Writer/director/producer JUDD APATOW has built his reputation over the past two decades with a style of comedy that weaves the relatable with the hilarious--in short, his comedy is outrageous, honest and human.  As an award-winning creator of television programs and theatrical films, Apatow has shown a consistent ability to take awkward situations we face in our own lives and mine them for optimal laugh-out-loud reactions from an audience. 
Apatow's gift for comedic storytelling was fully realized in summer 2005 with the critically hailed and box-office blockbuster The 40-Year-Old Virgin.  This film directorial debut told a heartwarming story of love, friendship and sexual curiosity, and introduced the world to the then largely unknown Steve Carell. 
David Denby of The New Yorker was one of a slew of critics who fell for the comedy, calling it "truly dirty and truly romantic at the same time, a combination that's very hard to pull off."  The film was nominated for and won a number of awards--including top-ten ranking from the American Film Institute in 2005 and a WGA nomination for Apatow and Carell for Best Original Screenplay.
With hits on his resume that include Talladega Nights: The Ballad of Ricky Bobby, Anchorman: The Legend of Ron Burgundy, The Cable Guy, The Ben Stiller Show, The Larry Sanders Show and cult favorites Freaks and Geeks and Undeclared, Apatow has both created a comic library and surrounded himself with up-and-coming talent who have become fixtures in today's comic community. 
One of those early players from Apatow's Freaks and Geeks and Undeclared, SETH ROGEN (The 40-Year-Old Virgin), would provide the source material for his new film, quite soon after Virgin wrapped production.  Rogen inspired Apatow to create Ben Stone--a directionless, ambitionless, everyday guy--who has lived the slacker fantasy and quite unexpectedly bedded the gorgeous girl of his dreams.  Only, this time…she winds up Knocked Up.
In his latest comedy, the filmmaker turns his attention to the delicate questions of love and marriage, and the laughs that rise easily and sometimes wincingly when exploring the topics.  In Knocked Up, KATHERINE HEIGL (Grey's Anatomy) plays Alison Scott, an ambitious and beautiful young woman on the verge of becoming an on-air reporter for a major entertainment news network.  Ben (Rogen), however, lives with four friends in a twenty-something/bachelor's extended adolescence: a dilapidated house complete with a makeshift boxing ring and deluxe (read: mosquito-infested) swimming pool.  The friends have a shared ambition to support their lifestyle by creating a semi-pornographic celebrity web site--one that could make them quite wealthy when (and if) it launches.
As Knocked Up begins, these two polar opposites meet in a bar, drunkenly hook up and then go their separate ways.  That is supposed to be the end of their story.  But Ben finds that the phone call he gets from Alison several weeks later is not a request for a second date; it's a call to tell him she's going to have his baby.  Now, Ben has some life-altering questions to ask of himself--will he run the other way or stick around to help raise the kid?

