Ben Stiller Judd Apatow Vince Vaughn Owen Wilson Will Ferrell and the future of comedy?

Aside from the fact that Sharon Waxman is an obnoxiously present writer, this article is kind of interesting... I love most of these guys, but are they really worth their salt? Do their talents and/or careers seem to have much longevity? Is comedy's future really in the hands of a few American dorks? etc etc. Actually, one of the more interesting implications of the arrangement these guys have struck with the studio system is a way to leverage more creative autonomy.... ???

from http://www.nytimes.com/2005/03/27/movies/27waxm.html?ex=1112590800&en=c2669710ded1df04&ei=5070

March 27, 2005

They're In on the Joke: Hollywood's Funniest Clique
By SHARON WAXMAN

LOS ANGELES

THE pitch took five minutes. And it went something like this: "Will" (that would be Will Ferrell) "is the driver." (That would be a Nascar driver.) "His whole thing is: I wanna go faster." Does it sound funny yet? Does it matter? Adam McKay, a former head writer for "Saturday Night Live," was doing the pitching. The studios, in competition, were doing the catching. In the end, Sony Pictures agreed last June to pay Mr. Ferrell $20 million to act in the then-unwritten film "Talladega Nights," with a green light almost certain if Mr. McKay, the director, and Judd Apatow, the producer, could keep their budget in the area of $70 million.

It helped that the principals had certain things in common. They'd worked together on last year's "Anchorman: The Legend of Ron Burgundy," for instance. And they were all clients of both the United Talent Agency and a pair of powerhouse managers, Mosaic Media Group's Eric Gold and Jimmy Miller, making them key members of a very select group.

Ever since Bill Murray, Dan Aykroyd and John Belushi hit Hollywood 30 years ago, screen comedy has been something of a circle game. For protection, inspiration or just plain fun, Hollywood's comic talent has tended to cluster and take care of its own. But never, perhaps, has the circle been tighter, or the financial stakes higher, than now.

Mr. Ferrell, Mr. Apatow and Ben Stiller are among the club's kingpins. Mr. McKay, Owen Wilson, Jim Carrey, Vince Vaughn and Jack Black belong, as do Nick Stevens, a United Talent agent who represents Mr. Carrey and Mr. Stiller, and Mr. Gold and Mr. Miller, who have much of the group in their stable.

The funnymen appear in one another's movies, from "Dodgeball" to "Anchorman" to "Elf" to "Zoolander," creating a wheel-of-comedy effect that can leave viewers wondering just whose movie they're watching. What's more, the stars and their representatives live, work and play in a continuum that has virtually shut the studios out of the development process. By coming up with their own concepts, finding screenwriters and then offering the whole package for production - script, director and cast, take it or leave it - this group is reshaping screen humor to their liking.

"What interests me most about this group is they all participate in readings of each other's scripts, without the studios present," said Stuart Cornfeld, Mr. Stiller's producing partner in their company Red Hour Films. He cited a recent reading of "Tropic Thunder," Mr. Stiller's new project for DreamWorks, at which Mr. Apatow took notes, and Mos Def and the British actor Steve Coogan - recent additions to the in-crowd - read various roles.

Studio executives are well aware of the power in such cohesion. "They seem to function somewhat as an informal kind of comedy troupe," said Hutch Parker, president of 20th Century Fox. "If you check around town and see what projects they all have in development, you find the same alliances."

In fact, the interaction has spawned a new brand of comedy that steps beyond the consciously dumb gross-out humor of the last decade, when the filmmakers Peter and Bobby Farrelly ruled the roost with pictures like "Dumb and Dumber" and "There's Something About Mary." Next-generation humor is "smart-dumb comedy, as opposed to dumb-dumb comedy or smart-clever comedy," Mr. Cornfeld said. The humor is often character-based and owes a lot of its knowing silliness - think of Mr. Ferrell as an oversized Santa's helper, or Mr. Stiller as a vapid runway model - to "Saturday Night Live."

"We are all the spawn of Hal Ramis," Mr. Apatow said, referring to the director or co-writer of the last generation's touchstone comedies, like "Animal House" and "Meatballs." "We all grew up on 'Stripes' and 'Caddyshack' and 'Animal House.' We're heavily influenced by Second City and Albert Brooks. As a result, a lot of us have similar sensibilities."

