The Invention of Judd Apatow

Within the fall of 1983, Judd Apatow made his approach all the way down to a musty room within the basement of Syosset Excessive Faculty and stumbled upon his secret weapon—he simply didn’t comprehend it but.Apatow was 15 years previous, deep into an infatuation with comedy, however had nowhere to channel it. Boyhood on Lengthy Island was one thing like a John Hughes film: idyllic on the surface and tormented on the within. “Plenty of what shaped some elements of my character was that there was an unlimited quantity of sports activities taking place and I wasn’t good—I might at all times choke and panic,” Apatow instructed me just lately.Discover the October 2025 IssueCheck out extra from this challenge and discover your subsequent story to learn.View MoreThis occurred, he emphasised, on a regular basis: in fitness center class, at pickup video games throughout lunch, after college. “Think about not being excellent,” he mentioned, “and having to be picked near final a number of instances a day,” after which being given a place “thus far out in proper subject that I used to be nearly in the course of Jericho Turnpike.”The jocks could have been the kings of highschool, however Apatow got here to know that theirs was a fleeting achievement. “I bear in mind as a child pondering, It doesn’t matter in the event you’re good at this,” he mentioned. “You develop into suspicious of how every part works—energy buildings; regardless of the caste techniques are—and then you definitely’re drawn to comedians who’re at all times calling out the totally different elements in life which can be bullshit.”He worshipped Lenny Bruce, Steve Martin, Albert Brooks, Gilda Radner, George Carlin, Martin Quick. He wished a pal to speak about Saturday Evening Dwell with each week, however couldn’t discover one. Comedy wasn’t cool—at the very least not among the many youngsters he knew. “Folks weren’t taken with it,” he mentioned.Apatow was describing all of this to me in his workplace in West L.A. On this explicit morning, he had requested me to return by at 7:30 a.m. (Apatow is a morning individual, a top quality that vexes his fellow comedians.) Once I arrived at 7:23, he was already exterior ready, carrying a half-eaten banana and blaring traditional rock from his smartphone. Inside, we settled into a few chairs across the lengthy desk in his writers’ room—a writers’ room that truly has home windows, he proudly identified—and talked about loneliness.Whereas his classmates had been out enjoying baseball, he holed up within the public library, poring over microfiche of previous newspapers so he might study Lenny Bruce’s obscenity trials. He didn’t apply the identical rigor to lecturers. He sweet-talked his approach into superior physics, solely to search out himself out of his depth—he began dishonest, received caught, and dropped the category. (“The trainer’s identify was Richard Lesse,” Apatow instructed me. “So individuals known as him Dickless.”)However issues had been totally different on the high-school radio station. In that basement studio, he received his fingers on a clunky inexperienced tape recorder that may enable him to waltz into the world of present enterprise. WKWZ 88.5 FM was, to Apatow, a “nerd’s paradise,” although he likes to joke that the sign barely prolonged past the varsity parking zone. The trainer who oversaw the station, Jack DeMasi, is now almost 80. He lovingly described WKWZ to me as a smelly “rat gap” for “misfit youngsters.” He remembers Apatow as an affable teen regardless of troubles at residence. The lecturers knew that his dad and mom had gone by way of a hellish divorce, and that cash troubles had adopted.From a younger age, Apatow knew he wished to carry out. (Courtesy of Judd Apatow)“Judd mentioned the scariest factor that any adviser school member at an FM-broadcast high-school radio station might ever hear,” DeMasi recalled. “He says, ‘I need to do a comedy present.’ ” DeMasi feared that Apatow would do a present so off-color that it could get the station shut down. “One of many issues about adolescent boys is that they ceaselessly suppose they’re humorous, and so they’re simply silly,” DeMasi mentioned. However Apatow had one thing totally different in thoughts.DeMasi had lengthy inspired his college students to exit and discuss to actual individuals. One child interviewed Mario Cuomo, then the governor of New York; one other, R.E.M. To Apatow, this was a revelation: The tape recorder in his hand might present a direct line to the comedians he idolized. If he might simply discuss to them, he might ask them how they did what they did, what it took to be humorous, what their lives had been like—in order that perhaps, someday, if he labored exhausting sufficient (although he dared not admit this to anybody), he might do it, too.From the July/August 2023 challenge: Judd Apatow’s interview with Mel BrooksWhen Apatow requested interviews, he recognized himself—precisely, although misleadingly—as calling from WKWZ 88.5 FM in New York. Folks like Garry Shandling, Jay Leno, Harry Anderson, and Steve Allen agreed to talk with him not figuring out he was a teen, solely to be (largely) charmed once they ultimately came upon. Apatow tells the story of strolling into Jerry Seinfeld’s house circa 1983 and seeing the bemusement on Seinfeld’s face. “His house had nothing on the partitions, no books within the bookshelves—he was simply there to jot down his jokes,” Apatow recalled in his 2022 e book, Sicker within the Head. “And he checked out me once I walked in like, I can’t imagine I’ve to do that with this little one.”Apatow’s descriptions of those early interviews are laced with self-deprecation and hero worship. (Lena Dunham instructed me she loves them partially as a result of his Lengthy Island accent, which he retains, was even stronger when he was younger—viewers and autograph are aww-dience and aww-tograph, and he at all times drops the h in humor.) However if you hear intently, what you additionally hear is poise—and a child making an attempt to chart a course for his personal future. In a 1984 dialog, he asks Martin