Early box office counts show Funny People pulling $23.4M since opening on Friday here and in Canada. Which, let's see, had Nikki Finke — who's been having fun with the picture of Apatow scratching his head, above - noting as "lousy," and Reuters pointing out in their lede that it was Adam Sandler's worst opening in almost five years. It was also the lowest opening for a #1 movie since Jim Carrey's Yes Man, it has a Metacritic score of 60/100, and on Rotten Tomatoes, has only 65% positive reviews.

So, no. Guess America doesn't like dramedy with their dick jokes.

We must admire the inexhaustible hustle of Apatow's publicist: Judd has been everywhere. And Apatow has aced the exposure due in large part to his own obsessions and personality quirks: that typical brand of Choosen People wang/ anxiety humor, the refractory wisdom about the emotional depth of his characters, constant self-deprecation, steady fear of failure, a sincere need to please, a graceful acknowledgment of misfires, and flirty sweet things about his comdienne wife Leslie Mann.

Today Apatow did one of his final PR stints as a guestblogger over at MTV. He has been filing weekly musings all of the same Apatowian themes have emerged . Here are some highlights from his month long blogging journey.

Oh Judd! We forgive you for Walk Hard:

There is nothing worse than making a bad movie and knowing it is going to be broadcast on cable TV for the rest of time. I am actually a fan of mediocre comedies. They are like warm soup. They can be pleasant and help time go by more easily when you just want to shut off your brain. When I make a bad movie I often try to make myself feel better by saying, "well, that is a good movie to watch if you are home with the flu." Believe me, when you have the flu it is still hard to find enough movies to fill a day, even if you have seven hundred channels.

Judd has feeeeelingsss!:

"Funny People" is very personal to me. It is really funny, but is also about a lot of life and death issues. People seem to project their view of life onto it. Dark people find it really dark. Happy hopeful people think it is sweet and positive. I have never had an experience like this before. Usually people just laugh and that is it. They ponder it for too long. I read one hilarious super-nasty article about me that said I was a misanthrope (you can look it up too) and then another that said I was conservative and syrupy sweet.

So I guess this will be a movie that will start many long conversations. That was the point when I wrote it but watching those conversations about to begin is scary."

Whose side are you on?:

How many times should I see "Funny People"?

Three. Once for the laughs. The second time to notice the details you missed when you laughed. And the third time just to make sure we beat "Transformers" at the box office. We must not let robots rule the world.

Judd wrote his final entry today in some sort of jazzy, improvisational, warrior poet way:

"Funny People" opens this Friday.
Looks good.
Reviews are solid.
Some raves. New Yorker. Rolling Stone.
A few didn't quite get it.
Their hearts are cold and dark.
I pray for them.
Leslie is funnier than me on talk shows.
Why? Why?
Doing The View tomorrow with Seth.
Not sure if you can discuss penises.
Isn't that the subtext of the entire show?
Doing Howard Stern.
Not sure I have enough penis material.
...

Might slip and tell dirty stories about Leslie.
Don't take sleeping pill.
Think about other things.
Movie is not that important.
New season of Mad Man is starting soon.
Happiness.
Zzzzzzzz"

Um, probably because Judd Apatow is like the god of all comedy of all time. He's basically had a hand in every other major comedy hit in the past five years, people lurve his short-lived (don't they have to be short-lived to have even more mythic status?) TV series Freaks & Geeks and Undeclared, and his two writer-director efforts at the cinema, The 40-Year-Old Virgin and Knocked Up, have been critical and box office darlings. So you will have a hard time saying no to that.

But might you have an even harder time saying no to him when the back six of his latest auteur effort, a mopey Adam Sandler flick about the comedy of the heart, features, front and center, his acidic cherub of a wife, Leslie Mann? The early reviews, while mostly positive, do seem to find nagging flaw in the long last third of his movie, which deals with Mann's character and her marital strife.

