Addendum

I'd just like to put a little addendum on the previous post here: I'd meant to bring up Apatow's use of the same actors in every movie and TV show in a little more detail, but I felt the post was going on too long anyway, and just skipped ahead. But one of my points that I'd thought of was that in every project Apatow does, almost all the actors translate over and receive major parts in the new project, but the actresses do not. Seth Rogen, Paul Rudd, Steve Carrell, Jason Segel, etc. - they've got all the screentime on every project. Sometimes people like Busy Phillips and Carla Gallo show up for a small cameo, but Apatow essentially leaves all the actresses behind on each project and takes the actors with him to star in the next project. He even built that group up over time, adding people like Rudd and Carrell as they fit in, never leaving someone behind, but never picking up an actress in that group.

I wondered why that was, what that said about Apatow's personality. Was it perhaps a little misogynistic? Did he feel that the actresses he'd worked with were untalented or replaceable? Did he just feel more connected to the actors he worked with than the actresses, and kept them accordingly? Did he feel he could either take one or the other with him, and decided to take the actors? I seriously thought about this for a while. These are the things I think about when I'm driving, which is a major reason I should probably not have a license.

Then I realized there was an exception (not, like, out of thin air. I was on the internet). From The Cable Guy all the way to Knocked Up, Leslie Mann appeared in a lot of Apatow's major projects. So I decided maybe I'd misjudged Apatow and it was just a coincidence.

And then I discovered that Leslie Mann is Apatow's wife. Ah. That makes sense.

In other news, I saw another cut of the Celebrex commercial. It's now even longer, and mentions "death" as a side effect twice. Excellent. Really drive that point home, boys.

Review: Knocked Up (2007)

The title is a lie. This is not a review of Knocked Up.

There's a reason for the lie, of course, and that is that when I started to sit down and write a review of Knocked Up and why I liked it so much, I realized that the reasons I liked it had less to do with the movie and more to do with the process that took place that before the movie, the series of events that brought the movie to the screen. I realized that I like this movie in kind of the same way you would like watching one of your friends win a marathon, or your kid win a geography bee. It's about being proud of something, of following something from its struggling early beginnings to its greatest victory. It's about being a part of that world. So, this is a review of that world. This is a review of Judd Apatow and Seth Rogen, and everything they created.

Eight years ago, "Freaks and Geeks," Paul Feig and Apatow's high school misfits drama, was released upon an unsuspecting NBC audience, who for the most part rejected it out of hand. It was an hour-long drama that was equal parts comedy and youthful angst in the most compassionate, honest way possible. A huge number of the storylines were ripped from the personal embarrassments of the writing team's high school years. It was a TV show about what high school was really like, where everyone looked like people you actually knew in high school, everyone was as uncomfortable and emotional as they really were - and it was always, always extremely funny. Five or six years later, shows like it would start popping up on television, but at the time nothing like it had ever been done. NBC never really knew what it had, never knew how to promote it, yanked it around for a season, pulling it on and off the air, and finally canceled it before the season ended. It was a knife to the heart for Apatow, he never forgot it.

Two years later, realizing he'd gotten all sorts of talented actors involved in the acting business who were now getting no work, he launched "Undeclared," a half-hour comedy in the same style about a bunch of slacker college students who spend most of their time hanging around the dorm and trying to entertain themselves - basically, a half-hour comedy about real college students. He brought back Seth Rogen, he fought tooth and nail and found a way to bring back Jason Segel, he ended up bringing back six or seven more actors from "Freaks and Geeks" before the show was pulled, because of course it was canceled before the first season finished. Virtually everything Apatow did ended up being canceled in those days: he had a mess of pilots under his belt that had never been picked up, and his attempts to launch the careers of the actors and actresses he picked were usually laughed at.

Naturally, those careers ended up taking off anyway - James Franco, David Krumholtz, Tom Welling, Jenna Fisher, Linda Cardellini, Charlie Hunnam, Monica Keena - because all of those actors were just as talented as he said they were. That was what was so frustrating to Apatow about his career; everything he touched was pulled away from him, but at the end of the day he was always right. The actors he discovered always turned out to be gems, everything he made would garner oceans of critical acclaim and loyal fans. But the audience, that giant audience that has networks wining and dining you and begging you to stay, that audience was never quite there. Mainstream success never arrived, and Apatow left the television industry and went back to movies, and it seemed hardly anyone noticed he was gone. Maybe nobody did.