Quick, “How does Second Metropolis work?” and “Did you ever do stand-up comedy, like in a membership?” and “Did you go to school?” In his interview with John Sweet, Apatow asks what number of takes it took to get the shot the place Sweet will get nailed at the back of the pinnacle with a racquetball in Splash. (“Three takes,” Sweet responded. “I used to be fortunate.”) Apatow then asks Sweet a couple of rumored three-picture cope with Touchstone Movies. Sweet hadn’t even signed the contract but.Apatow instructed me he can’t bear in mind how he knew to ask about that. He would hoover up details about the world of comedy wherever he might discover it. He’d maintain his tape recorder to the tv so he might document, play again, and transcribe SNL sketches in an try to determine what made them humorous. Apatow was so obsessed, so centered on doing no matter it took to enter that world, that it wasn’t till a lot later that he thought to ask himself, Why comedy?When you’ve by no means bombed—and I imply actually bombed, bombed so badly that the crickets hear crickets—you possibly can’t presumably know what it feels prefer to have a room activate you. There are two sorts of dying onstage, each painful: The primary is the quiet variety, the place no one laughs. Then there’s the loud variety, the place the viewers overtly ridicules you. Apatow has skilled each.Whereas he was doing his interviews for WKWZ, Apatow was additionally spending as a lot time in comedy golf equipment as he presumably might. He took a job as a dishwasher on the East Aspect Comedy Membership a few cities over, solely to appreciate that he couldn’t hear the comedians onstage when he was caught within the kitchen. (He switched to busboy.) From time to time, Eddie Murphy, nonetheless in his early 20s, would drop by to check out new materials. Apatow tells the story of a time Murphy confirmed up, received heckled, and rapidly shot again, “I don’t care what you say, as a result of I’m 21, I’m Black, and I’ve an even bigger dick than you.”This trade might need been on Apatow’s thoughts the primary time he ever did stand-up, when he was 17, at Chuckles, a comedy membership additionally on Lengthy Island. “I had considered getting onstage for a extremely very long time, and was actually scared,” Apatow instructed me. “I didn’t have a cocky angle about it. I used to be shitting a brick.” He had been provided a five-minute slot late at evening, typical for a rookie, and introduced his finest associates, Ronnie and Kevin, alongside for ethical help. Someplace in these 5 minutes, Apatow floated an thought to the viewers: I’m simply beginning out and I don’t know how you can deal with hecklers, so assist me out by heckling me.This was deranged. The native scene on the time was marked by an affection for a very brutal type of insult comedy—Don Rickles, solely meaner. Comedians mercilessly mocked their audiences, and audiences favored to punch again. Apatow was not ready for what he had unleashed. Folks had been shouting “You suck!” and “Get the fuck off the stage!” It received so dangerous that Ronnie and Kevin circled and began threatening the hecklers. Apatow can nonetheless bear in mind listening to their voices: You higher shut up or I’ll kick your ass. “They had been making an attempt to calm the room down for me,” Apatow mentioned. “Unsuccessfully.”Apatow is just not pleased with his early stand-up. A number of the materials remains to be humorous 40 years later—a joke about his again hair getting so lengthy that he can see it in his shadow—however a lot of it was a product of its time. “I don’t even know what I used to be pondering, to inform the reality. I’m embarrassed that I used to be even on the market, and I hope nobody remembers any of it,” he instructed me. One recurring bit concerned jamming the palm of his hand into his eye socket, one thing he known as “the attention fart.”Apatow in his early stand-up days (Courtesy of Judd Apatow)There can be different dangerous units, however none as disastrous as that first evening at Chuckles. From then on, Apatow stored a line in his again pocket for when a set began to bitter: “The good Jerry Lewis mentioned you study nothing by being humorous. You solely study by not being humorous. And I’ve gotten a university schooling right here tonight. Thanks.” That really labored. The road would at all times carry the viewers again round “irrespective of how dangerous I bombed,” he mentioned.After Apatow graduated from Syosset, he went to the College of Southern California to check filmmaking. When he received there, he was startled to study that his classmates “had been watching Truffaut and Godard at residence, and I’m watching Abbott and Costello.” One classmate, Matt Reeves, went on to direct motion pictures akin to Cloverfield and the forthcoming Batman II. “His movies had been so good, and I confirmed mine and I simply felt like such a idiot,” Apatow mentioned.Sophomore 12 months he landed a spot on The Courting Sport, a quiz present that concerned competing in opposition to two different younger males for the affections of a bachelorette who had to decide on a winner with out laying eyes on the contestants. As Bachelor No. 1, Apatow—all dressed up in a blazer and tie—seemed like a misplaced uncle from Full Home going for a job interview. However he was in his aspect, making fart noises (along with his fingers this time, not his eye) and customarily hamming it up in an enthralling approach. When he received the competitors, and the journey to Acapulco that got here with it, he took it as an indication. He was already behind on tuition funds, and was so centered on doing stand-up that he wasn’t ending his assignments. It was both remaining exams or Mexico. He determined to drop out.