NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER
From the writer and director of Knocked Up and the producer of Freaks and Geeks comes a collection of intimate, hilarious conversations with the biggest names in comedy from the past thirty years�including Mel Brooks, Jerry Seinfeld, Jon Stewart, Roseanne Barr, Harold Ramis, Louis C.K., Chris Rock, and Lena Dunham.
Before becoming one of the most successful filmmakers in Hollywood, Judd Apatow was the original comedy nerd. At fifteen, he took a job washing dishes in a local comedy club�just so he could watch endless stand-up for free. At sixteen, he was hosting a show for his local high school radio station in Syosset, Long Island�a show that consisted of Q&As with his comedy heroes, from Garry Shandling to Jerry Seinfeld. They talked about their careers, the science of a good joke, and their dreams of future glory (turns out, Shandling was interested in having his own TV show one day and Steve Allen had already invented everything).
Thirty years later, Apatow is still that same comedy nerd�and he�s still interviewing funny people about why they do what they do.
Sick in the Head gathers Apatow�s most memorable and revealing conversations into one hilarious, wide-ranging, and incredibly candid collection that spans not only his career but his entire adult life. Here are the comedy legends who inspired and shaped him, from Mel Brooks to Steve Martin. Here are the contemporaries he grew up with in Hollywood, from Spike Jonze to Sarah Silverman. And here, finally, are the brightest stars in comedy today, many of whom Apatow has been fortunate to work with, from Seth Rogen to Amy Schumer. And along the way, something kind of magical happens: What started as a lifetime�s worth of conversations about comedy becomes something else entirely. It becomes an exploration of creativity, ambition, neediness, generosity, spirituality, and the joy that comes from making people laugh.
Loaded with the kind of back-of-the-club stories that comics tell one another when no one else is watching, this fascinating, personal (and borderline-obsessive) book is Judd Apatow�s gift to comedy nerds everywhere.
Praise for Sick in the Head
�Open this book anywhere, and you�re bound to find some interesting nugget from someone who has had you in stitches many, many times.�
�Janet Maslin, The New York Times
�Incandescent . . . an irresistible, ultimate-insider�s comedy-interview extravaganza . . . Apatow never loses his unabashed fan�s enthusiasm even as he asks canny questions that yield superbly illuminating conversations rich in shop talk and musings on the lure, demands, and resonance of comedy.�
�Booklist (starred review)
�If Apatow�s gift for comedy is a sickness, may he never be cured.�
�Playboy
�Sprawling and insightful . . . The candidness of the interviews also exposes the peculiar community of comedians with anecdotes and cameos unlikely to be heard elsewhere. A delightful and hilarious read.�
�Kirkus Reviews
�These are wonderful, expansive interviews�at times brutal, at times breathtaking�with artists whose wit, intelligence, gaze, and insights are all sharp enough to draw blood.�
�Michael Chabon
�Anyone even remotely interested in comedy or humanity should own this book. It is hilarious and informative and it contains insightful interviews with the greatest comics, comedians, and comediennes of our time. My representatives assure me I will appear in a future edition.�
�Will Ferrell
How did I start interviewing comedians? That�s a good question. I was always a fan of comedy and�okay, I have been
The mid- to late seventies was a golden age in comedy. You had Richard Pryor,
A comedy freak was born.
I�m not sure why I was so drawn to comedy. Part of it, I think, was frustration. Looking back, I was an angry kid who didn�t feel like the world made sense. My parents were not particularly spiritual people in those days, so they couldn�t help much in the existential angst department. The closest they came to religion was saying over and over again throughout my childhood, �Nobody said life was fair.� It was the opposite of
Plus, I was the youngest boy in my grade, so I was small. This size deficit led to me always being picked last in gym class�every day for thirteen years. When you�re always picked last, you always get the worst position, like right field in baseball. Then, since you are always in the worst position, the ball never comes your way, so you never get a chance to show anyone that you are, in fact, good at this sport. But the truth is, you are
Therefore, what else is there to do except decide that everyone else is the loser and you are the cool one?
That is how the cocky nerd comes to be.
So I had a lot of time to sit there, in right field, thinking about other things, like how unfair this whole setup was. If I wasn�t handsome, how would I ever find a girl who would love me? Could someone who sucked at sports be popular? Was there a reason why nobody else was interested in the things I found interesting? Why did all the teachers think I was a pain in the ass and not someone special?
At that age, the comedians I liked most were the ones who called out the bullshit and gave voice to my anger�the Marx Brothers, Lenny Bruce, George Carlin, Jay Leno. I loved anyone who stood up onstage and said that the people in power were idiots, and not to be trusted. I was also drawn to people who deconstructed the smaller aspects of this bizarre and ridiculous life. I idolized the new generation of observational comedians like Jerry Seinfeld, Paul Reiser, and Robert Klein. I related to them and imitated them, and even began to write really bad jokes of my own in a notebook I hid in a small metal locker in my room. �On
�
During junior high, my parents got divorced and things got a little messy. It was the early eighties, and after my dad read the self-help book
Oddly, that pain and fear became the fuel in my tank. It inspired me to work hard and has led to every success and good thing in my life. It worked so well that today, a parent now myself, I am trying to figure out how to fuck up my daughters
When I was a kid, my parents owned a restaurant called Raisins. After the divorce, my mom, Tami Shad, moved out and got a job. A former bartender named Rick Messina (who went on to manage Tim Allen and many others) hired her as a hostess at a comedy club he ran in Southampton, New York, the East End Comedy Club. I was fourteen years old at the time and this was one of the great summers of my life. I was finally able to see comedians in person. My mom would get me a seat in the back of the house and I watched every comedian�people like J. J. Wall, Paul Provenza, Charles Fleischer, and Jay Leno.
My next move was to accept a job as a dishwasher at the East Side Comedy Club, located in Huntington, New York, near my hometown of Syosset. East Side was one of the first comedy clubs that existed outside New York City and Los Angeles, and I remember the day it opened. One day there was an old fish restaurant in the middle of a large parking lot, and the next day there was this place that had nothing but comedy, and lines out the door. Long Island legends like Bob Nelson, Rob Bartlett, Jim Myers, and Jackie Martling were regulars. I remember watching a young Rosie O�Donnell do her first weekend spot at the club, and how excited everyone was for her. Occasionally a twenty-one-year-old named Eddie Murphy would come in and work on new material. When he did, the staff would start a pool and take bets on how long his set would go; they were annoyed at�and probably a little jealous of�his marathon sets, which would bump all of the other comics for the night. Watching him one night, I remember some guy in the crowd started heckling him. �I don�t care what you say,� Eddie responded, �because I�m twenty-one, I�m black, and I have a bigger dick than you.� In retrospect, it was not that great a line, but back then I thought it was the funniest thing I had ever heard. I didn�t have a big dick (more medium-sized), but now I definitely wanted to be up there yelling at people and being funny.
By my fifteenth birthday, my obsession was full-blown. I needed to become one of them. The question was, how to do that? And the answer seemed clear:
Meet them. Talk to them. Get to know them. Learn their secrets.
But who was going to sit down with some junior high school kid and talk about comedy?
�
In the tenth grade, I started to work at my high school�s radio station, WKWZ 88.5 FM, in Syosset! Headquarters was a nerd�s paradise located in the basement of our high school. The station was supervised by Syosset High�s film teacher, Jack DeMasi, a fiery, hilarious Italian guy who went to film school with Martin Scorsese. We all loved him because he talked to us and treated us, a sea of weirdos, like we were adults.
At WKWZ, the sports geeks produced sports shows, the news geeks produced news shows, and there was even room for jazz and classical. My friend Josh Rosenthal was a DJ at the station, and he loved music as much as I loved comedy. Occasionally he would take the train to the city and interview new bands like R.E.M. and Siouxsie and the Banshees. This blew my mind. Wait, so we could actually interview people we admired? They would talk to you if you asked nicely? It suddenly occurred to me that maybe I could do this with comedians. I asked Jack if I could start a show of my own, and he said yes.
In your life you come across people who encourage your voice and originality. For me, that person is Jack DeMasi. In fact, in an episode of
How did I get people to talk to me? Well, I would call their agents or PR people and say I was Judd Apatow from WKWZ radio on Long Island and I was interested in interviewing their client. I would neglect to mention that I was fifteen years old. Since most of those representatives were based in Los Angeles, they didn�t realize that the signal to our station barely made it out of the parking lot. Then I would show up for the interview and they would realize they had been had. But they never turned me away, and every single one was gracious and generous with their time. (Except for one, who asked to see my dick. I won�t mention his name but I said no. I didn�t even realize this was probably just stage one of his plan. He told me he�d made �a bet with another comic� that he could get me to show it to him. I now realize the bet was probably a
Over the next two years, I interviewed more than forty of my comedic heroes�club comics, TV stars, writers, directors, and a few movie stars. It was a magical time. I remember walking into Jerry Seinfeld�s unfurnished apartment in West Hollywood, in 1983, and asking him directly, �How do you write a joke?� And meeting with Paul Reiser at the Improv and asking him what it was like shooting
This was my college education. I grilled these people until they kicked me and my enormous green AV squad tape recorder out of their homes. I asked them how to get stage time, how long it takes to find yourself as an artist, and what childhood trauma led them to want to be in comedy. I asked them about their dreams for the future and made them my dreams, too. Did I mention I never even aired most of the interviews? I put a few out there, but even then I knew this information was mainly for me�and that the broadcast part was a bit of a ruse.
One thing I took from these interviews was that these people were part of a tribe�the tribe of comedians. My whole life I�d wanted friends who had similar interests and a similar worldview, people I could talk with about Monty Python and
�
These interviews would inform the rest of my life. They contained the advice that would help me attain my dreams. Jerry Seinfeld talked about treating comedy like a job and writing every day. (I have never done that, but I certainly have written more than I would have since speaking to him.) More than one told me that it takes seven years to find yourself and become a great comedian. (Mystical-sounding, but kind of true.) From that piece of advice I learned patience. In my mind I thought,
When I moved to Los Angeles in 1985 to study screenwriting at the University of Southern California, a whole new world opened up to me. The comedy scene was booming back then. Suddenly I was able to go to clubs and make friends with fellow aspiring comedians. Many of those people, like Adam Sandler, Wayne Federman, Andy Kindler, David Spade, Jim Carrey, Doug Benson, and Todd Glass, are still my friends today. I felt like the bee girl in the Blind Melon video, running onto the field and looking around and�finding all the other bees I didn�t know existed. I was so happy to no longer be alone. Later, when I pursued stand-up comedy for real, I would sit and talk all night with the future comedy legends who were performing at clubs like the Improv or the Laugh Factory, asking them questions while eating fettuccini Alfredo and hoping Budd Friedman would notice us and give us more stage time.
Even after my career took off, the interviews never stopped. Sometimes I would get interviewed while promoting a project, and other times I would be on panels, or doing commentary recordings for a movie, interviewing my funny friends just like the old days. I would always save the articles or ask for DVDs or audiotapes, knowing that one day I would need them for something (my wife calls it hoarding).
One day I was talking to the writer Dave Eggers about fund-raising ideas for his tutoring and literacy nonprofit, 826, and I mentioned that I had this huge cache of interviews I had done in high school, along with some I�d done later in life�and maybe that would make for an interesting book? I had always loved Cameron Crowe�s book of interviews with Billy Wilder and those old
Dave connected me with my editor, Andy Ward, who encouraged me to do some new interviews and bring the book up to date. I wasn�t sure how many I had the energy to do, since I was in the middle of production on a movie and I was a little worried this project would turn into a giant pain in the ass. When I sold the book, I promised to give my proceeds to Eggers�s 826 nonprofit. (Unfortunately it sold for more money than I thought it would and it was too late to change the deal to �5 percent of the money goes to 826 and 95 percent goes to the Apatow Vacation Trust.�)
The first new one I did was Spike Jonze, two hours in my office on a hot Wednesday in Los Angeles�and, afterward, I found myself as inspired as I was when I first started doing this, thirty-one years ago. Spike talked about how artists who come from skateboarding are so inventive because it�s a sport that is all about coming up with a new trick. That is why when he made music videos he was always trying to do them in a way they had never been done before. Incredible! Now I want to do that!
I followed that up by inviting one of my first bosses, Roseanne Barr, to talk about her journey with me. We sat for hours digging through the past, amazed and baffled by this bizarre and fantastic journey we are still on. And before I knew it, I was hooked all over again. Next came three hours at Louis C.K.�s house, talking while he made me dinner like I was one of his kids. I couldn�t stop. I kept saying I was done, and then I would think,
I would like to thank all of the people who so generously agreed to speak with me. When I was a kid, I noticed that all of the comics I was speaking to shared a common humanity. Some were solid as a rock, some seemed on the edge of sanity, but all were filled with love and kindness. As an adult, I have tried to pay it forward by giving my time to young comics and mentoring the funny people I believe in. It has been the most rewarding part of my career. I hope you enjoy this book as much as I enjoyed meeting all of these remarkable people.
When can I start the next one?
I became an official Jerry Seinfeld fan the first time he appeared on television on
In 1983, I convinced someone in his manager�s office to set up an interview, and not long after, I showed up at his completely unfurnished apartment in West Hollywood. Thirty years later, I can still see that slightly crestfallen look in his eyes when he opened the door and realized that I was not, in fact, a real journalist from a real radio station with a real audience. That I was just a fifteen-year-old kid with a tape recorder.
This was one of the most personally influential interviews I did, mainly because he said so many useful things that helped me later in life�it was like a blueprint for how one should go about pursuing a career in comedy, and how to write jokes. For the first time, it dawned on me that comedy is work, and precision and care.
Jerry Seinfeld: Is it water-driven, this camera?
Judd Apatow: I�d like to talk about your type of comedy that you do. How would you describe it? Some people just tell the joke, like an observation, and that�s it. But you add a whole new dimension to it.
Jerry: Well, it�s one thing to see something. And I think the next step is to do something with it. You know, I�m doing this routine now about this guy that was on
Judd: So how do you develop that?
Jerry: Trial and error. You know, just try out one joke. I had this other thing about how I don�t remember this guy�s name. I saw the guy do it, right? Caught the bullet. I don�t even know his name. Now, if he knew that I didn�t know his name after seeing that, wouldn�t he feel like,
Judd: You�re there.
Jerry: You know, hit something.
Judd: So you work it out at the Improv?
Jerry: Anywhere. Wherever I�m working, I�m trying new material.
Judd: So what do you think of the other kind of comedy, just observation, or�
Jerry: Depends on who�s doing it. Anything can be done either in a classy, interesting way or in a junky, easy way. It�s not the form itself, it�s the way someone approaches it. I mean, David Letterman has a hemorrhoid routine, Preparation H routine. It�s classy and brilliant. No cheap jokes in it. It�s something about how hemorrhoid experts agree and, like, who are these people? And you thought
Judd: What do you think of this whole crop of comedians that just came out in the last five years?
Jerry: You mean like me?
Judd: Yeah.
Jerry: I think we�re pretty good. Ah, well, it�s interesting. I guess we don�t seem too daring as a group, if you compared us to say, the sixties or the fifties.
Judd: But that ground had been broken already.
Jerry: Yeah, there�s not too many people that are scary in terms of the type of things they talk about. Nobody seems to be treading on thin ice. That doesn�t seem to interest people anymore. I mean, comedy hasn�t changed really in thousands of years. It�s the same. If it�s funny, you�re funny, and people like you.
Judd: Do you think that people have gotten into comedy who shouldn�t have? Since there�s so many jobs now with so many new clubs opening up.
Jerry: It�s an interesting question. I�ve been thinking about that actually, and I think that there will always be only a very few great comedians because comedy itself is so difficult. No matter how many people do it, it�s just a rare combination of skills and talents that go into making a great comedian. If everyone in the country decided to become a comedian, there would still only be six terrific ones like there are now.
Judd: Do you think that there�s certain topics that shouldn�t be spoken about, or certain things that shouldn�t be done onstage? For instance, there�s gonna be a guy on tonight, who I�ve seen, who does something about Linda Lovelace with a glass of milk. And it�s�it�s rather crude. I won�t go farther.
Jerry: Right. Well, it depends on how you�re asking me. Do you think I should do something? For me, I wouldn�t do it. I think it�s wrong.
Judd: What about the egg white? Do you think�
Jerry: I think anyone should do whatever they like. I don�t think there should be any rules.
Judd: As long as it gets laughs?
Jerry: If it doesn�t get laughs, you�re not gonna get work, and you�re not gonna be a comedian. So the audience ultimately decides. It�s a very democratic system.
Judd: Are there certain topics that you stay away from in your act?
Jerry: A lot. A lot of topics I stay away from. Mainly the ones that have been covered or the ones that are easy. And I want�sex is easy, basically.
Judd:
Jerry:
Judd: What is the difference between an audience at the Improv or a local club, and Atlantic City or Las Vegas?
Jerry: What they came to see. Basically, the audience at the Improv is interested in comedy, and if it�s an easy joke or an obvious joke, it�s less appealing to them than a really clever, original observation. The reverse applies in Atlantic City. They don�t want to hear a comedian. They want to hear the main act. If you are a comedian, do something that we don�t have to pay too much attention to. You see, at the Improv they�re watching: We�ll listen to you go with it. You know. We�ll listen. Try that. Let me see how far you can go with that idea and if you can make it work. And at Atlantic City it�s enough if you can just get them to listen to you. I do the same act, but it�s a different type of performance. It�s much more instructive because they don�t know where the laughs are in my act because it�s not �Two men walk into a bar�bum bum bum, punch line.� And if the audience doesn�t know where the punch line is, you can�t get laughs. So I have to really slow it down and explicate exactly what I�m doing because to them, I�m like Andy Kaufman. They�re not used to my kind of comedy. They�re used to an older style. Traditional jokes. Polish jokes. They don�t understand.
Judd: Do you have to change your act in different parts of the country?
Jerry: Some people do; I don�t. There�s a central core of what I do that pretty much works everywhere, and the only variable is the way I perform it. I do the same jokes, but I do them differently. Little lines that some people come to hear. They love the little stray thoughts that you throw in. That makes the pieces interesting for people that know comedy and are beyond the very basic level of it. But in places where they don�t want to hear you, you can only do the stuff that�the tips of the icebergs.
Judd: How do you handle improvisation and talking to the audience in your act?
Jerry: See, that�s something I�m really getting into a lot now, having a lot of fun with it. When I do my act in comedy clubs, where I get to do like an hour, I�ll take questions at a certain point and just, you know, ad lib. It depends on how much I can get the audience to accept me. If I can get them to accept me, a lot of times I�ll take off on routines that I do normally and change them and take them a different way. Whenever I�m doing new material, I�m always ad libbing.
Judd: What is the strangest experience you�ve had doing comedy in a club?
Jerry: Strange? Um. I mean, I�ve played places where people didn�t know I was on. I did a disco one time in Queens on New Year�s Eve. And they�re screaming, yelling, and screaming and yelling and they sent me out on the dance floor to do my act, and I stood there but the screaming and yelling never diminished by even a couple decibels and I just stood there for thirty minutes, and walked off and I don�t think anybody even knew I was onstage.
Judd: Anything else like�
Jerry: Bombing is a riot. The looks on people�s faces is just priceless. They look up to me going, �I don�t know what you�re talking about. I don�t know what you�re talking about. I came for a show, and you�re the show and I don�t understand you. You seem normal but you don�t make any sense.�
Judd: You did a show the other day that didn�t go that good. That still happens to you?
Jerry: Oh, yeah, all the time. Every show varies and there are very, very few shows that go just right. Because every audience is completely different�a completely different group of people with a completely different personality. And you have to shape your act to their personality. Every set is an accomplishment.
Judd: Do you ever worry about, you know, say ten years in the future�a lot of comedians get bored after a while, they just cut stand-up out completely.
Jerry: Yeah, I know. I don�t think I�ll be one of those comedians. I have a lot of respect for it as a craft. I don�t see it as just a stepping-stone. I mean, it�s a hard life in some ways. But I have a fascination for it.
Judd: A lot of people do it and they just�they hate it.
Jerry: Well, they use it as a vehicle, which is fine. You know, you can get seen real easy. But it�s a tough thing to do. It�s a tough thing to put yourself through when it�s not gonna be a career for you. It�s a difficult thing to play at. It�s kind of like catching bullets between your teeth: If you�re gonna do it right, it would be something to learn it and then not make a career out of it.
Judd: When you�re onstage and everything is going great, is that like the ultimate idea?
Jerry: I think so. Yeah, for me it is. Because that�s what I like. I like jokes and laughing more than anything. Everybody has an appetite for a different thing. And comedy is something that I have an endless appetite for.
Judd: When did this all start, being funny?
Jerry: I wasn�t a class clown per se. I mean, I wrote some funny things for the newspaper and I was always trying to be funny around my friends. And watching comedy was the thing I enjoyed more than anything else. I knew every comedian, I knew all their routines. That�s how I got into it. I wanted to be around it, you know. I never thought I�d be any good at it. But that turned out to be an advantage because it made me work harder than most other people.
Judd: When did you first do it?
Jerry: I did Catch a Rising Star one night. I guess this would actually qualify as my strangest experience. This is definitely it. My first time onstage, I write the whole act out, you know, and I put it there on my bed and rehearse it, over and over again. I�m standing there with a bar of soap, like it�s a microphone. And I got the scene memorized, cold. I get up on there, and it�s gone. I can�t remember a word. I was�I stood there for about thirty seconds with�saying absolutely nothing, just standing there, freaking out. I just couldn�t believe it, all these people were looking at me. And then, I was able to just remember the subjects I wanted to talk about. This is absolutely true, I�m not embellishing this at all, I stood there and I went, �The beach�ah, driving�your parents�,� and people started laughing because they thought this was my act. I couldn�t even really hear them laughing; I was like absolutely panicked. I think I lasted about three minutes and I just got off. That was my first show.
Judd: How do you get steady work?
Jerry: Well, you audition; you start off at three in the morning and you fight your way through the order by doing better than the guy they put on ahead of you. Then the next night they put you on ahead of him. Then you try to do better than that guy. But if you�re good, people notice you. That�s the greatest thing about comedy. If you�ve got talent, it�s unmistakable. No one misses it and you don�t have to wait around for a break. It�s very easy to get a break. It�s very hard to be good enough.
Judd: When did you do your first TV appearance?
Jerry:
Judd: And how did you get that first booking?
Jerry: The same thing. I was out working at the Improv. If you�re clean, and you�re clever, and you�re killin�, they�re not gonna miss you.
Judd: What�s it like doing
Jerry: It�s the ultimate.
Judd: How do you prepare a certain ten minutes to go on?
Jerry: Well, you try to put it together like a small regular set. In other words, it�s an hour set condensed into ten minutes. You can�t have a mistake in it. Because it�s�you can�t recover. It goes by so fast so you try and put it together like an opening, and then you build, and you get the audience rolling and you have a big closing finish.
Judd: Is it like fifty percent of the fight is just going on and walking out there?
Jerry: Yeah, yeah. But you make one little mistake, or one stupid mistake and in five minutes it�s very hard to get an audience back. People do it, but it�s tough.
Judd: So where do you go from here? Like right now you�re established as one of the top comedians and you get work, not only in the clubs but in Atlantic City. How much farther can you get?
Jerry: It�s a tricky point that I�m at. But everyone that you�ll be talking to is that. Because there�s a lot you could do with TV series; you could do a sitcom, which a lot of people don�t want to be associated with. You could do movies; they�re hard to get and it�s hard to have a hit. You could just do stand-up and hope that you catch on after a while�like Gallagher, you know. There�s a lot of different ways. I�m gonna do some acting. Because it�s easy for me and there�s a lot of good vehicles for exposure as an actor. But stand-up is what I am. I�m a comedian, and the acting will just be to improve my visibility.
Judd: And what kind of vehicles are you looking for?
Jerry: Quality. That�s my only real consideration. It could be anything, as long as the people are trying to do something good. I don�t want to do a piece of junk. I�m not starving, you know.
I met Adam Sandler when I was in my early twenties. He was known at that time as the stud man from the MTV game show
The first step was when he was asked to do stand-up on
In 2009, I got to make
Charlie Rose: I am pleased to have Adam Sandler and Judd Apatow back at this table. Welcome.
Adam Sandler: Great to see you.
Charlie: Now, where do we start? Tell me when you two first met.
Adam: After I moved out to L.A., I was twenty-two and went onstage at the Valley Improv. There used to be an improv at a hotel in the Valley. They had that for a few years. It�s gone now but, uh, I did pretty well that night. That wasn�t a normal thing. Usually I didn�t do well and so I ran to a phone to call my dad��It�s going all right, Dad.� And if I remember correctly, I think Apatow was lurking around the phones, kind of looking at me, and I�m,
Charlie: The what?
Adam: The lack of bulge. Anyway, Judd mentioned he liked it and we started talking.
Judd Apatow: It sounds like a come-on. I love your bulge.
Charlie: So he started talking to you�and then?
Adam: And then we became friends�very good friends. I was out there with a few guys from NYU. We all made the move together and then they couldn�t afford rent anymore so I was like, I need a roommate who�s going to pay.
Judd: I don�t remember that. I don�t remember that.
Adam: Everybody was moving out of that house.
Charlie: Where were you in your life, at that point?
Judd: I went to USC cinema school for a year and a half and then I basically ran out of money and interest. How I knew that was, during college I went on
Charlie: Oh my God. How was Acapulco?
Judd: I got sunburned the first day and couldn�t leave the room for the next two days. And so I was living with my grandma Molly and my mom and working the clubs at night and emceeing at the Improv. So I was happy to move out to L.A.
Charlie: You were doing stand-up and emceeing at the Improv?
Judd: For money, I worked for Comic Relief producing benefits during the day so I had enough to pay my four-hundred-and-twenty-five-dollars-a-month rent.
Adam: He was making five hundred bucks a week. He was the only one of us who was guaranteed to pull in five hundred a week. We�d always say, �How�s he getting this Comic Relief job?� He would go in for a few hours and come back�he�s getting five hundred for only a couple of hours a day. There was a lot of anger towards him.
Charlie: What was he like as a roommate? I mean you were, he was Felix and you were�
Adam: I guess I was Oscar, you know, yeah. Judd�s a very, uh�
Charlie: Fastidious.
Adam: He is.
Charlie: And after being roommates, you remained friends? You stayed in touch?
Judd: When Adam got
Adam: That I had a room in.
Judd: That, yes, you had a room in.
Adam: He moved to another apartment, and just for my L.A. visits, which weren�t that frequent, he had an extra room for me.
Judd: It was very exciting because Adam got the job on
Adam: You know what is insane? How cocky I was back then. When I got offered
Charlie: Dummy.
Adam: Exactly.
Charlie: So why didn�t you make a movie together until now?
Adam: We did. We�ve worked on a bunch of movies together.
Judd: I started doing
Adam: He [Jack] was your assistant.
Judd: He was my assistant. And then he moved over to
Charlie: And what did you want to do?
Judd: To make a movie with Adam and to make it personal because, you know, we know each other so well. I always wanted to tap into that but I also didn�t know how to direct so I needed ten or fifteen years to get that together.
Adam: I always knew Judd was�you know, we have similar tastes. He�s doing movies differently than I did them but we always made each other laugh. We always felt comfortable with each other. We liked the same things. Judd liked a lot of stuff I never even heard about, a lot of music, a lot of movies. He brought me in to a different world. Then Judd gave me�he said, �Check out my movie,
Charlie: See, that says something interesting about him, doesn�t it? Looking out for himself by calling you up and saying, �You know I admire what you do, and think about me the next time you make something that might be right.� And on the other hand, he�s a huge star when he makes that call.
Judd: I was thrilled and then I instantly had to go in my notebook and be like,
Charlie: Before we talk about
Judd: In personality, it�s different. There are some guys who are kind of smart and witty and funny, and there are some guys who are just a little bit off, and there�s some guys who clearly got a beat-down at some point during their young life and that made them feel the need to get attention.
Charlie: And so which one is he?
Adam: So many of those.
Charlie: All of the above.
Judd: There is a moment on Garry Shandling�s DVD commentary for
Charlie: That�s what I would ask, yes.
Judd: And Garry just goes, �Why so angry, Jerry?� I think that captures it.
Charlie: Okay,
Judd: Yes.
Charlie: What�s the passion you had for this?
Judd: I wanted to talk about when I first became a comedian and the moment I was allowed into the world of comics, which was very exciting for me. The people I worked with when I first started were incredibly nice to me and I was just in heaven being around them. You know, I wrote for Roseanne and Tom Arnold. That was one of my first jobs. They bought me a Rolex for Christmas. They paid me eight hundred dollars a week and suddenly I could afford valet parking. It was all positive so I knew I needed to fabricate something and then I had another idea, which is, I wanted to write a movie about someone who is sick who gets better�
Charlie: Who is sick with a terminal illness and thinks it�s all over.
Judd: Yes, and it�s about how he realizes that he�s more comfortable being sick and the way that makes him feel, in terms of appreciating life, than he is when he gets better. Suddenly, there�s time again and he starts becoming neurotic and has kind of a meltdown. That was the initial thought.
Charlie: In your mind, what�s the push-pull between, I want to tell this interesting-but-serious story and at the same time, I make comedies?
Judd: I thought that if this story happened in the world of comedians it would inherently have a lot of humor in it. But what I thought in my head was,
Charlie: I�m not going to go for easy jokes?
Judd: I�m not going to go for big set pieces. Usually when you make a comedy, you think,
Charlie: Adam, tell me about George Simmons, your character. How is he different from anybody you played before?
Adam: He�s a little more raw. He shows a darker, nastier side�you know, what I like about playing the guy is you�re never sure what the response is going to be. Seth Rogen plays my assistant. He�s a nice young kid and one second I�m warm to him and the next second I�m abusing him. Seth never knew which way we were going to go with it, and when I first read the script I was like, �Oh, man, I am such a bad person in this movie.� And he would always say, �Really? You think so? I don�t know. I think he�s a nice guy,� and I�d be like, �I don�t know, I don�t know.� But the way Judd put the movie together was like, All right, you see why this guy became a certain way and you forgive him.
Judd: That was the thought I had. I had a little notebook and right before we shot I made little notes, things to remember. Like:
Charlie: All right. There�s something called �Apatowian.� Explain to me what that means.
Judd: I don�t know, exactly�
Charlie: What do you think it means? In other words, what is it if you say it�s an Apatow movie?
Adam: I guess it�s used right now with saying it�s, uh, there�s buddies involved in the movie, and language that feels natural. And cursing.
Charlie: A lot of reference to sex and women.
Adam: Exactly. What I love about this movie, I�on occasion, Judd has heard some, you know, uh, what is it? What do they say? What�s the negative on you right now?
Judd: That I�m a sexist?
Charlie: No, misanthropic.
Judd: How would you define that word?
Charlie: Someone who hates everything.
Judd: See, I think I�m a wussy. I�m a wimp.
Charlie: Tell me how you see this.
Judd: Okay. Well, what I thought about when I was making the movie was that there are traditional structures of comedies�and film in general�and when you go against it, it disturbs people. You know, it�s the movies like John Cassavetes�s movies and Robert Altman movies where they�re meant to make you feel things you don�t want to feel. Now that�s not part of mainstream comedy but I thought it was important to think about. There�s this quote from John Cassavetes. He said, �I don�t care if you like me or hate me, I just want you to be thinking about me in ten years.� I do want you to love the movie�I think that is the most important part�but I want to get under people�s skin and provoke in addition to having a hopeful message.
Charlie: All right. �
Adam: What is the problem there?
Charlie: Yeah, exactly. You�ve got to help me on this. We got to understand what�s�
Judd: It�s wrong in a couple of ways. One is, I had a fantastic girlfriend in high school who was very nice to me. Her parents were very nice to me. So I wasn�t the guy who didn�t have a girlfriend. In terms of it being an insular world of comedians, it�s kind of a ridiculous criticism because it�s a movie
Charlie: Who�s it real to? Twenty-five-year-old males?
Judd: It�s a way of talking about how we come up with our priorities for our lives through the eyes of a comedian, but we all deal with this. How much time do we want to spend at work versus how much time do we want to spend with the family?
Charlie: All right, here�s another one: �[Apatow�s] man-child universe, with its mixture of juvenile raunch and white-bread family values, has conquered American comedy.� Is that you? Middle-class values and man-child universe?
Judd: Well, I don�t think I�ve met a man who is not a man-child. If I meet a man who acts very proper I think he�s covering up how goofy he really is. I�m forty-one years old, and when we lived together we were all immature, goofy guys. Now I have a lot of the same friends and I�m forty-one and we haven�t made a lot of progress and I really don�t think when me and Adam are sixty it�s going to be much different.
Charlie: What is it that you think connects with the audience out there?
Adam: I get pitched ideas about movies. �Hey, such-and-such studio has a movie for you.� They tell me the idea and three sentences in, I can either be like,
Charlie: But when you look at these things, what is the instinct you have?
Adam: Most importantly, it�s
Charlie: How would you characterize his taste?
Judd: My pitch was not a funny pitch: �Adam, you�re dying and you�re a terrible person.�
Adam: Stop there, just write it. You�re going to get me out of this thing. Now his taste is very sexist and I identify with that.
Charlie: So if he was a misogynist that�s okay with you?
Adam: Exactly. I love to hate.
Judd: Here�s what I think it is. I�m trying to show warts and all, men and women. In most comedies, women are romanticized and they�re pretty and they�re not funny and the men try to attain them. And in my movies, starting with Catherine Keener in
Charlie: Are you making fun of their attitudes and what they talk about and how they view�
Judd: Yeah. I just think terrible behavior is funny. I�m not saying it�s correct. I�m saying, Here�s a starting point and most comedies�even if it�s a Jerry Lewis movie�start with an incredibly immature person who needs to learn a lesson. I�m not like that in life. I�m a very timid person when it comes to women. I was not out and about too much. I was a shy guy. But I find that nerdy guys talking about women in a way that is over-the-top sexist makes me laugh because they do it out of insecurity. They make up for that by going, �Hey, check that girl out,� because if the girl tried to kiss them they would cry because they would be so scared.
Charlie: What do you like and dislike about your character, George? What are his redeeming qualities?
Adam: You know, I couldn�t find any. It�s easier for me
Charlie: You were?
Adam: Absolutely. I have little daughters and I know they�re going to watch my movies when they�re older. Some of them I�m like,
Charlie: You�re thinking about that?
Adam: Oh my God. I let it go when Apatow would say what he wants in a scene, and I�d say, �Okay, let�s go.� But I would drive home that night and�I have this nice house. I have kids. I would look in their bedrooms and see them sleeping and I was just like,
Charlie: It might not be worth the millions.
Adam: Exactly.
Charlie: About him, tell me what you think. I mean, Adam has been the most successful comedic actor�
Judd: What is it about him? What is his appeal?
Charlie: What does he have?
Judd: When I lived with Adam, I wanted to be a comedian very badly and Adam had one of those things that you just can�t define, which is charisma. People were drawn to him. I would enter a room before he was famous and you would just feel the room move towards Adam and I would be sitting in a corner going,
Charlie: Over what?
Judd: Anything. You know, a lot of actors try to direct through their performance. They�ll say, �I don�t want to do that because you might use it.� Adam produces his own movies. He knows exactly what he wants. And Adam kept saying, �I completely trust you. It�s your vision. I�m not going to water it down. Just point me in the right direction.� And even though we were satirizing comedy and satirizing the comedy career, he just said, �I�m going to go for it, one hundred percent.�
Charlie: Tell me about the Cassavetes thing. Cassavetes was one of your idols.
Judd: Yes.
