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— by Corey Moss
BEVERLY HILLS — Not that there's a lot of competition, but when it comes to mainstream-movie orgasms, Meg Ryan has always taken the cake for faking it in "When Harry Met Sally."
Téa Leoni, however, just might top that in "Spanglish," in a scene where her nutcase character climbs atop a passive Adam Sandler and, well, gives a stunning solo performance.
"We went into that knowing the comedic gravity of it and what we could get out of it," Leoni recalled. "And it was surreal because we're filming this thing and I'm straddling Adam and [director James L. Brooks] is off crammed into some bathroom with a video monitor and about 50 other people, I think to give us a little space, and he's shouting out direction. So I'm sitting on Adam, listening to everything from 'Bark like a dog' to 'What about if it could be smaller?' It was a long day. It was actually, I think, longer for Adam because he just basically had to lie there and be beaten for most of the afternoon, but we certainly laughed through it."
Brooks, who wrote the script, penned the scene vaguely, so it was up to Leoni and Sandler to improvise. "Téa started with 'I bet I can take off his pants by shimmering my sneakers down them,' " Brooks recalled. "She does physical comedy so great, so she did that and then she had the idea of keeping her sneakers on, which was great."
"That was a sad day," added Sandler in his typical self-deprecating manor. "I know I could never actually make a woman make that kind of sound. ... And her hitting me wasn't the most enjoyable. That started to be painful by take six. I was getting the crazy red marks on my chest and one of my nipples was on the bottom side of the bed. I had to throw it back on."
The scene, as comical as it is, also serves as a perfect snapshot of what's at the root of "Spanglish" — a married couple so disconnected that even sex involves next to no interaction.
Like other films from the revered Brooks, namely 1983's "Terms of Endearment," 1987's "Broadcast News" and 1997's "As Good as It Gets," "Spanglish" is a character study with intermingling storylines. Along with Sandler and Leoni's dysfunctional relationship, the comedic drama examines a Mexican immigrant hired as their nanny, played by Spanish movie star Paz Vega.
Although she doesn't speak a lick of English when she starts the job (just like Vega when she arrived on set), the woman ends up making a major impact on each of the characters, especially Sandler's.
"My character, his wife was giving him so much trouble and was not pleased with anything he did or said," Sandler explained. "I think that Paz's character made him realize, 'You know, I am a good guy. This girl likes me. She respects how much I love my children. I wanna make it work with my wife.' I think she gave him some strength."
Throughout the film, Vega and Sandler's characters develop a special relationship. Brooks was unsure how far to take it romantically, though, so he shot most of their scenes with different levels of intimacy between the two, making decisions later during the editing process. The actors shot a particularly large number of endings, although Brooks said only one will ever be released.
"This is the only ending possible for these two people," he said. "I didn't always think so, but as I did the work, as we got close to it, there's no other way to end this picture. There never was any other way to be true to their characters."
"I'm relieved," Sandler said. "It could have been uglier, and that would have definitely hurt people. So it's painful, the ending, but you're happy in a way too. You're happy for Paz's character, you're happy for our family, but there's heartache too."
"Spanglish" is not the kind of movie Sandler fans are used to, although his character is the same sort of lovable, picked-on victim the comedian tends to portray. Sandler says that's just a coincidence.
"This one I was 100 percent attracted to 'cause Jim wrote it," he said. "I didn't even read it yet and I said I'm doing it. But he's a gentle guy. Am I like that in real life? I wish. I wish I was more like this guy, but a part of me can be this guy."
That part of Sandler was clearly active with newcomer Sarah Steele, who played his daughter and the most frequent beneficiary of his endearing gestures in the movie.
"My relationship with him was a lot like the father-daughter relationship in the movie in that he could sort of understand what I was going through," Steele said. "I think he sensed that I missed home and missed high school and everything and missed my life in Philly. And sometimes he would just like sit with me and talk about himself in high school and everything, and it was so nice to lower himself down to my level to make me feel like I wasn't missing out on that. He was wonderful."
Vega, who was even further away from home than Steele, was also comforted on the set by Sandler. "We connected right away," she said. "[He] is such a great actor and at the same time is a great person, very nice, very friendly."
That's not to say Sandler wasn't the same humorist he's always been.
"There wasn't one minute of the day that I wasn't laughing because of him," said Shelbie Bruce, who played the nanny's daughter. "One day he got cut on the lip [playing basketball] and they put makeup on it and it was horrible. And he walked in like a little boy in trouble."
"That was the first time I saw Jim Brooks almost panic," Sandler weighed in. "But we kept shooting and one of the scenes made it into the movie. And when they were doing the first screenings, before special effects could erase [the cut lip], every time that scene would come up, I would hear people like, 'Is that a herpes sore?' I was like, 'It's just a little cut!' "
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Photo: Columbi Pictures
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