Innholdsfortegnelse for January 2013 i Vanity Fair

There is much to recommend in this special issue on comedy, edited by Judd Apatow, he of Knocked Up, The 40-Year-Old Virgin, Superbad, and, coming out just before Christmas, This Is 40. It can reasonably be said that the comedy industry is booming these days, in movies, on television, and onstage. And who better to oversee an entire issue on the subject than one of the great impresarios of the business? Judd is only the third person to guest-edit an issue of Vanity Fair, and on this count, he is in good company: Tom Ford co-edited our Hollywood Issue in March 2006 and Bono handled the duties for a special issue on Africa in July 2007. Like his predecessors, Judd was a terrific collaborator, brimming with suggestions and infectious energy—precisely…

GIRLS’ GIRL Allison Williams at the Surrey hotel, in New York City. Williams plays beautiful bossypants Marnie on Girls, the HBO series that returns for its second season next month. Is it a challenge getting the audience to sympathize with Marnie? “I actually think the moments where she teeters into unsympathetic territory are, ironically, the moments that make her feel much more human,” says Williams. WILLIAMS WEARS A CARDIGAN BY MAGASCHONI; SKIRT BY SPORTMAX; BRA BY JENNA LEIGH; RING BY ANITA KO. Setting the Bar A mid today’s craft-beer explosion, Shaun E. Hill, at 33, is already considered one of the finest brewers in the world. Although he started brewing at the age of 15, he didn’t get paid to do so until 2005. Just five years later he opened…

Is the very concept of “Canadian humor” an oxymoron? As they say in Canada: possibly, or possibly not. Canada’s history lacks the violent frontier mythology that continues to fuel the folk hoax of rugged individualism so central to the American identity. Rather, Canadian society was carefully devised to run on the oiled ball bearings of amity and cooperation, ensuring a near-Scandinavian calm, as in: an aversion to firing semi-automatic Russian assault weapons into schoolrooms; the casual embrace of free health insurance even for deadbeats; debate over same-sex marriage that’s about as heated as that over licensing dogs; open arms to immigrants, swarthy and otherwise; volunteering for U.N. peacekeeping duties, no questions asked; and a national disinclination to jaywalk, even at three A.M. on an empty street, because, heck, they told…

AGE: 28. PROVENANCE: Sydney, Australia. DOWN UNDER: As the daughter of a beagle breeder, and with siblings named Riot, Anarchy, and Liberty, Wilson likens her upbringing to a traveling circus. “My family had this yellow caravan, and we would drive around to all the dog shows and sell dog products. I’d say we were one-seventh carnies.” GOT THE FEVER: Despite her colorful childhood, Wilson didn’t realize her theatrical ambitions until a stint in South Africa as an Australian youth ambassador. After contracting malaria, she hallucinated that she had won an Oscar. “Instead of doing an acceptance speech, I did an acceptance rap. The Academy really liked it.” BRIDAL PARTY: Wilson landed her Hollywood break in 2011’s debauched hit Bridesmaids after an improvisational audition. “I started talking to Kristen Wiig and…

I have always loved comedy, and this portfolio and issue, filled with men and women I admire, are my attempt to show you what it means to me. Some of them have shaped my sensibility; others just make me laugh. Anyway, I’m proud to have worked with many of the comic geniuses who appear in these pages, one of whom I have a fantastic anecdote about. I probably tell it too often. But here goes. One last time, for Vanity Fair, and then I’ll retire it forever. When I was 12 years old, I went to visit my grandparents in Beverly Hills. I was, and am still, a massive Steve Martin fan. One day, in the car, my grandmother pointed out where he lived. A few days later, as we…

I don’t understand how they fit so many jokes into each piece. Somehow they do hundreds of them, in quick succession, and they make their shorts in two or three days for almost no money. I burn through thousands of dollars for a decent line reading. When they made it to Saturday Night Live, in 2005 (Samberg as a performer-writer, Schaffer and Taccone as writers), they accomplished so much, whether it was “Lazy Sunday” or “Dick in a Box,” or the one with Pee-wee Herman on a rampage. Now that they’ve left S.N.L., it’s time for them to make a movie. I don’t need to produce it. I just want to see it. Although, sure, I’ll produce it. Call me: 310-774-1926.…

