Trivia / Billy Madison

• Actor-Inspired Element: During an interview, Jim Downey revealed the "Everyone in this room is now dumber for having listened to it" bit in the Principal's "The Reason You Suck" Speech to Billy was something Downey used to say to Chris Farley whenever the latter said idiotic things in the Saturday Night Live writer's room.
• Completely Different Title:
  • The Chinese title of this film loosely translates to The Dumb Rush to College.
  • Some Latin versions of this film title it as Silly, But Not So Much or A Millionaire At School.
  • The title for this on Croatian listings translates to He Grew Up Like Dad.
• Corpsing:
  • Adam tries very hard to keep a straight face when Farley (playing the bus driver) tells him how hot Veronica is.
  • Adam laughs at the end of the chlorophyll scene, and it is left in the shot.
• Creator Backlash: Larry Hankin is not a fan of the film. He mainly disliked it because he didn't like the type of humor used in the movie, he didn't find Adam Sandler very appealing as a person (saying he found him too crude and immature), and his friend was fired from the movie.
• Enforced Method Acting:
  • When filming the dodgeball scene, Adam and director Tamra Davis asked some of the kids for permission to let Adam hit them with the ball, but neither of them said how hard Adam would hit. Some of the resulting shots had to be edited because of how badly the kids were hit.
  • Norm Macdonald would sometimes drink a can of beer or two before certain scenes to get into his character being a constant drunk. Reportedly, when one scene was taking a long time to film, he actually passed out during it.
• Star-Making Role: Adam Sandler was already known for Saturday Night Live, but the success of Billy Madison established his long-running film career.
• Throw It In!:
  • According to Adam Sandler, Chris Farley turning bright red in aggravation was improvised.
  • The "shampoo versus conditioner" dialogue was completely unplanned, and improvised by Sandler to try and lighten up an otherwise filler scene.
• Troubled Production: The movie went through a rocky road just to get finished. The original director was fired after just a few days as Universal thought the dailies were terrible, and the crew were worried that the script wouldn't translate well to the screen. Adam Sandler got so stressed during production that he developed neck issues and literally couldn't move his head for a couple days (in a couple shots you might notice him not turning his head much due to this) and the studio had to fly in Tamra Davis to save the film. Thankfully she managed to turn things around quickly.
• Uncredited Role: Chris Farley is uncredited for his small part as the bus driver, presumably because the production overlapped with Tommy Boy.
• What Could Have Been:
  • David Spade was considered for Frank.
  • Charles Bronson turned down the role of Billy's dad.
  • The part of Eric Gordon was written for Bob Odenkirk, but the studio demanded that the role be given to an actor with more experience.
    • When that fell through, Adam himself called up Philip Seymour Hoffman after seeing a tape audition of his and begged him to play Eric, but Hoffman politely turned it down.

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