The king of Geeks
AS an 11-year-old growing up on Long Island, Judd Apatow began each week by studying the newspaper's TV section and highlighting all talk show guests of Mike Douglas, Dinah Shore and company. He spent afternoons holed up in his room watching TV, hanging out in his head with Charles Nelson Reilly. "I couldn't have had more fun in the saddest, lonely way," he says. "There was a period when I would get home at 3 and watch TV until 11, and I couldn't be happier." Eventually his parents became concerned. "In eighth grade I made some friends who drove dirt bikes. My parents were deathly afraid of dirt bikes, but they were so thrilled that I had a hobby outside of my room that they bought me a dirt bike and got me out of Merv Griffin."
Along the way, he learned to do impressions of Henry Kissinger, kept notebooks of jokes like "How come all the people on 'Gilligan's Island' had so many clothes if they were just on a three-hour cruise?" and transcribed tapes of "Saturday Night Live." He was consumed by show business -- never more so than when his grandfather, who owned a jazz record label, took him to see his pal, the zaftig comedian Totie Fields, when Judd was 9. "Here was this woman -- she had only one leg. She playing to a standing ovation because she's hilarious. I only wanted to be a comedian. Everything I've done happened because I couldn't be a great comedian."
Apatow is only partly joking. Sitting in his Santa Monica office, the 39-year-old writer-director-producer appears to be just another vaguely neurotic, schlubby, bearded comedy guy -- the kind that seems to grow like brush sage in certain precincts of town. He appears utterly ordinary. But perhaps that's part of the shtick. In actuality, Apatow is known in town as the Mayor of Comedy -- the guy with some rare combination of talent, self-assurance and the deft ability to handle big egos that has allowed him to befriend and collaborate with every major comic of his generation, from his former roommate Adam Sandler to Jim Carrey, Garry Shandling, Ben Stiller and Will Ferrell, to a new generation of comedians whose careers he's fostered, including Steve Carell and Seth Rogen.
- Kevin Smith directs 'Zack and Miri Make a Porno' (and his weight) Oct 30, 2008
- Humor Too Dark for Its Own Good? Jun 25, 1996
- Where it all began for Judd Apatow and Wes Anderson Nov 23, 2008