Charlie: Because Cassavetes was an extraordinarily incisive director, who would confront anything�
Judd: Yes. I mean, I�m certainly not as accomplished or brave as Cassavetes, but I do think that what he preaches when you read interviews with him is important. He says all his movies are about love, and obstacles to love. And that�s something that Garry Shandling always said of
Charlie: You know where the pleasure center is, though.
Judd: I do, and it takes work to avoid it.
Adam: It feels good there, though.
Judd: It does.
Charlie: Is it your comfort zone?
Adam: It�s definitely what I came out to Hollywood to do. I mean, I was like:
Charlie: Is there anything that would cause you to say, �I�ll roll the dice on this�?
Adam: I don�t have that right now.
Charlie: You don�t have that creative urge?
Adam: I�m forty-two. I�ve been doing this since I was seventeen. I�ve always had an insane drive. I�m shooting a movie right now and everyone in the movie is saying, All right, what are you doing next? And in my head I�m going,
Charlie: Do you love the
Adam: I am nuts. I am dying to get in there. I want to destroy. And when we get on the set, I�m just, like, in that trailer going,
Judd: It is a lot of pressure when you�re on that set. Every day is an experiment. Every scene might not work and so you�re concentrating�
Adam: That�s why, when you see a happy actor, you�re mad at him because you�re like, �You don�t care enough, you jerk.�
Charlie: It�s like they say about CEOs�those guys who have low golf scores are not doing a good job at the office, you know. Might you two work together again?
Adam: Of course, absolutely.
Judd: Definitely.
Adam: You know what was great? The subject matter of being sick�we both saw each other go through it with people we love and it was just very deep to us, this movie. Also we both work hard and respect each other�s work and, like, at the end of the day when I�d say good night to Apatow, I would tear up. I�d say, �All right, I love you, buddy.�
Judd: Are you serious?
Adam: Absolutely. Because it was, I couldn�t believe that we�ve known each other so long, that we�re both getting to do what we wanted. We would talk late at night. He wasn�t so sure on what he was going to do. I was like, �I�m going to be a movie star. That�s a guarantee and no one�s going to stop me.� Judd wasn�t sure what he was doing, but he was writing away all the time. I�d walk by his bedroom, see him typing away. I would go, �What are you doing in there, Apatow?� �Oh, I�m just writing some skit.� And I was like, �For what?� He�d be like, �I don�t know.�
There are certain people I always figured I would never get the chance to work with in my career. Albert Brooks was one of those people. Comedy-wise, he was simply out of my league. He was on Mount Olympus. At a certain point, I resigned myself to never knowing him like I wanted to.
When I was writing for
Then, when I was writing
Judd Apatow: Didn�t you write jokes for Michael Dukakis?
Albert Brooks: Yeah. I was asked to go on the airplane and go to different events. And I actually spoke at a few. I was so disenchanted with him. I thought,
Judd: Was that the first campaign you got involved in?
Albert: Yeah. I wrote a big joke for him at the Al Smith Dinner, in New York, which is a big political event. George Bush�s slogan was �It�s time to give the country back to the little guy,� and all I was trying to do was to get Dukakis to try to be self-deprecating. I said, �They love that.� So Dukakis is, like, four foot three, and he said, �George Bush says it�s time to give the country back to the little guy. Well, here I am!� And it got written about: Dukakis makes fun of himself. But I think he took it too far, with the tank.
Judd: And the helmet.
Albert: I wasn�t there for that. I would have disapproved of that.
Judd: I always think when someone�s elected president they take them into a room and say, �Here�s what really goes on on this planet.�
Albert: Well, that was in my book. That�s the two-week period where you go from thinking you can change the world to being scared out of your mind. You get the list of the nine people who run everything. I�m sure that�s the way it is.
Judd: You�ve always been a bit of a futurist.
Albert: My friend Harry Nilsson used to say the definition of an artist was someone who rode way ahead of the herd and was sort of the lookout. Now you don�t have to be that, to be an artist. You can be right smack-dab in the middle of the herd. If you are, you�ll be the richest.
Judd: And so
Albert: Well, the first thing I ever did was
Judd: Then Lorne Michaels wanted you as permanent host for
Albert: Instead of hosting, which I didn�t want to do, I was able to sort of dictate what I wanted to do, because they wanted my name. And so I made six films [for
Judd: Before that, did you have any sense you would go into filmmaking?
Albert: No. But my comedy bits were like scenes. I would bring props and chairs and tape recorders. I was fleshing out fifteen characters, with different voices, and it would have been better if I had hired fourteen people.
Judd: Was it almost a combination of a modern style of stand-up comedy and the previous style? This idea of doing characters and creating situations, but in a new way?
Albert: Well, my roots were in acting. That�s all I wanted to be. Even though my father was a radio comedian, it wasn�t cool to say, at a young age, �I want to be a comedian.�
Judd: Did your dad do stand-up?
Albert: My dad played a character on the radio called �Parkyakarkus.� A Greek-dialect comedian. He did Friars� roasts and wrote material and made people laugh that way.
Judd: What was the character like?
Albert: The character was a Greek immigrant who couldn�t speak very well, so there was a lot of dialect humor. He owned a restaurant. And the show was called
Judd: How old were you when that happened?
Albert: Eleven and a half.
Judd: So that�s just an earth-shattering�
Albert: Well, he was so sick before that that I�
Judd: Heart problems?
Albert: Yeah. And he couldn�t walk. He had a spinal operation. Then he could walk slowly, like Frankenstein. And so he gained weight. Nothing about him was healthy. Every time we were alone and he called me, I thought he was dying. So when it happened, it wasn�t like, hey, he was the second baseman and he woke up and died.
Judd: How did having a sick dad imprint you?
Albert: I think when you�re very, very, very young and you get a sense of the end before the beginning, it imprints you. In all possible ways.
Judd: What did your mom do?
Albert: My dad and mom met each other in a movie called
Judd: You were okay.
Albert: We were okay. And then my mom remarried, a lovely man in the shoe business.
Judd: You always hear this legend of Carl Reiner going on
Albert: This bit that I did, he said it was the hardest he�s ever laughed in his whole life. I don�t think it was the greatest bit. It was me pretending to be a terrible escape artist who gasped for air and begged for help.
Judd: Who were you developing it for?
Albert: Well, we all go to the area of strength in school, so we can be liked by girls. And if you�re not going to be a quarterback and you�re not going to be a biology honors student�so I was funny. At Beverly Hills High, there was a parent-student talent show. A big event once a year. Now, Beverly High, a lot of the parents were famous. So you had Tony Curtis, you had Carl Reiner�.
Judd: You had competition.
Albert: That�s right. Rod Serling. So I was the host of the evening�and I was this kid. I wrote jokes and made comments. I still remember a joke that I told. One of the kids, for their talent portion, did those batons�you twirl them around and around�and I still remember, because it was an ad lib. I was like, �Wasn�t she wonderful? Do you know, in practice, a 707 accidentally landed on the football field.� People roared.
Judd: So you weren�t like the class clown that couldn�t get a girlfriend?
Albert: Humor-wise, I was confident. I mean, my two best friends were Larry Bishop, who�s Joey Bishop�s son, and Rob Reiner, who is Carl Reiner�s son.
Judd: It was a world of comedy. Did you think at that point you would go into film?
Albert: I never wanted to be a director. When I started, when I wrote the script for
Judd: That�s exactly why I became a director.
Albert: I mean, Steven Spielberg seems to have wanted to be a director from thirteen. He put his dog in a certain position and made him eat at four o�clock. He liked to direct it. But, to me, directing is tedious. Especially if you�re acting in it. And I�m inherently lazy. I would stay in the trailer until someone came to get me: �It�s four o�clock. You�re not going to be able to do the horse shot if you don�t�� �Oh, okay.� So when I act in people�s films, I have this perverse thing of watching it rain, and I�m like,
Judd: Do you ever wish you directed more?
Albert: Here�s what I think. I think Woody Allen was the last person to get in under the radar of testing and promoting.
Judd: Because he doesn�t have to do any of it?
Albert: Yes. And I admire that, because the hardest part of the movies I made was the release part. I mean, some of my movies tested well enough where they were confused, and others tested so terribly that it�s like you killed their children. And that whole period where you have to dodge phone calls and figure out what to do. I came just at the time where I had to go on the plane with them. You just had to, or they wouldn�t talk to you again.
Judd: Was it the
Albert: No,
Judd: So they make it a double feature? And they are exhausted by the time your movie starts?
Albert: Yeah, yeah, yeah. And there was a big party planned at the Fairmont, with hors d�oeuvres and liquor, and everybody left and just flew back, and they didn�t tell me or [my co-writer] Monica Johnson or [my co-star] Kathryn Harrold�and I think [my friend] Paul Slansky came up just for support, and the four of us just spent the night in that ballroom alone, and they tell me I was the funniest I�ve ever been in my life. And then, when I got back to L.A., it was as if I had secretly changed every minute of the movie in a dungeon. They had a box of cards and they said, �You need to read these cards.� This was 1980, so I was still able to say, �I�m not going to read the cards.� So they read them to me. Like Guant�namo.
Judd: I get the same cards.
Albert: So Frank Price said, �You need to add a psychiatrist scene to explain the problem, or you won�t have a second week.� And I didn�t add a psychiatrist scene, and, of course, what he was saying was: If you don�t fix this, we�re doing nothing. And they did nothing. But the nice thing about that experience was that Stanley Kubrick befriended me.
Judd: Really?
Albert: He screened the movie, and I was really�I couldn�t get out of bed. I was just feeling like:
Judd: You struck up a friendship with him?
Albert: We wrote back and forth. Then one day I said, �Maybe I should come and visit.� And he went, �No, no, no, no, I don�t really live anywhere.�
Judd: And you never heard from him again. How were your reviews?
Albert: Remember, there were key outlets that could give you a career.
Judd: You�re always able to make the next movie.
Albert: I can make the next movie tomorrow. The thing that keeps me hesitant is the third act. What I mean is: The first act is writing, the second act is making, the third act is releasing. And if I can just get over that, nothing would stop me.
Judd: Do you ever just think,
Albert: Yes, I do. Listen, I like acting. I liked acting in your movie. I liked
Judd: Does that get worse as you get older?
Albert: It probably gets better as you get closer to the end. It would be funny to think,
Judd: I�ve been done with
Albert: There�s no real immediacy in movies. Even in comedy albums, the irony is, if I didn�t bring a comedy album to a friend�s and sit down and listen to it with them, I never heard my comedy albums played. I�ve never heard reactions to them.
Judd: That�s what�s interesting about Twitter. I get tweets every night where someone says, �I�m watching
Albert: Yeah, but Twitter is the devil�s playground.
Judd: It sucked you in. You�re addicted now.
Albert: I don�t know if I�m addicted. It�s a horrible waste of time for the writer of it, the reader of it. We will lose the war to China because of Twitter.
Judd: So why are you still doing it?
Albert: Well, because I always liked the ability to comment on a good story of the day. And it�s the easiest thing when you read the morning newspapers and then you go: �Look at this�they�re bombing Europe.� And it�s amazing, whenever you do anything political, I�m sure you know.
Judd: The vitriol.
Albert: �I hope you die!� It�s just so funny to me.
Judd: If someone says, �I hope you die,� and I tweet back at them�
Albert: They say, �No, I love you.�
Judd: Yeah. Every time.
Albert: Every time. I know. I love that. And they are so shocked. I had a guy that said, �Go drive your car into the ocean and never come up, you vile piece of shit.� And I said, �All of that from that comment?� And the guy said, �Oh, my God, I didn�t know you�d answer back. I love
Judd: So you�re not currently writing a movie? Do you have notebooks? Do you have ideas?
Albert: I have tons of ideas. One of the reasons I didn�t go into it again was I am enjoying acting and there were so many movies I turned down as an actor because I was making my own movies. Every time I see
Judd: You said you were friends with Harry Nilsson?
Albert: I was. He was one of these comedy-freak guys. He would come and see my shows and he was very sweet and a massive drinker. I didn�t drink and I wound up being the driver. And then he introduced me to John Lennon, because they were best friends. I spent a lot of time with Harry Nilsson and John Lennon during those May Pang years, when he was out here. Those guys would get rowdy, but John Lennon was certainly a fun person. And John Lennon, again, was a frustrated comedian. All these guys�comedy, to them, was the holy grail.
Judd: So three single guys running around.
Albert: Harry wasn�t even single. He was married. His wife was very forgiving with him leaving and coming back the next month. Look, sometimes it was too much. He was friends with Keith Moon. The Who were staying in Century City, and Harry said, �Come over. Keith is here�we�re having a thing.� Now, listen to this. I had just done a
Judd: So how old are you when you�re hanging out with John Lennon? Are you, like, twenty-three?
Albert: Twenty-five.
Judd: And did you grow up so much around show business that it didn�t blow your mind?
Albert: It�s a great question, because nothing blew my mind in show business, and he was the only person�the first time I met him, Harry said, �Get in that car there,� and I got in the backseat, and there was John Lennon, and the one thing I prided myself on in my comedy, you know, I�m not a person that was ever on. I was funny. I knew when to stop. I wasn�t that manic on, and I was on with him, and I didn�t know how to get out of it. I didn�t know what to do. And he said�that still remains the greatest thing to me�he leaned over and said, �I�ve known you for a thousand years.� And I just never felt bad again.
Judd: That�s right in the post-Beatles moment.
Albert: He was going through a lot. He was separated from Yoko, but I remember my album,
Judd: Was that inspiring creatively?
Albert: It was interesting to know what they think of comedy. They love comedy so much. It�s a language they don�t speak as eloquently. As much as you listen to the Beatles and say, �How do you write that song?� they�re going, �How did you say that? Where did that come from?�
Judd: Were you doing stand-up in those years?
Albert: I started on television. I had five years of network television before I ever got up on a stage. The first thing I ever did was in 1967. This guy Bill Keene had a little talk show at noon, and Gary Owens took over for a week. He knew about this dummy bit I used to do, this ventriloquist thing, and I was on
Judd: Did you have to show them before?
Albert: No. No. It was a time when people trusted you. They said, �What are you going to do?� �I�m going to do this�it will be four minutes.� Almost nobody laughed, but Steve Allen laughed so hard. And that was the laugh you needed. From that, in �69, I was offered a spot as a regular on a Dean Martin show. Then, from �70 to �73, I must have done eighty variety shows. There were so many. Glen Campbell. Helen Reddy. The Everly Brothers. Johnny Cash.
Judd: You�d never done it live, on the road.
Albert: My first couple of months was taking television bits and trying to make them fit into a live act. Eventually I felt comfortable onstage, but I went back to doing primarily television. In the early 1970s,
Judd: That�s a lot of bits.
Albert: A lot of bits, but you had Johnny�s confidence, and it didn�t matter if the audience laughed. Johnny laughed, and that�s all that ever mattered. But eventually they laugh. When Johnny laughs, they laugh.
Judd: Did you develop a friendship with him?
Albert: I would pay my respects and go to Las Vegas and see his stand-up, and he wasn�t an easy guy to be a friend with. He came into my dressing room one night before the show out of the blue and he sat me down and said, �You need to be married.� And this is a guy that�s been married three times.
Judd: How old were you when he said that?
Albert: I was twenty-eight. And I said, �How come?� And he said, �This is too hard to do alone.� Now, by the way, he�s right on that account. But I didn�t want to go through four wives just to accomplish that.
Judd: How old were you when you got married?
Albert: My forties. And I was very fortunate when I met Kimberly�things gelled. There weren�t all these problems, everybody who has these relationships. I was an expert at it. I made
Judd: What does that mean?
Albert: I don�t know.
Judd: That means, �We both like it.�
Albert: That means they�re both screwed up. I had a very wise person tell me that he thinks marriage, when you�re younger, you keep thinking you can fix things. That�s what people do. And you can�t really fix anything. It shouldn�t be a massive difficult thing every day. Life�s difficult enough. You can fix little teeny things. If a person likes to eat their peas off a plate, and you like to eat them in a bowl, you might win at that. But that�s about it.
Judd: Were you a difficult person to date?
Albert: I wasn�t a bad boyfriend. I had relationships with some of the women who were in the movies. And I wasn�t a cheater. I was a pretty loyal guy.
Judd: You weren�t like the guy in
Albert: Very early on I was. I had a relationship that was immensely physical without the other components. And when you�re young, that�s confusing, because you�re being told, Well, what do you think relationships are? They are physical. But you need a little bit of everything. I tried my hand at the most funny women, but I�m not a person who believes you want a person like yourself. You want key things in common, but you don�t want the nutsiness to be the same, because that�s too much.
Judd: What kind of dad are you? What are the TV rules?
Albert: TV isn�t an issue. It�s more the screens. It�s the games, and there�s rules about that, and there�s nothing before homework. They are not big TV watchers during the day. They are at night. When I was a kid, that�s all we had, and I watched a lot of it. We could trick our parents and say it was good for us.
Judd: What are your kids into?
Albert: My daughter, Claire, is an amazing singer and writes songs. And is a good writer. And very creative, and can draw. Jake is the funniest kid I know. He�s got a real sense of humor. He�s become a reasonable magician. I take him to these places on the weekend where they have what�s called Magic: The Gathering. And there�s like forty people who look like they work for Microsoft and my son. And he wins most nights. But the most important thing is that they�ve got good souls. They�ve got good hearts. They know what kid to befriend when that kid needs it�.I don�t see the kind of cynicism that you see in other people.
Judd: In us.
Albert: Yeah, well, I don�t think I was a person who made fun of other kids. That wasn�t my style of comedy�.I�ve never talked this much about myself.
Judd: Do you like the idea of your kids going into show business?
Albert: If I can�t talk them out of it, yes. My mother kept trying to talk me out of everything. �Honey, fall back on business.� I never knew what it meant, and that�s the way it should be. I sum up all of show business in three words: Frank Sinatra Junior. People think there�s nepotism in show business. There�s no nepotism on the performing side, especially in comedy. I don�t know of any famous person that can tell an audience to laugh at their son.
Judd: You once said you got such a kick out of making people laugh on the phone that it slowed down how much you would write for yourself.
Albert: That was a big problem for me and still is. I have to be careful. I�m going to go do
Judd: And so you didn�t need to write a movie.
Albert: It�s terrible. It�s not a commercial gene.
Judd: At some point it�s like: How much need is there to�how much is too much?
Albert: Let�s ask you that. You work a lot. I mean, if you enjoy it, it�s good. If you wake up and it feels like it�s destroying you, then you need to think about it.
Judd: True.
Albert: There are many aspects of work that are amazingly rewarding. The actual doing of it. The writing, when it goes well, there�s no better creative high. A day on the set where you assemble a bunch of great actors and you brought this to life. That�s a wonderful thing. There are other aspects where I�ve fought for things in movies. The movies that I�ve directed, for the most part, I�ve been able to win at the cost of alienating people.
Judd: Such as?
Albert: I wrote this movie with Monica Johnson called
Judd: The work can really bring out the worst side of you when you feel like someone else is ruining it. I can completely lose my mind.
Albert: But you�re supposed to. If you�re in a position where an argument can win, you�re supposed to argue. I mean, I�ve lost only a few arguments. That was the good thing about writing and directing my own movies. For
Judd: How does it feel for you that these movies that were painful at the time and didn�t make that much money are now classics?
Albert: It�s cool, but it�s not an active feeling. You don�t get up in the morning going, �My movie�s still here�fuck you.� That�s not a joyous daily feeling. I mean, as I told you, there�s no line at the bank for being ahead of your time.
Judd: How did you find the process working on
Albert: I liked it with you, because of the rehearsal. I like the idea of what the father was going to be. People ask me all the time about improv, and I tell them improv is just the final icing. You need a structure. It�s like, if you�re going to commit suicide, you need the building to jump out of.
Judd: Which comedians made the biggest impression on you when you were starting out?
Albert: The biggest influence was Jack Benny. Because of his minimalism. And the way he got laughs. He was at the center of a storm, he let his players do the work, and just by being there made it funny. That was mind-boggling to me.
Judd: Were you around him at all?
Albert: I knew him a little. He was very sweet to me once. I did a bit on
Judd: When I used to do stand-up in the late eighties at the Improv, you�d always hear, �Albert might be coming in, Albert might be coming in.� I don�t think you ever came in. Ever. Why did people think you were coming in?
Albert: Because I�d ask the guy to say that. Paid him forty bucks a week.
Judd: So you thought about jumping onstage but�
Albert: I did once. I even got a heckler. It was like I picked the wrong night. �Who are you?� I talk to a lot of friends now who tell me I would enjoy doing this again, because it�s different, and people would appreciate it. It�s a nice thing, because it�s so in the moment. That�s the lure.
Judd: Do you miss that part of your career?
Albert: I get it from the occasional talk show. The other thing would be to go do a stand-up special, something in front of a large audience. That�s what you�re really talking about. If I do
Judd: What do you feel there�s left to write about?
Albert: The subject of dying and getting old never gets old.
Judd: It�s shocking as you realize:
Albert: Well, aren�t we? I mean, this getting-old stuff is something. I sound like Bob Hope. I think I envy my dog, because my dog is sixteen and she�s limping and she�s still living, but she doesn�t look at me like she knows. She�s not thinking what I�m thinking. It�s a cruel trick, that we all know the ending.
Judd: Are you religious at all?
Albert: It�s funny, I don�t believe in the images of what God is, a thing or a person. I do wonder often the reason the sea horse is here, or a tree, or why I�m here, and so I don�t know if I�m religious. But it�s interesting when you�re part of a group�the Jews, to be exact�that the world has had such problems with. It has really nothing to do with religion. That�s why, if my kids didn�t want to go to temple, I used to say, �Let me explain something to you: If Hitler came back, he�s not going to ask if you went to temple. You�re already on the train. So you might as well know who you are and why they�re going to take you.�
Judd: What do you get out of temple?
Albert: I went to a memorial service and brought my kids and we thought about my dad and my mom, and the rabbi gave kind of a cool sermon, and you�re sitting in a room with everyone who would have to go on the same train. So there�s a bit of community there.
Judd: That�s dark.
Albert: But it�s true. Here�s what we know. We know meditation is healthy. Everybody says it slows your heart rate and everything, and the basis of religion seems to be that when you pray�I don�t know what people who are religious think when they pray, but it�s very close to what meditation is. It�s sort of ritualistic, it�s habit, it�s like exercising, so you might be able to get something out of that. I�m sure some people enjoy thinking it�s out of their hands. There�s all these people who think it�s �meant to be.� But I don�t buy that.
Judd: I�d love to buy it, though. I wish I could.
Albert: I don�t buy it, but I love it.
Judd: It would make the day so much easier.
Albert: Look, only a few people get to die peacefully in their sleep after a wonderful life. So that�s like not making the football team. There�s lots of things you don�t get to have. That�s probably one of them. Thank God, I consider myself lucky that I live after anesthetic. Can you imagine those days? �Sit down. Tuesday, we�re taking off your arm.�
Judd: The whole setup sucks. And comedy is a constant exploration of it. I still can�t figure it out, because it�s so absurd and so awful that I can�t do anything but laugh in its face.
Albert: But it�s really not awful. If I�ve learned anything�anything�getting older, it�s the value of moment-to-moment enjoyment. When I was young, all my career was �If I do well tonight, that means that Wednesday will be better. That means I can give this tape to my agent and�� It was this ongoing chess game. And that is a really disappointing game, because when you get to checkmate, it never feels like it should. And there�s another board that they never told you about. So if I come here and talk to you, if I have an enjoyable three hours, god damn it, that counts.
Judd: Do you ever have a spiritual feeling when you�re creative?
Albert: I used to hate when people say, �I feel it come through me,� but there are moments where two hours go by and you don�t know what happened, and you got all these words, and it�s the highlight of my life.
I was sitting in my car one day, listening to
So we did.
Amy and I spent the next few years working on
Amy Schumer: I did an interview with Jerry Seinfeld the other day.
Judd Apatow: You did? Did you know him at all?
Amy: We met a bunch of times at the Cellar, but I didn�t know him well. He picked me up in a Ferrari, and then it broke down on [the] West Side Highway. It was a real piece of shit. It was smoking, it was real scary.
Judd: That�s awesome.
Amy: Yeah, that was awesome. It was the best time.
Judd: And how was the interview?
Amy: He completely changed my philosophy about stand-up. He was like, �This idea that your generation has about �you have to burn your material and start fresh every time��it�s just so self-important. Not everybody�s watching everything you do, you know.� He said, �Focus on coming up with your best act for a live show. Remember: Seventy-five percent of the crowd has never seen you, and they�ll never see you again, so you should be working on the best possible show.�
Judd: He�s the main voice railing against the modern comic constantly turning over her act.
Amy: He changed my thinking. For TV, you always have to do new stuff, obviously. But for a live show, rather than trying to work out a whole new act, just do the stuff that�s pretty well worked out.
Judd: But he goes beyond that. He�s also saying that, at any time, half your act can be greatest hits. Like, who decided you couldn�t do that?
Amy: I don�t know why that became the thing. I don�t know why the idea of doing an older joke is supposed to make you feel embarrassed. It�s not about impressing the five comics in the back of the room. As Jerry said, if he sees someone, he wants to see their best jokes. Jokes are like works of art and they take years to figure out. He said you only get six closers in your whole life. Like six big jokes�
Judd: In your whole life.
Amy: Yeah.
Judd: I think the first person who turned over his material like that was George Carlin. He did a special every three years or so. Robert Klein put out a lot of specials, and I assume he was writing new material, too. But Seinfeld put out one special in his entire career. Leno has never put out a special. It�s a generational shift. The modern comic says, �Hey, this is what I�m going through right now.�
Amy: Yeah. �Check in with me, here�s where I am now.�
Judd: So maybe the secret is doing more specials than Seinfeld and less than Louis C.K.
Amy: I�m going to do one every couple of years, but I want it to be really great. Because the thing about specials is, they�re going to be there forever.
Judd: Do you think Seinfeld will ever do another special?
Amy: I don�t think so, no. He�s been doing Caesars for ten years, maybe fifteen, and the crowds are great. He gives them a great show and they leave happy. He asked me, �Do you want people to come and say, �Oh, she was good,� or do you want them to come and say, �You
Judd: But modern comedy fans
Amy: That�s a good point. I guess the question is, is it better to please the twenty percent of the crowd who comes to see you every time, or is it better to give a killer show, like an epic performance, for the rest?
Judd: This may not apply to anything, but I was watching a movie about women in comedy recently�I think it was called
Amy: I got cut out. Actually, I am in one scene. But I don�t talk.
Judd: Oh, I thought maybe it was a political choice, a way of saying, we shouldn�t even be debating this anymore.
Amy: No, that debate is insane to me. It doesn�t even make me mad. It�s like asking, �Do Jewish people smell like orange juice?� It�s just such a weird question. It�s not even a question. The thing that gets to me is the question �Isn�t this a great time to be a woman in comedy?� I mean, all the TV I watched growing up featured funny women.
Judd: People said the same thing when
Amy: In terms of what?
Judd: In terms of funny movies that are dominated by women. The studio system didn�t embrace them. They don�t know how to do it.
Amy: In my experience, there will be a script and you�ll be like,
Judd: When we did
Amy: Do you think that�s true? Do people really need more eye candy?
Judd: I have thought about that a lot. I don�t know. But what if people do want it?
Amy: I�m not above that. I want to look at Jennifer Lawrence eating cereal.
Judd: I mean, it depends. People are pretty happy looking at James Gandolfini, or Bryan Cranston. They�re happy looking at Nurse Jackie and everyone on
Amy: I think that beautiful people are not any happier than people who are not as beautiful. Even with models�there�s always someone who is more beautiful or younger. So no matter what realm you�re operating in, it�s all relative. I didn�t develop my personality, or my sense of humor, because I felt unattractive. I thought I was attractive until I got older. It was probably a defense mechanism for whatever pain was going on around me. But I don�t think that people who feel beautiful feel like,
Judd: You�re in a weird area. I would describe it as: Everyone thinks you are beautiful, but maybe you don�t agree with their opinion.
Amy: Um.
Judd: I�ll talk about me for a second. I always thought I was right in the middle, looks-wise, and that if I had a good personality, it could put me over the top. But it wasn�t like, behind my back, everyone thought I was handsome. I get the sense that you feel like some days you�re looking great, some days you�re not, but the audience sees you in a certain way that maybe you don�t agree with. Does that make sense?
Amy: I think that�s probably true. I think that�s probably dead-on. I feel, like you just said, that some days I am like a real monster, completely unlovable and unfuckable, and then there�s a moment, every now and then, when I�m more like Elaine on
Judd: I ask about it because it is about who you think you�re speaking to.
Amy: That�s a really good point.
Judd: I was a year younger than everybody in school. I was the youngest kid in class, always. But I only realized, later in life, that I was much
Amy: Physically?
Judd: Yeah. And by the time I caught up a little bit, in sixth or seventh grade, I had been defined. On some level, I guess it made me feel less masculine. And as a result, I always feel like a nerd. I have a beautiful wife, I�m successful. But I still feel like the kid who�s picked last in gym class. And that shaped my idea of comedy being about outsiders. It was a way for me to attack all of these systems that I thought were unfair to me.
Amy: I would say the same for me.
Judd: What was your version of that? What happened to you as a kid that made you think and defined your sense of humor? Just the darkness of your house, primarily?
Amy: Yeah, and one thing that�s too dark and private to even talk about. But I would say, with the physical stuff, that I was always pretty but not beautiful. And that was something that you were punished for. I was very aware of this stuff early on.
Judd: With girls, it�s weird because it changes dramatically. In high school, girls don�t look anything like they looked in third grade. Whereas guys, the handsome third-grade dude is still handsome in high school. Girls blossom and change. That was the kind of girl I always tried to date: the girl who, near the end of high school, got pretty but still acted insecure.
Amy: Well, that�s the jackpot. That�s my favorite kind of guy, too. The guy that blossoms but still sees himself as the fat kid.
Judd: Al Roker.
Amy: Al Roker is the
Judd: He lost the weight but he�s still nice to you.
Amy: Because he remembers. But I had no perspective on myself physically. All I knew was that I was pretty enough to get by. I remember in fifth grade, a guy who I was friends with said something to me about being pretty. I got my period in fifth grade. I had, like, boobs. I had an ass.
Judd: Well, that changes everything. That�s just pollution on Long Island.
Amy: Only recently have I got any sort of ownership over my body as a woman.
Judd: What does it feel like, going through puberty so early? Are you getting hormones, like a teenager?
Amy: I was totally boy crazy, running around trying to kiss them. My parents were getting calls. But I wasn�t very sexual or anything. I remember growing pains, and my boobs hurt and I was just getting a body that no one else had yet. I remember being sexualized by gardeners�gardeners are the construction workers of Long Island, you know. I�d walk past a gardening truck and I remember feeling like,
Judd: How does that relate to wanting to be funny?
Amy: That was so interesting, when you asked me before about who I was talking to when I�m onstage. I just thought of that two nights ago. I was in Rochester and I was onstage and this is probably bad to admit, but I was like, I really am speaking to the women in the audience. I�m appreciative of the guys that can come along for the ride and not feel alienated because this isn�t some �pro-women, down with men� thing, but the reality is, I�m speaking to the women and trying to keep the guys interested enough that they still want to come to the shows.
Judd: And what are you saying to them?
Amy: �You�re doing the best you can and you�re good enough.� And that came from just sitting around with my girlfriends in high school and not having to pretend. You could just be like, �Well, I haven�t washed my hair in almost a full week, and do you want to hear what I ate last night?� You would feel so human�and, as a result, less apologetic.
Judd: Your act is like that now.
Amy: Well, I think it�s really comforting to people. It makes everyone feel better to acknowledge that no one has it together. I mean, I don�t know anyone that doesn�t have this big, dark cloud hovering over them. Just knowing that makes me feel better.
Judd: At what age did you become aware of comedians?
Amy: Really young, when we would watch the Muppets. And then I discovered stand-ups. I loved Gilda. I was so drawn to funny chicks. I remember watching Rita Rudner and George Carlin and Richard Pryor. My dad must�ve had it on. And Letterman.
Judd: How old were you?
Amy: Ten or younger. Stand-up trickled in over the years but it wasn�t until I was in college, early college, where I discovered Margaret Cho, and got really into it.
Judd: At what point did you think,
Amy: After college. I was twenty-three.
Judd: What did it take for you to think,
Amy: How old were you when you got up for the first time?
Judd: Seventeen. I had wanted to do it really badly since age fourteen, but I was afraid to admit it to anybody.
Amy: My experience was like this: I was in an abusive improv troop after college. This guy set it up to get fifty bucks a month from each of us, but it was not really improv�it was a crazy, schizophrenic, delusional situation. I went one night to see one of the girls do stand-up at Gotham. It was like at six P.M. and she was bombing. Everyone was bombing. I thought,
Judd: That�s interesting. Because it�s not about being inspired by watching someone murder, it�s like,
Amy: I still think that all the time. It�s not that I feel like what I�m doing is so amazing, but it�s pretty good compared to what other people are doing. So that same week, I was walking past the club and it was my birthday and I was like,
Judd: You wrote it in one day?
Amy: I wrote it in two hours.
Judd: How did you do?
Amy: Pretty good.
Judd: Do you remember any of it?
Amy: I have a tape of it. I remember it. I talked about how skywriting annoys me. Don�t you find that when you talk about your early jokes, even though you
Judd: What were you doing for a living back then?
Amy: Waiting tables at Michael Jordan�s Steakhouse.
Judd: Trying to get acting work?
Amy: Yeah, auditioning. But one day, this woman came into the restaurant and she really liked me. She was like, �I�m going to hook you up with my agent.� So I went in and I did a one-act play to audition for the agent and he was like, �You�re pretty mediocre and I have too many girls like you that are better than you.�
Judd: That happened to me and I never acted again.
Amy: Are you serious?
Judd: Yes.
Amy: Well, it made me furious. At some point, I started doing open mics. They were the worst shows in the world.
Judd: So how long until you were okay at it?
Amy: Four years. It wasn�t until the end of the
Judd: What was it like for you on
Amy: It was a reality show, so people were basically pulling for you. I was young, and I was excited, and I hadn�t been at all hardened by the business or anything. I was just so happy about it all: �This is great, guys, we�re telling jokes!�
Judd: How far did you make it?
Amy: Fourth place. And the other guys had all been doing it for twenty years, but I had an advantage in that way because I was funny off the cuff and on my feet. The competitions were good for the people with fresh minds rather than the hardened road dogs.
Judd: And then you guys all toured the country and you hated everyone, right?
Amy: Five of us toured and I died onstage every night. I would cry on the tour bus, and then go out and do it again the next night�sometimes two shows a night. We had this mandatory meet and greet after each show, so I�d have to stand out there and talk to everyone who had just not laughed at me.
Judd: Did you get better over the course of the tour?
Amy: My material was good, but I got better at selling it. By the end, I was pretty desensitized. I�d just been in so much pain every night that I stopped caring�and once that happened, it became more about my experience onstage. I was worried that I was going to offend someone because I�d be in Fayetteville, North Carolina, making a joke about how I think all gay people have AIDS, and then I�d look out and wonder,
Judd: Do you think you have a much different experience, as a woman on the road, than guys are having?
Amy: Not in terms of the audience or anything, but in terms of fun? Yeah. Like, I�ve never hooked up with somebody after a show.
Judd: I did.
Amy: You did?
Judd: Once.
Amy: What happened?
Judd: It lasted eight seconds and I looked in her eyes as she realized what a horrible mistake she had made. And then we had sex again and this time, it lasted six seconds and she really looked disappointed in herself for choosing to do this. If she became a nun after that, it wouldn�t have shocked me.
Amy: Oh my God.
Judd: And I thought,
Amy: That�s why I�ve only dated two comics.
Judd: It�s so boring on the road. If you�re on the road and you�re a guy and you�re bored, it�s almost like there�s nothing else to do.