GETTING KNOCKED UP: GREENLIGHTING THE FILM
As Apatow went from stand-up comedian to award-winning television writer, creator and producer to feature filmmaker, he developed a knack for spotting and nurturing comedic talent.  He first noticed Seth Rogen on a taped audition for Freaks and Geeks, the television show he was executive producing in 1999.  "I saw him on this casting tape from Vancouver," Apatow recalls.  "I thought, 'This guy has a funny-sounding voice, and I should see him in person.'  So I went to Vancouver.  Seth came in and was hilarious, so we created a part for him on the show."
In addition to being a member of the cast, Rogen had shown himself to be adept at improvisation.  After the critically acclaimed program was abruptly canceled, Apatow hired Rogen again, this time as an actor and a writer on 2001's Undeclared, a series Apatow created about a group of college freshman. 
Apatow remembers, "When I started working on Undeclared, I hired Seth to be in the cast and to be a very cheap writer on the show.  But then, as it turned out, he was among the best writers on the show, and he was only 18 years old.  He was really good--good to the point it was embarrassing." 
By the time The 40-Year-Old Virgin came along, Apatow decided that having Rogen around was advantageous to all.  "I thought, 'I can throw Seth in the movie and he'll be there every day to help me make everything else funny.'  I always have my eye open for the next funny guy who can carry a movie." 
His instincts were correct.  Rogen's tattooed, burly, deep-voiced stockroom guy was not only the perfect contrast to Andy Stitzer, Steve Carell's fastidious, buttoned-up, middle-aged virgin, but his improvisational "You know how I know you're gay?" riffs with Paul Rudd quickly became a classic.
Buoyed by The 40-Year-Old Virgin's critical and box-office success, Apatow would turn his attention to his next project and put Rogen in a leading role.
The concept for a comedy about an unlikely couple and the complications that arise from their one-night stand was inspired in part by the young actor and a conversation the two had after the success of Virgin.  "We were talking about writing something for him, and all of his ideas were giant science-fiction movies," Apatow recalls.  "They were very high concept.  I said 'Seth, you don't need a big concept to be funny.  In Virgin, you're funny just standing there talking.  You just need a situation that's funny because you're in it…like you get a girl pregnant--and it's funny because it's you.'
"It seemed like Seth came out of the womb with his own comic identity," continues Apatow.   "He's a very viciously funny, biting, sardonic personality, but yet he is a sweet and good guy.  That combination's always fun for comedy.  I just always thought, 'That's the kind of guy I'd like to see star in a movie.'"
The news that he would be starring in the filmmaker's next comedy came as a big surprise to the actor.  "Judd was deciding what to do after Virgin, and he was very elusive about it until, one day, when we had a meeting about another movie at Universal, he just pitched it," recalls Rogen.  "I was sitting there, and he said, 'We want to do this movie Knocked Up, where Seth gets a girl pregnant after a one-night stand.'   I couldn't believe it."
Another source of inspiration for Knocked Up came while Apatow was directing his previous film.  In the process of trying to lose his virginity, Carell's character, Andy, finds a complicated relationship with Trish, played by Catherine Keener.  Says Apatow, "A few of the scenes that I really liked were these scenes between Steve and Catherine trying to have a relationship and having these vicious fights.  They were funny, but really painful to watch at the same time.  I thought, 'Wow, we pulled those off, and maybe I can find the courage to be a little more adult and be even more truthful about relationships and marriage.'"
For his sophomore film effort, Apatow would do for relationships, marriage and family what he'd so successfully done for midlife virginity.  "There have been a lot of movies, Virgin included, which are about older people who don't want to grow up," he notes.  "I think that happens because as comedians get older, it's more fun to play immature people than mature ones."
The director felt that mature adults were patently not funny, so he created a movie about someone who's supposed to be immature at this age.  He wanted Ben to be the kind of guy "who has no choice but to grow up, because he got someone pregnant too early and now he has to be an adult--whether he likes it or not.
"It's a movie with the same evolving spirit of The 40-Year-Old Virgin--which is a filthy, dirty movie with a good heart," he continues.  "Basically, I try and make these movies with the thought that they're about trying hard not to be an asshole.  Any story about the journey toward how to be a good person and what it takes to get there is funny to me." 

