Funny People (2009) on Netflix
George Simmons, a comedian turned movie star, learns he has acute myeloid leukemia and returns to stand-up. At a club he meets Ira Wright, a struggling comic he hires as his assistant.
- Netflix3.1/5
- IMDb6.3/10127,891 votes
- Rotten Tomatoes69%
Trailer
Plot summary
George Simmons built a career as a stand-up comedian before becoming a movie star. Wealthy but disillusioned, and unhappy with the low-brow films he has been making, he is diagnosed with acute myeloid leukemia and offered an experimental treatment with an 8 percent success rate. Expecting to die, he goes back to performing stand-up. Ira Wright is a struggling comic in his twenties who shares an apartment with his friends Mark and Leo while he searches for an onstage persona. The two meet at a small comedy club, and George hires Ira as his assistant. Ira becomes one of the few close relationships George has.
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Cast
Did you know?!Facts and trivia about Funny People (2009)
Can contain spoilers, watch the movie first.
- For a prank-call scene, director Judd Apatow dug up an old home video of Adam Sandler from when the two were roommates, in which Sandler makes prank phone calls, and it happens to also feature a young Ben Stiller and Janeane Garofalo.
- The soundtrack and film include solo songs from all four former Beatles, including John Lennon, Paul McCartney, Ringo Starr and George Harrison.
- To capture George Simmons' and Ira's stand-up routines, Apatow filmed the actors performing entire sets in front of real live audiences using six cameras, but kept only five to ten minutes of that footage in the finished film.
- Funny People was the last film ever produced by Adam Sandler's Madison 23 Productions banner, which he retired after the film came out.