Amy: I�m just so lazy about what you do
Judd: Once I was playing the Dallas Improv and I hooked up with this woman after. This is how bad I was: She slept over and we didn�t have sex. I told a friend about it afterwards, who was a comedian, and he told me that every time he was with a girl, they would have sex. And I was like, �They go all the way with you every time?� I was like a thirteen-year-old.
Amy: That�s amazing.
Judd: She drove me to the airport in the morning.
Amy: Oh my God.
Judd: And her makeup was all smeared down her face. She looked crazy. And we had this weird goodbye, one of those things where you know you�re not going to ever call each other.
Amy: Are we supposed to kiss goodbye like we�re a couple?
Judd: And I thought,
Amy: And then you�re reminded that it�s vile.
Judd: It�s never delightful.
Amy: I�ve had one one-night stand in my life.
Judd: And yet people see your act as very sexual.
Amy: Right.
Judd: So is that a character you�re playing?
Amy: Well, it�s a part of me, too. Because the stuff you�re copping to and the saddest, worst moments of your life�that�s the stuff people connect to and appreciate. In reality, I�ve almost always had a boyfriend. But in those phases in between, I�ve never held out on sex at all. Like, I�ll sleep with a guy right away. That�s just what�s in my nature. If I want to, I�ll do it. I haven�t ever used that like as a trading or a bargaining chip but I am also thirty-three and single, so�
Judd: You�re allowed to.
Amy: Every year, if I have like one or two sexual experiences, they might both be hilarious.
Judd: And then they add up, and people think,
Amy: Right. But you can get up there and do that, and you�re not the Sex Guy. But if I do it, I am. So I just embraced it.
Judd: But those experiences are funny. That�s the thing. Your worst sexual experience can be so humiliating and hilarious, both in movies and in stand-up. They�re always the best stories. A guy who has got a lot of terrible sex stories is the best dinner companion of all time.
Amy: It�s the best. I did one last season on my show, about the biggest penis I�ve ever encountered. It was like, that year I was single and I hadn�t been single for four years. I dated a wrestler and there was so much preposterous sex stuff from that relationship, and then I happened to go out with a guy and realized that his penis was way more than I bargained for. I probably already told you who the guy was, but he was an athlete. He was this guy my sister loved, a hockey player. I don�t watch sports but we winded up going out, mostly because my sister was like, �Oh my God, you have to go out with him! I�ve had a dream about you two falling in love!� So I go out with him mostly so she would think I was cool, but he was really hot and it was fun. I was like,
Judd: I haven�t heard that bit.
Amy: You�re supposed to be really excited about a big penis, but when you�re faced with one, it�s like a unicorn�in theory, you�ve always wanted to see one up close but if it were ever standing in front of you, you�d be like,
Judd: You have to slow your heart rate down. Like a Buddhist monk.
Amy: And then I say, �Do you have a condom?� He says no. And I was like,
Judd: They don�t make condoms that big.
Amy: So then we tried and it didn�t work at all. It was not a possibility. I would have had to alter my body.
Judd: He must be used to this, right? He must know it�s going to happen.
Amy: At one point, I say to him: �Are you serious?� He�s like, �No, it�s usually�� And I�m like, whatever. In my twenties, I would have given it the old college try, but I�m in my thirties now and I was just like, I have Olive Garden leftovers in the fridge, see you later. It�s not happening. I�m not going to walk around New York with a gaping vagina because I had sex with you once.
Judd: You tell that story and then you become known as a sex comic.
Amy: It makes me feel like a little bit of a fraud, actually, and a little misunderstood. Onstage, I�ll talk about how I�ve never done anal, or no one�s ever cum in my face. I haven�t done anything out of the ordinary. I�ve been so boring. But people don�t hear that. All they hear is that you�re talking about sex.
Judd: How does that affect what you decide to do on your show? There�s a certain amount of gender politics at play here, for sure, in what you decide to write about and talk about. Every sketch, in a way, ends up being about your position on certain things.
Amy: Right.
Judd: And your point of view is strong. That�s what people like about it.
Amy: I�m only choosing and pitching what I�m interested in. If there is a great idea�something that I think that is kind of vulnerable and untouched, uncharted territory�I say, let�s do it. I try to think of the ideas that are the most awkward.
Judd: What has been the most talked-about political sketch on your show so far?
Amy: We did one about rape in the military.
Judd: And does taking on a subject like that change the way you approach your work going forward? Does that inspire courage to write about different things?
Amy: I�m going to pitch things that I think are funny, but I will also pitch things about subjects that I think are unfair. I do feel a responsibility to be exploring some issues and so I try to always stay up on that stuff, reading every article I can get my hands on, trying to stay up on what�s going on. I want to do something about the Equal Pay Act this season. I read every article on feminism.
Judd: Not too long ago, you gave a speech at Gloria Steinem�s birthday party. Did people have a strong reaction to that?
Amy: Yeah. I got asked to do a monologue the year before, for some event, I can�t remember what it was called. It was me and all these tiny actresses and I just felt like I needed to joke about it because we looked like an evolution chart or something. I felt like a big, blond monster, standing with a bunch of girls who had never seen semen before. But my speech really came off strong because I was actually talking about some real things, bad things that had happened to me�and the other speeches weren�t as hard. And so Gloria asked me to come talk the following year at her birthday party. So I wrote this speech about losing all my self-esteem in college, and a kind of painful night that I tried my best to make funny.
Judd: What about it do you think connected with people?
Amy: Just the feeling of losing all your confidence and feeling like you�re worthless because of how other people are treating you. And then having to realize that the real issue is actually how you�re treating yourself. I think that�s something most people have experienced, feeling like they don�t deserve love.
Judd: Do you ever go back and read your own speech, to cheer yourself up?
Amy: Yeah, and my friends will quote it to me.
Judd: That must be a big change, to go from doing stand-up, just trying to get laughs, to realizing that people are paying attention to what you�re saying. And that they�re moved and inspired by certain things you say. It�s not just about being funny.
Amy: I�m taking this responsibility seriously. I�m looking at it as an opportunity. What do I want to say? What have I really learned? Where am I, really? I�m not interested in just saying something for shock value anymore. I do feel more of a weight about the message that I�m sending because I know what it�s like to be on the other end of that and I don�t want to be in denial about what success means�and like how many people I�m reaching now. I want to make people feel better.
I remember watching Chris Rock�s act in the late eighties and thinking,
When I started doing stand-up again in 2014, I spent the better part of four months at the Comedy Cellar in New York, waiting for my turn onstage, watching other comedians. I saw so many incredible performances, so many inspiring new voices and original acts. But I also came away from it thinking,
Judd Apatow: It�s funny. We�ve been in the business for twenty or thirty years now, long enough to where, you know, we�ve seen the winds blow in both directions.
Chris Rock: Oh, it�s unbelievable. If you put it in a movie, no one would believe it.
Judd: Right.
Chris: No one would be like, �Really?� You�re in a big movie, and suddenly, people call you up who haven�t talked to you in years. �Yeah, we�ve got to hang out! Come on the boat.� Whatever.
Judd: �Come on the boat.�
Chris: Get hot, you�re on the boat. Cool off, and you don�t get that boat invite like you used to.
Judd: It�s almost impossible to keep success going because you have to stop at some point, to rest and learn something new. It�s essential. People�s interest in you goes away so quickly, but you have no choice but to step off the boat sometimes.
Chris: Yeah, if you�re going to try to stay interesting.
Judd: People don�t get that. In Hollywood, they think you going onstage to do a play means: Whatever happened to Chris Rock?
Chris: Exactly. I mean, doing a play is literally the equivalent of: Oh, he�s doing open mics again.
Judd: When was your last HBO special�2008?
Chris: Yeah, about then.
Judd: How do you decide when you�re in the mood to pursue stand-up again, and do a new special?
Chris: To me, the key is, you got to ask yourself, what kind of comedian do you want to be? You can be a guy who plays every night or every week, the guy who has the same act, or maybe the same act with a tiny bit of turnover. Seinfeld and I always have this debate: the guy versus the act. You can keep the same act and work all the time, like Jerry does. But I don�t want to be that guy. I have nothing against that guy. Most guys I love are that guy.
Judd: Like Leno. He never did a special.
Chris: Leno, yeah. And Rickles. Most guys have the same act, they really do. But then you�ve got this other crew of guys�the Carlin/Pryor school�who never wanted people to know what they were going to say. And in order to make that work, you have to live life. You�ve got to live like a musician, basically. You go on the road and drop an album and then you go off and live life for a couple of years. You come back and, hey, the world�s changed a little bit. And so
Judd: Who are the comedians that have had the most impact on you?
Chris: Eddie Murphy. Even though the guy hasn�t been onstage in twenty-five years or whatever, he was really into the idea of: It�s got to be an
Judd: Today, I feel like people put the special out, and then think they have to have the next act written, too, so they can tour off the special with a completely new act. That�s a crazy amount of work.
Chris: I�ve never done that. I do a special. I tour for�until it�s literally like, �Okay, I�ve been everywhere.� But you want to leave some money on the table. The best advertisement you can have is for there to be a person out there that
Judd: Do you get the urge to do stand-up again because you feel like the culture has changed and you have something new to say? Or is it just, like, �Okay, I guess it�s time to start thinking about a special again�?
Chris: It comes from having something to say. It comes from being a new person. Have you lived enough life? Are you seeing the world differently? It can be something as simple as getting up onstage and talking about your kids, you know. I didn�t really talk about my kids in my last special, but the special before that one, I was talking about Lola being born and keeping her off the pole. You know what I mean? So if I decide to talk about her tomorrow, twelve
Judd: Suddenly the stripper joke�s not as silly.
Chris: I have two daughters. That joke is never silly.
Judd: And then, the older your kids get, you have to think about their awareness of your act. My wife is going to see me do stand-up tonight. We�ve been together for nineteen years, and she has never seen me perform live. She�s only seen a video of me doing stand-up once, and that was like the first week when I was hitting on her. And my older daughter, too. She has never seen me do stand-up. She�s about to turn seventeen. And half of my act is about her.
Chris: Wow. That�s my dream, that I can stay big long enough for my kids to come see me, with their friends, and it�s a cool thing. It�s not charity.
Judd: How aware are they of what you do? Do they go on YouTube when you�re not looking and watch?
Chris: They must. I mean, the oldest one must. I�m sure when she�s at her friend�s house or whatever. When I pick them up from school, I can tell every boy has seen everything I�ve done. They�re way too nice to me. They talk to me like I�m Mingus or something. Like I�m Monk. They�re freaking.
Judd: Do you ever think about changing your act as your kids get older, to help them digest it?
Chris: Nah. I�m not going that far. I always say I�ve got kids like Eminem�s got kids. Having kids hasn�t seemed to affect his act.
Judd: It�s funny, I�ve been going through your career, just looking at all the stuff you�ve done�and it struck me, how you seem to have done everything. I mean, I didn�t realize that you wrote a memoir�in 1997!
Chris: I wouldn�t call it a memoir, but yeah.
Judd: Okay, but you�ve been around a long time.
Chris: I try never to brag but I�m probably the only person who has been on
Judd: That�s hilarious. But you�ve done everything from
Chris: No, my first album was a comedy album. I put out a comedy album eight years before I got on
Judd: What�s your connection to hip-hop? Are there rappers you�ve been close with?
Chris: All the old-school guys, yeah. We�re like the same age. Me and Run are literally the same age and we�ve lived near each other. Jay, Doug E. Fresh, Flash is an old friend. MC Lyte, Kid �n Play, Latifah, Busta. We�re all the same age, hung out at the same clubs. It�s like we went to high school together, in a way. I�ve known Queen Latifah for twenty-five years�as long as I�ve known Sandler or any of those guys. Now we see each other at funerals.
Judd: It�s freaky.
Chris: Yeah. When I was on
Judd: How does it feel hanging out in the clubs now?
Chris: I�m the oldest guy at the club every night now. Sometimes the guys are into me and sometimes they�re just humoring me. Sometimes I can tell they think I suck or I�m a hack or it�s like, �Fuck you and your Maserati out front.� I can feel it sometimes. You know.
Judd: It is weird to be this elder statesman. You feel this need to really
Chris: Oh, I totally feel that. I love going to the Cellar and spanking the shit out of everybody. I love going there, at my age, and having an act that�s better than the guys who are fifteen or twenty years younger than me. I�m like, �This is my seventh special. What�s your fucking excuse? I got rid of six hours of shit. Why aren�t you funny yet?�
Judd: Do you feel like comedians have gotten better? Are people funnier now?
Chris: I don�t know. In some ways, they are better. There�s more comedy to choose from, I would say. Hannibal Buress is kind of weird and Demetri Martin is kind of weird and, you know, Sarah Silverman has a totally different act than Kathy Griffin. So in that aspect, yes, I think there�s more variety in comedy today. People are talking about different things. On the other hand, I don�t know if comedians know how to work an audience anymore.
Judd: Yeah.
Chris: You know, that thing where it�s just like, it literally doesn�t matter who�s in front of you. I find more and more comedians complain about the crowd these days. Or they�re always asking, �How�s the crowd?� And I�m like, �Why do you give a fuck about the crowd? I mean, if you kill tonight, is the crowd going to get the credit? And so don�t give it to them if you bomb. It�s not them, it�s you.� But I don�t know. We have a lot
Judd: Are you still engaged, creatively? Do you still feel as enthusiastic about your work as you always have? Are you on fire right now, or do you have a sense of fatigue, of just,
Chris: The only time I ever feel fatigue is the fact that it�s really hard being up with kids early in the morning and being at a club late at night.
Judd: It�s brutal.
Chris: I�ve got to make myself take a nap during the day if I�m going to properly do stand-up. So I do feel that fatigue. But as far as creativity? I honestly feel the energy even more now, I think. It�s like that Tiger thing. Tiger is chasing Jack Nicklaus. He just is. And what is it, how many Masters does he need? I�m chasing Richard Pryor, man. I have not done�I still haven�t done my version of his Long Beach concert. I�ve done some good stuff, but Richard Pryor in Long Beach? It�s the greatest piece of stand-up ever done. It just is. I haven�t got there, in my act. I got some stuff�you know, some of it is good and some of it is good in comparison to other people of my era. Pryor�s special was kind of late in his career. He�s not a kid doing it. That�s what I�m going for.
Judd: What was your relationship like with Pryor?
Chris: I met him on the set of
Judd: Wow.
Chris: And a lot of nights he would actually watch my set and he would say nice things afterwards. One of the last times I saw him was�oh, I wish I could find this picture. The last time I saw him, he came and saw me at the Universal Amphitheatre. I was coming offstage and there�s Richard Pryor, in a wheelchair, telling me I did a great job. It�s one of the highlights of my life. One of the greatest stand-ups�you know, the Willie Mays of comedy. You know, Pryor�s Willie Mays, and Cosby�s Hank Aaron. Because Hank Aaron has more hits, more home runs, more RBIs than anybody. He�s number one or two in every freaking category.
Judd: I was listening to the Richard Pryor box set that they put out last year. It has one disk, which has all sorts of odds and ends on it, and there�s a lot of stand-up that he did about being sick. It�s remarkable.
Chris: He was funny, even then. That�s the crazy thing.
Judd: He was doing a bit about a girl walking up to him in his car�he�s flirting with some pretty girl and he�s pissing himself because he�s sick and he can�t control himself. He�s trying to act cool as he pisses his pants.
Chris: Wow.
Judd: It was amazing. But even the great stuff he was doing around 1976�about, you know, the Bicentennial and Patty Hearst�it all sounds like he�s playing for a hundred people, in tiny clubs.
Chris: That was the genius of the guy. The guy believed in working it out. He was like, �Okay, so I�m going to have a bad set tonight, big deal. But when you pay to see me, it�s going to be right.� Most comedians just don�t have the guts�especially famous comedians�to get up there and not be funny, to just feel your way around this thing.
Judd: How tragic is it that Eddie Murphy won�t do stand-up anymore?
Chris: Tragic. Because he can do it, you know what I mean? It�s like, what if Mike Tyson could still knock people out and didn�t fight? That would be sad, right? Eddie Murphy, right now, would be top three in the world. Probably number one if he worked at it. But he doesn�t want to. Only financial ruin will get that guy back onstage.
Judd: I do understand how it happens, though. You feel like,
Chris: You should go to Eddie Murphy�s house on the next fight night. You�ll be entertained by the funniest man on earth. He has amazing fight parties. There�s lots of people there, every black comedian imaginable�and he�s funnier than everybody there. But I�ve given up asking him. I don�t even bring it up anymore.
Judd: As you�re preparing your new act, do you begin by thinking about what�s important, what really needs to be said right now?
Chris: A little bit, yeah. Some of it�s for the crowd, and some of it�s for you. There�s definitely a part of you that goes like,
Judd: Jerry doesn�t have any pressure, apparently.
Chris: Jerry�s got no fucking pressure. God bless him. Jerry Seinfeld, one of the greatest comedians of all time and one of the cockiest bastards to ever live.
Judd: How did he get that cocky? If you�re neurotic in any way�like, in a normal way�he looks at you like you�re insane for not getting it.
Chris: To his credit, he writes some of the best jokes ever. He really does. I mean, they�re like Billy Joel songs, you know what I mean?
Judd: Yeah.
Chris: There�s a lot of hip guys in the world, but who can follow Billy Joel in America, you know what I mean? I don�t give a fuck who you are, I don�t give a fuck if you�re Sting or Bono�if you�re onstage in America, there�s a part of you that just hopes Billy Joel doesn�t walk in. I remember going to see Billy and Elton John in concert. I kind of wanted to see Elton a little more, and I came out of it thinking, Billy Joel is actually more American than Bruce Springsteen, you know what I mean? Bruce Springsteen�s a fucking Russian soldier compared to fucking Billy Joel, man. That shit�s American. Everybody likes those records. And Jerry Seinfeld writes jokes like that.
Judd: I sometimes think it seems everyone in our circle had their kids at the same time. You, me, Seinfeld, Sandler�it�s a real shared experience.
Chris: It�s weird. Our kids are all the same age. And we�re all kind of married to the same woman.
Judd: We all have the same issues in our lives. Several decades in, everybody�s kind of in the same place, trying to figure out the next phase. When people have had success and they�ve made money and they have families�and they�re not dying to be accepted anymore, with a long career ahead of them�they�re
Chris: We�re going to be old for a long fucking time, dude.
Judd: Then you see certain people, like Martin Scorsese, who just go on a tear, a late game tear. And that makes you wonder,
Chris: You�ve got to make yourself scared. When I did that play not too long ago, it was like,
Judd: What made you realize it was time to make
Chris: Doing that play, a few years ago, inspired me. It showed me what work is again. The thing about the play was, it wasn�t a revival. It was an original play. If you�re doing a revival, you can rehearse it at your house�the lines aren�t going to change or whatever. But when you do an original play, when you�re in previews, you get new pages, new lines, every day. �I�m going to get rid of that scene and we�re going to do this scene instead.� What? But being around actors really helped me. Being around creative people that had talents I didn�t helped me. It opened my eyes. I don�t know, I mean, I had directed two other movies in my life, but I haven�t had a hit in a long time. There was a part of me that was like,
Judd: So then you make this more personal movie. You show it in Toronto and the place goes crazy and you sell it to a big studio. That�s the weird thing about creativity, right? When you get real, you have your biggest success.
Chris: It�s the smallest movie I�ve ever written. Actually, it�s the first time I wrote a movie. It�s the first time I�ve written by myself.
Judd: I just finished a movie with Amy Schumer. At first, she wanted to write it with someone else, but I said to her, �I think, in ways that are hard to describe, your point of view will shift because you�re going to make all sorts of concessions that are destructive to��
Chris: You�re going to have a consensus. You�re not going to have a vision. That�s what happens. So I wrote this movie by myself. Every other movie I�ve done�
Judd: I feel like, for a lot of people, there�s that moment when you go personal with your work and everything changes. Look at Louis C.K. When he revealed himself, the whole world connected with him. I felt that way with
Chris: I mean, there was an episode of Louis�the one where Melissa Leo gives him a blowjob in the car. And then she says, you know, �Now you�re going to eat my pussy.� And that blew my mind. I watched that episode, and it was like the first time I heard NWA. It was like,
Judd: Yeah.
Chris: And I thought,
I am aware that Eddie Vedder is not a comedian or a comic actor. Yes, he was hilarious in
Judd Apatow: Did you ever see the
Eddie Vedder: I saw, like, an hour version. There�s got to be a version that�s longer and more detailed, but�
Judd: Yeah, you want the early cut, from before they tightened it up. For me, that was the big record. I�ve heard that was a mind blower for you, too.
Eddie: Yeah. And a lifesaver. A life ring to hang on to because, for some reason, I just didn�t feel like there was anybody I could relate to on the whole planet. Nobody at school and certainly no one in the household. And then, all of a sudden, it was like here�s some guy from London named Pete, and he knew everything that was going on.
Judd: How old were you?
Eddie: Probably about thirteen, fourteen. And all kinds of stuff was happening in my life. It was really like, just, you know, it was like a bridge with the planks covering a big, deep chasm�and the planks were just falling. That whole period, I was just hanging on.
Judd: I feel like I had the same exact experience. My parents broke up in between eighth and ninth grade and had a crazy divorce. They didn�t actually even get fully divorced until I was in college. They fought. For some reason,
Eddie: Absolutely. I mean, it was a number of things�I was finding messages in, like, Split Enz and Talking Heads. But as a whole,
Judd: When I was a kid, no one was into comedy. I felt so alone with this weird interest and it was only when I moved to Los Angeles and went to college and met the comedians at the Comedy Store and the Improv that I thought,
Eddie: I remember�I still remember distinctly that somebody ended up obtaining a small bag of mushrooms and we were all gonna have a surf, and it ended up being a great experience. But while we were waiting for things to happen, we were playing a Kinks record and I said to my friend, �Yeah, see the guitar tone, the distortion, the space in between,� and he was like, �You know, some people don�t listen to music like you. Some people just listen to it to enjoy it.� He was basically telling me to shut the fuck up.
Judd: (
Eddie: He was just trying to listen to the song. And he had a valid point. But it was just always that way. With me�and I think eventually you�you find that. And then certainly with the group of guys in the band, you know, after a show, if we have a night and we have to travel or we�re still up and awake and sitting in a confined space talking, we can talk all night about music. We�ll talk until we get to the next place, laughing hysterically, remembering this thing, or �Oh yeah, so-and-so produced this one.� You realize how fortunate you are and how involved everybody is to this day. The passion for music is as strong as it was when we were na�ve little kids and it seemed like the most exciting thing in the world.
Judd: With a lot of comedy people, I feel like there�s like a moment where you realize that certain friends have figured out their mental state, calmed down and evolved, and others kinda spin out. In the beginning, you do it because you�re crazy. You�re angry, you�re trying to show somebody, you have low self-esteem�as a comedian, you go onstage because you so desperately want approval, you�re willing to risk rejection by hundreds of people at a comedy club to get it. But at some point that kind of goes away and then you start creating for a different reason.
Eddie: I just try to always remember where that initial spark came from. It�s like a pilot light, and you try to make sure it doesn�t go out.
Judd: Sometimes I forget my pain. I try to remember what I was so neurotic about. It�s still there, almost as a vibration, but I forget the specifics.
Eddie: An interesting moment for me was the movie
Judd: Who�s been most helpful to you in your career? I�ve always had mentors who have shown me the way, who showed me, This is how you can do this work and not go crazy. Garry Shandling talked a lot about honesty and the importance of telling the truth in your work and honesty, and as a kid, I�d never heard about any of that. At each stage of my career, I find myself thinking,
Eddie: Oh, I feel like I�ve been learning from everybody. The other night, I got to sit with Tom Petty for a little bit and then, you know, there�s Bruce and Neil and Pete and Kim and John Doe and Ian MacKaye and Thurston and it�s all�in a way, you�re so fortunate because you�re working in something where it�s a bit of a craft or whatever. It�s an endless learning cycle.
Judd: I can never believe that I can sit and talk to any of these people. Does that ever go away for you?
Eddie: I think, at some point, you have to get out of that state. And I think it�s more comfortable to them, too, to know that you feel like you�ve earned the right. That�s only happened recently. That I feel like I�ve at least earned their respect enough to be sitting across the table from them. It probably makes them less nervous.
Judd: Exactly. (
Eddie: It�s a curiosity, for sure, and an unanswered question. I think we can all agree that there�s no evidence to say that it�s just this one thing. But I think about the people who have stopped asking the questions, who have stopped searching and stopped looking for answers. I think that when you�re committed to one religion�let alone into the level of being fundamentalist�you close yourself off to things that might be out there. There becomes a closed-mindedness where you don�t allow anything more in, and I think you�re missing out on half the plot, or half the experience of life on this planet.
Judd: You have two daughters, right?
Eddie: Yeah.
Judd: What�s your theory, going forward, regarding the war with kids to be a part of the digital generation? What will your boundaries be?
Eddie: Well, raising them Amish is maybe the answer. We�ve been doing a lot of calligraphy.
Judd: Farming?
Eddie: Yeah, farming.
Judd: But it�s a war with kids, isn�t it? They want to be a part of it so badly. My daughter always says, �That�s how we communicate, Dad, you can�t stop it.� But you can tell it�s hurting them. They are not comfortable in silence and you hate to be that groovy person who�s like, �It�s hurting their imaginations!� But you can tell that they don�t allow anything to come forward because they�re just constantly filling all the mental space.
Eddie: When we were kids, back in the day, it was like, �Don�t sit too close to the TV.� That was our only electronic boundary.
Judd: (
Eddie: Ten feet back, at all times! But now I�m worried about myself and certainly worried for them. I�m not really sure how it�s gonna�I think it�s just giving them enough they can at least balance it out. Our freedoms are going up in smoke, but if you still like take a walk, or take a hike or have a surf�if you�re lucky enough to be in a situation where you do these things or go to the park or whatever, at least that can still feel free for a while.
Judd: Do you ever think about what, emotionally, you�re giving away in your music? When I make a movie I think,
Eddie: Well, no. If the emotion is real and the idea�I guess one thing you do is try to mask it slightly.
Judd: (
Eddie: But if it�s the real thing, then you just do it and deal with the circumstances.
Judd: Are you happy, family-wise?
Eddie: My type of personality is that even when things are going really good, then I feel like something bad could happen at any minute. I think a lot about the fragility of life. From knowing people like Tomas Young, who�s a soldier who lost the use of most of his body due to a couple of gunshot wounds in Iraq, and the challenges he faces, or just having friends who are dealing with diseases�knowing these people has given me a great appreciation for life and the moment. I just see that fragility at all times.
Judd: When you start a record, do you have an idea of what it�s going to be, or is it something that evolves once you guys start working?
Eddie: Whatever the music is dictates what the record is, especially if I�m writing lyrics to someone else�s piece. What you�re listening for is, like,
Judd: Are you writing actively or is the music the beginning of your process in writing lyrics?
Eddie: It�s pretty much the beginning. I should do that more, you know, but usually it�s just something that connects all at once. Something lands on my shoulder and then it�s just a matter of waiting and getting it down. And then there�s this great writing tool�I don�t know if you�ve heard about it. It�s called a vaporizer.
Judd: (
Eddie: And so, you put your tools out on your desk and then you just start, you know, bricklaying and then you see what happens the next morning.
Judd: I think my whole process is wrong. I�m just stressed all day long trying to think of things. I�m sitting there thinking,
Eddie: I think we have a signature model coming out soon.
Judd: You should just be a sponsor of that. You could have your own brand, like the George Foreman Grill.
Eddie: Well, certainly in a few states, we could air those commercials.
Judd: But what will you tell your kids about the rock star life, and what your journey has been like? They can start googling you pretty soon. My daughter said to me recently, �You took mushrooms at a Frank Sinatra concert.�
Eddie: I think I need to get home and check on the kids.
Judd: (
Eddie: Right. Well, umm�
Judd: I just blew your mind. (
Eddie: I�m a little paranoid about the computer�.
Judd: Yeah.
Eddie: A crazy thing happened the other night. My daughter likes to listen to this ukulele record that I did�she goes to bed to it, and especially if I�m not around, at least I�m there playing her to sleep. There�s a sad song about sleeping by myself or something and it was pretty intense. She started by asking me, you know, �What�s that song
Judd: How much Disney Channel are your kids making you watch?
Eddie: I don�t want to say anything, you know, because there are certain good things about Disney.
Judd: Yes.
Eddie: But that channel is not one of them. I challenge you to find a single character, if not just even a single line in a half-hour show, that has anything of value and that isn�t said with an attitude other than, you know, being snarky.
Judd: Yeah.
Eddie: And it rubs off, you know. It�s a bad influence. I probably sound like my parents. I mean, I was listening to Country Joe and the Fish and George Carlin and, you know, Jimi Hendrix and all of that. We were pretty excited about this stuff.
Judd: You never went with the Shaun Cassidy records?
Eddie: Mmm, no.
Judd: No Partridge Family period?
Eddie: No. But Michael Jackson? Yeah.
Judd: I read somewhere that you could sing like Michael Jackson for a short period, a short prepubescent period.
Eddie: He�s an amazing singer.
Judd: Oh, absolutely.
Eddie: I had this period in Chicago where we lived with some foster brothers�it was like a home for boys kind of thing�and there was a basement and we had a lot of Motown records, Sly and the Family Stone and James Brown, and we had kids of all races and all�it was a really good upbringing in that way. It made you grow up and toughen up a little bit, even though I was only like seven or eight. But man, Michael Jackson was an anomaly. The stuff coming off of that record player. That wasn�t kitsch. He could really sing.
Judd: I used to watch the Jacksons� variety show.
Eddie: That was after the cartoon and all that, right?
Judd: Yeah, the cartoon. What was the animal he had in the cartoon? Did he have a mouse or�
Eddie: They had a snake and two mice. I show my kids that thing.
Judd: You have those shows on video?
Eddie: No, sixteen-millimeter film. We like to watch films on the wall.
Judd: Oh, wow.
Eddie: It�s a part of their Amish upbringing.
I was given the chance to guest-edit the comedy issue of
Judd Apatow: I first met Paul [Feig] in the mid-eighties, hanging around �the Ranch,� this incredibly cheap house a bunch of comedians rented really deep in the boonies in the San Fernando Valley. It was all these guys who had come out to L.A. from the Midwest, and all they did was smoke cigarettes and watch infomercials. I also used to see Paul in comedy clubs and thought he was really funny.
Paul Feig: We would go out and do our stand-up shows and reconvene at the Ranch and play poker and drink coffee until the sun came up. That was our routine every night for years. Judd was younger than everyone else�he was really considered to be just a kid. At the same time, he was booking his own stand-up night at some club, working for Comic Relief. I would say, �This guy is really smart. Everybody should be nice to him because he could be running the town someday.� He was the most mature seventeen-year-old I�d ever met in my life.
Judd: By the late nineties, Paul�s acting career wasn�t going anywhere, so he started trying to write. One day I bumped into him and said, �If you have any ideas for TV, let me know.� I didn�t think he would hand me a finished script a few months later, and I certainly didn�t expect it to be the best thing I have ever worked on. That just
Paul Feig: I had just come off of a year of trying to promote this movie I�d written, directed, produced, and paid for, and I had lost a good-paying acting job before that on
Dan McDermott (
Scott Sassa: Networks then programmed towards something called �least objectionable programming,� which meant the show that would suck the least so people wouldn�t change the channel.
Paul Feig: We went over to NBC, and I remember feeling that �new person in the industry� kind of indignation, like, �If they want to change this at all, I�m not going to do the show.� So I start to make that speech and Shelley goes, �Don�t change a thing.� It was like,
Dan McDermott: Judd and Paul said, �We want to try to cast real kids�we don�t want to cast TV kids.� And, again, Scott basically said, �Sounds good to me!�
Paul Feig: My friends and I weren�t popular in high school, we weren�t dating all the time, and we were just trying to get through our lives. It was important to me to show that side. I wanted to leave a chronicle�to make people who had gone through it laugh, but also as a primer for kids going in, to say, �Here�s what you can expect. It�s horrifying but all you should really care about is getting through it. Get your friends, have your support group. And learn to be able to laugh at it.�
Judd: The pilot had a very daring existential idea, which was that a young, really smart girl sits with her dying grandmother and asks her if she sees �the light,� and her grandma says no. And all the rules go out the window. The girl decides to have a more experimental high school experience, because she doesn�t know if she believes anymore. I was always surprised that the network didn�t notice that that�s what our pilot was about.
Paul Feig: I also really wanted the show to be about the fear of sex. I got tired of every teenager being portrayed as horny and completely cool with sex, because that was not my experience.
Judd: Paul felt like most kids are not trying to get sex, but trying to avoid that moment. You could split them into kids who are constantly trying to get older and kids that are desperately trying to hold on to their immaturity.
Paul Feig: First day of prep, we get into the office, and Judd�s like, �Let�s tear the script apart.� And I said, �What do you mean? They don�t want us to.� And he said, �Yeah, I know, but let�s see if we can make it better.� And it was this stripping away of the old Paul Feig, who was a complete control freak, who wouldn�t let people change a word of anything he wrote.
Judd: Paul showed up when we started production with this bible he�d written about the show, hundreds of pages long, with every character in detail�what they wore, their favorite songs. I asked him to write another few episodes to explore the world, and he banged out two more. We took a lot of moments from them and put them into the pilot.
(Jake Kasdan, twenty-four, is hired to direct the pilot; he will stick around for the run of the series, directing nearly a third of the episodes and helping edit the rest.)
Judd: Jake and I had the same agent, so I was always hearing a lot about this amazing young director. He had made a detective movie called
(Casting begins.)
Judd: In Paul�s pilot, he really understood the geeks, but you could tell he didn�t hang out with the freaks because it wasn�t as specific. So I said we should just try to cast unique characters and rewrite the pilot to their personalities.
Allison Jones (
Justin Falvey (
(Linda Cardellini, then twenty-three, is cast in the lead as sixteen-year-old Lindsay Weir.)
Linda Cardellini: Here�s this girl [Lindsay] who desperately wants to be away from her parents and what they know her as, but at the same time truly does not want to disappoint or rebel against them and really loves them. It was a more interesting approach than all the other teenagers I was reading, who just hated their parents.
Paul Feig: Lindsay was the only character not based on somebody I knew. But Linda was the exact person I had in my head. When she walked in, it was just, like, �She�s alive!�
Jake Kasdan: We used to say in editing that you could always cut to Linda and she�s doing the right thing.
(After a long search, John Francis Daley, thirteen, gets the role of Lindsay�s younger brother, Sam.)
John Francis Daley: I was really sick when I auditioned. And I think that helped me ultimately, because it let me put my guard down. I was just focused on not throwing up.
Linda Cardellini: John was so natural. One day on the set I was sitting thinking about my part, and John was shoving his spaghetti in his mouth that we were supposed to eat in the dinner scene, going, �It�s so great! All we have to do is act! It�s, like, the easiest job in the world.� I thought,
(James Franco, twenty, is cast as freak Daniel Desario, a slightly goofy bad boy.)
Jake Kasdan: The first impression was �This guy�s going to be an enormous movie star. We should grab him immediately.�
Judd: We didn�t think of him as handsome. We thought his mouth was too big for his face and he seemed perfect to be a small-town cool guy who wasn�t as cool as he thought he was. When all the women in our office started talking about how gorgeous he was, me and Feig started laughing because we just didn�t see it.
John Francis Daley: Franco went to Michigan for two weeks to get into character, and we were joking that he lived under an overpass for a few nights. He was always the one that had a Camus novel, heavily dog-eared, and his car was so full of junk that it looked like he lived out of it.
