyer.

He should write movies."

[audience laughing] But I had written a stand-up, and then when he got on "SNL" in, I think, '90, I helped out with that.

Just on an unofficial, like, just helping your old buddy kind of a way, he said that Lorne wanted to do a movie, so I wrote "Billy Madison."

I didn't know anything about screenwriting.

Adam gave me a copy of a script so I could get the margins and stuff right, and I wrote it on Microsoft Word in my legal office, like doing tab, tab, tab, tab, you know, name of character, tab, tab, dialogue.

So coming from this in a real caveman kind of way.

So what happened was, it was brought in, you know, we wrote this movie, developed it at Universal.

And at that time, and I didn't know this, you know, most movies were kind of gang written.

You know, someone writes the original draft, and then people get brought in.

And it was very, very unusual.

I'd say less than one out of every 20 movies had one singular writing voice throughout the whole process.

So there came a point when Universal was like, "Hey, we gotta bring somebody in."

And we were like, "What do you mean bring somebody in?"

Like another writer.

So they brought in this guy who came in and did a week or two on the movie.

And just the sense of violation that we felt that someone had come in and rewritten us.

As soon as we regained control of the script, we systematically tried to get all of his stuff out of it.

We succeeded, except there was one thing the studio insisted on, which was this O'Doyle Rules thing, which became, you know, people love that.

Yeah, so I should have learned at that point that maybe there was a value to bringing in another set of eyes, another voice, but I didn't.

And then, second movie was "Happy Gilmore."

Thank you.

[audience applause] Same studio and they did the same thing and they brought in another writer, great guy named Dean Lurie, and they wanted him to do it.

And the difference was for this, they let me and Jack, the producer of the movie, who's here today, sit in the room with Dean Lurie and help him.

And you can imagine the hostile dynamics at this point.

We were in one of those little very old school bungalows at Universal where they would house the writers like in the '40s and '50s at these tiny offices.

And Dean was sitting at the keyboard, and me and Jack were just pacing angrily behind him, you know, not wanting him to change anything.

So that was toxic and wrong.

But before we start on this, I just want you to know where, you know, just the sense of, you know, not being used to this way of doing things, and not used to the idea of being rewritten.

So I was rewritten on this, on "The Wedding Singer."

[laughs] [typewriter dings] - Let's talk though about the original intent of the movie then with you guys, I mean, obviously you're making an Adam Sandler movie and at that point I think after those two movies, there is an Adam Sandler movie, like it has become a thing, right?

And honestly, something that if you'd put most other comedic actors in some of his films, it wouldn't have worked, you know?

When you were deciding to make this film like how did the idea come about and what was the early part of it before anybody got involved in the rewriting of what you guys intended for the mission of this movie to be as a vehicle for Adam?

- We were definitely looking to grow and not do just another movie that, you know, Billy and Happy were sort of similar in tone and similar in the story, and we were definitely looking to mix things up a little and do something maybe a little more sophisticated.

I think we kind of had settled on the idea of more of a romantic comedy and more of a two-hander.

You know, Adam had the idea of a guy who gets, who sings at wedding, who gets stood up at his own wedding and how that would work out.

And I wanted to do a movie set in the '80s.

So we argued about which idea to do.

And then one of us said, "Hey, why don't we do a movie where it's a wedding singer in the '80s who gets stood up at the altar and then has to go continue on with his life?"

But we definitely wanted to do a romantic comedy.

The problem was that no actresses wanted to do a romantic comedy with Adam Sandler at that point.

So we ended up with Drew Barrymore.

- She's the smartest one of all, right?

So how were you actually developing the script that you were writing?

- At this point, we were on different coasts.

So it was a lot of back and forth.

We actually were faxing at that time.

That was a thing.

Just going back and forth, and we knew that, you know, obviously, romantic comedy is about obstacles and about, you know, it's over in 10 minutes if there's no obstacles for these two crazy kids to be together and in love.

So that's kind of what it was about, because we had the setup, we had that he's a wedding singer and had the first, you know, 20, 25 pages.

It was just a matter of how do we keep these guys apart and how do we stop them from, you know, getting married in the first, you know, 15 pages.

- So let's do the Adam Sandler version of a meet cute here.

- All right, remember, alcohol equals puke, equals smelly mess, equals nobody likes you.

- Hey, ho, I got it.

- Actually, you know what?

You go this way and you go this way.

It's for the best.

It's all right, take it easy.

See you later.

Sleep it off, pal.

All right.

- Hey, you know, wedding singer.

[howls] [glass shattering] - Okay.

Are you drinking, too?

- No.

It's Coca-Cola.

- You sure there's no rum in that Coca-Cola?

- I'm not a big drinker.

And if it was, I'd be puking in there more than that kid.

- Oh, I don't think anybody could puke more than that kid.

