Breaking Bad was a journey. It wasn’t an exploration of the drug trade or those within it so much as it was a chronicle of corruption. Watching the pilot, you wouldn’t expect Bryan Cranston’s Walter White to evolve in the drastic, violent ways he does, both behaviorally and physically. Creator Vince Gilligan took a…
Over the weekend, Family Guy and The Orville creator Seth MacFarlane decided to take a nice big bite out of the hand that feeds him by saying that he’s “embarrassed” to work for Fox. His comment was a response to a quote from Fox News host Tucker Carlson, who recently instructed viewers to ignore everything they hear…
Garry Shandling made groundbreaking TV comedy by showing the things that are usually left off TV: The through-the-looking-glass meta-sitcom shenanigans of It’s Garry Shandling’s Show, the backstage talk-show tumult of The Larry Sanders Show. We take such lack of a fourth wall for granted in 2018, but some of the most…
Early in the first part of The Zen Diaries Of Garry Shandling, director Judd Apatow mentions how he had a habit—even before Shandling died—of reminding people that “most of modern comedy originated with Garry, that he inspired so many people.” Apatow’s two-part documentary about his friend and mentor spends more than…
Judd Apatow is a very successful producer, director, writer, and stand-up (in that order), and he’s also mentored a new generation of Hollywood players, including Seth Rogen, Lena Dunham, Jonah Hill, and Jason Segel. So he seems particularly qualified to teach a MasterClass aimed at helping students develop their…
Garry Shandling was one of the sharpest and most innovative American comedic minds of the past century, and his death two years ago at the age of 66 was, to put it mildly, a huge fucking loss for the planet. His disciple Judd Apatow knows that better than most, and is determined to ensure Shandling’s legacy gets its…
Netflix has announced that the upcoming third season of its Judd Apatow-produced dramedy series Love will be its last. This is per Variety, which notes that the series—which stars Gillian Jacobs and Paul Rust as two people who almost certainly should not be in a romantic relationship—returns for its last season on…
Judd Apatow’s film and TV catalog all share carefully curated soundtracks with spot-on song choices, whether it’s the rebellious opening of Freaks And Geeks or in the James Taylor/MySpace party scene from Funny People. In the video above, Apatow details his five favorite musical influences, which include The Who,…
What makes the funniest people in the world laugh? We asked a host of comedians from the Just For Laughs festival in Montreal and got some great answers. From the accidental physical comedy of Shaq’s infamous TNT fall, to the dry British humor of HBO’s Extras, comedians like Kevin Hart, Judd Apatow, and Ali Wong offer…
Ten years after its initial release, Superbad continues to live on in the American zeitgeist. Like other comedy hits before it, references to the film’s jokes have gone from being hilarious, to annoying, to nostalgia-inducing, to hilarious again. And even after a decade of everyone and their mother misquoting McLovin,…
Interesting anecdotes don’t always make for interesting movies; your story may kill at parties, but that doesn’t mean it belongs on the big screen. In The Big Sick, stand-up comedian Kumail Nanjiani, who plays Dinesh on Silicon Valley, and Emily V. Gordon, the writer and former therapist he married, dramatize the…
Recently, Sony floated the idea of releasing “clean” versions of some of its naughtier films so people with sensitive eyes and ears could enjoy the storyline of, say, Captain Phillips without suffering through the part where Barkhad Abdi tells Tom Hanks that he’s “the motherfucking captain now, motherfucker.” This…
Director Judd Apatow has offered up his opinion of Sony’s new trial program to offer “clean” versions of some of its films as extras to people who purchase digital versions via services like iTunes and VUDU: The company can shove the whole project up its collective ass.
Several pop culture publications and trades printed stories this week about the fact that some combination of Zosia Mamet, Jemima Kirke, Andrew Rannells, and Adam Driver wouldn’t appear in the Girls series finale. Those stories struck me as a savvy move on the part of HBO’s communications team. The absences are…
“What Will We Do This Time About Adam?” is an awkward title for an episode that provides such an elegant solution for one of Girls’ biggest narrative conundrums. A large chunk of Girls is about Hannah’s relationship with Adam, so it’s not unreasonable for fans to consider a reconciliation a necessary part of the end…
Last Sunday, news reports came out stating that comedian Artie Lange had been arrested for “alleged possession of cocaine, heroin, and drug paraphernalia” near his New Jersey home. Yesterday, Lange—who currently has a recurring role on Pete Holmes’ new HBO show, Crashing—opened up about the arrest on Twitter, assuring…
A romantic comedy is nothing if you don’t want to see the leads get together—and while there are definitely parts of Netflix’s Love where it seems like the central couple should not be together, that would be a denial of the chemistry between stars Gillian Jacobs and Paul Rust. Co-created by Rust with his wife, Lesley…
Pete Holmes has the right story for a Louie-esque semi-autobiographical sitcom. Raised in an evangelical Christian household, his was a righteous path toward the pulpit. He married his college sweetheart at 22; at 28, they were divorced. In between, Holmes found that he preferred audiences to congregations, and…
Today, on this most love-filled of days, Netflix released its trailer for season two of the cringe-inducing, utterly uncomfortable, all-too-real anti-rom-com Love, starring Gillian Jacobs and Paul Rust. Season one ended with Jacobs’ unhinged Mickey confessing to Rust’s geeky Gus that she was a sex addict, and the…
Judd Apatow is currently prepping a documentary about his hero Garry Shandling. The comedy impresario solicited any material that may be of use on Twitter yesterday.
