Judd Apatow Share His Screenwriting Secrets

Posted on September 27, 2005

Writer and Director Judd Apatow, whose most recent film is The 40-Year-Old Virgin is currently keeping a week-long journal for Slate.com, while he films the new Will Farrell/NASCAR comedy. He and his family are in Charlotte, North Carolina, the location of the film. So farr, Apatow, has shared his (quite entertaining) thoughts on reality TV, moving to Charlotte from L.A., and how he got the idea for the drunk driving scene from The 40-Year-Old Virgin.

My daughter Maude was 5 when she realized that Barney had only one expression. She couldn't stop laughing when she noticed this. She ran around the living room with this psychotic Barney smile which never changed, and then started saying, "I'm happy. I'm sad." She laughed some more and then screamed, "Help me! I don't know how to feel." At 7, my daughter also punched up the drunk-driving sequence in The 40-Year-Old Virgin -- which features my wife, Leslie Mann, as the drunk driver -- by saying to me one day in the car, "When mom is driving badly, she should fall asleep." The next day she tried to button the joke by telling me, "Dad, when mom falls asleep in the car, she should gas."
After we showed the movie to a crowd, I came home and told Maude, "Mom falling asleep got a huge laugh." To which she replied flatly, "Yes, but did she gas?" When I said, "No," she just shook her head. She is either in for a lifetime of neurosis or a lucrative career as a comedy writer.

Inspiration can come from unlikely places.