Judd Apatow

Screenwriter, film director, and producer

• Born: December 6, 1967
• Place of Birth: Flushing, New York

Apatow is the creative force behind a series of critically acclaimed television series and box-office hits. His popular and financially successful films are male-bonding comedies, or bromances, that expose the vulgar as well as the sentimental sides of men.

Early Life

Judd Apatow was born to a nonreligious Jewish family on Long Island, New York. When Apatow was in the eighth grade, his parents divorced and the family split: his brother went to live with his grandparents; his sister went to live with his mother; and Apatow went to live with his father, seeing his mother only on weekends.

In high school, Apatow had a radio show, Club Comedy, on which he interviewed comedians. His mother worked at a Long Island comedy club, and Apatow used her contacts to invite performers onto his show. He interviewed such comedy artists as Steve Allen and Howard Stern and such up-and-coming comedians as Jerry Seinfeld, Jay Leno, and Garry Shandling. His obsession with comedy grew, and he spent hours watching Saturday Night Live episodes to learn what was and was not funny. In 1985 Apatow began his own stand-up career in clubs on Long Island. Upon high school graduation, he enrolled at the University of Southern California (USC) as a film major.

While at USC, Apatow worked on developing his stage act, performing in comedy clubs in Los Angeles and making friends with many comedians, such as Adam Sandler, Kevin Nealon, David Spade, and Jim Carrey. He dropped out of USC in 1987 to pursue comedy full time. He got a job washing dishes at a comedy club in order to be near the action, and he moved into an apartment with Sandler, a close friend. He continued to develop his stand-up act, but he became increasingly aware that, although he wrote funny jokes, he was not able to create a comfortable and recognizable performance persona. He realized that his friends were much better at stand-up, and he began writing jokes professionally for Tom Arnold, Roseanne Barr, and others.

Life’s Work

In 1991, while waiting in line to get into an Elvis Costello show, he met Ben Stiller, who was about to begin the MTV-sponsored Ben Stiller Show. Stiller hired Apatow as chief writer and assistant producer. Although the show lasted only one season, 1991–92, it earned Apatow his first Emmy Award for best comedy writing. In 1992, Apatow was featured on Home Box Office’s Fifteenth Annual Young Comedians Show, but, after more than fifteen years trying to be successful at stand-up, he realized that his stand-up career was over. Then, in 1992, Apatow was hired to write and direct for Garry Shandling’s The Larry Sanders Show, where he worked until 1995. During this period, he received six more Emmy Award nominations and was awarded two CableACE Awards for comedy writing. He then worked on the animated series The Critic for one year.

While writing for television, Apatow began working on films, writing Celtic Pride (1996) and The Cable Guy (1996). Although they were not box-office successes, they helped Apatow move from comedy-skit writer to screenplay writer and director.

His big breakthrough came in 1999, when he and Paul Feig produced the television series Freaks and Geeks. Although a great critical hit, the show was canceled after one season. It continues to have a large cult following, and it was named one of the one hundred best television series of all time by Time magazine. After that show’s cancellation, Apatow created another underappreciated series, Undeclared, starring many of the young actors from the previous series.

Realizing that television was not the perfect place for his brand of humor, Apatow contacted Steve Carell, whom Apatow had directed in the Will Ferrell film Anchorman: The Ron Burgundy Story (2004). At the time Apatow had asked Carell if he had any ideas for a film. Carell responded with a plot based on his stand-up character, a middle-aged guy who had never had sex. The two went on to cowrite The Forty-Year-Old Virgin (2005) based on this material, which Apatow also directed. The film was a big hit, earning both critical and popular respect; it made more than four times its production cost. This success allowed Apatow to begin production on a backlog of projects. Between 2004 and 2009 he produced, wrote, or directed more than ten hit films, including Knocked Up (2007), Superbad (2007), Walk Hard: The Dewey Cox Story (2007), Forgetting Sarah Marshall (2008), Step Brothers (2008), Pineapple Express (2008), and Funny People (2009).

The films were all created with Apatow’s group of favorite performers and writers, known as the Jewish Apatowniks and the Jew-Tang Clan. Working with people he met on Freaks and Geeks, such as Seth Rogen, Jason Segel, and James Franco, Apatow created a circle of friends and coworkers whom he encouraged to write and to direct. With the addition of Jonah Hill, Evan Goldberg, Sandler, and Paul Rudd, among others, Apatow’s group became the nucleus of a male-dominated, all-Jewish creative force in Hollywood known as Apatown.

Between 2010 and 2014 Apatow worked on several projects, including the films Bridesmaids (2011), This Is 40 (2012), Anchorman 2: The Legend Continues (2013), and the HBO series, Girls (2012–). The show, which stars its creator, Lena Dunham, won several honors, including prime-time Emmy nominations in 2012 and 2013, the BAFTA TV Award for best international show in 2012, and the Writers Guild of America award for best new television series.

Apatow conitnued working through the late 2010s, most notably writing and producing the hit Netflix series Love (2016-2018). In 2018, Apatow directed the documentary The Zen Diaries of Gary Shandling. In 2023, the artist realest Bob & Don: A Love Story.

Significance

Apatow became a powerhouse in Hollywood because of his personal achievements and the enormous success of his creative circle. He actively mentors new talent, encouraging young comedians to break out of stand-up and begin writing, directing, and producing their own films. Because comedians often are not conventional leading-man types and starring roles are rarely available to them, Apatow believes they should create their own films, with themselves as central characters. He took the teenage Rogen, Segel, and Hill under his wing years ago, and they ended up producing hit films based on their screenplays in which they star.

Bibliography

Apatow, Judd. Interview by Brian Hiatt. Rolling Stone 17 Jan. 2013: 27. Academic Search Complete. Web. 24 Dec. 2014.

Armstrong, Stephen. "Smile for the Camera, Honey; Midlife Crisis? Turn It into a Film. That's What Hollywood Does. Judd Apatow Talks Therapy with Stephen Armstrong." Sunday Times (London) 17 Feb. 2013. NewsBank. Web. 24 Dec. 2014.

Hymowitz, Kay. “The Child-Man.” The Dallas Morning News, February 1, 2008.

"Judd Apatow." Internet Movie Database, 2024, www.imdb.com/name/nm0031976/. Accessed 3 Sept. 2024.

Rodrick, Stephen. “Judd Apatow’s Family Values.” The New York Times, May 27, 2007.

Stein, Joel. “Taking Judd Apatow Seriously.” Time (July 20, 2009).

Stein, Joel. "Working from Home." Time 180.17 (2012): 52–55. Academic Search Complete. Web. 24 Dec. 2014.