One such "smart-dumb comedy" was in its birth throes recently, as Mr. Apatow and Steve Carell, another "Anchorman" veteran, found themselves, scripts in hand, sitting at a table in Santa Monica with a few other actors, exchanging stories of their early sexual exploits. What started as a read-through of Universal Pictures' "40-Year-Old Virgin," set for an August release, had quickly devolved into a discussion of how the central character - Mr. Carell as an electronics store clerk - happened to still be a sexual naif.

The cast tossed out situations that might have led to his giving up on sex. Paul Rudd suggested a problem of premature ejaculation. But Mr. Apatow, one of the film's producers, was still thinking. "This one guy told Garry Shandling he lost his virginity to two women," he mused.

"That's a good story," Mr. Carell said.

Mr. Apatow told of an eighth-grade experience when he panicked after his girlfriend guided his hand beyond first base. "In my head I thought, 'Oh my God, I'm going to pee on her,' " he recalled, to general laughter around the table. "I literally stayed in the shower until she was gone."

Romany Malco, a cast member, cheerily told of being seduced by the family baby sitter when he was 6, then by a string of sitters for years after. (No one said comedy doesn't hurt.) Mr. Malco, who served in the military, also told a raunchy tale from the barracks involving masturbation and killing roaches.

Mr. Apatow slapped the table. "That's going in," he said, grabbing a pen.

The concept for this movie came from Mr. Carell, who had riffed on the idea years ago during improvisations in Chicago at Second City, the comedy troupe where he got his start. During down time on "Anchorman," he tossed out the idea to Mr. Apatow, whom he had met on the set, and they sold it as a pitch to Universal. "The 40-Year Old Virgin," which they wrote together and which Mr. Apatow directed with Mr. Carell starring, just wrapped. This has become a fairly normal scenario for a group that has become accustomed to hearing the word "yes" from executives who are willing to rely on the comics' instincts and track record.

Similar telegraphy was behind more than one film that has hit the screen. Mr. Stiller had only to call his agent, Mr. Stevens, and say, "I have five words for you: Owen Wilson. Starsky and Hutch." Mr. Stevens got it. Within days he had sold the idea to Warner Brothers, which owned the title but was doing nothing with it, and eventually landed a budget of $60 million.

In the next several months, a new wave of films from the group will include New Line Cinema's "The Wedding Crashers," the summer's most buzzed-about comedy, starring Mr. Vaughn and Mr. Wilson as overgrown bachelors who prey on women at weddings, and Universal's "Kicking and Screaming," with Mr. Ferrell as a demented soccer dad. Then there's "Bewitched," an update of the television series with Mr. Ferrell and Nicole Kidman, and later in the year comes "Fun With Dick and Jane," with Mr. Carrey and Téa Leoni as a married couple who turn to robbery, both films for Sony Pictures.

Audiences are likely to sense the connections among these films, if only because everybody on the circuit lends a bit of screen time to everyone else. Mr. Ferrell, for instance, did a cameo in "The Wedding Crashers." That's partly because Mr. Vaughn did a cameo in Mr. Ferrell's last picture, "Anchorman." For that matter, so did Mr. Stiller (as Arturo Mendes) and Mr. Black (as the Angry Biker).

The camaraderie owes much to connections that go back many years, sometimes decades, to shared experience in the grimy comedy clubs of Lower Manhattan and Los Angeles. It extended to "Saturday Night Live" circa the 1990's; the innovative Wayans brothers' show, "In Living Color"; and the ratings-challenged "Ben Stiller Show," canceled in 1993 after one season on Fox.

"Everybody hung out more together when we were unemployed," Mr. Apatow said. Actually, that much of the group became not just employed but also richly compensated owes much to the influential management company run by Mr. Gold, 48, and Mr. Miller, 47. The managers, who rarely talk to the media, are both from Pittsburgh and met during their college years. At the time, both were dabbling in comedy, though it was Mr. Miller's older brother, Dennis, now a talk-show host, who was the rising star of their group. Jimmy Miller spent 13 years as a manager in comedy clubs, from 1981 to 1994, five or six nights a week in the back of the room, first in Pittsburgh, then in Hermosa Beach, Calif. Mr. Gold was a stand-up comedian before moving to Los Angeles to become an agent, then a manager.

Their practical experience in the clubs became invaluable. Mr. Apatow, a friend, became a client. Tipped by him, Mr. Miller booked Mr. Carrey into his Hermosa Beach club and gradually started booking him into clubs on the road, long before the comic made his mark in the movies.

