The Producers

The Producers

In our second installment of the Mark Brazill and Judd Apatow drama, the two TV producers amp up the volume in their e-mail diatribes.

The story so far: Apatow, creator of “Undeclared,” which follows Brazill’s “That ‘70s Show” Tuesdays on Fox, tries to get Topher Grace, star of “That ‘70s Show,” to make a guest appearance on “Undeclared.” When Apatow’s request falls on deaf ears, he e-mails Brazill, only to be told he is a thief of comedy sketches. The ensuing e-mail exchange makes the Hollywood rounds.

In this episode, Apatow tries outreach:

“Come on, we all wrote for comics at the beginning of our careers. I wrote for Roseanne, you wrote for Dennis Miller. If that makes me a sycophant, then I guess I am....I wish you had called me about this years ago. I’m sure we could have worked it out. Try not to be so angry. Not everyone is as bad as you think....If it turned out that I didn’t steal your idea would you still want me to get cancer? I swear to God that I didn’t know you were mad about this. Until six weeks ago I was still referring to you as an old friend. Maybe one day I’ll be able to say that again.”

After a phone conversation between the two creative writers (the gist of which we can only speculate about), Apatow sends another e-mail:

“I have no interest in talking with you on the phone any more. I know you are very successful and think that gives you the right to judge people and berate them regardless of the facts, but I have had enough of you for one day. I know it’s hard to believe that your rock band TV idea, which every writer in this town has thought of at one point, was not on my mind half a year after you told it to me ... Groucho and George Burns stole it from you. Maybe you should sue Bernie Mac ... Nobody has ever goofed on rock bands, not Spinal Tap or the Rutles or 800 Saturday Night Live sketches. I should have told everyone on the show, no rock band sketches, that’s Brazill’s area. So hold on to your hate and rage, even though it makes no sense. I’ll go back to my life of thievery and leaching. As for the cancer, I’ll wait till you get it and then steal it from you. By the way, that joke was one of my writers’.... See, I have no original thoughts.”

But, as he should have guessed, intellectual property in Hollywood is no laughing matter. Brazill fires back:

“How appropriate that you had to use someone else’s joke to take a swipe at me. I told you my idea. You did it two weeks later, VERBATIM. Spew ... all you want. Everyone knows you’re a hack. Is your wife still livid about someone in the neighborhood building a house just like hers? Tell her I know how she feels. We’ll never be ‘friends,’ regardless of the ... whining from your last e-mail. I respect you zero. See ya at the upfronts ... unless you get canceled before that. Until then, die in a fiery accident and taste your own blood. (Is that too angry?) Love, Brazill.”

Tomorrow: Apatow deconstructs his old friend.

Iris, Honestly

When actor Jim Broadbent was considering roles after his portrayal of the club owner in “Moulin Rouge,” he was struck by the heartbreaking honesty in “Iris,” a film that examines the love affair between British novelist and philosopher Iris Murdoch and her husband, John Bayley, before and after Murdoch develops Alzheimer’s disease. Judi Dench plays Murdoch, who died in 1999.

Broadbent told us in a phone interview last week that he lost his mother six years ago to Alzheimer’s and could see in the script that it was a sensitive and unsentimental vision of the disease. “The onset is the worst thing because in a way it’s quite sudden,” Broadbent said. “That was the worst bit, knowing you’re never going to have the lucid conversations you had before. That’s where the loss happens.”

The film draws on Bayley’s accounts of his life with Murdoch in two memoirs, “Elegy for Iris” and “Iris and Her Friends.” For his character, Broadbent read Bayley’s books and studied a radio interview Bayley granted years ago. Of playing Bayley, Broadbent said, “The thing about playing a real person is that by and large they are far more complex than fictitious characters.”

Sightings

At the Hollywood premiere Thursday of “The Royal Tenenbaums,” Julie Delpy making funny faces across the aisle at former beau Adam Goldberg; Rebecca Gayheart, who recently received three years’ probation for misdemeanor vehicular manslaughter, sharing the balcony with Kelsey Grammer ... In Old Town Pasadena on Sunday, Kirstie Alley shopping with a friend ... On Friday night, Harrison Ford dining at Divino in Brentwood.