Eventually, though, "Freaks and Geeks" and "Undeclared" came out on DVD. And word spread around, people began to follow the stories from beginning to end, and Apatow began to gather a larger contingent. But it wasn't just seeing the shows that brought him support, it was the world that he offered on these DVDs. Every single episode had commentary, sometimes more than one. But rather than just a commentary from the show's creator, or from the executive producers, up to seven or eight people involved would get together to contribute the track: half a dozen actors, sometimes the director or the writer would join, and often Apatow himself would sit in to guide the commentary. Rather than spend the time back-patting or breaking down the elements of the story, the commentary tracks were about telling old jokes and bringing up forgotten stories. And there was an honesty to them - during one, Jon Kasdan (the writer of the episode) and Apatow talked about how Kasdan had quit the business after the show was canceled, sending Apatow a letter that basically said "you broke me." The fact that there were able to get together a few years later and discuss the episode was a testament to Apatow's ability to admit mistakes and move on.

It's that honesty that makes Apatow and his projects so appealing. Apatow never pretended that he was making great art, he never gave interviews that maligned people for not appreciating his genius, he never claimed to be a genius. In the world of Hollywood producing, that's a rare feat: everything made is important and made by people of exceptional, untouchable talent, nothing is made by someone who just likes making TV shows that are funny. Apatow never pretended he wasn't working hard, he was clearly putting his own lifeblood into everything he made, you could feel it just hearing him talk about it. In interviews years later, he talked about how he managed to put himself in the hospital through the stress, he estimates he might've taken ten, twenty years off his life in those more stressful times. But by then he was out of the industry and producing movies again, and nothing had been heard from him in a few years.

In the meantime, as far as I can tell, Rogen did nothing. Rogen states that the lazy, unfocused life that he and his apartment mates live in Knocked Up is a fairly close approximation to his actual life for a while. Pretty much the only person who hired him as an actor was Apatow, and so Rogen kept standing by, waiting. Eventually, he ended co-writing a script with Apatow called "The 40-Year Old Virgin." Rogen pushed to have it be as profane as possible, the argument if you're going to have someone as sweet and awkward and honest-looking as Steve Carell as your lead, doesn't it make it that much funnier to have him be surrounded by completely opposite characters? He turned out to be more right than he knew.

And of course, The 40-Year Old Virgin ended up being a smash success, but what was important about it was that it wasn't that was the first time Apatow had something hit big but rather that the thing that hit big wasn't any different from the things he'd made before. It was that same loose, improvisational style, that blend of comedy and honesty, all those things that had been the trademark of everything that Apatow had done that had failed. It was a vindication that he'd been right all along.

Knocked Up is an extension of that success, in fact the culmination of it. It features only actors who've been in Apatow productions before, and the four actors playing Rogen's best friends are his actual best friends, three of whom played his friends all the way back on "Undeclared." Even the day players are roles filled by people connected with Apatow in some way - actors from "The Office," or Loudon Wainwright III, who played the father on "Undeclared" and contributed the soundtrack to Knocked Up. The world created is the world they built from the ground up, filled only with people they discovered and trained. It's like these films operate in their own universe, their own tiny Golden-Era Hollywood filled with actors who only appear on screen when summoned by Apatow. And you got to see it all come together right before your eyes.

My brother didn't like the film, found it just coarse and unfunny, full of drug jokes and constant profanity, and I see his point, because it is full of drug jokes and constant profanity and it's easy to get turned off by it all those things, I know a lot of people who were. But watching this movie meant I got to watch the moment when all the awkward young actors I've followed finally truly found their feet. And I don't mean to say - I can't emphasize this strongly enough - that it wasn't funny but I found it funny because I've gotten attached to these actors. I mean to say that I've gotten so in tune with how these movies feel and flow and how the jokes land that it just made it that much funnier, and I got to see all the sweetness and camaraderie that's apparent, not in spite of, but actually through the dirty jokes and drug humor. It was everything I'd been waiting for. And that's saying something.

Four stars out of Five.