SHOOT UNTIL THE FILM'S GONE: CASTING AND DIRECTING COMICS
Finding the right actors to play opposite Seth Rogen would prove another piece of the comedy puzzle for Apatow and his fellow producer, Shauna Robertson.  For the role of Ben's reluctant girlfriend, Alison, actress Katherine Heigl brought something unique--and quite necessary--to the role.  Says Apatow of the number of talent that read for the part: "Other people would read, and the whole premise felt sad.  Great actresses would come in, and they would say 'I'm pregnant,' and it made you want to cry.  But Katherine came in, and she and Seth would go at each other hard, and it really made me laugh." 
Of her interest in the humorous part, Heigl explains:  "It's not so far out there and ridiculous that it's slapstick.  Seth and Judd take the experiences that we have in our relationships with our friends, family and lovers, and exaggerate it just a bit."
Rogen concurs that his co-star made the perfect, formidable opponent.  "One of the problems is that I'm just like a big, loud dude.  So, when you pair me up with a tiny little actress and have me scream at them, it becomes very unpleasant to watch.  But with Katherine, it worked.  She could yell a lot louder than even I can."
While Apatow is credited with helping to revive a classic film genre--the R-rated comedy--critics and audiences agree that at the center of his raunchy hilarity is heart.  That could only be accomplished with finding supporting actors who make the audience simultaneously laugh and feel moved. 
A key to Apatow's casting process is bringing together talent who have fun with one another.  Surrounding Rogen with a strong group of actors was easy.  "The people from Virgin worked together very well," explains the director, "so there's a shorthand there and everyone understands the process.  Then for the new people who join us, like Katie, they easily fall into what we're doing because everyone is so in sync.  We just try to take advantage of the real relationships people have."
Once again, Apatow wanted to cast actors who could strike a delicate balance between delivering profane comedy and profound, heartbreaking conversations.  He found that in his Virgin alumni Leslie Mann and Paul Rudd.
For the role of Alison's older, protective sister Debbie, the filmmakers turned to a woman they knew quite well.  Mann, Apatow's wife, had been a standout in Virgin with her portrayal of the French-toast craving, happy drunk Nicky.  For her role in Knocked Up, however, Mann would play the more sober of the two sisters.  She admits that working on these films is "a different type of moviemaking.  It's very loose and creative.  The actors have a lot to say and do in the creative process."
Mann's on-screen husband (and fellow Apatow player--from Virgin to Anchorman), Paul Rudd, agrees: "On other projects, you really have to memorize lines and rehearse scenes.  I've forgotten how to do that because I've become so accustomed to the way Judd shoots things." 
Apatow concedes that his directing style is fluid and lively.  From the table read on, each actor makes a continual contribution, bringing his or her own take to any given situation.  "I liken it to writing a movie on its feet," says the director.  During filming, he is known to roll the camera until he's out of film.  In between, the actors shoot the scene, then perform various improvisations based on the scripted scene and are fed new lines by Apatow as the cameras roll.
More accustomed to memorizing lines from a page on her day job, Grey's Anatomy, Katherine Heigl's initiation into Apatow's particular working style came during her audition.  "I had my lines and was ready to go," Heigl states.  "Basically, they tossed it all aside, and we didn't even follow any of the dialogue.
"Thankfully, Seth is such an easy guy to bounce things off of," she continues.  "I spent a lot of my first audition for the movie just reacting to things he said, simply because I couldn't think of anything fast enough." 
The contrast between Alison and Ben's lives is nowhere more apparent than in the house he shares with four friends.  A flophouse for the lost boys, it is the land that time and cleaning supplies forgot.  But for the five guys who live there, it is a temple full of offerings to the gods of sex and marijuana.  Adding to the humor, Ben Stone's best friends, Jonah, Jason, Jay and Martin are played by Seth Rogen's real best friends.  Conveniently, the actors--Jonah Hill, Jason Segel, Jay Baruchel and Martin Starr--share first names with their characters.
Apatow insists that casting people he liked made his job easier:  "I don't really have to do much, because if I just say, 'Sit around and talk and give each other a hard time,' I know they'll do what they would really do.  It's a great, lazy writer/director move.  And then I did something else that was really lazy--I didn't even bother to change any of the guys' names, except Seth's."
Rounding out the cast are Leslie Mann and Judd Apatow's real-life children, Maude and Iris Apatow, as Sadie and Charlotte, Pete and Debbie's little girls who serve as a constant source of amusement and parental confusion to the harried Ben.  The filmmaker laughs, "I had an instinct that they would be great, and they were.  Now, I can never let them act again."

ABOUT THE CAST

SETH ROGEN (Ben Stone, Executive Producer) has emerged leading a new generation of comedic actors, writers and producers.  Nominated for an Emmy Award in 2005 for Outstanding Writing for a Variety, Music or Comedy Program, Rogen began his career doing standup comedy in Vancouver, Canada, at 13.
After moving to Los Angeles, Rogen landed supporting roles in Judd Apatow's two critically acclaimed network television comedies, Freaks and Geeks and Undeclared, on which Rogen was hired as a staff writer at 18.  Shortly after, Rogen was guided by Apatow toward a film career. 
  In 2005, Rogen was cast by Apatow in the hit feature comedy The 40-Year-Old Virgin, which opened at no. 1 at the box office, where it remained at the top perch for two weekends in a row.  The film went on to gross more than $175 million worldwide and helped put Rogen on the map as a future film star.  In 2005, the film was named one of the 10 Most Outstanding Motion Pictures of the Year by AFI and took home Best Comedy Movie at the 11^th annual Critics' Choice Awards.  Rogen was also a co-producer on the film.     
In August, Rogen will be seen in Superbad (a semiautobiographical comedy) that he co-wrote and executive produced with writing partner Evan Goldberg.  The story is based on two codependent high school seniors (played by Jonah Hill and Michael Cera) who are forced to deal with separation anxiety after their plan to stage a booze-soaked party goes awry.  The film is being released on August 17 through Sony Pictures.
Rogen is currently in production on the action comedy The Pineapple Express,a film he co-wrote with Goldberg.  The film stars Rogen opposite fellow Freaks and Geeks alum James Franco and centers on two buddies who get mixed up with a drug gang.  The film is slated for a 2008 release through Sony Pictures.
  Rogen's upcoming projects include lending his voice to Kung Fu Panda, for DreamWorks Animation; the classic Dr. Seuss story Horton Hears a Who; and The Spiderwick Chronicles.  Rogen also co-wrote the screenplay for another Apatow-produced comedy, Drillbit Taylor, starring Owen Wilson, which is set for release in early 2008.
In addition to the Apatow-produced comedy Anchorman: The Legend of Ron Burgundy, Rogen's film credits include Donnie Darko and You, Me and Dupree.  His other television credits include The Family Guy.  Rogen currently resides in Los Angeles.

