The Animal (2001)

"We laughed so hard when we were writing this thing," smiles Rob Schneider, who wrote the script with Tom Brady. The Animal is the first produced screenplay for Brady, who has written and produced television shows such as The Simpsons and Home Improvement. He first hooked up with Schneider while executive producing Men Behaving Badly for NBC, and the two quickly began hatching movie ideas.

In addition to his writing chores, Schneider also stars as nerd-turned-animal Marvin Mange. "I feel like everything I've ever learned-from being a stand-up to my days on SNL and working with Adam Sandler on his movies-has all been put into this film. Working with Sandler was great on Deuce, so we decided to have another go. This time, instead of different gigolo customers, we had different animal parts.

"This is about a guy trying not to be an animal, and he's losing the battle," Schneider continues. "It's a guy trying to retain his humanity, but he's got these animal organs that are going to win."

Schneider, who co-wrote and starred in Deuce Bigalow: Male Gigolo and played the lead in two seasons of the television sitcom Men Behaving Badly, credits his family for his foray into comedy. "We didn't have music albums, we had comedy albums," he says. "We'd only go to see comedy movies. I loved Blazing Saddles. I loved Peter Sellers, who was an amazing physical comedian. Monty Python, the high-water mark of comedy in the 20th century, was a big influence on me."

"Rob is amazing," says director Luke Greenfield. "Rob has pushed all physical and mental boundaries in this movie. If you just put a camera on him anywhere, anytime, it's going to be funny. Just follow him around and you'll have a movie! I was pretty lucky to work with Rob on my first feature."

Greenfield was busy editing a short film when his work got into the hands of Revolution Studios. Before Greenfield knew it, he was signed on to direct The Animal and looking at locations. "This has been a total dream," he says. "It happened at a furious pace. I had no time to tell anyone. I had no time to even call friends. Suddenly, I was in pre-production! There was every possible challenge in this film-animals like badgers and cougars, children and water and night exteriors-but I had a great army behind me." One of Greenfield's biggest problems on the set was trying to keep from laughing. "Rob's scene with the goat was hysterical. Everyone had to turn away because it was so hard not to laugh," he smiles. "There was a scene where Dr. Wilder put a cone on Rob's head. Michael Caton, the actor who plays Wilder, turned his back and started laughing while Rob had to deal with the scene. We did one scene with Rob and Colleen that I had to walk away from," he continues. "I couldn't watch the rest of the take. Someone else called 'cut.'"

On The Animal, as he did on Deuce, Schneider had to balance his roles as the co-writer and star of the film. "When I'm writing the movie, I never think about really performing in it because it's two separate art forms," he explains. "Then you get out there, and it's like, 'What? I'm getting strangled by an orangutan?'" Schneider, who created the hilarious role of the Richmeister on Saturday Night Live, says he loved playing a character that was part animal. "As an actor it's so much more fun to play a guy trying not to be an animal than a guy playing an animal," he points out.

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