What Adam Sandler in Happy Gilmore taught me about content creation
Recently, my little brother and his fiance came up from Sydney to spend the weekend with the rest of my family. We spent the day catching up, playing barefoot bowls (that is harder than it looks) and eventually, we decided to wind down with a movie. The unanimous choice? Happy Gilmore.
Happy Gilmore is one of those movies that, no matter how many times I watch it (I’m not ashamed to admit it must be close to 20 times) it never loses its charm. Its blend of humour and absurdity brings everlasting joy. It got me thinking about what Adam Sandler's character in Happy Gilmore can teach us about content creation.
Embrace the Silly Fun
We live in an era where content can sometimes feel robotic, overly structured, and a bit lifeless. When scrolling through YouTube, Instagram, or TikTok, I often find myself questioning the authenticity of the content creators. There is a lot of effort put into curating a certain image, making things appear perfect, but where’s the fun? Where's the silly side? This is the first lesson I learned from Happy Gilmore and Adam Sandler more broadly—embrace the silly.
One of my favourite content creators who gets this right is Link and Rhett of Good Mythical Morning and other offshoots. They are just so unabashedly ridiculous, and it’s refreshing. One video in particular springs to mind where they’re trying on “air bag vests” that are designed to explode around you if you fall over (aimed at the elderly) and I almost did a whizz in my pants watching that video.
It reminds me that we need more of that—more silliness, more idiocy, more joy. It's not only about delivering valuable content but also about being a genuine human with multiple dimensions. If you're a content creator, bring out the goofy side. Let your audience see the real you.
Be Unashamedly Yourself
Adam Sandler’s character in Happy Gilmore is unapologetically himself. He swears, he’s rough around the edges, and he is so authentic it makes me cringe numerous times throughout the film. While I'm not suggesting that you necessarily need to swear or adopt an abrasive personality, the core idea here is about authenticity. Don't create a persona that's not you. If you're quirky, show it; if you have a unique viewpoint, share it. Authenticity can set you apart in a sea of monotonous content.
Embrace Multiple Facets of Yourself
In the movie, Happy Gilmore insists on introducing himself as a hockey player, even while he is killing it playing golf. This brings to light an essential lesson: don't pigeonhole yourself. Life can take you on various paths, and just because you’ve been known for one thing doesn’t mean you can't explore and excel in others.
For instance, I was a touring musician for over a decade. That's all I wanted to be from a young age. I thought of myself exclusively as a singer. But why can't I also be a successful business owner running a podcast production company? Embracing multiple facets of yourself not only enriches your life but also makes your content more relatable and diverse.
Visit Your Happy Place
A notable scene in Happy Gilmore is when Happy is encouraged to go to his “happy place” when he’s struggling to make a putt. For me, a happy place is more about mindset—a state where creativity can thrive and problem-solving is more fluid. Having a positive mindset can be a game-changer in content creation. Goals become more achievable and challenges more manageable. Negativity breeds limitations, but a happy, optimistic mindset fosters creativity and productivity.
Wrap Up with Ridiculousness
So, why not let a silly, stupid movie like Happy Gilmore inspire you to bring more joy, authenticity, and multifacetedness to your content creation? Whether you're creating podcasts, YouTube videos, or any other form of content, allowing yourself to be ridiculous if you feel like it can open new avenues and make your content genuinely engaging.
I encourage you to watch Happy Gilmore or any other dumb, fun movie that can give you a fresh perspective. It’s often in these seemingly trivial moments that we learn the most significant lessons.
Transcript:
-
[00:00:00] Brianna: It's story time.
[00:00:05] Just recently, my little brother came up from Sydney. Hadn't seen him in a little while. Love to see him when he can come up. And his fiance came too. Every Sunday morning, we get together as a family and we all hang out. We have a beautiful meal that we all bring things to. And the rest of our family lives up here in Brisbane, but my little brother lives in Sydney.
[00:00:27] So he misses out on all the family fun times and it just makes me sad. Miss him dearly. He came up from Sydney and we were having a lovely day together doing all sorts of things. We decided to watch a movie and the movie we landed on was Happy Gilmore. Happy Gilmore is one of those movies that I will just love forever and ever and ever.
[00:00:49] I've probably seen it maybe 15 times or more and it never gets old. It's never not happy. Funny. And it got me thinking about what Adam Sandler from Happy Gilmore actually taught me about content creation. So I'm going to get into that today. If you have not seen Happy Gilmore, this episode will make no sense.
