Judd Apatow Humbly Accepts His 'Publicity Whore of the Year' Award At The Flackies
At yesterday's ICG Publicists Awards at the Beverly Hilton, Hollywood's most accomplished dissemblers not in the direct employ of the major talent agencies gathered for their annual luncheon celebration, handing out handsome Flackie statuettes (a clipboard-wielding thirtysomething woman hurling herself upon a grenade, cast in the finest bronze) to 2007's most distinguished practitioners of their reality-distorting craft, as well as the grateful celebrity beneficiaries of their skills. Accepting his "Showman of the Year" prize, ubiquitous comedy monopolist Judd Apatow thanked his PR pimps for so effectively turning him out during a busy year in which he had to promote projects like Knocked Up, Superbad and Walk Hard. Reports THR:
"It's an honor to be up here and to be honored as publicity whore of the year," Apatow deadpanned. "And you're all my pimps."
There were surprisingly few references to the writers strike other than a guffaw-inducing jibe by Apatow.
"I have 27 pages of jokes here; I've been on strike for three months and haven't been allowed to write," he said. "I was up all night laughing and looked outside my window, and Paul Haggis was outside picketing."
Despite such welcome moments of levity—publicists can laugh at themselves, but they'll fucking cut you if you try that with one of their clients—the awards were not without their disappointments: sadly, our prediction that New Line would be honored for its groundbreaking work in frozen-dead-baby-related viral marketing on behalf of The Number 23 did not come to pass. Instead, the Warner Bros. publicity team was recognized for helping to sell the year's most homoerotically charged entertainment, 300, to mainstream America as a CGI-enhanced action-adventure, then immediately repackaging the film for its incredibly successful run of campy midnight screenings in which audience members joined in "It's Raining Men" singalongs while tossing plastic spears at a chorus line of dancing, scantily clad Spartans reinterpreting the blockbuster's action at the front of the theater.
[Photo: Getty Images]
