Random House | Avid Reader
Review by George Yatchisin
It would be impossible to write the story of late 20th century-early 21st century pop culture without considering the work of Judd Apatow and Cameron Crowe. Even an abbreviated list of titles they wrote/directed/produced would be a roll call of beloved TV and filmic memories that have launched a million memes and coined troves of quotable quotes. Freaks and Geeks, The 40 Year-Old Virgin, Anchorman, Bridesmaids. Fast Times at Ridgemont High, Say Anything…, Jerry Maguire, Almost Famous.
Despite being ten years apart in age (Crowe was born in 1957, Apatow in 1967), both men have recently put out big looks back, full of delicious details of lives creatively well-lived. The Uncool is more of a straightforward biographical take, crafted out of punchy, generally chronologically ordered chapters framed by Crowe’s anxiety prior to the debut of the musical stage version of Almost Famous. Comedy Nerd is a self-proclaimed hoarder’s scrapbook of Apatow’s life, composed of recently-penned passages, lots of primary documents (texts, reviews, emails, scripts), and many, many pictures of the funny and famous.
It’s impossible to ignore the loser adjacent titles, though, for these are books by guys for whom comedy and creativity are a crucial way out of not just geekdom but often childhood pain. That’s even more so for Crowe as his eldest sister commits suicide. It becomes the untalked about ache in his family, but after her death, of all things Crowe gets to pick up her last order from the record store, The Beach Boys’ “California Girls” and “Don’t Worry Baby.” He takes the latter as Cathy’s goodbye message. The Uncool is dedicated to her.
As most people know from the fictionalized version of his youth, Almost Famous, Crowe went on to be a rock writing wunderkind, publishing his first full feature in Rolling Stone about Yes in June 1973, the same month he graduates from high school, as a junior, three years younger than his classmates. His journalistic success is a combo of doggedness, a seemingly unthreatening mien in interviews, knowing how to conduct them (he does plenty of research to go deep but also knows to let silence sit so a subject will fill it), being an ace at working connections, a bit of naivete about what should happen (a passage with Kris Kristofferson being too kind is a delight), and a keen way with a description, especially of people (“he was a short stick of dynamite in a large cowboy hat”).
If Crowe’s life was saved by rock ’n’ roll (as the Velvets would have it), Apatow found refuge lining up interviews with all his favorite comedians, from Steve Allen to George Carlin. He managed to pull this off for his high school radio station (like Crowe, he got started young), which suggests a serious work ethic and chutzpah that no doubt have served him well throughout his career. Not that any of it came easy—he doesn’t talk process a ton in the book, but just the sheer number of projects happening hints he’s ever at it. Of course Apatow is also praised for giving actors room to run with scripted characters, and given the actors (and writer/directors) he helped turn into stars—Jim Carrey, Steve Carrell, Will Ferrell, Seth Rogen, Jason Segel, Lena Dunham, Amy Schumer, to name but a few—that ability to nurture without insisting on auteurship is striking. Still, there’s lots of talk about his therapists and the plague of panic attacks, admitting, “I must sit in the aisle seat for life.” (Tellingly he’s a producer on Gary Gulman’s hilarious yet lacerating HBO special The Great Depresh.)
Both men were also blessed with brilliant mentors. For Crowe that’s fellow San Diegan, rock critic bad boy Lester Bangs. One of Crowe’s first writing homes was local alt weekly the Door, and there he discovers a rusty green cabinet full of unpublished Bangs reviews—the guy was so prolific he submitted work everywhere. “More than anything he ever published,” Crowe writes, “it was that green cabinet bounty that made me want to a) meet Lester, b) shake his hand, and c) write.” Crowe ended up doing all three. And note the use of Bangs’ first name; Crowe seems preternaturally quick to get to a real familiarity with people. The section of the book when he gets absorbed into David Bowie’s inner circle as Bowie develops the Thin White Duke persona while practically no one knows he’s hiding out in LA reads like magical realism. At one point Crowe takes a first date to meet Bowie—they all sit cross-legged on the rocker’s bed together.
Apatow’s mentor was Garry Shandling, the first person to give him a job when he moved from Long Island to LA (there’s a brief time in the USC film school that doesn’t take). Beyond teaching Apatow about comedy and storytelling—and exemplifying intense work habits—Apatow also writes, “Garry and his girlfriend Linda Doucette spent so much time with me and were so kind it felt like they were experimenting with what it would be like to have a son.” Instead of a son, they had The Larry Sanders Show and changed television.
For both books make it crystal clear how much our music and comedy obsessions help us define our tribes, for it takes created cultural villages to raise our inner children. “I never was a jock, but following music was my sport,” Crowe asserts, “and it was always fun to find people with the same craving for this wildfire that was building everywhere, all these great bands, and most of them only a few months away from visiting your hometown.”
In a similar vein Apatow offers, “When I was a kid, I know I was in search of like-minded comedy nerds and I wished a book like this existed.… So I’m taking the leap to believe that somewhere out there are people who will enjoy this, laugh at this, learn from this, and maybe there will even be a few people that use it as inspiration to create comedy careers and identities of their own.”
Of course, the Crowe-Apatow bar of creativity and life is set mighty high. Few of us will have an equivalent moment to, say, being in the room the first time Gram Parsons and Emmylou Harris meet in person and harmonize, or closing a stand-up comedy set at Bonnaroo by welcoming special guest Eddie Vedder, with whom you get to duet. Both books succeed in making such insane moments a blast to read about without you ever hating on the authors too much. They are uncool nerds, after all. And write with keen self-deprecation—Apatow in particular clearly praises his luck daily that he married the, as he himself admits, much more photogenic Leslie Mann. Meanwhile Crowe’s book, by the end, is as much a love letter to his mom as anything else, in scenes described as if from the tenderest movie.
And, oddly, tenderness is where they both finally landed. Think about the almost rhyming nature of their last names as a clue. Crowe likes the “oh” moments of discovering a new band (he’s early on everyone in the 1970s, it seems, from Jim Croce to Lynyrd Skynyrd), of a song transcending a moment (singing “Tiny Dancer” in the Almost Famous tour bus), to John Cusack immortalized with a boombox blasting “In Your Eyes.” Do note that moment, so poignant and replayed/parodied, is not a big gesture triumph—Ione Skye doesn’t rise out of her bed because of his grand gesture to take him back.
Apatow, especially early in his career, goes for the “oww” in his films. Forty year-old virgin Carrell getting his chest hair waxed, cursing like a sailor. The shocking birth shots in Knocked Up. The Bridesmaids suffering from explosively violent food poisoning. But all these films use that outlandishness to coat their inner sweetness. After all the sex talk and outlandish shenanigans in 40 Year-Old Virgin, Carrell and Catherine Keener don’t do it until they are married. The freaks and geeks tend to find détente more than distance. And later in his career Apatow even gets past being the master of the bromance, working with more and female casts. It’s Lena Dunham who writes the book’s gushing foreword.
Ultimately both books make a strong case for the importance of family, community, caring, mentorship. Apatow writes, “When we’re in the outlining stage, we don’t think of these movies as comedies.” Building characters people will care about, even if they’re as obliviously buffoonish as Ron Burgundy, matters.
For both men’s work ultimately comes down to essaying and exploring what Crowe calls his favorite emotion, “the happy/sad.” Isn’t that where we all live? Isn’t that slash bearable only if we have the good sense to laugh?
