Portrait of Seth Rogen, Judd Apatow, and Adam Sandler.
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Because Apatow is a guy who can get into his own head, set up an office there and really go to work. A bearded 41-year-old in a uniform of striped short-sleeved Izods, he makes a lot of eye contact, has a friendly, nervous laugh and constantly plays with his right thumb. He seems more like a therapist than someone who sees one. But behind the approachable attitude, Apatow is superintense. He is rarely far from a Red Bull. On the nights he doesn't use sleeping pills, often the only way he can fall asleep is to listen to meditation courses on his iPod. He reads self-help books and rarely uses the words project or idea, greatly preferring the term problem. He's been racked with back pain and had a long bout with severe panic attacks; he'll still sit only on the aisle in a theater, in case he flips out and has to leave abruptly.
Almost all that neurotic energy has gone into his work. The child of divorced parents on Long Island, New York, he lived in a different home than his two siblings did and spent a lot of time--as in from 3 p.m. to 11 p.m. every day--watching television. As a kid, he'd push his tape recorder against the TV so he could transcribe every episode of Saturday Night Live. At his high school radio station, he wangled interviews with comedians like Jerry Seinfeld, Jay Leno and Steve Allen; at 15 he started doing stand-up at clubs. He's such a giant comedy nerd that after proudly playing me snippets of his Garry Shandling interview from high school, he takes me into his office in his huge Pacific Palisades, Calif., house to show off a collection of autographed photos he just bought in New York--Sonny and Cher, Siskel and Ebert, Barbara Eden. Then there's the album of autographs he sent away for as a kid that includes a surprising number of headshots of Paul Lynde. It's as if Apatow invited me over hoping I'd beat him up.
After high school, Apatow moved to Los Angeles to go to USC but dropped out after two years to focus on his stand-up act. He was tight with Sandler, Carrey and David Spade but came to feel that he couldn't compete with them onstage. So he started writing jokes for Tom Arnold and Roseanne Barr and, after approaching Ben Stiller in line at an Elvis Costello concert, took the helm of the Fox sketch comedy The Ben Stiller Show at the age of 24. There Apatow surprised everyone with his confidence and willingness to fight with network executives. "He burned bridges. He was not afraid," says Stiller. "He had the courage of his convictions. I don't know where he got that from. I was like, 'This is great, but maybe that sketch about the Weird Tales of the Dark Side where I turn into a monster for eight minutes isn't the greatest thing in the world.' But he would be like, 'No. Come on. We're doing it.'"
He fought even harder as an executive producer of Freaks and Geeks, the critically acclaimed high school series created by his friend Paul Feig, which lasted only one season. When Apatow's next show, the sitcom Undeclared, was canceled, he sent a messenger to the Fox executive responsible--the same guy who canceled The Ben Stiller Show--with a copy of a positive review from Time and a note expressing his disbelief in extremely graphic terms.