I'd just like to put a little addendum on the previous post here: I'd meant to bring up Apatow's use of the same actors in every movie and TV show in a little more detail, but I felt the post was going on too long anyway, and just skipped ahead. But one of my points that I'd thought of was that in every project Apatow does, almost all the actors translate over and receive major parts in the new project, but the actresses do not. Seth Rogen, Paul Rudd, Steve Carrell, Jason Segel, etc. - they've got all the screentime on every project. Sometimes people like Busy Phillips and Carla Gallo show up for a small cameo, but Apatow essentially leaves all the actresses behind on each project and takes the actors with him to star in the next project. He even built that group up over time, adding people like Rudd and Carrell as they fit in, never leaving someone behind, but never picking up an actress in that group.
I wondered why that was, what that said about Apatow's personality. Was it perhaps a little misogynistic? Did he feel that the actresses he'd worked with were untalented or replaceable? Did he just feel more connected to the actors he worked with than the actresses, and kept them accordingly? Did he feel he could either take one or the other with him, and decided to take the actors? I seriously thought about this for a while. These are the things I think about when I'm driving, which is a major reason I should probably not have a license.
Then I realized there was an exception (not, like, out of thin air. I was on the internet). From The Cable Guy all the way to Knocked Up, Leslie Mann appeared in a lot of Apatow's major projects. So I decided maybe I'd misjudged Apatow and it was just a coincidence.
And then I discovered that Leslie Mann is Apatow's wife. Ah. That makes sense.
In other news, I saw another cut of the Celebrex commercial. It's now even longer, and mentions "death" as a side effect twice. Excellent. Really drive that point home, boys.