Judd Apatow’s “Funny People,” you’ve probably heard about it, right? Blah, blah, Adam Sandler stars as a stand-up comedian who believes he is dying, and he’s famous and been in a lot of movies that people like his friend and would-be assistant (and stand-up aspirant) Seth Rogen adored while growing up.
As previously mentioned, and as you can imagine, there are going to be lots of little fake, meta-movies scattered within the film to depict and make Sandler’s character’s famous back story feel credible.
In December, Owen Wilson said he’d make a cameo in the film by appearing in a fake poster to one of George Simmons’ (Sandler’s character) movies. Now Apatow is revealing some of the details. Basically there’s four fake meta-films… so far.
1. “My Best Friend is a Robot” is the name of the aforementioned “film” that Wilson appears in (again, only in poster form). Wilson is the robot. Hmmm, slight comment on his acting these days?
2. “Redux” – “There’s also a movie where [Sandler’s character] turns into a baby,” Apatow said describing the film as a cross between “Little Man,” and Zac Efron’s “17 Again.” “It’s Adam’s head, but on a baby’s body. It’s really funny. We actually shot a couple scenes from it.”
3. “Mistake” – The third film, which is a romantic comedy co-starring Elizabeth Banks. “There’s all sorts of posters, some we shot scenes for.”
4. “Mer-Man” -“I’ve heard they already sold [‘Mer-man’] to be a real movie after we made it as a joke,” he quipped (pictured above, as an astute reader points out, it looks like Banks is is this too).
Will we see viral marketing based on these posters? Will we see them at the end of the film ala “Forgetting Sarah Marshall” in the credits? Will we see them on the DVD? All of the above sound like a good bet.
Banks is the newest “cameo” we’ve heard of. The film also includes brief guest appearances by Norm MacDonald, Andy Dick, Sarah Silverman, Dave Attell, obviously Owen Wilson and Asiz Ansari (among others). There’s also already meta-TV shows within the movie: Jason Schwartzman (who’s also doing the music for the film) plays a TV star on a fake show called, “Yo Teach.”
Comedians Patton Oswalt, Brian Posehn (“Mr. Show”) and Allen Covert also wrote jokes for the stand-up bits and don’t be surprised if you see them for a brief second. Musician Jon Brion shows up for a second.
Seriously, we once wrote, “chances are if you’re vaguely cool, remotely funny and live in L.A. you’ll probably be clocking some time in Judd Apatow’s stand-up comedians dramedy, “Funny People,” which has basically turned into a prophetic statement. Apatow wasn’t kidding when he recently said the biggest studio battle he is fighting right now is to see how much extra time he can get on the DVD.
“Funny People” opens up July 31. [MTV]