James Franco: I knew that Paul had grown up just outside of Detroit, and I found his high school. I ran into his audio/video teacher, who showed me where Paul used to sit in the AV room. I saw all the kids at summer school, and there was this guy the teacher pointed out to me, this kind of rough-around-the-edges-looking kid. He had a kind face, but he looked like he�d been in a little bit of trouble. And I remember thinking,
(Jason Segel, nineteen, is cast as pothead drummer Nick Andopolis.)
Jake Kasdan: The actors would walk in and we�d be like, �Hey, how�s it going?� A little casual kibitzing to get some sense of who this person is. Jason walked in, and he said, �I�d like to just get into this, if I could.� And we were like, �Let�s do it!� and he was just hilarious and endlessly charismatic. Judd connected to him immediately and deeply.
Judd: I loved writing for Jason. That�s what
(Seth Rogen, sixteen, who will play acerbic freak Ken Miller, is found on a casting trip to Vancouver.)
Judd: Everything he said made us laugh. The smart, sweet, grounded person we now know him to be seemed impossible back then. He seemed like a mad, troublemaking Canadian lunatic who was quiet and angry and might kill you.
Seth Rogen: At the time, I kind of had a chip on my shoulder, you know, because I hadn�t gotten any girls to sleep with me yet. I was incredibly angry and repressed, and I think they saw me as this kind of weird, sarcastic guy and started writing towards that. But then they got to know me and saw me as a nice guy, and that revealed itself as the show progressed.
J. Elvis Weinstein (
(Busy Philipps, nineteen, is cast as Daniel�s tough blond girlfriend, Kim Kelly�initially Lindsay�s antagonist, but eventually a friend.)
Seth Rogen: Busy scared me at first. She�s just kind of intimidating. She�s a little loud and she�s kind of physical. She�ll punch you and smack you if she doesn�t like what you did, as an exclamation.
Busy Philipps: I ran into Linda, who I knew peripherally. And she said, �Hey, are you going to do that thing? You have to do it�it�d be so fun to do together.� So I decided, against my agent�s better judgment, to do what essentially at the beginning was a guest-starring role.
(Martin Starr, sixteen, is cast as Sam�s friend Bill Haverchuck. Gangly, shuffling, bespectacled, he is the most outwardly strange and inwardly deep of the central geeks.)
Paul Feig: You�re seeing hundreds of kids, so every person you see you�re like,
Martin Starr: I probably more than anything was focused on what came after that audition in my life. Like going to get food or going to a friend�s house. My life wasn�t focused entirely on whatever this audition was.
Jake Kasdan: The blank stare and the way Martin�s doing those affects, mouth hanging open�it�s just this incredibly subtle, inspired comic character. We figured out how to write to it and play to it, but it was not on the page initially and it wasn�t him playing himself, either. He could make you cry laughing by doing almost nothing. Then it turned out he could do anything.
Thomas F. Wilson (
Debra McGuire (
(Samm Levine, sixteen, who will play Sam�s other best friend, Neal Schweiber, a self-styled sophisticate and wit, is discovered on a tape from New York.)
Samm Levine: My audition wasn�t terribly good, but I had asked beforehand if I could do my William Shatner as part of it.
Paul Feig: He looks past the camera to the casting director and goes, �Now? Can I?� and then he goes into a William Shatner impression that was so corny and silly. And Judd�s like, �That�s all of us when we were in school just trying to be funny, doing stupid shit.�
John Francis Daley: Flying from New York to shoot the pilot, Samm Levine came up to me and said, �Hey, are you on the show as well? Come up to my row at some point and we�ll chat.� Who talks like that at that age? We told each other jokes for a couple hours and became friends. Martin was the exact opposite, very mischievous, liked to get a rise out of people. Samm was more the Vegas comedian with the puns and the quips. They got on each other�s nerves immediately, but were friends at the same time. It was a very odd, bickering-family kind of friendship. That I got a lot of enjoyment out of.
(The pilot is completed by early spring of 1999. In May, NBC picks up
Paul Feig: I remember I had looked at Judd right before we showed the kids to the network and said to him, �Are we about to ruin these kids� lives? What do we do to not let that happen?�
Joe Flaherty (
(The producers assemble a writing staff.)
Mike White (
Paul Feig: We did our infamous two weeks with the writers locking ourselves in a room and telling personal stories. I wrote a list of questions for everybody to answer: �What was the best thing that happened to you in high school? What was the worst thing that happened to you in high school? Who were you in love with and why?�
Judd: �What was your worst drug experience? Who was your first girlfriend? What�s the first sexual thing you ever did? What�s the most humiliating thing that ever happened to you during high school?�
Paul Feig: That�s where most of our stories came from. Weirder stuff happens to people in real life than it does on TV. It was a personal show for me and I wanted it to be personal for everybody else.
Gabe Sachs (
Jeff Judah (
Patty Lin (
J. Elvis Weinstein: Paul was the heart of the show, I always felt. I think everyone wanted Paul to be the heart of the show.
Steve Bannos (
Judd: Paul remembered every detail of everything that had happened to him in high school: every happy moment, every humiliation. The running gag in the writers� room was that Paul would tell a horrible story and I would say, �How old were you when that happened?� Implying probably twelve, and it was always seventeen. I had seen him as this cool comedian. I hadn�t realized he had all these incredibly funny, dark stories. He
Paul Feig: There was a store I used to shop in during high school, a disco-flavored men�s clothing store. One day one of the salesmen drags me over. He goes, �This is the hottest thing, man,� and shows me this big denim jumpsuit with the flare pants and the big collar. To this day if I get a new piece of clothing I can�t wait to wear it. So I could not be stopped from wearing it to school, and the minute I walked in the front door I knew I had made a huge mistake. It was fun, on the show, re-creating the most horrific moments of my past.
Jake Kasdan: From the beginning, we thought that everything about the show should be painfully, painstakingly real. We were going to separate it from all of the other high school shows by being radically unglamorous.
Miguel Arteta (
Russ Alsobrook (
Busy Philipps: Paul and Judd awkwardly tried to talk to Linda and me about how, now that we�re on a TV show, we shouldn�t think about losing weight, which had never even occurred to me. They were like, �Don�t get crazy now�don�t think you have to be an actress that�s really skinny.� And I was reading things in the press about how we were the anti�
Linda Cardellini: They didn�t want us to look like people in other shows�which you don�t really know how to take. It was comforting on one hand, and not so much on the other.
John Francis Daley: Paul talked to me about the fact that I was basically playing him, but he didn�t try to steer me in any direction. They encouraged your true personality to shine through and shape your character. The way Sam is so amused by his dad was totally because I thought Joe Flaherty was the funniest guy in the world.
Bryan Gordon (
Jason Segel: I just watched and learned, doing scenes with him. He�s so fast. There�s a lot of improv on all the stuff we do with Judd. When you�re young, you kind of think,
(Between NBC�s making the pilot and picking up the show, Garth Ancier arrives from the WB network�home of
Dan McDermott: I remember getting the call that said, �Garth doesn�t get the show. He went to boarding school and Princeton�he doesn�t understand public school.� And that was the first flag that went up.
Paul Feig: We flew to New York for the up-fronts [annual presentations of new shows to potential advertisers]. I go to this NBC party at �21� and Garth�s there. And I go, �Hey, Garth, thank you so much for picking up the show.� And he�s talking to some guy and looks at me and goes, �Deliver the goods, man. Just deliver the goods.� And he points to the guy with his thumb and goes, �Don�t end up like this guy.� I don�t know who that guy was, but he gave this sort of sad laugh. And I walked away going, �We�re dead.�
(The show gets a time slot, Saturdays at 8 P.M., and a premiere date, September 25, 1999.)
Justin Falvey: You hear �Saturdays at eight� and you think,
Judd: We were up against the tenth season of
Seth Rogen: You just have to conclude that people would rather watch shirtless dudes get tackled than a TV show about emotional shit that�s funny.
Paul Feig: The reviews were great, and the premiere had a really high rating. The first Monday back I stood on a table and read the ratings and everybody cheered. And the next week we just dropped huge. And Joe Flaherty was quoted as saying, �Yeah, Paul never came back in and read the ratings to us again after that first week.�
Joe Flaherty: I never got my hopes up. I�d gone through something similar with
Paul Feig: We were the lowest-rated show on NBC several weeks in a row.
(Despite the ratings, the cast and crew continue to refine and improve their show.)
James Franco: I remember Judd saying, �You guys are acting too cool. You�re acting like young guys who just got cast in a TV show. We need dudes that are a little insecure.� He said, �We�re going to show you your audition, because this is what we liked.� So I watched it and I�m like,
Busy Philipps: Judd and Paul early on said they liked the weird physicality between James and me. Presumably both of our characters come from abusive households, and you parrot what your family does. In the pilot, James did all of that stuff. Kicking me and all sorts of rough behavior. But I would always go back at him. We had a real intense thing when we worked together.
Sarah Hagan (
James Franco: I always wanted to wear the beanie, and the network didn�t like it. They were all about �We need to see his hair. He needs to look handsome.�
Seth Rogen: James would do stuff at times just to push people�s buttons. I think he threw milk in someone�s face as an improv, and I remember thinking,
Judd: We used to say, �Two out of ten of Franco�s improvs are good, but those two are just historic.�
Natasha Melnick (
Russ Alsobrook: It wasn�t wasted: We were trying to find these comedic nuggets of gold that might be scattered throughout a ten-minute take. At one point Eastman Kodak gave me a lot of swag because we�d shot a million feet of film.
Judd: There were moments when I would say to the actors, �We�re going to do the long version of this. I don�t care about the words�I just want it to be truthful.� In �The Little Things,� the episode where Seth finds out his girlfriend has �ambiguous genitalia,� it was important to us that it was legitimate and thoughtful. I took him into my office with Jessica Campbell [who played the girlfriend] and asked, �How would this go down if she was telling you this information?�
Seth Rogen: He had us improvise and rewrote them to what we improvised. That was the first time I saw you can make weird moments work if you treat them totally honestly.
Judd: That story came about because I was listening to Howard Stern and there was a doctor on, talking about ambiguous genitalia. I thought,
Jon Kasdan (
Judd: It became one of our favorite episodes. In a way, it was a fuck-you to NBC, like, �Now we�re going to get really ambitious and aggressive with story lines that you would never approve if the show had a chance of surviving.�
Jake Kasdan: There was this sense that it wasn�t going to last, so the network wasn�t really going to try to fix it. I�m not sure you could get away with those things on a show that isn�t about to be canceled.
(As with the improvised scene between Rogen and Campbell, the series�s depth and nuance owes much to the chemistry of the cast.)
Paul Feig: John and Linda would do this thing where they would talk to each other like brother and sister, just on the set when they were waiting around. They kind of got on each other�s nerves, but it was their game. That�s when I was like,
Miguel Arteta: Judd knew how to get into the heads of these kids. He really knew their psychology. He made them bring what was happening in their real life into the performances.
John Francis Daley: Over the course of the show, Martin and I would hang out, and Samm would be the odd one out, and then Martin and Samm would hang out, and I�d be the odd man out. There were scenes when we had to act all lovey-dovey with each other and felt exactly the opposite.
Jeff Judah: Seth was stuck studying for his GED and wasn�t happy about that, because he wanted to hang out with Franco and Jason and Martin.
Seth Rogen: I dropped out of high school when I started doing the show. I told them I was doing correspondence school from Canada and just wrote
James Franco: I was interested in the writing, so after hounding Judd and Paul they said, �You want to see how it�s written?� They took me into Judd�s office, and they wrote a scene right in front of me, just improvising as the characters out loud. That was really important for me.
Judd: There�s that moment early in your career when you will work harder than any other point afterward. And you can see that in
Linda Cardellini: Everybody was so talented and nobody knew it yet. People would hang out with each other and practice and play and think of things.
Jason Segel: We would get the script on a Friday, and Seth and James and I would get together at my house every Sunday, without fail, and do the scenes over and over and improve them and really think about them. We loved the show. And we took the opportunity really, really seriously.
Seth Rogen: We felt if we made the scenes better on the weekend, if we came in with better jokes, they would film it. And they would! And we didn�t know it at the time, but that was completely unindicative of probably every other show that was on television.
(Ratings remain low as the series becomes hard even for fans to find.)
Paul Feig: We were on for two weeks, off for four weeks because of the World Series, on for another six and then off for two months, moved, put up against
Judd: We started a website, but NBC refused to let us put the address on any of our ads because they didn�t want people to know the Internet existed. They were worried about losing viewers to it.
Becky Ann Baker (
Scott Sassa: We had this constant battle with Judd about making things more upbeat. He thought we were going to put ponies and unicorns in, and we just wanted some wins for the characters�without losing the essence of the show.
Judd: There were tough episodes. The toughest was probably when Jason Segel tried to be a drummer, and he went out and auditioned, and he was horrible. And we really played that moment out there, when he realizes he�s not good enough to do the thing he dreams of doing.
Linda Cardellini: Life is filled with moments where you have to sit alone with yourself, and I think this show let our characters do that in a way that wasn�t normal at the time. You don�t really know what to say or do, so you just have to sit there in the uncomfortableness.
Bryan Gordon: The show played silences, and television is afraid of silences. But silences just speak to so much about teenagers.
(A series finale is shot as the last episode of the initial thirteen-episode order, in case of cancellation.)
Paul Feig: Judd came to me and was like, �This thing could be dead, so you should write the series finale now.� And then it was going to be the one I got to direct. It was terrifying, but it came out really well. Then the network ordered five more.
Judd: Paul was supposed to direct one of the first episodes, and at the last second I pulled him off it because we weren�t in a groove with the staff writing the show yet, and it was so much Paul�s vision that he couldn�t disappear. Then when I realized the show was probably going to get canceled, I said to Paul, �You should write and direct this finale.� And it�s clearly the best episode of the entire series.
Linda Cardellini: To do the last episode in the middle felt rebellious, like we were part of dictating our own fate.
Becky Ann Baker: In the finale I�m putting Lindsay on the bus, where she was supposedly going off to a summer college experience. �I miss you already� was the last thing I said to her. And that was all so unfortunately true.
Samm Levine: We�d be out on location. Judd�s phone would ring, and he would walk twenty feet away, and he�d be pacing on the phone for forty minutes. And I remember thinking,
Judd: We were saying to the network, We need a full season [twenty-two episodes] to attract an audience. And the order wouldn�t come, and I would just rant and rave. It was like begging your parents not to get divorced, trying to save the show. And then they did order one episode.
Samm Levine: Judd said, �Scott Sassa said, �If you get a ratings share higher than my shoe size, we�ll order more episodes.� � And mercifully he was not a tall man.
Jake Kasdan: The thing they always used to say was �We want these kids to have a victory.� I think what they were trying to say was �Is there any way it could be a little less depressing?� And it�s a fair question when no one�s really watching. We were telling really unconventional stories where the victories were so small they could be confused with not actual victories.
Judd: Garth took me out to lunch once and asked for more victories. And so we did an episode where Bill plays softball. We have this triumphant moment where he catches the ball, but he doesn�t realize everyone�s tagging up. He�s celebrating catching the ball, but he�s actually losing the game by not throwing it to home plate. That�s as far as we could get.
Paul Feig: The irony was that the network was very, very supportive. The interference we had was the interference of people that wanted to make it as good as they could. But Judd was a screamer back then. He would take them on, hard-core.
Judd: We were willing to go down for the show. It would have been awful if one of us said, �Let�s do all these changes�I really want to keep this job.�
Jason Segel: We didn�t really have to be told we were being canceled. We watched the craft service table: It started out with, like, cold cuts and delicious snacks, and it was reduced to half a thing of creamer and some Corn Pops by the end.
Judd: What happens is they shorten your order. Not that they officially shorten the order�they just
(One week after the wrap party, March 19, 2000)
Paul Feig: My mother died suddenly, and a couple of days later we got canceled. I was sitting with attorneys when Judd called. And I was just so bombed out from my mom and from the season, and the episode that aired the night before hadn�t done well at all. And so part of me is going,
Judd: An underling calls and tells you the show is canceled and then they say, �Garth is going to call in a little bit.� They give you an hour to digest, so by the time he calls you don�t really have the energy to argue. I always wondered if Garth had me on speakerphone, with his underlings laughing as I cried and begged.
Leslie Mann (
Paul Feig: I remember everyone at the network coming to my mom�s funeral. And Judd getting some secret joy of �Good, I�m glad they�re all here.� It made me laugh: He�s enjoying the fact that they had to come and see me in a diminished state.
Linda Cardellini: I was asked to go on
Judd: I felt like a father to everybody, and I felt like everyone�s world was about to collapse. I felt responsible, like I had to fight to have it survive so that their lives would be okay, so that their careers could get launched. And so to completely fail was devastating to me. And especially for Paul, because this was Paul�s story.
Paul Feig: We were still in postproduction on the last three episodes. The network was like, �Finish them up,� but we didn�t have anywhere to show them.
Judd: We stayed in editing for months, obsessing over every detail, in both rage and depression, for a show that had been canceled. I was so upset, I herniated a disk and had to have surgery.
Paul Feig: And that�s when we did that day at the Museum of Television and Radio in L.A., where we showed the four episodes that hadn�t aired. That was the coolest thing ever, in a theater packed with fans, with every episode just rocking the house.
Samm Levine: Scott Sassa called me himself and said, �I loved the show. But at the end of the day, it�s a business.� I�ve been on a lot of canceled shows since then and I�ve never heard from the network president.
(Sassa had decided to cancel the show when he saw a rough cut for Paul�s final episode, in which Lindsay, apparently headed for a summer school program, instead runs off with Kim to follow the Grateful Dead.)
Scott Sassa: They show Lindsay traveling in the bus�I almost popped the tape out, because I thought I knew where they were going�and all of a sudden the bus goes by and the freaks are there in that van going to the Grateful Dead concert. And I thought,
Judd: I only found out later that when Scott Sassa saw the cut of the finale and he saw them get in the van he realized we would never do the things that would make the show commercial. That doesn�t take away from the fact that Scott was the biggest supporter of the show; it�s only good because he gave us all this creative leeway. But that�s the funny thing about this work: You can do something you really like and someone else just looks at it and says, �I need to end this today.�
Paul Feig: There was a moment when we got canceled where I was like,
Judd: Whenever I see an opportunity to use any of the people from
Paul Feig: I�m still very friendly with them all. Judd was the one who really kept on working with everybody; he brought them along to their next level. I�m like the mom who sits at home and watches the kids become successful and takes great joy in their accomplishments.
Judd: Part of the problem of the show was it should have been on HBO. Everything that�s popular now you might call �independent television.�
Martin Starr: I can�t express how fortunate I feel to have been a part of something so appreciated and so loved. I�d feel so sorry for myself if I had done a teen movie and people were quoting the dumbest lines in the world everywhere I went. I feel so fortunate that it�s something I care so much about and that I can connect with the people that connect with it. I got really, really lucky.
From the beginning, Garry Shandling was one of my favorite comedians. I used to watch him religiously when he was the guest host on
Judd Apatow: So you guest-hosted
Garry Shandling: I think I had done the show eleven times. And I had done well, fortunately, just about every time. What happened was that Albert Brooks was supposed to guest-host, but he got sick the day before and so they called me, twenty-four hours ahead of when the show was being taped, and said we�d like you to guest-host tomorrow night. I had twenty-four hours to prepare.
Judd: Really?
Garry: Yeah. I mean, it was very weird. But
Judd: What kind of preparation would you do for the show? I mean, you�re interviewing people, which is new to you. Plus, you have to have a ten-minute monologue okayed. How did you go about preparing all that?
Garry: It was interesting because I hadn�t worked in about twelve days�which is a long time for a comic to go without working. Because you don�t keep your chops up on the stage otherwise. So I assembled a monologue of material I had done before�there was nothing else to do. And I went out to two clubs that night, tried to figure out what I wanted to do for my monologue. And just try to get my feet back on the stage, because I hadn�t worked in two weeks.
Judd: And when you watched it, were you happy?
Garry: Pretty much. I mean, it�s hard for me to look at it and be objective. I can�t see it. But it seemed like it went well, for my first time. I don�t think it was, like, amazing or anything. Did you see it?
Judd: No, I didn�t. I was doing interviews that night at the Improv. But you must have been scared to death, right?
Garry: Well, I wasn�t real scared because I had mentally prepared for doing that all along. I mean,
Judd: What kind of feedback did you get? Did you get offers afterwards?
Garry: My manager doesn�t tell me about all the offers. But I did get requests to do what we call personal appearance work, which is in clubs and stuff. And I guess there were some sitcom offers, but I�m just not that interested in that.
Judd: Acting is something you�re
Garry: I�m interested in acting, I just don�t know in what vehicle yet. My immediate goal is to sell a show and get it on the air. A talk variety show. Something like
Judd:
Garry: They were smart. Ratings-wise, they know I�m not going to get any ratings. But they were smart because they slipped me in when Albert Brooks had dropped out. The night before, they didn�t even mention that I was going to be guest-hosting, so everybody who tuned in assumed it was Albert Brooks. And then I�m sure, out of curiosity, they watched for a while. I think, in their minds, they were taking a risk putting me in there. But I had pretty much proven that I was strong and in control of what I do. I think they felt that I could do it, and I think they were more than satisfied with how I did. It was exciting. It was very emotional.
Judd: So you�re working bigger rooms these days. You�re in Tahoe right now, right?
Garry: I�m in Tahoe, opening for Tony Orlando. But I�ve been doing big rooms for about two years.
Judd: And how does that compare to, you know, playing clubs in Los Angeles?
Garry: It�s very different. For one thing, it depends who you�re opening for and what kind of crowd they draw. Sometimes in these big rooms�like Reno, or Tahoe, or Vegas�they draw an older audience that�s totally unlike what you find in a comedy club, which is generally younger, and a little hipper. So you work it differently. You have to work it in a broader, more commercial way. I have to take out most of my hip material. And some of my singles material has to go because it�s been so long since some of these people have been single, they just don�t relate to it.
Judd: How would you describe your type of humor?
Garry: Oh man, I can�t see it objectively.
Judd: It�s not that conventional. It�s ideas and thoughts with observation. Some comedians now, they�re just doing straight observational humor. But your act has a whole new dimension to it.
Garry: You should tell
Judd: That�s how I see it from the outside�you know, it�s like your ideas on things, and I think it�s great, just�
Garry: The most important thing a comic can do is write from his insides. As clich� as that sounds, a lot of comics start out thinking that they just should write something funny. Which is not the answer. You have to write from personal experience. What you see on the stage is really how I am when I�m funny.
Judd: Like with your friends?
Garry: I can�t see how it�s different. All I know is when I watch, I go,
Judd: Who did you write for?
Garry: I wrote for
Judd: What would be an example of how a piece of material developed?
Garry: I�ll tell you an interesting story�I mean, this is unlike other material of mine. I do this joke in my act: I say, �I�ve heard every excuse for a woman not going to bed with me. I think I�ve heard them all. I remember this one girl actually said to me, �Look, not with this Falkland Islands thing.� �
Judd: (
Garry: �And I said, �That was over a year ago!� And she said, �I still haven�t gotten over it yet.� And I said, �Well, I can understand that, Mrs. Thatcher.� �
Judd: (
Garry: I could tell you about the derivation of so many jokes. Because some of them take a year�literally�from the time I get an idea to the time I get the line exactly right. With the Falkland Islands joke, I originally wrote a joke where I would come out and say, �Boy, I�m just not meeting any women. I don�t know if it�s this Falkland Islands thing or what.�
Judd: (
Garry: And then, as time went by, I changed it to �I�ve heard every excuse for a woman not going to bed with me. I remember this one girl said, �Not with this Falkland Islands thing.� � Which is a little more hip, and gets a laugh. And I was telling David Brenner that joke, and he said, �At that point, you oughta say, �That was over a year ago,� because that�s funnier.� And then I added, �Well, she still hasn�t gotten over it yet.� The Thatcher line came later. So it just kind of kept going, you know.
Judd: Can you tell me about another one?
Garry: Okay, there�s one I�m working on now. I actually did this joke on
Judd: (
Garry: �And I started to shout: �Someone turn off the porch light!� � And it�s interesting, because I don�t know yet how this joke is ultimately going to evolve. I actually did this joke on
Judd: Yeah.
Garry: Because that�s what bees do. And then I said, �Or I�ll wake up the next morning, and I�ll be flinging myself against the screen door.� And then I added the part about �turn off the porch light,� which I think paints the picture of what bees do�which is go for the light, you know.
Judd: That is really great. When did this all begin, this interest in comedy?
Garry: When I was a kid. I had a total interest in comedians when I was ten years old.
Judd: Who were the comedians that you idolized?
Garry: Woody Allen is my idol, period. I mean, I think he�s as funny as you can get. Others? I like a lot of people. Mort Sahl. He is hip and funny. Dick Shawn, Johnny Carson. I think he�s underrated in a way. I think he�s a really funny man.
Judd: Did you ever see Woody Allen work live in a club?
Garry: No. I grew up in Tucson, Arizona, where there�s just nothing. I�d only seen comedians on TV. But my folks started going to Vegas when I was like thirteen, fourteen, fifteen, and I saw Joey Bishop and people like that there. And I actually remember knowing some of his jokes before he delivered them, and thinking,
Judd: Who isn�t?
Garry: And it�s really a wonderful story. The first time I ever wrote any comedy material, I was nineteen. George Carlin was working in a club in Phoenix. This is when he had just let his hair grow long and he was starting to do honest material about his life and stuff. And I met him and I asked him to read my material, and to tell me what he thought. And he read my material. He was so supportive. He said, �I don�t buy material, I write all my own material.� But he gave me a lot of feedback and encouragement. Then, ten years later, I met George again and was able to thank him for that moment. He�s a wonderful guy.
Judd: What kind of background did you have that you could just write this stuff?
Garry: I was an electrical engineering major, if you can believe that. And then I switched to marketing, and then I switched to creative writing. I finally got a degree in business and I went to graduate school for one year. And just took writing classes. I�d always been a pretty good writer. It�s just one of those things. I can sit down and fill a page pretty easily. And so I moved to L.A. and I didn�t know exactly what direction I was going to take, and I met a guy who said, �Well, try writing a script and see what happens.� I wrote a script for
Judd: Yeah.
Garry: But then I was sitting at the typewriter one day and I realized that this was not what I wanted to do the rest of my life. And so when I was twenty-eight, I sort of had a midlife crisis�you know, twenty-eight is midlife for a Jewish guy. I said,
Judd: Were there audition nights?
Garry: Yeah, I went to audition nights. I was working in discos and health food restaurants. It was bizarre.
Judd: Jerry Seinfeld, when I interviewed him, said that he did a disco and no one even knew he was performing.
Garry: I�m sure we�ve all had the same experiences. I worked a health food restaurant for about four months where people would just come in�there would be six people, eating rice and vegetables, and I would do forty minutes.
Judd: Only in Hollywood, I guess.
Garry: When you�re first starting, it�s just important to be on the stage. It doesn�t matter if people respond, because you just have to get over your stage fright.
Judd: Was
Garry: Yeah. They like me and they�re supportive of me and they know that I work hard at what I do. I try to get better all the time. And I still don�t think I�m near my potential.
Judd: You feel you have a ways to go?
Garry: Yeah, I don�t think the things I�m doing on the stage now are what I�ll be doing five years from now.
Judd: What will you be doing?
Garry: I hope it�ll be even more honest than it is now, more personal. Because it takes time for people to get to know you. I mean, Richard Pryor is the perfect example. If you look at what he was doing ten or fifteen years ago, it�s different than what he does now, because we
Judd: What are your long-range goals?
Garry: Well, first of all, my long-range goal is to be funnier. It really is. And to get better, and to keep digging inside myself. Number two, I guess, is to find the right vehicle, either on television or film, that�ll allow me to be funny in the way that I�m funny, you know.
Judd: Well, thank you very much.
Garry: I�m sorry I wasn�t funny this morning.
Judd: This show is pretty serious.
Garry: Okay.
Judd: This is the comedy interview program that talks serious about comedy.
Most of the important breaks and rewarding experiences in my career can be directly traced to Garry Shandling. Let me run through it quickly here for you: One of the first jobs I got as a writer was writing jokes for the Grammys for Garry Shandling in 1990. After that, he agreed to do a cameo on the pilot of
There is no one who has taught me more or been kinder to me in this comedy world than Garry Shandling. As a kid, my only dream was to be a comedian. I never thought about being a writer. Garry was the first person who ever sat me down and said, �Look, this is what a story is about. This is how you write in this format.� He talked a lot about how the key was to try to get to the emotional core or the truth of each character, which I had never heard before. He taught me that comedy is about truth and revealing yourself, and these are all lessons I apply every day in my work. In fact, when we started
Judd Apatow: Who made you the man you are today?
Garry Shandling: I can�t discuss that without having a shitload of coffee first.
Judd: To get it all out? Oh, he�s spilling it. He spilled it already.
Garry: See, this is why I don�t eat in therapy. Do you ever eat?
Judd: The second you said, �That�s why I don�t eat in therapy,� I thought,
Garry: I know I�ve had sessions where I�ve said, �You should think about having at least a salad bar,� to the therapist. Seriously, though, I don�t know who made me the man I am except to say what I feel in my heart relative to Roy London.
Judd: Yeah.
Garry: Roy influenced me gigantically when I was about twenty-seven years old and I stumbled into his acting class. Instead of talking about acting, we ended up talking about the world and people. Those conversations are what gave me the confidence to move on. Up until then, I was a confused young man who was writing for
Judd: Who were you best at writing for? Which character?
Garry: That�s a good question. Lamont. (
Judd: The Asian character�s name was Ah Chew?
Garry: Well, this was when political correctness was required nowhere in the script.
Judd: Do you think the world was better when you could name a character Ah Chew?
Garry: I cannot judge that right now. Even just alone with you, I cannot judge that. But I will say, the two producers on that show, Saul Turteltaub and Bernie Orenstein, taught me a lot. When I used to turn in my script, they�d go, �You don�t have an ending,� and I realized, �Oh, the writer actually is supposed to do the
Judd: There�s nothing
Garry: Well, I didn�t know how to make it funny unless someone caught fire, and that certainly wasn�t an option. Nor was I equipped, as a younger man, to write the father-son emotionality that they were looking for at the end�so they had to help me. I remember I wrote three of those scripts in one season and then I went to the story editor Ted Bergman, who really helped me, and said, �How do you write fifteen more? Or
Judd: So your shrink made you the man you are today.
Garry: She really did help me. Because I didn�t think I had the right to be bored. You�re just so grateful to have this job. Who am I to be bored by writing for
Judd: That�s what we do: We instantly go to guilt and shame.
Garry: That�s totally right.
Judd: In all situations, I go straight to that feeling.
Garry: Who were your early mentors?
Judd: Well, my grandfather Bobby Shad was this guy who produced Sarah Vaughan and Lightnin� Hopkins and Charlie Parker and Janis Joplin. He raised money when he was a kid�he was a poor kid�and would pay jazz musicians to let him record them and then he would make records and sell them in stores. Eventually, he started his own label, in the forties, and then�
Garry: You kind of saw the whole creative process right there.
Judd: Yeah, that�s what I thought. I remember feeling like,
Garry: It was the only interview I could get.
Judd: (
Garry: That�s right. You remind me of two or three things. One, for some reason, is that so many of the comedians and comedy writers I know all pretended like they had radio shows, talking into their tape recorders or whatever when they were kids�it seems to be a common theme. I used to do that, too, but I never actually called anyone and interviewed them. You�ve always had bigger balls than most kids in comedy. The second thing is, I was a late bloomer. I was confused until I was twenty-seven and, as I said, started to get into that Roy London mentality. That�s when I realized I wanted to take the self-discovery path. I figured that would fit naturally into whatever project I felt was right, where I could continue to search this human condition thing we always talk about�because the human condition is hilariously awful.
Judd: I never thought about any of those things until I worked for you. I didn�t think in terms of the human story. You started thinking about it from Roy, and then I worked for you, and then you started talking to me about it, and�
Garry: Yeah, this is the big bang of it. By the way, my own belief is that I know how the big bang started�everyone�s confused�which is simply that shit happens.
Judd: Just random?
Garry: It may not be random, but �shit happens� is what we end up writing.
Judd: We�re getting into chaos theory right now.
Garry: When we were doing
Judd: You always used to say that
Garry: And what people are always covering up�the tension between what they�re covering emotionally in life and what�s really going on inside them. What you really want to write is what they�re covering; otherwise you end up writing the exposition�which is just words. That�s what the struggle was in the writers� room, in a nutshell: getting people not to write just words.
Judd: I remember you said once that it�s very rare that anyone says what they actually feel, that we�re always trying to project on to other people, hiding our true motivations and feelings, and when you finally tell someone how you feel about something, it�s a big deal. As a kid, watching TV, I think I was learning all those things without even realizing it. I watched
Garry: There�s a way I mentor that�s a bit on the Zen side, which is a little hard to understand because it happens in the writers� room. Let�s just talk about you, Judd, okay? You, clearly, had youth and a point of view and energy and were really funny, and so what I wanted from you was whatever was pure that was coming out of you. The same pure thing will work for
Judd: Yeah. I would notice things that were happening in your life, or things that you were thinking about, would make their way on the show. After
Garry: Whenever you turn to what the organic state of any given character is, the fears and the anger and the struggle, you�re going to get conflict and a lot of hilarious stuff.
Judd: It also led me to realize that certain stories can be very small, but if you�re incredibly honest about them, there�s so much to do there. Take
Garry: That�s right.
Judd: We were all going, �Oh, maybe we should do that,� but we were just joking around and then we realized, �Wait, maybe that actually
Garry: You allow the actor to be, as opposed to do. People are fascinating. They don�t really need to do much.
Judd: I�ve always thought that mentoring comes from being in a place where you want to learn. When you hired me at
Garry: That�s the way I was when I was just starting out. I was really open to being taught. When I see talent, I want them to be all they can be. I really want to help�and by doing so, I am helped as well. Whenever I mentor, I notice I�m learning something myself. You are right that there were writers who were not willing to look deeper inside themselves to get the material we were talking about. It�s like being at a therapist and saying, �No. No more sessions.� Whereas you would keep going back in the room and rewriting until you just, I could see how successful you would be because that�s what it takes. It�s just, keep reworking and reworking�and man, you listened and you went back in and you ended up, of course, contributing enormously. I don�t know, I�m just interested in life and teaching. I care.
Judd: The bar was so high on that show, it was fun just to try to meet it. But I think for some people�when you struggle to get there, your self-esteem collapses. If you write a bad script and someone calls you out on it, you either go, �How can I make it better?� or you get mad about it.
Garry: You get defensive.
Judd: You get defensive. But I always thought,
Garry: It sounds like you are saying that it�s everything in the moment. On any given day, you can see everything that Lena brings to the stage, to the writers� room, that day. So you start there and try to take her somewhere.
Judd: Yeah. It�s Lena�s show, and we�re all there to help her. Some weeks she may love our ideas, she may love our whole script. Other weeks, we�re just trying to feed her so she gets excited and goes off and writes a script without us.
Garry: So it�s not a discussion of ego, it�s actually a discussion of someone�s emotional life and where they are in the moment, which is incredibly usable for the writing and the shooting of the episode itself. That�s what we were teaching in the room at
Judd: Her insecurity about being a writer is what her show�s about, really�a lot like Larry�s insecurity about being a talk show host. The battle in the writers� room, on some level, has all the same issues of the battle of trying to be a writer in New York.
Garry: So, as an example, if a writer came in and got defensive about a script he was going to rewrite for
Judd: It all becomes fodder for the show.
Garry: Translating experience to paper. That�s so hard to teach, isn�t it?