The Top Power Forwards In The Game

I was watching the NBA Finals tonight, and one of the announcers laid out his Top-Five list for the best power forwards of all time, which I instantly committed to memory for its pure ignorance. The list looked like this:

1. Tim Duncan
2. Charles Barkley
3. Karl Malone
4. Kevin Garnett
5. Kevin McHale

I shouldn't be surprised at this, I suppose; ESPN did a similar poll of ten sportscasters a few years back and came up with virtually the same result. There's a human instinct to quickly forget the players of the past, to believe that what we're seeing now is the best that's ever been. But it's just not the case.

After overpraising LeBron's overdue 48-Special against the Pistons, Bill Simmons hearkened back to his youth, and wrote an illuminating article last week about how quickly our memories fade. He was dead-on. We want to believe that everything before us is history being made - and in some cases, it is. Duncan's quest for his fourth ring in nine years is just one more trophy on one of the most distinguished careers in NBA history. Tim Duncan is not one of the top-ten players of all time, but he is most likely the greatest power forward to play the game. Unlike most sportscasters these days, I think the matter's still up for debate.

Though if you asked me to cast my vote today for who that would be, I would unquestionably pick Duncan. I think it's still up for debate, but I do know who I think should win the debate. I just wish more people were legitimately asking the question, "where does Duncan rate among the greatest power forwards of all time?"

Here's my answer to that question: "Not one notch above Charles Barkley." Barkley is not the second-best power forward in history. Garnett is certainly not the fourth-best power forward in history. Let's look at the stats of these players, the first four of whom were playing NBA ball within the last ten years:

1. Tim Duncan - 21.8 ppg, 11.9 rpg, 3.2 apg, 2-time MVP, 3-time Finals MVP, 9-time All-Star, 9-time All-NBA First Team, 9-time All-Defense First or Second Team.

Those numbers aren't stunning, but they've been consistent year in and year out. And a 3-time Finals MVP, with possibly one more on the way this year (though Tony Parker's probably going to nab this one). Remember, the following three players have zero rings between the three of them

2. Charles Barkley - 22.1 ppg, 11.7 rpg, 3.9 apg, 1 MVP, 10-time All-NBA First or Second Team, 11-time All-Star

3. Karl Malone - 25.0 ppg, 10.1 rpg, 3.6 apg, 2-time MVP, 13-time All-Star, 11-time All-NBA First Team

4. Kevin Garnett- 20.5 ppg, 11.4 rpg, 4.5 apg, 1 MVP, 10-time All-Star, 6-time First or Second All-NBA, 8-time First or Second All-Defense.

5. Kevin McHale - 17.9 ppg, 7.3 rpg, 1.7 apg, 7-time All-Star, 6-time First or Second All-Defense. McHale's stats are lower than the players ahead of him since he was one of a number of great players on one of the greatest teams in NBA history, with a number of other scorers: Bird, Parish, Ainge, Johnson, etc. As a result, he's got as many championships as Duncan.

Now, take a look at some of these challengers. Can you think of any reason for these players not to be on this list other than the fact that they played 20-30 years earlier than these five players?

• Elgin Baylor - 27.4 ppg, 13.5 rpg, 4.3 apg, 1 MVP Award (his rookie year), 10 years All-NBA First Team, 11-Time All-Star
  
• Bob Petit - 26.4 ppg, 16.2 rpg, 3.0 apg, 2-time MVP, 11-time All-Star, 10-time All-NBA First Team
• Elvin Hayes - 21.0 pgpg, 12.5 rpg, 1.8 apg, 12-time All-Star, 6-time All-NBA First or Second Team

We've lost the ability to rationally evaluate the players we see on SportsCenter every night - when someone's better than anyone we've ever seen, it's easy for that person to become the best player of all time. Anyone who's ready to hand over Jordan's legacy and call LeBron "potentially the greatest player ever to play the game" is an idiot. It's still arguable if Jordan was the best of all-time, since we've lost the ability to accurately compare him to players like Wilt Chamberlain and Oscar Robertson. It's impossible to weigh the things we've seen against the things we've only seen on paper. It can't be done.

Duncan's going to win another championship in a couple days. When he does, we'll see him hoist that giant awkward looking trophy over his head one more time, grinning through the shower of ticker tape. When he does, the announcers are going to say something like "the greatest power forward in NBA history takes home yet another championship." And I think they'll be right.

I just think that maybe it should still be up for debate.

