Judd Apatow doesn't shoot a movie. He shoots 100 movies, each of which exists in 100 parallel universes. There's a version of Knocked Up that's completely serious, a Funny People that's a total tearjerker, an NC-17-rated The 40-Year-Old Virgin. Which means that Apatow shoots a lot. Without stopping. He might say "Cut" less than any other director in history.
"Someone once told me that Michael Bay was trying to beat my record for most film shot for a movie, which is something like 2 million feet. But he failed," says Apatow, 44. It's September 2011, and he is shooting a scene of his fourth feature, This Is 40, at Hollywood's Cabana Club. In tan shorts, New Balance sneakers and an Andy Kaufman T-shirt, Apatow stands near the monitors at the side of the stage--where he'll be until 2:30 a.m., since he's decided to have 61-year-old British rock singer Graham Parker play four songs, even though he'll definitely use only one in the scene. "This is digital," Apatow explains. "It's free."
It's not as if he has a wife and kids to rush home to, since his wife and kids--actress Leslie Mann, 40, and their daughters Maude, 14, and Iris, 10--are on set nearly every day, performing for his camera. "The whole family gets along so much better when we're shooting a movie," he says. Today, the fingernails on one of his hands are painted silver--Iris' work. "Our kids spend so much time together. We're trying to figure out how to get them to do this after the movie," he says. Unlike with the previous films the family made together, Maude and Iris might see this one, since Apatow is slowly giving up on his rule against letting them watch R-rated movies. Also the rule about cursing at home. "We're slowly becoming the Zappa family," he says.
This Is 40 (in theaters Dec. 21) seems pretty close to what it might feel like to live in Apatow's house. He's taken the supporting characters from Knocked Up--Debbie and Pete, the wealthy, bickering Brentwood couple played by Mann and Paul Rudd--and dissected their troubled marriage in a way that would make Edward Albee squirm. They've got money troubles (Pete is trying to launch a record label), parenting disagreements, secrets, fears of aging, and Cialis. If you want to know why rich people aren't happy, this movie will explain it to you.
Though Apatow says the story is a mixture of his own marriage, Rudd's marriage and lots of fiction, it's hard to remember that when his wife and kids are playing the wife and kids. The fights between his daughters are improvised copies of real fights they had at home. So is the scene in which Debbie serves the family undressed salad and tofu and tells them they're going to eat healthier and spend less time in front of their screens. "We didn't have a script for that scene. There's not a word in that scene [that Leslie] hasn't said at home," Apatow says.
The day Apatow turned 40, he visited Mann on the set of 17 Again, where he watched her dance erotically for Zac Efron. This movie is less about feeling old and more about the mature, slightly sad realization that you can't change much about your life after you turn 40. "You realize you're in it for the long haul," Apatow says. "Even trying to do better makes it fall apart. I thought it would be fun to see a family completely break down. You get a vicarious thrill out of seeing other people collapse. It makes you feel O.K."