New Click article

[Brian]

Clicking Through My So-Called Life
Source: Heather Newgen June 19, 2006


Adam Sandler is back on the big screen (in a huge way, as you'll see in the film), this time co-starring with the stunning Kate Beckinsale in the Columbia Pictures and Revolution Studios comedy Click.

Sandler plays Michael Newman, a father and husband who doesn't make much time for his family. Instead, he chooses to work long hours at an architectural firm in hopes that his unappreciative and unthankful boss (David Hasselhoff) recognizes his dedication and makes him partner.

The little time he is home, he's constantly working and always staying up late to get ahead at the office. He's annoyed and frustrated by the pressures and stress of balancing both work and family and the fact that he can't figure out which remote turns on the TV irritates his even more.

One night he gets so fed up, he storms out of the house to find a universal remote control. He unknowingly stumbles across a device which is given to him by Morty (Christopher Walken), a wacky Bed Bath & Beyond employee that will not only turn on his TV, but with each click can rewind, fast forward or pause moments and times in his life.

Once Newman realizes what the remote allows him to do, he values the gadget more than his family. Before he realizes it, however, the remote takes over and he can't stop the device from controlling him or certain events of his life. By this time, he sees what he has done and how he hasn't appreciated what he had, but is it too late?

If this is kind of sounding like It's a Wonderful Life, you're right.

"I don't know if it's our version of it. I don't know. It had, definitely, learning a lesson about the way you're living your life. I wouldn't compare our movie to that, but it has a structure where it's about a man who doesn't appreciate all that he has and finds out at the end that life has been great and he has to enjoy that. They have similarities, no doubt about it," Sandler told ComingSoon.net. "I need a kick in the ass a lot. I always tend to forget. In one day, I have times where I'm feeling great, I feel like I love my life, and then 2:30 rolls around and I'm the angriest man alive."

Since Sandler could definitely relate, he admitted it's one of the reasons he liked the film.


"We all read this thing and connected to it because; when you're shooting a movie you are away from home most of the time. It's something you love to do. It's amazing that we get to do what we get to do, but you definitely are away from the family more than you'd like to be and time keeps passing. And I go movie to movie a lot. I'm 39 years old. Looking back on the past 10 years of my life I've been at work more than I've been at home. So I connected with this movie. By the end of the movie, when I watch it, when I watched the playback the other day, I went home. I was excited to get home and do the right thing – be with the family. And I've heard a few people comment on that."

Given that this is an Adam Sandler comedy, Beckinsale was thrilled to be a part of it, but she honestly didn't think anyone would take her seriously on the set.

"I had such an amazing time on the movie. I really did think, you know, that I might just be this sort of roaming pair of breasts that wouldn't quite fit. Everybody would be watching sports and I'd be kind of tolerated and then I might bend over and it might be an event. You know what I mean?" she asked us laughing. "My daughter has decided that [Adam is] a relative. [He's] just generous and brilliant to work with. I mean, really, I was so bummed out when it was over. I felt like summer camp had ended and nobody invited me to Hannukah."

The beautiful British actress had such a good time on the film that she confessed it wasn't that bad being married to the outrageous comedian.

"I thoroughly enjoyed it. I didn't have to take him home, I didn't have to yell at him about going and playing golf or all of that stuff that would probably really bug me in real life if I was married to him," she said. "But I had the sort of total movie pleasure of everything apart from anything leaking or gross or leaving me on my own or any of that. See it was perfect. It was a blissful marriage and I was really kind of sad when it was over."

Although a lot of the film is hilarious, there are very serious moments in the movie which isn't typical for Sandler and it's the other reason he wanted to take on the project.

"I felt like with the remote control itself we had a lot of jokes and a lot of humor in the movie, and the thing that was attractive to all of us was that second half of the movie, and I thought people who had seen some of my movies in the past, they can handle it. We give enough jokes to relax you, but it gets heavier than we've ever had before in one of our movies," he said.

Director Frank Coraci, who has been friends with Sandler since they were teenagers, added, "I kind of feel like more than heavy. I think that part of the story brought the heart, and I think Adam and Kate's performance has really brought the heart out in the movie. I think of it as the heart of the movie, and that's really what we strive to do when we make movies together is make movies that make you feel things and think about life."

Click hits theaters on Friday, June 23.

[R0Blade]

Thank you for the post. That was a very good read .

"I really did think, you know, that I might just be this sort of roaming pair of breasts that wouldn't quite fit. Everybody would be watching sports and I'd be kind of tolerated and then I might bend over and it might be an event. You know what I mean?"