We may never know exactly how the horror began. Some historians trace the scourge all the way back to 1992, to a cheap apartment in the Wrigleyville section of Chicago’s North Side. Three bored, slightly entitled college graduates and a woman named Chloe who had briefly dated two of them decided it would be harmless fun to start an “alternative” improv group called Room for Improvment. Within a year, that single improv group had metastasized into 400 quasi-alt-improv-sketch-comedy collectives, each offering eight-week classes, taught by “instructors” who had, just the day before, completed their own eight-week class. The madness was spreading. It could have ended there, but just then—at the worst possible moment—cable channels and the Internet erupt and the demand for ironic content becomes insatiable. New late-night talk shows…

1 Self-love and self-loathing are constant, bickering bedfellows. If utilized correctly, both keep you moving forward. 2 There’s no way to sound smart in People magazine. But you will sound friendly! 3 Drake is not interested in you romantically or even sexually. :( 4 No one wants to hear your real opinion at the premiere. 5 Eating the bread at most events will make your table-mates quizzical and, ultimately, very jealous. 6 People will always find something in your work to argue with. Get used to being humbled, shutting out the noise, second-guessing yourself, and realizing that one out of six times those cretins are right. 7Most meetings are about meetings, and if you have too many meetings about meetings you will get a very flu-ish feeling. 8 Uttering the…

First thing in the morning, the king of Hollywood receives a phone call. The call always comes from New York. The reason is simple. New York, being three hours ahead of Los Angeles, always has The Numbers. And The Numbers—daily accountings of every dollar spent, every box-office receipt—are all that matter. That’s how Lew Wasserman sees it. And if Lew Wasserman sees it that way, that’s the way it is. This is what makes him Lew Wasserman, the feared and omnipotent head of Universal Pictures. It is October 1979, and The Numbers are not to Wasserman’s satisfaction. The culprit is Universal’s big-ticket production The Blues Brothers, a movie that pretty much defies logic and description. Some call it a musical; others, a comedy; others, a buddy movie; others, a bloated…

PHOTOGRAPHS BY MARK SELIGER He’s the prototype. He’s the original smart, sensitive Jewish neurotic guy, with huge flaws and a heart of gold. Even after working with him, on This Is 40, I’m still in awe. His stand-up work alone, some of which you can hear on the albums Comedy Minus One (1973) and A Star Is Bought (1975), guarantees him a place in my personal comedy pantheon. But then he made the mockumentary “The Famous Comedians School,” which is great, and the six innovative comedy shorts for Saturday Night Live, which inspired a lot of what Ben Stil ler and I did when we were putting together The Ben Stiller Show. And then came his own films, which are like the Torah to me: Real Life. Modern Romance. Lost…

This month, Vanity Fair presents its first-ever Comedy Issue, which was guest-edited by Hollywood titan Judd Apatow. Working with Apatow—who wrote and directed Knocked Up, Funny People, and The 40-Year-Old Virgin (co-written with Steve Carell), and produced Bridesmaids, Superbad, Pineapple Express, Forgetting Sarah Marshall, and many more—was a big deal. After all, his films have grossed a combined $2 billion at the box office, and his unofficial troupe is made up of some of the best and most recognizable names in comedy. His latest film, This Is 40, which stars Paul Rudd, Leslie Mann, Megan Fox, Melissa McCarthy, Jason Segel, John Lithgow, and Albert Brooks—Mann, McCarthy, Rudd, and Fox appear together on one of our three historic covers this month—hits theaters on December 21. Apatow collaborated on the issue with…

ART SCENE Tout le monde turned out to celebrate LACMA’s second annual Art & Film Gala, honoring Ed Ruscha and Stanley Kubrick, and co-hosted by Eva Chow and Leonardo DiCaprio. The evening was presented by Gucci and featured a performance by Florence and the Machine. MASTER OF ALL THINGS Mike Nichols, Barry Diller, and Graydon Carter hosted the New York premiere of American Masters: Inventing David Geffen, directed by Susan Lacy. Friends celebrated Geffen afterward at an intimate dinner at La Grenouille.…

