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— Corey Moss
LOS ANGELES — The things Allen Covert has done for Adam Sandler ...
As an actor in 13 movies for Adam Sandler's Happy Madison production company, Covert has grown an unsightly moustache and mullet ("The Wedding Singer"), made out with fellow Sandler regular Peter Dante ("Big Daddy"), and taken a football to the crotch — twice ("The Longest Yard").
"Every movie, Sandler would be like, 'Hmm, I think you should be 50 pounds heavier and shave your head,' " Covert recalls, referring to his character in "Little Nicky."
Now, it's payback time.
Covert finally has his own starring role, and he's making people pay for his shame. Sandler's not in it, unfortunately, but the rest of the Happy Madison team is.
"It's like a fraternity," Covert says on the set of "Nana's Boy," which is due out this fall. "I don't get to haze Sandler, but there's Nick Swardson [Covert's co-star and co-writer] and all these other guys. I make Swardson wear pajamas with feet and I masturbate on his mom, things like that — not his real mom! And Nick Goossen, he's the director, so it's hard [to make him do embarrassing things], but once a day I berate him in front of the crew and make him cry. It's fun."
Covert is actually far too nice a guy to do such a thing (the berating, that is; the other stuff is true), but he's absolutely correct about the shoot's fraternal values. Today's set, for instance, resembles an old house packed with all the elements of a good frat party: beer, junk food, video games, and, of course, naked women. And everywhere you turn: hilarity.
"I beat Jude Law out for the part," Swardson tells co-star Joel Moore ("Dodgeball"), who sits on his lap. "We battled it out doing monologues. I did a monologue from 'White Chicks.' He did some Shakespeare, and they were like, 'Shakes queer!' Then he got the oust."
Across the room, Linda Cardellini of "Scooby Doo" and "E.R." fame raps a hideous rendition of "Push It," slurring most of the words.
"I laughed so hard the other day that I cried," she says later. "They had to redo all my eye makeup."
While most of this crew has worked on all the Happy Madison productions, there's a new sense of responsibility with "Nana's Boy." With Sandler absent, it's the movie equivalent of a dad finally trusting the kids with the family business.
"My analogy is that he's built this really nice lawnmower, kinda like Bobby Boucher's in 'The Waterboy' but a little nicer," Dante, hair in pigtails, explains. "And he's like, 'Well, if you guys want to borrow my lawnmower to cut the yard, I'll let you and see how it goes.' And so far we're doing some straight lines, maybe some zigzag lines here and there, but that's OK 'cause it's rated R."
Sandler is trusting Nick Goossen, a first-timer who started with Happy Madison as an intern on "The Wedding Singer" and has run AdamSandler.com for several years, to direct the movie.
"It's not like we said, 'You! You get to direct,' " Covert says. "He's been working toward this, and he's good. Trust me. If he wasn't, I'd be going, 'Hey, Nick, how's that espresso coming?' "
The "Nana's Boy" budget is miniscule for a studio production, but the team is stretching it with the help of Sandler's connections. The cast, which also includes Doris Roberts from "Everybody Loves Raymond" and Shirley Jones from "The Partridge Family," took smaller salaries for the opportunity to work on a Happy Madison project. And friends of the team, like David Spade, Kevin Nealon and Rob Schneider, have stopped by to shoot cameos.
"We're all here together every day, kind of making Nick feel more comfortable with directing us," Dante says. "That's how Adam does it. We're just watching each other, ragging on each other, and making each other funnier."
The idea for "Nana's Boy," the story of an adult video-game tester forced to move in with his grandma, was inspired by Covert's real-life experience of living with his grandmother while he helped his father recover from surgery.
"It was me, my father, and my 90-year-old grandmother living in a two-bedroom condo," Covert says. "There were a lot of situations of me trying to hide things from her, like my tattoos."
The movie begins with Covert getting evicted after his roommate spends their rent money on hookers. He winds up with his grandmother and her two friends, then "our friends meet her friends and, you know, love blossoms."
"We have a little ... what do we call that?" Covert asks. "There's a 70-year-old woman and a 20-year-old man. Let's think of a name for that ... Inter-ageal! There's an inter-ageal relationship."
The grandmothers also take an interest in their roommate's other hobbies, mainly video games and drugs.
"It's certainly unlike anything I've ever done before, and totally different from 'Everybody Loves Raymond,' " says Roberts, who plays Nana. "I'm doing things I've never done before in almost every scene. Outrageous things."
Right now, Roberts is passed out in the corner as a party rages around her. A few feet away, 21-year-old Jonah Hill (from "I Heart Huckabees") and the stripper on top of him are making a boob sandwich around Hill's face.
"When I found out I was doing this movie, I just freaked, because we grew up obsessed with all of the guys in this movie," Hill says. "I've watched Adam Sandler's movies a million times. When I first walked in, it was one of those dreams that come true. Then you realize they're total A-holes and you can't even talk to them because they have such big attitudes! No, I'm totally kidding."
"Who doesn't want to get together with friends and make movies?"
Joel Moore asks, rhetorically. "That's what this is about — and trying to make all the hot chicks in high school that didn't get with you feel jealous."
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Photo: MTV News
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