Knocked Update

03Jun07

Knocked Up is out, and although I previously claimed I’d be the first in line to see it, I turned out to be busy on Friday making people at fencing hate me by putting them through a grueling footwork exercise and making Asians hate me by making off-colour remarks about their de facto enslavement in the 19th century. Instead, I’ve been getting a Judd Apatow fix by watching Freaks and Geeks on DVD.

I got to wondering what the other veterans of the ill-fated Judd Apatow sitcoms have gotten up to since cancellation. Of course, James Franco is currently in theatres as Harry Osborn in Spider-Man 3, and Jason Segel, Jay Baruchel, and Martin Starr all show up in Knocked Up. But whatever happened to Jarrett Grode, who was excellent in his recurring role as the sarcastic Perry Madison in Undeclared? You know, the one who looked kind of like like a young, non-balding Jeremy Piven? What’s he been up to?

Not too much, it turns out, according to his IMdb profile. That’s not right. Someone should be putting this guy in something. But I did stumble across his MySpace page, which contains an archive of his humour writing and is worth checking out.

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For a comedy I thought likely to fly under the radar, Knocked Up has had more hype behind it than I’d expected. A few days ago, I passed along a link to an excellent New York Times profile of Judd Apatow, but I’d be remiss if I didn’t also point you toward the Onion A.V. Club’s interview with Seth Rogen.

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By the way, Wikipedia informs me that Rebecca Eckler, the poor woman’s Carrie Bradshaw whose inane, self-indulgent vapidity infected the National Post until she was mercifully let go by the CanWest newspaper chain in 2005, is suing Judd Apatow and Universal Studios, accusing them of plagarizing her memoir Knocked Up: Confessions of a Hip Mother-to-be. (Quill & Quire, in panning her second book, refers to the first as stultifying caterwauling on the part of “seemingly the first woman in Canada to both carry and birth a child”, although this overlooks the much-ballyhooed miraculous virgin birth of Céline Dion’s son, René-Charles.) Ridiculous as the charge is, it’s not such a surprise, considering this narcissist’s well-documented belief in herself as the center of the universe. The movie and book certainly have the same title (which, as some have pointed out, is a slang expression dating back to 1813), but Eckler can hardly patent the concept of pregnancy (her own regrettable existence being prior art). Besides, the film is based on a pregnancy resulting from a one-night stand between a seemingly mismatched couple, while by her own admission, the loathsome Eckler was impregnated by a man she’d already decided was such an ideal partner she’d agreed to marry him — on the night of her engagement party, in fact, assuming she isn’t fudging the date for the sake of propriety — so the premise doesn’t even seem that similar. Same title — that’s it. So, fuck off, Rebecca Eckler.

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Fellow Cracked blogger Matt Wilson linked to this entry from his thumbs-up review of the film, so I’m reciprocating in kind. Also, I find it noteworthy that he warns against doing a Google search on the words “knocked up” with Safesearch turned off. Coincidentally, I did that earlier this evening and was a little taken aback — not just at the graphic imagery, but also by the realization of what it says about me that I recognized Knocked Up Nina from her picture alone, without having to read any text. I am, of course, muy embarazado (as the Spanish say) to admit this; however, in my defence, my fascination with her mainly has to do with her business plan. How does one maintain a one-woman pregnancy fetish site over the long term? Does she take as many photography sets as possible over a short time and then release them gradually, so that one pregnancy seems to take years to inch toward its denouement? Or does she simply keep getting pregnant as often as possible? I simply don’t know.

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