“I used to be younger and so silly,” Apatow mentioned. “All these selections didn’t make any sense, and I had nobody to debate them with. I don’t suppose I debated these strikes with my dad and mom or any pal. I had no mentor. I simply was an fool who was like, I don’t need to miss this Acapulco trip.” He additionally felt that his Courting Sport victory was validation that he might make it in Hollywood. It amuses him now to consider how naive that was, however on the time he actually thought, “That is present enterprise.” If he might make it on The Courting Sport, perhaps he might make it huge.The journey to Acapulco was “horrible”: He received sunburned on the primary day, forcing him to spend the entire subsequent day within the lodge room. And it was instantly clear that there can be no precise love reference to the bubbly, blond bachelorette. (“I’ve seen her Instagram recently, and it looks as if she’s had a really completely happy life,” he instructed me.) Trying again, Apatow thinks his dad and mom had been as relieved as he was to lose the tutoring stress. No person even feigned an try to influence him to remain at school.Expensive Therapist: My son has an impractical, ridiculous profession planHis grandmother lived in Los Angeles, and after he dropped out, Apatow slept on her sofa for 2 years, toiling away at open mics and emcee gigs, the place he met a few unknowns named Adam Sandler and Jim Carrey. (Apatow turned roommates with Sandler and launched Carrey to his supervisor.)It was round this time that he hunted down the whole scripts for 42 episodes of Taxi, the traditional James L. Brooks sitcom. “I might sit and description them and research them, and I found out that there have been widespread buildings in them,” he mentioned. “I might see how these exhibits had been made.” He was additionally spending plenty of time on the Ranch, a nickname given to the group home the place a bunch of aspiring actors and comedians lived, approach out within the Valley, the place hire was far cheaper than it was in Hollywood. On the Ranch, he was uncovered to a special breed of comic—not the exuberant, sharp-elbowed Jews of his Lengthy Island comedy-club upbringing, however midwesterners who had been, in his telling, simply as humorous in a softer approach.Apatow additionally began writing jokes for different comedians, one thing he had discovered was attainable from the director and actor Harold Ramis, whom Apatow had interviewed again in highschool. (Ramis, whom Apatow adored for Caddyshack and Stripes, had instructed him he’d written jokes for Rodney Dangerfield.)Apatow was emceeing comedy exhibits on the Comedy & Magic Membership, in Hermosa Seashore. “That’s how I met plenty of my heroes,” he recalled. A type of heroes was Garry Shandling. When Shandling was doing a set one evening, Apatow’s supervisor floated the thought to Shandling that Apatow ought to write some jokes for him. Shandling didn’t appear remotely ; they’d “no connection in anyway” that evening, Apatow mentioned. However just a few months later, out of the blue, he known as to see if Apatow wished to assist him write just a few jokes for his upcoming gig internet hosting the 1990 Grammys. The reply was Sure, God sure, after all sure.Apatow stayed up all evening and gave Shandling, to his shock, an inventory of 100 jokes to select from. Shandling rewrote each punch line—which, to those that knew Shandling, says extra about him than it does about Apatow. The best way Apatow tells it at the moment is that they made a superb crew: Apatow knew far more about music, and Shandling was merely funnier. This was the start of one of the crucial essential relationships in Apatow’s life.Certainly one of Shandling’s associates, the actor-writer-director Albert Brooks, instructed me he remembers hanging out at Shandling’s home within the early ’90s when Apatow began coming round. “He was like Garry’s shadow,” Brooks mentioned. “What I’ve at all times liked about Judd is that greater than anybody, he’s a comedy savant. I might describe him as a human Friars Membership. And I like that about him. As a result of he didn’t simply adore it; he knew every part. And he was humorous! It was like, Who is that this child? ”The extra time Apatow spent round comedians and writers in L.A., the extra he started to suppose he wished to be in comedy—however not as a stand-up. “I used to be such a fan that I used to be very conscious of how good individuals had been,” Apatow instructed me. “I knew how humorous Andy Dick was and Ben Stiller was and Jim Carrey was.” Strolling away from stand-up, “there was in all probability a bit a part of me that died,” Apatow mentioned, however it made house for one thing new, too.In 1990, he and Stiller created The Ben Stiller Present, which appeared on MTV (and later Fox), and starred up-and-comers akin to Andy Dick, Janeane Garofalo, and Bob Odenkirk. It produced sketches beloved by comedy nerds—see: “Legends of Springsteen”—however was barely given an opportunity to take off. (The present received an Emmy for excellent writing simply after it was canceled.) Livid, Apatow took a visit to Hawai‘i to wallow within the tropics, and by some cosmic flip of destiny bumped into Shandling close to the lodge the place Apatow was staying.For comedy nerds, this picture will evoke the well-known Steve Martin character “The Nice Flydini,” a vaudeville magician who pulls methods out of his pants, together with, within the coup de grâce, an opera-singing hand puppet. (Apatow purchased the unique puppet at public sale for $3,520.) (JR)Shandling coached him on how to deal with the cancellation, and provided him a job writing for a collection he was growing for HBO known as The Larry Sanders Present. “Garry mentioned writing is a approach to determine who you might be,” Apatow instructed me. “It’s all about self-exploration. I didn’t suppose that. I simply thought I used to be writing a humorous spouse joke for Rodney Dangerfield. I didn’t suppose spiritually about any of it. It was like, comedy is about figuring out your self? What? I believed it was simply punching the horse in Blazing Saddles.” It wasn’t till then that he felt “some kind of calling” to jot down.For the following a number of years, Apatow labored obsessively, toggling between writing gigs for the animated collection The Critic and The Larry Sanders Present. Set behind the scenes at a Johnny Carson–type late-night present and that includes a parade of A-list comic visitor stars, The Larry Sanders