I think I saw a boot come out of him.

[Julia laughing] - You're the wedding singer.

- Yeah.

How you doing?

I'm Robbie.

- So is that the scene as you originally wrote it, or how did that work?

- That actually does feel a little first drafty to me.

You know, we had to subvert everything.

You know, like, we were a little bit embarrassed that we were doing romance, so we had to put the vomit in there.

We had to put Buscemi and Covert and George and, like, we were a little, like, feeling like our audience didn't want, the people who really loved Billy and Happy, who we really were, we wanted to expand the audience, but at the same time, not abandon our audience.

And this is all stupid.

I'm just saying what my mindset was at the time is that we didn't want to alienate those people.

So all the romance had to be very much leavened with, you know, Adam Sandler stuff.

- Well, I think one of the funniest things in that scene is Steve Buscemi.

And the fact that he's just a 30-something-year-old version, although, forgot he looked like that, but he's a 30-something-year-old version of the kid throwing up in the dumpster.

So, you know, it's got layers in it for a first draft.

You get the first spark there for sure.

- Yeah, it's meet cute Adam Sandler version, which was, you know, didn't feel hard for us.

Why don't we show the ice cream scene?

- May I ask what happened with Linda?

- She wasn't the right one, I guess.

- Did you have any idea she wasn't the right one when you were together?

- I should have.

Uh, I remember we went to Grand Canyon one time, we were flying there, and I'd never been there before and Linda had, so, you would think that she would give me a window seat, but she didn't.

And not that that's a big deal, you know, but just there were a lot of little things like that.

I know that sounds stupid.

- Not at all.

I think it's the little things that count.

- How did you know that Glenn was the right one?

- [sighs] The right one.

I-I always just envisioned the right one being someone I could see myself growing old with.

- So that is a pretty cute scene.

- You know, someone asked me, "Well, like, what my favorite scene in all my movies is?"

And I think it might be that scene, not because it's well-written, because of the song.

And it's just such a... At this point in the movie, this is about, I don't know, 40 minutes into the movie, they're falling in love.

And there's something about falling in love that's kind of a stomachache, that's kind of like, and eating ice cream and listening to that song, like, [vocalizes] it just felt so real and cool.

And I've always, and, you know, I don't know if we wrote it with that song in mind.

We had sort of low expectations of like a Police song would be expensive, but I guess we got it.

We felt like it was important.

- But I think it's a really interesting song to have in that scene because I would not have ever thought that's a song you would pick for that scene, you know?

I mean, it does start, it is a menacing beginning a little bit, you know?

- But it is about falling in love, but it's like there is something about that like, uh-oh.

- The two go together.

- Yeah, exactly.

And they both have like things that are preventing them from consummating this.

- It does end up being a perfect song.

I mean, I guess that's not a sort of like it does set up a, it also kind of fits the way he looks in the moment, you know?

- Yes.

- He really does look like he's been dragged through the mud.

- It's the most right we've ever got it.

[typewriter dings] You know what that scene also represents is we've written the writing saying it's done a couple of versions of it As I said Adam was in LA and I was I was still at SNL so I was back in New York got to this part about halfway through the movie and this is where I kind of couldn't nail it.

I mean, they're falling in love.

Why can't they just, you know, get married at this point?

You know, there is the fiancé, but clearly that's a surmountable obstacle.

He's a jerk.

Adam's got nothing.

I mean, he's heartbroken, but he has nothing.

So, this is what I could not crack is from here on.

We got them to this point, the setup, the falling in love, you know, 45 minutes into the movie.

So, I was fired.

And Carrie Fisher was brought in.

Now, Carrie Fisher was, at that time, in addition to being, you know, a space princess in a series of popular science fiction movies, was the Hollywood script doctor, especially for romantic comedies.

And it was a coup that she was willing to work on our movie.

I did not feel this way at the time.

I can look back in retrospect and see, but the other movies I had, they had, you know, brought someone in, we all held our noses and endured this other person, you know, working for a week or two.

Carrie Fisher was brought on for several months to take over.

So we had a limited amount of control in this.

Jack, our producer, went to Carrie's house every day with the director, Frank, and could probably do a panel about what happened at Carrie Fisher's house, circa 1996.

It was kind of the nexus of Hollywood.

But she, when she finally finished, and again, please put this in the context of who I was and where I was coming from.

I was aghast at how she had ruined my movie.

And I don't know that you could ever feel, if Shakespeare rewrote you, I don't know if you could ever feel good about it, like, oh, they did some good stuff.

So what happened was Judd Apatow, who was our friend, was brought in for two weeks, I think, to do stuff.

But it was, from my perspective, it was rearranging deck chairs on the Titanic.

It was just, at this point, it was just a disaster.

So this was a go movie.

We had to do it.

