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We psychoanalyze the superhot, superbad Judd Apatow and his obsession with bodies, buddies and male bonding

By Jim Emerson
Special to MSN Movies

Writer/director/producer Judd Apatow, the man Entertainment Weekly recently crowned the 'Smartest Person in Hollywood,' has made a solemn promise to put at least one penis into every movie he makes from now on. He's slipped penises into his pictures before, of course: all those obsessive-compulsive drawings in "Superbad," his own on comically disconcerting display in "Walk Hard: The Dewey Cox Story," and Jason Segel's for a humiliating breakup in "Forgetting Sarah Marshall." Sometimes, too, his films include breasts and vaginas. And there are perfectly good reasons for that. Not the least of which is that all genitalia and externally visible glands are funny.

Video: Interview with Kristen Bell and Jason Segel

Apatow was created when his dad's ... well, you know how that works. He has built himself into a powerful Hollywood brand name by mashing together the sweet and the randy, the smart and the sophomoric, and the masculine and feminine psyches (and their anatomical playgrounds). Apatow earned his reputation as a writer and producer on "The Ben Stiller Show" and "The Larry Sanders Show." After building up his farm team on a pair of brilliant but underwatched cult TV shows about high school ("Freaks and Geeks") and college ("Undeclared"), he finally found an audience in movies as a producer of the Will Ferrell comedies "Anchorman: The Legend of Ron Burgundy" and "Talladega Nights: The Ballad of Ricky Bobby." As a writer, director and producer, he and his collaborators have reinvented popular goofball comedy, and particularly romantic comedy, with "The 40-Year-Old Virgin," "Knocked Up," "Superbad" and, now, "Forgetting Sarah Marshall."

Now, cast your memory back to the romantic comedy of an earlier age: specifically the execrable "When Harry Met Sally ... ," an anemically romantic, allegedly comic ersatz "Annie Hall." In that movie, Billy Crystal (Jew) and Meg Ryan (shiksa) set out, with their magic screen chemistry, to prove that men and women cannot be friends because their sexual organs fit so nicely together that it's impossible to keep them apart. Apatow's movies approach the "When Penis Met Vagina ..." dilemma from another angle, which is that although friendship between men and women (or boys and girls, or boys and women) may lead to sex, the guys actually hope that the sex will lead to friendship. Women represent a possible win-win scenario: the love and acceptance that comes with friendship combined with the joys of animalistic rutting. Besides, as Ben (Seth Rogen) observes when he and Alison (Katherine Heigl) are getting naked in "Knocked-Up," "You're prettier than I am."

Also: 'The Big Debate': Is Judd Apatow the Funniest Man Alive?

In your typical Apatow film, a guy (he makes movies about guys) is stuck in some kind of developmental ... well, rut -- usually involving virginity, high school, a girlfriend or absence of girlfriend, an ex-girlfriend, college, postcollege, pot smoking, marriage, etc. He's scared and reluctant to move on to what he or someone else feels should be the next stage of his life, which will involve giving up the relative security of his current, stale situation in favor of a new, risky and unpredictable one. Behind every Apatow protagonist is at least one buddy, either holding him back or pushing, prodding and goading him to make the big jump.

"He is our friend," says Officer Michaels (co-writer/co-star Rogen) to his partner, Officer Slater (Bill Hader) in "Superbad," after they've interrupted the virginity-busting coitus of McLovin (Christopher Mintz-Plasse). "We should be guiding his [genitalia], not blocking it."

There's the rub. On some level, all of Apatow's seminal motion picture productions -- "The 40-Year-Old Virgin," "Knocked Up," "Superbad," "Forgetting Sarah Marshall" -- are about women granting or withholding sex from the male protagonist (which is pretty much what all romantic comedies -- and tragedies -- are about).

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