Tim Herlihy
Timothy Patrick Herlihy (born October 9, 1966) is an American screenwriter, film producer, actor, comedian, and playwright, best known for co-writing a series of commercially successful comedy films starring Adam Sandler, including Billy Madison (1995), Happy Gilmore (1996), The Wedding Singer (1998), and The Waterboy (1998).[1][2] Born in Brooklyn, New York, and raised in Poughkeepsie, Herlihy earned a bachelor's degree in accounting and international business from New York University Stern School of Business in 1988, followed by a Juris Doctor from NYU School of Law in 1992.[3][4] He briefly worked as an accountant at Ernst & Young and as a practicing lawyer while developing comedy material, having met Sandler as NYU freshmen roommates in 1984 and begun supplying jokes for Sandler's stand-up routines.[2][3] Herlihy joined the writing staff of Saturday Night Live in March 1994, rising to head writer and producer by 1999, where he contributed to sketches such as the Canteen Boy series featuring Sandler.[2][5] His screenwriting partnership with Sandler produced multiple box-office successes that defined early 2000s comedy, with Herlihy often handling structural elements while Sandler focused on character voices; recent credits include co-writing Happy Gilmore 2 (2025) for Netflix.[1][2]Early life and education
Family background and upbringing
Timothy Patrick Herlihy was born on October 9, 1966, in Brooklyn, New York.[6] He spent his formative years in LaGrangeville, a working-class suburb adjacent to Poughkeepsie in upstate New York, where he was immersed in a household shaped by public service professions.[3] Herlihy's father, Patrick Herlihy, worked as a New York City firefighter, a role that embodied the grit and dependability of blue-collar labor amid the demands of urban emergencies.[7] The family extended this ethos, including relatives in law enforcement such as police officers, fostering an environment centered on practical resilience rather than creative pursuits.[7] Patrick Herlihy supplemented his firefighting career by operating local businesses, including a chimney sweeping service and a coal company, reflecting entrepreneurial adaptability within constrained economic circumstances.[8] This backdrop of modest, service-oriented stability in the Hudson Valley region exposed Herlihy to everyday realism and community interdependence, elements that later informed his unpretentious comedic style, though he was not initially regarded as humorous within his family.[7] Local influences, including the unvarnished humor of suburban and small-town life, provided early, informal touchpoints for observation predating structured comedy endeavors.[3]College years and meeting Adam Sandler
Tim Herlihy attended New York University's Stern School of Business, where he majored in accounting and international business, graduating with a Bachelor of Science degree in 1988.[9][4] During his freshman year, beginning around 1984 following his high school graduation, Herlihy was assigned to room with Adam Sandler in Brittany Hall dormitory.[10] Herlihy and Sandler quickly bonded over mutual interests in pop culture and comedy, with Herlihy recalling that their shared observations of campus life and humorous exchanges laid the groundwork for collaborative creativity.[2] As Sandler began performing stand-up during his sophomore year, Herlihy contributed by writing jokes for him, marking an early shift from business studies toward comedic writing that contrasted with his formal academic pursuits.[11] This organic partnership, rooted in dormitory proximity rather than structured programs, honed Herlihy's skills in sketch-like humor derived from everyday absurdities.[7] These college experiences represented Herlihy's initial foray into comedy scripting, distinct from his business curriculum, as he experimented with material that emphasized character-driven satire over analytical coursework.[3] The duo's improvisational routines and joke-writing sessions foreshadowed their future professional synergy, though Herlihy completed his degree without immediate deviation into entertainment pathways.[12]Professional career
Saturday Night Live tenure