There is a wonderful moment in Judd Apatow’s Funny People that is as surprising as it is funny. Seth Rogen portrays a struggling young writer-comic invited along on a corporate gig to assist his idol, a legendary stand-up comedian played by Adam Sandler. James Taylor is also on the bill, and in a casual moment after Taylor’s performance, Rogen asks him, “Do you ever get tired of singing the same songs over and over?” Taylor, playing off a long career based on graceful elegance, sharply replies, “Do you ever get tired of talking about your dick?” For anybody paying attention to the long and tumultuous history of musicians crossing over into the dark and mysterious world of acting, this was a watershed moment. Taylor was operating far out of his…

Q&A with GEORGE WAYNE Jeremy Clarkson On the North Pole, the uselessness of electric cars, and hating Piers Morgan Whether he’s driving up to the Arctic or plotting his next far-flung adventure, Top Gear’s host continues to amuse and antagonize. As the show enters its 10th season, our correspondent has a chin-wag with the BBC’s resident bigmouth. GEORGE WAYNE: What would a stroll down memory lane be like for Jeremy Clarkson? JEREMY CLARKSON: It would be a very short one, because I have the mental capacity of a nine-year-old. So it would be nothing but blue skies and fun and games. I have had an amazingly fortunate life. I’m a child from Yorkshire, which is sort of like Cleveland without the pretty bits. G.W. What about Top Gear this season?…

When I was 67, I knew I could make money by taking tourists by Judd Apatow’s house. I had been a big fan ever since his first movie, Young Adults, Gotta Love ’Em. One day I was driving the tour bus by Judd’s house, and I saw him making coffee in the kitchen. I just knew my tourists would love to get his autograph, so I drove them up his driveway and a few of them rang his doorbell. I suggested that others go around to the backyard. Judd finally came out and said, “What’s going on here?” It was funny the way he said it, but I could picture Seth Rogen or Jonah Hill saying it and making it really funny. Actually, I could see it becoming a movie,…

People always ask me who’s funny, and what TV shows I watch. MINDY KALING (top right) is crazy funny, not only on classic episodes of The Office, but on her new show, The Mindy Project. Who doesn’t love AUBREY PLAZA (top left) on Parks and Recreation, and she proved she’s a movie star in Safety Not Guaranteed. My daughters worship ZOOEY DESCHANEL (bottom right). We TiVo New Girl every week and watch it at 6:30 in the morning. Ben & Kate, which stars DAKOTA JOHNSON (bottom left), is one of our new favorites. I guess we need to get up at six A.M. now.…

Nobody has made me laugh harder than these two guys. Their work is awe-inspiring: Blazing Saddles (Mel), The Dick Van Dyke Show (Carl), Young Frankenstein (Mel), The Jerk (Carl), The Producers (Mel), Oh, God! (Carl), The 2,000-Year-Old Man (Mel and Carl). I could tick off 70 other things they did that are riotously funny. They’re great writers, great actors, great comics, great directors. They’ve been making people laugh since Eisenhower was president, and they’re still at it. Mel has a beautiful box-set DVD collection out now, The Incredible Mel Brooks: An Irresistible Collection of Unhinged Comedy, and Carl has just published a charming memoir, I Remember Me. At the ages of 86 (Mel) and 90 (Carl), these two comedy giants are also best friends. Most nights they have takeout dinner…

FROM ZACH GALIFIANAKIS ON SEPT. 21, 2012, AT 12:50 P.M., “JUDD APATOW” WROTE: What is up? Sorry to bother you, but I am editing the January issue of Vanity Fair, a comedy issue—and you must take part. It would be incomplete without you. I hear you are shooting The Hangover 3, so you might be too busy, but we are doing some funny photos and little comedy pieces. Anyway, if this sounds amusing, let me know. If it doesn’t, just don’t respond. Your icy-cold silence will send a clear message.–I hope the shoot is going well. Judd FROM: ZACH GALIFIANAKIS, DATE: SEPTEMBER 24, 2012, 12:15 P.M., TO: JUDD APATOW Judd. Hi. Do you really want to know what is up or is that just a really good icebreaker? If you…

