Apatow On Apatow

The Cable Guy (1996)

“The Cable Guy is still one of my favourite films to have worked on. I must say, however, the rough critical reaction made me doubt my instincts and sense of humour.

I spent that time making well-regarded television shows that were cancelled instantly. Not that I didn’t realise that a Jim Carrey movie that ends with his
suicide attempt was a bit of a risk…”

Anchorman (2004)

“Will Ferrell appeared on my show Undeclared right when he was leaving Saturday Night Live. And around that time, he showed me a script that he’d written with Adam McKay called Anchorman.

The 40-Year-Old Virgin (2005)

“I’m proud that the chest-waxing scene works so well, because it is so hard to get very big laughs in a movie and come up with something memorable.

Knocked Up (2007)

“Seth gets a girl pregnant. That’s enough for the movie. How deep and rich can we go with a simple idea? We actually improvised for five hours, where Seth and his idiotic stoner friends debate abortion.

Superbad (2007)

“We’d watch the movie and go ‘How many these “fucks” can we remove?’ We literally removed every single one in the movie that isn’t connected to something that gets a laugh and it’s still 100s.

Walk Hard: The Dewey Cox Story (2007)

“It’s a goof on movies like Ray and Walk The Line, so we started watching every single biopic we could get our hands on.

Forgetting Sarah Marshall (2008)

“Jason Segel and I had worked together on Freaks And Geeks , but you can only do so much on TV. We couldn’t show his penis on that.

Drillbit Taylor (2008)

“A friend of mine at Paramount told me he had this treatment that John Hughes was never able to finish a script on. I asked Seth Rogen to take a look at it and we went about trying to make a movie in the tradition of the great John Hughes movies.

Step Brothers (2008)

“I think everyone noticed that John C Reilly and Will Ferrell had a special chemistry in Talladega Nights and so they came up with this idea together that they would be step brothers later in life.