A Psychic On The Larry Sanders Show Set Told Judd Apatow He Was Going To Direct
It's pretty common knowledge among film and comedy fans that Judd Apatow got his start as a stand-up comic alongside his good friend — and one-time roommate — Adam Sandler. In fact, Apatow has recently gotten back to the stand-up grind, with ... mixed results. But these days, he's mostly known for his writing, directing ,and producing, to the point where his style of comedy essentially became its own genre for about a decade.
Still, Apatow has been behind the camera for some of this century's most enduring comedies, like "The 40-Year-Old Virgin" and "Knocked Up." But directing wasn't always in the cards. In fact, it wasn't until he was writing for Garry Shandling on "The Larry Sanders Show" that anyone could have predicted his future would be in directing. And we mean that literally, since yes, someone predicted it. That's because during the filming of an episode of that series, a psychic who was on the set gave Apatow a reading that may very well have nudged him down the path toward directing.
Within weeks of getting that reading, Apatow had been hired to direct an episode of "The Larry Sanders Show," and in no time at all, he was helming episodes of "Freaks and Geeks" and, just a few years later, blew up in Hollywood with "The 40-Year-Old Virgin."
We've got some good news, and some bad news...
As Apatow tells it, the psychic was on set as a consultant and was giving cast and crew readings in their downtime. Some people might be skeptical of just how legitimate psychics are, but this one gave Apatow some pretty convincing evidence. As he told Vanity Fair while breaking down his career:
"We were doing a show about a psychic, and a psychic was hanging around the office and reading different people. And she said to me, 'You're going to have a flood at your house, and you're going to direct soon.' And then it rains, and flooded my house, and then two weeks later Garry said, 'You're going to direct the next one.'"
Now, maybe it's not much of a stretch for a supposed psychic to figure out someone in the writers' room for a successful HBO series would eventually want to direct. But production took place in Los Angeles where — and you may have heard this before — rain isn't particularly common, especially the amount needed to flood an upstart young comedy writer's house. So the fact this psychic perfectly nailed both claims is at least convincing enough for us to consider it baseline eerie. And given she seemed to have a pretty good insight into what Apatow's future held, we're starting to wonder if she didn't also give him a head's up on one or two other things down the road in his career.