We have nothing to base this on except pure speculation, but could it be that Apatow's dive into the serious side of his actress wife prickled a bit with Universal execs? Not that they wouldn't love Mann! Everyone loves Mann! But they love her as the spritely, mean supporting lady, not as the star of her very own late-summer dramatic arc. Plus can't poor Universal please just have a regular bros-'n'-dick-jokes August comedy to rely on, not some itchy junior Importance film ("The third film from...") by comedy's reigning rabbi?

No, they can't. Because Judd said so. It's his wife's big moment! Now that he's a big deal, it's gonna be one for you, one for him, etc forever. Next one's yours, Universal. No worries.

We think? Er, it's always possible that Universal just wanted some of the funny stand-up parts cut, right?

Wordy but fun, overreaching yet accurate, Variety's Todd but McCarthy - who gives great analysis with sometimes decent box office projections - has mixed, yet succinct, feelings, to put it lightly. His lede, emphasis mine:

Candid but long-winded, well observed but undisciplined, "Funny People" feels like Judd Apatow's diploma picture marking his move from high school to college as a filmmaker. Amusing and engaging yet lacking in snap and cohesion, this insider's look at the world of standup comics in contempo Los Angeles rings true in its view of the variously warped, stunted and narrow lives of its mostly male denizens. Adam Sandler's central performance as some version of himself is notable for its revelation of callowness and ambivalent self-regard, which will fascinate some fans and turn off others. Curiosity should spur a healthy opening, with likely widely divergent reactions suggesting questionable staying power.

Could've guessed that one, though: Apatow's making a movie with a big heart where the endgame is more than just some great dick jokes and a moral, and that's evident by the premise. How about that third act, when the movie inevitably gets all serious on us to show what an aueteur Apatow is?

While it has its moments, this long latter stretch drains the picture of what little momentum it had and switches the focus to [Leslie Mann's] Laura and her own marital problems, which are annoying and not entirely convincing.

Eegh. McCarthy goes on to slam Leslie Mann, and take us away from the Apatow and Sandler we want to see (like, incidentally, the last third of Funny People, apparently). But what'd the other trade in town think? Silly wittle Hollywood Reporter, show us what you've got:

Bottom Line: A more mature but still funny Judd Apatow comedy whose move into serious human relation issues nearly scuttles the third act...there is a serious side to this film that makes the second half go awry....George's [Adam Sandler's] disease goes into remission — and the air comes out of the movie.

Finally, what do the bloggahs have to say? Jeffrey Wells of Hollywood Elsewhere, Keyboard Cat us out of here:

It's not a "great" film but for me it's a stunningly brave (by which I mean exceptionally candid and self-revealing) one. And funny as shit.

And we have a consensus! While it's funny and great and well, Apatow's noble attempts at painting deep, murky moral colors at the end of his film aren't as good as Apatow's skill at directing a good dick joke. And this is the problem I always had with people who would shove a boxed set of Freaks and Geeks DVDs in my face like it was the second coming of good television that I'd never seen: sure, it has its moments, but I can't see beyond the non-revelatory revelatory moments to understand why it's the best thing in dramedy since Edward Albee.

That being said, I'm willing to give Sandler and Apatow the chance, probably sometime in the next week. The 40 Year-Old Virgin was one of the best sad-clown comedies ever made, and Sandler's done this well, before (Punchdrunk Love). Will you? No? Uh...

Update: Peter Travers of Rolling Stone reviewed it as well, though the review isn't online yet. A point for the Ha-Ha camp, but Travers is known for his studio-happy reviews. He gave it a 3.5/4. Typical Travers, watch the kicker. Emphasis mine, again:

But no worries about this perceptive, deeply entertaining boundary-pusher. It's the work of a major talent. Apatow scores by crafting the film equivalent of a stand-up routine that encompasses the joy, pain, anger, loneliness and aching doubt that go into making an audience laugh. For his people, that really is a matter of life and death.