Present was beloved by critics and business insiders. It launched the careers of quite a few comedians, and pioneered a documentary-style format that influenced exhibits akin to Curb Your Enthusiasm, The Workplace, 30 Rock, and Parks and Recreation. Apatow parlayed that success into writing the 1995 movie Heavyweights and producing The Cable Man, starring Jim Carrey, in 1996. Each flopped however have since achieved cult standing. This dynamic would develop into excruciatingly acquainted to Apatow: splashy failures on tasks that solely grew extra beloved over time.Throughout casting for The Cable Man, a younger actor named Leslie Mann got here in to audition for the feminine lead, and Apatow learn Carrey’s half along with her. He remembers leaning over to Stiller and saying one thing to the impact of I can’t imagine the long run Mrs. Apatow simply walked into the room. (The encounter was not as indelible for Mann. She doesn’t bear in mind it in any respect, she instructed Self-importance Honest years later. “Is that dangerous?”) By the summer season of 1997, they had been married. Later that 12 months, they’d their first little one collectively—a woman named Maude. One other lady, Iris, adopted.When Maude was nonetheless a toddler, certainly one of Apatow’s associates from the Ranch, the actor and director Paul Feig, proposed making one thing collectively. “He actually handed me a manila envelope with Freaks and Geeks in it,” Apatow mentioned. He was astonished by what he learn. He ended up growing and executive-producing the present. Round this time, the teenager drama Dawson’s Creek was an unlimited hit. Apatow and Feig wished to make one thing that was nothing prefer it.Freaks and Geeks was uncommon in various methods. Feig and Apatow forged actors who seemed like actual youngsters, reasonably than discovering Hollywood-ready teenagers grown in a lab to look on the quilt of Tiger Beat, and the characters these actors performed had been advanced, not mere vessels for sexual objectification or ethical classes that might be neatly resolved in 22 minutes. Freaks and Geeks additionally collapsed the space between ache and humor in a approach that made it really feel true: Going by way of puberty isn’t simply horrible and awkward; it’s hilariously horrible and awkward.Apatow and Feig infused the present with their very own adolescent agony. The intestine punch of Apatow’s life was when his dad and mom received divorced whereas he was in center college. The break up was past ugly; it scattered the household. His brother moved in along with his grandparents in California. His sister lived along with his mother. Apatow lived along with his dad.One after the other, all of Apatow’s associates’ dad and mom received divorced too. They talked about divorce consistently with each other, however barely with their very own dad and mom. (Apatow’s father as soon as left a e book out on the espresso desk known as Rising Up Divorced however by no means mentioned a phrase about it.) Apatow remembers he and his associates pondering, “We are able to’t hear to those individuals. They don’t know what the hell they’re doing.”From prime left: On the set of the Netflix collection Love; on the set of This Is 40; Apatow with Lena Dunham and the forged of Women; Seth Rogen, Jay Baruchel, and Apatow on the set of Knocked Up; Iris and Maude Apatow, Paul Rudd, and Leslie Mann on the set of This Is 40; Apatow with the Trainwreck stars Amy Schumer, LeBron James, and Invoice Hader. (Suzanne Hanover; Common Studios Licensing; Dimitrios Kambouris / Getty; Moviestore Assortment / Alamy)That feeling gave rise to the conviction that he needed to study to care for himself—by way of comedy. “I constructed this obsession that I believed would free me sooner or later,” Apatow instructed me. “I had a really clear thought my entire childhood, which was: This can repay. Someday, individuals might be on this. It’s nearly maniacal.”In certainly one of our conversations, Apatow introduced up the episode wherein one of many geeks of Freaks and Geeks, Neal Schweiber (performed by Samm Levine), confronts his philandering father by telling hostile jokes about him by way of a ventriloquist puppet. “I actually associated to that,” Apatow mentioned. “There was a second the place I believed, I have to discover ways to juggle fireplace and carry out at birthday events—that need to get a talent since you’re so traumatized by what’s taking place in the home.”Certainly one of Apatow’s closest associates, the comic Pete Holmes, instructed me that he at all times noticed Apatow as one other of the geeks, Invoice Haverchuck (Martin Starr). In one of many collection’ unforgettable scenes, Haverchuck comes residence from college to an empty home, makes himself a grilled-cheese sandwich and pours a tall glass of milk, pulls out the TV desk, and dissolves into laughter watching Shandling do stand-up whereas the Who’s “I’m One” performs over the scene. That “raised-by-television latchkey factor,” Holmes instructed me, “that’s Judd. That’s all it’s good to learn about Judd.” He went on: “It’s an remoted fan who used his love of comedy to make himself not remoted.”In the present day, Freaks and Geeks routinely exhibits up on critics’ lists of the most effective exhibits ever made. However NBC canceled it after simply 12 episodes, citing low rankings. Apatow was devastated, once more.It was round this time that he started having severe panic assaults. The worst of them occurred throughout a gathering with Lorne Michaels on the Beverly Hills Lodge’s Polo Lounge. “We had been seated in a spherical sales space I couldn’t simply escape from,” he instructed me. Apatow sat in silence, screaming on the within and questioning if he must fabricate a narrative about meals poisoning to get out of the room. (“I made it by way of. No as soon as appeared to note.”)Even when Apatow’s not panicking, his thoughts tends to race. He remembers sitting and watching The Merv Griffin Present as a toddler, tapping his toes consistently, counting the syllables of the phrases being mentioned on TV. He’s not susceptible to catastrophizing a lot as compulsively