When you present yourself for your first day of university, you never know who your roommate will be. You can assign a careless party animal that makes you miserable life or a studious library mouse that you don't see the whole semester.
Or maybe he shares a suite with a young Adam Sandler, before any of his races has begun, and together they create some of the most successful and lasting comedies of the last 30 years.
That is the story of unlikely but blessed origin of Tim Herlihy, a business student and accounting at the time of the lawyer in exercise, whose script loans for her friend Sandler include “Billy Madison”, about the endearing design; The romantic comedy “The Wedding Singer”; and “Happy Gilmore”, about a great hockey player (but moody) who discovers that he is a great golfer (but moody).
During an association of decades, Herlihy and Sandler have realized their achievements mainly following where their own silly muses lead them. But now they are about to try something they have almost never done: a sequel.
“Happy Gilmore 2”, which Netflix launched on Friday, finds his bad boy headline until adulthood and more soft. In the follow -up of stars, whose cast also includes Bad Bunny, Travis Kelce and Benny Safdie, Gilmore is more concerned about the needs of his family and wonders what his legacy will be.
Benito Antonio Martinez Ocasio, also known as Bad Bunny, Left, and Adam Sandler in “Happy Gilmore 2.”
(Scott Yamano / Netflix)
Herlihy said that the idea of a sequel to “happy Gilmore” is one that he and Sandler resisted over the years, but hugged in “a weak moment.”
“The reason we did is the same reason why I have a dog,” said Herlihy. “I'm like, 'no, I'm not going to get a dog. No, I'm not going to get a dog.' And then, one day you say: 'Well, what if I had a dog?' And then two days later, you have a dog. “
While looking at his career, Herlihy is as surprised as anyone to find himself in a prolific and lasting creative association. But he is not sweating too much about why it works or what everything means.
“It's a silly mandate to try to grow a person,” said Herlihy. “At a certain point, I am having more fun with Adam. I am doing the best job with Adam. I am not making commitments to Adam.”
Herlihy, 58, who was born in Brooklyn and grew up in Poughkeepsie, New York, spoke during lunch earlier this month in a Bistro de West Village, not far from the bedroom of the University of New York, where he and Sandler met as first year students in 1984.
When Herlihy recalled his fateful encounter from the day he moved to the bedroom, he remembered having been impressed by the apparent Sandler's self -vergence. “He seemed to know his way, and his mother was cleaning the bathroom,” said Herlihy. “Am I like, they put me with a second year student?”
Sandler, in a video interview, said Herlihy considered it similarly safe. “I said: 'What do you want to do?'” Sandler recalled. “He says: 'I think I want to be a billionaire.'
They quickly joined their mutual love for films such as “Caddyshack” and other tastes shared in popular culture. “I introduced myself with a police shirt and he had a Rodney Dangerfield shirt,” Sandler said. “We were the two of the same size, so we exchanged. I said: 'Can I have that Rodney shirt?' He said: 'If you give me that police shirt.' “

Adam Sandler and Tim Herlihy met in Nyu and joined their shared tastes in pop culture. “At one point, I'm having more fun with Adam. I'm doing the best job with Adam,” said Herlihy.
(Justin Jun Lee / for the Times)
More crucially, when the incipient Sandler said that he was going to start performing a foot comedy and that he needed material, Herlihy used a weekend of train walks to and from poughkeepsie to scribble some jokes for him. (Today, Herlihy claims not to remember any specific joke. “It was not the Round Table Algonquin at that time,” he said. “It is probably even worse than you are imagining”).
In the years that followed, when Herlihy attended and graduated from the Nyu Law Faculty and entered the professional world, he continued to supply Sandler ideas and material. When Sandler landed in “Saturday Night Live”, Herlihy helped him devise outlines like the boy in the canteen of the jaw. Together, they wrote the script of what became the vehicle starring Sandler in 1995 “Billy Madison”, trading pages per fax, while Herlihy wrote late at night on a computer in his law firm.
“Happy Gilmore”, released the following year, began before “Billy Madison” was released, but writing a second film was not easier for Herlihy and Sandler after writing the first.
“Your first movie, you put all your heart and soul, and every joke you had,” Herlihy explained. “So, when you have to do another, you are like, what are we going to do?”
Even so, Herlihy, who later became a main writer of “SNL”, continued to pass a Sandler movie to the following: “Happy Gilmore” engendered “The Wedding Singer” who engendered “The Waterboy”, until he looked up and realized that he was a film scriptwriter.
“Around 'Mr. Deeds', we started having several things,” said Herlihy. “I think I am returning to the thing of one in time, more for laziness than anything else. I can only handle one at a time.”