3:2 on at least one of those being clipped for an ad later this week. Takers? Talk about some awkward turtle.

Funny People Review [Variety]
Funny People Review [The Hollywood Reporter]
Apatow's Big Surge [Ed. WTF?] [Hollywood Elsewhere]

Awkward Turtle Wikipedia Entry [Wikipedia]

Is it a big fat spoiler to point out that a trailer is a big fat spoiler? Because that's what this one is. I read the script a while back and except for the very end, everything's in here. The movie stars Adam Sandler as comedy superstar "George Simmons" who befriends up-and-comer Seth Rogen. They play pretty much the same Apatow man-boys that populate all of his movies, except here they're dealing with issues weightier than whether it's worth it to give up their bongs to get a hot girl.

You see, Sandler gets cancer and thinks he's dying. In fact, most of the movie is actually about him coming to terms with his imminent death (a laugh riot). The revelation that he's beaten the deadly disease doesn't come until close to the end. In most movies, you would call this the "twist." Here it's a title card — GEORGE SIMMONS WAS PREPARED TO DIE BUT THEN A FUNNY THING HAPPENED — in a trailer out nearly six months before the movie's due in theaters.

It's tough to blame Universal and Sony, the studios behind Funny People, for selling out the plot in the trailer. Marketing a movie, especially one that's ostensibly supposed to be a comedy, must be tough when the main character thinks he's dying for most of the film. Cluing people into the fact that Sandler lives was probably the best way they could say this isn't Terms of Endearment. But you have to ask, what's left? Ah, yes the familiar get-the-girl plot line in which Sandler tries to woo his old flame (played by the obligatory Leslie Mann, Apatow's wife) away from Aussie Eric Bana.

There wasn't a lot of comedy in the version of Apatow's Funny People script that I saw. Lots of sections, such as the stand-up routines, were marked simply with notes like "COMEDY GOES HERE." Apatow likes to film hours and hours of quasi-improvisation to get gags into his films. And no doubt, he was relying on Sandler and Rogen to come up with their own stand-up material. But all in all, it left you with the sense that, after Apatow's prolific two-year producing streak (which includes hits like Superbad and Pineapple Express and bombs like Drillbit Taylor and Walk Hard) he may have succumbed to an all-too-common comedy writer disesase: the need to be taken seriously.

Sandler plays a successful comedian who moves the less-successful Seth Rogen into his house to write additional jokes for him. In real life, Apatow once lived wth Sandler and wrote jokes for him and other comedians after realizing he had no future as a stand-up.

One of the Sandler character's posters bears a strong resemblance to this real-life poster for Going Overboard, which starred a pre-fame Sandler and is always inexplicably facing outward on the DVD rack whenever we go to Best Buy.

In Knocked Up, Rogen's character worshipped at the altar or Eric Bana's ass-kicking Jew in Munich and announced, "If any of us get laid tonight, it's because of Eric Bana and Munich." Who, then, would Apatow pick to play Sandler's impossibly perfect romantic rival in Funny People? Bana—ironically, a former comedian Down Under.

Yup, Apatow's real-life daughters with Leslie Mann are once again featured as Mann's on-screen children (after stealing the show in Knocked Up).

Rogen and friends are spotted numerous times in the trailer hiking up and down Runyon Canyon for exercise. Poor guy—even on a big-budget, well-catered film like this one, Rogen has to keep slimming down until he's the size of a toothpick-waisted hipster standing in line for MGMT at the Echoplex.

• Judd Apatow's Funny People Movie Trailer [/film]

Throughout the show Apatow took movie pitches from the audience members. One member of the audience pitched a road trip movie based on Satre. [sic] The guy then said he traveled all the way from Salt Lake City to see the cast perform. Apatow quipped, ‘They’re going to find me dead after the show.’ Hill seemed the least experienced doing stand up, but still kept the crowd entertained. One of the highlights was a joke Rogen made about farting on airplanes. Apatow also suggested Sandler do a bit that he’d already done, leaving Adam to jab, ‘Some director you’re going to be.’ I would have liked to see Eric Bana do stand up. Otherwise, great night.”

