Party in Snoops trailer, tasers and Steve Carell almost losing a nipple: Inside the bro comedy boom of the aughts

For a movie about people who live to party, the set of the 2003 comedy classic “Old School” practiced what it preached.In his new book, “Funny Business: The Old-School Wedding Crashers and Knocked-Up Virgins Who Changed Comedy Forever,” (G.P.Putnam’s Sons, Oct.

6), Matt Singer writes of how, between takes on “Old School,” Snoop Dogg would invite all of the attractive extras back to his trailer to hang out while he DJed.When an assistant came to get Snoop back on set to shoot his scene, he couldn’t get in the trailer to retrieve the star.“There was a bouncer at the door not letting him inside,” Scot Armstrong, the film’s co-writer, recalls in the book.The tome looks at how talents such as Judd Apatow, Will Ferrell, Ben Stiller, Seth Rogen, Todd Phillips, and others created a comedy movie boom of the aughts.It was a time when Stiller could star in four movies in a single year that each grossed over $100 million domestic, as he did in 2004, and people would fill theaters to watch the antics of the actors known as “the Frat Pack.”Despite that moniker, however, the group was often characterized by a nerdy outrageousness.When Apatow was 12, he saw Steve Martin on the street and asked for an autograph, but Martin refused. The tween did not take the rejection lightly.“Apatow wrote him a letter chastising him for treating his fans ‘like crap’ and threatening to send his address to (tour bus company) ‘Homes of the Stars’ if he didn’t apologize,” writes Singer.

“A few months later, a copy of Martin’s book ‘Cruel Shoes’ arrived with the inscription, ‘Dear Judd.I’m sorry.

I didn’t realize I was speaking to the Judd Apatow! Your friend, Steve Martin.’ ”Apatow would need such bold audaciousness when it came time to make “The 40-Year-Old Virgin.” While the movie eventually made Steve Carell a star, Universal Pictures was so disturbed by the first two days of filming that they shut down the production, summoning Carel...