Word: apatow
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After high school, Apatow moved to Los Angeles to go to USC but dropped out after two years to focus on his stand-up act. He was tight with Sandler, Carrey and David Spade but came to feel that he couldn't compete with them onstage. So he started writing jokes for Tom Arnold and Roseanne Barr and, after approaching Ben Stiller in line at an Elvis Costello concert, took the helm of the Fox sketch comedy The Ben Stiller Show at the age of 24. There Apatow surprised everyone with his confidence and willingness to fight with network executives...
...fought even harder as an executive producer of Freaks and Geeks, the critically acclaimed high school series created by his friend Paul Feig, which lasted only one season. When Apatow's next show, the sitcom Undeclared, was canceled, he sent a messenger to the Fox executive responsible - the same guy who canceled The Ben Stiller Show - with a copy of a positive review from TIME and a note expressing his disbelief in extremely graphic terms...
...Apatow was equally persevering in his personal life. He met his wife Leslie Mann, who co-stars with Sandler and Seth Rogen in Funny People, on the set of The Cable Guy. "I didn't think I would date him. I thought I'd send him on dates with my friends," she says during a Funny People recording session on their 15th wedding anniversary, which she and Apatow later celebrated by seeing The Hangover. "But he'd send his sister to keep telling me all the women he was dating. It was all part of his plan." (See pictures...
...Feedback Machine For all his master planning, Apatow as a moviemaker is known for his collaboration. His least favorite part of the process is writing, which for Funny People involved his speaking the characters' parts into a tape recorder. Even then, he'd call people for feedback. "The moment you think of a joke is the best moment," he says. "I put on a big show when I write something I think is funny. I'll talk about it a lot and call people and tell them, 'I thought of this joke where Steve Carell pees in his own face...
...real writing starts after casting, when Apatow re-creates his characters based on the actors. He's not interested in having anyone do a Meryl Streep-like transformation. "Initially my character in Sarah Marshall was an English author, a bookworm character," says Russell Brand, the English comedian who played a rock star in the movie. "Eventually it was decided that no one could expect me to do any actual acting. I think he's very interested in truth, so he has a good intuition about people's essence." Sean (Diddy) Combs co-stars in next year's Apatow-produced...