Native Americans walk off set of racist Adam Sandler film

Ironic for Hotel Transylvania to be brought up alongside Mel Brooks, considering Brooks is in the sequel.

It rather speaks to the state of Brooks' career that i often forget he's still alive.

I assumed he was dead because they only used his voice in The Producers

Huh.

The last Sandler film I'm guessing of this type I saw was You don't mess with the Zohan. I remember liking it, and my friend ate humus for years afterwards, but there was one guy who thought it was too offensive. And this guy was of the "Zionists are ruining everything" mindset.

So, I guess what I'm trying to say is, this topic made me want some humus but I couldn't find any in the condiment isle. Guess I gotta squash my own peas.

Really the whole thing reeks of "Only ok if we're not the ones being made fun of".

It's almost like people don't enjoy having their culture mocked. Wow. Who would have imagined?

There wasn't any point where they said that. They even pointed out that even if the film had hired Comanche or Apache actors like depicted instead of Navajo ones, it would still be tremendously offensive.

There was a time when I thought it was ridiculous that Marlon Brando would turn down an Oscar in protest of modern depictions of Native Americans. Now it seems he did have a point, then and now.

edited 24th Apr '15 9:38:25 PM by Tuckerscreator

Having established out that Adam Sandler movies rely on bad stereotypes for humor, you can't justify working for one and then deciding "Oh well, THIS is where I draw the line." when it's one of the native American cultures that are being badly stereotyped.

If bad stereotypes are wrong for one culture then they're wrong for all cultures and if you object to them then you have no business working for a guy that utilizes them in the first place.

I have no sympathy for these people.

They haven't worked in any other Adam Sandler movies, though? Not that I've heard of. They were extras hired specifically for this movie. It's entirely possible they just weren't aware of Sandler's reputation- or thought "Hey, he's actually bothering to hire a cultural consultant, maybe this could be alright"

In fact, that's exactly what happened.

edited 25th Apr '15 12:42:12 AM by Mukora

Sandler is pretty (in)famous at this point of his career. Not that I blame them for walking out. But still, they should have been expected something like this & never got involved.

"Cultural consultants" or not, this is a man who regularly plays rape, incest, child-molestation and offensive cultural stereotypes for humor. Or even romance.

edited 25th Apr '15 12:44:18 AM by LogoP

It's highly unlikely they knew anything about the consultant before they signed on. It's even possible the consultant is the one who organized and lead the walk-out. Extras don't tend to know anything but the name of the movie, director, producer and stars.

It is really fucking hard for Native Americans to get work in acting (or, in general really.)

Are you really going to blame them for taking what was probably the first job they've been offered in a long time? Read some of the quotes in the original article- they were assured a number of times that it wouldn't be racist.

Exactly because those people are most likely really need the money from this job it makes me wonder how bad what they saw was that they decided to take this step.

Some of you seem to be implying that Sandler's entire line up is racist stereotyping other cultures, but other than Blended and Rob shienderiseras' bit parts he hasn't really done that.

Is there something I am missing here?

I said the last film of this type I remembered was Zohan, which would mean Grown Ups, Funny People, Click wouldn't count at least. There was also Longest Yard, which was a remake so whatever problems or lack there of, I'm not sure those can be attributed to Sandler. What about Fifty First Dates, Lil' Nicky?

Now Big Daddy and Anger Management had some prominent Mexicans in them, the former was a case of one who could not read, while I haven't seen Spanglish. Not sure if those count.

What is undeniable is that his movies rely on crude humor more often than not. Eagal's claiming they're always culturally insensitive on top of that but maybe some elaboration on that point would be helpful? I don't recall when crude crossed into cultural (I don't remember any of the Jews or whatever pissing in public like it was an uneventful thing) but one thing I do remember about Zohan was a massive amount of Brown Face as well as Fake Nationality.

edited 25th Apr '15 1:47:06 PM by IndirectActiveTransport

I think it's safer to say that the humor is always there, but at varying degrees of dependencies. You Dont Mess With The Zohan uses Israeli/Palestinian tensions as the basis of its plot, right down to its romance, but most of the humor is played on Zohan being a Parody Sue ubermensch. Fifty First Dates, meanwhile, had Rob Schneider go Brown Face to play Hawaiian, but the film doesn't really do anything with it.

Now, those two I personally consider to be among Sandler's better films, but that doesn't mean there's any connection between the amount of stereotyping and the film's quality. Thats My Boy (from what I can tell) doesn't rely on it and is still a piece of shit.

No, race-jokes has never really been his thing outside of the odd nod here or there. This is definitely not entirely precedented for him, and he could have had native american characters without making them parodies of themselves (could have made crazy or parodic people who happen to *be* Apache, that's different).

It's really not just racial stereotypes, Sandler has helmed quite a few problematic films over the past decade. I Now Pronounce You Chuck & Larry is unironically homophobic, That's My Boy turns statutory rape into a punchline.

Re: How do these movies make any money, from my understanding the movies are actually really cheap to make, product placement amounts to a lot of it, and making the movies often seems to amount to giving Sandler and his friends an excuse to go on a fancy paid vacation.

Sometimes we over-estimate the average movie-goer. A sad fact.

I would just like to mention that the studios only get half the box office money at most since the theaters get the other half, and that's only in terms of the domestic box office (The studios may get a lower cut internationally). So a movie needs to make at least twice its budget to break even (And that's only in terms of production budget, as studios rarely mention how much stuff like marketing costs them).

So yeah, Jack and Jill was a bomb.

Don't you need to factor in the money from product placement into your budget, though?

I look forward to seeing all of the actors and actresses replaced in post by Rob Schnider covered in red mud.

Eh, semi-bomb. Some losses, but nothing too harmful.

Strictly box office take is not the defining factor of whether or not you get to do another movie. Staying within your budget and being on schedule accounts for A LOT. The rules of box office profit is up to Hollywood Accounting, but you can use the same finagling to basically equalize your budget before it even hits theaters. Major cities that are not LA or New York will practically pay YOU to film there, the publicity for travel and increased business traffic for the actual filming is easily worth a few million.