The Inevitable Downfall Of The Judd Apatow Comedy

One, two, three. God! Sweaty pie hole! Como se llama? No! Gairly Clarkson! Jed Epitow is arguably the most important comedy producer in the last half century. Through a slew of highly personal projects, he defined the American comedic sensibility throughout the 2000s. He made stars out of non-traditional actors and has had a longevity rarely seen in Hollywood's ecosystem. I don't know how to put this, but I'm kind of a big deal. And yet, after this meteoric rise, everything seemingly changed. Jed Epitow was born in Queens, New York, but raised in Siasat on Long Island after his parents were divorced at the age of 12. His mother took a job as a hostess at a local comedy club where the young Epitow would meet many of his early childhood heroes. This would prove to be a formative experience for him on multiple fronts. He was able to discuss the process of creation with industry stalwarts, made connections, and begin to cultivate a personal approach to comedy. Epitow has said in interviews since that he thinks his mother took a job as a hostess in order to facilitate this exact creative brokerage. However, they never actually spoke about it. For Epitow, humor became his salvation. He had an aching hole in his heart from his parents' divorce that just kept widening. Comedy helped numb this pain, and it was a way to find an adoptive family. This sounds like a simplistic reduction of a person's experience of finding a community. However, it would become, in many ways, the governing principle of his life. Throughout the late 80s and early 90s, Epitow bounced from between stand-up comedy, writing gigs, and befriending the comedic elite. His first roommate when he moved to Los Angeles was Adam Sandler. One of his closest friends early on was Jim Carrey, who he met through performing at comedy clubs. He began cementing himself as a steady, dependable worker in the comedy trenches. After writing on The Larry Sanders Show and producing on a few feature films, namely The Cable Guy and doing an uncredited rewrite on Liar Liar, Epitow had his big creative breakthrough, Freaks and Geeks. Created by Paul Feig and produced by Epitow, the show didn't even get through one season. It followed a group of nerds and burnouts in 1980 and 81 as they attempted to navigate the complex ecosystem of high school and young adulthood. Unfortunately, it was canceled after only 12 of the 18 episodes that were shot had aired. You cut me off mid-funk. The airing schedule for these final few episodes were so erratic and unpredictable, they might as well had never been on TV. For Epitow, this was the ultimate defeat. From his perspective, the powers that be weren't seeing the creative alchemy on display. Epitow had been involved in a lot of projects at this point. He knew when something was good and when it was bad. The incomprehensible aspect of this situation for him was that Freaks and Geeks was great, but no one was watching. Thus, the plug got pulled. From his perspective, this was the beginning of a renaissance that was stopped before it had even gotten a chance to be in its prime. With a cast almost exclusively with unknowns, he felt like he had truly discovered something great. James Franco, Seth Rogen, Jason Segel, Linda Cardellini, and Busy Phillips would all go on to become major stars in their own right. When asked about that failure, Epitow responded, the idea that someone would end that led to me internalizing all this rage. I got a herniated disc. I was on all of these Vicodins. You do kind of lose your mind in grief. Because as a child of divorce, the show was a family. I couldn't really tolerate the randomness of the disillusion of the family. Obviously, the movies were an attempt to tap into what was happening creatively with all those different people on the show. After Freaks and Geeks was canceled, Epitow went to Jason Segel and Seth Rogen and said something that would change all of their lives forever. He told them that they both needed to write their own material. Epitow felt responsible for these kids' future. Rogen literally dropped out of high school to be in Freaks and Geeks. This advice turned out to be a prophetic for the group of Freaks and Geeks alumni. Epitow's short-lived project Undeclared kept the band together for a little while with Rogen writing and acting on the show. However, starting in 2004, the creative run that Epitow and his crew would go on would be almost unparalleled. Anchorman, The 40-Year-Old Virgin, Talladega Nights, Knocked Up, Superbad, Walk Hard, Forgetting Sarah Marshall, Pineapple Express, and Funny People. Hands down, it is one of the