/Film has a few more accounts from attendees, many of which seem potentially more successful than the performers themselves ("Can I get another cock joke, wash it down with a fart. Hey Yall we smoke weed? Thats just classic can’t go wrong with those time honored classics. Damn, my hand won’t stop making this wanking motion for some reason." ... "Energy was way down. Sandler didn’t seem too into it, he kept repeating 'Almost there').

So what next? The film is shooting somewhere over at Universal as we speak; get to stalking already, Defamer Ops! Apatow, Sandler, Rogen, Eric Bana and the rest will appreciate it in the long run — trust us.

• Judd Apatow & Posse Finish 'Funny People' Rehearsals [/Film]

We caught up with Apatow shortly after the show, where he talked to us about what it felt like to stand in the live-comedy spotlight after all these years, gave us a little taste of what to expect in his upcoming movie, Funny People, and submitted to a round of Desert Island DVDs that you might find surprising. It's after the jump.

DEFAMER: Congratulations on what we'd call a very successful return to your stand-up roots. What spurred this on? Was it research for Funny People, or did Funny People come out of a desire to revisit the world of stand-up?

APATOW: I figured if I was going to make a movie about stand-up comedy I, unfortunately, needed to start doing it again. Mainly, because I have to start writing jokes for the stand up sequences in the movie, but also so I can remind myself how it makes you feel great and like crap, almost simultaneously.

DEFAMER: Is that how it feels?

APATOW: You get a high, but I always feel ashamed afterwards. Embarrassed about what I said. Embarrassed about the ego it takes to think anyone would want to listen to you talk. The instant need to do it again. It's like comic crack.

DEFAMER: So Funny People is going to be like Punchline, only with Seth Rogen in the Sally Field role?

APATOW: The movie isn't about stand-up comedy. It's about a few characters who are having a crisis, but what makes it different is that they are people who make comedy.

DEFAMER: Your willingness to collaborate and promote lesser-known talents is probably one of the first things people think of when they think of the "Apatow" brand: You're not just getting one vision, your getting a bunch of complimentary sensibilities.

APATOW: It was an easy show for me because I knew that no matter how well or badly I did, I had Seth Rogen, Charlene Yi, Million Dollar Strong, Craig Robinson, Bill Hader and Russell Brand coming on after me. No matter what the show would be fun. The idea was to put on a show that starred all of the people who have acted in our films. So many of them are great comics so it made for a great, raucous show.

DEFAMER: Now onto the hardballs: You're stranded on a desert island with no one but a naked Jason Segel. Miraculously, you happen to have your three favorite L.A. takeout meals, and five favorite movies or TV series on DVD (excluding your own) with you. What are they?

APATOW: My five DVDs would be Mad Men, Season Three of The Wire, Broadcast News, Being There, and Punch Drunk Love. My three take-out meals would be PF Changs, Vitorrio’s Pizza, and A Votre Sante chicken and asparagus—so I don’t feel unhealthy.

DEFAMER: Seth Rogen did a bit in his act about being considered a bear by the gay community, and how he wished there was a straight equivalent. Have you ever been pegged as a bear? Ever thought about making the first mainstream bear comedy—or, failing that, a movie with a prominent gay character?

APATOW: I almost wrote a movie which was about gay characters but I ultimately realized I didn’t know enough about the subject. That may have been the moment when I first realized I had heterosexual tendencies.

DEFAMER: And finally, what can you tell us about this mysterious Sacha Baron Cohen project about Sherlock Holmes that you're producing?

APATOW: Sherlock Holmes is being written by Etan Cohen, one of the writers of Tropic Thunder.

DEFAMER: Hmm. Mysterious. Thanks, Judd!