How’s this for value? When Martin Short appeared on The Late Show with David Letterman one night this autumn, he gave of himself for more than 16 minutes—which, when you subtract the commercials and the monologue, accounted for the better part of the show. On the couch, he showered Letterman with unctuous faux flattery about the host’s youthfulness (“I was watching backstage. I thought, Is that one of the Winklevoss twins? They’re usually inseparable!”) and humility (“I love that you don’t thrust your Scientology at people!”). He did a couple of impressions, of Nathan Lane and of the show’s bandleader, Paul Shaffer. He came prepared with a good anecdote, about spotting his comic-actor friend Richard Kind from behind at a Washington party, wrapping his arms around Kind’s midsection, and buffoonishly…

‘She’s not like other people,” Mike Nichols e-mailed me when I first approached him about being interviewed with his legendary partner in comedy, the soulfully offbeat and intensely private Elaine May. “As you know she ignores publicity but we’ll see.” John Lahr profiled Nichols for The New Yorker in 2000, but May declined Lahr’s offer to do a similar profile of her. The last in-depth interview she gave was to Life magazine in 1967, six years after her and Nichols’s professional breakup. She has mostly held her silence ever since. But there it was in an e-mail from Nichols later that night: “Elaine says Yes. So sharpen your pencils and your tongue and we will commence.” Judd Apatow, the guest editor of this issue, who yields to no one in…

When I asked Jimmy Fallon for the time and place that would suit him best for lunch, he replied, “Eight P.M., Gramercy Tavern.” And so it was that, in the surreal world of late-night talk-show hosts, our four-hour dinner after he had taped Late Night with Jimmy Fallon turned out to be the most fun lunch I’ve ever had. For one enjoyable thing, I got to break bread not only with the very likable Mr. Fallon but with everyone he impersonated. His uncanny impressions come so naturally to him that during our wide-ranging conversation I also met Robert De Niro, Mitt Romney, Saddam Hussein, Van Morrison, Jay Leno, Jim Carrey, Michael Caine, and Roger Federer. “Can you remember the first time you made anyone laugh?” I asked. “There’s an audiotape…

Did British and American comedy enjoy mile-high sex over the mid-Atlantic during the Clinton era and dissolve most of their differences? That’s my Einstein theory, and I would hazily pinpoint the blessed moment of consummation as having occurred in April of 1998, when NBC’s top sitcom, Friends, taped a special two-parter in London, and fans and media went sedately mad with Ross-and-Rachel hysteria: Beatlemania in reverse. Frosty British taste, which had resisted the vanity-plate, Manhattancentric ironies of Seinfeld, completely threw itself at Friends’ quippy sextet, narrowing the comedy gap between our two great, declining nations. Stateside, British television comedy had established a far deeper beachhead years earlier, courtesy of PBS, bless its tote bags. It was between pledge drives that we commoners got our first fixes of mother-country surrealism and…

Has anyone been more up and down this year than Tig Notaro? A little-known comedian nine months ago, No taro, 41, stepped onstage at the West Hollywood club Largo in August and delivered a set for the history books. She had material, of course: in 2012, in quick succession, she contracted a life-threatening intestinal disease, mourned her mother’s passing in a freak accident, broke up with her girlfriend, and, when it seemed like the prophecies couldn’t get any fouler, ended up in a doctor’s office at Cedars-Sinai, diagnosed with breast cancer. But less than six months later she’s a cult icon: writing a book, working on a comedy series in New York, and making the rounds on late-night TV. “Everyone has the moment that brings them to the next level,”…

(1) THE MANIC PIXIE DREAM GIRL AS DESIRABLE SPOUSE At 40, he’ll have a job and kids, and she’ll still be posting pictures of waffles on Pinterest. (2) THE WACKY LATINA Only in Hollywood does the hot-blooded, perennially aggrieved Latina still break into mangled English at the drop of a plot point. (3) DAD IS A BUMBLING LUDDITE IDIOT Yet, amazingly, his children are a combination of Steve Jobs, Oscar Wilde, and Socrates. (4) SHE’S BEAUTIFUL, BUT SHE DOESN’T KNOW IT She’s also a hooker with a Ph.D. And she just remembered her biological clock is ticking. (5) THE MAGIC NEGRO How about if, just once, the longsuffering black character didn’t end up providing wisdom and salvation to the white folk? (6) THE IMPLAUSIBLE HOOKUP That frivolous one-night stand turns…