Harold Ramis was the original cocky nerd. He was the guy, more than anyone else in this book, whom I secretly thought I could be like. He was tall and lanky and goofy, the guy standing next to Bill Murray who was, in his own quiet way, every bit as funny as Bill Murray. Harold Ramis had a hand in almost everything of note that happened in comedy over the last few decades. He wrote for
I first interviewed Harold when I was in high school, and he was thirty-nine years old, about to make
I was lucky enough to work with Harold on the film
Judd Apatow: When you look back, not in terms of quality but in terms of a good time, what movie do you look back on and say, �
Harold Ramis: The good-time movie for me has been every single one of them, without exception. I don�t say that as a Pollyanna, because there have been nightmare situations. I thrive on disaster. I�m very excited when things go wrong. I�m really attracted to outlandish and excessive human behavior. Any experience with Bill Murray is better than any other experience because he does things no one you know would ever do. Every ride with Bill is a potential adventure. I say this with love and considerable distance, because I don�t talk to him and I don�t see him, but the memories of doing those films with him or even doing a film like
Judd: My wife is so onto that. She considers all work play. If I�m not working and I say, �I�d like to go to the movies with my friends,� she�s like, �You goof off with your friends all day long.�
Harold: I had the same thing with my first wife. I said to her, �I�m working so hard for you�.Blah, blah, blah�You don�t appreciate�� She said, �You love your work. Don�t ever claim this is hard for you.�
Judd: What was the first movie you directed?
Harold:
Judd: So you started at a very low level.
Harold: It
Judd: Did you guys all get money from
Harold: Well, we didn�t get rich. I got $2,500 for the treatments, and Chris, Doug, and I split $30,000 for the final product, $10,000 apiece. They slipped me another two grand because I did the final polish. We shared five net points of the movie, 1.6 each. There were no gross players in the film, and it was relatively low budget. When the movie came out, we did a quick calculation and thought, �We�re going to make some money.� I think we made in the under-$500,000 range, but in 1978 that seemed like a lot of money. I literally went to the bank in Santa Monica with the review and bought a house.
Judd: Tell me a little about Doug Kenney, who is a
Harold: Having Second City as my first professional experience was great. Second City is so different from stand-up. In the world of stand-up you really talk about killing, not just killing the audience but killing the other comedian. It�s a competition every night. You want to be better than anyone else. But the whole thrust of Second City is to focus on making everyone else look good because in that process we all look good. It�s more than collaborative. Your life onstage depends on other people and on developing techniques for creating cooperative work. We have rules, guidelines, games, and techniques that teach that. It fosters a spirit that exists to this day. Anyone who�s ever worked at Second City can run into any other generation of Second City players, and they instantly share a language and an approach to their work. John Belushi got hired from Second City. We were in a show together, and he got hired to do
Judd: So those were the salad days, socially, for that group? It wasn�t like, �Oh, no, the group broke up because��?
Harold: Not then. After
Judd: You always hear that when
Harold: Everyone in the world of that age was on drugs and partying. It was the eighties in Florida. There were hotels literally built of pressed cocaine. They had so much cocaine, they just used it as construction material.
Judd: I�m always fascinated when you hear about people being on something when they�re making
Harold: Well, one of the miracles of substance abuse�when you use something enough, it eventually loses its effect, whatever it is. That�s why addicts have to take more and more of it to get high. You�re not even high anymore. Eventually, John Belushi�people would come up to him at parties and just hand him drugs because they thought that was the way to John�s heart. They�d give him a little gram bottle of cocaine and go, �John, you want some coke?� He�d go, �Yeah, the whole bottle.� You become a glutton. It�s a form of gluttony. If you�re high all the time, that becomes your sober state. Eventually, all your judgments become relative to that state. That was the miracle of getting sober for me. It�s not different. It�s the same. I have the same problems, urges, desires, ideas, and thoughts. I don�t need to be high. Eventually getting high, I realized, just made me sick. I was sick.
Judd: How does it feel�I would assume you would become numb to it at some point�to have a body of work that�in a way, I guess it�s kind of like being the Beatles. Does it get boring dealing with the impact of your body of work on people, how much it means to people? Can you feel that anymore?
Harold: Grandiosity is the curse of what we do. There�s a great rabbinical motto that says you start each day with a note in each pocket. One note says, �The world was created for you today,� and the other note says, �I�m a speck of dust in a meaningless universe,� and you have to balance both things. I once did a public talk and told them that story, and I said, �I literally have a note in each pocket.� I took one out and said, �This one says, �You�re great,� and this one says, �You�re great.� � The culture is what it is. I�m as much a product of our culture as I am a participant in it. It�s very gratifying on a personal level to know that people responded so much and cherish those films. Any of us who make films or work in any of the arts aspire to have a dialogue with the culture and with our audience. Our audience could be an audience of one, like when you grab your best friend and say, �Read this. What do you think?� Our little hearts pound as our friends read our poem, look at our painting, or read our script. If they like it, our spirits soar. It�s great. We can get grandiose from the approval of very few people.
Judd: If you look at the entire generation of people you began with, it seems that very few of them have continued to work at a high level. There are a lot of people that crashed, or their work crashed. Then you look at other people�.Larry Gelbart is still a great writer after fifty years. Do you attribute that to anything?
Harold: What eventually happens in all our lives is that we�re faced with developmental challenges. It�s always, �Now what?� We all start to work for certain reasons, and I think most guys in the room would recognize that we work to meet girls. The last line of
Judd: Unless the guy�s never had sex for forty years.
Harold: That was a good one, though. That transcended romantic comedy.
Judd: You talk about how you enjoy the disasters and the difficult moments. I�m not like that. I usually end up on my back in surgery when something like that happens. I don�t get that, the enjoying-the-pain part. But maybe that�s because I�m in pain the whole time, and you�re not. When it gets even worse, it�s like,
Harold: As my first job out of college, I worked in a mental institution for seven months. I learned how to deflect insanity, or how to deal with it, and how to speak to schizophrenics, catatonics, paranoids, and suicidal people. It sounds funny, but it really expanded my tolerance for the extremes of human behavior, which turns out to be great training for working with actors. They have an incredibly hard job, and most of them are already a little bent. That�s why they�re actors in the first place. They have a desperate need to get out there and reveal something about themselves. Even as a teenager, you�re in a room full of people and someone is acting out. God, that�s interesting, isn�t it? It�s always the person who�s in big trouble. The rest of the class sits there and goes, �Wow! Did you hear what he said to the teacher? That was great!� We all wish we�d said it, and we�re fascinated by the result: �He�s going to get in trouble!� Then you meet someone like Bill, who says things to people you can�t believe. Like a sociologist or a psychologist, you watch for the impact: �God, you can say that and get away with it?� I�ve seen a total stranger come up to Bill on the street in New York: �Bill, love you on
Judd: What is that? Is he having fun, or is he mad? Does it make it impossible to maintain a relationship with somebody like that?
Harold: It keeps you constantly alive to possibility. Anything can happen here. It�s great. It kind of frees your imagination. Actors are nothing if not self-revealing or at least self-presenting. It�s kind of remarkable. It almost seems like a clich� to say comedy comes from pain, but real comedy is connected to the deep pain and anguish we all feel. I worked with Robin Williams on an obscure film called
Judd: You always hear stories of conflict during
Harold: Never a creative problem. Bill kind of passive-aggressively takes his anger out on the production itself, but never me. I�m too calm. I don�t offer him anything to go after. He would go after the producers, or the costumes�.Whoever was around had to take it from him. Or he�d go back and trash his motor home. I�d say, �Well, now you�ve trashed your motor home. Good idea.� No one fights with me. I�m just a detached observer of this extreme behavior. One time, we were shooting
Judd: At what time in your life did you get acquainted with or interested in Buddhism? It seems like it influences your approach.
Harold: My best friend in college, we went to San Francisco together and graduated college in �66. The word
Judd: As someone who is an existentialist with a dash of Buddhism, if that�s your philosophy, you seem like a serene, happy person. How have you taken the darkest philosophy there is and found peace for yourself?
Harold: Serenity is an illusion, but if anything is possible and I can do anything, then there�s a limitless capacity to do good. That�s what
Yes, I was a Harry Anderson fan, too.
When I sat down with him, he was a magician and stand-up comedian whom I�d seen on
Judd Apatow: On
Harry Anderson: If I were, I guess I would lie and say no.
Judd: No, but I saw you on
Harry: A shell game. I ran a shell game for about three years on the street.
Judd: Taking people�s money?
Harry: Yeah.
Judd: And living off that? Were you doing stand-up at the same time?
Harry: No, I didn�t do stand-up. I got into magic when I got my jaw broken doing the shell game, and I gave up gambling and then turned it around and did a comedic expos� of the shell game, which really wasn�t an expos� but it was more of�there was no gambling, I just passed my hat at the end of it. This is back before street performers were so common. I was on the street from the time I was fifteen until I was twenty-five.
Judd: When did you get into magic?
Harry: I�ve always done magic as a hobby. I�ve done it professionally, too. I played at amusement parks in Southern California when I was a kid, did birthday parties and things.
Judd: At fifteen you started hustling?
Harry: When I first went out at fifteen, I did a street act with linking rings, but I wasn�t very serious about it. I didn�t make much money at it. When I was twenty-one, I went to San Francisco and started hustling full-time with the shell game because the money was better that way.
Judd: You just had people bet and they thought they could beat you out? Just like the guys on Eighth Ave.�
Harry: And Seventh Ave. and Sixth Ave. and Fifth Ave�.
Judd: And you made a lot of money doing that?
Harry: Well, no. I made better money but I didn�t�too dangerous. I wasn�t really cut out for it. I wasn�t tough enough and, if it comes right down to it, I wasn�t black enough to be doing that kind of work. Because the mobs that were running were black mobs, and I never had a mob. I never had shills. I did rough hustling, what they call playing against the wall. I just played myself with the players so I would pay, I would make them shill. I would pay certain players and then take from others. But it�s a real rough way to do it. Sometimes it�s called dumb hustling.
Judd: You were able to support yourself?
Harry: Well, yeah, I made a living, but then I got my jaw broken so�
Judd: How did that happen?
Harry: A guy didn�t like where he found the pea. And that was�
Judd: So was it a�
Harry: It was a fix. There�s no way to play the game fair. Because the pea won�t stay under the shell.
Judd: What kind of fix? How did you work that?
Harry: The pea was not under the same shell where it started. Obviously, I was cheating the man. It should have been under that shell.
Judd: So you just lift up the shells without him knowing?
Harry: I can�t explain the technique, you know. But it�s a cheat and the fellow didn�t like it. It was just one punch. I didn�t even see him coming. He just was there and I was down on the ground. Somebody else took my money and left. So after I had my mouth wired shut for six weeks, I had a lot of time to think about what I should be doing. I�d always been a reasonably funny guy, so I decided to take a less serious, more comic approach to things. I went back out and did the shell game but it became more of a lampoon�a parody of the shell game. I created this character that I still have of a guy who is a little bit of a nincompoop�I�m poking fun at street hustlers. I didn�t make quite as much money as one would gambling, but it was a lot safer.
Judd: You did this on the street?
Harry: Yeah.
Judd: So instead of people betting, you just passed around a hat?
Harry: I would demonstrate how the game is played and I�d fool them, and uh, I�d do the shell game and then a couple of card things and then just pass the hat.
Judd: And then how did the magic get into it?
Harry: If you do sleight of hand without trying to cheat someone, that�s what magic is. A card trick is what a gambler does, only you�re not cheating someone, you�re entertaining them. It�s the same technique, applied differently.
Judd: Did you have training from anybody?
Harry: Oh, from all sorts of people. I hung around these kinds of guys when I was a kid. But no formal training. I picked it up the same way most guys do. A lot of guys when they�re seven or eight, and they�re going through the variety of hobbies, will do magic for a while. Pretty much everybody starts around that age and then they stick with it or they don�t.
Judd: What kind of childhood did you have if you were out on the street at fifteen?
Harry: Fine. Fine. I was just anxious to make some money. We weren�t particularly rich.
Judd: Where was this?
Harry: I lived all over the country. We traveled. We never stayed anywhere much.
Judd: What did your parents do?
Harry: Well my mom and dad split when I was young and my mom hooked. She was a hooker, and that�s how I ended up meeting the people I did and learning what I learned.
Judd: When did your act move into a club atmosphere?
Harry: Oh, about four years ago. Ken Kragen asked me to open for Kenny Rogers in Las Vegas.
Judd: Just off the street?
Harry: Not off the street, I was playing the Magic Castle in L.A. He saw me there and asked me. I had not done much nightclub work. I was playing colleges in Texas, Arizona, and California. It was a lawn show�I would put up a tent and do a noon show and pass the hat. And then I would go to L.A. and play the Magic Castle. I haven�t played the streets since then.
Judd: Not at all?
Harry: Not at all.
Judd: And after you got signed, what kind of work did you do after that?
Harry: I started doing talk shows. Merv Griffin and John Davidson, Dinah Shore, Mike Douglas. And then last year I was signed to do
Judd: Do you have an ongoing contract with
Harry: I�m going to do at least one episode of
Judd: The poker game?
Harry: Yeah. And I did several episodes where I just popped in for a teaser and I�ll do at least one of those next year.
Judd: And wasn�t that, I guess that episode must have been, like, handwritten for you?
Harry: Well, I wrote it. I didn�t write the script but I wrote the sting. I designed the game and the swindle for them. I told them who should cheat who at what time and that�s part of the work I do. I have a consultation company called the Left-Handed League and we advise scriptwriters on plots like that. So the League would, if you look at the credits, the technical consultation for that episode is by the Left-Handed League.
Judd: Wait, you work for it or it�s yours?
Harry: It�s my company. I am co-founder of it with a fellow named Martin Lewis, who is a British cheat, and a sleight of hand expert.
Judd: So you�re doing many things. All grounds are covered, really.
Harry: Oh yeah, I don�t know how long anything is going to last so I have to make sure I have something to do tomorrow.
Judd: Are there any films that you are going to be starring in?
Harry: I did a film called the
Judd: You were the escape artist?
Harry: Yeah, a very small part because I�m dead during the film but I�m seen in flashbacks.
Judd: I saw part of that. I saw a trailer�it got a good review with the two guys on Channel 11.
Harry: Siskel and Ebert?
Judd: Siskel and Ebert.
Harry: They gave it a good review?
Judd: They gave it a mediocre review.
Harry: Well, it was never released nationwide. So it wasn�t that highly sought out.
Judd: I saw a scene from it where it was at a party, the magician and he�s doing�I think flying through the air and disappearing, it was very strange.
Harry: I wasn�t involved in the whole film, so I�m not sure. Was it the boy doing it? Or was it�
Judd: It was a man.
Harry: A man? Well that�s probably the uncle because what I did, I did the water torture stuff, the escape that Houdini did. The water.
Judd: Did you do it for real?
Harry: Oh yeah, I did it thirty times for real holding my breath in six hundred gallons of water, yeah.
Judd: Oh my God.
Harry: Yeah, my God.
Judd: And is that how your character dies?
Harry: I�m dead throughout the entire thing. Actually, he�s killed attempting a prison escape. A guard shoots him. And the kid�s aunt and uncle explain that he was shot accidentally while he was staging some publicity stunt but the kid finds out that his father was actually not a real well man. He was pathological. He couldn�t stand locks and he would open any lock that he came across. And he was arrested for breaking and entering, essentially, and tried. Once he was in prison, he tried to escape because he couldn�t take locks and was shot trying to escape. And so the boy tries to duplicate his father�s feat and it�s all very convoluted. It was a real confusing film, which is why it�s going to be on cable any minute now.
Judd: So you didn�t see the whole film?
Harry: I�ve seen it on American Airlines but I fell asleep.
Judd: That must say something for it.
Harry: Well, you know. Off the record�no, not off the record, forget it. That�s the only film I made. I�ve read for a couple of films but I haven�t been taken on by them. I�m doing this very slowly. I don�t want to bite off more than I can chew and end up looking foolish.
Judd: So you�re just doing your act?
Harry: Well, my act and I�m breaking into acting very slowly.
Judd: On
Harry: Yeah. And in
Judd: This is a new sitcom called
Harry: Yeah, it�s by the guy who wrote
Judd: Do you think you�re going to get tied down if it�s a successful series?
Harry: I wouldn�t mind. If it becomes a success, it will be a real joy to do it because it�s a quality show. I wouldn�t feel tied down at all. I would feel employed, you know.
Judd: So for
Harry: I�m not sure how it happened. I think somebody related to one of the Charles brothers�I took him at the shell game years ago. I got twenty bucks off him or something. He remembered that and he saw me on
Judd: I did, I said I couldn�t believe�
Harry: But then he comes right back and that�s the trick. A con like that is just an elaborate magic trick or a swindle. It�s bringing people to the wrong conclusion and then surprising them.
Judd: You sound like you�ve done that trick in the bar.
Harry: I�ve done that plenty. I haven�t paid for a lot of drinks in my life. I�ve run some scams, yeah. But fewer and fewer as time goes on, which is good. I�m finding more legitimate ways.
Judd: Like acting?
Harry: Yeah. As I grow older and I don�t run so fast, I�m not so eager to get myself in situations where I�m going to have to run.
Judd: How would you describe your act? Are you a magician who does comedy, or a comedian who does magic?
Harry: It�s a character, it�s a guy. It�s
Judd: A lot of the tricks that you do, sometimes people think they see what�s going on and then you just like turn the whole trick around so it�s, like, it looks like you did something but it�s nothing.
Harry: It�s bringing them to a false conclusion, and then pulling the rug from under them. Giving them the feeling that they know what�s happening�and then telling them they�ve been manipulated. That�s part of things like three-card monte, and the shell game. You give them the impression, with a bent corner on the card for example, when you�re tossing the cards, the money card seems to have a bent corner so everybody�s now betting because they see the bent corner, and how that bent corner is no longer on the money card, but another card altogether. Those are sucker gags. You let them think they�ve got you�and then you pull the rug from under them.
Judd: And that�s the card you have the money riding on.
Harry: It�s toying with them and doing what a swindler would do when he�s taking their money, only there�s no harm, there�s nothing to be lost. You can poke somebody in the arm, and it can be affectionate. You know it could be a �How ya doing?� A friendly gesture. Or you can hit them, and it hurts. Same gesture, different intent. This is tricking people but to no bad end�just to make them laugh. That�s what I�m going for.
I interviewed James Brooks on the morning we all found out that our friend Mike Nichols had passed away. When Jim walked into my office, I could see in his face that he was devastated�and I wasn�t sure whether we should even bother doing the interview or not. But in this raw, grief-stricken state Jim became reflective about Mike�s work and his decades-long friendship with this man we respected so much. Which then led to an interesting conversation about comedy and life�the man is truly wise in these ways�that could only have happened on a terrible day.
Judd Apatow: Awful day with Mike Nichols, huh?
James L. (Jim) Brooks: Awful fucking day. I got up at five this morning. I just happened to wake up and I saw the news of his death, and�I was alone, and I just went over and started reading this horrible
Judd: Really?
Jim: Horrible. Just a list of hits and misses.
Judd: Mm-hmm.
Jim: Have you ever seen the sketch he did with Elaine [May], �The $65 Funeral�? You�ve seen that?
Judd: Not in a long time.
Jim: It�s killer. You see him making fun of death and stuff like that, right there, and you laugh. And then you start reading some of the crazy, open, honest stuff he�s been saying of late and�he�s never to be equaled. It�s literally impossible to beat him. Impossible. And, I�ve just been�I�m still in a fog, because of the enormity of it.
Judd: Yeah. I just knew him in the last few years, but he showed
Jim: Wow.
Judd: And he was so nice to me. Scott Rudin set up a screening of
Jim: For a long, long time. Extraordinary generosity. He sent out love, he did. And the most acerbic wit. Don�t ever be chopped up by Mike Nichols. You�ll just never recover from it.
Judd: What do you think it is that he did for actors? Why did they love him so much?
Jim: I know what he did for them, because I�ve asked so many of them. The bottom line is, it was never put better than: When you do something wrong, he says it�s his fault; when you do something right, it�s the most glorious thing God ever created. Richard Burton, who�I mean, drunk, mean guy�once said, �It�s not like he�s directing you. It�s like he�s conspiring to make you your best.� Mike was a great director of actors. I don�t have that tenderness and generosity.
Judd: Did he read your scripts? Was he one of the people you would go to?
Jim: He was. I was talking to him a lot about the one I�m writing now. He was very there for it. I didn�t want him to read it yet, but he had heard me talking about it and it was special, the way he told me he wanted to �be there� for it. It�s so important who your buddy is. He was like, Let me be your buddy on this.
Judd: There�s very few people in life who you feel like you can talk about this type of work with.
Jim: Yeah. By the way, here�s a question. Tell me who else holds up like Mike and Elaine, where the work is still so vital and vivid, and doesn�t lose anything.
Judd: It�s very different, but I think a lot of what George Carlin was talking about in the last five years of his life will hold up for a long time, when he got really angry and cut right to the heart of how he felt about everything. And I�ve been listening to the old Pryor stuff, and although it is of its time�I mean, if you listen to Pryor 1976, as the bicentennial is coming, talking about what�s wrong with America? I forgot how militant he was. I don�t think anyone talks about politics like that now. No one has the guts to do it that way anymore.
Jim: Yeah.
Judd: What do you think Mike�s purpose was in his work, and how does it relate to yours?
Jim: Oh, I don�t think like that. There really is a word for what he did:
Judd: When I was a kid, a high school kid, I had a radio show and I just started talking to all these people. I interviewed fifty people. Leno and Seinfeld, but back when they were just guys on
Jim: (
Judd: I even interviewed Lorenzo Music and Jim Parker, writers from
Jim: (
Judd: You interviewed Louis Armstrong, right?
Jim: Yes. I talk about that all the time, Louis Armstrong, because I asked him a great question. I said, �How do you keep your lips going?� And the answer was at least nineteen minutes long. And he showed me his lip ointments and the process for when they go in. It was great.
Judd: (
Jim: Singers. Some of them were big names. I was nobody. But my picture was in the high school paper every week, standing there with the person I was interviewing.
Judd: (
Jim: They loathed me.
Judd: (
Jim: You knew you would get out? Did you feel like you had the power to get out?
Judd: Well, yeah. I thought,
Jim: Wow. Wow. That was back when?
Judd: Nineteen eighty-four. Anyway, I think so much of why people get into comedy is out of some sense of feeling abandoned. When I was a kid, my parents got divorced. My mom left�
Jim: Your mom left, not your father?
Judd: Yeah. She moved out, and that was the thing. As a kid I thought,
Jim: You were how old?
Judd: Thirteen. But then the rest of your life, on some level, you feel that sense of inadequacy.
Jim: Did your mom maintain contact with you?
Judd: Yeah. But she had a bit of a mental break after the divorce. She claimed that she thought she was going to leave and come right back, and my dad immediately moved his girlfriend in. Right before she died, she told me, �I always thought I was going to come right back. I always thought it was going to be a couple of weeks.�
Jim: Wow.
Judd: She called one day and asked me to read her the number on my dad�s credit card, because she needed it for something. But really, she was just angry�and she blew thirty thousand dollars that they didn�t have. It all went downhill from there.
Jim: Jesus Christ, Judd.
Judd: So I figured I needed to get a job. And that made me want to get into comedy, and to get to know comedians. It made me think,
Jim: I�m staggered by your story.
Judd: (
Jim: You drop that and then turn it into a question? Are you kidding? It�s a life experience here, that story.
Judd: As I said to someone recently, I�m trying to fuck my kids up
Jim: (
Judd: I�ll tell you another funny thing. I lived alone with my dad. My sister lived with my mom, and then my sister and my brother both moved in with my grandparents in California. So, I�m alone with my dad, and when I left for college, on the way to the airport�I was on my way to USC film school, which was a big achievement for me�my dad tried to convince me not to go. He was begging me to open up a video and CD store with him. Which is the worst business. It�s like�
Jim: It�s been eradicated from the earth.
Judd: My dad almost ended my entire career and life. He begged me to stay and open this store with him.
Jim: Jesus. Jesus.
Judd: But that�s the drive, I think. It�s fear. I don�t know how you feel about this, but I always say, when a movie comes out, I don�t get that much satisfaction when it goes well. I feel comfortable in process, but when it�s over, I don�t actually get�I enjoy being in the middle, working towards something, because there�s a feeling of safety. I feel like I�m doing something.
Jim: When I�m writing, and I go through all the stuff you go through, the one thing I got is: It�s worth it. Writing is worth it.
Judd: Yeah.
Jim: You know? Someone says, �What do you do for a living?� and it takes you so long to say, �I�m a writer.� I�m working as a writer, and so I always�that really calms me. Even when I�m going nuts with it, even when it�s impossible, I say, Boy, this is a legitimate thing to be. This is worth going nuts about.
Judd: Yeah.
Jim: Directing is a different story.
Judd: It is.
Jim: But I think of it as an extension of writing. And it�s fun to discover that when you leave the movie you had in your mind when the process began, that�s always�I think Mike Nichols said it best. He said, �Every day there�s a surprise, something you didn�t expect. And that�s the joy of making movies.�
Judd: But do you feel the work, for you, comes from a healthy place or�
Jim: I think everything is great. Any kind of movie you make is great, you know. It�s wonderful, wherever it takes you. But to me, the golden ring is when you get to do a movie
Judd: Yeah.
Jim: If you have that going for you, don�t you breathe.
Judd: If they don�t throw a superhero in it, you�ve won.
Jim: Yeah.
Judd: Do you notice common themes or things you�re trying to work out, when you look back at what you�ve done?
Jim: You know, I mean there�s�I guess self-consciousness. People use the word
Judd: That�s me.
Jim: Right. And then I try not to feel good about that, but I do.
Judd: Sometimes I think that�s as close as I get to a spiritual moment. The moment of creation is the closest I feel to a godlike experience of connecting with something larger.
Jim: I think the whole thing with writing�generally, you push and push and push and then, come on already, when do you pull? At a certain point, it pulls.
Judd: It comes together?
Jim: No, I mean it�s pulling you forward and you�re not working so hard. You�re not laboring. You�re serving. Laboring becomes serving.
Judd: I remember hearing you talk once about serving the characters and honoring the characters, and I had never thought about it in that sense before. As if your characters were real people and you were trying to do right by them, as the writer.
Jim: And the constituency they represent.
Judd: Yeah, that was the first time I heard it framed that way, and that had a big impact on me. Like,
Jim: Nineteen-seventy.
Judd: And what year was
Jim: Two years earlier.
Judd: Did they overlap?
Jim: Yes.
Judd: Wow. For me, those shows�and this was at a time when the whole country was watching ten or twelve shows�they programmed my mind. Your shows and Norman Lear�s shows, Larry Gelbart: Those shows, those characters, had a big effect. They were a part of your day, the struggles of those people, and the humanity of those shows. It�s like building neuropathways for morality and compassion. I remembered when
Jim: No, we did an episode of
Judd: Yeah.
Jim: And we followed his show, which was the best thing that happened to us.
Judd: You were on right after. So that night on TV was
Jim: It was a great night.
Judd: A perfect night.
Jim: The last big Saturday night.
Judd: It�s completely different now, because no one�s watching any show in those kinds of numbers. The biggest night of
Jim: I had a show canceled with a thirty-five share. (
Judd: How do you think that changes the culture, the fact that we�re not watching the same things together anymore?
Jim: Well, it�s changed it enormously. Look at sports. Or
Judd: Yeah.
Jim: But television is still the greatest job. We agree on that, right? Television is the greatest job?
Judd: Yes. Yes. So, was
Jim: Seven.
Judd: Seven seasons, and it went right into
Jim: Yes.
Judd: That was one of the great transitions of all time.
Jim: Yeah. When is a spin-off not a spin-off?
Judd: I used to love that show.
Jim: You know what was so great about that? We got our stories from the newspapers, literally.
Judd: And so after
Jim: Mm-hmm.
Judd: What was that like, working with Andy Kaufman?
Jim: He�d always be in character. He was great. I tell Andy stories all the time. How can you resist Andy stories? He invented performance art, just amazing, bizarre stuff. But when you gave him notes, he�d be in that character, and you�d give him notes and it would be like he was Latka with an American talking fast at him. And then he�d do the note. He�d always do the note.
Judd: But he was in character the whole time he was on set?
Jim: Yes.
Judd: Did you have private moments with him when he
Jim: My favorite private moment with him was when he was hospitalized after the wrestling match, and I found out it was all a fake.
Judd: Who told you?
Jim: We had been really scared. We were running the tape and then we froze up and we saw�he did a very difficult physical stunt, a brilliant physical stunt. There�s no way a stuntman could do that stunt better than he did. That�s how good Andy was. And I was pissed off because�
Judd: Because he scared everyone?
Jim: This was on front pages! Yeah. And I said, �Do you know what it�s like to think you were seriously injured?� And he says, �Do you know what it�s like to be in traction for a few days?� (
Judd: (
Jim: I was in my office and I think he was still in the hospital. I don�t know.
Judd: And so when he would make a joke like that, what was his tone like? Did he ever talk about what the purpose of it was?
Jim: He�d talk like a guy who just came up with a good bit.
Judd: To him the bit was just riling people up? There�s no point to it, really, other than isn�t it funny that you�re going to get upset about this?
Jim: He was inventing an art form, for Christ sake. He was an original talent.
Judd: You spent years around him, but there were very few moments when he would drop it and say, �The reason I�m doing this is because��
Jim: It was deeper than that. And it�s not even a question of dropping it. He was
Judd: Writer-wise,
Jim: We had a great time. We really worked. It was great. The Charles brothers. David Lloyd. It just worked. And the cast was great, too. We had fun. We had a party every Friday night. And this was in the days when�
Judd: When everyone was on that lot?
Jim: Yes. And it was literally segregated. Television people used one entrance and movie people used another. At that time, nobody who ever worked in television got a movie job. But you know that.
Judd: You couldn�t be a movie star
Jim: You couldn�t get a job. You couldn�t get a writing job. Nobody was interested. You did television. You were lower order.
Judd: Even as a writer, you couldn�t cross over?
Jim: There were a few people who made it over the fence in the early eighties. But the fence was still up�which was great, because you not only had a job you loved, and were making terrific money, but you also got to feel like an underdog. (
Judd: While you were getting rich.
Jim: It was bliss. It was just bliss. Yadda, yadda, yadda.
Judd: And was that the great moment for you? I feel like, in my life, there was a brief moment where we were all together and then people started splitting off and doing different things, but still, there was that one moment where everyone is around each other for a while. Was
Jim: Yes, it was perfect. It was a community, a real community. Everyone�s working. Everyone�s having fun, doing something. I mean, that�s it, you know?
Judd: And that�s about when you started directing movies, right? With
Jim: Yes.
Judd: That was a big movie in our house. My dad and my mom really looked at that as one of the great, hilarious movies. They talked about it a lot.
Jim: Jesus.
Judd: Maybe because they were on the verge of breaking up, but they would talk about Candice Bergen singing that song, and it was one of their favorite moments of all time. But is that why you asked Burt Reynolds to do
Jim: No, I wasn�t quite that foolish. (
Judd: Did the whole thing kind of fall apart at that moment?
Jim: Yeah.
Judd: So who became the great supporter of
Jim: Grant Tinker, who had gone over to NBC, and pre-bought it for television.
Judd: I�ve never even heard of that.
Jim: That gave me the final million.
Judd: That�s a good friend.
Jim: Great boss. A great boss. My obsession with the movie was that it was a literal comedy.
Judd: About cancer.
Jim: I wanted to do a truthful movie, but�I went through arguments with the Golden Globes where the studio had to put a muzzle on me because I classified my movie as a comedy and they classified it as a drama, and it was the whole point that I was doing a comedy. I lost that one and I won drama�but then, afterwards, when people didn�t see it in theaters, the solitary experience, I think, is, you know, it�s not a comedy. It�s in a completely different tone because you�re watching it alone, I think.
Judd: Because in the theater, it murdered.
Jim: Yeah, it did.
Judd: Why do you think it has transcended? I think a lot about culture, how quickly things disappear now. There�s so much new stuff, but these shows and movies, they�re timeless, whether it�s
Jim: I don�t know. Humanity?
Judd: What do you think you did right as a parent?
Jim: Oh, God. It was an awful house my kids grew up in.
Judd: Yeah?
Jim: I don�t know. (
Judd: Well, I think it�s always a combination of your parents love you and you watch their mistakes and some kids take some things from the mistakes, and some kids are injured from the mistakes�
Jim: That�s true. Jesus, why does everything you say sound so good? (
Judd: I�m just trying to calm myself down.
Jim: Can you heal, do you think?
Judd: I notice with my friends� kids, some of them crash early, and then they pull out, and they�re kind of awesome and funny and interesting. Other kids seem kind of great, and they have trouble later, and it�s fascinating how parenting relates to this environment�you�ve written a lot about it�in
Jim: My whole goal in
Judd: Yeah. (
Jim: I spent a lot of time as a parent thinking it was my duty to give my kids the lessons of being poor when they weren�t.
Judd: Yeah.
Jim: It took me so long to stop�you know?
Judd: They�re never going to appreciate it like you did.
Jim: It took me so long to get off it. I want them to be from New Jersey, and they�re from Brentwood.
Judd: You think,
Jim: I think, in some ways, the worst thing I did as a parent is that I passed on the embarrassment of riches, as if they should be embarrassed.
Judd: I have that, too. As a kid I always said, �I want to leave this town,� but there�s no moment where my kids are like, �We�ve got to get the fuck out of Brentwood.� Why would you leave? My daughter, it�s time for her to get a car, and I think,
Jim: Yes, yes, yes. A shitbox with a five-star rating.
When I was a kid, Jay Leno was hands-down my favorite stand-up comedian. He wasn�t the host of anything yet, of course. He was a semiregular guest on
I have gotten to know Jay a bit in the years since our interview, and he�s been nothing but nice to me, for reasons I still do not understand. He did this interview with me when I was in high school, first of all. Then, when I was in college, I sent him a whole list of jokes to see if he�d buy them for his
Then, much later, when I started directing my own movies, Jay would always book me as a guest on
Jay Leno: Is there an interview, or am I just talking?
Judd Apatow: Well, yeah, you�re talking to me. That kinda thing. Okay, um�I know it�s hard to get going, but once you get going�
Jay: Okay.
Judd: Where are you right now in your career, if you had to describe it?
Jay: Ah, about twenty-five miles outside of New Jers�outside of New York. I guess I�m in Jersey right now. Where am I? I have no idea. I mean, the last two years or so I�ve been doing the Letterman show a lot and that seems to have helped an awful lot. You know, the clubs are kind of full on Wednesday now, instead of just the weekends, so that�s nice. But I don�t know, I�m too close to it. I can�t tell.
Judd: You�re a draw, but you�re not pulling like Universal Amphitheatre or anything.
Jay: (
Judd: Are you happy doing the clubs or would you like to play the larger audiences?
Jay: I like doing the clubs. Two hundred to four hundred seats is about the maximum for ideal comedy, where you play with the crowd and all. I mean, obviously the big rooms are nice because there�s more money. But performance-wise, the smaller rooms are more fun to do. I mean, it�s like anything else. I like this. I�m happy where I am now, and�you know, the whole idea is if you keep coming up with new ideas and new material, everything else just falls into place.
Judd: Who are the people that you�ve opened up for?
Jay: Oh, everybody. Everybody from Stan Getz, Mose Allison, Rahsaan Roland Kirk, Chick Corea, all the way to like John Denver, Tom Jones, Perry Como, Kris Kristofferson. All kinds of people.
Judd: I thought I saw you once on
Jay: Oh!
Judd: What is the point of doing that show at this stage in your career?
Jay: Well, the point of doing that show is the same point of doing this show. Somebody asks you to do it, and you go,
Judd: But it�s the kind of thing you make fun of in your act.
