Knocked Up's Judd Apatow: How to Turn 40 Year-Old Virgins and Pregnant Ladies into Comedic Gold

>>This is an excerpt from the latest issue of Rolling Stone, on stands until June 15th.

As usual, Judd Apatow has a funny idea. While his chauffeured Chevy Suburban pokes its way through early-afternoon traffic toward Santa Monica, the writer-director decides that it might be a good time to send a menacing e-mail to Ryan Seacrest.

Hunched over his BlackBerry, Apatow -- best known for his work on a flop TV series, Freaks and Geeks, and a hit movie, The 40-Year-Old Virgin -- taps out a terse message to Seacrest, who has a small role in Apatow's new film, Knocked Up.

To: Seacrest, Ryan

From: Judd

Subject: Idol Tix

Hook me up. There's still time to trim your scene.

Satisfied, Apatow hits "send" and chortles. Seacrest had offered him American Idol tickets -- but then failed to write back when Apatow attempted to take him up on it. Now, Apatow is trying again, and he's taking bets. "Let's see how long it takes Ryan Seacrest to e-mail back," he says, folding his furry forearms. "I'm saying within half an hour."

From the back row of seats, Jonah Hill, a rotund twenty-three-year-old comic actor who's along for the ride, chimes in: "I'm calling an hour and a half."

Not long ago, Apatow was in the middle of an agonizing losing streak. A comedy prodigy who scored a manager at age nineteen and abandoned a promising stand-up career to produce The Ben Stiller Show (and then to work on The Larry Sanders Show), he was making smart, deeply empathetic television that critics adored but almost no one watched -- the classic high school dramedy Freaks and Geeks, the college sitcom Undeclared and then several stillborn pilots. "I just thought, 'Maybe there's not many people who get this' -- that this is a niche, like a college band," Apatow says. "Hüsker Dü never sold many records." The stress of battling with NBC executives as head writer on Freaks and Geeks left Apatow with a herniated disc. He found himself unable to laugh without excruciating pain, and he landed in the hospital for spinal surgery. When Fox -- which had already canceled The Ben Stiller Show -- did the same to Undeclared, Apatow sent the network a framed copy of the show's appearance in Time magazine's "Ten Best TV Shows," accompanied by a note: "How can you fuck me in the ass again when your dick is still in there from last time?"

Back in the SUV, just four minutes have passed when Apatow's BlackBerry buzzes: Seacrest is on the case. "Yeah, baby!" Apatow shouts, raising his fist in semi-ironic triumph.