ON SEPT. 12, 2012, AT 4:36 P.M., “JUDD APATOW” WROTE: Do you think comedians are better now? How do you compare the work of the comedians of today with the work of the people you started with and were inspired by? ON SEPT. 12, 2012, AT 6:46 P.M., “CHRIS ROCK” WROTE: Do I think comedians are better now? Hell fuckin’ no. Show me one guy or woman as funny as Rodney Dangerfield or as good as George Carlin, Richard Pryor, Bill Cosby, or Joan Rivers. There are a lot of good comics out there, no doubt, but as far as the quality of the comics goes, I think what you have is a bunch of situational comics. What we have now is black comics that work only black crowds, gay…

Tons of people are funny, but here are six truly inspired comics doing great work right now: BO BURNHAM (as the photographer), AMY SCHUMER (as the widow), CHELSEA PERETTI (as the other woman), REGGIE WATTS (as the reporter), HANNIBAL BURESS (as the laughing cop), and JOHN MULANEY (as the murderee). I was going to explain what their acts are like, but invariably I would get it wrong and make them sound awful. They all have comedy albums available for download on iTunes. Give them your money. They have earned it.…

These are some of the people who taught me what I know about comedy and life. NORMAN LEAR manages to be hysterically funny while also imprinting his shows (All in the Family, The Jeffersons, Sanford and Son, Maude) with a moral core. JAMES L. BROOKS’S work (Terms of Endearment, Broadcast News, The Simpsons, The Mary Tyler Moore Show, Taxi) taught me about humanity and friendship. ROSEANNE BARR kicked down the door for women in comedy with her groundbreaking show. More important, she gave me one of my first jobs, writing jokes for her, when I was broke and unqualified. DAVID MILCH, the creator of Deadwood and co-creator of NYPD Blue, combines gritty drama and wicked humor in a way that makes me scream with joy alone in a room when…

1 I’m really, really busy and really, really popular. So right off the bat, that’s a tough squeeze time-wise. 2 I can’t say I’m familiar with this publication, unless it’s connected to the super-fancy paper-plate-and-plastic-ware company I love so much. Still, I’m sure you understand I can’t be writing art for a paper-plate-company magazine. 3 O.K. I just Googled it and I do know this magazine—and as it turns out I have a big beef with them. Whenever they have a young-up-and-coming-movie-starlets-of-tomorrow cover, I’m blatantly snubbed. Am I not good enough to lounge in a vintage gown from the 1930s, lazily draped on a chaise, pretending to be in the same room as 14 other cut-and-pasted actresses in similar garb and furniture and poses? I was born to do that,…

Though you would not think it of a show set in a suburb of Detroit during the 1980–81 school year, Freaks and Geeks, which premiered on NBC in the fall of 1999, is one of the most beautiful and ambitious television series ever made. But its beauties are not cosmetic, and its ambitions are subtle. Both on-screen and behind the scenes, the story of Freaks and Geeks is one of community beating against the odds and growing stronger for it. An hour-long comedy with drama at its core (a “dramedy,” to use the then current term of art), the series centered on a sister and brother, 16-year-old Lindsay Weir and 14-year-old Sam, and, widening its frame, the outsider crowds in which the Weirs run—the older freaks for Lindsay, the younger…

What is your idea of perfect happiness? Not ever having to fill out this questionnaire. What is your greatest fear? You think I’m going to tell you that? You think I’m going to let you print my greatest fear in a national magazine? No sir. I will not, sir. Which living person do you most admire? The guy I saw yesterday. He was crossing Eighth Avenue against the light. He just sauntered out into the middle of the street with cars and cabs speeding toward him and it meant nothing to him. Like he’s the only living soul and the rest of us were ghosts. I love that man, whoever he is. What is the trait you most deplore in yourself? I have an absolutely beautiful penis. It’s stunning in…