Jay: It is. Sure it is. But I�m not above doing something I make fun of in my act. I also eat at McDonald�s and all those other things I make fun of. That�s all a part of the business, you know. I do
Judd: Would you want more people knowing you? Is that something you want?
Jay: That�s something every performer tries to get. It�s like anything else: You do your work and the more people you can please with it, the better it makes you feel.
Judd: What prompted you to go into this?
Jay: Oh, I don�t know, it seemed like a fun way to make money at the time. I was in college, and I used to do ah�all those college shows, you know, like in Boston there are two hundred or three hundred colleges. So consequently every Saturday the cafeteria would become the Two Toke Caf� or something like this. And there would be nineteen-year-old folksingers with guitars ODing on the stage, and I used to emcee some of this stuff. And I would ah�you know, I would say, �That was so-and-so.� Boo, get off the stage, man you stink, get outta here. The audience was terrible, I was terrible, the acts were terrible. But it was fun being onstage and screwing around and�I started going around other coffeehouses and things like that and getting onstage. I was making five bucks, six bucks a night, which is what friends of mine who were waiters and waitresses were making at the time.
Judd: When you were in college?
Jay: Yeah. Colleges. I used to work strip joints. All kinds of places like that.
Judd: Strip joints? How did that work out?
Jay: Oh, your eyes light up, huh? Well, there were no comedy clubs.
Judd: What year is this?
Jay: Seventy-three, �74. Most of the comedy clubs didn�t come along until about �77, so the only place you could work was strip joints. You know, I had read Lenny Bruce and Milton Berle and all those people, and they all seem to have gotten their start in strip joints. So I used to go in and do strip joints. They were terrible. I was like nineteen, with long hair. It was terrible. But I thought it was fun.
Judd: What kind of reactions did you get?
Jay: Terrible. �Get off the stage, you stink.� I had a guy jump me with a Heinz ketchup bottle once. Split my head open. I got eight stitches on that one.
Judd: Why�d he do that?
Jay: (
Judd: What did you study in college?
Jay: I don�t know. My mom has the degree in the living room. Ah, speech therapy. I went to college and I said, �What requires the least amount of studying?� Speech courses had�at the end of the year you had to give a talk. I figured, well, I can do that. So I get up and give my talk and get a C and then get out of there.
Judd: So you�re doing comedy at that point, at the end of college. You knew that was what you were going into?
Jay: Well, I was also a Mercedes-Benz mechanic at the time. I didn�t have any expenses. I didn�t have any lifestyle to maintain. I liked doing it. I would drive hundreds and hundreds of miles to work for free for four or five minutes. I didn�t know if I would ever really make a living at it. It was just a fun way to screw around. I�d make thirty bucks a week or forty bucks a week at best. But that was enough to live on. I had a junky car, and it was fun, you know. But that�s the whole key. You gotta keep moving. You gotta work every kind of job there is. I used to do old people�s birthday parties for the state. Which is
Judd: You sound like you�ve played, like, any kind of place where people congregate anywhere.
Jay: What do you mean, I still do.
Judd: What are the other strange places?
Jay: Everything. Indian reservations, any kind of job I could get. You know, that�s it. You learn from the bad jobs. You don�t learn anything from the good jobs. When you go into a club and everybody�s happy to see you and you do your jokes, and the jokes that normally don�t work, work, you say, well, this is terrible. Give me a place that�s awful. Like I was in New Mexico a while ago at an Indian reservation, just a very strange setup. Nice people, but�and they laughed. So I said, Okay, this stuff is gonna work on the Letterman show.
Judd: And how did you progress to better places?
Jay: Well, what happens is you get better money after a while. The places don�t get any better. You know, it just depends how much respect you get.
Judd: How did your comedy change over the years?
Jay: How? Well, I don�t know. I mean, you just get better the more you do. The real trick is to listen to it and throw out everything that�s not funny. You�ve interviewed a lot of comedians, you�ve seen a lot of comedians. I�m sure you�ve seen a lot of new people, too. And I�m always amazed when I go to clubs and I see new comedians, and night after night they do the same jokes that don�t work. If a joke doesn�t work, you just get rid of it and do something else. Better you do eight minutes of really funny stuff than sixteen minutes of hit-and-miss, you know. That really seems to be the whole key to it. You bring a tape recorder, you tape it, you say,
Judd: And when did you start doing talk shows like
Jay: First show I ever did was
Judd: Is acting something you want to do?
Jay: I like doing this better. I mean, doing films is fun. I�m not as�when I do a scene in a film I have to stop and say to somebody, �Is that any good? How was that?� Whereas in comedy, I hear the laugh, great, I know it worked, thank you, goodbye, I�m outta there.
Judd: Right now you�re doing
Jay: Yeah, I knew David years ago in L.A. We both used to write for Jimmie Walker.
Judd: You wrote for Jimmie Walker?
Jay: Yeah, yeah. We both used to write comedy. Jimmie was great. Any struggling comic, Jimmie would pay them a hundred bucks a week, and we�d meet once a week at his house, and throw jokes around and ideas, and�it worked out pretty good. He was real good to a lot of people that way.
Judd: What about comedy albums? Have you ever wanted to do that?
Jay: I don�t buy comedy albums myself, and I�m a comedian. So no, I don�t have any interest in them. I mean, if I was gonna take every joke I�ve ever done and never do it again, then I might put it on an album and sell it. I know, as a kid, I would get annoyed if I buy a comedy album and then go to a nightclub and see the guy and for an hour, I hear exactly what was on the album. I�d rather do it this way, kind of door-to-door comedy, and do my act.
Judd: How would you describe your comedy if you had to? It�s a little sarcastic and observational�
Jay: (
Judd: Is most of your humor worked out on the stage? Some people work it out on paper, and they think about it�
Jay: Oh no, I don�t have anything on paper. I�ve never written anything down. I suppose I should. Everybody says, Oh, you should make notes. I seem to remember the funnier stuff and forget the stuff that isn�t that funny. Once in a while I forget a funny one, but no, I don�t write anything down.
Judd: Why do you think in the last couple of years, tons and tons of clubs have been opening up all over the place?
Jay: It�s like anything else. Tons and tons of clubs are closing all over the place and a few good ones will remain. I mean, I think it�s great. It gives everybody a chance to work. There�s good and there�s bad sides to it. The good side is everybody gets a chance to work. The bad side is people that probably would not be in the business are still around.
Judd: Right now, you know, it�s like�there�s hundreds of people getting into it�
Jay: There�s thousands. When I used to audition at the Improv�you know, the Improv in New York would have audition nights, same as Catch a Rising Star. And we would go there and there would only be four people auditioning. Suddenly there are thousands. You go to the Improv on the audition nights and they�re lined up around the block.
Judd: So how do you keep it from getting boring?
Jay: It�s a job. You have to do your work, you know. It�s not a hard way to make a living, it�s a fun way. You make a lot of money for having a good time. And if you can�t get up for it, well then get out of the business. You know people say, Well, gee, what happens when you�re just not in the mood? Well, I mean, the worst I ever had was a bad hour. You know, most people have a bad day. If I can�t fake it for an hour�
Judd: But don�t you ever get bored of it?
Jay: I get a kick out of doing it. I change it a little bit on a nightly basis, try out new jokes and whatnot. The whole idea is to keep coming with new things and new ideas. No, it doesn�t get boring for me. I really like it.
Judd: A lot of your act is about television. Television commercials. What do you think about television? Do you think it�s really bad, because it seems like you really just�I mean you must watch it�
Jay: No I don�t. I mean, again: The whole trick to being a successful comedian is to make fun of the things you like. Occasionally when I really go after something I don�t like�it can come off vicious. People sense a hostility. I�m an average person, I watch a lot of TV. Admittedly, there�s a lot of stupid things on TV, but I have to watch it to make fun of it. And the fact that I�m talking about a show like
Judd: Once, on
Jay: Yeah, that was the last time. I started reading about shows that were on.
Judd: And you just opened it, �cause it looked like you were just�
Jay: Well, I had looked through the
Judd: How do you handle hecklers?
Jay: The trick to working with hecklers is to give them enough rope so they hang themselves. I like a good heckler. Somebody who�s intelligent, who I speak to and they speak back, and I say something to them, and they say something to me. Everybody gets
Judd: What would be your strangest experiences in comedy?
Jay: My strangest experiences? Oh, I don�t know. God, I mean there�s thousands of them. I used to work the Playboy Club in New York and they would give a report card after each show. You know, like have a guy like Vinny from the Bronx: �Hey, you get a D tonight. I didn�t think you were that funny.� And they would tell you how they would mail these to Mr. Hefner to look at, you know, that kind of thing. So I�m working there one time and they�you know, they get tour groups in there�and they�ve got three hundred Portuguese and two interpreters. Nobody tells me they�re Portuguese. You know, I don�t know. So I go out there and I start my act, and I hear these two guys going, �Heh, heh, heh.� I hear two guys laughing and the rest of the audience is just staring at me. I said, �How you folks doing?� And they would smile and nod. But they didn�t speak English or anything. So I�m out there, like, this is unbelievable at this point. Finally one of the interpreters yells out that they�re Portuguese. So I come offstage and Vinny the room director says, �You get an F.� I said, �What�re you talking about?� He says, �You get an F, pal. Nobody laughed tonight except them two guys.� And I said, �Come on, they didn�t speak
Judd: So, where do you want to go with this? You�re working a lot now. Is there something else that you want to be doing?
Jay: No, I like doing this. I enjoy it. I have a good time with it. If something else comes along and someone offers something else, I�ll try that for a while. But there�s nothing I enjoy doing more than this. I find it as challenging as anything else you can do. And I really haven�t reached a peak where I�m famous enough to go, Well, everybody�s seen the act, let�s try something else. When that happens, maybe I�ll try something else.
In the late eighties, when I was on the road as a struggling stand-up comedian, I had the pleasure of opening a few times for a young guy named Jeff Garlin. His act was loose and weird and improvisational in a way I could never hope to replicate. He looked so happy up there. He seemed to enjoy getting huge laughs as much as he enjoyed creating awkward moments. And when you�re on the road with somebody, going from club to club and town to town, you get to know that person pretty well. And nobody�s more fun to be on the road with than Jeff. We would be driving down some small-town street and there would be a fast-food restaurant on every single corner, and Jeff would say, �I wonder if there�s a fast-food restaurant around here?� We would drive some more, and there would be seven banks in a row, and Jeff would say, �Do you think they have a bank in this town?�
Jeff, of course, would go on to be one of the minds behind
Judd Apatow: Is it important to you if your kids are smart?
Jeff Garlin: No. I mean, yes, I hope they�re smart and self-reliant so they can enjoy life�but they�ll probably be more miserable if they�re smart. If they�re stupid, they�re going to have a great time. Because really, everything is created for stupid people. Books, movies, TV shows for the most part�they�re for stupid people. So, they would be much happier if they were stupid. But I think both my boys are going to be miserable just like their father.
Judd: So they�ll be smart and miserable.
Jeff: Well, they go hand in hand.
Judd: Yeah.
Jeff: Do you know any smart people who are just, like, chill? Really happy? No, seriously, do you know any smart people just, like, �Hey, weeeee!� You don�t, do you?
Judd: I don�t. I mean, I don�t think I�m smart. But I think I�m beginning to think I�m smart based on how miserable I am.
Jeff: That�s a good way to measure it, by the way.
Judd: Yeah.
Jeff: But I know you and I�m telling you: You�re smart. You�re really smart.
Judd: They say certain people aren�t good soldiers because if they�re in a foxhole all night�you know, if you�re creative and smart, you�re thinking about all the different ways someone is going to blow your head off. But if you�re not that smart, you�re just like chilling out. And I feel like that in life. I�m just in the foxhole all fucking day thinking about everything that�s going to go wrong in every possible way.
Jeff: And that�s why you�re prepared.
Judd: The preparation is not helpful at all, really.
Jeff: I�m equally miserable but�by the way, we�re having a conversation here. It�s kind of rude if you don�t look at me.
Judd: I know, but why do you need to look at me?
Jeff: Because I�m talking to you.
Judd: You know, when I was first dating my wife, she said to me one day when we were talking, she said, �Dude, what are you looking at?� And I said, �I�m looking at your mouth.� And she�s like, �Why are you looking at my mouth?� �Because you�re talking, and I want to know what you�re saying.� And she said, �You know, when you talk to people, you�re supposed to look them in the eye.� No one had ever said that to me before. I was twenty-eight years old and I thought�
Jeff: Did you really go through life up until twenty-eight�I mean, did your parents tell you when you were a kid that you were deaf?
Judd: Like, I mean with�
Jeff: Like, �Look at the lips, it�s very important.�
Judd: Right now, I am having to make an extra effort to not look at your mouth.
Jeff: That�s crazy.
Judd: It is crazy and it makes me wonder how I was parented. Where was my mom looking? Was she looking at my mouth? It makes me realize what my damage is, and why it�s hard to connect with people: because I�m a mouth looker.
Jeff: So you say mouth looker, and that makes sense, but I never heard of that before.
Judd: Someone told me you exercise now.
Jeff: I�ve been exercising for a while. I do Pilates, for Christ�s sake.
Judd: Really? Like you slowly lift your legs with pulleys, every morning?
Jeff: Not every morning, but often enough.
Judd: With an instructor?
Jeff: With an instructor. I do privates.
Judd: You do privates?
Jeff: That�s one of the luxuries I actually partake in. I have to have privates because the thought of me being in a Pilates class�that�s goofy.
Judd: There�s nothing about Pilates that won�t make one of your balls fall out of your pants.
Jeff: By the way, nothing. You have to prepare for that ahead of time. I�m a big boxer-brief guy. With boxer briefs, you get no ball fallout. And then, I try to avoid�
Judd: You do Pilates in boxers?
Jeff: Boxers?
Judd: Didn�t you say boxers?
Jeff: Yeah, but underneath my sweatpants. With sweatpants, my balls aren�t going to drop out.
Judd: I don�t like that flexibility. I need it compact.
Jeff: No, boxer briefs hold everything in. You know what boxer briefs are?
Judd: No. I thought it was brief
Jeff: Boxer briefs are like longer briefs�like, they come down to here. You never worn those?
Judd: I have like tighty whities.
Jeff: Is that what you wear?
Judd: I don�t need the extra shorts aspect of it that you seem to like.
Jeff: Do you really wear tighty whities?
Judd: What does this do for you?
Jeff: There�s a certain confidence�I would have to drop my pants right now to show you. But I would not look like an idiot, whereas you, my friend, you wear tighty whities and we would be laughing at you.
Judd: The idea with that is that you have a bigger dick than me.
Jeff: I would wager everything I own that our dicks are the same size.
Judd: Really?
Jeff: We got the classic, average Jew dick. I see my dick all the time; I know it�s not big. It�s very normal size. It�s not like a tiny festival. But I don�t wear the boxer briefs because I have an extraordinarily large dick or small. My penis has nothing to do with it. It�s just a nice�it�s a very comfortable loungewear.
Judd: Okay. I was listening to an interview with you recently, and there�s a long section where you�re talking about what a good guy you are. Now, is that because you are a good guy, or like you�re such a murderer that you just say that?
Jeff: One of my favorite comedians of all time is Jack Benny. But besides being my favorite comedian, he also had a reputation of being the biggest supporter of other comedians and the nicest amongst comedians, and I really want to be known as, if not the nicest, then one of the nicest comedians.
Judd: Are you a people pleaser?
Jeff: No, I could give a shit about that.
Judd: There was a letter that someone showed me once�Jack Benny used to write letters to this television producer�but what made me laugh is that they were kind of dirty. And you don�t think of guys like Jack Benny as dirty.
Jeff: Right.
Judd: He was talking about how he loved a lot of the shows that year, but his favorite one was called �My Mother the Cunt.�
Jeff: Jack
Judd: So he likes that kind of joke but he thinks it�s wrong to do the �My Mother the Cunt� joke to America�like we can�t handle it?
Jeff: They
Judd: I just mean they all had a different sense of humor that they didn�t share with the public, like Milton Berle taking his dick out and putting it in a hot dog bun. But then when these young comedians like Robert Klein started showing up, they were all like, Oh, this is out of line!
Jeff: Let me ask you a question. You�re busy. We don�t spend a lot of time together but I look at you as a friend. J. J. Abrams is the other person who you remind me of in this way. And that is, I call you, I email you, anything, and right away, you respond: �What�s going on? How are you doing?� It�s not like two weeks later. But I, even being one hundredth as successful as you, don�t get back to people ever. I just wonder how you pull off being a great dad, a great husband. You�re this successful producer. You make movies. You�re producing a TV show for HBO. I mean, how do you do that?
Judd: Does this also relate to the fact that you have to keep saying you�re a good guy? When in fact you�re like the asshole who never returns emails?
Jeff: By the way, isn�t it true that when you don�t return someone�s email, they think there�s something wrong? Whenever I do write people back, their response is always: �Oh, I thought you were mad at me!� What? If I�m mad at someone, I tell them. But how do you pull this off? I don�t know.
Judd: For a long time, people thought all my emails were angry. Because they would be very simple.
Jeff: Informational.
Judd: Yeah.
Jeff: I�m totally good with that.
Judd: But you know what helps? Exclamation marks. Now I�ve adopted an email personality that is not anything like me. I�m like a fourteen-year-old girl who puts exclamation marks after everything. Because people kept thinking I was mad at them. Well, I don�t think answering emails correlates to any positive qualities that I, or anyone, has.
Jeff: No, what I want to know is�
Judd: What�s probably happening is, like, one of my kids is choking on a bone and I�m not helping them because I�m so obsessed with answering your email. So maybe I�m a prick who cares more about your email than my children.
Jeff: I really want you to answer this.
Judd: I�m being honest.
Jeff: Really?
Judd: I�m saying, why the fuck am I answering your email? Honestly, I have a lot to do.
Jeff: That�s my point.
Judd: I�m busy. I have children. They need help with their homework and why am I checking the fucking email?
Jeff: Oh, stop it. I�m saying as a
Judd: I know, but you�re wrong. It�s an addiction. It�s a modern addiction. The email and the Twitter. It�s distraction. There�s better things I should be doing with my time and I�m not present at all. I�m staring at your mouth.
Jeff: You don�t want to take credit.
Judd: I think I�m a nice enough person. But unlike you, I don�t brag about it.
Jeff: I was a virgin until I was twenty.
Judd: You were? How did that work out?
Jeff: I actually lost my virginity to a heckler.
Judd: You did?
Jeff: I swear to God. I did. It was on the beach, South Beach. There was a comedy club. I was hosting a show. This woman heckled me unmercifully and later on that night some guy goes, �My friend wants to buy you a drink.� We were on the beach, you know, at this place called the Carlyle. And she called me outside. She said come outside, and then she kissed me. I didn�t stop her. I was twenty. She was thirty and a lawyer, and she ran on the beach ripping off her clothes yelling, �Follow me!� So I did. And then, in a lifeguard stand, she was naked and as soon as my penis went in it could have ended because I was like,
Judd: The first time I had sex, it was a ski trip senior year.
Jeff: High school? See, you�re way more advanced than me.
Judd: Yeah. It was, you know, brief. And then afterwards, as a joke, I said, �Was it good for you, too?� And she said, �Well, I guess it�ll get better.�
Jeff: She was a girl you were dating.
Judd: Yes.
Jeff: Did she hang around to see if it got better or was that it?
Judd: She found out that it was not going to get better for about six months or so. She tested it out.
Jeff: I loved the way you said six months or so. You were a slow learner.
Judd: Well, because that�s, like, a first love, someone you�ve done everything for the first time with. The two of you had this experience that this is what sex is, the way we do it, and then I think she just went off to college and went,
Jeff: My high school years were filled with unrequited love. One after the other. I was the guy the girls talked to about the guy that they�re fucking who is an asshole. I was the guy they talked to about that.
Judd: I mainly had that, too. Most of the time that was the situation. I don�t have many road sex stories, either, because I was very uncomfortable with that. But I remember being out on the road�my first road sex story�in San Luis Obispo at some comedy club opening up for Rick Wright.
Jeff: I remember him.
Judd: And this nurse hit on me.
Jeff: Was she wearing her nurse outfit?
Judd: No, but she was very nursy.
Jeff: She showed nursing qualities?
Judd: Yeah, and I�m at the club in the hotel. It�s like the perfect setup. And I thought,
Jeff: What were you? Like, nineteen? Twenty?
Judd: I was twenty years old, and I�ll tell you how long the sex was. Okay, ready, and�we�re done. And I think,
Jeff: You didn�t like it?
Judd: It was terrible. It�s the kind of thing that puts you on your heels.
Jeff: You didn�t like the movie, you mean?
Judd: No, the sex.
Jeff: Oh, okay, because I got the indication that you didn�t like
Judd: Well, there is�
Jeff: It�s not great. But there�s good stuff in it. And it�s Pryor playing himself, which is awesome.
Judd: I need to watch it again. But did you ever become the guy trying to get laid after the show?
Jeff: You know the answer to this one. We were on the road together a lot as young comics. No fucking way did that ever happen to me.
Judd: How many times did you get laid on the road?
Jeff: I have someone who keeps track of that for me. Unfortunately they�re not here tonight. Otherwise I could�I�m guessing, I mean, I can think of two. In twenty-nine years.
Judd: It takes a lot to be a road comic and not get laid.
Jeff: Yeah, it does. Because you�re surrounded by it. You�re surrounded by girls who would fuck you under normal�if you knew what you were doing. Anyway. You have two children, and you don�t want another kid, do you? I�m too tired.
Judd: I have two girls and I think it feels like the right amount with the potential of a very dangerous foster child in my future.
Jeff: Your daughters, by the way, are so adorable, and talented. When you sit down to write a movie, are you thinking,
Judd: I just don�t like other people�s kids and I don�t want to be around other people�s kids.
Jeff: Let�s take a step back for a second.
Judd: Yeah.
Jeff: Okay. Young actors�kid actors�are, for the most part, so frightening. A couple things happen: Number one, the parents come with them. And they�re always scary. It�s all about them, really. It�s like parents of Little League kids�you know how they overcompensate and all that. That�s how it is with stage moms. I�ve had times when a seven-year-old goes, �Oh, I saw your show last night.� �
Judd: Why?
Jeff: Because it�s inappropriate.
Judd: Eleven? There is literally zero chance that your son is not spending at least one or two percent of his time watching blowjobs on the Internet. It�s impossible. There�s no scenario�
Jeff: One time my wife and I found�this was like maybe a year ago. He was ten. He had googled �big bosom.� It turned out that his friend told him to.
Judd: And you think it ended there?
Jeff: I do.
Judd: The other day, my daughter said that in the second or third grade, she was so into American Girl dolls that she decided that she wanted to see what an American Boy doll looked like. And googled �American Boy doll.� And saw�
Jeff: A penis?
Judd: Graphic sex.
Jeff: Graphic sex under �American Boy doll�? I�m just trying to think how that goes together. By the way, you can google the word
Judd: A candle in someone�s ass, yeah.
Jeff: So I�m thinking,
Judd: You think your eleven-year-old can�t handle Susie Essman cursing?
Jeff: I don�t know if it�s Susie Essman�s cursing as much as �I�m going to fuck the Jew out of you, Larry.�
Judd: Why is that hurtful?
Jeff: When did
Judd: Why are you underestimating him?
Jeff: I don�t know. I just, I just tend to�
Judd: Does he beg you to watch
Jeff: The truth is, he doesn�t even want to watch it.
Judd: Yeah, or he�s seen every episode at his friend�s house. My kids would be like, �No, I don�t want to see
Jeff: You worked with one of my heroes, Albert Brooks.
Judd: Yes, I did.
Jeff: So on the first day of shooting, he�s doing a scene and you�re directing, and you�ve got to give him a note.
Judd: Yes.
Jeff: What are you thinking? Because I know you love Albert like I love Albert.
Judd: Well, it�s scary. But the process actually starts much earlier than that. You know, I wrote the part with him in mind and then gave it to him hoping he would do it. It would have been bad if he said no because I put in a lot of time thinking about him in the part, and then a lot of rehearsals so by the shoot, we�re comfortable. I mean, I was still nervous. But it�s not like I�m sweating it out.
Jeff: Well, if I�m suddenly directing Albert Brooks, it�s going to be a bit freaky in my head.
Judd: Yeah, well, that is why I do a lot of rehearsals.
Jeff: Did you do rehearsals just to be calm with Albert?
Judd: Well, I actually did a lot of rehearsals with Albert because I wanted him to rewrite all of his scenes. We would improvise. I would say throw out the script but get to the same information and then we would play and I would chuck out more ideas.
Jeff: Did you videotape it?
Judd: I did. And then he would email me better jokes at night. He�d start thinking about it, like,
Jeff: So, let me see something here. Oh, you know what? We�re almost at an hour.
Judd: How long are we supposed to talk?
Jeff: There�s no �supposed to,� but you know.
Judd: Like two?
Jeff: By the way, that�s a question I want to ask you. What do you think about when you hear that Dane Cook or Dave Chappelle do like twelve-hour shows or whatever the hell it is? Have you heard about that?
Judd: I have, yeah. Never seen it, though.
Jeff: I haven�t seen it, either. You couldn�t pay�I mean, God bless both of them, but I don�t want to see�
Judd: Actually, I saw Jim Carrey do that in like �89 or �88.
Jeff: What did he do?
Judd: We were at the Comedy Store. He�s not megastar Jim Carrey yet, but he�s solidly in the
Jeff: That�s awesome.
Judd: It was awesome. I think that was the night he came up with Fire Marshal Bill.
Jeff: Yeah, because in those moments is where he�d come up with stuff.
Judd: He started just doing the burnt-guy face and complaining about how all of the electrical outlets weren�t safe and he did that for thirty-five minutes to kill time. It was a great thing to witness.
Jeff: You came over to my apartment one day, when I was living on Genesee, and you said, �You have to come down to Comedy Magic Club with me tonight, to see Jim Carrey.� And I go, �The guy who does Sammy Davis and stuff like that?� And you�re like, �Yes, but he�s changed everything. He�s going to blow your mind.� You were adamant and so I went and it was ridiculous how great it was and�what was the opening that he did? He did some sort of thing where he pretended to be opening and then kept going and going until�he was Andy Kaufman�like in what he was doing back then.
Judd: Well, you know, he had done impressions for a long time and then decided that he didn�t want to be an impressionist�but he had no act. So he would go onstage with nothing, and do a set every night. After a year or two, he developed an act. But for a while, you would see Jim Carrey with nothing go onstage, searching. They were the best shows I�ve ever seen. He was just so interesting.
Jeff: Okay, here�s the reason I said earlier, �We�ve been here for an hour,� was not to stop things but�
Judd: I have nowhere to go.
Jeff: You�re committed.
Judd: I like to be here until people really want to leave. But that�s kind of how I am as a person. That�s why my movies are too long. That�s why I eat too much.
Jeff: Where would you find that your movies are too long?
Judd: Where would you find out?
Jeff: Do your friends tell you, �Your movie was too long�?
Judd: Oh yeah, everybody.
Jeff: Well, a couple of things on that. First off, I remember going to see a screening, an early screening, of
Judd: Yes.
Jeff: Okay. You were there. It was at Sony. Did you produce that movie?
Judd: Yes.
Jeff: Okay. So it�s one of those screenings that you guys do. I found a lot to laugh at, but I had to go to the bathroom at a certain point. So I walk in the bathroom, and there�s Adam McKay.
Judd: Not watching his own movie.
Jeff: Peeing. And I said to him, �What is with all these movies being so goddamn long?� And I didn�t realize, I mean I knew that he directed it but I forgot who I was�I was just speaking frankly. And he looked at me like, What? I think all these comedies should be ninety minutes. I remember when I saw a rough cut of
Judd: Yes.
Jeff: No, I really did, though. I really did. I don�t know if you remember me saying to you, but I told you in no uncertain terms: �Cut it down to ninety and it�ll be a huge hit.�
Judd: Yeah.
Jeff: I still wish it was ninety. By the way, loved it. But I would have loved it more at ninety. You know, Groucho Marx came to see Second City one time and I said to him, �Groucho, what did you think of it?� And he goes, �Make it shorter, and make it funnier.� That�s sort of my attitude about comedies. All Woody Allen: ninety minutes or less. You can�t watch a fucking short movie anymore. I understand if�what�s his name, the guy who directed, like,
Judd: I don�t subscribe to that.
Jeff: I know you don�t. And by the way, I love your movies, I really do. But I would love them more if they were shorter.
Judd: You�re probably right.
Jeff: I am with you on that. I remember going to your apartment once and watching that movie about the workers on strike. The train people�
Judd:
Jeff:
Judd: Not funny ones, right. You don�t think you can sustain joy or laughter over the long haul. See, when we were doing
Jeff:
Judd: You�re probably right, though, about length. But when things are good�you know, I�m not, like, upset that
Jeff: I am.
Judd: And there�s two
Jeff: I�m very upset. I�m not very upset but�
Judd: Really?
Jeff: I mean, I�m done. Because I feel like
Judd: What about Harry Potter?
Jeff: I�ve never seen a Harry Potter movie. It all goes on too long.
Judd: I get mad that people will sit through Harry Potter for two hours and forty minutes and not give me two hours and forty minutes.
Jeff: By the way, I�m so with you. What makes you think that Harry Potter should be�
Judd: You haven�t even seen the first one to judge the Potter movies. It�s not like you saw the first one and you went, �That sucks, fuck Harry Potter.� You�ve watched no Harry Potters.
Jeff: I have never seen a Michael Bay movie, either.
Judd: But maybe you would be the biggest Michael Bay fan in the world if you saw one.
Jeff: No I wouldn�t.
Judd: How do you know?
Jeff: I just know. I know it�s a difficult place to argue from, I know.
Judd: You don�t enjoy action and comedy hybrids?
Jeff: I love action and comedy hybrids, yes, but not Michael Bay�s. I�ll never see his�it�s a matter of pride.
Judd: Okay, well, who�s the funniest person that made you laugh? Who made you laugh the hardest?
Jeff: Let me think about that. Watching their work?
Judd: Yeah, not just hanging out. But their work.
Jeff: Can I do both?
Judd: Yes.
Jeff: All right, so their work: I guess Peter Sellers,
Judd: I was also thinking of stand-up. You�re talking about movies.
Jeff: Stand-up? You know who used to kill me when he was at his peak? Kevin Meaney. He used to destroy me. Night after night, the same exact act would kill me.
Judd: Chris Farley, in person, was one of the funniest people ever.
Jeff: Yeah, but he�s not a stand-up.
Judd: I�m changing the rules. When I think about stand-up, there�s so many that it just becomes ridiculous. I mean, my favorite thing used to be watching people write their acts onstage, free-form associating to come up with the next thing. There were days, when I first started, when I really used to laugh. I don�t laugh anymore. I�m dead inside.
Jeff: It�s much harder now, stand-up-wise, to get a laugh out of me. Even after someone�s done, I�ll go, �That was a good set.� You know, and I�ll mean it but I didn�t laugh once.
Judd: Yeah, that�s sad. I mean, Chris Rock�s act is crazy. Like, to see him really on his game?
Jeff: You know what�s sad? When you see Chris Rock at midnight at the Comedy Store working out his act and what he�s working out is better than anything you�ve ever written. It�s just so sad and frustrating and you�re laughing, and you�re going,
Judd: There were so many people, when we used to go on the road, who would just kill so hard. I never did. I was never that good.
Jeff: When we were on the road together�one thing, by the way, somebody said they saw our names up on the wall at the Improv in Addison or Dallas, you know, wherever it was, and everyone�s names and the date they played there are on the wall. And it was you and I opening for someone. I�m not going to say who it was because they haven�t gone on to anything and they�well, they weren�t a nice person but, uh, they weren�t so fuck them but I�m not going to say their name. It�s just mean.
Judd: But you�ll slam a guy like Michael Bay? Who you�ve never met?
Jeff: Yes.
Judd: But the guy who was mean to you, you will not call out?
Jeff: Yes.
Judd: Is that because he doesn�t have Michael Bay�s money? Like where, what�s your line?
Jeff: My line is Michael Bay better be able to take it. Not even because of money. Fuck him for making those shitty movies. Fuck him for wasting America�s time. Fuck him. Fuck him. And by the way, Albert Brooks�s speech in
Judd: You say this and you�ve never seen any of his movies. What are the top three or four jokes that, even for you, are uncomfortable?
Jeff: I never�generally, I�m thinking about what�s for lunch. Uh, the only time that I am offended is when something is not funny. Trying to be shocking, and if it�s not funny, you know, like whatchamacallit, who played Kramer?
Judd: Michael Richards.
Jeff: Michael Richards. You know, I�ve seen things worse than that, and you have, too. Horrible, horrible things. And if he was funny that night, nobody would have been pissed. But he wasn�t funny. Hall of Fame not funny.
Judd: But was it offensive?
Jeff: What? Him saying what he said about the fork and shit like that? Yeah!
Judd: I�ve seen people do things like that. I felt bad because I felt I kind of knew what he was trying to do.
Jeff: He was trying to provoke a response. Do you know that when he came offstage, he said�I think it was Tom Papa, who was going up next. He walked over to Tom and goes, �Yeah, weird crowd.� Having no idea that his life was about to change. People freak out like that. Not every night, but it happens. Anyway, we�re done. And thank you. I thoroughly enjoyed my time with you. You�re a good man. You should take more credit for being a great guy.
Judd: Thank you, Jeff.
Jeff: You�re welcome.
Judd: And I�m going to tell that to my good friend, Michael Bay, when I see him.
Jeff: You can tell Michael Bay. Michael Bay, by the way, I wish him nothing but happiness. I really do. I want him to be happy, have a good meal. I hope that all things are good for Michael Bay, but I want him to stop making movies. That I do. If it brings him joy, let him make movies�but don�t put film in the camera.
I couldn�t wait to talk to Jerry Seinfeld again for this book, thirty years after our first interview. Jerry is someone I have known a little bit for a long time. Whenever I�m around him, though, I usually don�t speak much. I�m still a little bit intimidated. The truth is, most comedians don�t understand why he�s so happy when they�re so tortured. But I look up to him more than ever, and every conversation with him is an opportunity to learn. You�d be a fool not to take advantage of what Jerry Seinfeld has to offer.
When we did this interview, I had just started doing stand-up again, after a twenty-year hiatus, and it seemed like a perfect moment to grill him about his current joke-writing process, and to soak up some of his stand-up wisdom. And, once again, he lit a fire under my ass�no one else has his work ethic or his clarity of vision, his passion for the craft. But I also had the opportunity to ask him questions about how he raises his children and his spiritual life, which is something I always wanted to do. Also, this being a few decades after our first interview, it was fun to remind him of what his dreams were back then, and to ask him how it feels to have made every single one of them come true.
Judd Apatow: You know how, back in the day, I interviewed you for my high school radio show?
Jerry Seinfeld: Yes, it�s still resonating.
Judd: Well, I thought I�d start out by talking about that interview, back in 1983�which I remember and you shouldn�t.
Jerry: No, I do remember. I do. It was an odd thing.
Judd: We did it at your apartment in Santa Monica. Do you remember that?
Jerry: I mean, I�d never had a kid come to interview me with a tape recorder before.
Judd: I remember you had a funny look on your face because I don�t think you knew a child was coming. The tape recorder I used was literally straight from the AV squad at Syosset High School�this huge green cassette recorder.
Jerry: How old were you when we did this?
Judd: I was fifteen. But I was aware of you, I think, from your earliest TV performances. I was watching way too much
Jerry: Wow. Boy, those were the days.
Judd: Is that the greatest moment in a comedian�s life, doing
Jerry: Yeah.
Judd: Do you remember it?
Jerry: Well, Leno recently told me that he came to my first
Judd: The other thing that I remember about our interview is that your apartment had nothing in it. Like, it was
Jerry: Oh, I was a minimalist from the beginning. I think that�s why I�ve done well as a comedian.
