How do you make more than $2 million in one night for a great cause? You get Tom Sherak to run your live auction.
“Sinbad couldn’t be here tonight,” the AMPAS prexy told the crowd at the BevHilton on Oct. 24, “so I am here to twist your arms.”
And twist he did for the Fulfillment Fund Annual Stars Benefit Gala, getting folks to pony up $5,000 scholarship pledges to support the org’s main cause of helping low-income kids go to college. Sherak started with his ex-partner, and the night’s honoree, Paramount’s Rob Moore, who made three pledges. J. J. Abrams and Jeffrey Katzenberg stepped up, Jack Giarraputo did too; Brad Grey took six, to which Adam Sandler responded, “We’ll purchase — fuck you! — 10!”
Even Sacha Baron Cohen and wife Isla Fisher went big, pledging for six, with Cohen saying, “I do this for you, Tom Sherak, who banned me from the Oscars.”
Sandler said of the night’s honoree, “Rob Moore went to Pepperdini College and majored in sneaky business moves and hair loss. Not everyone goes home and sleeps on a pile of cash, you rich bastards. When I was a kid, my parents talked about the importance of education. I did not listen. Now I have nine houses!”
