Adam Sandler has starred in a ton of movies dating back to 1995, and standing next to him for the majority of his films is writer/producer Tim Herlihy.
The duo’s latest collaboration is “The Ridiculous 6,” premiering Friday on Netflix. The Western stars Sandler as an outlaw who teams up with his five half-brothers — Terry Crews, Jorge Garcia, Taylor Lautner, Rob Schneider and Luke Wilson — to track down their dad.
amNewYork spoke with Herlihy about the film.
How did “The Ridiculous 6” come about?
This might be the 26th movie I’ve worked on, but it might be my favorite. I started writing it when they were shooting “Click,” which is 2006, and it’s been back and forth since then, so it’s almost like the brother I never had. And I’m just such a fan of Westerns. And it’s almost self-indulgent to do a Western — they’re not exactly clamoring for Westerns out there. But Adam loved it as much as I did, and we talked about it so much as we did those other 10 movies in between. When it finally happened, it was so exciting. And it turned out great. Sometimes you get lucky with movies with casting and locations, and sometimes you get very unlucky. This is one of those movies where everything lined up. We got lucky with everything.
What is the writing experience like with Adam?
We’ve been Skyping a lot lately. It actually saves a lot of travel. Between my office in Connecticut and his in L.A., we have an open line that will go for hours and hours and hours. People walk into their office and I’m kind of there in the meeting and then we’re writing, and we can see the script at the same time, so it’s almost better than being next to each other.
Was it a coincidence that Quentin Tarantino’s “The Hateful Eight” is also coming out this month?
It was complete coincidence; in fact, we had actually offered Quentin a part in the movie like five years ago. I’m not sure it was called “The Ridiculous 6” then. It just happens to be they came out in the same month. Since they both are Westerns and they both have numbers in the title, they’re conflated a lot of times. But Quentin’s movie looks a lot different than our movie, and the same thing with “The Magnificent Seven.” I’ve been reading online that our movie is a take off on “The Magnificent Seven.” It has nothing to do with “The Magnificent Seven” in any way except that it has a number in the title.
Was the filmmaking here any different because it’s going direct to Netflix?
I think we just basically made our movie. I think there is something to that. The movies that we made kind of stand-up to repeat television viewing.
I’m sure “Big Daddy” is on TV right now somewhere.
Yeah. [laughs] I actually watched some of “Big Daddy” this weekend. I watched the last 10 minutes of it. Jon Stewart looks so young. Yeah, there’s some science to that. I wish that we could figure out the thing to our movies that make them so conducive to home viewing. I think we just kind of made our regular movie — maybe a little wilder and a little more out there than usual because you don’t have to worry about an opening weekend.
How did the cast come together?
We did write it for Rob Schneider, and he just had that character. … When he comes on screen in the movie, he really kicks things up a notch. Taylor Lauter was kind of a revelation. I never thought of him as a comedy guy, but Adam kept saying, “No dude, he’s funny.” And watching him, I got it. This guy’s handsome and funny. I hate him. [laughs] He’s young, handsome and funny, and he’s built. He’s awful. Jorge [plays] a weird character. He’s mute and talks in gibberish. We didn’t even have a great handle on the character. He came in [and] just became that guy. I didn’t know Luke Wilson at all, but I had him in mind for the character Danny, and when we talked about who to get, I said, “How about Luke Wilson?” and it worked out. And we did write that for Terry Crews. That was another thing that basically stayed the same from 2006. The conception of the character is it’s this kind of flamboyant piano player and ladies man and cardsharp and that kind of guy. and he’s just perfect and great and we’re very happy.
Streaming: “The Ridiculous 6” is now streaming on Netflix.