[00:01:09] So go and watch Happy Gilmore. It is a very stupid movie and I love it. The overall premise of it is that we've got Adam Sandler as the main character who is, is a hockey player who wants to be a professional hockey player, ends up getting into golf and is actually awesome at it. It's just so dumb. It is such a dumb film.
[00:01:32] And this is the first thing I want to say. Things have gone a bit just boring in a lot of ways. When I look at all the content that I see on YouTube, when I look at all the people that I follow on Instagram and on Tik TOK and a bunch of social channels, there's a bit of meh. Do you feel the same way? I feel like there's a lot of that.
[00:01:51] There's actually a lot of people just creating content. They're trying to present themselves a certain way. They're trying to look a certain way, trying to be a certain person. [00:02:00] And I often think to myself, are you actually real? What part of you is a real person? Not that I expect them to give everything away as to who they are, but I want to connect with people more.
[00:02:10] And I don't, I don't, believe that everyone is as boring as they present. Everyone is a structured, everyone is as like segmented and scheduled and planned as they present on YouTube or on podcasts. Even some of the interviews and things that I listened to, it's like they get deep into conversation. They ask big questions and they get big answers, but where's the silly fun?
[00:02:35] That's what I want to know. That's the first thing I've learned from Happy Gilmore, Adam Sandler. Where is the silly fun? Where are idiots being idiots? I think probably Good Mythical Morning does it really well. For me, that really resonates because they're just stupid. Like there's that episode that they have where they're trialing the vests that are for old people.
[00:02:57] So if they fall over, they explode and they protect them like a, like a crash test sort of dummy airbag situation. That is hilarious. That is really, really funny. I could not stop myself from even just thinking about it. Go watch that video because it's really good. That's the kind of stuff that I feel like is missing even from normal business.
[00:03:19] Like if you have a podcast or a YouTube channel that you're talking about things that are a little bit more serious. Why is the whole thing serious? Why is the whole thing structured in a way where you actually come off seeming like you're just a boring person? Are you a boring person? Maybe you are, okay?
[00:03:38] And if you think that you are, I challenge you to get a little bit silly. To bring a little bit more of your actual personality out. And if you feel like, oh, you don't have that in you, go watch some stuff that is dumb. Like Happy Gilmore. And just let yourself laugh. Let yourself feel ridiculous, because to me, that's how I've [00:04:00] lived my whole life.
[00:04:01] I'm, I am a bit of an idiot, really. Like I'm a doofus. I know that and I'm totally fine with it. And so I feel like I can still deliver. Content. I can still deliver value. I can still be an intelligent human being that also has a personality. That's the thing that I feel like is missing, especially from podcasts that I listened to, where I feel like, just give me some more of you.
[00:04:26] Give me something that feels like I can grab onto it. And then I know a little bit more about you that you feel like a human that has more than one dimension. So that's the first thing that I learned from watching Happy Gilmore just recently. Where is the stupidity? We need more dumb, silly fun. You can still be a real person.
[00:04:48] You can still have serious feelings. You can still have emotions, but you can also be a fun human being. The next thing I learned from Happy Gilmore is this character, Adam Sandler, he is unashamedly himself. And that's something else that I think is missing a lot of the time is that you don't feel confident enough to actually just be yourself, to just present yourself as you are.
[00:05:13] He's swearing all over the place. He's just being. Being him. I don't swear. I mean, I'm not the kind of person that feels like I need to do that. But what I'm trying to say here is that it doesn't feel like he's putting on a persona at all. That's important for you as a content creator to think the same way.
[00:05:31] Don't put on a persona that isn't actually you. Don't think that you need to be something that you're really not. Just be And know that people will accept that maybe not everyone, but whoever you want to engage with you, whoever really understands you will accept that you are who you are. Happy Gilmore also mentions in the film quite a few times that he is a hockey player that is just playing [00:06:00] golf at the moment.
[00:06:00] He's introducing himself as a hockey player. That's playing golf. Sometimes we get attached to being a certain thing, um, When in fact there is more out there for us if we just let it happen. Sometimes that can be sad. You think of yourself one way, you thought you were a certain type of person, you thought this was where you were going to go in life, and then you You don't end up going that way.
[00:06:27] It can make you feel really like you don't understand who your personality is. You don't understand who you are because your personality was attached to a thing. If we use me as the example, I was a touring musician for over a decade. All I did. From a very young age, all I wanted to do from a very young age was be a singer.
[00:06:50] I wanted to be a princess first when I was really little. Like I thought that was a job that I could just do. But after I got over that, all I really wanted to do was be a singer, was be a musician. And I did that for a long time. And I love it. And I still love it. I will always love that. But it doesn't mean that that's all I am.