LOL (with tears in eyes)

[ethan]

i was listening to a morning radio program in dc today and they were giving out Click tickets during one segment. the lead guy was like, "stop by so-and-so to pick up free tickets to a sneak preview of Click starring adam sandler and....and...oh, what's the british actress's name...{someone else chimed in}..."kate beckinsale." "oh yea, she is beautiful. ahh...the woman from Underworld..."

that's not exactly word for word, but the point is it was just another reminder that kate is still, well, maybe not "an unknown", but not exactly a household name either and it takes people a few minutes to sort out just who she is. (until the UW movies she was always "the girl from Pearl Harbor".) these dj's were in no way insulting -- in fact, they were very complementary. they just didn't know who she was or couldn't remember her name at first. i think that's pretty normal really. most of my friends only know her from PH or (maybe) UW. hopefully all of this exposure doing a sandler movie (like him or not) will put her more on the map and will open doors for more things to come.

thanks for the article. here's hoping Click is a success!

[Brian]

Here is another Click related article:

Beckinsale on Comedy, Working with Adam Sandler, and Magic Remotes
For the first time in a feature film, Kate Beckinsale's playing a mom onscreen. In real life, she's had seven years of experience as the proud mother of daughter Lily. In the comedy movie, Click, she's the mother of two and wife of Adam Sandler's character.
Click poses the question: if you were given a magical remote control that allows you to go revisit your favorite memories, fast-forwarding through portions of your life, and zoom ahead to see what your family's like in 10 or 20 years, would you use it?

Playing Adam Sandler’s Wife in Click: Beckinsale said she thoroughly enjoyed playing Sandler’s spouse in Click. “I didn’t have to take him home, I didn’t have to yell at him about going and playing golf or all of that stuff that would probably really bug me in real life - if I was married to him (laughing).
I had the sort of total movie pleasure of everything apart from anything…gross or leaving me on my own or any of that. See, it was perfect. It was a blissful marriage and I was really kind of sad when it was over."
On the Set of Click: “I had such an amazing time on the movie. I really did think, you know, that I might just be this sort of roaming pair of breasts that wouldn't quite fit. You know what I mean? Everybody would be watching sports and I'd be kind of tolerated and then I might bend over and it might be an event. You know what I mean?

My daughter was around [during filming]. These kids were brilliant on the movie, but they were… If I had a child actor, I would wish for it to be in an Adam Sandler movie because he just comes in and makes them so comfortable and is so brilliant with them. They all go home and say that they've got this special relationship. My daughter has decided that he's a relative. [He’s] just generous and brilliant to work with. I mean, really, I was so bummed out when it was over. I felt like summer camp had ended and nobody invited me to Hanukkah. It was great. I loved it. I'd do it again in a shot.”

Returning to Comedy: Beckinsale did a couple of comedies earlier in her career but recently has been busy with dramas and action films. The actress admits it was fun to return to something a little lighter. “It was a big coming home for me. Actually, for me it was kind of a personal thing because I think my father had been in England a very well known comedy actor. I think I was very attracted to that because I had grown up on it. I think I also slightly tried to steer clear of it – just I didn’t want to tread on anyone else’s patch. I kind of wanted to be on my own patch. And then on this movie I actually turned a year older than my father got to, and it was a very liberating moment. ‘I made it to 32 and I’m in a comedy and everyone’s being really nice,’ and I wasn’t away from the family because we shot in L.A. My daughter was around. It was just like a blissful and lovely sort of blossoming moment for me, you know?”

The Aging Process: The characters in Click go back and forth in time, depending on where the remote control takes them. For any actor, seeing themselves made up to look older is a weird feeling. “The ‘gracefully aged’ thing is a big shocker. I thought I was going to handle it better than I actually did,” confessed Beckinsale, adding, “[Adam Sandler] looked like a mixture of Humphrey Bogart and George Burns…”

Beckinsale continued. “As for the aging thing, I think that at some point everybody turns into their mother or their father. It’s just not normally from morning to afternoon. It gives you a moment of totally existential panic. You sit there for six whole hours and it’s kind of boring and goes on and on and on. Then at the end of it, you look so much worse and more creepy than you did when you went in. They modeled my hairstyle on the hairstyle my mother wore at my wedding so the whole thing was just kind of spooky.”

If a Magical Remote Control Actually Existed…: What feature would Beckinsale use? “I’ve been a parent for seven years,” answered Beckinsale, “I would press pause and I would take a big old nap. That’s what I’d do. That’s all I would do.”

Is there a special moment from her life she’d use the remote control to revisit? Beckinsale joked, “God, I’m British, it’s all been such abject misery… No, I don’t know. I probably would go back to when my daughter was really a small baby and I knew in advance that I wasn’t going to accidentally sit on her and bust her. It would be nice to go back through that in a relaxed frame of mind, because she was a great baby.”

No Underworld 3 for Kate Beckinsale: Apparently Beckinsale has donned tight black leather for the last time - at least for an Underworld movie. Beckinsale revealed, “I don't think I’m invited to that one. I think it was always planned as a prequel so I wasn’t a vampire yet.”

[Mike]

great reads, thanks for posting.

[becki-fan]

and another one :
The movie "Click" was shot on a cutting-edge Panavision Genesis digital camera, embellished with revolutionary computer-controlled visual effects and recently was used by Sony to display the groundbreaking

The stars of the film, however, have no idea what any of that means.

