There was a moment in the spring of 2011 when director Paul Feig realized his entire career rested on a single screening in a packed and unruly Austin theater. He was about to debut his first feature directorial effort in five years, after his last movie, the 2006 kids comedy Unaccompanied Minors, had been such a disastrous bomb that it had delivered what Feig believed to be an irreparable blow to his professional life.
But then producer Judd Apatow, Feig’s friend and collaborator on the beloved 1999–2000 cult TV series Freaks and Geeks, called with a rare second chance, a female-driven comedy that he wanted Feig to direct. That film was Bridesmaids, and what had Feig so anxious was its semisecret midnight screening at the 2011 SXSW Film Festival, the first time the movie had been shown in public. Feig recalled, “ if I had another movie bomb, then I would be not only in movie jail, I’d be in movie dungeon.”
