![\"Two](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/03\/30415241-466f-4ca0-b07d-335822084f57.jpg\")
Katherine Heigl and Leslie Mann in Knocked Up, written, produced and directed by Judd ApatowAlamy<\/p>\nJudd Apatow is arguably the king of 21st-century comedy \u2014 an American whose films as writer, director and producer have taken almost $3 billion at the box office. He has a formula \u2014 broad and brash yet also rather tender, giving fans many of the biggest comedies of the past two decades: The 40-Year-Old Virgin, Knocked Up, Superbad, Bridesmaids and This Is 40.\u00a0<\/p>\n
\u201cFor me, comedy is everything,\u201d he says. \u201cI loved angry comedy as a kid. I must have been upset at school or when my parents got divorced, so I loved comedians who talked about how all systems are bullshit. It helped me to know those people were out there, so I don\u2019t think there is any subject too difficult to be funny about. That\u2019s been proven again and again and it is important to speak truth to power, about the dangers of authoritarianism. Comedians often say what others are hesitant to.\u201d<\/p>\n
Katherine Heigl and Leslie Mann in Knocked Up, written, produced and directed by Judd ApatowAlamy<\/p>\n
He has had an unparalleled run \u2014 even taking in political comedy, writing jokes for Barack Obama, and bringing satire into his stand-up shows. But something is bothering him, a sort of existential crisis that is leading him to question where, with everything that is going on in the world, we can find anything to laugh about.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt\u2019s much harder to do comedy right now,\u201d he says, speaking to me last Sunday, as President Trump fired missiles at Iran<\/a>. \u201cIf you look at what\u2019s happening in the world, it\u2019s stranger than Dr Strangelove. Characters in our country are more ridiculous than characters in Kubrick\u2019s film, so what can comedy do? The Trump administration is hard to be exaggerated in a sketch, so it\u2019s a difficult moment for political comedy.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n Essentially the parody is already happening. If you wanted to skewer the overreach of ICE, you could do a skit with those in charge wearing uniforms suitable for cosplaying Nazis, only for real-life chiefs in Minneapolis like Gregory Bovino<\/a> to do just that.<\/p>\n \u201cIt\u2019s very difficult and so cruel that there\u2019s not a lot of humour in it,\u201d Apatow agrees. \u201cIndeed, sometimes I think things have become so serious that, maybe, it\u2019s a moment for us not to joke about it and to instead have a bit more energy to fight for our values. It is important people have an outlet and an expression, but it doesn\u2019t mean anything without action. And it\u2019s certainly the time for that.\u201d<\/p>\n Which leads us to Mel Brooks \u2014 a titan who lampooned racism, the Spanish Inquisition, antisemitism, Nazis and Hitler in a career that started in the late 1940s. From TV shows to Blazing Saddles and The Producers and an in-the-works sequel to Spaceballs, he is the subject of Apatow\u2019s near four-hour epic documentary Mel Brooks: The 99 Year Old Man!. Split into two parts, it is a remarkably enthralling and moving deep dive, with a title that riffs on Brooks\u2019s 2,000 Year Old Man sketch. Thanks to hours of conversation between Brooks and Apatow, plus clips, it paints the not exactly under-interviewed Brooks in more detail and nuance than ever.<\/p>\n \u201cMel feels like those are the subjects that you have to go after,\u201d Apatow says of the need for comedy to keep on punching, but politics is not the reason for the documentary. \u201cThe point was to speak to him in a more serious way about his life. He\u2019s been hilarious in interviews for 50 years \u2014 it was always said that he was the funniest man in the world, and every time I saw him anywhere, he seemed to prove it. But what I wanted to know was what it all felt like to live through.\u201d<\/p>\n Brooks turns 100 in June. His beloved wife, Anne Bancroft, died in 2005 and his partner and best friend, Carl Reiner<\/a>, in 2020. For added poignancy, Apatow\u2019s documentary contains perhaps the last interview with Reiner\u2019s son, the director Rob<\/a>, before he was murdered last year. In it, Rob explains how, after his father died, Brooks would still pop over to the house for months to, in a way, stay close to his friend.\u00a0<\/p>\n Yet Brooks keeps on going. \u201cIt is remarkable how sharp he is,\u201d Apatow says. \u201cHe\u2019s not even reaching for names from people from the 1940s. I reverse my kids\u2019 names all the time, but he has tremendous recall. Still, I couldn\u2019t get him to tell me how he takes care of himself. When I asked for his morning schedule, he just went into a skit, basically asking himself questions every morning to make sure that he doesn\u2019t have dementia. He just sat there and invented a routine.\u201d<\/p>\n Brooks claims he gave \u201clittle, short, funny-looking Jews who are trepidatious about entering showbusiness\u201d a boost. At one point in the documentary, Adam Sandler says Brooks\u2019s marriage to the beautiful Bancroft \u201copened the door for all of us\u201d, pointing at Apatow and saying: \u201cEspecially you.\u201d Apatow is married to the actress and his frequent collaborator Leslie Mann and they have two daughters.\u00a0<\/p>\n I ask Apatow, who is Jewish, what truth is in Brooks\u2019s line. \u201cWell, if you\u2019re a weird, little, funny Jewish kid not treated great at school and who doesn\u2019t have a girlfriend? And then you see a strange, hilarious man being worshipped? Of course it gives you a feeling that somewhere in the world they will like people like you,\u201d he says. \u201cI escaped by watching people chat about their creative lives on talk shows. I felt like I was with my buddies, staying at home for hours watching them while peers played football. It\u2019s both sweet and very sad.\u201d\u00a0Apatow laughs.<\/p>\n But he says Brooks\u2019s comedy is a dying art. \u201cMel was trying to tear the house down,\u201d he says. \u201cHe\u2019s trying to make you piss your pants \u2014 not just be mildly funny. But not many people go for that level of laughter. You see it in the film Airplane! or with Sacha Baron Cohen, Jackass, Adam Sandler and Ben Stiller, Jim Carrey, the Farrelly brothers; a handful who go for pandemonium. But most people don\u2019t have the courage to make that the goal any more.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n Why not? \u201cIt all stems from the live experience of early TV that emerged from vaudeville,\u201d Apatow says. \u201cThey played to crowds so were used to thinking, \u2018We\u2019ve got to kill tonight!\u2019 You grind people until they fall out of their seat and the audience is a part of the experience. The chest-waxing scene in The 40-Year-Old Virgin was our attempt to go really hard and do physical comedy. But if you\u2019re making a movie for streaming, there\u2019s no crowd. You don\u2019t have the same energy.\u201d<\/p>\n Times are changing. Well, some things are. We talk about a great Brooks skit in which he plays a redneck riffing on keeping a Jew as an accountant, a joke that could have been written yesterday. \u201cAnd jokes Richard Pryor made in the 1970s about the police killing black people, would be the exact same ones that he would do 40 years later, if he was still around,\u201d Apatow adds.\u00a0<\/p>\n![\"Mel](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/03\/b2164110-b973-495f-b3b2-b49e26ee2902.jpg\")
A younger Mel Brooks with his wife, Anne Bancroft<\/p>\n![\"Charlotte,](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/03\/6f8e7512-1423-468f-9da3-c5ab06eabc53.jpg\")
Iris Apatow, Maude Apatow, Paul Rudd and Leslie Mann in Judd Apatow\u2019s This Is 40<\/p>\n![\"Beth](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/03\/03061f54-00d1-4288-8aed-76f7d686e96e.jpg\")
Elizabeth Banks and Steve Carell in The 40-Year-Old VirginAlamy<\/p>\n