planning forward. Over time he’s developed techniques for staying calm, first by white-knuckling it by way of episodes of panic and later with obscene quantities of remedy and mountains of self-help books.From the November 2023 challenge: What’s comedy for?After Freaks and Geeks was canceled, Apatow centered on ending the collection, though he knew it wouldn’t be renewed. He wished to do proper by the forged of younger actors, which included Seth Rogen, Busy Philipps, Linda Cardellini, Jason Segel, and James Franco, all of whom ultimately turned stars. Working with all of that nascent expertise on one present was “like discovering a music scene,” Apatow instructed me. “It was like discovering Seattle or Manchester.” He instructed himself that if he might end the present and know that, simply as soon as, he had gotten one thing precisely proper, it could be sufficient. Ultimately, NBC by no means even aired the whole collection—three of the present’s 18 episodes reached audiences solely when Fox Household reran the collection later that 12 months.In a intelligent act of desperation, Apatow used the present’s web site to ask followers for assist demanding that Freaks and Geeks be launched on DVD, one thing that by no means occurred for a canceled present, and which finally helped Freaks and Geeks discover its viewers.However when the identical expertise occurred—“nearly beat for beat”—with the cancellation of his 2001 tv present, Undeclared, Apatow was furious. That very same 12 months, he filmed a pilot for North Hollywood, starring Segel with the up-and-comers Amy Poehler, January Jones, and Kevin Hart, which received scrapped earlier than it even aired. “That turned the gasoline,” he instructed me. He simply stored pondering, “You’re improper. I feel all these persons are nice. All these writers and administrators are so sturdy. Let’s simply attempt to show everyone improper.”When Undeclared was canceled, Time journal had simply named it one of many 10 finest tv exhibits that 12 months. Apatow despatched a framed copy of the article to the chair of the Fox Tv Leisure Group, who additionally occurred to be the person who had canceled The Ben Stiller Present. The observe mentioned: “I don’t know in the event you simply fucked me within the ass once more otherwise you simply by no means took it out in 1992. Merry Christmas, Judd.”The individuals who know Apatow finest will inform you that his willingness to burn bridges is famous in comedian circles. “Simply actually robust with studio executives—like, You could allow us to make this present what it’s,” the comic Mike Birbiglia instructed me. He went on: “Whenever you’re in present enterprise lengthy sufficient, you begin to see that there are people who find themselves rooting for themselves, after which there are people who find themselves rooting for the artwork type at massive. He’s the quintessential instance of ‘He’s rooting for the artwork type at massive.’ ”From prime left: Apatow with Rogen and Katherine Heigl on the set of Knocked Up; the forged and crew of The 40-Yr-Previous Virgin; Apatow with Norman Lear, Mel Brooks, and Dick Van Dyke; Jason Segel and John FrancisDaley in Freaks and Geeks; Jonah Hill, Michael Cera, and Christopher Mintz-Plasse in Superbad; Matthew Broderick and Jim Carrey in The Cable Man. (Common Studios Licensing; Courtesy of Judd Apatow; Gabe Sachs; Cinematic Assortment / Alamy; AJ pics / Alamy)Apatow can be impressively petty. A number of the identical associates who expressed to me their timeless loyalty to Apatow described him as generally “defensive” and “biting,” the type of individual you must work to win over. He as soon as received into a protracted e mail argument with the tv producer Mark Brazill that was so over-the-top, Harper’s ended up publishing the complete factor. Brazill signed off one e mail to Apatow with “Get most cancers,” and one other with “Die in a fiery accident and style your individual blood.” Apatow, ever the comedy savant, accused Brazill of stealing the “style your individual blood” line from Sam Kinison’s 1986 album, Louder Than Hell : “That’s a Sam Kinison line you silly fuck!!!! Hypocrite!!!! J’accuse!!!!”But Apatow described himself to me as somebody who desires to be favored and who tries to keep away from battle. He worries about upsetting individuals. “Comedians are delicate,” he mentioned. “Comedians are conscious of all of the dynamics which can be taking place, and so they’re feelers.” The one time in all of our many hours of conversations that he ever balked was once I requested him whom he considers his closest associates. “You need me to record them?” He was horrified by the thought of constructing anybody really feel dangerous.Apatow has, over time, mellowed out. One of many individuals who has seen this up shut is Seth Rogen, who was an unknown 16-year-old when Apatow forged him in Freaks and Geeks. “He was the primary boss I ever had,” Rogen instructed me. He was petrified of Apatow on the time, and determined to impress him. After Freaks, Apatow requested Rogen to be a author on Undeclared.The primary film they made collectively was The 40-Yr-Previous Virgin, Apatow’s 2005 directorial debut and a blockbuster. Rogen remembers the second Apatow got here up with one of many scenes that drew the most important laughs within the movie, wherein Steve Carell’s character awkwardly tries to alleviate himself whereas aroused. It’s “perpetually tattooed in my thoughts,” he instructed me. They’d been engaged on the script and Apatow left to tempo round, get espresso. When he returned, “he was laughing so exhausting,” Rogen mentioned, and he went on to explain the entire scene, with Carell’s character having to “tilt down” to pee. Rogen misplaced it too. “We had been laughing so exhausting,” he mentioned. He stored pondering, “They’d have by no means allow us to try this on tv.” (Apatow instructed me that developing with a joke that excellent feels such as you’ve “lastly linked to God.”)Apatow made the bounce to directing movies at exactly the precise second. Studio executives had realized that audiences really liked huge comedic movies