Portrait of Seth Rogen, Judd Apatow, and Adam Sandler.
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Apatow was equally persevering in his personal life. He met his wife Leslie Mann, who co-stars with Sandler and Seth Rogen in Funny People, on the set of The Cable Guy. "I didn't think I would date him. I thought I'd send him on dates with my friends," she says during a Funny People recording session on their 15th wedding anniversary, which she and Apatow later celebrated by seeing The Hangover. "But he'd send his sister to keep telling me all the women he was dating. It was all part of his plan."
The Feedback Machine
For all his master planning, Apatow as a moviemaker is known for his collaboration. His least favorite part of the process is writing, which for Funny People involved his speaking the characters' parts into a tape recorder. Even then, he'd call people for feedback. "The moment you think of a joke is the best moment," he says. "I put on a big show when I write something I think is funny. I'll talk about it a lot and call people and tell them, 'I thought of this joke where Steve Carell pees in his own face.' I'll talk about it like I cured a disease."
The real writing starts after casting, when Apatow re-creates his characters based on the actors. He's not interested in having anyone do a Meryl Streep--like transformation. "Initially my character in Sarah Marshall was an English author, a bookworm character," says Russell Brand, the English comedian who played a rock star in the movie. "Eventually it was decided that no one could expect me to do any actual acting. I think he's very interested in truth, so he has a good intuition about people's essence." Sean (Diddy) Combs co-stars in next year's Apatow-produced Get Him to the Greek, in which Jonah Hill has to transport Brand's rock-star character to a gig at the Greek Theater in L.A. "I prepared the script like any audition," Combs says. "When I walked in, they took my script and said, 'You won't even need that.'"
On the set of every movie he produces, Apatow makes the director shoot and keep shooting, yelling suggestions at the actors until they're so worn down that they can't think of anything to say other than something personal--or funny. After a scene in Get Him to the Greek, director Nick Stoller runs off triumphantly, shaking his fists in the air. "We did it! We got Sean to make a gay joke!" he yells. "They got me. They turned me out," says Combs, shaking his head as he walks away. One night, with 1,300 extras at the Greek Theater at 11 o'clock, Apatow suggests yet another shoot of Brand's rock performance with pyrotechnics. He enlists his favorite argument: "Maybe it'll show up in the DVD extras."
Once Apatow has a three-hour-plus version of the movie, he shows it to every funny person in L.A. and asks for notes. "Judd is like a feedback machine," says Feig. "He wants feedback of the person he doesn't even like or trust. And he's got the brain trust of comedy at the moment, old and new." The next stop is test audiences--10 for Funny People. "We had a debate over how much is too much for a comedian to talk about his penis and testicles," Apatow says. "The answer there is, No amount is too much for an audience. The F-word count is at Goodfellas levels. People are waiting for David Mamet's name in the credits."