It's Judd Apatow's world: women are just living in it.

The most influential person in the world when it comes to making movies and TV shows for (and about) women is……a man.

Judd Apatow has long and impressive tentacles that reach into more movies and TV shows in the past decade than you would believe. He’s a writer, director and producer but more than that, he’s a mentor and champion for three of the most talented rising stars in the entertainment industry: Kristen Wiig, Lena Dunham and Amy Schumer.

This is why:

• Apatow has co-produced all 5 seasons of the hit show Girls, a writing and starring vehicle for Lena Dunham.
• He co-produced and directed Bridesmaids, which was a writing and starring vehichle for Kristen Wiig.
• And he produced and directed Trainwreck, a writing and starring vehicle for Amy Schumer.

Lena, Kristen, Amy.

How’s that for a trifecta of incredible women, all championed by Apatow at a significant point in their careers when they didn’t have the Hollywood weight to make things happen and go to the next level. He had the power and he used it to pull them up beside him.

It’s almost unheard of for a man in Hollywood to mentor one woman let alone several. It’s highly unusual for a man to use his power and influence to promote women.  And it’s incredibly rare for a man to be so invested in telling women’s stories.

Judd Apatow is a smart guy who – unlike so many of his peers – understands the power of the female audience and realises how hungry we are for layered, nuanced, authentic depictions of our lives.

Apatow didn’t start off his career wanting to tell women’s stories, especially. He was more about men. Men like him.

As a writer, producer and then director, his early movies were very much bloke-focussed comedies like Anchorman, The 40 year old Virgin and Knocked Up, the latter two treading the well worn rom com path of schlumpy guy with few prospects gets the hot girl against the odds.

Punching above his weight etc etc.

More blokey comedies followed: Talladega Nights, Pineapple Express, Finding Sarah Marshall, Step Brothers and Superbad, with lots of stoner lead characters that appealed to the idea of young guys who didn’t remotely have their shit together.

It’s the story of Apatow’s own life, really. Schlumpy guy made good, gets hot girl.

This is his wife:

You probably recognise Leslie Mann. She’s a talented actress who has been in many of his movies like This Is 40 and many other projects of her own.

But it was his work with Lena Dunham that debuted the idea of men championing women in Hollywood.

The US magazine Fast Company published a fascinating conversation between Dunham and Apatow where they spoke about working together.

Here’s a taste:

Dunham: I hope we’ll write more together. In the first season, we wrote episode 6, and in the second season, we wrote the season finale together. You inundate me with so many ideas that I can just be like a scribbling secretary. I think we each think the other one is doing the bulk of the work.

Apatow: Sometimes I’ll say something profound like, “Maybe we should show Peter Scolari’s penis.”

Dunham: Mmhm.

Apatow: And you will email back, “Yes, that seems like a good idea. Do you think he’ll do it?” And then I say, “Yes, I think he will do it.” And then he does do it.

Dunham: Bigger and better than we had even imagined.

Apatow: You know, the show is run differently from other shows because we’re trying to really filter everything through you. My goal is to have you do as much work as possible without getting killed. So part of what I’m trying to do is pace you so you don’t collapse. For me, a lot of the work is just having a very fresh brain and set of eyes to read things and look for where there are holes or trouble and then trying to help fix that.

Dunham: I feel like you’re constantly monitoring my brainpower and body power, even when I’m not able to tell what I’m feeling.

Apatow: I try to think months in advance, When will you collapse?

Dunham: And you’ve been a pretty good judge so far.

Apatow: This type of show is an auteur’s vision. It isn’t collaborative in the same way as other shows. We are probably closer to Curb Your Enthusiasm than we are to something like Friends. So it’s similar to The Larry Sanders Show, where other people could write good episodes. But it can’t just be good, it has to be good in a way that makes sense and feels right for you.

Dunham: Well, there have been times where someone has written a script and I’ve gone, “This is structured beautifully, has tons of great jokes, and in many ways has more integrity as a script than something I would write—but it just doesn’t feel like the thing that we’re doing.” At first I didn’t understand that that was allowed. But you’re constantly letting me know what’s allowed, because you spent so much time learning the boundaries and then defying them.

Another way you help me is in blocking out the massive amounts of Internet noise. You’re so involved with gauging public reaction, but you’re also really good at putting yourself on media fasts. You’ve emailed me a few times when I’ve been on vacation, and you’ve been like, “Stop tweeting or you’re not gonna get anything out of this vacation.”

You can read the whole conversation here.

And in his book, Sick in the Head: Conversations About Life and Comedy. Apatow writes about the moment he first heard of Amy Schumer and how they came to work together:

I was sitting in my car one day, listening to The Howard Stern Show, when Amy Schumer came on. I think I had seen her do a little stand-up on television once or twice before, or maybe just some jokes at a roast, but that’s about it. I didn’t have a clear picture in my mind. But sitting there in my car, listening to her talk to Howard, I was blown away by how funny and intimate and fresh she was. You could sense that she had stories to tell and was a lot more than just a comedian. I instantly thought: I need to make a movie with her.

So we did.

Amy and I spent the next few years working on Trainwreck, and I found that she was, indeed, so much more than just a comedian. She is someone who is willing to go emotionally deep, as well as work obsessively hard, and there’s a frankness to her work that I find inspiring. The stories tumble out of her. She is able to make important points about our culture and feminism and relationships and what it’s like to be a woman in America right now, and to do it in a way that is consistently insightful and hysterical. Here is someone at the beginning of a very exciting career.

In the same book, he talks to Amy about Bridesmaids and Kristen Wiig:

J.A.: People said the same thing [about how groundbreaking it was to have a female-heavy comedy] when Bridesmaids came out. We never thought about that when we were making it. I just thought, Kristen Wiig is funny. It would be fun to make a movie with Kristen Wiig. And then she had this idea to make a movie about bridesmaids. We never thought of it as a female movie. At some point, in the middle of it, it occurred to us: Oh, it’s kind of cool to have so many funny women in one movie. But it wasn’t conscious or anything. At the end of the process, we realized that it meant something to people. But what is shocking to me was that, even after the movie did well, there was almost zero follow-up in the culture.

A.S.: In terms of what?

J.A.: In terms of funny movies that are dominated by women. The studio system didn’t embrace them. They don’t know how to do it.

A.S.: In my experience, there will be a script and you’ll be like, This is funny—I think I’ll audition. And you’ll know other women, who are hilarious, are auditioning, too. And then they give it to, like, some beautiful movie star. They’re great actresses and they’re really pretty, but they’re not funny.

 

You can read the whole conversation here.

The whole, nerdy-guy-punching-above-his-weight is a familiar theme in Apatow projects when there’s not a strong woman driving it.

His new comedy series for Netflix called Love falls into that bucket.

We spoke about it on The Binge podcast this week:

As I said on the podcast, I’m not sure that I love Love. It feels a bit modern day Woody Allen – I just can’t believe in the pairing of the two main characters in Love. Not because Paul Rust is physically dweeby but because he’s not particularly nice. Nor is she for that matter…….

ANYWAY.

The idea of flawed female characters like Mickey in Love, and all the female characters in Girls and Trainwreck and Bridesmaids…..I love the influence Judd Apatow is having in broadening out what it means to be a leading woman in a mainstream movie or TV show. And in helping to nurture female talent and give it the opportunity to slay.

That can only be good thing.