Tim Herlihy entered professional comedy by supplying sketches to Saturday Night Live in the early 1990s through his longtime collaborator Adam Sandler, who had joined the cast in 1990 following his own start as a writer the prior year. While practicing law after passing the bar exam, Herlihy co-developed material for Sandler, including the recurring Canteen Boy sketches, which debuted during the March 13, 1993, episode hosted by John Goodman with musical guest Mary J. Blige. These bits starred Sandler as a gullible, prepubescent Boy Scout whose childlike naivety invited exploitation by scoutmasters portrayed in escalating, boundary-testing absurdities, capturing the era's raw comedic style that favored unvarnished exaggeration over sanitized narratives.[3][2][13] Herlihy's informal contributions occurred amid SNL's transitional phase in the early 1990s, marked by cast turnover, the rise of performers like Sandler and Chris Farley, and a tolerance for provocative content that drew from physical comedy and cultural irreverence. The Canteen Boy series, for instance, leaned into themes of male camaraderie and vulnerability through slapstick and innuendo, elements that aligned with the show's willingness to elicit discomfort for laughs during live broadcasts. This pre-hire involvement provided Herlihy initial exposure to the rigors of television sketch refinement under producer Lorne Michaels.[14] Officially hired as a staff writer in March 1994, Herlihy's tenure coincided with ongoing cast dynamics, including Sandler's dismissal in 1995 amid ratings pressures, yet he persisted as one of few retained writers. His role immersed him in the demands of live production, where sketches required precise pacing to suit unpredictable audience responses and editorial cuts, cultivating an adaptability to rejection and iteration essential for comedy's high-stakes environment.[3][14]Screenwriting breakthroughs in the 1990s
Herlihy transitioned from Saturday Night Live sketches to feature film screenwriting through his collaboration with Adam Sandler, co-writing Billy Madison (1995), a comedy depicting a wealthy but immature heir repeating school grades to prove himself. Released on February 10, 1995, with a $10 million budget, the film grossed $25.6 million domestically, establishing an underdog narrative infused with physical comedy that resonated with audiences seeking escapist humor over sophisticated satire.[15][16] This success reflected Herlihy's formula of irreverent, character-driven antics prioritizing broad appeal, particularly among working-class viewers alienated by elite cultural norms. Building on this, Herlihy and Sandler co-wrote Happy Gilmore (1996), released February 16, which followed a hockey player-turned-golfer channeling aggression into sports underdog triumphs, blending slapstick violence with anti-establishment jabs at country club pretensions. Produced on a $12 million budget, it earned $41.4 million worldwide, doubling its cost and cementing Herlihy's role in crafting accessible, high-grossing vehicles that defied critical disdain for their unpolished style.[17][18] In 1998, Herlihy penned The Wedding Singer, co-credited with Sandler and released February 13, a romantic comedy set in the 1980s featuring a jilted wedding singer finding love amid pop culture nostalgia, which grossed $80.2 million domestically on an $18 million budget despite reviewers dismissing its lighthearted tropes as juvenile. Later that year, The Waterboy (November 6 release), solely written by Herlihy from a Sandler story, portrayed a socially awkward waterboy discovering football talent, achieving $186 million worldwide on $23 million, its exaggerated Southern caricatures and triumph-over-mockery theme driving massive returns that underscored audience preference for unpretentious laughs over coastal tastemakers' preferences.[19][20] Collectively, these films generated over $330 million in grosses, validating Herlihy's approach of anti-elite, everyman comedy that prioritized empirical commercial viability amid biased critiques favoring arthouse sensibilities.[21]Ongoing collaborations and production roles
Herlihy serves as a key creative partner and executive producer at Happy Madison Productions, Adam Sandler's company founded in 1999, where he has contributed to sustaining a high-volume output of commercially oriented comedies amid shifts toward streaming platforms.[22] His production involvement includes executive producing Grown Ups (2010), which grossed over $271 million worldwide on a $80 million budget, demonstrating the company's focus on broad-appeal ensemble projects.[23] In screenwriting, Herlihy co-wrote the 2015 film Pixels, adapting a short film concept into a feature blending arcade nostalgia with action-comedy elements, directed by Chris Columbus and starring Sandler alongside Peter Dinklage.[7] He extended this partnership into Netflix-exclusive releases, co-writing Hubie Halloween (2020), a Halloween-themed mystery comedy that emphasized Sandler's physical humor and ensemble casting from prior Happy Madison films, achieving over 31 million U.S. household views in its first 28 days.[24] These efforts reflect an adaptation to digital distribution, prioritizing direct-to-streaming models for global reach and fan retention over traditional theatrical awards cycles. Herlihy's most recent collaboration, co-writing Happy Gilmore 2 (2025) for Netflix—the 13th Sandler film he has scripted—revives the 1996 original's irreverent golf satire, driven by persistent audience demand evidenced by the sequel's development nearly three decades later.[2] This project underscores Happy Madison's strategy of sequelizing proven hits, maintaining Herlihy's signature style of exaggerated, character-driven absurdity while leveraging streaming data for profitability, as the original Happy Gilmore generated enduring merchandise and cultural references.[22]Broadway and stage work