For Herlihy, that portfolio included a sequel to “Happy Gilmore” after the original, which was a modest success of $ 40 million in 1996, became a cult phenomenon.
As Christopher McDonald, who has acted in about 200 different television films and television programs, but is still recognized as Happy Gilmore's nemesis, which Malapropsing says, Shooter McGavin, explained that there is a reason for the resistance of the film.
“Television, television, television,” said McDonald. “He went crazy. People began to look and say: 'Oh my God, enters the grandchildren here. This is sick, this is generational.' Everyone laughs, and still endures.

Christopher McDonald, on the left, repeats his role as Shooter McGavin, Happy Gilmore (Adam Sandler), in the sequel.
(Scott Yamano / Netflix)
But writing “Happy Gilmore 2” proved to be as defiant as his predecessor. Herlihy and Sandler spent long days in the lobby of the Sandler production company, Happy Madison, moving index cards around an advertisement board, playing and pulling points of the plot, trying to discover what could motivate Gilmore to collect his clubs again at this stage of his life. (This time, he is trying to fulfill the dreams of his daughter's ballet school, played by the daughter of the real life of Sandler Sunny).
The production also required that Herlihy was on the set every day and came up with new lines as necessary, since he did it in the original “Happy Gilmore”.
Julie Bowen, the “Modern Family” star who interprets Gilmore's love interest, Virginia, in both films, reminded Herlihy as a gentle and beautiful in that first film, just the type of type that could have helped conceive a fantasy sequence of “happy place” now famous that had his two beer pitchers while dressed in white linge. “I never felt objectified or stupid,” Bowen said about that scene. “I felt that it was part of one of the best jokes in history.”
In “Happy Gilmore 2,” Bowen said he saw Sandler and Herlihy working on even greater synchronicity, touring each shot and each joke to do it well.
“If you see that something does not work,” he said, “they are like, 'Give me a second', and they will change it. They don't think they have written to Shakespeare and you can't change a comma. It's, let's do as fun as we can.”
Kyle Newacheck, who directed “Happy Gilmore 2,” said it was exciting and intimidating to work along with Sandler and Herlihy, whose name acknowledged from Sandler's movies and comedy albums as “everyone will laugh at you!”
“It can be said that they date back,” said Newacheck, who previously directed Sandler in “Matisterium of murders.” “It is one of those relationships in which someone can move in a certain way and you know that they don't like that particularly, or have another release or think they can overcome it.”
Newacheck added: “I had an incredible opportunity to sit there, possibly, the two people who shape my comic membrane, and then to add what I thought could be fun. There is nothing better than saying something that makes them laugh.”
With regard to Sandler, there is a direct reason why his association with Herlihy has lasted all this time: “He is a good man, well, more fun than everyone. I love him so much. I love every conversation with him. It is exciting to hear what his thoughts are happening.”
Returning to his first meeting, Sandler said: “I thought, boy, this guy is quiet. He doesn't speak much. And throughout the year, I thought it's more fun than everyone.”
But from Herlihy's point of view, the collaboration thrives in contrasts between the two friends for a long time. Sandler, he said, is the duo's work addict, working with other directors, making dramas and comedies and producing films for other writers and performers.
“The more he is doing in a movie, the more he is happy,” said Herlihy. “I like free time.”
Herlihy also has a unique link with his old land in “SNL”: his son Martin, member of the comedy trio please does not destroy, is a writer and interpreter there, and occasionally they register to share stories and advice.
When Bad Bunny, who has made multiple appearances in “SNL”, even as a host and musical guest, was being considered for a role in “Happy Gilmore 2”, Martin asked about him. “He said it was really fun, but Martin never says bad about anyone,” said Herlihy.
(As I was happy to discover, “Bad Bunny had tremendous capabilities that we were not aware of,” said Herlihy.
Herlihy said that his own career is defined by his close association with Sandler, Herlihy will live up to history and out of his hands. But he said that such distinctions were unlikely to import in the long term, pointing out the fact that, although he is a screenwriter, he rarely remembers who wrote the movies he has seen.
“I don't know anyone who wrote Marx Brothers movies,” he said. “I don't know who wrote 'Kramer vs. Kramer'.”
Then his mind went to an even more absurd and exaggerated stage.
“What happens if you are a big movie star, you have a fantastic career, and then, when you are 70 years old, you get diarrhea at Sunset Boulevard and then your obituary is 'Diarrhea actor'?”
The final result, Herlihy said: “You have no control over your obituary. Just enjoy your family and laugh.”