Judd: No distractions.
Jerry: If you always want less, in words as well as things, you�ll do well as a writer.
Judd: That whole high school radio show thing happened because a friend of mine decided he wanted to interview rock bands�we were like fifteen or sixteen years old�and then he goes off and interviews R.E.M. one day. And it occurred to me:
Jerry: Wow, that�s great. Not to take you off track here, but I heard that you were doing some stand-up at the Cellar recently. Is that true?
Judd: It is true.
Jerry: I want to know what that was like.
Judd: Well, I was interviewing Pearl Jam for their last record and as I was writing questions�you know, I think about them a lot because they�re my age and they�ve had, in a way, a similar experience to us in the arc of their careers. And I just kept thinking,
Jerry: I understand.
Judd: So I was making a movie with Amy Schumer, and she kept talking about doing stand-up and I finally said to her, �You know what, I�ll do a set and see how it goes.� I hadn�t done it in twenty years. And the first set went well and I went on every night, after we would finish shooting, for the next three months. I�ve been doing it ever since and it�s literally like I spent my entire life directing movies just so I could get better spots in comedy clubs.
Jerry: It�s really fun. You find that you�re this breed, you�re a dog breed. I always thought it was weird that dogs would bark at other dogs. They should be barking at everyone else. And that�s the way I see comics. I didn�t feel comfortable anywhere until the day I walked into a comedy club. But where do you think you�ll go with your stand-up, Judd?
Judd: I have to say that I am loving the fact that there�s no career goal connected to it. It�s purely for the joy of trying to get good at something that I was just okay at back in the day. It�s unfinished business. And it would just be great to figure out how to tear the house down consistently.
Jerry: Right.
Judd: It�s been so much fun�oddly, way more fun than anything else I�ve done.
Jerry: Now, why would you say that?
Judd: Because it�s immediate. I mean, I�m sure you had this experience making
Jerry:
Judd: I completely relate to that.
Jerry: And does the audience react when you are introduced? Do they know you?
Judd: I thought a lot about how you always say that buys you about ninety seconds.
Jerry: Yeah.
Judd: It buys me like thirty seconds. But I think they feel like they know me a little bit from the movies, so it�s as if they have a head start understanding my point of view. But I couldn�t enjoy it more. I�m fully addicted to performing again. I put as much time into my stand-up as my movies.
Jerry: Good.
Judd: I always remember you and Larry Miller saying that to be a comedian, you have to sit down and write. That�s the job. How much time do you spend at a desk?
Jerry: I just finished wrestling with a bit, actually. I couldn�t stop. I do it compulsively. I write with a pad and a pen. I like a big, yellow legal pad. And once I get that pad open, I can�t stop. It�s kind of like free-diving, you know. You have a certain amount of air and then you just have to come up. I�m good for an hour or two and then I collapse on the couch and sleep.
Judd: Do you have a legal pad organizational system?
Jerry: Oh, it�s very complicated. I have the legal pad and then I have one of those accordion folders with a different slot for each letter. Once I�m done with the bit, it either goes in the garbage or the accordion folder. Those are the only two destinations. And then it�s in the air. It has to survive on its own. Bits are like turtles right after they hatch, running to the beach.
Judd: Have you ever had a period where you were sick of it?
Jerry: No. No. No. Never.
Judd: Not even for a second?
Jerry: If this is something you have a gift for, it�s going to suck you along into it. All you have to do is transition from looking at your phone to putting the phone down and opening up the pad where there�s nothing going on. There�s no light hitting your retina. So, no, I�ve always found it to be�I just see something and I write it down and I go,
Judd: Do you feel like your act has changed in a substantial way? Has your work become more personal, now that you have kids?
Jerry: No, it�s just�you know, I�m still mud wrestling with a pig.
Judd: Is there a line for how personal you will go in your work?
Jerry: I�m doing a thing now about dadness�you know, when you reach dadness fully, no one in your family can hurt your feelings anymore, because you don�t
Judd: I find that everything about a family is drama and emotions and tears and yelling. How is that for you as somebody who doesn�t live his life that way? How do you deal, in the middle of the madness of kids, when someone wants something so badly they will scream and push you emotionally until you crack to get it?
Jerry: My kids never get me to crack. It�s because of my stand-up training. Like, �You�re nothing compared to the Comedy Cellar.�
Judd: That�s so funny.
Jerry: �You think you�re tough?� My kids said something to me last night, and I said, �That line is so weak, give me my last name back. You don�t deserve it.�
Judd: I have the opposite thing with my daughter. She said to me the other day, �Dad, all those things you say that you think are jokes are not funny.�
Jerry: Oh, my son had one even worse than that. We were making up words as a game at dinner one night and I said, �You know, I�ve made up a lot of words that people actually use as words.� And my son said, �Uh, really, like what?
Judd: That�s brutal. I do feel like there�s no larger pride than in seeing your kid get funny.
Jerry: No larger pride. Do you think they pick it up around the house or do you think it�s genetic?
Judd: It has to be genetic but I think that as they watch us reacting to things, over and over again, and see how we look at things, they also just pick it up. But Leslie and I, you know, from day one, the second our kids started terrorizing us with their emotions, we would crack immediately. Like when they cried because they wanted to sleep with us, we would always wind up sleeping with them.
Jerry: We were the same. I just meant, my kids will never get me to yell. I will not yell.
Judd: You�ll give in, though?
Jerry: I�ll give in, but I will not yell. Nor will I show any emotion.
Judd: How old is your oldest child?
Jerry: They�re fourteen, eleven, and nine.
Judd: So you�re in full puberty mode.
Jerry: Not quite. I�m an inch away.
Judd: Because I�m in the mode where suddenly boys are calling and boys are around and when they�re in the house, I have this very primal hatred of all of them. They�re all scared of me. I think I�m being nice, but I�m not.
Jerry: I am going to try my darnedest to avoid all those clich�s. I�m going to be fine with the boys, fine with the mischief. It�s just too clich� to be, �So you�re interested in my daughter, huh, young man?� I don�t want to be that.
Judd: Well, it�s also that all the boys are so unamusing, it bugs you. If they were funnier, you might like them. They just have so little to offer.
Jerry: But don�t you think there�s just going to be just a natural, powerful editing process that goes on? Your daughter is not going to be able to hang out with unfunny guys forever, right?
Judd: That�s an interesting thing I�ve noticed. Because of my job, my daughters have gotten to hang out with some of the most interesting, funny people around�and it makes them think less of their friends.
Jerry: That�s good.
Judd: They think they�re so uninteresting and so not funny.
Jerry: They�re right.
Judd: They actually have a problem with it sometimes. They don�t like what their friends talk about, or what interests them.
Jerry: That�s a great contribution you�ve made.
Judd: What was your family situation like, financially, growing up?
Jerry: We were fine. I grew up straight middle class.
Judd: I�m interested in how you approach having money and raising kids and making sure you instill some sense of values.
Jerry: We talk about it a lot and we make a big deal about it and they have absorbed it. They understand the natural, obnoxious vibe that people are going to have of them�that they�d better watch it, you know, because they�re going to be hated for this.
Judd: �Everybody knows what we have, so you�d better be cool.�
Jerry: I have cars. And my son, when I pick him up at camp, says, �Dad, you better not come in a different car. No one�s impressed with your cars. Come in the same car every day so no one knows you have more than one car.�
Judd: I find myself saying to my kid, �I earned this money, not you.� I�m allowed to enjoy it, but you go make your own money.
Jerry: I say that, too. �You�re not getting any of it.�
Judd: Do you subscribe to the Warren Buffett theory? Are you going to give your kids nothing?
Jerry: No, I don�t. I wish I subscribed to that theory, but I don�t. I honestly don�t even know what to do about that. Let them fight over it.
Judd: For me, I wanted to be a comedian and I wanted to work from a very early age because I was afraid of being broke. What was your core motivation?
Jerry: To never have to do anything else. I learned very young in this business that you bust your ass or you get thrown out of the kingdom. My motivation was not wanting to leave the kingdom. Plus, I just love the life of it. I love my independence and the joy of hearing laughs and making jokes. It�s as simple as that.
Judd: Does the TV show seem like this weird little dream that happened in the middle of your stand-up career?
Jerry: That�s a very good description of it.
Judd: Like this odd distraction for eight or nine years and then back to real life?
Jerry: Obviously, after the show, I saw there were many other avenues available for me. I missed the solitude. I missed the griminess and the simplicity of the life. I remember working it out with a friend of mine, James Spader. I said, �What do I do with my life now?� And he said, �Well, what has been the best experience that you�ve had so far?� And I said, �For me, it has been performing for live audiences.� You kind of get to do that on TV, but TV is so much work and the pipeline is just too long. In stand-up, you get addicted to that intensity: You have an idea for something, and then you�re onstage that night and people are reacting to it. That�s very intense.
Judd: How did you handle the grind of doing the show, with scripts coming in and not being good and having to deal with fixing them and everything? At
Jerry: Decimated.
Judd: And we didn�t do it anywhere near as many years as you did
Jerry: We were killing ourselves and the reason why I stopped the show was I literally physically couldn�t go on. We were doing twenty-two episodes a season. And then once Larry [David] left, I was doing all the rewrites�to rehearse all day and then to do all those rewrites and all the editing and all the casting, it was just�I was lucky the show happened when I was young and healthy. You�re strong in those years and you�re pretty smart. I couldn�t have done it before or after.
Judd: People don�t understand how it grinds you down. They don�t understand why people who have done it don�t ever want to do it again.
Jerry: Right. �Why did you stop doing the show?� I don�t have a good answer for that. I can�t explain. You can�t explain what that is.
Judd: There�s no way for people to understand what you give to a show like that.
Jerry: Yeah, and when your name
Judd: Sometimes, when I think about my career, I think of it in this weird way. I had this show that was a financial failure,
Jerry: Mostly, it just frees me from having to do press. And I travel in comfort. That�s what it gave me. No, I mean, it gave me everything, and that was always my thought when I was doing it. If I sacrifice every cell of energy that I have doing this, the rest of my life will be pretty good. So I just died on the shield. I went to the point where I thought,
Judd: I had that at the end of a season of
Jerry: This is one of the great perils of the job. You can work yourself to destruction. Because the work is interesting and exciting and all these opportunities are rare and wonderful and hard to resist.
Judd: Two years ago, I took my first Transcendental Meditation class. Just to get centered.
Jerry: Oh, really?
Judd: You started doing TM in college, right?
Jerry: I started doing it in college. While everyone was at lunch, I would go back to my room and do a TM. I did it once a day. But about a year ago, I was talking to a TM instructor, and he started telling me, �You know, if you do two a day, it�s a lot more powerful.� So I just recently started doing that and it has completely changed my life. I honestly will do four a day sometimes. I pop them like Tic Tacs.
Judd: How is it possible that, in all those years, no one told you that most people do TM more than once a day?
Jerry: All I think about now is what the experience of the show might have been like if I had applied this as the real antidote, which is what it is. It�s the antidote to that difficult life.
Judd: Is there any part of you that thinks that a certain level of bad energy and exhaustion helps you reach some other comedic place?
Jerry: No, I don�t believe in that.
Judd: One of the funniest things I�ve seen is on a DVD extra of the
Jerry: I don�t fall prey to that.
Judd: Do you think your general disposition comes from a place of spirituality, or were you like this from the get-go?
Jerry: That�s a tough question. I was drawn to a lot of Eastern thought, a lot of Zen stuff. I�ve always been drawn to Eastern philosophy and religion more than Western or Jewish, I guess. Which is why I took to TM so quickly. No question. But going back to our thing about emotions, I just don�t accept irrational emotion as part of my behavior. I�m not going to act on an irrational emotion. So I think that�s probably built in, but reading some of the Zen stuff I�ve read over the years and doing all the TM has definitely shored it up. Now I�m this guy, whoever that is.
Judd: I read a lot of Zen but it ultimately makes me unhappy because I don�t want to be one drop in the ocean.
Jerry: I do.
Judd: How do you get over that hump?
Jerry: You look at some pictures from the Hubble Telescope and you snap out of it. I used to keep pictures of the Hubble on the wall of the writing room at
Judd: See, I go the other way with that. That makes me depressed.
Jerry: Most people would say that. People always say it makes them feel insignificant, but I don�t find being insignificant depressing. I find it uplifting.
Judd: Insignificance is a hump I have trouble getting over, but maybe that�s because my parents were crazier than yours.
Jerry: Maybe. Or maybe you think this is your only life, and this is the only stuff you�re ever going to do. Which, you know, I don�t subscribe to that.
Judd: What do you subscribe to?
Jerry: That this is just one chapter of thousands of chapters.
Judd: My parents never mentioned spirituality or God or anything. The only thing they would say is �Nobody said life was fair.� That was my entire religious upbringing.
Jerry: Nobody said life wasn�t fair, either. Nobody is in charge of saying what life is and that�s what it is.
Judd: But generally, your parents were cool, right? You had a good relationship with them?
Jerry: I wouldn�t use the word
Judd: That didn�t make you needy?
Jerry: It made me feel free. You don�t need people. They�re unreliable.
Judd: It�s such a different type of a comedy upbringing. I feel like most comedians have broken parents who don�t know how to mirror you; they want you to take care of them. So you spend your life trying to please other people and thinking that you are significant because you can change the world or change things, but you find out that you really can�t, and then you�re miserable.
Jerry: Pleasing people is fun. It�s never been an emotional nutrient for me. It does make me happy when people like something I made and it makes me unhappy if they don�t like it, but that�s not my
Judd: You�re a lucky man in that respect.
Jerry: It�s allowed me to play the game for what it is. I look at everything as a game.
Judd: I recently watched that speech you gave about advertising, at the Clio Awards, or whatever. I really enjoyed that.
Jerry: Oh, thank you. Boy, you see everything. You know, I wrote that because I was so regretting that I agreed to accept this stupid award, I thought,
Judd: That�s maybe the greatest lesson you can teach a child.
Jerry: I�ve always loved getting sold. That�s true of all good salesmen. All good salesmen love to get taken in by a pitch.
Judd: Are you just loving doing your show,
Jerry: Yeah. I love it because it�s a completely free canvas, like stand-up. Nobody cares what I make. As long as the audience likes it and I like doing it, that�s the end of it.
Judd: Looking back at the shows you�ve done so far, what were the ones that had the biggest impact on you, or that surprised you the most? Because you have people on that show that we don�t see in that format, ever. You don�t see Howard Stern talking as he does in life, ever. You don�t see Letterman do that.
Jerry: I think people enjoy that. I never know what the show is going to be. Somehow I get in there and I can make it into whatever I want. It�s a can of Play-Doh. You just make stuff. I don�t deal with any executives, on any level. It�s just me. It�s just like stand-up. I go, �Here�s something I made for you.� And that�s it. I wanted people to see what the life of a comedian is like: Ten percent of it is being onstage, and ninety percent is just like hanging out with these great people. And that�s really made my life.
Judd: Just the joy of that.
Jerry: I wanted to show that. I thought people would get a kick out of seeing what it�s really like. This is the fun part.
One of the most intense experiences I�ve had in this business was the creation of the film
Ben Stiller: Let�s introduce ourselves.
Jim Carrey: Okay.
Judd Apatow: Who are you?
Jim: I�m�Orson Welles! My name is Jim Carrey.
Ben: And I�m Ben Stiller.
Judd: I�m Judd Apatow, and I guess we should talk a little about how this movie got started. There was this script,
Jim: And you jumped on board and rode my coattails all the way to the top.
Judd: Yes! And here I am, looking down. Actually, I made a very brief play to direct, which got rejected by the Sony people in about fifteen minutes.
Jim: Really?
Judd: Then it was like, well, who else?
Jim: �Judd Apatow will never direct a movie.�
Ben: Yeah. Dream on, buddy. Dream on. So, what should we talk about?
Judd: Well, we could talk about�that me and Ben went and visited Jim when he was shooting
Jim: I wanted to do the lisp because�you know, the more money people pay me, the more I want to rebel.
Ben: Yeah, I remember. We went to Charleston. I remember you were shooting a scene from
Jim: The rhino�s butt.
Ben: Yeah, the rhino�s butt.
Judd: But it was hot out! It was like a hundred and five out!
Jim: Yeah! People were dying out there. People were falling apart. And the producers were asking them to drink less water.
Ben: Couldn�t afford the water!
Jim: Yeah, and we spent a couple days, just brainstorming.
Judd: I have those notes still, from the hotel: It just says, like, (
Jim: That�s right. But that�s one of the most sublime scenes ever, in a movie. Oh my gosh. Can�t believe we got to do that.
Ben: And then you got to�you sort of rewrote the script�
Judd: I went and rewrote the drafts.
Jim: You cut your teeth!
Judd: Lou Holtz is the credited writer on this film; I did a pass on it. I think if I said more than that I�d get kicked out of the Writers Guild. But this was post�
Jim: Yeah. And I was just about to destroy the industry as we know it.
Judd: You were paid twenty million dollars. What�d you do with all that money?
Jim: I�m still living off that twenty million dollars.
Ben: And they made a big deal of it�the studio
Jim: Yeah, they stuck their heads right out there. Into the guillotine.
Ben: It put us out there, right from the beginning.
Jim: It really did expose us.
Ben: �Let�s get our money�s worth!�
Jim: �Oh, yeah. We�ll be
Judd: I remember they said forty-million-dollar budget, twenty million to Jim, and then if we ever asked for more than forty million dollars they�d get very angry.
Jim: (
Judd: At this moment in time, when I was doing my work, I was very, very lonely. I was lonely, and so the idea of the desperation of this was not a big leap for how I was feeling at the time.
Ben: I was coming off a big breakup, too.
Jim: We�re all disenfranchised. It�s all about abandonment, man. Every role I do is about abandonment. How about you guys?
Ben: My life is about abandonment.
Judd: I remember every aspect of this�we could not have laughed or enjoyed the ideas of this or the shooting more. But then, when you watch it years later, you do think,
Ben: I think a lot of the issues with the movie are about the
Jim: With homosexual overtones!
Judd: This is the first bromance.
Jim: Yeah. But I think it was important! I still think so. This movie is what�s wrong with
Ben: I don�t think the studio ever�they were sort of afraid to
Jim: Well, I don�t think you should. I think it�s a great movie, man!
Ben: But if it had come out on Halloween or something, or if they hadn�t put it out there as�
Jim: I remember they took all the psychodrama craziness out of the first trailer and I got worried right then. I went,
Ben: The trailer was a little ridiculous, in terms of the oom-pah-pah music.
Judd: We wanted the trailer to be a little more, like,
Jim: I wanted me attempting to put my drill into Matthew Broderick�s head or something like that. I wanted it to just be out there.
Ben: Judd, you said that the experience was fun, and it
Judd: I remember at the premiere, literally at the premiere, someone handed me two faxes�the
Jim: I knew. I
Ben: I remember that you never ever had any question about where you wanted it to go. I blame you.
Jim: I would take it further. I would.
Judd: At the time, it felt like you were throwing down the gauntlet, that you were announcing that you wanted to do things other than big, broad comedy.
Jim: It was a complete rebellion.
Judd: It kind of set up people to know that
Jim: How they speak about it still is so strange to me. It�s like, �And then he gave the audience something they weren�t ready for�.� They talk about it as if it was some murderously dark thing and I think it was just funny, and the need of the character is hilarious, but our sensibility, you and me�you love to go to that place.
Ben: Were you thinking of that at all when we were doing it, though? In terms of how audiences would react to it?
Jim: No, I always follow what I think is funny.
Ben: Your character is funny to me because he�s just so needy, and he�s so�he just wants a friend. I mean, he has a very clear motivation. He�s pure.
Judd: And it took an insane level of commitment. Jim, you had limitless energy: It was never like, �I�m tired. Can I go home?� It was always like, �Grr, how many more? Let�s go, let�s go!� (
Ben: I think we were sort of all at that place in our lives where we sort of had nothing else going on except our work.
Jim: We had nowhere else to go.
Ben: I just wanted to be there all the time.
Judd: I remember when�I used to have panic attacks around this time from smoking too much weed and working too hard. And I�d have to go into these meetings with the head of Sony, Mark Canton�
Jim: Everything was on the line for Mark at that point.
Judd: And I�d realize that this meeting is going to take two hours and I�d have a panic attack. Or we�d be at page five of a hundred and five and I�d know that I was going to have a panic attack for a hundred and fifteen pages but not
Jim: Wow. I didn�t know you were going through so much, Judd.
Judd: Here�s something: Jim, you make sweet love to my wife, Leslie Mann, in the movie
Jim: We go at it! We go at it like bandits. Like bandits! My God, my forehead was bleeding from the headboard.
Ben: Now, what was that like?
Jim: It was insane. Unbelievable. I dislocated her hip.
Judd: I don�t mind when it�s friends! Between friends, it�s okay. The only person that bothered me was Owen Wilson.
Jim: Well, of course. Because you figure, like, that could be something real.
Judd: I just want to be apologized to before you do it�like, �Sorry, Judd, it�s the job.� But Owen was just like, �Hi, Judd.� Then just did it. Anyway, Jim, was this the weirdest character you�ve played? Or Ace Ventura? Like, what�s the top three weirdest Jim Carrey characters?
Jim: I don�t know. I don�t think they�ve happened yet. But yeah, Ace was definitely an out-there character. And suddenly I got this big paycheck and stuff, and I didn�t know what to do with myself. My first terror went through me�
Ben: Well, it worked well for you until this movie.
Jim: Till I started chasing penguins around and kissing up to the public. No, this movie
Judd: How do you feel about the movies you�ve made since then, about your canon?
Jim: It won�t be complete, Judd, until you do your best work with me. Seriously, we have to reteam. It has to happen. I mean, honestly. I think the world is ready for this.
Ben: They�re clamouring for
Judd: That
Ben: This time we�ll have a hundred-million-dollar budget.
Jim: And I should get paid fifty of the hundred million! That would be amazing.
Judd: For all the film students out there�are they learning anything about film right now, listening to this?
Ben: I never know if these things are supposed to be entertaining or informative.
Jim: I don�t know what they�re supposed to be.
Judd: This is your first commentary.
Jim: I feel so virginal right now.
Judd: I kinda feel like you should do some impressions, since we�re on audio now.
(Jim does an impression.)
Judd: Now do your Clint Eastwood face!
Ben: Come on, dude. I was just watching that on YouTube. There is this incredible YouTube video of you doing all the impressions, from the early days�
Jim: Well, yeah, I was on the Johnny Carson show. Remember him?
Judd: You were on with Johnny? Did you meet Johnny Carson, or�
Jim: I was on twice with Johnny. He was awesome, man! I loved him. He was on something, for sure, but�
Judd: He had questionable years of sobriety.
Jim: I don�t know
Judd: I remember Ben and I being somewhat shocked at your energy level, too. Take after take after take�it literally threw me as a person that it was possible.
Jim: I�m a desperate human being.
Judd: Do you feel like you�re needier now or then?
Jim: I�m definitely in more pain now than I was.
Ben: Me too! I�ll join you there.
Judd: Does success bring about peace and calm, or more pain?
Jim: When you start to realize that peace and calm are not actually gonna help you in the business�that they�ll actually be bad for you�that�s when the real divide happens. When you go,
Ben: The building blocks of success.
Judd: I remember John Cleese�he
Jim: Oh yeah, there you go.
Ben: Pain and humor go together.
Ben: There�s David Cross! Left side of the frame.
Jim: David Cross! We love David Cross. How many people were in this movie? We started the industry!
Judd: Sometimes when I watch this movie�I always thought it was going to be some kind of wild roller-coaster ride that�d also be, like, super-fun and delightful. But then, it has true madness in it.
Ben: I think it was a roller-coaster ride, it�s just that it was going
Jim: I disagree. I think it�s sublime.
Ben: No, but it�s a fun drop.
Judd: I remember when Jim said at the end of the movie, �I have to die. I need to jump off the tower and die.�
Jim: Yeah.
Ben: Well, you should have died, that�s the thing.
Jim: I really should have. When you go halfway, it never works.
Ben: That�s my fault. I take responsibility.
Judd: They weren�t going to let us kill you.
Jim: People don�t understand, truly, how warped you are, Ben. They haven�t even scratched the surface. Your iceberg is large under sea level there.
Judd: Ben, this was the second movie you directed, after
Ben: Well, this was a weird period in time. I sort of had a career as an actor but not really�
Jim: (
Ben: Let�s go back to the beginning�when I was about fifteen I played with the idea of becoming an actor.
Jim: You didn�t direct for quite some time after
Ben: Well, nobody was banging down the door. Let�s call it�basically I got a new agent. And he said, �Okay, you can�t do anything for about six months.�
Jim: Hide under the porch.
Ben: And then we�ll see where we�re at. It�s so obvious in show business. When a movie doesn�t make a lot of money, people don�t call.
Judd: But then you did
Ben: I did�after this, I did
Jim: No, I�m loving it.
Judd: But I remember when you got
Ben: It was a break. Huge. The Farrelly Brothers gave me a chance because they liked
Jim: Which is one of the classic comedies of all time, by the way. That was a genius movie.
Ben: But it was a weird time, where I didn�t know what I was going to�
Jim: When you kiss T�a [Leoni] in that movie, did you
Judd: Versus how
Jim: It was crazy! It was crazy what was happening outside the frame.
Judd: I just remember once, we were at a restaurant after
Jim: It�s a nice thing! That�s nice.
Judd: It�s nice having catchphrases, visuals, that people yell at you.
Ben: But this was your reality, Jim, when you were making this movie. It had already been like that for a few years. What was it like?
Jim: It was odd.
Judd: I remember being in the mall with you, Jim. We were in a bookstore and suddenly people started walking up to you, and then more people, and more people, and then we realized every single person in the mall is headed to you, and then it got sort of dangerous for us to get out and became a
Jim: No, exactly. And that�s why I�m a martial artist. That�s why I�m a weapons expert.
Judd: How emotional do you get now when a movie does well, or badly? Like after having made a lot of movies, how emotionally connected are you?
Jim: My entire self-worth is wrapped up in it.
Ben: I find it hard to totally disconnect from that stuff.
Jim: I want to go to a place where they hate me personally, and I have to win them back. It�s odd, because some of them�when a movie doesn�t work, you know, it�s because it had something of gravity in it, and actually there was something that was not going to appeal to everybody, and it spirited people away in the other direction.
Ben: It�s a complicated thing. Because how do you disconnect from that, but not make it about yourself, too?
Jim: Whenever you try to do something serious, you�re gonna lose people. Certain people. Because they want you to be a certain thing and�
Ben: There is that thing with comedy. People can take it very personally if you�re not there to be
Jim: On Twitter, man, every once in a while, every fiftieth person is like, �Who do you think you are? You better not be dramatic anymore. Don�t you be dramatic!�
Ben: I�ll tweet something about Haiti and there�ll be someone who�ll tweet back, �Be funny! Who cares about Haiti!�
Jim: �Who cares about Haiti? Put your penis in your zipper and shut up.�
Ben: �I�m unfollowing you, you�re not funny. You just care about Haiti.�
Judd: I get that for retweeting your Haiti things! �Stop retweeting Ben�s Haiti things!�
Jim: �Who do you think you are, funnyman?�
Ben: Judd, how do you feel when your movies come out?
Judd: I have those moments where�
Ben: I�m looking for some insight here.
Judd: Where I�m so proud�and it doesn�t do well. Like this movie. This blew my mind�I didn�t recover like you guys. This one threw me for years because I loved it
Ben: See, I�ve never felt like I had any idea about what the audience liked. It�s always like a crapshoot, really. (
Jim: Yeah. Only what feels good.
Ben: Yeah. How can you figure out what twenty million people will like?
Jim: Well, it�s the Emerson thing: What�s true for one man isn�t true for all, and�
Judd: I went back to TV after this. I retreated.
Ben: I didn�t direct again for four years after this.
Judd: It�s true.
Jim: I still marvel at where everybody went. It just blows me away. It�s hard for me to even be in the room with you guys.
Ben: (
Judd: We were all giving each other a shot, but in weirdly interwoven ways.
Jim: Judd was like pumping me back when I was in the clubs and stuff, and no one was watching me.
Ben: I remember going to your young comedian special, in Phoenix, with David Spade.
Jim: Judd actually opened for me.
Judd: And I thought,
Ben: So what did you think, Jim, when you said to everybody, �I want Judd to produce it,� and then Judd said, �I want Ben to direct it�?
Jim: You know, this is the thing�
Ben: You had the power to do that.
Jim: No one really knows anything about comedy. We know a little bit about what we�re doing, but as far as the industry�the exec branch�they don�t know how it happens. It never comes to you prepared and ready to go, you always have to work it to death till the last second, in the moment and whatever. And I don�t know what the hell I�m trying to say right now.
Ben: I think you�re saying that they don�t know, so they let you go with your instinct.
Jim: Exactly.
Ben: If you�re the guy in the power position, they�ll listen to you.
Jim: A lot of the comedies, you find yourself having to take shots with people, because they have that kind of�not a lot of experience, but they have that kernel of brilliance, that you go, like, �A good brain�s a good brain, man. Let�s go.�
Judd: And they don�t know to be scared. I mean, we weren�t scared when we did this and in a lot of ways that�s what makes it pure. Really, it�s like a pure comedic thought.
Jim: There�s not somebody trying to fit it into a shape or a form that�s
Ben: And I don�t think we knew enough about the context of the �business� to know whether or not it could hurt us.
Jim: It�s too bad that my money got in the way of all the fun. But you know, I�m just not going to look back with regrets. I�m just not. It was fun. Such a fun movie. We really had a lot of
Judd: We�ve all priced ourselves out of the business.
Jim: You guys got huge kingdoms. I can�t even get inside.
Judd: I�ll work for free. I�ll say right now, I�ll get it going.
Ben: Get my assistant, okay? She�ll hook it up.
Judd: Call my assistant�s assistant.
Jim: We really should do something, because this is not enough. We just cut our teeth on this thing.
Judd: It�d be fun now that we know more. But do you think we�re scared now?
Jim: I�m not scared.
Ben: Fear is part of the experience, but�I�m beyond fear now.
Judd: I paid off my house, I�m okay.
Jim: You can live forever.
Judd: Is that where we stop?
Ben: I�m glad we did this. We�ve wanted to do this for about ten years, right?
Judd: Ten years.
Jim: Well, I�d never done this before. How�d we do, by the way? Did we do okay?
Ben: We can always come back and do it again.
Jim: Let�s start it over. We�re going to do it again. Turn it over and I�ll be you this time, Judd.
I don�t understand Jimmy Fallon. He�s fast, witty, handsome, musical, inventive, a confident performer, a great listener�and he is definitely having more fun than the rest of us combined. I always thought comedy came from pain. I thought the people who created it were drawing from some bottomless well of existential angst. I thought it was impossible to do it well if you are also an enthusiastic, hopeful, energetic person. Most talk show hosts are fun to watch because they seem so miserable, but Jimmy is the opposite. He is more of a Steve Allen or Martin Short type of guy. He is exactly what he seems to be when you see him on TV�a warm, chipper, funny guy. A good person. I wanted to speak with him to figure out how he became this way�with the secret hope that it would help me shed some of my old, boring, neurotic, my-pain-is-so-old-I-don�t-even-remember-where-it-came-from BS. I think I got my answer but I am not sure I can make it work for me. (I think he is happy because he is not a Jew.)
Judd Apatow: I had the loveliest time with your wife at the wedding the other night.
Jimmy Fallon: She just got back. She�s like, �Thank God for Judd Apatow. He was fantastic.�
Judd: I was a stand-in for you.
Jimmy: Did you do all my bits?
Judd: Yeah. If she didn�t look over, she may have thought that you were there.
Jimmy: Was it fun or was it just a wedding?
Judd: It was great. When you go to a wedding and Lionel Richie comes out and sings �I�m Easy,� what more do you want?
Jimmy: Goose bumps.
Judd: He was really funny, too. I always get annoyed when someone like that is funny.
Jimmy: I know. What did he say, �I only do this if I get paid or invited,� or something?
Judd: Yeah. (
Jimmy: That�s why I don�t go out anymore. Because I�ll see somebody��Oh, hey, I just talked about you. I talked about your bad plastic surgery. Sorry!�
Judd: That�s your biggest conflict. You have no choice but to be nice to their face, and then take them down in the monologue.
Jimmy: (
Judd: Someone told me a funny story about the
Jimmy: Did you ever hear the story about Wayne Newton punching Johnny Carson?
Judd: No, no.
Jimmy: There�s a story that Wayne Newton got pissed off that Johnny Carson was making jokes about him, so he stormed into his office, past his secretary, grabbed his collar, and said, �You say one more joke about me and I�ll fucking knock your block off.� I don�t think Johnny mentioned him ever again.
Judd: I love people almost getting in fistfights over jokes.
Jimmy: What is wrong with people?
Judd: Your show seems so well run. I guess my first question�as somebody who had to run shows when I didn�t know how to do it�would be how, in the beginning, did you know how to set up your show, not only for it to work comedically, but for it to be a place that was happy and functional?
Jimmy: We just went in knowing that we might get canceled. And if you�re going to go down, you have to go down doing what you like doing and what�s fun for you, because I don�t ever want to do something painful and then have everyone go, �Hey, that works. Keep doing that painful thing for years.�
Judd:
Jimmy: It�s so�I watch
Judd: (
Jimmy: Got to take them down a notch.
Judd: You�re very close to Lorne. What is the thing you think people don�t understand about him?
Jimmy: Maybe that he does not care about money. He�s very successful, so he doesn�t need money, but it�s like�if it was anyone else, they would have made some contract deal where they would get five percent of every person who leaves to become uber-famous. Will Ferrell would be giving Lorne five percent after the next
Judd: What was exciting about SNL�well, I�m a little bit older than you, but when
Jimmy: I taped every
Judd: Where did you grow up?
Jimmy: Saugerties, New York, which is Woodstock.
Judd: Did you have friends who loved comedy? Because I was totally alone. No one gave a shit.
Jimmy: I had a good crew of maybe like five to ten kids I could watch the tapes with. They�d have a party and sneak booze in the basement or something and I�d come in with a tape and show a couple of funny sketches, and they�d all laugh, and we�d just hang out and listen to music and stuff like that. I was really into it. And then my dad bought a VCR, because he wanted the video camera that came with the VCR that attached with the wire�
Judd: Yeah.
Jimmy:�and you had to carry around a box.
Judd: (
Jimmy: He used that to tape home movies, but I used it to tape
Judd: I remember that.
Jimmy: And so I used to tape them, but I couldn�t always play the tapes back because that was the only VCR we had in the house, so what I would do is play back Richard Pryor�s monologue, and record it on a reel-to-reel that I bought at a garage sale. Then I would go up in my room and play it and lip-sync Richard Pryor�s monologue in the mirror.
Judd: Oh my God.
Jimmy: I did Steve Martin, too. I would do all of their bits and lip-sync them like they were songs.
Judd: I�m always fascinated what draws people to doing any of this, but you seemed to have super-cool, healthy parents.
Jimmy: They�re not healthy, but they are definitely�
Judd: You liked them?
Jimmy: They were great. I had a great childhood.
Judd: Are your parents still around?
Jimmy: Yeah, I talk to them almost every day. They are great. They belong in a mental institution, but besides that, very nice people.
Judd: (
Jimmy: They were funny people. We were an Irish Catholic family, so we�d have parties. My dad loved to listen to music, so we always had the radio on, and so they would have parties and people came over and after a couple of hours people would stand up in front of everybody and sing a song. And then everyone clapped and then someone else would go, �No,
Judd: That is hilarious. And you were never a dirty comedian.
Jimmy: I never was a dirty�no, I never was.