Herlihy co-authored the book for the Broadway musical adaptation of his 1998 film The Wedding Singer, partnering with Chad Beguelin to translate the story of a jilted wedding singer in 1985 New Jersey into a stage production featuring new music by Matthew Sklar and additional lyrics by Beguelin.[25] The show opened on April 27, 2006, at the Al Hirschfeld Theatre after previews, retaining core elements of the film's romantic comedy while expanding into musical format with period-specific 1980s references, pop culture nods, and ensemble numbers.[25][26] Herlihy incorporated two original songs from the film—"Somebody Kill Me" and "Grow Old With You"—which he co-wrote with Adam Sandler, integrating them to preserve the heartfelt, nostalgic tone of the protagonist's journey from heartbreak to redemption.[25] This adaptation highlighted his ability to adapt screen-driven humor and character arcs for live theater, focusing on accessible entertainment through pun-filled dialogue, innuendo, and wordplay evocative of the era, without altering the underlying causal dynamics of the plot's romantic entanglements.[27] The production completed 285 performances before closing on December 31, 2006, earning five Tony Award nominations, including for Best Musical, Best Original Score, and Best Book of a Musical, though it did not achieve the prolonged commercial run of Herlihy's film successes.[25][28] This stage work marked Herlihy's primary contribution to Broadway, demonstrating a shift from cinematic scripting to libretto writing while maintaining fidelity to the source material's empirical appeal to audiences favoring lighthearted, era-specific escapism over more experimental theatrical forms.[29]Key works and contributions
Major film credits as writer
Herlihy's screenwriting career is marked by frequent collaborations with Adam Sandler, yielding credited work on at least 13 films that collectively generated over $1.4 billion in worldwide box office revenue.[30][31] His scripts consistently employ irreverent comedy to satirize authority figures and pretentious social norms, often centering narratives around underdog protagonists navigating absurd challenges through loyalty to friends and family.[32] This approach is evident from his early 1990s breakthroughs onward, blending fantasy elements with grounded relational dynamics in vehicles tailored to Sandler's persona. Key credited films include:| Film | Year | Writing Role | Notes |
|---|---|---|---|
| Billy Madison | 1995 | Co-writer (with Adam Sandler) | Story of a wealthy but immature adult forced to repeat grades K-12, mocking educational elitism and parental indulgence.[5] |
| Happy Gilmore | 1996 | Co-writer (with Adam Sandler) | Hockey player turned golfer derides country club snobbery via chaotic antics and rivalries.[5] |
| The Wedding Singer | 1998 | Writer | Rom-com set in 1980s wedding scene, highlighting romantic mishaps and era-specific cultural mockery.[5] |
| The Waterboy | 1998 | Co-writer (with Adam Sandler and others) | Waterboy becomes football star, lampooning Southern sports machismo and intellectual gatekeeping.[5] |
| Big Daddy | 1999 | Co-writer (with Adam Sandler and others) | Slacker adopts child to impress girlfriend, exploring makeshift family bonds against bureaucratic hurdles.[5] |
| Little Nicky | 2000 | Writer | Satanic spawn saves Hell from rebellion, infusing fantasy horror with buddy-comedy irreverence toward religious tropes.[5] |
| Mr. Deeds | 2002 | Writer | Remake where humble heir battles corporate greed, emphasizing small-town values over urban cynicism.[5] |
| Pixels | 2015 | Screenplay (with Tim Dowling; based on Herlihy's story) | Gamers fight alien invasion mimicking arcade games, ridiculing government incompetence.[33] |
| The Ridiculous 6 | 2015 | Writer | Western spoof with outlaws questing for fortune, parodying genre conventions and historical pretensions.[33] |
| Sandy Wexler | 2017 | Writer | Manager hustles misfit talents in 1990s Hollywood, satirizing showbiz exploitation.[33] |
| Hubie Halloween | 2020 | Writer (with Adam Sandler) | Security guard uncovers town conspiracy, blending holiday horror with community camaraderie mockery.[33] |
| Happy Gilmore 2 | 2025 | Co-writer (with Adam Sandler) | Sequel reviving golf rivalries, extending original's anti-elite sports humor.[2] |