Actor Paul Rudd plays a superhero with the ability to change his size in Marvel's "Ant-Man," in theaters July 17, 2015. (Walt Disney Pictures)  YOU TEND to swap personal stories while in the newsroom trenches, and a few summers back, a friend and fellow arts journalist was offering one of his. It was about his first newspaper, which he spoke of fondly like a first dear girlfriend, a former flame with a few warm embers still. Back in the ’70s, David was in high school and loved rock music, so he started an underground paper called Common Sense with another aspiring music reporter, who was just 15. The younger teen was named Cameron Crowe.  One day, Cameron tried to urge David to come with him, to go knock on a few hotel doors. The artist Boz Scaggs was in town in San Diego — He’s staying at the Catamaran — and maybe they could score an interview. For the precociously confident Crowe, their youth was no impediment to being taken seriously.  Three decades later, I asked David to interview his old friend timed to the release of a new movie, which was set in roughly that time in their lives. The film, of course, was “Almost Famous,” centering on a 15-year-old rock journalist, for which Crowe would an original-screenplay Oscar.  I relay all that because today there is another Hollywood talent who, when he was still a teenager, would approach the stars of his future industry and boldly ask for interviews, using his humble media outlet — his high-school radio station in Syosset, Long Island — as a forum and a fulcrum for landing big names. As a 16-year-old fan-turned-interviewer, he was taking the East Coast approach to comedy that Crowe had taken on the West Coast to the music industry.  That future Hollywood comedy writer and producer was Judd Apatow, and he has cited Crowe as a formative influence.  Apatow has a new book, “Sick in the Head,” that features three decades of his conversations with comedians, beginning right there at his Long Island high-school mike.  And today, Apatow has a new look out — as a man whose cinematic troupe had a key hand, be it direct or undersung, in the top three films in the land (“Ant-Man,” “Minions” and “Trainwreck”) — which, combined, grossed nearly $140 million at the domestic box office over the weekend.  That may seem like a gaping range of disparate films, but Apatow’s influence is largely a product of sharing certain core traits with Crowe — from fearless fandom and journalistic curiosity and chutzpah, to a gift for great and sometimes prescient casting, often by spotting the true potential in untapped talent. And despite their differing personae within Hollywood and without — and variations in their career arcs — both are drawn to producing writing that often aims to inspire through the truth of emotion. As Crowe has said of his “I Bought a Zoo”: “It definitely wears its heart on its sleeve.” (And if Apatow once had more of a rep as a “bro-median” than Crowe does, that take can overlook the degree to which Sean Penn’s Jeff Spicoli in “Fast Times at Ridgemont High” or Matt Dillon’s baked Cliff in “Singles” would fit right into, say, “Pineapple Express.”)  [Best Books: Judd Apatow leads celebs who go ‘Inside MAD’]  Now, speaking of wearing honesty on our sleeves, I should fully acknowledge that I, as a cartoonist and like countless others, have many of the same entertainment-industry writing influences as Apatow does, from MAD magazine to classic TV comedies like “Taxi” and “All in the Family” — and so it has been a profound pleasure to communicate warmly with James L. Brooks, Mort Drucker and Norman Lear this year (the last two for heartfelt sit-downs). Those talents and institutions tower over so much of modern comedy.  [Sketchbook: TV legend Norman Lear spotlights our saving grace that is the Arts]  And for full context, I’ll also say that even before the wonderful “Freaks and Geeks,” I was enjoying Apatow’s ’90s projects like “The Cable Guy” (still a comedically underrated movie — Jack Black, Owen Wilson and Bob Odenkirk soar in smaller parts) and the truly great “The Larry Sanders Show.” And that last show is key, because it represents a pivot point in Apatow’s career.  Apatow has said that Shandling (who himself was mentored by George Carlin) taught him how to write comedy. And that good comedies often aren’t about one-liners and crafting the best contextual gags, but rather about “experiencing love and the obstacles to love.” (Which can fairly Venn-overlap with Neil Simon’s idea of comedy centering on conflicts that hinder achieving our wants and desires.)  