The studio was, you know, a little, you know, I think they had just brought Carrie in, just because that seemed like a good thing.

But I don't think they had anything specific they wanted her to do.

So me and Adam and Jack and Frank sat at the dining room table in Adam's house and created "The Wedding Singer" and really just put everything together.

What I can realize now 10, 30 years later, I don't know why I said 10 years later, is Carrie saved the movie.

[typewriter dings] - What was, if you could sum it up, like the greatest part of the plot that she enhanced or gave you in this whole story?

- We were hung up on the language.

And it wasn't Adam's voice.

And what she did was she did this classic, you know, movie thing in the second part of the movie where it's a mistake.

- It's nice to meet you, I'm Mrs.

Julia Gulia... [sobs] [somber music] Hi, I'm pleased to meet you.

I'm Mrs.

Robbie Hart.

Robbie and I are so pleased you could come to our wedding.

- Adam goes to Drew's... Sorry, I should know the name of the characters, it's just Adam and Drew, and sees her happy and thinks she's happy about marrying Glenn, but she's actually imagining herself marrying Adam and fantasizing about that and that explains why she's smiling and joyful-- - So that's the window scene, right?

- Yes, that's the window scene.

And then she goes to tell him how he feels and runs into the ex-fiancé who implies that they're back together even though they're not.

So it's a very old school, '40s movie, mistaken identity thing, which, you know, probably Carrie from like her mother's movies, like knows that sort of a thing.

And it works and it solves the problem.

And it enables us to construct everything that comes after it.

It is not breaking any new ground.

There's not some, but this story, it is perfect, and it solves the second half of the movie.

[typewriter dings] [rock music] - So, uh, Sunday's a big day, huh?

I don't even know your last name.

- It's Gulia.

- Gulia.

Julia's last name's going to be Gulia.

Julia Gulia.

That's funny.

- Why is that funny?

- I don't know.

[upbeat music] [people chattering] Are you excited?

- Yeah, she's paid her dues.

Been with me four years.

I owe it to her to get married.

- Plus, you know, you probably, uh, you want to get married.

- I don't want to break up.

Plus, she was with me before I made my money, so I know I can trust her.

[upbeat music] - So I think you really nailed the '80s, right?

That is still really a funny scene.

So you wanna talk about like how this fits into the conversation?

- Well, yeah, I mean, this was, this kind of another aspect of this is that I've written over the years, all these movies with Sandler and we kind of have come from the same place in a lot of ways.

We not only liked the same things growing up when we were kids, we kind of went through the same education together of sitting through things and Billy that didn't work, or test audiences in Happy, or read-throughs at Saturday Night Live, where ooh, we should have zagged there.

But like, so we had very, very similar sensibilities.

So for a guy I've worked with so much, we rarely, really disagree at all.

I think we had a big disagreement on this movie, and it was maybe the biggest disagreement we've ever had.

And I'm still not sure who was right.

I didn't want Glenn to be a philanderer.

I thought we had just done, you know, Billy and Happy, which have like capital V villains, you know, like Shooter McGavin is like this, he's just a bad guy.

You know, there's no redeeming.

And I thought that that was a sign of sort of a hack work of doing a bad guy who's just a real mustache twirling evil dude.

So I just thought if Glenn is just wrong for this girl and he's just kind of a dope and kind of a money guy but not an actual cheater, 'cause it's so on the nose.

And Adam felt like the audience would not forgive him if he stole another guy's girl unless he was a cheater and we really wanted him to do that.

So, we argued about that and Adam won.

And I'm still not sure to this day, he's probably right, I have to say.

Like, he has a good instinct for that stuff.

But this was probably our greatest creative disagreement was this scene.

- From just the perspective of the truth of the movie, it still fits the Sandler dialogue in trying to root out the fact that he's a cheater.

I mean, I think it sets up how much he clearly likes her.

That he's gonna, it's not like, "Oh, I'll let a passing comment like this go.

I really am disturbed by this."

So, it's this point, I feel like it does give you the sense that he really cares about this girl a lot, even though he's got this other hot chick next to him.

- Yes, it gives him permission, for sure.

- Was any of this part of that, that add-on from Carrie Fisher?

- This was pre the stuff that Carrie kind of did some stuff and then we undid it and put it back the way it was in this part of the movie.

- Uh-huh.

So you're fired and you're still working on it, right?

Like, you're going in, because you're trying to save your movie, which you're out.

And it is your baby, and who wouldn't feel the way you feel?

So you don't have the right, technically, right, to be going in there and reworking the movie.

You're doing it for free at that point, right?

'Cause you're no longer getting a paycheck from them.

So what does that process look like when you're all getting into this room and talking about how you're gonna try to save it when somebody else is being paid?

Obviously, Adam is a big part of that.

