Judd Apatow
Judd Apatow (/ˈæpətaʊ/; born December 6, 1967)[1] is an American director, producer and screenwriter, best known for his work in comedy films. He is the founder of Apatow Productions, through which he produced and directed the films The 40-Year-Old Virgin (2005), Knocked Up (2007), Funny People (2009), This Is 40 (2012), Trainwreck (2015), The King of Staten Island (2020), and The Bubble (2022).
Judd Apatow
December 6, 1967
- Director
- producer
- writer
- comedian
1985–present
Through Apatow Productions he produced and developed the television series Freaks and Geeks (1999–2000), Undeclared (2001–2002), Funny or Die Presents (2010–2011), Girls (2012–2017), Love (2016–2018), and Crashing (2017–2019).
Apatow also produced the films The Cable Guy (1996), Anchorman: The Legend of Ron Burgundy (2004), Talladega Nights: The Ballad of Ricky Bobby (2006), Superbad (2007), Pineapple Express (2008), Forgetting Sarah Marshall (2008), Get Him to the Greek (2010), Bridesmaids (2011), Begin Again (2013), Anchorman 2: The Legend Continues (2013), and The Big Sick (2017).
Throughout his career, Apatow has received nominations for 11 Primetime Emmy Awards (two wins), five Writers Guild of America Awards (one win), two Producers Guild of America Awards, one Golden Globe Award, and one Grammy Award.[2]
Early life and education[edit]
One of three children[3] of Maury Apatow, a real-estate developer,[4] and Tamara Shad,[5] who ran the music label Mainstream Records founded by her father, Bob Shad,[3][6] Judd Apatow was born in the Flushing neighborhood of the New York City borough of Queens, and raised in Syosset, New York, on Long Island.[7] His family is Jewish,[8][9] but nonreligious.[10] Apatow has an older brother, Robert, and a younger sister, Mia.[11][12] Their mother died in 2008.[13] His maternal grandmother, Molly, co-starred in his film This Is 40.
When Apatow was 12 years old, his parents divorced. Robert went to live with his maternal grandparents, and Mia went to live with her mother. As a child, Apatow lived mainly with his father, and visited his mother on weekends. Apatow's mother spent a summer working at a comedy club, which is where Judd was first exposed to live stand-up comedy.[14]
Apatow's deep interest in comedy dates back to his childhood; his heroes were Steve Martin, Bill Cosby and the Marx Brothers.[11] Apatow got his comic start washing dishes at the Long Island East Side Comedy Club, and while attending Syosset High School, he played jazz[6] and hosted a program called Comedy Club on the school's 125-watt radio station WKWZ which he created as a way to meet and learn from the comedians he looked up to.[15] He cold-called comedians he admired during this time, managing to interview Steve Allen, Howard Stern, Harold Ramis and John Candy, along with emerging comedians such as Jerry Seinfeld, Steven Wright, and Garry Shandling.[16][17][18][19]
Career[edit]
1985–2003: Stand-up and early work[edit]
Apatow began performing stand-up comedy at age seventeen, during his senior year of high school.[11] In the September 1985 issue of Laugh Factory Magazine, he is listed as an associate editor. After graduating from high school in 1985, he moved to Los Angeles and enrolled in the screenwriting program at University of Southern California.[11][20] While at USC, he organized and hosted a number of on-campus "Comedy Night" events, featuring headliners such as Saturday Night Live performer Kevin Nealon. Apatow introduced the acts at these events with short standup routines of his own. He also began volunteering at (and later producing) benefit concerts for HBO's Comic Relief and performing and seeing standup at the Improv in Hollywood.[11] He dropped out of college during his second year and later moved into an apartment with comedian Adam Sandler, whom he met at the Improv.[11] He competed in the Johnnie Walker Comedy Search in 1989 directed by Saturday Night Live short film producer Neal Marshad.[21]
Shortly thereafter, Apatow was introduced by manager Jimmy Miller to Garry Shandling which resulted in Apatow being hired as a writer for the 1991 Grammy Awards that year, which Shandling hosted.[22] He went on to co-produce comedy specials by Roseanne Arnold, Tom Arnold, and Jim Carrey. In 1992, Apatow appeared on HBO's 15th Annual Young Comedians Special[23] and shortly afterwards went on to co-create and executive produce The Ben Stiller Show for Fox. Apatow had met Stiller outside of an Elvis Costello concert in 1990, and they became friends. Despite critical acclaim and an Emmy Award for Apatow and the rest of the writing staff, Fox canceled the show in 1993.[24]
