The Albert Einstein of Comedy

Today Deadline Hollywood announced that Judd Apatow is in talks to cast Albert Brooks in his next movie, as Paul Rudd's father. For most of today's young moviegoes (unless they caught his guest shot on Weeds), Albert's mostly known as the voice of Nemo's dad in Finding Nemo. 

I hope Apatow helps fix that. Because for a certain generation of comedians and moviegoers (his), this is amazing news. To us, Albert can do little wrong (excepting the scary-looking remake of the Alan Arkin-Peter Falk comedy classic The In-Laws. I refused to watch).

My first question was, what took Apatow so long?

"This Interview Is Over" or, how sausage is sometimes made.

After writing about some of the stories that got away, I remembered a harrowing experience that is probably more revealing about the job of celebrity journalism, though it's not much fun to relive it.

After stints as writer/editor at Rolling Stone and editor/writer at Vogue, I became a full-time freelancer -- and a father of two small children. One big difference about a staff job versus freelancing: freelancers get paid by the word.

Which means, you get paid the same for a two-hour sit-down with Alicia Silverstone and a couple of phone calls to people she worked with, as you do tracking down dozens of subjects for a long piece about, say, Mississippi flood victims (which I did for Vogue with photographer Mary Ellen Mark). You do the math.

So as much as I liked