One of the biggest producers of comedy films in the world, Judd Apatow, has released a book full of interviews with some of the comedians that inspired his passion in the medium.
When Apatow was in high school, he hosted a radio show. As he spoke of on Marc Maron’s podcast, Apatow was able to maneuver around the comparatively smaller PR protection of some huge comedians to interview them on his radio show. As a 15-year-old kid, Apatow was able to interview massive names in comedy including Jerry Seinfeld, Jay Leno, and Larry Sanders, the latter of whom was one of Apatow’s first bosses when Apatow worked on The Larry Sanders Show.
Apatow kept the tapes to those interviews and transcribed them for his new book Sick in the Head: Conversations About Life and Comedy. The book reflects on Apatow’s life and utter obsession with comedy. Along with the interviews he conducted in his youth, he also updated the book with newer interviews with comedians and writers like Chris Rock, Louis C.K., Lena Dunham, and Mel Brooks.
The book examines Apatow’s life as one of the world’s biggest comic successes.
Jennifer Lawrence, who was ranked last year by New York Magazine as the most valuable actor/actress in Hollywood, has been paid her worth signing on upcoming sci-fi film Passengers for a jaw-dropping $20 million contract. That’s $8 million more than her equally red-hot Passengers co-star Chris Pratt.
This is made even more triumphant by the fact that when Lawrence signed on to David O. Russell’s American Hustle, she did so for a contract 23 percent smaller than her male co-stars Christian Bale, Bradley Cooper, and Jeremy Renner, the last of whom does not have the box office juice that Lawrence has accumulated with the success of The Hunger Games franchise.
Lawrence’s contract is not only a big win for her but a win for Hollywood actresses at large who have for far too long gotten paid less than their male co-stars.
Documentarian Rick Beyer began told a story of a group of artists and designers that were recruited by the U.S. government to play tricks on the Nazis during WWII. The documentary aired on PBS and was turned into a book written by Beyer with Elizabeth Sayles called “The Ghost Army of World War II: How One Top-Secret Unit Deceived the Enemy With Inflatable Tanks, Sound Effects, and Other Audacious Fakery.”
American Sniper producer Andrew Lazar, comedy director Todd Phillips, and Haute 100 actor Bradley Cooper optioned the book to be turned into a feature film. The book chronicles this group of WWII artists who were able to save much Allied lives by fooling Nazi troops into thinking that they were a real military outfit.
The troops were called the “Cecil B. DeMille warriors” after the famous director. Considering that Cooper has worked with Lazar on American Sniper and Phillips on The Hangover franchise, it can be safely assumed that the film will fall somewhere in between comedy and drama portraying the heroism of the soldiers but highlighting the humorousness in the charade of these soldiers faking out Nazis.
Of the 1,100 men in the “Cecil B. DeMille warriors,” only 26 are still alive.