Apatow went on to join HBO's The Larry Sanders Show in 1993 as a writer and consulting producer, and he later served as a co-executive producer and director of an episode during the show's final season in 1998. He credits Shandling as his mentor for influencing him to write comedy that is more character-driven.[21] Apatow earned six Emmy nominations for his work on Larry Sanders. During this same time, he worked as a consulting producer and staff writer for the animated show The Critic, starring Jon Lovitz.[25]
In 1995, Apatow co-wrote (with Steve Brill) the feature film Heavyweights. Around the same time, Apatow was hired to produce and do an uncredited re-write of the script for the movie The Cable Guy, which was released in 1996 to mixed reviews.[26] It was during the pre-production of the film that Apatow met his future wife, actress Leslie Mann.[27] Apatow did uncredited re-writes on two other Jim Carrey films: Liar Liar and Bruce Almighty.[28] His next script was titled Making Amends, which had Owen Wilson attached to star as a man in Alcoholics Anonymous who decides to apologize to everyone he has ever hurt. However, the film was never made.[26] Apatow did uncredited rewrites of the Adam Sandler films Happy Gilmore and The Wedding Singer.[26] He was also featured in four tracks on Sandler's 1996 comedy album "What the Hell Happened to Me?"[29]
In 1999, Apatow created Sick in the Head, a multi-camera sitcom pilot starring David Krumholtz as a psychiatrist on his first day on the job, Amy Poehler as a suicidal patient, and Kevin Corrigan as Krumholtz's slacker roommate.[30] The show was not picked up by Fox, which freed up Apatow to serve as an executive producer of the award-winning series Freaks and Geeks, which debuted in 1999. He also wrote and directed several episodes of the series. After its cancellation, Apatow was the executive producer and creator of the series Undeclared, which reused Seth Rogen in the main cast and other Freaks and Geeks cast members in recurring roles. Although both shows were quickly canceled, USA Today media critic Susan Wloszczyna called the shows "two of the most acclaimed TV series to ever last only one season".[31]
In 2001, Apatow created North Hollywood, a pilot that featured Jason Segel, Kevin Hart, Seth Rogen, Phil Hendrie, and Judge Reinhold (playing himself). The pilot was not picked up by ABC.[32] In 2002, he co-wrote (with Brent Forrester) a Fox pilot titled Life on Parole, starring David Herman as a dissatisfied parole officer whose roommate happens to be one of his parolees; it was not picked up. Apatow has screened and introduced them at "The Other Network", a festival of un-aired TV pilots produced by Un-Cabaret.[30]
2004–2008: Career breakthrough[edit]
In 2004, Apatow produced the feature film comedy Anchorman: The Legend of Ron Burgundy, starring Will Ferrell and directed by Adam McKay. The film was a box office success. Apatow co-produced the 2013 sequel, Anchorman 2: The Legend Continues.[33] He made his feature directorial debut in 2005 with the comedy The 40-Year-Old Virgin, which he also co-wrote with the film's star, Steve Carell, for Universal Pictures. The film opened at number one at the box office and grossed more than $175 million globally.[26] The comedy garnered numerous awards and nominations, including being named one of AFI's Top Movies of the Year, as well as taking home Best Comedy Movie at the 11th annual Critics' Choice Awards.[34] The 40-Year-Old Virgin also earned Apatow a nomination for Best Original Screenplay from the Writers Guild of America and received four MTV Movie Award nominations, including a win for Carell for Best Comedic Performance.[35] In 2005, Apatow co-wrote with Nicholas Stoller the feature film comedy Fun with Dick and Jane starring Jim Carrey and Téa Leoni. The film went on to gross $205 million worldwide.[36]
His second film, the romantic comedy Knocked Up, was released in June 2007 to wide critical acclaim. Apatow wrote the initial draft of the film on the set of Talladega Nights.[21] The story concerns a slacker and a media personality (Rogen and Heigl, respectively) whose one-night stand results in an unintended pregnancy. In addition to being a critical success, the film was also a commercial hit, continuing Apatow's newfound mainstream success.
