Local Director Longs For the Less Stabby Malls Of North Carolina
In a guest column looking back at the Year in Comedy for MTV News, producing/writing/directing Comedy Mafia kingpin Judd Apatow digressively mentions a recent incident that had him pining for the simpler, less stab-happy days of his Talledega Nights location shoot in Charlotte:
The movie I did work on with Sacha was called "Talladega Nights: The Legend of Ricky Bobby." I was one of the producers. I lived in Charlotte, North Carolina, with my family while we shot the film. My family misses Charlotte. Here's one story that illustrates why: I live in Los Angeles and recently we celebrated my child's birthday party at a kids' store in an outdoor mall. At the end of the party we exited the store and there were cops everywhere because someone had been stabbed at the mall. They pointed us in another direction to avoid the ambulances and police. As we walked away I noticed there was blood all over the sidewalk. I had to push my kid's stroller around the puddles of blood. This type of thing makes my wife want to move back to Charlotte. I assume this type of thing happens in Charlotte too, but since their mall seemed really serene, I have no argument against moving out of Los Angeles. That is not a funny story and has nothing to do with the year in comedy. We just miss Charlotte.
While Apatow discreetly declines from naming either the kids' store or the outdoor mall that were the backdrop to the violence, we're going to take the scant evidence provided and make a wild guess that he's talking about the American Girl Place store at The Grove. As anyone who's been to L.A.'s retail Thunderdome during the holiday shopping season can attest, it's really not hard to imagine greedy, desperate moms shivving one another over the last set of Bitty Twins dolls, then leaving their greviously wounded victims to bleed on the cobblestones in front of the store while they make a quick getaway on the trolley.