Word: star
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Apatow casts his long-ago roommate Adam Sandler as George Simmons, a star of movie comedies who has been diagnosed with a terminal disease, and who hires Ira Wright (Seth Rogen), a struggling young comedian, as his assistant. In what he presumes to be his last days, George realizes he's essentially friendless and loveless, and tries to rekindle the old affair with Laura (Leslie Mann), then a young actress, now a wife and mother...
...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...
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...
...neither a star nor a mogul nor a person caught up, Henry Louis Gates-style, in a controversial news event, Ben Silverman drew a lot of media attention. His job was to find or help create hit shows - the kind of network position that usually brings power and wealth, but not notoriety. But Silverman's outsize personality - big parties, big talk, big ideas - and his youth made him a magnet for gossip, anecdotes and media speculation. Problem was, two years into his term, NBC had exactly zero hit shows. And people noticed...
...Mason's lingering impact will be felt most strongly through her more than 25 plays about the black experience in America. One of her most highly regarded works, A Star Ain't Nothin' but a Hole in Heaven, portrayed a college-bound woman as she becomes aware of the price civil rights activists paid for the opportunities she is afforded. In 1977 the drama earned Mason the first Lorraine Hansberry Playwriting Award...