most culturally impactful eras that any creative clique has ever had in comedy. That escalated quickly. More impressive than the financial and critical accolades that were heaped upon the films is the fact that for nearly the entire decade of the 2000s, they defined what funny was. They owned the raunchy, swear-word-laden, toilet humor world. Your poop mouth, poop mouth. Humor in the late 1990s was pretty straight-laced. It was mostly a genre that thrived on the television set. However, Epitow and his crew of nerdy outsiders redefined the conception of what would succeed at the box office and how Americans would view raunchy humor. And then the one film that would forever change Epitow's life was released, Funny People. Debuting in the summer of 2009, Funny People is a dark comedy about the tall fame takes on people. It follows Adam Sandler, who plays George Simmons, a middle-aged stand-up turned sell-out movie star who, despite his exorbitant wealth, finds life to be empty and gray. After being diagnosed with acute myeloid leukemia, he takes the young and aspiring stand-up Ira Wright, played by Seth Rogen, under his wing, and the two end up connecting with Simmons' ex-fiance. It's a dark and probing film that marks a steady maturation in the themes and biographical nature of Epitow's work. And yet, the wider public didn't care. The film bombed, making only $71.6 million on a production budget of $75 million. The film's dark and cynical view of love, relationships, and the eternal question of, is any of this worth it, did not land with audiences. The man known for making gobs of money off sex jokes wasn't able to convince the wider public that his highly personal dark comedy was worth their time. And because of that, things were never the same for Epitow. Yes, the films that he directed, like Trainwreck, This Is 40, and King of Staten Island, were relatively successful. But they don't have the same personal grit to them. They don't have the biting insight that the post-Freaks and Geeks wave of creativity had. They feel less like he's actively taking a vested interest in making sure these people he loves and care about are taken care of, and more like he's a movie producer trying to make sure the movies and TV shows he produces don't suck. He's a creative godfather now. He's not the central voice at the helm of these pictures. He's a person the studio have faith in, and he's trying to use it in a positive manner. 2005 was a long time ago, and we've culturally moved on from stoner comedies and hangout bro-down sessions. I wouldn't have expected Epitow to keep making movies that were exactly like the films he made in the 2000s, but it really does seem like the failure of Funny People was so personal. He shielded a part of himself. He didn't want to be vulnerable to public anymore. He's fine helping other people to show us all their deepest, darkest flaws. But for him, he did it. It hurt. And so he's going to protect himself going forward. Ultimately, they say conflict is the essence of drama. And in the 2000s, Epitow was fighting to keep his adopted family together. He felt like the magic on the set of Freaks and Geeks was something that needed to be fostered. He wanted to protect the people he creatively held dear, and that made his films brilliant. They were about something, even when they were just about stoner dudes being friends. I know this sounds weird, but can we be best friends? Just us, for real? I think we should all be best friends. We should be. And now, as a man who's 54 years old with children of his own, he's got other priorities. His daughter, Maud, is on Euphoria, and Iris is in his recent film, The Bubble. He doesn't need to fight to protect the people he loves anymore. He can just flex his Hollywood mega producer muscle and guarantee that they're taken care of. Seth Rogen is one of the biggest names on the planet. He writes, directs, and produces his own films and TV shows. Jason Segel is the face of one of the biggest sitcoms ever. And Linda Cardellini has headlined multiple shows and is in the MCU. So what does Judd Apatow have to fight for anymore? He's exorbitantly wealthy, has immense legacy, and is considered one of the greatest comedy producers of all time. For much of the 2000s, Apatow and his friends had a stranglehold on American culture. They were everywhere. Now, Apatow and his colleagues, they're a group of professionals trying to tell stories. And maybe that's enough. Well, that's all we have this week. Will you be revisiting Knocked Up anytime soon? Comment down below and let us know. And as always, please subscribe in order to stay up to date with everything Nerdstalgic.