starring actors who weren’t conventional leading-man materials. Will Ferrell, who in 2003 efficiently leaped from SNL to the massive display screen with the Todd Phillips hit Previous Faculty, was a catalyst for the golden decade of huge comedies that adopted.Apatow’s success, when it got here, hit like a tsunami. It’s tough to overstate his affect on American comedy. Critics began utilizing the ungainly time period Apatowian to explain his imitators.Apatow and his onetime roommate Adam Sandler (Courtesy of Judd Apatow)Knocked Up was an excellent larger hit than The 40-Yr-Previous Virgin, grossing almost $220 million on a $30 million price range. The movie instructed the story of an underachieving stoner (Rogen) and an formidable TV reporter (Katherine Heigl) who, after their one-night stand ends in being pregnant, should navigate the complexities of changing into dad and mom whereas attending to know one another. It was raunchy, tender, absurd, and hilarious.Apatow had anxious that Knocked Up wouldn’t come collectively in any respect as a result of he couldn’t determine the casting. Eighty girls had learn for the lead half, and none of them clicked till Heigl confirmed up. Whenever you discover the precise individual for a task, “you nearly really feel aid,” he instructed me. “As a result of when individuals learn it and so they’re not proper for the half, the scene doesn’t work. So that you’re watching your scene not work time and again.”Heigl could have been excellent for the half in Apatow’s eyes, however she criticized the film after it got here out, touching off a bigger debate about Apatow’s work on the time. She known as Knocked Up “a bit sexist,” and described the ladies characters he had written—together with her personal—as “shrews” who had been “humorless and uptight.” (Apatow, clearly bruised, reacted by calling her alternative of the phrase shrew one thing out of the 1600s.) To him, the argument was unfair. He’s taken with flawed characters and what they should do to develop into good individuals, a theme that runs by way of his work going again to Freaks and Geeks.Amy Schumer instructed me she by no means understood individuals who dismiss Apatow’s work as sexist. The lads in Knocked Up don’t appear to know what the ladies of their lives are going by way of. Seen a technique, that’s proof of sexism; seen one other, it’s an sincere portrayal of how some males behave of their relationships. The topic appeared to exasperate Schumer: “His home is all ladies, his cats are ladies, he made the present Women, he made my film.” I’ll confess that I discover the talk considerably tiresome myself. Generally the flawed characters Apatow focuses on are males; generally they’re girls. As Schumer famous, he guided her and Dunham towards realizing their very own artistic visions for Trainwreck and Women, respectively.Apatow has filmed nearly all of his motion pictures in Los Angeles as a result of he didn’t need to be away from his household, particularly when the ladies had been little, and he famously casts Mann and his daughters in his motion pictures (Knocked Up, Humorous Folks, This Is 40 ). This has provoked inevitable eye-rolling about nepotism, however Mann is a comedic star in her personal proper. She is the primary one that reads his scripts. “She has provide you with among the nice moments and scenes in the entire motion pictures we’ve collaborated on,” he instructed me.Apatow, Mann, and their daughters in 2018 (Jon Kopaloff / Getty)The Apatow ladies—each now of their 20s, each actors—first appeared on-screen once they nonetheless had their child enamel. Apatow likes to level out, swelling with delight, that then-8-year-old Maude utterly improvised her character’s hilarious clarification of the place infants come from in Knocked Up. “I feel a stork, he drops it down, after which a gap goes in your physique, and there’s blood in every single place, popping out of your head, and then you definitely push your stomach button, after which your butt falls off, and then you definitely maintain your butt, and you must dig, and you discover a bit child.” Mann’s character deadpans in response: “That’s precisely proper.”After a protracted pause, Apatow began doing stand-up once more a couple of decade in the past, and has been doing it ever since. Certainly one of his common venues is Largo, a gem of a comedy membership in West Hollywood with the prettiest twinkle lights and the least snug chairs you possibly can think about.The greenroom at Largo is a small shrine to nice expertise. Photographs of David Bowie and Gilda Radner are tacked up on one wall. On a latest go to I discovered Apatow there with Stephen Service provider, a co-creator of the unique The Workplace. Service provider and Apatow had been discussing the most effective place on this planet to see Bruce Springsteen (Milan, they concluded), whereas the musician Pete Yorn stood within the hallway tuning his guitar. A couple of minutes later, Sarah Silverman wandered in. Ali Wong confirmed up after that.Apatow had assembled this group of comedic super-talent for Judd Apatow and Pals, a semi-regular profit he hosts that mixes stand-up and stay music. For every present, he picks a special lineup, and a special trigger—on this evening, proceeds had been going to the ACLU. Apatow had with him a chaotic pile of notes—scrawled by hand, photocopied, clearly out of order, some the other way up. If he was nervous, it didn’t present.Apatow’s set had a relaxed, funniest-dad-at-the-barbecue really feel. He received large laughs, from each previous materials (the hairy-back-shadow joke) and new, a lot of which concerned confronting the indignities of growing older. (“Don’t you hate diverticulitis? Isn’t it the worst when your high-school girlfriends begin dying of pure causes?”) He additionally recounted a narrative a couple of quasi-religious expertise he’d had whereas tripping on ayahuasca. (He’d instructed me the story earlier than. “That actually did occur,” he mentioned.)Apatow’s type relies on a confessional kind of self-deprecation, whereas Wong’s, for instance, is extra brash and confrontational—she