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After he struggled for two decades in the worlds of stand-up comedy, television and movies, Apatow's plugging away suddenly paid off: he broke out as the creator of a genre of foulmouthed straight-man-love movies - the bromance. The first movie he directed, 2005's The 40 Year-Old Virgin, earned more than four times its cost at the U.S. box office. This enabled Apatow to produce all the scripts he'd been studiously stockpiling, making seven movies in 2007 and '08 - Knocked Up (which he also directed), Superbad, Walk Hard: The Dewey Cox Story, Forgetting Sarah Marshall...
...watching television. As a kid, he'd push his tape recorder against the TV so he could transcribe every episode of Saturday Night Live. At his high school radio station, he wangled interviews with comedians like Jerry Seinfeld, Jay Leno and Steve Allen; at 15 he started doing stand-up at clubs. He's such a giant comedy nerd that after proudly playing me snippets of his Garry Shandling interview from high school, he takes me into his office in his huge Pacific Palisades, Calif., house to show off a collection of autographed photos he just bought in New York...
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...
When the Democrats lost Congress in 1994, some Representatives blamed the defeat on a party they felt had shifted too far to the left. These disgruntled Democrats decided to form a coalition to stand against their more liberal party members. They held meetings in the office of former Louisiana Representative Billy Tauzin, who reportedly had one of Cajun artist George Rodrigue's famous Blue Dog paintings hanging on his wall. The Blue Dog Coalition's website also lists as an inspiration the 1928 term Yellow Dog, used to refer to a Southern Democrat who was more likely to vote...
Booker staunchly defends the salaries. "I stand by any personnel decision I've made," he says. He points to a reduction of Newark's budget deficit, from $180 million to $73 million, according to the city, as a healthy return on his talent investments. A more professional and efficient city hall has helped Newark collect an extra $10 million in property taxes this year in spite of the foreclosure crisis. Further, Booker has proposed a 2% pay cut for all non-police and non-firefighter employees making more than $100,000 and is pushing for mandatory furloughs...