WHEN ADAM SANDLER WAS IN OUR YARD

A ticklish feeling came from making Adam Sandler laugh. It all happened while he was filming the opening scene from Happy Gilmore 2 right next door at our neighbor’s house.

The location scout, Christina, approached me just as I returned from a supermarket trip. Perishables in hand, she made her initial greeting as a scout with Netflix as she handed me her card.

Christina told me they contracted with our neighbor, whose house stands on the other side of our driveway, to film at her home in the coming weeks. They were asking for my permission to use our property for wiring running to the street. I quickly put the perishables away and invited her inside. I told her we recently renovated the basement and the room over our garage. She jumped at the opportunity to look at both and asked if she could take pictures.

Soon enough, Christina came to me with a proposal to house the children acting in the film in our basement, along with their private tutors. The list got longer as the days passed, and the grandmother from the film also spent an afternoon in the basement, while two port-a-potties were parked on our driveway side patio.

Eventually, the directors’ chairs were lined up on our front lawn, and food carts lined the driveway. The scene was right out of Hollywood.

For one tiny scene, it took over a month of preparation, filming, and clean-up. The neighborhood had never been so lively. The construction crew built a totally new facade on our neighbor’s Victorian home. They painted the trim a wine color to go with the gray clapboard and white window frames.

After adding a white picket fence, they filled the yard overflowingly with plants. Trees, shrubs, and flowers were placed on the grounds with dirt around, making it look as though they were planted in the soil.

Many of the plants graciously became ours at the end of the cleanup since our neighbor was not interested in keeping them. For that matter, she also relinquished the facade and upgraded staircase, but she accepted a new paint job on the exterior of her home, bringing it back to its basic gray and white color scheme.

Sandler’s writer/producer was acting as his bodyguard when I approached my driveway with my iPhone in hand. He gruffly asked, “Where do you think you’re going?” When I calmly replied, “To my house of 43 years,” Sandler questioned, “This is your house?” As I nodded affirmatively, he signaled me and said, “Come here.”

As I walked over smiling, I asked if the young girl sitting with him was his younger daughter. He said, “Yes, this is Sunny.” That was my lead-in. I told him that our daughter teaches at Kehilat Israel in Pacific Palisades. (That synagogue is now known as the only building that withstood the Los Angeles wildfires when we were out there visiting our daughter in January 2025).

Sandler quizzically asked, “Your daughter teaches at K I?” I responded matter-of-factly, “Yes, she does.” He was amazed and squealed, “No way!” I insisted it was so. With that, he asked his daughter if she knew her. While Rina never had Sunny as a student, Sunny thought she knew Rina and nodded when I showed her picture on my iPhone.

Sandler became more and more excited. He turned and looked at our house, dreamily stating, “Your daughter grew up in this house?” I chuckled as I affirmed that our daughter did grow up in this house.

Are you still wondering what caused Sandler to laugh? That was the best part. I deadpanned, “Had I known you were coming, I would have had the driveway fixed.” See THE TIME I MADE AN ICONIC COMIC WRITER LAUGH, dated September 26, 2023, at sharonmarkcohen.com. I’m two for two!

Our kids laughed at my thought that we would meet the star or speak with him. They must have forgotten how tenacious their mother can be and how much their father yearns for interesting and energetic guests on his radio show.

Now that we were “friends,” I asked Adam if he would be a guest on my husband’s radio show, The World of Work. After telling him a bit about it and naming some of the former guests, such as Carl Reiner, he readily agreed.

Asking Sandler how we would make that happen, he told the “bodyguard” to give me his name and number and to have my husband contact him. A date for the interview is pending. The “bodyguard” referred my husband to Sandler’s publicist, and she asked to wait for him to finish filming, as he has a very busy schedule.

My husband happened to be on air when I engaged in conversation with Sandler. I offered for Sandler to run in the house and go upstairs to my husband’s at-home studio, and say hello to the listening audience, but he was in a crunch to go next door to tape the next scene.

When my husband finished his one-hour broadcast and came outside, I introduced him to Sandler, who finished the scene he was casting, and they shook hands on the offer. Sandler laughed when my husband guaranteed him it would be his best interview ever. Our son-in-law can’t wait for the interview. The original Happy Gilmore is his favorite all-time movie.

Have you seen Happy Gilmore 2? Did you spot our neighbor’s house? There’s a fleeting view of our trees with the third-floor dormer from our house peeking through. Feel free to post your reviews in the comments section below the photos.