instructed a narrative a couple of one-night stand that was so vulgar, a person sitting close to me was really honking with laughter, which prompted the individuals round him to begin laughing even tougher.Learn: The king of comedy is okay with not being funnyApatow’s method was clearly influenced by Shandling. Like his mentor, Apatow pushes a joke to get funnier till there may be nowhere left to go. When he’s directing, he’s identified to shout out one punch line after the following for actors to attempt, after which chooses which one to make use of in modifying. (He nonetheless stews about bits of his movies he needs he might change.)Apatow at his workplace. His method is to push a joke to get funnier till there may be nowhere left to go. (Maggie Shannon for The Atlantic)If Shandling taught Apatow to be exacting in his writing, he additionally helped him discover methods to calm his galloping thoughts. It was Shandling who launched Apatow to Ram Dass, the writer of the best-selling 1971 e book Be Right here Now, which popularized Japanese spirituality within the West. Once I first began studying Ram Dass, at Apatow’s urging, my instant response was that it appeared very Los Angeles—we’re all simply cosmic vibrations made to like each other, that type of factor. It wasn’t till I listened to certainly one of Ram Dass’s lectures that I had a revelation: Ram Dass’s perception system could have been Buddhism-flavored, however his supply is mainly a type of stand-up. He talks about going to India and meditating till he achieved transcendence. “I imply, mild was pouring out of my head and I used to be some mixture of the pure thoughts of the Buddha and the center of the Christ”—right here he pauses for only a beat earlier than delivering the punch line—“which, for a Jewish boy, is just not dangerous, you recognize?” The viewers roars.Among the best items of recommendation Apatow offers to different writers—which Schumer, Rogen, Birbiglia, and others all repeated again to me—is to jot down comedy such as you’re writing a drama. The story has to work on a human degree earlier than it may be humorous. “I feel what he’s making an attempt to get at nearly at all times in all of his movies and tv is the vulnerability of the characters, and the comedy is secondary,” Birbiglia instructed me. “And since he’s so humorous and he’s so comedy-obsessed, the comedy finally ends up being the factor he’s identified for. However really it’s the opposite factor that he’s extraordinary at.”Apatow put it to me this manner: “The jokes can’t work if the story doesn’t work. The entire thing will crumble. So a very powerful half is that you’ve an important dramatic story that you just care about that tracks, after which you possibly can determine how you can decoration humor the place it’s wanted. I feel motion pictures are often dangerous once they haven’t figured that out.”The director and Simpsons co-creator James L. Brooks instructed me about taking his 15-year-old son to see Superbad, a raunchy however candy caper about a few youngsters making an attempt to hook up with their crushes earlier than they go off to school. Brooks’s son left the theater feeling like somebody had “seemed into his coronary heart,” Brooks instructed me. Rogen, who co-wrote Superbad along with his childhood finest pal, instructed me he’d discovered how you can inform that story by watching Apatow (who produced the movie). When you concentrate on the entire gifted actors, writers, and administrators who do what they do due to Apatow, “I imply, the group of actors is huge,” Brooks mentioned. “He raised puppies.”Within the Seventies, when Steve Martin hit it huge, Apatow went loopy for him. “I purchased each album he put out—and couldn’t cease doing an impression of him for the following 5 years,” he recalled in certainly one of his books. To a child who worshipped the gods of comedy, Martin was the most important of all of them. So when Apatow was 13 years previous, on a go to to California to see his grandmother, he persuaded her to drive him out previous Martin’s Beverly Hills residence. After they arrived, Apatow couldn’t imagine his eyes: There was Martin, taking out the trash. He seized the second, hopped out of the automobile, and requested for an autograph. Martin politely declined, saying he had to attract the road at signing autographs at his residence. Apatow, ever quick-witted, steered that they merely step into the road. However Martin insisted he couldn’t.When Apatow received again residence, he wrote Martin an obscenity-laden, joking-but-not-joking letter, asking Martin why he handled his followers like rubbish and threatening to share his residence tackle with a Hollywood celeb bus tour until Martin responded with an autograph. When the reply got here, it included a duplicate of Martin’s e book Merciless Footwear. “Expensive Judd,” the inscription reads, “I’m sorry. I didn’t understand I used to be talking to the Judd Apatow.”Years later, after Apatow had damaged out, he and Martin had been in a gathering collectively and somebody requested Apatow to inform the story. “I instructed it,” Apatow recalled in Sicker within the Head. “And on the finish, they requested Steve if that was how he remembered it. And he mentioned, ‘In my reminiscence, I knocked on Judd’s door.’ ”Apatow is not the younger apprentice—he has lengthy since develop into a grasp himself. Now comedians consistently come to him for recommendation. Rogen runs each huge artistic undertaking by Apatow, he instructed me. “I, to a fault, to an inappropriate diploma, run every part by him,” Schumer mentioned. “He truthfully solely offers good recommendation,” Dunham instructed me. The very best recommendation he ever gave her is {that a} good observe of suggestions can come from wherever. She took that to imply that actual artists are assured sufficient to launch a little bit of management. (“Although he did as soon as take me to a Who live performance after a protracted workday, and I fell asleep and he took images.”)And but Apatow has misplaced none of his enthusiasm for finding out comedy. He has a scrapbook of a memoir popping out in October, Comedy Nerd, which tells the story of his life and is full of the numerous images, studio notes, and different paperwork he has hoarded through the years. He has continued to interview comedians, and revealed two books full of these conversations. That is how I first received to know him. I had lengthy wished to discover a strategy to get Mel Brooks into the pages of The Atlantic. I knew that Apatow shared my adoration of Brooks, and figured he was extra more likely to decide up a name from Apatow than from me. So I received in contact with Apatow to ask if he would do the interview. He mentioned sure straight away—and Brooks mentioned sure to Apatow.Apatow is now making a documentary about Brooks, whereas additionally growing movies about Norm Macdonald and Maria Bamford. These tasks observe his documentaries The Zen Diaries of Garry Shandling ; George Carlin’s American Dream; and Bob and Don: A Love Story, in regards to the friendship between Bob Newhart and Don Rickles. The identical thread runs by way of all of those movies: a deep curiosity about how individuals, regardless of their flaws and fears, discover a strategy to preserve going.Apatow is drawn to comedians who deal immediately with struggling. He executive-produced Gary Gulman’s stand-up particular The Nice Depresh, in addition to Ricky Velez’s particular, Right here’s The whole lot, each of that are steeped in ache. Once I caught up with Gulman just lately, he described Apatow to me as a hybrid of Springsteen and Hal Ashby. Springsteen due to his relentlessness; Ashby as a result of “there’s at all times that intestine punch in Judd’s motion pictures,” Gulman instructed me. “Even those which can be nearly absurd within the quantity or the focus of comedy.” Possibly particularly these ones.Not way back, I had a dialog with Kelly Carlin, daughter of George, about what makes somebody develop into a comic within the first place. She had gotten to know Apatow when he made the documentary about her father, and had identified Shandling as properly. It’s clear to her why Shandling had taken Apatow underneath his wing. “I actually do suppose he noticed that Judd was a really soulful, human man,” she mentioned, and that his reverence for comedy was actual. For individuals like her father and Shandling, if you make one thing that you just hope will make individuals snicker, and it really works, “it’s like all’s proper within the universe.”“It’s a type of church,” Carlin went on. “There’s one thing about that shared house. My dad used to say that if you’re laughing, your coronary heart and your thoughts are open.”Shandling, who died from a blood clot in 2016, didn’t come simply to the knowledge that Apatow so admired him for. He spent his life working by way of the childhood loss of life of his older brother from cystic fibrosis, and struggled to take care of relationships.Apatow has skilled his personal losses. Throughout certainly one of our conversations, he instructed me what it was prefer to be along with his mom within the hospital as she was dying. She had ovarian most cancers, and had developed sepsis. It was a horrible evening and every part appeared to be falling aside. Proper earlier than she died, she seemed up at her son and mentioned: “Are you able to imagine this shit?”“That’s what comedy is,” Apatow instructed me. “We simply should snicker at how exhausting it’s, and likewise actually take pleasure in once we get a superb second.” The story made me consider a web page in certainly one of Shandling’s previous diaries that Apatow is obsessive about. On it, Shandling had scrawled, in all caps: “GIVE MORE, GIVE WHAT YOU DIDN’T GET, LOVE MORE.”I as soon as requested Apatow if he tends to juggle a number of tasks directly as a result of, on some degree, he thinks about Shandling, who died at age 66, and hears a clock ticking. Apatow mentioned that wasn’t it. (“My dad is a younger 83 so I really feel I’m going to stay lengthy, just like the Russians within the previous yogurt commercials,” he mentioned.) He works so exhausting as a result of he understands that the majority issues by no means get made within the first place, and that loads extra get canceled once they shouldn’t.For all of his success, Apatow nonetheless dreads failure. It’s a lot tougher for anybody to make huge comedic movies than it was, even for Apatow, although Common is fast-tracking his newest—a still-untitled movie he’s directing a couple of country-music star who has hit all-time low. He instructed me that, way back, he determined he can be content material because the Elvis Costello of comedy: not the one who sells out Madison Sq. Backyard however the one who makes nice artwork for its personal sake, for an viewers who appreciates it, even when that viewers is smaller. However a number of of his associates instructed me that he quietly worries about staying related.Just lately, I instructed Apatow that I’d come to imagine he’s probably the most well-adjusted anxious individual I’ve ever identified—few individuals can fear as a lot as he does and nonetheless come off as easygoing. “That’s only a stable facade,” he instructed me. “That’s why I in all probability simply am drowning in pop-psychology books and non secular books—as a result of I don’t get me in any respect. I simply don’t.”What Apatow has discovered, what he is aware of for positive, is that the great and the dangerous will come. It doesn’t matter what you do, irrespective of how exhausting you’re employed or how gifted you might be, life entails struggling. However you get to decide on what you do with ache. When you encompass your self with individuals you like and respect and imagine in, in the event you refuse to take your self too critically, then you definitely start to see that the darkness incorporates extra mild than may appear attainable.This text seems within the October 2025 print version with the headline “The Invention of Judd Apatow.”Comedy Nerd: A Lifelong Obsession in Tales and PicturesBy Judd Apatow​Whenever you purchase a e book utilizing a hyperlink on this web page, we obtain a fee. Thanks for supporting The Atlantic.