QUESTION: Do you see doing more family style films?

SANDLER: Absolutely. I had a great time. I loved it. Me and Keri, we’re both new parents. It’s bizarre. When the kids are laughing in the audience, I tear up, I’m so happy I did a nice thing. I think I did a good thing. I’m so happy to hear kids laugh. I’m so happy it gives a place for parents to take their kids. I keep thinking about grandmas because of my mother. My mother will sometimes take my kid to a movie, and I’m just like, ‘Oh, that’s going to be cool, grandma having a nice time, or grandpa, with their grandkid.’ I did have a great time doing it, I would love to do it again.

QUESTION: Shankman, I was amazed at your family friendly restraint. Will we see some of the other side on the outtakes on the DVD?

SHANKMAN: This is the sad part: because the kids were around there’s not really an other side. There’s some bloopers, but even with these two, they’re family friendly bloopers. People were pretty aware. There were always parents around and kids around. Those kids were in most of the scenes. And I’m sitting ere going, ‘My restraint? What have I don’t that’s so dirty. The Pacifier? Yeah, that’s filthy. Cheaper by the Dozen II? Yeah, that’s good porn!’ I like to think that there’s stuff for the parents in there. Parents when we tested and scored, parents loved the movie and that was deeply satisfying for me. That was the goal for us, it was like, ‘Let’s go and do family,’ which is great. Sadly there’s not too much other stuff in there.

QUESTION: Russell, I was just wondering what drew you to the film specifically? And what we can expect form you moving forward? Will we see you in more US films?

Russell Brand: Yeah! I’m doing some more US films. I wanted to do it with Adam. Like, he said, ‘Do you want to do this film?’ I said, ‘Yeah, all right.’ Be like, I’ll learn stuff and it will be a laugh. Then, I thought, as I spent more time learning about it, I got to meet other people, like Adam Shankman was involved, I found out all his movies make loads of money. Now, if people associate you with the idea of loads of money, they in turn will give some of that money to you. Then, for example, you see how they are only allowed to buy their family one Christmas present, I used to be poor, I’ve loads of money now. My family’s getting loads of things for Christmas. I’m giving the stuff away! I’m buying things for people I don’t even know. I’m like Willy Wonka. More manipulative. Imagine if Willy Wonka had a devious goal.

QUESTION: Adam, now that you’re a father of two, what influence is it going to have on your movie direction? You’re a father, actor, producer, and a writer. Which is the biggest challenge?

SHANKMAN: I like that question.

Adam Sandler: I remember everything you said. First of all, good question. Let’s see. What the hell was the—

SHANKMAN: The future. The future. Is it going to affect your decision making in the future?

Adam Sandler: I thought so. When I was shooting it, I was like, ‘This feels good. I come home at night. I see my kids. I feel like I’m a good person.’ Then Judd Apatow, he’s a longtime friend of mine, he wrote a movie and asked me to be in it. I was like, ‘Okay.’ I’ve been shooting it and I come home feeling so filthy and so sad. I can’t meet eyes with my kids sometimes. I’m like, ‘Oy, God.’ So no, I’m not making every decision due to my children. I hope they never see these other movies I’m doing, but I do want to do more family friendly movies. I do feel good doing them, but it’s not going to be a way of life.

SHANKMAN: And you’re a really good actor and I do hope he does more dramas. I’m just saying.

Adam Sandler: Thank you, Shank-man.

SHANKMAN: The other one is what’s your most difficult role?

Adam Sandler: None of them are difficult. I have fun doing them all. It’s not like I’m a producer who I go over budget every day, I have numbers to run. I produce, I hang out, I help try to get the best stuff on the screen, that’s all I do. When I write, I sit down with my friends, come up with ideas. When I act, it’s the same thing. We try to do it as a team, everybody’s helping everybody, nothing’s too tough.

QUESTION: Keri, what made you want to say yes to this movie?

Keri Russell: I’m still trying to figure that out. No, I was very pregnant at the time and Adam Sandler called me and said, ‘I have a kid now. I want to make a movie my kid can see. And you have a kid. I think it would be fun. You should come do it.’

Adam Sandler: That’s right. It was something like that.

Keri Russell: It was. And I was like, ‘Okay.’

Adam Sandler: Well, I told you you were great in Waitress first. Me and my wife saw Waitress and we were really blown away by old Keri.

Keri Russell: Jackie. It was really Jackie who cast me.

Adam Sandler: When Jackie says to me, ‘I like that girl,’ I’m like, ‘Oh, good I can use her.’

Keri Russell: No, it just sounded like fun. I’m so glad I said yes, it was so fun. It was so great and there were kids all around.

Adam Sandler: You were like the mother on the set. She was nice to the two kids the whole time. ‘Cuz I run out of stuff to say after about—I try to make the kids laugh and I get a couple laughs and they’re staring at me for more and I’m like, ‘Really? Go talk to Keri Russell over there.’

QUESTION: But the two of you, the chemistry’s so good. Was there improvisation like there was with Russell?

Adam Sandler: Yeah, we did a little bit, but we felt comfortable with each other. I swear to God, it helps. Her husband is cool as hell, she’s cool with my wife. It makes it light and fun. I think Keri’s funny, I just like hanging out with her.

Keri Russell: It was good, yeah. Good time.

QUESTION: Adam, this feels like a very comfortable role for you. You are very relaxed in it. I’m wondering, what when you’re acting now makes you nervous and scared when you’re coming to the set. Are those things you seek out?

Adam Sandler: Apatow’s movie’s scaring me.

QUESTION: What’s it called?