KATHERINE HEIGL (Alison Scott) has quickly emerged as one of Hollywood's brightest talents on both the silver screen and on television. 
During her summer hiatus, Heigl will be filming the romantic comedy 27 Dresses.  The film, co-starring James Marsden and Malin Akerman, focuses on a young woman who, after serving as a bridesmaid 27 times, wrestles with the idea of standing by her sister's side as her sibling marries the man with whom she's secretly in love.
Heigl can also be seen weekly on ABC's critically acclaimed drama Grey's Anatomy.  She portrays Dr. Isobel "Izzie" Stevens, the small-town girl who is constantly battling for respect among her peers.  The series focuses on the personal and professional lives of five surgical interns struggling to be doctors and their supervisors who are struggling to stay human.  For her performance, Heigl earned a Golden Globe nomination in 2007.
Heigl's previous film credits include the comedy The Ringer; the horror film Valentine; Steven Soderbergh's critically acclaimed depression-era drama, King of the Hill; Under Siege 2: Dark Territory, opposite Steven Segal; Stand-Ins; and That Night. Heigl's first leading role was in Touchstone Pictures' My Father the Hero, starring opposite Gerard Depardieu.
On television, Heigl starred on the WB's sci-fi drama series Roswell.  Additional television credits include the Hallmark Channel's Love Comes Softly and Love's Enduring Promise, and TBS' Evil Never Dies.

ABOUT THE FILMMAKERS

JUDD APATOW (Written and Directed by, Produced by) made his feature directorial debut with the 2005 summer box-office smash The 40-Year-Old Virgin, starring Steve Carell.  Slated for this summer is his next turn as a producer, Superbad, starring Jonah Hill, Michael Cera, Seth Rogen and Bill Hader.
Apatow recently produced the upcoming Drillbit Taylor, starring Owen Wilson, and the summer 2006 hit Talladega Nights: The Ballad of Ricky Bobby, starring Will Ferrell.  He is the executive producer of the independent film The TV Set, a scathingly funny look at the television industry, starring David Duchovny and Sigourney Weaver.
He was the executive producer of Kicking & Screaming, starring Will Ferrell, and he produced Anchorman: The Legend of Ron Burgundy, starring Ferrell, Christina Applegate and Paul Rudd.
Apatow co-wrote the screenplay for the remake of Fun With Dick and Jane, starring Jim Carrey and Téa Leoni.   He made his feature film debut as a co-writer and executive producer on the comedy Heavyweights.   He also served as a producer on the dark comedy The Cable Guy, directed by Ben Stiller and starring Jim Carrey and Matthew Broderick.
On the small screen, Apatow served as an executive producer of the critically praised, award-winning series Freaks and Geeks, which debuted in 1999 and for which he also wrote and directed several episodes.  He created and was executive producer of the series Undeclared, which was named one of Time magazine's 10 best shows of 2001.
Previously, Apatow worked as a writer, director and producer on the award-winning and widely acclaimed series The Larry Sanders Show, starring Garry Shandling. For his work on the show, he earned an Emmy Award nomination for Outstanding Writing for a Comedy Series and received five consecutive Emmy Award nominations for Outstanding Comedy Series.  In addition, The Larry Sanders Show brought Apatow two Cable ACE Awards for Best Comedy Series and a Writers Guild of America WGA Episodic Comedy Award nomination for an episode he co-wrote.
Born in Syosset, New York, Apatow aspired at an early age to become a professional comedian.  While still in high school, he created a radio show and began interviewing comedy personalities he admired, including Steve Allen, Howard Stern and John Candy.  Inspired, he began performing his own stand-up routines by the end of his senior year.
Following an appearance on HBO's Young Comedians special, Apatow eventually stopped performing in favor of writing and went on to co-create and act as executive producer of The Ben Stiller Show, for which he earned an Emmy for Outstanding Individual Achievement in Writing in a Variety or Music Program.  

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