Judd Apatow — who has been busy producing no shortage of projects ranging from “Girls” to this summer’s indie hit charmer “The Big Sick” — is giving another try at an early career move that didn’t quite take off: stand-up comedy. That’s right, before he was a filmmaker, Apatow was trying to make people laugh from the stage, but surrounded by extraordinarily funny and groundbreaking pals like Adam Sandler and Jim Carrey, he quickly realized his strengths lay elsewhere. However, time has sharpened his comedy muscles, and notices on Apatow’s return to stand-up are pretty good. Still, most of us want to see what he does next behind the camera.
Speaking with Vulture, Apatow reveals quite plainly he doesn’t have a movie in the works (“I don’t have a script I’m working on”), but does share the details of an unmade movie he wrote with Owen Wilson way back in the day. It sounds pretty interesting, and maybe it’s one he might want to pull out of the drawer. Here’s what he had to say:
That was very early in Owen’s career, right after Bottle Rocket. I hadn’t even directed anything yet. Here’s what the script was: it was about a guy who gets in a drunk driving accident and as part of his sentence is forced to go to 20 Alcoholics Anonymous meetings. Owen was going to play that guy, and in the script he meets an older gentleman played by Rip Torn, who convinces Owen that he is an alcoholic. Owen thinks he’s just a guy who one time got in a drunk driving accident.
…I was never able to get anyone to make it. The reason Owen and I went on the road was to go to AA meetings in different cities and see what they were like. The script I wrote, I like a lot. The only time it was ever performed was in my living room. Me, Owen, and Rip Torn. Having Rip Torn sitting in my living room reading this thing was the best experience of my life. I was devastated that I couldn’t get a green light for it. That was actually an interesting experiment for me, because I used to think that in order to make a movie you had to spend years and years and years on it. That’s what I did in that case, and then when I couldn’t get it made I thought, “I just wasted almost a half-decade of my life.” From then on I started developing more projects simultaneously. I got myself involved in more things.
Apatow and Wilson would eventually work together on “The Cable Guy” and “Drillbit Taylor” (both of which Apatow produced), but it would be nice to see them reunite for a deeper collaboration. Again, this sounds pretty solid, and Apatow certainly seems to be fond of the work. Maybe it’s one worth bringing out again and seeing if one of the many outlets he works with — such as Netflix or HBO — might be willing to give it a go.