Arthur The Intern: Week One

Andy asked me to make an "Arthur The Intern" video that was sort of like the Ross The Intern bits Letterman (actually, it was Leno, but that's understandable) used to do, only "not gay." The new guideline for what's going up on the screens in church: something that's not gay. Though that does give me a lot of room to play with, for once.

Arthur and I had met for the first time the day before, so we weren't really sure how this was going to work, but we chatted a bit and came up with this. Apparently people were in hysterics, rolling in the aisles. I'm not really sure why... it's not that funny. But here it is anyway. Andy decided that we're going to do one every week now.

ARTHUR THE INTERN LEARNS ABOUT KEEPING A LOW PROFILE

I''ll put the second one up in a day or two.

There'll be no more waiting.

My dad is a stats man. Since he doesn't have a television at the house, and he probably wouldn't watch it much even if he did, he doesn't ever end up watching any of the Celtics games each year. But he follows it online, seeing how the young players are improving, figuring out where the team will end up in the draft, dissecting all of Danny Ainge's baffling front office moves.

Whenever he gets the notion, he'll put down his current thoughts about the Celtic's status in an e-mail and send it along, and I'll write back with my interpretation, along with what I'd seen on Sportcenter and the glimpses of Celtics games that I'd caught that year. But each season it finally reaches a point with me where the team has just made so many bewildering moves and trampled on my hopes so much that I just can't take it anymore. And when my dad sends me one of those e-mails, I'll write him back and just say "I'm done." I just reach a point where I simply can't spend any more precious time thinking about a Celtics team that has done virtually everything to convince their fan base that they have no idea what they're doing. Around the time the lottery rolls around, I perk up and join back in, researching likely picks for the team and trying to figure out if they have the players to make the leap to the playoffs this year. Each year, my hope returns, a little bit diminished from the time before, but it returns.

But this is it. I can't root for this team anymore, I can't wait for this team anymore, I can't do it. I'm done.

I first got into NBA basketball in the fall 1995, after the Rockets had just won their second championship. I was just starting 6th grade, and my dad handed me an issue of Sport magazine that someone had left behind at work. It was the NBA preview for the coming year. I don't know what happened to me - maybe it was just the time in my life or some part of my personality, maybe I just needed a new interest - but it just took. I read that issue over and over and over, hundreds of times, dog-earing the pages, memorizing their player rankings - Hakeem Olajuwon and Michael Jordan were the only "A+" players, but there were lots of "A" players: Shaquille O'Neal, Penny Hardaway, Clyde Drexler, Mitch Richmond, Chris Webber. In some ways, I've never shaken those rankings from my mind - 12 years later, Juwan Howard is still a "B+" player. I'm quite sure I'm the only one who thinks so.

Eventually I cut out all the player pictures and stuck them on the wall around my bed with sticky tack. I would lay there at night, looking at them: there was KJ, grimacing as he drove into a crowded lane. There was cocky Nick Van Exel, disdainfully beating his man off the dribble. There was young Glenn Robinson, gliding to the hoop. There was Karl Malone, lofting a two-handed set shot. I would stare at those pictures and dream of that grace and skill. It was that next year, with no skills, no knowledge of the actual rules of basketball, and absolutely no talent, that I joined the school basketball team for the first time. It was those pictures that made me believe I had it in me.

The issue declared it a virtual lock that the Rockets would three-peat, beating the Magic in the Finals again. They figured that high-school draft pick Kevin Garnett was going to be a huge disaster for Minnesota. They figured the return of Jordan would be dramatic but wouldn't be enough to launch his team to a championship. And it figured the Celtics weren't going anywhere fast. On this matter - and this matter alone, I think - they were quite correct.

I began rooting for the Celtics that season. Sure, I followed the whole league - I knew every player in it for those first three or four years - but it was the Celtics that captured me. They were the hometown team, with this grand history of awkward white guys who played with tenacity and fluidity and success. That year they went 33-49, and drafted a young forward from Kentucky named Antoine Walker whom I believed would be the savior of the franchise. My mom photocopied me Dan Ryan's Boston Globe article about the Celtics selecting Walker, and I hung it on my wall next to the pictures, where Walker's picture smiled out at me, his arms still raised in victory from the stock photo they used for the article: a picture of him celebrating on the court after Kentucky won the national title that year. I was sure that would be us, soon.