- It was the whole part of it, 'cause we were writing together.

I got sole credit on the movie, but, you know, we wrote it together.

We wrote every bit of it together as much as we did any of the other movies.

And because if he hadn't been the star of it, I would've been, "See ya at the premiere."

There wouldn't have been any coming back, there wouldn't have been any putting it together, but because he was the star and he wanted me involved in the process, that's what it came back to.

This is, you know, maybe six weeks before shooting.

I mean, it was like a funeral.

It was like a lot of, you know, awkward silences, but ultimately, we got things going again and got cooking.

- How are you dealing with the studio on that?

- Sandler definitely played, you know, defense on that for us and just said, "This is what we want."

Told them what they wanted to hear while we just sort of did what we wanted.

You know, I think the thing we were hung up on was the dialogue.

I think, you know, Carrie was, you know, 20 years older than us.

And so we almost spoke a different language.

And I think, you know, if you're ever in a meeting with a studio, like, just really appeal to, you know, one of the things you could do is say, well, you know, that's fine for the older crowd, but you know, the kids today, they want this.

And then, you know, that's something that they're super interested in.

And so, we were able to say, look, we're just going to make this language a little more, you know, less boomery and more, I guess, Gen X.

- So the ice cream scene, is that wholly you?

- Yeah, I mean, me and Sandler, you know, the Buddy Hack and the Blake Harrington and all that.

But that really is the end of, in terms of plot stuff, of what we did.

[typewriter dings] - I'm miserable.

- What?

- See, I grew up idolizing guys like Fonzie and Vinnie Barbarino 'cause they got a lot of chicks.

You know what happened to Fonzie and Vinnie Barbarino?

- Yeah, I read that Fonzie wants to be a director, and Barbarino, I think, the Mechanical Bull movie, I didn't see it yet.

- Their shows got canceled 'cause no one wants to see a 50-year-old guy hitting on chicks.

- What are you saying?

- What I'm saying is all I really want is someone to hold me and tell me that everything is gonna be all right.

- Everything is gonna be all right.

- If you found someone you can love, you can't let her get away.

- You're right, man.

Thank you, Sam.

- You didn't have to tell anybody it was an '80s movie once you see that jacket.

So, walk us through that scene, 'cause it's really kind of a nice scene.

- Again, a lot of drinking in this movie, in addition to the vomiting.

You know, again, like the dumpster scene, it's like a scene that's doing something we knew it had to do, but we constantly had to subvert it.

And the Fonzie stuff is very, very true, too.

You know, we tried to get in touch with our '80s self.

You know, it's the realization scene.

So, and letting Allen Covert's character be the catalyst to that was kind of fun, and I think it ultimately was a good idea to externalize what Robbie was trying to decide in his head.

I really just wanted everybody to see my acting, 'cause it was, uh... [laughs] It's not easy playing a bartender.

- So, are you not fired anymore?

- Yeah, I was unfired.

I was unfired at this point, and I got myself back in the good graces of New Line.

And when you're not a big star on the set, sometimes they save your coverage for last.

So, and especially a bar scene, they're shooting one way for all day of Adam and Allen and the barfly guy.

And then at the end of the day, they turn around and they do me.

And this was after midnight.

So I was there, you know, off camera all day, you know, giving to my fellow actors.

And right before, this was like two in the morning, they were gonna shoot my scene, my close-up.

And they do last looks, which is the hair and makeup people come over.

And Anne, who is Adam's hair and makeup person, still is, was spraying something in my hair.

And I said, "Oh, what's that?

Is that, like, hairspray?"

And she goes, "Oh, no, it's to cover your bald spot."

And I was like, "Buh-buh-buh-buh-buh!"

And, "And action!"

And I literally, like, I got this devastating life news, seconds before I had to, uh... That was horrible.

- You're over that now, right?

- No, no, not really.

I never get over that.

[typewriter dings] - So then, of course, you had some reflection at some point in what happened.

Like, how long did it take for that reflection?

- Twenty years.

[all laughing] I mean, you'd think that after I started rewriting other people's movies, I would have a little... I just, like, just immediately changed sides, but I had no, like, I thought all rewriters were evil except me, who was like giving my beautiful talent to these other people's movies and that they should be grateful and maybe about, you know, 10 years ago I was like, "You know, actually, it's really one or the other, either rewrites are good or bad, it doesn't depend on whether I'm the one doing them or not."

[typewriter dings] [Announcer] You've been watching "Script to Screen: The Wedding Singer" on "On Story."

"On Story" is part of a growing number of programs in Austin Film Festival's On Story Project, that also includes the On Story radio program, podcast, book series, and the On Story archive, accessible through the Wittliff Collections at Texas State University.

To find out more about On Story and Austin Film Festival, visit onstory.tv or austinfilmfestival.com.

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