As I’ve noted before, it’s easy to assume that Kevin Smith cast Seth Rogen in Zach and Miri Make A Porno in an effort to capture some of the magic dust that makes Judd Apatow’s films so financially successful, while remining the audience that Kevin Smith movies have offered a blend of raunchy comedy and surprisingly traditional romantic resolutions for a decade and a half now. In a post today at Burbanked, Alan Lopuszynski questions whether Adam Sandler is currently starring in Judd Apatow’s Funny People for the inverse reason.
“At first, I figured that Sandler’s interest in working under Apatow as a director was because Sandler was on a downslope of box office returns at this point in his career,” writes Alan Lopuszynski at Burbanked. But then he got out the virtual graph paper, and realised that although Judd Apatow’s films are vastly more appreciated by critics than Sandlers, “the pair’s financial track records are extremely similar” — and when there has been a discrepancy, Sandler’s films have almost always grossed more than Apatow’s.
And so Alan coins a term to explain the collaboration:
He can handle something more as an actor, but knows his fanbase doesn’t want him to. Working with Apatow suggests a better balance for Sandler, an opportunity where his comic skills can be invested in a more realistic world where the conflicts and narrative pay off better. He seeks sethrogenization - a validation of his talents and value as an actor and comedian at the same time.
Of course, many would argue that the Apatow world isn’t actually realistic at all. But I would also suggest that Seth Rogen is basically working on developing a Seth Rogen type which, as Zach and Miri proves, could easily be applied to non-Apatow projects, but which we’ve as of yet seen no evidence can easily be funneled into, say, a Paul Thomas Anderson film. I love these graphs, but for me, the question is not whether Sandler can be Sethrogenized by Apatow, but whether a Sethrogenized Sandler would actually be more versatile at all. Thoughts?
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SpoutBlog » Karina Longworth