"I'm terrible, I'm dumb and I'm useless," technology challenged funnyman Adam Sandler said of his real-life deficiencies with anything resembling the high-functioning remote control — which allows him to pause, rewind or fast-forward life — he wields in the film.

"I'm hopeless," grinned Kate Beckinsale, who plays his put-upon wife in the movie. "I rely almost entirely on my 7-year-old daughter to operate the television. It's not good, not good at all."

"I like a book," she added. "I know how to operate a book."

"What's pathetic is that I do all these movies with Sony, [so] I have all this stuff in my house," Sandler ranted. "[I get] presents from the chairman of Sony — he'll send me the newest Sony gadgets. I just stare at them and I'm like, 'I don't even know what the hell that thing does!' My friends come over and are like, 'No way!' and then they start playing with it, and I just walk out of the room. I'm like, 'You guys can have that if you want.' "


Making friends with Sandler clearly has a multitude of benefits. Some perks even go beyond electronics handouts — just ask Rob Schneider, David Spade, Allen Covert or any of the other talents who regularly appear in the flicks Sandler's Happy Madison company produces. For Frank Coraci, that loyalty paid off when Sandler grabbed the "Click" script and once again came looking for his "Waterboy" and "Wedding Singer" director and longtime friend.

"We were in the same dorm at New York University. My roommate, Jack [Giarraputo,] is now the producer of all [Sandler's] movies," Coraci said, recalling their first impromptu meeting some 20 years ago. "We hung out one night, went out to a bar and got drunk, came back and we just started making each other laugh. We stayed up until the sun came up, goofing around, and we were like, 'Wow, this is the coolest! There are other people goofy like us!'

"Adam was in a lot of my short films, and I would go see him do stand-up, so we were all there from the beginning, creating the Sandler-esque humor," continued the director, who returned to the Happy Madison fold after spreading his wings for the non-Sandler flick "Around the World in 80 Days." "From the beginning, we were like, 'Let's try to do something different,' and we called it the 'Shnorf' humor," a gibberish term that emerged to describe the kind of unusual sensibility the group developed.

For "Click," Sandler wanted Coraci to start with Shnorf jokes and add on a high-concept plot and emotional weight that are typically absent from his comedies. The real-life remote control was a hilarious idea, but "the thing that was attractive to all of us was the second half of the movie," Sandler said of the point at which his fast-forward-dependent Michael Newman realizes he's skipped over all of life's important little moments. Sandler admits he's aware that his fans will be looking for his typical comedic timing.

"People who've seen some of my movies in the past can handle it," Sandler said. "We give you enough jokes to relax you, but it also gets heavier than ever before in one of our movies."

But don't worry, Coraci insists — there's still plenty of Shnorf to go around. "We used to play this game, it was an acting exercise, and we made it into our own funny thing where you'd get a beat going and a person would go, 'Habu-bashu-bada,' making [gibberish] sounds, and everybody would repeat it," the director remembered of lost evenings spent with a young Sandler. "In 'The Waterboy,' we had Farmer Fran talking in Shnorf language, and it's one of those things that's so obscure, it's funny — like the gibberish in 'Billy Madison.' "

As the actors point out, both behind the scenes and onscreen, "Click" is driven as much by interpersonal relationships and fond memories as it is by technology. And both types of elements came into play during several scenes that use high-tech movie magic to transform the stars into younger and older versions of themselves, to literally dramatic effects.

"I'm from England — I wasn't even remotely groomed until about 22," Beckinsale said of one of the visual-effects scenes that is supposed to recapture her and Sandler as innocent teenagers. "I was a monster at 17."

"You looked awesome in that scene," Sandler giggled. "She looked very nice."

For many of the scenes in the more serious second half of the film, however, the stars underwent a combination of prosthetics and computer-generated technology to render their futures anything but pretty. "He looked like a mixture of Humphrey Bogart and George Burns," Beckinsale laughed, referring to the moments where computer effects allowed a young Sandler to interact with his old, overweight alter ego. "Adam did get more jowls than I did."

In real life, Sandler claims that he doesn't care how old or fat he gets — as long as the future version of himself never loses his sense of what's important. "He'd be a lot fatter," the comedian laughed when asked about a senior-citizen version of himself. "He'd be even more angry, but hopefully his kid likes him. That's all he wants: his kid and his wife to still say, 'I love you.' But, I think I'll get that."

"Oh, God," Beckinsale grinned when asked the same question. "I would hope that I've been talked out of Botox and face-lifts, number one. I don't want to turn into a crazy old lady. I would hope that [daughter] Lily has provided me with several grandchildren. I will be baking, fairly overweight and will be a big, rosy-cheeked, happy grandma."

With any luck, Lily's kids will also be able to teach their grandma and obese Uncle Adam how to operate their Blu-ray machines, so that they can similarly rewind to their glory days.