[00:07:15] It doesn't mean that I have to attach or be sad or, or feel like I, I can't, I can't do anything else because that's who I was. That's the personality. That's who everyone knew me as, as this professional musician who wrote songs and toured them and did all the things. Why can't I also be this? Why can't I also be a business owner who runs a successful podcast production company who is an audio engineer who, you know, multifaceted.
[00:07:44] Why can't I also be this? Over here. I can. The same goes for you. You can be this thing, and you can also be this thing, and you can also be all these other things in between. Just because you did a degree and you got the skills in one particular thing, why can't you [00:08:00] then also be something else? Sometimes this is a bigger conversation, where you've invested not only time, but money into perhaps a degree where you've done a bunch of years and it's been expensive.
[00:08:14] And you've got a student loan that's associated with it and all this time into maybe, maybe becoming a lawyer or something. And then you get to the end of it and you're like, well, far out. I mean, I don't love that, but I feel like maybe I have to keep doing it because I've invested so much time and money into it.
[00:08:33] But you're not really happy or you're not really getting anywhere because you're not really passionate about that thing. And that's something that I learned from Happy Gilmore. You can think you're one thing, but why can't you also be this thing? Don't get attached to being any one thing. Allow yourself to be a human with many interests, with many facets.
[00:08:55] Allow yourself to become good at many skills. And that just brings Is more fun for you. It's just more fun for everyone involved. You're a more fully formed person. It can be hard if you're doing a nine to five job and you know, and then you get to the weekend and you've got kids and you, you know, you can't develop more of your things.
[00:09:13] But if you're really truly interested in becoming more in doing more things in associating yourself is to more than just the one aspect of you, then you'll make the time for it. This might be the kick up the pants that you need to actually do it. The other thing I learned from Heffy Gilmore was this concept of going to your happy place.
[00:09:34] This is something I think about a lot even before watching that movie for the billionth time. Having somewhere, it's kind of like a vision boarding or having a mindset or a journal or something where your mindset's in the right place to achieve the goals that you want to achieve. I have many goals. I have many things that I want to achieve here at Bambi Media, within the other businesses that we are working on, within the [00:10:00] songwriting and the new album that I'm putting together.
[00:10:02] All of these things are goals, but if I come to it from a mindset of a happy place, then I can be more creative in troubleshooting things when things go wrong. If I'm coming to it with negativity, with a kind of bad place, where in the movie she's making out with Shooter McGavin and also his grandma is making out with Shooter McGavin and everything's bad and then he can't hit the ball properly because he's got so much negativity.
[00:10:30] In his head, same thing goes. If you have a negative mindset around something, then you get stuck. You get stuck in achieving the things you actually want to achieve because you can't think outside the negativity. If you come to it from a happy place, from a mindset of joy, from the possibilities, then you can be a lot more creative in what you actually bring out, in how you can troubleshoot an issue that you're facing.
[00:10:55] Isn't that just great? I mean, it's, it's a movie. This is a stupid movie. This is a really dumb, dumb movie. But if you allow yourself a moment to think about it, it's teaching you a lot of lessons. Allow yourself to be ridiculous. Know that you have more facets to yourself than what you're currently probably showing.
[00:11:16] Bring more personality to everything that you're doing as a creator. Be sillier. Be unashamedly yourself. Allow yourself to be more than one thing. That's all I wanted to say here today is this, that I was reflecting on this particular movie and the wonderful time I had watching it. for the upteenth time.
[00:11:39] If you haven't watched it, I implore you to go and watch it, or something that is equally as ridiculous. There are many ridiculous movies. There are many ridiculous things that you can watch. Allow yourself to do it and then be free, feel freer. To be yourself and your content will benefit from that. And your audience will [00:12:00] benefit from it as well.
[00:12:01] If you like this kind of content, hit the like button, the subscribe button, leave me a comment. Are there any other stupid movies that I should watch? I would love to watch some things that I haven't watched before. I really like, uh, what is it? Bad guys. What's that movie with Will Ferrell and Mark Wahlberg?
[00:12:19] I'm going to look it up. Hang on. The Other Guys. That's the movie. I just looked it up. That one is also just so silly. It's so, I mean, any movie with Will Ferrell is pretty ridiculous, but that one particularly, just the play between the two of them, I find just the best. Silly and fun. If there's any other movies or podcast episodes or YouTube influences that you think I should watch that will allow that freedom, that silliness, that dumb vibe to wash over me, then please put them in the comments and I will definitely go and check them out.
BAMBY MEDIA LINKS:
GEAR WE USE HERE AT BAMBY MEDIA:
Aputure Amaran 200d LED Video Light
