An Open Letter to Judd Apatow
November 16th, 2009
Judd:
I watched The 40-Year Old Virgin this weekend. It was my second time viewing the film, and each time I’ve been lead to the same conclusion: it’s too long.
In fact, after I saw it for the first time, I realized that the version I saw was the unrated “director’s cut” version, so I suppose I should cut you a little slack. I saw the same version today, and it clocked in around 2 hours and 10 minutes, which is considerably long for a comedy.
However, while I’ve now seen the director’s cut of this film twice, I’ve seen a number of your other movies as well: Knocked Up, Superbad, Pineapple Express, and most recently, Funny People, which was released this summer. Looking at your IMDB entry now, I see that you’ve produced a number of other comedies, including Talladega Nights, Walk Hard: The Dewey Cox Story, Anchorman: The Legend of Ron Burgundy, and Step Brothers.
The one over-arching theme between all of these comedies is that they are all at least a half hour too long.
I think one complaint about critics is that most of them cast judgment onto people’s creative output without any real understanding of the creative process. Some people even believe that a person has no right to criticize creative output unless they themselves create. I agree, to an extent, and I acknowledge that I have never made a film in my life.
That said, I have watched a lot of comedies in my life. I think there are parts of your films that hit, and when they do, they do it really well. Superbad was probably my favorite of the bunch by far, but there are several decent films that you’ve produced, and all of them would’ve been immensely stronger if they went through an intense editing process.
Less is more. I hope you find an editor that you can trust, and I assure you that when one of your new movies hits theaters, and the running time is 90 minutes or less, I’ll be there.
Kind regards,
jmw