Although Gilbert Gottfried had prior small film appearances, including 1987’s Beverly Hills Cop II, it was the surprise hit Problem Child that served as his breakthrough role.
The 1990 film, billed as Universal Pictures’ highest-grossing film of the year, starred John Ritter and Amy Yasbeck as a couple who experienced ups and downs after adopting Junior (Michael Oliver). Director Dennis Dugan hired Gottfried as a nervous adoption agent after seeing him deliver stand-up in Los Angeles, and the filmmaker learned that the performer’s boisterous personality onstage was very different from his real-life demeanor.
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“He was the cutest guy,” Dugan, who previously directed episodes of Moonlighting but never a feature film, tells . “You’d think maybe he was a guy who worked in the back of a library, putting books on the shelves. He was just the nicest, calmest little guy and then you would say action and like a nuclear bomb he would just explode.”
Dugan, who went on to direct numerous films for Adam Sandler, including Happy Gilmore (1996), Big Daddy (1999) and both Grown Ups films, praises Gottfried as “quite possibly one of the funniest guys I’ve ever worked with.” . He also recalls a time when he had to turn to Universal Brass to defend the comedian, whose death was announced on Tuesday.
“I was getting yelled at — that was when we started filming,” says Dugan. “I got a call from the vice president of Universal at the time and I was like, ‘What are you doing? You make so much film!’ If you normally shoot 6,000 feet of it — you had a film at that point — I shot 18,000 feet one day, and the next day I shot 20,000 feet. It doesn’t matter now, but back then the movie cost and it was a low-budget movie.”
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Director Dennis Dugan on the set of Problem Child (1990). – Credit: Universal Pictures/Courtesy The Everett Collection
Universal Pictures/Courtesy The Everett Collection
He continues, “So they were screaming, ‘What are you doing? You’re well over budget for the film.” And I’m like, ‘Well, we’re doing a comedy, right?’ And they say, “Yes.” And I said, ‘Well, we have Gilbert Gottfried. And if I were to say action, Gilbert Gottfried writes the screenplay and then it starts. You say don’t cut. you just let him go Don’t look at how long it takes – watch the film and see what you think.’ And so they called me back and said, ‘All right. You’re OK because he’s so funny.’”
Dugan, whose latest project was the 2020 film Love, Weddings & Other Disasters, starring Diane Keaton and Jeremy Irons, quips, “He was just a wonderful guy to work with – absolutely dedicated, and once he started acting, you’d think he should be committed because he’d just go as crazy as you can.
The director, who stresses that the key to good comedy is getting a good script and then hiring fun people to deliver it, shares that his experience with Gottfried had an impact on future films.
“Working with him later helped me a lot,” Dugan admits. “Going to Grown Ups was a great example because we did a scene with these five guys and then we started and they just started talking. I knew from my work with Gilbert that if there’s a fire, just throw kindling on it. Because you can yell things at them in the middle – “Try this, try that” – and he did the same. He would do anything you ask plus 3,000 times more.”
Dugan also recalls that Ritter had an easy time bonding with Gottfried. “Ritter was as fun and good a partner as one could imagine,” says the director. “When you’re on set with Gilbert and you’re near a shooting star, you just say, ‘Great, let me go,’ and Ritter loved him.”
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