Related to that, there is a scene in 2004’s Apatow-produced “Anchorman: The Legend of Ron Burgundy” (which, yes, circles us right back to ’70s San Diego) in which Paul Rudd and Steve Carell, playing members of the cheesy-dim news team, ask Will Ferrell’s title character “what love is” — a sudden moment of closed-door vulnerability amid all the macho boasts and braggadocio that hang thick in the panther-scented air. Rudd’s roving reporter recounts a store quickie with a stranger and wonders whether that is love.  And in that single scene, 11 years later, we can find many road signs pointing to this past weekend.  The top film in the nation is “Ant-Man,” which, by grossing $58 million, becomes the 12th straight Marvel Cinematic Universe movie to open at No. 1. The film depends hugely — at both the ticket booth and on screen — on Rudd’s immense likability.  Two decades ago, of course, Rudd impressed in “Clueless” with that twinkle-eyed charm. And several years back, director Neil LaBute acknowledged to me how crucial Rudd’s ability to play earnest/vulnerable on stage and screen was to his “The Shape of Things.” But it was Apatow’s productions — including “Knocked Up” and “This is 40″ — that opened up Rudd’s film career to the point that not only does he have the star wattage to even be considered to headline a Marvel movie; he also has enough of a screen persona to draw viewers who aren’t really superhero-story fans. As thief-turned-superhero Ant-Man for this and future Marvel films, Rudd’s comic likability is crucial.  [Bugs in the system: From ‘Ant-Man’ to ‘Thor,’ why does Marvel clash with its directors?]  The No. 2 film over the weekend was “Minions” ($50.2 million), which of course is a spin-off from the two “Despicable Me” films. At the heart, literally, of the “Despicable” franchise is Apatow player Steve Carell voicing Gru, the super-baddie/daddie.  Carell, of course, cut his teeth a quarter-century ago on the Second City main stage opposite Stephen Colbert, and gained national attention as a “Daily Show” correspondent. But it was Apatow’s “The 40-Year-Old Virgin” a decade ago that converted him into an A-lister who can fully display his range, from “Little Miss Sunshine” to the under-appreciated “The Way, Way Back.”  And “40-Year-Old Virgin,” naturally, is about nothing if not “experiencing love and the obstacles to love.” Without Apatow, who knows whether we’d ever have a Gru — at least with Carell’s brilliant take?  The film from this week that Apatow can take direct credit for, natch, is third-place “Trainwreck” ($30.2 million), which he directed and produced as a star vehicle after its writer, Amy Schumer, impressed him on the Howard Stern show.  “Trainwreck” follows a traditional narrative arc true to many Apatow films: A character who’s feeling incomplete, unfulfilled or lost battles personal conflicts — as the film derives laughs from those obstacles to love, and blind spots en route to self-realization — before love is redeemed as the big, sticky adhesive of a better Life.  It’s not to everyone’s taste. But then, neither is Mel Brooks (a national treasure), or John Cassavetes, or another Apatow performing hero, Steve Martin.  “Trainwreck” co-star Bill Hader (“Superbad,” “Forgetting Sarah Marshall”) told me last month that he welcomes working with Apatow again because the director knows so clearly what he wants. That belief elevates his actors, be the comedy broad or deadpan.  [Pixar’s ‘Inside Out': How ‘anxious’ Bill Hader embraced becoming Fear itself]  And so, Apatow’s influence continues to provide good roles and great exposure for a gifted troupe of actors, until, like this past weekend, you can trace nearly $140 million in domestic box office, in ways great and lesser alike, to the Apatow effect.  That’s the thing about being sick in the head. If you’ve caught the comedy bug as a performer or producer, it can be highly contagious, passing not only person to person, but also across genre and approach and form.  And given the current crop of top films, Judd Apatow may well be Patient Zero.  Starting as single-celled yellow organisms, Minions evolve through the ages, perpetually serving the most despicable of masters. Continuously unsuccessful at keeping these masters—from T. rex to Napoleon—the Minions find themselves without someone to serve and fall into a deep depression. But one Minion named Kevin has a plan. (Universal)
Three actors walk into a bard: Judd Apatow's troupe cleaned up with top three films at the weekend box office. Here's the effect of his influence.