'Grown Ups 2' Helped Turn Chris Rock's Career Around
Chris Rock finally has a good movie coming out — and it wouldn’t have happened without the influence (and ample production-budget moolah) of Adam Sandler. According to a lengthy profile in this week’s New Yorker, the writer-director of next month’s Top Five wrote the script during the production of Sandler’s 2013 comedy Grown Ups 2, during which he had countless days off, allowing him to hang around in a rented seaside house and get to work: “I’m literally looking at the ocean, like f—kin’ Hemingway, writing longhand,” he told the magazine. He also spent a lot of time contemplating the film career of Sandler, whom Rock says “had the confidence of a black wide receiver” during their stand-up days together — a confidence that eventually helped Sandler build a one-man movie empire. “That’s something I needed to learn from him,” Rock said. “He does his movie amazingly. O.K., what’s a Chris Rock movie?”
In the interview, the 49-year-old Rock — who’s directed such cooly received comedies as 2003’s Head of State and 2007’s I Think I Love My Wife — also admits that Top Five is pretty much his last chance to salvage his filmmaking career. “It was, like, ‘O.K., if this doesn’t work I can definitely see no one letting me direct a movie again,’” he said. “I had to think that was a possibility. I mean, how many times can you not have a hit? I used to go see Christian Slater movies. They don’t really have them anymore.” Clearly, someone needs to Netflix Nymphomaniac.
Watch the trailer for Top Five below:
