Feig did, in fact, get lucky: A script called The Untitled Female Buddy Cop Comedy was sitting on his counter. Eventually, it was named The Heat. And with it, Feig officially became a successful Hollywood director.

He signed a first look deal with Fox, which snatched up Feig's script for Spy before The Heat had even opened (to $39.1 million at the box office). He fended off offers to direct a Ghostbusters sequel, until he realized he could reboot the franchise with women. He's producing The Peanuts Movie, Blue Sky Studios' ambitious feature adaptation of Charles Schultz's indelible comic strip. He's developing an original movie musical that he is "desperate" to direct. And this year, he returned to TV, executive producing the Yahoo sci-fi comedy Other Space.

With so much on his docket already, does Feig want to become a brand, like Apatow? "Yeah, I do," he said quickly. But with so much experience with the vicissitudes of a career in comedy, Feig is also convinced that all his hard-earned clout in Hollywood and credibility with audiences could vanish just as quickly as his career exploded after that late night in Austin in 2011.

"Bridesmaids surprised everybody," he said, at once proud and nervous, as he sipped his second martini. “I just hope that Spy does well. … We're in a great time for me, and have been for the last 10 years, quite frankly, comedy-wise. But I'm nervous because, literally over the weekend, the country's sense of humor can change. Where you feel like, Here it is folks! This kills! And it dies, and you're like, What the fuck?! That's the built-in danger of comedy. You can only do what you think is best, and then you just kind of hope we don't get caught in a vortex when something else comes in.”

With the interview over on that cautious note, Feig finished off his drink, stood up, and began with his small entourage to wend his way back out of the bar. But he didn’t get far. A woman clad in a bright green shirt, her neck festooned with plastic bead necklaces, walked right up to him — apparently, a man in a three-piece suit being interviewed in an Austin bar for over an hour is somewhat conspicuous, and she wanted to know who he was. Feig’s response was too quiet to hear, but based on the woman’s reaction, it probably involved the word “Bridesmaids.”

“Oh my gosh!” she said, her eyes going wide. “Ohhh myyy gawwwwssssh!” The woman began racing around the bar, grabbing other women wearing bright green shirts and plastic bead necklaces, telling them all that the director of Bridesmaids was there. And that’s when it became clear: This was a bachelorette party. And they, of course, had to take a picture.

After spending so much of his career at the margins of the industry, at times so far that he was barely a part of it, Feig has achieved the kind of success where his mere presence is enough to create a story these women will tell for years to come. As much as Feig may worry about it all going away, that is the kind of lasting impact that can be almost impossible to shake.