Comedy

Al Jean knows Marge, Homer, Bart and the gang better than almost anyone. He's executive producer and writer for The Simpsons, and he's been with the show since it began. The new Simpsons movie, he's been heard to say, is about "what happens when a man doesn't listen to his wife."

Before The Simpsons, Jean worked on TV's A.L.F. and It's Garry Shandling's Show.

Comedian and actor Patton Oswalt stars in Ratatouille, the new animated feature from Pixar. He's also a writer and stand-up comic, who starred in his own comedy specials and appeared in the TV shows The King of Queens and Reno 911! He'll release a new comedy album, called Werewolves and Lollipops, on July 10.

On TV's Rescue Me, the comic, actor and writer Denis Leary plays a highly strung, highly macho fireman Tommy Gavin, who deals with raging fires and his own raging male ego. Season 4 of Rescue Me starts next week on the FX network.

Leary, who's worked in films including The Thomas Crown Affair and The Ref, sidelines as a singer, too; his comedy CD No Cure for Cancer spawned the provocatively titled hit single "Asshole."

Judd Apatow has been a writer for Larry Sanders and Ben Stiller, and he worked on the cult-favorite TV comedy Freaks and Geeks. But you'll know him as the writer-director of the hit film The 40-Year-Old Virgin.

Now he's back with Knocked Up; guest host David Bianculli talks to Apatow and to Knocked Up star Seth Rogen, who plays an oafish slacker confronted with the prospect of fatherhood after a one-night stand.

Comic Don Rickles is known for insulting his audiences on stage, but he doesn't consider himself an insult comic. His heyday was in the '50s and '60s, on TV and in Vegas. Frank Sinatra, an early fan, helped get him noticed. Now Rickles has written a memoir, Rickles' Book.

Misunderstood giants? None have ever been as popular as Shrek, star of two huge summer hits since 2001. Paramount's grumpy-green-ogre franchise is the epitome of the hand-hold movie: family flicks that serve up action, tomfoolery and life-lessons for the kids, nonstop pop-culture in-jokes for the adults, and fart jokes for the whole family.

Fresh Air went national in 1987, and we're celebrating that 20th anniversary by revisiting some classic interviews. First up: Jerry Seinfeld, who sat down with Terry Gross before Seinfeld made him a star.

That hit TV show, of course, catapulted the comedian to fame and won six Emmy Awards before ending its run in 1999. The 2002 documentary Comedian, which followed Seinfeld on a stand-up tour, is available now on DVD. Rebroadcast from Sept. 2, 1987.

Fresh Air went national in 1987, and we're celebrating that 20th anniversary by revisiting some classic interviews. In this segment: Jackie Mason.

Mason's comic roots are planted firmly in the Borscht Belt, but he's conquered everything from HBO to Broadway. His one-man show The World According to Me earned Mason a Tony Award, an Outer Critics Circle Award, an Ace Award, and an Emmy Award, and it toured the U.S. and Europe for two years.

Garry Shandling parodied TV talk shows on The Larry Sanders Show, which ran on HBO from 1992 to 1998 and is now out in a four-DVD box set. It's called Not Just the Best of "The Larry Sanders Show" — in part because it features eight hours of extras, including essentially unedited conversations with stars who made guest appearances on the Larry Sanders sofa.