You have to like the way Adam Sandler enters a room. Sandler, who eschews print reporters like a cat avoids bathtubs, agreed to a single press conference to promote his latest film, James L. Brooks' "Spanglish," wading through journalists on his way to the dais with a litany of friendly hell-o's delivered in the same cheery, sing-song manner he uses when addressing fans in public.
He hints as to why he's agreed to endure the print gauntlet (which would ordinarily tend, though not today, to buffet him with tough questions): "(When I'm) looking back at my career, when I end up having kids, and I say, 'Throw in that "Spanglish" (in the DVD player),' I know I'm going to be very proud of it."
He ascribes none of his pride to his own work on the film, however: "I hate to say it, but I just did what the man (Brooks) told me to do."
In "Spanglish," Sandler stars as John Clasky, a four-star chef and dedicated family man who watches, dismayed, as the blinkered exploits of his emotionally peripatetic wife (Tea Leoni) threaten to pulp his home life into the human equivalent of microwaved couscous.
Sandler entered Brooks' radar when the director saw the former "Saturday Night Live" comic's first atypical film, "Punch-Drunk Love," a movie that also left co-star Leoni "extremely impressed."
On "Spanglish," she says, "I saw a different side of the depth of his work, and he was delightful and boyishly charming, as you might imagine."
And Leoni left Sandler, if not impressed, then at least with deep impressions — on his chest, after they shot a particularly comic sex scene in which the actress beat on Sandler, ostensibly in the throes of passion (and not because she had paid full price to see "Mr. Deeds"), for several takes.
"That was hurting — that was a lot of takes," Sandler confesses. "The camera kept rolling and Tea kept whacking. Put it to you this way — the makeup girl would have to come in between takes and put flesh color back on my chest."
Mainly, however, Sandler's performance is far more subtle than fans — even those few who saw "Punch-Drunk Love" — might expect.
Nonetheless, Brooks says, "I don't think this is a stretch for him. I think he made the part his own and that's what I wanted. . . . The dreariest thing in the world is if you take someone who's wonderful and funny and say, 'We're going to take all that away.' I would never do it. All the effort was the other way — this character gets the joke. And he's loose in it, he improvised jokes in the film."
Still, Brooks admits, "I purposely had his character make a late entrance, and the nature of the picture is that he's there and he's not central and then he is central. I'm hoping the rhythm of the picture allows that to happen."
And Sandler says that fans shouldn't read anything into his doing a film like "Spanglish."
"I'm not looking to get away from anything," he says. "I like what I've done. I like what I get to do. I enjoy working with my friends and I like those movies. . . . But when I heard (Brooks had) written a movie and wanted me to be in it, I was extremely excited. I didn't think, I'm going to run away from my other stuff."
Sandler says he acutely understands the film's attitude toward family.
"I admire my father more than I ever did," Sandler says. "The thing I always think about with my parents is what John Clasky is similar to — my parents would get a call: 'Hey, we're going away to Bermuda this weekend; want to come?' and my parents would say, 'Oh really?' And the other people would say, 'We're not bringing the kids, though,' and my parents would say, 'No kids? Oh, we can't go then.' That's my parents' sacrifice — they didn't care about anything but the kids. And that's a big part of John Clasky."
But just when Sandler seems to be eliciting an awww from you, he changes course from romanticizing his father.
"He wasn't perfect — he had a temper," Sandler confesses. "My father having a temper led to my developing a sense of humor — trying to calm the old man down."
Nonetheless, America's most-beloved arbiter of pratfalls and gross-out gags admits to trying to grow up — he's hoping to become a father.
"I just recently started trying; I'm doing the best that I can," Sandler says, adding, deadpan, "It feels good to try."
"But I'm getting a little older, I am taking it more seriously and I do want that lifestyle, I do want children. I study dads more, I watch what they go through."
The comic also watched what Brooks went through to make his film, and learned from it.
"I always thought I worked hard, but before we started shooting, it was the most amount of work I'd ever done in preproduction, establishing relationships and rehearsing and just becoming comfortable with each other," he marvels. "Jim's process is the most concentrated I'd ever seen. He never stops, he never gives up. I'd never seen anyone with that much discipline. I learned I'm not as hard-working as I thought I was.
"So I learned from it, and how am I going to apply it to my own movies? I guess I'll try even harder."