Verne Lundquist: "I Was Worried About Happy Gilmore"
Verne Lundquist, who was my first round pick in last week’s TBL CFB media draft, was the guest on the latest installment of the Just Not Sports podcast (the hosts’ backgrounds are here). For the first half of the podcast, Verne discussed his love for classical music, which runs far deeper than you probably imagined.
After that, they got to talking about his roles in Last Boy Scout and, around the 44-minute mark below, Happy Gilmore. With regards to the latter, he said he was “worried” about it for a few reasons. Though he was away from CBS at Turner for a few years in the 90’s when the former network lost NFL rights, he was nevertheless concerned about what the reaction from the people at The Masters, which was pretty overtly lampooned in the film, was going to be.
However, he said he never heard anything – “ever a word” – about it from them, or the people who ran CBS or Turner. He did, however, get some blowback from Pat Haden, who he says remains a close friend to this day. Verne characterized Haden as speaking to him with “phony indignation,” saying, “Are you at all embarrassed about being seen in a movie like that? You should be.” This apparently occurred at a game at the old Giants Stadium, and shortly after the interaction Verne was recognized for his role in the film by someone in the crowd.
A couple other interesting tidbits: Verne hadn’t seen the parts of the script not involving himself, and didn’t realize what the first half of the film was gonna be like. “I thought, holy cow, this is some kind of vile movie,” he recalls thinking when he saw the premiere.