Judd Apatow is a filmmaker who helped alter the course of Hollywood comedies in a way that almost makes him like a modern day Mel Brooks. He pushed the envelope and changed the way people view what a comedy can be. There were plenty of R-rated comedies before Apatow, but there was something about his films that felt revolutionary.

Before the 2000s, there seemed to be only two types of adult comedies that could reach a level of mainstream success in Hollywood. You could either be a smart award-worthy comedy like A Fish Called Wanda, Broadcast News or Groundhog Day, or a silly lowbrow comedy like Ace Ventura: Pet Detective, Beavis and Butt-Head Do America or Austin Powers. Judd Apatow’s films kind of capture the essence of both. He often writes scripts with naturally vulgar language and a ribald sense of humor and tells stories centered on an immature man child protagonist, but underneath it all Apatow knows how to portray the vulnerability and humanity of his characters in ways that often make them relatable. The 40-Year-Old Virgin is about a middle-aged man who has never had sex finally learning how to talk to women. Knocked Up is about a guy who is forced to stop being childish and start being responsible after he gets a woman pregnant. The King of Staten Island is about a high school dropout who still lives with his mother and whose life is seemingly going nowhere. Part of what differentiated Apatow’s films from other adult comedies was how completely un-glamorous and how painfully relatable these characters were. The familiarity of being awkward, being lonely and feeling like a loser (all things Apatow tapped from his own childhood) are what make so many of his films so hilarious and so universal.

Judd Apatow has one of the most impressive filmographies in terms of both critical and commercial success. He directed The 40-Year–Old Virgin (2005), Knocked Up (2007), Funny People (2009), This Is 40 (2012), Trainwreck (2015), The King of Staten Island (2020) and The Bubble (2022), he co-wrote Walk Hard: The Dewey Cox Story (2007) and You Don’t Mess with the Zohan (2008) and he produced a lot of films including Anchorman (2004), Talladega Nights (2006), Superbad (2007), Forgetting Sarah Marshall (2008), Step Brothers (2008), Pineapple Express (2008), Get Him to the Greek (2010), Bridesmaids (2011), The Five-Year Engagement (2012), Begin Again (2013), Pee-wee’s Big Holiday (2016), Popstar (2016), The Big Sick (2017), Juliet, Naked (2018), Bros (2022) and Please Don’t Destroy: The Treasure of Foggy Mountain (2023). But before Apatow became a successful film producer, he had to navigate the world of television in the nineties, although his tendency to center stories on unpopular and unconventional protagonists was slightly ahead of its time.

The New York City comedian and filmmaker Judd Apatow was born in Queens in 1967 and raised on Long Island. Apatow was a huge comedy nerd from a young age and a fan of comedians like the Marx Brothers, Bill Cosby and Steve Martin, which made him a bit of an oddball kid, but his mother also once spent the summer working at a comedy club, which led to Apatow’s first personal exposure to stand-up comedy. Apatow even started out washing dishes at the East Side Comedy Club on Long Island, and while he was in high school he hosted a program called Comedy Club on his school’s radio station. The amazing thing about that show was that Apatow actually managed to interview actual comedians as a teenager, cold-calling people like Jerry Seinfeld, Garry Shandling, Steve Martin, Howard Stern and others. But Apatow was a legit comedy fan who often asked smart questions and that’s why so many comedians were willing to talk to him because they could tell he was a serious guy. Apatow wrote a 2017 book about those interviews called Sick in the Head, and he goes into all the details about that period.

The first time Judd Apatow would perform stand-up comedy on a stage himself, he was seventeen years old. But he also moved to Los Angeles in 1985 to enroll in the University of Southern California to learn screenwriting (those parallel interests obviously turned out to say a lot about the future of his career). While at college, Apatow continued to host comedy-related events, introducing comedy acts on campus and later working with HBO to produce Comic Relief charity events. Apatow actually met comedian and future star and collaborator Adam Sandler at the Improv that decade and after Apatow dropped out of USC he would go on to move into an apartment with Sandler.

In 1989, after competing in the Johnnie Walker Comedy Search, Apatow was introduced to Garry Shandling, which led to Apatow being hired as a writer for the 1991 Grammy Awards, which Shandling was hosting. Apatow would also go on to co-produce comedy specials for Jim Carrey, Roseanne Barr and Tom Arnold.

