“The King of Staten Island” and the contemporary King of Comedy come together on this episode of The Discourse, the show where we discuss film and television news, reviews, and any other pertinent pop culture items that we feel the need to weigh in on.
This week, I’m joined by Nick Allen (RogerEbert.com, Vulture, MEL Magazine, The AV Club) to look back on the directorial career of Judd Apatow. It’s difficult to find a more influential figure on American comedy in the 21st century than Apatow who, after “The 40-Year-Old Virgin” became a massive hit in the summer of 2005 (coupled with “Wedding Crashers”), ushered in an era of raunchy, unapologetically R-rated, sweet, improv-heavy, and lengthy comedies. Starting at the beginning, we look at his first two films about arrested development (“Virgin,” “Knocked Up”) and how they largely became the template for the films that not only he would produce, but the imitators as well. Then, we move into his personal, semi-autobiographical films where he started to take the James L. Brooks approach to dramedy (“Funny People,” “This is 40”), before concluding with a look at his latest features, that sees him pairing with newer comics to tell stories tailored to their sensibilities, with Amy Schumer in “Trainwreck” and now Pete Davidson in “The King of Staten Island.” We also talk a little bit about the state of the studio comedy as a theatrical play, and speculate how “Staten Island” would have performed, had the COVID-19 pandemic not forced Universal to release it on PVOD.
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