Adam Sandler: Funny People. I’m very sick in the movie. I find out I’m dying and I have to do a lot of stuff with that. I come to work going, ‘Oh man, this is going to be a rough day.’ And I have to think about stuff that I don’t like to think about. But I swear to God, doing Bedtime Stories, that was my dream when I was young and I became a comedian. I didn’t come out here to do that other stuff, and Reign Over Me, I can’t believe I got to do that movie, but that wasn’t on my mind when I as a kid going, ‘I want to be a movie star.’ I wanted to be Eddie Murphy. That’s all I wanted to do. I get these other opportunities to do stuff and I just try my best, but I’m very comfortable, Bedtime Stories I show up on the set and I’m happy as can be.

QUESTION: Adam, your gibberish has improved since Billy Madison. Can you talk about growing your gibberish skills?

Adam Sandler: You know what? There’s much more confidence in it now. Back then I was like, ‘What are they going to think about that?’ Now I’m like, ‘They’ll think what they think. I’m doing it.’

QUESTION: Did you find it harder to work clean? You’re working with an arm tied behind your back, basically.

Adam Sandler: It wasn’t that bad. It felt good. I swear to you. Did you feel it was difficult?

Russell Brand: No, it’s a laugh. It’s all right. Sometimes parameters I think create better work because otherwise you have sort of go-to places comedically. I really think when you’re not using that kind of facility, you do different stuff. And plus it’s not that mad because in the real world I have friends with kids and stuff, and like if I’m hanging out with my friends who’ve got kids, I don’t think, ‘I’ll blow their minds with some coprophilia jokes!’ You know? You do stuff that’s appropriate. Although a lot of children do eat poo.

QUESTION: Keri, having a newborn, was it hard embarking on a big budget movie?

Keri Russell: Like I was saying—that was one of the cool things about this movie is Adam had kids, Covert had kids, Jack had kids, everyone had kids there so it was really fun. One of the babies would stop by, and everyone would stop and play with the kids. It really was like that. It made it really nice.

Adam Sandler: If you were with us three years before that you would have hated us.

Keri Russell: I know!

Adam Sandler: You would have been like, ‘Put your baby down! We’re shooting!’

Keri Russell: It really was like that. Elephants would be on the set one day and everyone brought their kids and took pictures with the elephants. And, you know, I was dressed as a mermaid one day, and all the kids took pictures with me. It was just that kind of set. I had a picture with the mermaid, as well. Very different motivations.

QUESTION: Everyone’s talking about how your comedy style changed to do a kids’ movie, but I really didn’t see that. To me: It’s kind of he same thing: works for frat guys, works for eight year olds.

Adam Sandler: I’m with you on that. Thank you. We wanted to make sure the guys who show up to my movies have a good time. It wasn’t that much of a—

SHANKMAN: Only thing different is you don’t swear or hit anybody.

Adam Sandler: That’s true.

SHANKMAN: That’s the only thing that’s different.

Keri Russell: There’s some lovely ladies in there for the frat guys. Our lovely Teresa Palmer. The body! The body’s in that!

Adam Sandler: Keri Russell thinks Teresa’s body is pretty spectacular.

Keri Russell: Come on! Why not?

Adam Sandler: I haven’t seen it yet. I don’t look that way. Russell?

Russell Brand: Oh! There’s a fire! There’s a fire! We should all definitely go!

QUESTION: This is for Adam and anyone else who could care to answer it. If there is one thing you want the audience to take away from the film when they leave, what would it be?

Russell Brand: Their litter!

SHANKMAN: I personally would hope that especially in these—you are such an idiot! (laughing). I hope that they take away a couple of things. First of all: the sense that magic can happen when family is together, A, because that’s sort of the trigger of it all. And B, the importance of imagination because we are now living in difficult times where the old stuff hasn’t been working and it’s going to take a lot of imagination to move us forward in life—I mean globally. So this notion that spending time together, being creative, using your imagination, there are no limits, and there are happy endings and can be. Because that’s what a happy ending is, it’s hope. So I want that spirit to be with the audience as they’re leaving. Not literally in your brain, but hopefully that’s the feeling you take with it and hopefully it will inspire parents to spend more time with their kids and really talk and don’t let them sit on their blackberrys and all of that because we need that now.

QUESTION: How was the relationship with the children?

Adam Sandler: How was I? They were just great kids.

SHANKMAN: They were really sweet kids. He got along actually a lot better than I thought you would. Working with kids, especially as much as we did, it can be hard because their attention spans are dododododo. When you have certain kid hours, only a certain amount of day, you need them focused. But these kids were pretty hard core. Laura especially was like, zzt.

Adam Sandler: They were focused, funny, nice, sweet kids. They liked me and then they fell in love with Russell. Actually I was their go-to guy for a while, and then Russell’s part started up a month into the shoot and they slowly left me and fell in love with Russell.

QUESTION: Matt, where did this story come from for you? What do you think was the thing that’s most true to what you saw when you were writing the story?

Matt Lopez: For me, also I have two little girls, and for me what I loved about it is sort of the power of storytelling. It was just about the fun of storytelling. What I was really captivated by and I think brings a lot of punch to the movie is the notion that if you’ve ever tried to tell a four-year-old a bedtime story, they tend to take the stories in whatever direction they feel like taking it. You could be telling them a story about a knight and then they say, ‘Tonight I think the knight should be a princess.’ I thought if there was a guy who actually had to live through these stories, I had a lot of fun with the notion that he thinks he’s in control of them and for a while he sort of is in control of them, but not really.