A Classic MTV Game Show, Not SNL, Gave Adam Sandler His First Big Break

Adam Sandler broke big by playing oddballs like Canteen Boy on “Saturday Night Live,” but a few years before that, he was already making people laugh by playing a character known as the Stud Boy. The series that first thrust Sandler into the spotlight? “Remote Control,” a pop culture game show that aired on MTV back in the distant era before “Ridiculousness,” when it was still all music videos, all the time.

Hosted by Ken Ober, the half-hour show featured contestants sitting in recliners, answering ridiculous pop culture questions, and — upon being eliminated — crashing through the wall behind them and disappearing. It also introduced the world at large to comedian Colin Quinn, who served as announcer, and the goofy format of the series also allowed for characters to come in and read off questions, which is where Sandler comes in.

“Remote Control” executive producer Doug Herzog scouted — or, more accurately, stumbled upon — Sandler during one of Sandler’s stand-up comedy sets. “He’s wearing stained sweatpants, sneakers, a dirty T-shirt, and a hat on backwards,” Herzog recalled in the A.V. Club’s oral history of “Remote Control.” “He was literally a college student, and I thought, ‘Oh, that’s the audience.’ I was just like, ‘This kid should be on MTV,’ so I followed him out to the lobby, gave him my business card and said, ‘Call me.'”

Although Doug Herzog might have seen Adam Sandler’s potential, not everyone did. “Doug sent Adam Sandler into my office,” Mike Armstrong, head writer for “Remote Control,” said on “The Gary & Kenny Show.” “And this guy comes in, and he does a little bit of shtick, and I’m sitting there going, ‘I don’t get this guy at all.’ And I felt bad for Doug. ‘Doug’s picker is broken! This is not good!’ So Adam comes on the show and, y’know, he gets huge applause and laughter.”

“Quinn knew [Sandler] from the clubs, and Quinn was always a huge fan,” Herzog told the A.V. Club. “I remember that in Adam’s early performances, he was doing [his ‘Remote Control’ character] Stud Boy and early versions of his characters, and it was just absolute crickets. The only person laughing is Quinn on the side of the stage. But Adam, that was lightning in a bottle there…”

“We laughed so f***ing hard,” Denis Leary — who also counts “Remote Control” as one of his early gigs — told the A.V. Club. “We’d be backstage just watching the monitor. If Sandler goes out, you’re watching, waiting to see what he’s going to do, and you’re laughing your ass off.”

Adam Sandler’s popularity on “Remote Control” was so substantial that when MTV decided to take the show along when the network did their annual live Spring Break broadcast in Daytona Beach, Florida, the producers brought Sandler with them. He was also credited as a writer on the show, but he left before the end of the series’ run because — you guessed it — “Saturday Night Live” came calling.