In 1990, Judd Apatow met the comedian Ben Stiller, and two years later, Apatow and Stiller co-created The Ben Stiller Show, a sketch comedy show starring Stiller, Andy Dick, Janeane Garofalo and Bob Odenkirk that aired on FOX from 1992 to 1993 for 12 episodes (a 13th episode later aired on Comedy Central in 1995). It didn’t get a lot of viewers but critics enjoyed it and afterwards it even won the Emmy for Outstanding Writing in a Variety or Music Program.

Luckily in 1993, Apatow was hired as a writer on HBO’s The Larry Sanders Show, Garry Shandling’s highly acclaimed TV series about a late night talk show host (Shandling) and his hectic life both on and off stage. It co-starred Jeffrey Tambor (Larry’s announcer and sidekick) and Rip Torn (Larry’s boss) and featured real celebrities playing themselves as talk show guests, to often hilarious results. The Larry Sanders Show ran on HBO from 1992 to 1998, and over the course of the series Apatow went from being a writer to being a producer, executive producer and by the final season a director. Apatow would win six Emmy Awards for his work on that show and he credited Shandling with teaching him a lot about how to write character-driven comedy.

During his run on Larry Sanders, Apatow made the jump to film for the first time, co-writing Disney’s Heavyweights (1995) with director Steven Brill. That film centered on a fat camp and it starred Ben Stiller as the evil fitness entrepreneur who takes over the camp. It was no masterpiece, but it had its funny moments and to this day a sizable number of fans. Apatow would also do uncredited rewrites for such comedies as Ben Stiller’s The Cable Guy (1996) and Adam Sandler’s films Happy Gilmore (1996) and The Wedding Singer (1998).

In the late nineties, Apatow’s uncanny ability to produce commercially unpopular but critically acclaimed comedies continued with Paul Feig’s 18-episode high school masterpiece Freaks and Geeks, which aired on NBC from 1999 to 2000 and is still one of Apatow’s best pieces of work. Conflict between what NBC wanted and what Paul Feig wanted caused the series to be short-lived, but what did get a chance to air was wholly original in its depiction of teenagers and to this day it is often cited among the best cult shows of all time. Many unknown actors who would go on to become famous were introduced to many people for the first time on this show, including Linda Cardellini, James Franco, Seth Rogen, Jason Segel, Busy Philipps and Martin Starr. Many of these actors would also go on to collaborate with Apatow again multiple times.

After working on Freaks and Geeks, Judd Apatow would create his own series for FOX called Undeclared (2001-02) which also ran for only one season despite receiving critical acclaim. It starred Jay Baruchel, Carla Gallo, Charlie Hunnam, Seth Rogen and Louden Wainwright III and followed a group of college freshmen. It had a sharp sense of humor and a sweet and insightful genuineness similar to Freaks and Geeks and it even managed to land guest stars like Adam Sandler.

Despite the commercial rejection of Freaks and Geeks and Undeclared, those two shows were hailed as original comedies that touched on authentic and heartfelt human experiences rare for ordinary television sitcoms, and this was at a time when most TV comedies still had laugh tracks and Beverly Hills, 90210 was the standard bearer for depictions of teenagers on television, which tells you how much Judd Apatow went against the grain.

Fortunately Apatow would finally get his big break in the movie business when Saturday Night Live writer Adam McKay and Saturday Night Live cast member Will Ferrell decided to collaborate to create the 2004 comedy Anchorman: The Legend of Ron Burgundy and Apatow was hired to produce it. The satire starred Ferrell as a hard-headed San Diego news anchor in 1974 and co-starred Christina Applegate, Paul Rudd, Dave Koechner and Steve Carell, but it was Carell’s performance in the film that caught the eye of Judd Apatow, who wanted to collaborate with Carell on a new movie. That movie, which Apatow and Carell both co-wrote together and was based on a character Carell created while improvising at The Second City, became the 2005 comedy The 40-Year-Old Virgin, which was Apatow’s feature film directorial debut and a huge hit that set off his successful career as a comedy producer. He has since gone on to influence many other comedy writers and directors with his writing style. And when I see a film that isn’t made by Apatow but still has an Apatow vibe (21 Jump Street, Neighbors, Booksmart, etc.), I usually refer to the “Judd Apatow School of Comedy” as a short hand for those kinds of films, because most people know exactly what I mean when I say it.