"It's really a small business, still, the comedy business," Mr. Miller said during a recent interview in his conference room on Sunset Boulevard. Contemporary comedy, even as it evolves, still owes its essence to "Saturday Night Live," he said.

Mr. Gold agreed: "It's 30 years old as we know it. It hasn't gotten so big that the people involved don't know each other. We all know each other."

Today, the managers do much more than just represent Mr. Carrey, Mr. Apatow, Mr. Ferrell, Mr. Vaughn, the Wayans and many others. They actively edit and shape their clients' ideas; the stars implicitly trust their comedy judgment.

Which means Mr. Gold and Mr. Miller can keep people out of the "wheel of comedy" too. One film executive complained that the young comedy club is exclusionary and not always in a good way. "There's always a wall being put up with those guys," he said, declining to be identified for fear of jeopardizing future relations with the group.

During the making of "Elf," Mr. Miller and Mr. Ferrell differed with the editing choices of the director, Jon Favreau, executives close to the production said. Both versions were tested with audiences, but the creative differences led to Mr. Favreau's not being involved in the sequel at New Line, executives in both camps said. Though Mr. Favreau's choices tested better with an audience and won out, he is considered creatively out of sync with Mr. Miller and Mr. Ferrell, and New Line has confirmed that he will not be part of the sequel.

Mr. Apatow came from New York and worked as a stand-up comic at the Improv in Hollywood. That's where he met Adam Sandler, who became his roommate but who today appears to remain outside the club, in an orbit of his own. Mr. Apatow met Mr. Stiller standing in line at an Elvis Costello concert. "Within two weeks we were friends," he recalled. Together, they wrote a sketch show for MTV, then wrote and produced the critically adored but doomed "Ben Stiller Show." Mr. Apatow, who once opened in comedy clubs for Mr. Carrey, also produced "The Cable Guy," which starred Mr. Carrey and was directed by Mr. Stiller, in 1996.

Mr. Stiller further expanded the group when he became a fan of Mr. Wilson after seeing him in "Bottle Rocket" and called up the actor to propose collaborating. He had given Mr. Black a role in "The Cable Guy," and used both Mr. Wilson and Mr. Ferrell in "Zoolander."

Some executives say they are happy to be schooled by the collective, with its accumulated comic lore. "What these guys do, and what makes them exciting, is they're very cutting edge," said Adam Goodman, the president of production at DreamWorks. "These guys are teaching us what comedy is, and where comedy's going. We're simply following their lead here."

Though Hollywood may be following now, the studios were initially slow to catch on. The pitch for "Anchorman" was rejected by the DreamWorks production chief, Walter F. Parkes, who told his executives after the meeting that Mr. Ferrell was no star, more than one person present says. He changed his mind after "Old School" became a hit. Asked about his decision, Mr. Parkes said: "We weren't ready to go forward with a green light with that picture, with that cast, at that moment. It had to do with concerns about the concept of the film, not the star. We were the ones who cast Will in 'Old School' in the first place."

Similarly, DreamWorks, MGM and other studios passed on "Dodgeball." Fox finally agreed after Mr. Stiller reduced his fee to well under $1 million, a fraction of his usual price. The film has so far taken in $114 million domestically and cost $23 million to make.

Indeed, part of the appeal of these films has been their low production cost and their huge return at the box office. But that formula is quickly disappearing as the success of the young comedy-makers is forcing the studios to engage in bidding wars.

And some worry that a comic oligopoly is inevitably raising the cost of doing business with stars like Mr. Ferrell, Mr. Black and lately Mr. Vaughn. After all, Mr. Carrey already costs upwards of $20 million, and Mr. Ferrell is hovering in that neighborhood. In January, Mr. Stevens and Mr. Gold held an auction among the studios for Mr. Vaughn's latest project, a romantic comedy. The script for the film, "The Breakup," sold for $2.25 million, and Mr. Vaughn received his highest payday ever, $12 million, to star and produce.

"Smart guys like Eric Gold and Jimmy Miller are figuring, 'Let's put our own stuff together, go out in a competitive way, and the studio that wants it the most will pay the most and give us the most creative autonomy," said New Line's president of production, Toby Emmerich, who has found himself on the losing end of a couple of recent bidding wars from the Gold-Miller workshop.

For Mr. Emmerich, the trick is not to get into the club but to get ahead of it: "Right now I'd say those guys are worth their weight in gold for comedy. But for us, the bigger challenge is to figure out: Who's the next guy?"