Fans have recently realised that Happy Gilmore almost ended up with a completely different cast to the one we all know and love.
Imagine Happy Gilmore without Carl Weather’s ‘Chubbs’, Christopher McDonald’s ‘Shooter McGavin’, Bob Barker’s, well, Bob Barker. You can’t right? Well once upon a time, that was almost a reality.
Christopher McDonald, who played Shooter McGavin, actually revealed he turned down the film not just once, but twice.
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But in an interview with And So It Begins, he said he suddenly reconsidered: “I played a round of golf in Seattle, and we won. And that high was something else. So, with my golf shoes still on, I went in the locker room, called my agent and said, ‘Is that golf movie still available, because I just won the tournament and I’m feeling a little bit…Shooterish”.
After that, Christopher met up with Adam Sandler in person, and the rest, as they say, is history.
Similarly, the film’s iconic fight scene with Bob Barker almost looked completely different, as Bob wasn’t the film’s first choice for the fight scene cameo.
As it happens, Ed McMahon from The Tonight Show was. But while on the Dan Patrick show, Sandler revealed that McMahon turned them down.
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When explaining why he think McMahon turned them down, he said: “I doubt he got it […] I think the script was a little rougher, we cursed a little bit more. And then when Ed said no, we dialled it down a bit for Bob Barker”
And boy we’re glad they did, because Barker did one hell of a job as when he agreed to do it, he had already spent years training martial arts with Chuck Norris and Pat Johnson.
Barker said in Sandler’s biography: “In twenty years I never won a fight. [Norris and Johnson] both beat me up. So, when they offered me [the Happy Gilmore] script, I said, ‘I’ll do it’, because I win the fight.”
And as a matter of fact, Carl Weathers nearly didn’t get his part as the infamous Chubbs Peterson either.
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Instead, the role almost went to John Amos, but it was later revealed in an interview with Vulture that the studio decided Carl was a better choice.
Amos confirmed this in an interview with Insider, where he said: “It never worked out, but no hard feelings”.
And in a final blow to the cast that almost wasn’t, professional golfer Lee Trevino said in an interview with CBS that had he didn't read the original script before it was toned down, and if he did he 'never would have done it' because of the foul cursing.
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So we'll thank our lucky stars he missed the script on that one.
But despite the fact the film almost went in a very different direction, fans can rejoice that it didn’t. And then some more, as Sandler confirmed in his appearance on The Dan Patrick Show the greenlight for a sequel.
So stay tuned folks, because Happy Gilmore 2 could already be in the works.
Topics: Adam Sandler, Film and TV, Entertainment