Hollywood had a problem: both its big young audience and its big young stars were male; but to make a romantic comedy you needed girls, right? Wrong. The trick was to stir up a sense of intimacy between two guys — without, heaven forfend, more than a jokey hint of homosexuality. Enter Judd Apatow, the writer, producer and sometime director who concocted a movie environment that mirrored the tone and makeup of the writing team on a comedy show: raucous, competitive, endearing and virtually all-male. The female characters in The 40 Year Old Virgin and Knocked Up were incidental to the bond established by the stars Apatow created: Steve Carell, Seth Rogen, Jonah Hill, Michael Cera and the rest. Bromance became the comedy subgenre, with or without its ubermensch. The surprise comedy hit of 2009: the non-Apatow (but very Apatow) The Hangover.