With Grown Ups, in theaters tomorrow, Adam Sandler decided to make a movie by gathering up a bunch of his buddies. Which is, come to think of it, the way Sandler makes most of his movies: The Sand-man has always been a clubby type, working with the same folks over and over again, whether they’re directors, members of his entourage never seen in anything else, or legitimate actors game for a kooky cameo. That means that over the years, Sandler has pulled an impressive array of co-conspirators into his orbit. But who stands above all as Sandler’s most loyal lieutenant, with the largest percentage of their work coming in Sandler-related projects? Vulture went through a whole bunch of IMDb.com profiles and crunched the numbers.
As to how the percentages were calculated: Each project (movie/TV show/one-off TV-show appearance/voice-over, etc.) was counted as one for the denominator. (For directors, each movie/TV movie counted as one, and episodes of TV shows were not counted.) Each appearance in an Adam Sandler movie, or a movie produced by Sandler’s company Happy Madison Productions counted as one for the numerator. Most important, we only started counting for each person on the list from the time of their first appearance in an Adam Sandler project. Okay, onto the results!
Henry Winkler: 7% (3/41)
Steve Buscemi: 9% (7/ 71)
John Torturro: 10% (3/30)
Judd Apatow: 16% (3/18, starting from Sandler’s appearance on Undeclared)
John Lovitz: 16% (5/31)
Norm McDonald: 16% (5/ 30)
Kevin Nealon: 24% (10/41)
Chris Rock: 25% (3/12)
David Spade: 40% (6/15)
Steven Brill (director-actor): 45% (5 /11)
Kevin James: 46% (6/ 13)
Nick Swarsdon: 47% (9/19)
Dennis Dugan (director): 54% (7/13)
Rob Schneider: 61% (19/31)
Allen Covert: 66% (20/30)
Peter Dante: 66% (10/15)
Jonathan Loughran: 68% (15/22)
Peter Segal (director): 75% (3/4)
Congratulations, Peter Segal!