Judd Apatow is everywhere, yet somehow the guy has managed to film a secret movie. I guess it was hidden behind the other 12 movies he’s producing. Either that or America's newspapers have become so desperate for attention, they've started doing things the British way and faking stories for fun and profit.
According to an alternative weekly called the Weekly Dig, Apatow has been secretly shooting a movie called Pedovan in Boston. They claim we haven’t heard about it because city officials have gone out of their way to help them keep the whole thing under wraps, hidden away from all you pesky internet scoopers. Here’s the really interesting thing. Why the need for secrecy? They claim Apatow is scared to death of lawsuits. See, he’s making a pedophile comedy… allegedly
This whole thing sounds so bizarre that I had to research the source a bit before I could convince myself I wasn’t reading a story out of The Onion. The source however, appears to be a legitimate newspaper. So what’s this secret, lawsuit ready, possibly fake flick about? It stars Jonah Hill as Glenn Davis, some sort of misguided, perhaps mildly creepy hipster who attempts to bring the children of his community joy. Explains Apatow, “People think he's a pervert, but he's a soft, lovable lug.” Sorry Judd, you just made him sound even creepier. No wonder they’re keeping this thing hush hush.
Here’s how the Weekly Dig describes Pedovan: “After creating numerous doomed youth programs, Davis founds Ped-o-van ("Why walk when you can ped-o!"), a ZipCar-like community service where drivers pick children up from the park, their school or their extracurricular activities, and drive them home. All the vans are refurbished, soon-to-be junked conversion vans from the '70s. "He loves these vans," says writer Evan Goldberg. "And he loves these kids." Davis equips the vans to run on biodiesel, so he must stop at fast-food restaurants to fuel up. The vendors start offering the kids free fries, inciting the wrath of high-strung parents concerned about children's nutrition.”
In addition to Hill, the movie is supposed to be filled with Apatow regular cameos, including one from Bill Hader and Seth Rogen as their cop characters from Superbad. Former Freaks & Geeks kid Martin Starr also appears along with Leslie Mann, Richard Simmons (driving a van decorated with a rainbow unicorn), Harold Ramis (in a Jesus van), Rob Lowe, and Boston Celtics basketball player Glen Davis.
So let me get this straight. Judd Apatow has secretly made a movie about a guy who looks and acts exactly like a pedophile, but isn’t a pedophile, who drives around in “ped-o-vans” picking up kids and they’re actually calling the movie Pedovan. What’s more the city of Boston is not only ok with this, but they’re going out of their way to help him accomplish it, and hide it. If this were the Catholic Church Judd Apatow would be a priest and Boston would be the pope.
This has to be fake. Must be. The movie’s official site for instance, referenced as being at Ped-O-Van.com, has a badly photoshopped picture of Jonah Hill in a van, and nothing else. It lists the studio as being “International Pictures” and the International Pictures logo is a ripoff of the Universal Pictures logo. What’s more, even though the Weekly Dig positions itself as a legitimate publication, if you read their story closely one of the people involved, a city official named Tim Lochland, is described as having a monocle. Either the city of Boston is run by the guy from Monopoly, or a certain alternative weekly has decided to abandon all credibility in order to engage in misconstrued, obtuse, painfully unfunny satire.
If it’s real (which it can't be, can it?), Pedovan is supposed to hit theaters for Christmas in 2009. I suspect the folks at the Weekly Dig will receive a cease and desist order from Judd Apatow’s lawyers long before then. Defamation of character, that’s angle I’d take on this one Judd.
UPDATE! Thanks to Cody below in the comments section, for simply having the good sense to check the URL of the image being used on the movie's "official site". As we'd all but assumed, this is a hoax. Viewing source on the image reveals that the URL is the newspaper. There's one trail they forgot to cover. Great journalism Weekly Dig. I'm sure you're patting yourselves on your back for your wonderful sense of irony. Some though, might call it lying... which is only acceptable on April Fools.