Criticism[edit]
In 2007, New York magazine noted that former Apatow associate Mike White was "disenchanted" by Apatow's later films, "objecting to the treatment of women and gay men in Apatow's recent movies", with White quoted as saying of Knocked Up: "At some point it starts feeling like comedy of the bullies, rather than the bullied."[95] In Apatow's comedies, characters had frequently used demeaning words against the LGBTQ community, words such as "tranny", and "faggot".[96]
Actress Katherine Heigl said in 2007 that though she enjoyed working with Apatow on Knocked Up, she found the film itself "a little sexist" and felt it "paints the women as shrews, as humorless and uptight, and it paints the men as lovable, goofy, fun-loving guys."[97][98][99] Apatow responded, "I'm just shocked she used the word shrew. I mean, what is this, the 1600s?"[100] Apatow said the characters in the film "are sexist at times... but it's really about immature people who are afraid of women and relationships and learn to grow up."[101]
In 2012, Alyssa Rosenberg of ThinkProgress quoted Apatow as saying, "I got bored of penises. I said, 'enough of that.' No, I just like immaturity, I like to show people struggle and try to figure out who they are. I'm a guy and so it leaned guy for a while. But one of the projects I'm most proud of is Freaks and Geeks, which is about a woman in high school struggling to figure out which group she wants to belong to, so for me, it goes back and forth."[102]
Awards[edit]
In 1993, he was one of the writers awarded a Primetime Emmy Award for "Outstanding Writing for a Variety, Music or Comedy Program" for his work on The Ben Stiller Show at the 45th Primetime Emmy Awards.
During his work on the Larry Sanders Show, Apatow was nominated for five Emmys,[119] as well as a Critics' Choice Television Award. In 2007, he was nominated for a Grammy for co-writing the song "Walk Hard" (nominated for Best Song Written for Motion Picture).[120] Apatow's work was also nominated for Outstanding Comedy Series at the 2012 and 2013 Primetime Emmys for Girls and was also nominated at the Critics' Choice Television Awards for Girls.[119] In 2012, Apatow received the Hollywood Comedy Award at the 16th annual Hollywood Film Awards presented by the Hollywood Film Festival.[121] Additionally in 2012, Apatow was presented with the Herb Sargent Award for Comedy Excellence from the Writers Guild East.[122]
In the 2013 Critics Choice Award Nominations from the Broadcast Film Critics Association, Apatow's film This Is 40 was nominated for Best Comedy as were Leslie Mann and Paul Rudd for their performances in the film.[123] On January 10, 2013, the Broadcast Film Critics Association awarded Apatow the Critics' Choice Louis XIII Genius Award named after a cognac.[124] On October 3, 2013, The San Diego Film Festival awarded Apatow the esteemed Visionary Filmmaker Award.[125] On May 12, 2013, the television show Girls won a BAFTA for Best International Program.[126]
Apatow was nominated for the Writers Guild of America Award for Best Original Screenplay for his work on The 40-Year-Old Virgin, a nomination also shared with Carell, and Knocked Up.[127]
In 2015, Apatow's film Trainwreck was nominated for 2 Golden Globe Awards, including a nomination for Best Motion Picture – Musical or Comedy, the first film directed by Apatow to achieve this feat.[128] The film was also nominated for 3 Critics' Choice Movie Awards, including Best Comedy.[129]
In 2016, Apatow was awarded the Generation Award at the Just for Laughs comedy festival in Montreal for his contributions to comedy.[130]
In 2018, Apatow was nominated for the Darryl F. Zanuck Award at the Producers Guild Film Awards, alongside producing partner Barry Mendel. Later that year, May It Last: A Portrait Of The Avett Brothers, which Apatow co-directed along with documentarian Michael Bonfiglio, won the SXSW Audience Award at the 2018 SXSW Film Festival.[84][90]
In 2022, Apatow was nominated for an entertainment Peabody Award for his work directing George Carlin's American Dream. [131]
In 2023, Apatow was nominated for the Golden Raspberry Award for Worst Director at the 43rd Golden Raspberry Awards for his work on The Bubble.[132]