“I was always last-picked for teams, and it was devastating,” Apatow told me one day just before “Knocked Up” started shooting. “I gravitated toward comedians because they were the ones who were pointing out hypocrisy and lying. I needed someone to tell me that it was O.K., because I felt really bad.”
The Good Stuff:
Both of the films Apatow has directed offer up the kind of conservative morals the Family Research Council might embrace — if the humor weren’t so filthy. In “Virgin,” the title character is saving himself for true love. “Knocked Up,” which opens on June 1, revolves around a good-hearted doofus who copes with an unplanned pregnancy by getting a job and eliminating the bong hits. In each of the films, the hero is nearly led astray by buddies who tempt with things like boxes of porn, transvestite hookers and an ideology about the ladies possibly learned from scanning Maxim while scarfing down Pop-Tarts. By the end, Apatow exposes the friends as well meaning but comically pathetic and steers his men toward doing the right thing.
On the greatest ending of a movie of all-time:
Throughout the writing of “The 40-Year-Old Virgin,” Apatow wrestled with how to show the joy of the lead character Andy’s first time. Often, he would turn on his cellphone and find a message like this one from Garry Shandling, his comedy mentor: “You have to make us understand that Andy’s sex is better than everybody else’s sex in the movie — because he’s in love.” In the end, Apatow had Andy marry and then have sex. Andy does it twice. The first time lasts less than a minute. After the second time, he breaks into a hosanna of “Aquarius” from “Hair.” The camera switches to a pastoral field where he is joined in song and dance by the rest of the cast. It was completely ludicrous and possibly the most uplifting end to a Hollywood comedy in years. The movie cost $26 million, earned $177 million and made many critics’ Top-10 lists at the end of 2005.
From the NYTimes
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