Eight Crazy Nights wants to fix you
Also, news from HanukkahLand: JellyNut gets an intervention
1.
Since the beginning of 2002, I’d heard rumors that Adam Sandler was using his Adam Sandler money to make a feature-length animated version of his 2-minute-18-second hit novelty song about Hanukkah. The movie would be released during Thanksgiving break.
At Thanksgiving, as soon as the first suggestion was floated that we leave the house to do something with our lives, I suggested that we go to see Eight Crazy Nights. A Hanukkah movie! A musical starring popular Jewish entertainer Adam Sandler! It was a horrible mistake.
Here’s what happens in the first five minutes.
The title appears, the last moment that doesn’t aim to make you feel disgusted. We hear sleighbells (sleighbells!) as we fade to a small New Hampshire town covered in snow. Rob Schneider narrates, his first words, “Well, all right.” Davey Stone (our protagonist, voiced by Sandler) gets drunk at a Chinese restaurant, leaves without paying, and, outside the restaurant, mimics having sex with his car in front of two cops.
I love profanity, vulgarity, and gross-out humor, but the worst thing about Eight Crazy Nights’s vulgarity is how boring it is. By the book, you might say.
A chase ensues, while Davey sings a song to develop his character:
I’m a kinda guy who can’t stand a holiday,
So I drink ‘em all away, that’s me.
In one moment while singing, Davey appears to squeeze an old woman’s breasts but she turns to reveal she’s carrying two watermelons. In another moment, Davey moons some carolers, then farts a green, gaseous cloud to propel his trash-can sled forward and away. He sings:
I hate love, I hate you, I hate me.
I hate love, I hate you, I hate me.
Eight Crazy Nights is available to watch for free on Tubi.
2.
This year I spent Christmas and the first night of Hanukkah without my family. I have spent the last three Christmases without my family. In some ways, I have become Davey Stone. I drank egg nog and watched The Nightmare Before Christmas, which, if you think about it, is kind of a Hanukkah movie. It rocked.
But you can’t be that honest in a feature-length film.
3.
“You have to give them something they can see,” says Hersh Hyman, the geriatric ad executive who’s helping me polish these HanukkahLand stories into something we can sell. “We need a nihilist goofball.”
Sandler spent the 90s perfecting this persona. His satanic pixie dreamboy rocketed to major success in the 90s. For a while, he was the King Jew.
4.
I wanted the world of HanukkahLand to have a nihilist goofball. The character I pitched to Hersh was JellyNut™ the monorail mechanic.
JellyNut knows how to have a good time.
JellyNut works a 9 to 5 union job fixing the HanukkahLand MenoRail™ and after he’s done at 5pm, he goes out drinking and never seems worse for wear.
When JellyNut comes home from work, if there isn’t a party that night, he’ll start eating himself alive. His head is a jelly doughnut, which also happens to be his favorite food. He’ll sit and watch Tubi, or illegally downloaded sports games, and he’ll rip off a piece of his cheek and start eating. He’s going to keep doing this whether you like it or not. He doesn’t want to hear your critique.
5.
The Talmud has its share of grossout humor too. My favorite section of Avodah Zarah concerns a list of decrees concerning the kinds of women it is unbecoming for a Jewish boy to see in private. After about 800 words, they determine it’s all women.
And then there’s this mysterious, noncommittal line: “And they further issued a decree on something else due to something else.” You’d almost read right over it, except one of the Talmud’s characters the Gemara (who is also a book, but not in the literal sense -- I’m telling you, the Talmud is odd, my guy) asks, “What is the meaning of this?”
And one of the rabbis goes: “They decreed upon a male gentile child that he imparts ritual impurity as though he were a Jew who experienced a gonorrhea-like discharge, so that a Jewish child will not become familiar with him, leading to gay sex.”
And the final line of this section: “The Sages employed a euphemism when referring to this decree.”
6.
“Why are you all here?” said JellyNut, dropping his toolbox and taking off his shoes. His friends Mayor Brisketface, AppleSue the Hanukkangaroo, and two or three others were gathered around his living room. Johnny Hanukkah stood up holding a piece of paper.
“We’re having an intervention, JellyNut. You’ve been eating yourself and we’re worried about you.”
JellyNut sat down and stopped himself from grabbing a piece of forehead. “Do I have to listen to this?”
“Yes, unfortunately you do.”
JellyNut listened. And JellyNut cried. Eventually, they all hugged and started eating something that wasn’t JellyNut. He was amazed at how good it felt.
7.
JellyNut took a week of rehab, but it was a really quick process. He returned to work and it was good to have the routine. He felt stronger, nimbler. He could finish work by 3pm now and just really get to know people. He liked getting to know the people at the monorail shop. Except what they said behind his back was, “Didn’t he used to be cool before?”
This is part 6 of an eight-part series called HanukkahLand. To catch up: