Rob Almighty
There's a great deal more to Rob Schneider, appearing in the new Adam Sandler vehicle You Don't Mess With The Zohan, than knob gags and fart jokes.
Tara Brady, 26 Aug 2008
“I’m ridiculed and thought of as obscene but so were the post-impressionists. I’m not going to stifle myself artistically because of other people’s perception. Self-censorship is the worst form of censorship.”
Huh? If he hadn’t been speaking like this for the past twenty minutes I’d swear Rob Schneider was doing a bit.
Oh yes. Rob Schneider. The low fallutin’ star who once disappeared under Jabba the Slut (DJ Big Boy in drag) for Deuce Bigelow: Male Gigolo, who ‘marked his territory’ and eyed a goat in 2001’s The Animal; and who initially made his name playing Sensitive Naked Man and Orgasm Guy on Saturday Night Live.
That Rob Schneider.
Sitting in a contemplative pose that works to offset the Buddha beads around his wrist, today Mr. Schneider is playing the sophisticate, the intellectual, the world traveller; in short he’s everything we don’t expect Mr. Schneider to be.
“Of course I’ve been to Ireland before,” he says with a note of nonchalance. “I spent two months here in 1984. I had read Leon Iris’ Ireland – A Terrible Beauty, an amazing book about the Irish history and became obsessed with the place. So I hitchhiked around and I found the Irish were just about the nicest people on the planet. They reminded me of my Filipino relatives. If I’d ask for directions the person would leave their store and walk me wherever I was headed.”
I point out that in 1984 most of the traffic was leaving this country, not the other way around.
“I know. I went around these decimated villages in the west where they speak Irish. But just look at the gigantic influence this country has had on literature. How could I not come?”
This just doesn’t add up. We’re aware that Joyce can be as potty-mouthed as Peaches with a stubbed toe but how does one of his disciples grow up to make his directorial debut with Big Stan, a prison rape comedy? Well, like many funny men, Mr. Schneider is, behind the laughter, a deadly serious fellow. Today, he repeatedly speaks not of his work but of his art. Indeed, he regards his Razzie for Worst Actor and the other rotten fruit he regularly finds himself pelted with as a manifestation of the film establishment’s unfairly dismissive attitude towards comedy performers.
Page 1/5 <Previous 1 2 3 4 5 Next>
©Hot Press 2012. Why be a member? | Terms of Service | Privacy Policy | About Us Jobs @ Hot Press