Word: sandler
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Apatow's new movie, Funny People, is the one he hopes will turn him from a mass producer of comedies into a filmmaker. It has a tragic premise: Sandler plays a lonely, selfish comedian who has received a terminal-disease diagnosis. It's got no set piece to assure laughs - no chest-waxing like in Virgin, no crowning baby like in Knocked Up. It's complicated enough that it's the first movie Apatow has made that has a bad title, a bad poster and bad commercials. And if it doesn't do well, the creative freedom he has earned...
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...
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...
...head and agonizes over the final details. On the last day to make changes to the Funny People print, he is sitting in the office building in Santa Monica, Calif., that his assistants call the Apatower, mulling over which of several jokes to put in. One dilemma: Should Sandler dislike Mann's elder daughter because she doesn't laugh at his jokes or because she's old enough to have her period? Mind you, this is Apatow's real daughter who's playing the character - so when he asks me, as a warm body in the room, for my opinion...
Apatow often serves as a mentor to the young people in his comedy troupe. The advice he hands out is exactly what he learned from watching Carrey and Sandler: They succeeded by writing their own movies to star in, so start typing. He barely knew Jonah Hill, now 25, when he hooked him up with a scriptwriting deal. "I was living at home, getting my tonsils taken out, and I was getting an e-mail from Judd saying, Here's your Universal movie deal. Now write down 100 ideas," says Hill. "My parents were like, 'Is this guy touching...