Tim Herlihy The Wedding Singer (1998)

Tim Herlihy was thirty-one years old when The Wedding Singer opened in February 1998. He had been Adam Sandler's writing partner since their NYU years, had spent the mid-1990s as a writer for Saturday Night Live, and had co-written Billy Madison (1995) and Happy Gilmore (1996) — two films that established the Sandler-Herlihy comedy template before The Wedding Singer applied it to romance. The Wedding Singer gave Herlihy his first solo screenwriting credit and his first chance to construct a romantic-comedy plot. It also gave him a structural problem he could not solve, and the public lesson of being doctored — and then restored — by Carrie Fisher.

NYU, SNL, and the Sandler partnership

Herlihy attended NYU at the same time as Sandler, Frank Coraci, and Allen Covert. After law school at NYU and a brief practice career, he reconnected with Sandler at SNL, where he wrote sketches from 1993 through 1995 — including the original "Opera Man" segments, "Lunchlady Land," and "Canteen Boy." When Sandler moved to features, Herlihy followed.

The pre-Wedding Singer Sandler-Herlihy comedies are:

  • Billy Madison (1995, co-written with Sandler)
  • Happy Gilmore (1996, co-written with Sandler)
  • Bulletproof (1996, uncredited contributions)

Both Billy Madison and Happy Gilmore established the Sandler-Herlihy voice — soft-spoken protagonist, sudden rage outbursts, comic underdogs against caricatured villains — that The Wedding Singer deliberately modulated for the romantic register.

The Wedding Singer as solo credit

Herlihy was the sole credited screenwriter on The Wedding Singer. The premise was Sandler's; the 1985 setting was Herlihy's contribution.

"Sandler always had this idea of a wedding singer who got stood up at the altar, and then had to go back to doing weddings." — Frank Coraci, Yahoo Entertainment (2023)

"As we were working on it, I don't even know if we set out to do a romantic comedy, but it just kind of got romantic." — Tim Herlihy, Yahoo Entertainment (2023)

The second-act wall and the Carrie Fisher pass

Herlihy's draft established the premise efficiently but stalled in the middle. The romantic-comedy structural problem — the audience knows the ending, so the journey has to generate enough peaks, valleys, and near-misses to sustain tension — was new to him.

"I kind of didn't know where to go." — Tim Herlihy, Yahoo Entertainment (2023)

Carrie Fisher, one of Hollywood's most active uncredited script doctors, was hired to address the female roles and the romantic structure. Fisher rewrote substantially. Herlihy was temporarily removed from the project, in the standard studio arrangement.

"I got fired. I mean, you're not really fired cause you're still paid the full amount." — Tim Herlihy, Yahoo Entertainment (2023)

Fisher's draft fixed the structure but did not match Sandler's voice. The dialogue was restored to Herlihy's almost entirely; Fisher's structural blueprint stayed.

"When she handed in her draft, we were heartbroken because she really changed all the dialogue and it wasn't Adam's voice, really. It was her voice." — Tim Herlihy, Yahoo Entertainment (2023)

"I think there's only one line of Carrie's left in the movie. But she did that structural stuff that really saved our bacon in the second act." — Tim Herlihy, Yahoo Entertainment (2023)

The post-Wedding Singer Sandler-Herlihy filmography

After The Wedding Singer, Herlihy continued as Sandler's primary writing partner through the commercial peak years and beyond. His credits include:

  • The Waterboy (1998, co-written with Sandler)
  • Big Daddy (1999, co-written with Sandler and Steve Franks)
  • Little Nicky (2000)
  • Mr. Deeds (2002)
  • Anger Management (2003, story)
  • 50 First Dates (2004, co-written with George Wing)
  • The Longest Yard (2005, screenplay)
  • Click (2006, co-written with Steve Koren)
  • I Now Pronounce You Chuck and Larry (2007, screenplay)
  • Bedtime Stories (2008)
  • That's My Boy (2012)
  • Grown Ups 2 (2013)
  • Blended (2014)
  • Pixels (2015, co-written)
  • numerous Netflix-era Sandler comedies

The partnership has lasted longer than nearly any other comedy writing team in Hollywood and produced more theatrical comedies than any single Sandler-circle credit pairing.

The Broadway musical adaptation

Herlihy co-wrote the book of the Wedding Singer Broadway musical with Chad Beguelin. The show opened April 27, 2006 at the Al Hirschfeld Theatre, received five Tony Award nominations including Best Book of a Musical, and ran 284 performances before closing December 31, 2006. The book retained most of Herlihy's screenplay structure while adding original songs by Matthew Sklar and Beguelin.

The musical is the only Sandler-Herlihy property to receive a Broadway adaptation. Herlihy's name on the book credit is the most direct sign of how thoroughly he is the structural author of The Wedding Singer on top of the dialogue.

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