But it wasn't us. Chicago won another title that year, on their way to a second three-peat, and our general manager, M.L. Carr, decided to try his and at coaching. The Celtics went an abysmal 15-67, almost an NBA record, and an embarrassment to a fan base used to failure from the hard-luck Red Sox, and the laughably incompetent Patriots, but not from their proud, resilient Celtics. Radio call-in stations were flooded with fans who spewed hatred at Carr, and publicly pleaded for run-and-gun college coach Rick Pitino to come up and save the franchise. People even wrote comic songs about it, I still remember one playing over the radio. "Oh, Rick Pitino, come to Bos-ton. 'Cause M.L. Carr's killin' me..."

And Pitino came. And I waited for it to happen. I knew it was going to happen. And then the NBA draft rolled around.

It was the year of Tim Duncan. Admittedly, there were other players that people were looking forward to - a lanky senior forward from Utah named Keith Van Horn. A flashy playmaker from Colorado named Chauncey Billups. A versatile swingman named Tim Thomas. Some people were even talking about taking a risk on this high school kid from Mount Zion named Tracy McGrady. But was Duncan everyone wanted, and everyone knew it. And the Celtics fans knew we had him all but locked up. I'd watched our team tank all season, waiting for Duncan to come and save us.

Because of unusual trades and the addition of two different expansion teams the year before who weren't allowed to receive the top pick, the Celtics had an astronomically good chance of getting the top pick. In addition, they were also receiving another pick from Dallas, to whom they'd quite brilliantly traded Eric Montross for the rights to, in addition to the getting to move up and select Walker the year before. You can't blame Dallas, of course, for moving down in the draft that year. After all, there were loads of players still available: Derek Fisher, Pedrag Stojakavich, Jermaine O'Neal, Steve Nash, even Kobe Bryant. Dallas, naturally, selected Samaki Walker. I'd like to bet they eventually regretted that.

I bring all this up so that you can see that things weren't all that black-and-white right then. We didn't know who was going to hit big and who was going to bust. I thought maybe all these high-school kids could work out, but they seemed to be too big a risk, I didn't know then who would be big, except for this: I knew I wanted Tim Duncan. I knew he was going to change everything. I knew that it was the dawn of a new era.

But it never happened. The ping-pong balls bounced differently than they should have bounced, differently than they were supposed to bounce, and we ended up with the 3rd and 6th picks. We picked up Chauncey Billups and Ron Mercer, both of whom the team quickly decided weren't going to pan out and started shopping them around. Tim Duncan joined David Robinson on the Spurs and led them to a championship two years later. Pitino came, traded all our players for fresh blood, traded those players again, and then left after it became quite clear that no fresh blood, least of all his, was ever going to change our losing ways.

We drafted player after player so uninteresting that every detail about them has already faded from my memory: Jérome Moïso, Josip Sesar, Joseph Forte, Darius Songaila, Dahntay Jones. Jim O'Brian came and left. We traded Chauncey Billups for Kenny Anderson. We traded away Joe Johnson for Tony Delk. Paul Pierce got stabbed in a bar by a random fan. I knew how he felt. We traded Vitaly Potapenko and Kenny Anderson for Vin Baker, who promptly went crazy. I knew how he felt.

Danny Ainge arrived, and promised fresh blood and more talent. We traded Antoine Walker for Raef Lafrenz, then traded again to get him back, then traded him away again for literally nothing. Then we traded Raef Lafrenz, too. We traded to get Ricky Davis, then traded just to get rid of him. We traded desperately, treating each move like a blackjack hand, waiting for that lucky hand that would let us bust the dealer. We kept adding more young players and subtracting the young players we'd traded for the time before, waiting for that one who would take us there. Take us back where we belonged, on the top of the heap. Take us to the place I'd dreamed about, lying on my bed, staring at a grainy black-and-white photo on the wall. I just kept waiting. And I wound up back here again on lottery night, 10 years later. Waiting for Greg Oden. Waiting for Kevin Durant. Waiting for that player to take us there.

But Oden's not coming. Durant's not coming. No one is coming, no one is going to show up and save us, save me from all this waiting, all this hoping, all this dreaming that someday my team will get it back again. And I'm through waiting.

I'm done.