Judd: But your show now, in a way, is like sitting around, singing songs at the piano, enjoying people. Is that how you see it? I mean, the idea of my crazy Jewish family sitting around, singing a song, is unfathomable.
Jimmy: This was a weekly event. This would happen all the time, and everyone would get involved. My sister wasn�t as into performing as I was, but we would play �King Tut� and come downstairs in my mom�s dresses�the ones that looked kind of Egyptian�and we would dance and lip-sync �King Tut.�
Judd: See, I did all that and no one cared and I was alone.
Jimmy: (
Judd: It�s like we have the same story�if everyone ignored you and you just watched
Jimmy: I look back, I mean there are tapes of me doing Pee-wee Herman and impressions of people, Michael Jackson, Eddie Murphy�
Judd: I remember meeting you when you first got to
Jimmy: That was my breakout episode. Ben Stiller was hosting.
Judd: That�s right. It was the Stiller episode. That�s why I was there.
Jimmy: It was a Halloween episode, Ben Stiller hosted, and I remember Ben said to Higgins, �Hey, this kid does a great Sandler.� They go, �Yeah, yeah, we�ve seen it, but Adam doesn�t have a movie coming out, so we�ll wait until something�� and Ben goes, �No, it doesn�t matter. You should have him do it.� So we wrote up celebrity
Judd: Yeah. Wow.
Jimmy: Usually, if they know that a bit is going to kill, they�ll put it at the end of �Update,� but they didn�t think I was going to work that well, so they put me in the middle�and I crushed. It was a good bit. I did impressions of Alanis Morissette and all this stuff and no one knew�I was brand-new. It was my third episode, I think.
Judd: That�s the biggest moment, when you realize you�ve found something that will make you break out a little bit.
Jimmy: And that was it. I was the impressions guy. It all started happening from that one episode.
Judd: You try so hard to figure out what will make people notice you�
Jimmy: I remember I called Adam before I did it, because I wanted to make sure I had his blessing. They called him and put him on the phone with me, and I was so nervous. I was like, �Hi, Adam.� He goes, �How ya doing, man? Let�s hear it.� I go, �Okay.� I go (
Judd: That�s because no one ever calls or shows any respect in that situation. I remember Dana Carvey did Shandling on
Jimmy: I remember that. It was a great one. Out of all the things I watched to get ready for this job,
Judd: It seems like effortless, the way you generate all this material.
Jimmy: Well, I think you have to keep trying and keep swinging and get up to bat and try a different type of joke, because you don�t know which one is going to connect. We try a lot of stuff that doesn�t work, and you go, like, �Wow, that one did not work,� but we tried it. And that�s what you have to do. I remember�it was the first season of
Judd: Because Letterman, there was a moment when he just stopped going to New Jersey and knocking on doors, doing bits.
Jimmy: But that was the best part.
Judd: It was. It was incredible. And I felt a deep sadness when I heard he was not going to do remote pieces anymore.
Jimmy: He was the best at it.
Judd: It must have been odd to go up against Letterman, since he�s the one that made us all want to be funny.
Jimmy: Yeah, but it�s just the way it worked out.
Judd: Do you ever interact with him?
Jimmy: I don�t. You know, we started joking back and forth a while ago. He would say�he would try to tweet me. Almost like he didn�t understand Twitter. He�s like, �I�ll tweet Jimmy Fallon!�
Judd: That�s funny.
Jimmy: It was a funny bit. Then, I would try to teach him how to tweet through Twitter, and then I think CBS asked him to stop.
Judd: (
Jimmy: Yeah. They were like, just stop saying his name. I think they have a blanket rule, CBS isn�t allowed to talk about me or something. So silly.
Judd: Everyone in late night right now is great. It�s a weird moment, as a fan of comedy and good things: You go,
Jimmy: You can�t do that. That�s a waste of your day. But the bummer for me is that I can�t watch anyone else now because I don�t want to take any of their bits. Being an impressionist, I imitate everybody, so if I watch Letterman every night, I would start doing him in my show, and if I watch Kimmel, I�d do his bits, you know. So I get nervous and I just can�t watch anyone.
Judd: Is there a part of this job that still blows your mind? For me, watching your show, when you�re standing next to Bruce Springsteen singing a song and doing a bit, I think, there must be a feeling of nirvana in that moment that I can�t even imagine.
Jimmy: But when it�s happening, you don�t feel it. The
Judd: The one that made me laugh was when you were singing with Paul Simon, and I realized, oh, there�s no joke here. Jimmy just forced Paul Simon to sing a song with him.
Jimmy: (
Judd: No, you have to keep doing it. It just made me laugh so hard. This is a fun moment in late night. I would watch
Jimmy: Yeah, you know them, and you�re like, wait, what?
Judd: You can�t imagine Carson being as excited about doing his show as you are and we are. Like I don�t think Carson ever thought,
Jimmy: (
Judd: Those shows were driven by such darkness. Carson was funny, but he also looked like there was so much more going on here, which we didn�t understand. And I guess Letterman is that way, too. We were fascinated to see how these guys would interact with people because, on some level, we thought they were miserable.
Jimmy: Yeah, well, you could tell when Dave hated somebody or when Johnny hated somebody.
Judd: I think that people are generally struggling, and a lot of people are having a hard time and are miserable. To watch someone who is genuinely enjoying themselves is an elixir, and it shocks people. I think they watch you and think,
Jimmy: That�s not my style, so I�m not good at that.
Judd: It taps into the national neurosis in a way, where people are so happy to not be unhappy. You know, we all want to be around the piano, singing the song.
Jimmy: I don�t know if you had this, but I always wanted to please everybody. I always wanted to make everyone proud of me and happy.
Judd: Yeah, but what is different for me is that, when I go home, I feel shame at the need to make people happy in order to feel good. I don�t know how you are afterwards, but it doesn�t feel like you have the bad aftertaste.
Jimmy: When it�s the TV show, I don�t really, no. But if I�m at a party or a wedding and I have to get up and do some bit that I think is funny�and if it goes well�I just go like,
Judd: How is the social part of this life for you, where you get to know all these people that you look up to?
Jimmy: It�s odd, but you get used to it after a little while. I don�t know, all of this is fun and surreal, and it�s just been getting crazier and crazier.
Judd: And now you have two kids.
Jimmy: I do.
Judd: You have two girls?
Jimmy: Just like you. I�m like, I finally get it now. It�s like, this is why you�re doing what you�re doing. This is the future. And also, God, it�s so worth it. It�s just the greatest feeling in the world. The little arms, they hug you and it�s like, ugh, it�s a crusher and I�m a mush. I�m an Irish emotional mess.
Judd: You understand how people get needy with their kids because you�re like, �You�re still going to talk to me when you leave, right?�
Jimmy: Totally. It�s so embarrassing. And you always say, �Well, I won�t do that, I�ll be the cool parent.� But you can�t help it.
Judd: You can�t and you just�that balance of how do I give them rules, which they want to fight me on, and guarantee they want me to be their best friend at the same time is impossible.
Jimmy: You invented this human, so you�re like,
Judd: And then there�s that weird moment�and everyone tells you about it your whole life and you think,
Jimmy: Yeah. It does happen. Right around twelve or thirteen is what everyone�s telling me.
Judd: That little kid who�s just, like, �I want to show you the teddy bear I bought��twelve years later they�re like, �Get the fuck out of my room!�
Jimmy: �Get the fuck out.�
Judd: I have the thing with my daughter where I hate any boy that comes by�like, in my bones, I hate any boy that is circling.
Jimmy: Yes.
Judd: But there�s one kid that is like a super-goofy, nerdy kid, who I realize,
Jimmy: (
Judd: I�m like, �How come you don�t want to date my doppelganger?�
Jimmy: But she will date someone like you.
Judd: That�s the scary part. I wish I had self-esteem so she would like a guy with self-esteem.
Jimmy: I�m going to be so bummed out because my daughter is going to marry some feminine guy that laughs at himself too much. And I�m going to go,
I�ve known Jon Stewart since we were both young comedians. After his first attempt at a talk show on MTV, he took some time off to write and act on
There are certain people I�ve known for a long time that I feel an odd sense of pride in knowing, because I simply can�t believe how brilliant their work is and what they�ve accomplished. It shocks me that I used to sit in the back of clubs with these people, and they went on to speak to presidents and influence people in such a profound way. Jon is one of those people. He makes me proud to be in the world of comedy.
Judd Apatow: I am going to ease my way into this with you, but how much stand-up are you doing these days?
Jon Stewart: You know, these past couple of years I have not done much, but before that, I was going out one weekend every month, every other month, something like that. I try to keep it to that.
Judd: And are you still writing new material for your act?
Jon: I keep it just stale enough so that the rote memorization I had of my act was still, you know, mindful to some extent.
Judd: I just started doing stand-up again about four months ago. I hadn�t done it in twenty-two years.
Jon: Holy shit.
Judd: But one of my strongest memories from my stand-up career was the night you and I were auditioning at Stand-Up New York for the HBO
Jon: How much do you love to bomb, though?
Judd: Uh.
Jon: Oh, I love the bomb. You have to
Judd: Is there one in particular that wakes you up in the middle of the night?
Jon: I think maybe the most pleasurable bomb was�you know, when you�re bombing young and you�re in the Cellar. Those are the most volatile bombs. Because you haven�t quite established a baseline of confidence yet. So you really feel the sting of it. Like,
Judd: Yeah.
Jon: I remember this one time. I had already been on TV for a bit by this time. They were reopening Radio City Music Hall, so this is probably the largest crowd I�ve played. It must have been five thousand people. And it�s a big night of big stars�there�s Billy Crystal, and they�re raising him up on a platform through the stage floor, like he�s Michael Jackson. He�s leading the charge. Fucking crushing it, destroying the room. Ann-Margret is in the audience. This is like some big return to glamour for Radio City Music Hall, and I come out and there is some confusion in the audience as to why I am there. I can feel it. Six minutes into the bit, and it had not in any way dissipated. What was impressive about it was, you would think the law of averages says that if you have a room full of five thousand people,
Judd: Wow. I had one where�well, I didn�t perform but it
Jon: You can�t win that.
Judd: The place is packed and I�m with my daughter. I�m usually with my wife at these things, because she will encourage me and say, �Don�t worry, you always do great.� But my daughter is as scared as I am. She�s sixteen and terrified for me. So I would say to her, �I�m really scared,� and she�d be like, �Oh my God.� And then the show starts. Martin Short does a medley of Mel Brooks songs. Tears down the house. Billy Crystal comes out with the most heartfelt, hilarious anecdotes. Tears down the house. Sarah Silverman comes out and does some variation of what I was going to try to do, only better.
Jon: You actually defused the bomb with, like, ten seconds to go. You fucking pulled the plug, man.
Judd: I totally pulled the plug, and then people just kept killing. The funny end of it is that special won the Emmy for best special and I thought,
Jon: You know what you did? You sacrificed yourself. To give them the Emmy.
Judd: I knew Mel didn�t need me. He had enough love.
Jon: It�s always stunning how the old-school showbiz guys can crush anywhere, anytime. You realize that what we would consider the gauntlet of stand-up�the shitty clubs, the one-nighters in Jersey, the hotels in Rochester, all the shit you go through�is like a sanitized private school compared to what these guys did.
Judd: I asked about stand-up because it strikes me that you�re basically doing a fifteen-to-twenty minute stand-up set every night on your show�and one that you�ve never done before.
Jon: The show is such a different animal, though. It�s structured differently and written differently, and you have all the creature comforts of television to fall back on: The over-the-shoulder graphics, the montage, the willing audience. It�s
Judd: When you think about your post�
Jon: I hunger for a nap.
Judd: I know. I watch the show every night and I have the same reaction every night:
Jon: I always have this sense, with the show, that it is a beast that just wants to get the hell away from us. And so the effort and energy that it takes to corral the beast every night�that is where your focus has to be. That being said, I guess I don�t look at the forms as exclusionary. It�s really a function of time, and I think that when I stop doing this, I will want to do stand-up. I just don�t think I�ll do it to the exclusion of other things, the way that we used to. The single-mindedness of it when we were younger is probably something I won�t return to.
Judd: Here�s the part that I am most impressed by: When I go to work in the morning, I�ll usually have someone bring me breakfast. I get somebody to make me�
Jon: Do you really?
Judd: Yeah, and I�ll�
Jon: What do you have for breakfast?
Judd: An egg white omelet of some sort.
Jon: Look at you, with the egg white omelet.
Judd: And that�ll take me�
Jon: Maybe a little spinach in there, a little tomato, a little feta?
Judd: I�ll have a little�uh, yeah, spinach mainly.
Jon: Nice.
Judd: And I�ll sit and I�ll eat that omelet and I�ll take an hour. I�ll watch your show. I�ll watch Colbert. Okay, so there�s an hour where I�ve gotten no work done. And then I�ll just kind of wander around and chat with everyone at the office and make a couple of calls. I can easily kill until one o�clock that way. But you have to hit the ground running. Hard. Every single day.
Jon: We work in an office. You know, it�s funny. People always say to me, Ah, man, you guys�it probably must be so much fun, sitting around! And it�s like, Yeah, our morning meeting starts at nine. We have to pitch out our ideas�and in some ways that is the challenge of a show. It�s to create a factory that doesn�t kill inspiration and imagination. You try to create a process that includes all the aspects of a mechanized process that we recognize as soul killing while not actually killing souls.
Judd: That is the invisible genius that the world will never understand. We worked at
Jon: See, here�s where I disagree. I think that�s not necessary. When I was working on those other shows, I felt like there were aspects to it that didn�t need to exist in order to maintain the creative excitement. It didn�t need to be Machiavellian. You could get everybody to have common cause, and do it in a way that maintained a certain humanity. I always look at it like: Think of how much energy it takes to fuck with people. What if you try to use that energy to get the show done faster and better and get everybody out by seven? If I go into the morning meeting and I have clarity, and I can
Judd: How often does it happen that something heinous happens in the world, and you walk in and say, �I have no take on this whatsoever, it�s so horrifying. I have nothing to say.�
Jon: Well, then that�s our take. And that�s where the stand-up background comes in. What�s the audience feeling right now? Let�s just articulate back to the audience what they�re feeling so at the very least, they get a recognition laugh as opposed to bringing them some sort of analysis. None of us may have a take, but if you maintain your ability to recognize a good idea, at the very least you know everybody is up for it. We�ll sit in those meetings and we may come in with nothing, but at some point, it�s sort of like it�s a refinery. We�ve been here sixteen years, so we�ve sanded out every rough aspect of the process. Any extraneous energy that would be spent on things other than trying to make the show good have been removed.
Judd: I just always felt, and I don�t know if this is your take on things, but when we did the last-season
Jon: It was tough.
Judd: It was tough for many reasons, but a big part of it was that the show was so personal to Garry. It was hard to crack what he would like, and he was acting so much that he needed the staff to come through for him so he could have time to sleep and do his work. There was a tension that couldn�t be removed, which is: You were never going to nail it and it was always going to be painful for Garry because then Garry would have to say, �Okay, just come to my house on Sunday so I can rewrite the script.� There was some pain to that. But as I�ve watched the evolution of
Jon: No question. Well, first of all, Garry is brilliant. The biggest thing, and this is not necessarily what comes through on
Judd: Yes, well, there was always that�the struggle that comes when certain people are trying to please their boss. My approach was always: This is an impossible job for Garry. I�m just going to try and help him in any way I can. But other people, when they would pitch a joke that didn�t get through, would get angry at Garry. And that was destructive.
Jon: It�s so important to remove preciousness and ownership. You have to invest everybody in the success of the show, and to let them feel good about their contribution to it without becoming the sole proprietor of a joke. There has to be an understanding that that may be a great joke, but it might not serve the larger intention, or the narrative, of the show. You have to make sure that everybody feels invested without feeling that type of ownership. The other side of it is doing twelve episodes is a very different process from having to set up something that can serve a hundred and sixty episodes, and I think you can get away with more volatility in that other environment.
Judd: And the storytelling requires that people go to some deep place, emotionally, which makes them vulnerable and raw. And on a show like
Jon: Correct. The fact that
Judd: Looking back, one could say that the final season of
Jon: It�s
Judd: And it is exactly what happened with Leno and Conan.
Jon: We created this template. People used to say to me,
Judd: How has the way that you look at
Jon: I never think about its purpose. I think about its process, and that has changed dramatically. In other words, the evolution has been less about: What is our job here, or what is our purpose of being here? It�s about: How can we make the show better, more distinct, with different voices? The two areas where I think the show has evolved the most are through the integration of new technologies, obviously�you know, search engines that didn�t exist when we started, and that help us find material. When we got here, we used to cut the show in an online room. You could use maybe five rolls for an act and if you cut that montage and you got one of them wrong, you had to go back and start again. And I also think we have a better understanding of the diversity of voice. We�ve moved it from more of a strict, periodic structure into something that could become more essayistic.
Judd: Was there ever a moment when you realized,
Jon: There were two moments where that occurred, in some measure. One was winning an Emmy. That got in my head a little bit, feeling like I suddenly had a responsibility, that we had to live up to this thing even if I couldn�t fully define what that thing was.
Judd: Sometimes I liken it to Chappelle in the sense that, for some reason, the responsibility of the show took him away from the idea of having fun, and enjoying himself.
Jon: The sense I got from Dave was it wasn�t so much the responsibility as he wasn�t sure if the show was being received in the way it was intended. I think Dave felt a responsibility, as a black performer, to live up to a responsibility and to not give people�you know, it�s sort of what we call the bucket-of-blood laugh. George Carlin and I used to talk about that a little bit because he would do those shows where he�d be like, �You know, we only bomb brown people. We only bomb brown people except when we bombed Germany they were white people and that�s because they were going, you know, because they were bombing people and that�s our fucking job. That�s our fucking job.� It�s a great bit but you definitely felt, in the audience, that there were some people going, �Yeah, that�s our fucking job!� And for George, it created this sense of �Oh they�re not taking this in the way that I intended it.� And in some ways you have to let that go because it�s something you can�t control. You can only control the intention of the execution, but I think for Dave it became more complicated than that.
Judd: I get it, too, because every time I do stand-up, I wake up the next morning and I feel this shame that is so intense, like I was drunk all night and I don�t remember what I did.
Jon: Really?
Judd: I feel embarrassed at even having had an opinion or a thought.
Jon: But isn�t that the whole�I mean, there�s a certain arrogance in us entering this business. There�s an arrogance in the idea of saying,
Judd: What effect does raising your kids have on the mechanics of getting all your work done and presenting your point of view with the world? How old are your kids now?
Jon: Ten and eight.
Judd: I have one about to turn seventeen and one about to turn twelve.
Jon: Oh dear, do they still like you?
Judd: They have to act like they like me because they still need me for some driving. But we�re right at the end of that.
Jon: A little gas money might still keep you in the loop.
Judd: Maybe. But in some way, you must have perfected some sense of balance between your time at home and your time at work�which seems impossible, given how demanding your show is.
Jon: I have done my best, but it�s still not satisfactory, especially as the kids get older. It�s different when they begin to share and experience things that are more complex. It�s one thing to, you know�I have this letter up in my office. It�s something my daughter Maggie wrote to me. It says, and this was after we were down the Jersey Shore, bodysurfing. I think I tanked it and smashed into the sand. It says, �Daddy, I know you are a good writer. You�re a good surfer, too. When you got on that big wave, you got hurt bad. I know you saw a lot of nature. You�re a great dad. Love, Maggie.� That is, like, beautiful. It�s simple. But now, they�re older and they are beginning to articulate things in a much more complex way, and you need to be there more. And nine-to-nine is a shitty schedule for that kind of thing. So I�d like to say that I�ve achieved that balance, but the truth is, I probably haven�t.
Judd: The conversation I get into in our house is: �Dad, we have money, so why don�t you stop working so much?�
Jon: Because I�m an obsessive weirdo?
Judd: And what if Ebola happens in a much larger way and we really need to get the compound solidified?
Jon: Exactly. You are just preparing. I also think, to some extent, you are where you came from. No matter where you end up, no matter what you achieve, on some level, you feel like you belong in a basement underneath a Middle Eastern restaurant telling jokes. That�s never out of you. Leno used to have this. He�d always say, �I never spend any of my stand-up money.� He�d been doing
Judd: I know that when I started doing stand-up again, and I would get eighty dollars for my Saturday night spot at the Comedy Cellar, I held on to that money with a joy that I don�t get when the
Jon: Because we�re psychotic and, at some level, not living with a real sense of things. But also, you know, I like working, man. I just wish I was better at it. One of the nice things about doing this show versus stand-up is that there is a moment of Zen at the end of it. There�s a good night. You�re done. With stand-up, you�re never done. You always feel like you�ve got to keep that notebook by the bed. And so you stop experiencing anything. You just exist purely as an observer, constantly trying to figure out if I�m going to be able to work a bit out of this. It�s a different way of approaching life. It�s exhausting.
Judd: How is it that your family�s not angry at you?
Jon: You�ll have to talk to them. I think there�s a certain normalcy. My kids have never known me not to have this schedule.
Judd: Do you enjoy work in the same way after all these years? Has the pleasure of it changed? Because what I find most shocking, as someone who burns out�I mean, we did thirteen episodes of
Jon: It�s hard. In some ways, I think it�s cyclical. I liken it to batters in a slump. Sometimes you just have to simplify, return to basics. You know,
Whenever I sit down with Key and Peele�which is fairly often, and we�re usually talking about a screenplay we�re working on together, and who knows if we�ll ever finish it�I think:
Anyway, these guys are hilarious and, maybe more important, they seem to be having the best time in their work, and with the fact that they get to do it together. They are funny and sharp on all subjects, but I can�t think of anybody who has been better on the subject of race in America. They have found that magic formula of making people laugh until they shit themselves while also saying things that need to be said right now.
Judd Apatow: So you�ve just finished shooting the show, and you did two seasons
Keegan-Michael Key: Yeah, pretty much.
Judd: That�s crazy. Was it a nightmare? Two-thirds of the way in, did you go, �This is a terrible decision,� or did you not hit that level of suffering?
Key: Some things fell through the cracks. We�d be on set, trying to fix things, but then we�d have a hiatus week, and then we�d have to shoot something for Comedy Central on the hiatus week, but while that�s happening there�s always still a stream of emails that come through saying, �Here�s the second version of this cut, of this episode,� or, �Do you guys want to give notes on this?� And there�s just no time to weigh in on all that stuff.
Jordan Peele: No, at some point you�ve just got to go�
Key: Yeah, you�ve got to delegate. Trust people and delegate.
Judd: Do you have people that you could trust with a full episode? Could you say, �I�m so burned out, I am not even going to watch this one,� and have faith that it�s going to be solid?
Key: Yeah. I�ve watched episodes on TV with my wife at night and I�ll see little cuts of things and go, �Oh, that was a nice little touch.�
Peele: There was an episode where an old edit got used by accident, though.
Key: Oh, shit. That�s true.
Peele: Something got by and I didn�t�I was so pissed. They�re fixing it now for all the future airings and stuff, but I couldn�t blame anybody because I didn�t screen it.
Judd: Yeah, you remember those things forever. What level of control freak are you guys at?
Peele: I feel like, in the beginning, I wanted to be part of every single stage of the process. There was a fear that it wouldn�t go right. When I was at
Key: I�m�to my detriment�a very trusting Pollyanna, and that can lead to times when a piece of work suffers, so I try to be a little bit more of a control freak. But my thing is�and this is not necessarily the best process�but, once we get on set, I know Jordan and I can fix anything. We can fix anything on set.
Judd: In the writing?
Key: Yeah, the writing, but even in the performance.
Peele: With this double season, when they requested twenty-one episodes, I think our first response was, like,
Judd: During the last season of
Key: Right, exactly. And to be honest with you, I actually think the second half of our fourth season, we will not plateau. I believe that it�s going to be better. Because when you�ve been working with someone for eleven years, you get to a place where there�s going to be something only you can do. Like Steve Coogan and Rob Brydon. They�re at a place where only they can do something that way, and I feel like we have things only we can do, and so it will excel and it will grow. It will grow.
Judd: It must be a big trial by fire for you guys, as friends, to be under that much pressure. Especially with this season getting so much positive attention, and you guys being on the cover of
Key: It�s been interesting. There are fellow writers who were early adopters of the show, people who have been on board since day one. But more interesting to me are the regular people, who don�t have anything to do with our industry, who have gotten on board. I want to meet those people. I think a lot of those late adopters are probably biracial like us and said,
Peele: It is weird, but all the cool accolades have really beaten the
Judd: Right. You�re not making as much money as your accolades would suggest, and eventually, you just get pissed at everyone.
Key: Just steaming, staring at your Peabody Award, like,
Judd: Cosby�s made so much more money than we have. And it makes the accolades feel like some kind of weird accident. But I think the next couple of years, it will continue to sink in. Like:
Judd: What really sticks out?
Key: The Peabody Award, don�t you think?
Judd: That�s a great award. Your program shows that prejudices and the way people were and are ignorant are ridiculous and should be mocked. Like my daughter, she�s mad that we even have to talk about homophobia because she doesn�t understand how anyone would feel that way. She actually gets upset. But that�s because her generation grew up saying homophobia is stupid, racism is stupid, and so it�s not even in their heads. I think comedy has helped affect that. Do you get that sense?
Peele: Our target demo was teenagers, and so we were forced to make a show that was relevant to them. A lot of the work we did in that first season was really about: What
Key: That�s really the biggest, most significant paradigm shift: Kids don�t look at race, they look at culture. I don�t think they know that they�re looking at culture, but they�re co-opting each other�s culture and it�s starting to mush together, whereas for me or for someone older than me, everything was always about the color of your skin.
Judd: But now it seems like it is a little bit more about class?
Key: It does. And when I say culture, I mean class. As in, you can afford to be part of a certain culture. For a lot of people, their culture is defined by where they are socioeconomically, and for decades, rich kids have coopted poorer kids� cultures because they were bored or whatever.
Judd: My daughter is at this nice private school, but there are a lot of scholarship students there, too. She says that the school is very aggressive about wanting everyone to hang out with each other. And when they don�t, they assume it�s because of race, but she says it�s because of class, that it�s uncomfortable for the kids who aren�t living at the same economic level to integrate. And that kids from similar class backgrounds tend to hang out together.
Key: Yeah. My wife and I drove out to Riverside yesterday to watch my best friend�s oldest son play for his Pop Warner football team. They lost the game by a field goal, and it was a heartbreaker. My friend is from Rancho Palos Verdes and all the kids on the other team were from San Bernardino, and as we were driving home, my wife said, �Well, those kids really need it. Good for them.� And I feel that all the way. You know, I�m from Detroit. It doesn�t matter when New York City wins a sports championship. But when Detroit wins a sports championship, it actually
Judd: I think it means so much whenever you see somebody that you relate to in whatever way kicking ass and succeeding. I�m so interested in this with the president, and how people look at him.
Key: Yeah, and trying to figure out what box to put him in. You have to understand that if you�re going to put him in a box, you should put him in the child-of-a-single-mother, lower-middle-class box. That�s the box he belongs in. You know, as Jordan has said in the past, I sometimes think we have a show because Obama got elected. That pushed these issues to the forefront, and people have had to address it. What happens when a person�s mixed?
Judd: The country�s completely mixed, but you still see the last vestiges of some things�
Peele: There�s such a diversity of experiences, and having a sketch show now has been a great way to explore it all, because there�s no single comment to be made that�s going to sum it up. Often we�ll make a sketch and go, �You know what? You know who�s going to love this sketch? Hispanic break dancers are going to love it.� And then this one, �This one is for the black people in Ferguson that need this story told as a reminder to everyone else.�
Key: Right, that this is going on, and that we know that�s going on, and that everybody else needs to know that that�s still going on. Whenever people stop to talk to me on the street, I�m always like, �I�m sorry, I�m so curious, you�re going to have to tell me what sketch hooked you in. I want to know what demographic you�re coming from.�
Peele: In the beginning, we really latched on to being biracial as something that made us similar to the president, but also as the thing that made us relevant and hadn�t been explored. As the show has gone on and progressed, though, the more important thing is that we�re able to tell the stories of anybody. We can get away with going anywhere because we�ve gone everywhere.
Key: This is so lofty, but it feels like we ended up writing an American show.
Judd: Absolutely. And not just where America is now; it�s also where America�s going.
Peele: Part of the interesting thing about this whole conversation is the fact that I think we consider ourselves kind of like modern-day jesters. Our job is to be a mirror for everything that�s going on, and I think that if people had the sense that we were just purely in the president�s pocket or whatever, we�d lose credibility.
Judd: I love that your comedy doesn�t seem to come from insecurity or self-hatred. I could be completely wrong�you may hate yourselves�but my sense of humor came from feeling like I was not like all these other people and it sucked. It made me mad at the world. But I don�t get the sense that you guys came from the same type of emotional experience. What was the thing that made you funny?
Peele: I think we both had success early on that probably helped us not have a disgruntled vibe. But I think our ability to be chameleons comes from an early sense of identity crisis.
Key: I agree. That was our survival mechanism.
Peele: Keegan grew up in Detroit and I grew up in New York, both fairly cosmopolitan places. But we both still lived in a culture where being a black person who sounds white is a recipe for a beating.
Key: I mean, if you go way back�primordial, right�as human beings, we have had to categorize things to stay alive. Eat the brown one, don�t eat the green one. So some of that primal stuff kicks in for people and they go, You�re not fitting in my box. And that�s why you get beaten up, because you scare them and they just happen to be bigger than you and know how to throw a football. But I think for me, humor is definitely borne of the insecurity in being adopted and being biracial and saying, �I just got to figure out what the gig is that will allow me to feel good emotionally and survive the beatings.�
Peele: You know, the beauty of a show like
Judd: Yes, they would. The ones that aren�t in jail.
Key: Something that has always been positive for me, in our working experience, is that we�re trying to figure out that puzzle in different ways. My mom had to keep nudging me and nudging me until she finally kicked me out between the curtains and onto the stage, you know: �That�s where you belong!� I was painfully shy in grade school. I was the most well-spoken kid and experienced the most emotion and I was mesmerized by all the school plays�
Judd: Who told you you couldn�t do it?
Key: Nobody. This is my pop psychology theory: I had a complete, profound, horrible sense of self because, even as a nine-year-old, you can comprehend the idea of,
Judd: That�s why I stopped doing stand-up for so long. The same psychology:
Key: Like with Bill Cosby: all he�s done his whole career is tell his story.
Judd: Or part of it!
Peele: Yeah. But I want to get back to being a chameleon: So much effort has been put into becoming other characters and becoming other identities. I remember the first time I faced this was when I went to iO [formerly ImprovOlympic] in Chicago, maybe fifteen years ago. And improv is a totally different form. The playing around was fun, but the monologues were so hard. Right before we started doing the show, I tried stand-up for the second time in my life and I realized that if I didn�t have a sense of who I am, the show would just be these empty characters�and they wouldn�t connect. So I started piecing together a few short bits that exemplified my place in the world, and that was the missing element that is so important and has really helped us in the show. Especially with the car segments. Four years ago, I don�t know if I would have had the ability to say, �All right, just be yourself with Keegan. Just do what we would do in a car.� And that was such an important lesson.
Judd: I think those segments are more revealing than being in front of a crowd.
Key: For me, the big challenge is that I am still in this place where I care about what other people will think. It reminds me of something you said, Judd, that has been working inside of me:
Judd: That you�re allowed to do that.
Key: Right.
Judd: These things also get complicated when you feel abandoned. You worry that if you talk about your life and your family that people will abandon you again.
Key: And how can you navigate that? Yeah, it�s tricky. This is why I didn�t go into stand-up. When my dad was still alive, I said, �I want to do stand-up like Eddie Murphy. Maybe I could do that.� And he was like, �Well all right, but don�t tell any jokes about me.� He just straight-out said to my face, �Don�t tell any jokes about me.� Nigga, you
Judd: I sent my dad the script for
Key: He signed off on it? That�s great.
Judd: What made you think you actually could do comedy as a career? Jordan, you were in New York and went to a nice high school, right?
Peele: Yes, I was at the Calhoun School but I was the artist kid, very quiet. My mother would have never guessed that I would have gotten into this. But when I was ten years old, I saw this play at this place called Tada, a children�s theater, and it was amazing. I thought:
Judd: You went James Brown on them?
Peele: Total James Brown.
Judd: How old were you?
Peele: Ten. And I got the coolest part in the play and very quickly I realized that I loved doing it. It was like,
Judd: I wanted to do commercials as a kid, too. I got head shots made like in seventh grade but I got the chicken pox and had these terrible scars, and they refused to heal. They were red and full of pus and then I actually shoved poison ivy up my nose to make my friends laugh�
Peele: Oh, fuck.
Judd: So I got poison ivy all over my face, plus the chicken pox, and I didn�t know what to do, so I put poison ivy medicine on the chicken pox, which made them blow up like ten times the size�which caused these horrible scars and the pus. And so my dream of acting was over.
Peele: How old were you?
Judd: Between seventh and eighth grade. But that�s what I wanted to do, was go out for those Jack in the Box commercials.
Peele: That�s a really fucked-up time to be selling yourself, too.
Key: The most fragile time.
Peele: I remember one audition I went on, for some kind of fast-food spot. I got in and homeboy was like, �All right, dance.� Oh my God, I busted out and danced. I danced for about sixty seconds. He was like, �All right, great, great, great�� And then you don�t get the gig. I just went there and danced on cue.
Judd: Oh my God. I just found this old tape�a recycled three-quarter-inch tape that I was putting my stand-up act on a long time ago to use for getting gigs and whatever. And apparently it had also been used as the audition tape for a dance party show on MTV. I started watching it and my roommate, Adam Sandler, shows up on the screen. It�s his audition! They put music on and he�s dancing, walking up to other dancers, asking them questions, dancing the whole time. It was as humiliating an audition as you could ever imagine. �Hey, buddy, where ya from? You like this song? Yeah, I like Tiffany, too.�
Key: �I like Tiffany, too.� Oh that�s awful.
Judd: But how did that�all the early acting stuff and the commercials�lead to becoming aware of improv and Second City?
Peele: For me, that didn�t happen until college. I went to high school and did a couple of plays, got into college, Sarah Lawrence. I was interested in theater. My thing was doing puppetry.
Judd: Getting laid a lot?
Peele: Did not get laid as much as I would have liked to. But the need to be liked by girls was a huge motivator. Just to try and make something beautiful because I never had any wild man machismo. I never had any of that shit that the girls like, that X factor. And so.
Key: Well, you have, like, the
Peele: Yeah, but when you�re young, that�s worth nothing.
Key: When I was fourteen or fifteen, I used to listen to that 1977 compilation
Judd: Were you studying theater at all in college?
Key: I was studying theater, yeah, and I did this improv group, went off to graduate school, and then, after graduate school, joined the Second City in Detroit and was there for four years.
Peele: I was hosting at Second City so I was taking classes there but really the best thing I did was sit there and watch the main stage.
Judd: Were those the Adam McKay�Tina Fey years?
Peele: No. This was right after, with Stephnie Weir, Rich Talarico, Kevin Doyle, Susan Messing, Tami Sagher, T. J. Jagodowski�just unbelievable, night after night. It�s so important to see the best. That�s how you know how good it can be.
Key: And you�re like,
Peele: I remember feeling like,
Key: So many people have the same journey. I remember being a first-year in graduate school, sitting in the room where we did all these showcases that nobody watches but the other students, and the second-years were doing their Greeks final. And it�s all like the Trojan women and everybody�s been fucking raped sixty-five times and the husbands have been killed and babies have been chucked off the side of mountains. There was just so much raw emotion taking place in these four actors in front of us. I remember looking at my roommate and another one of my friends and saying, �I�m getting kicked out. I�m getting kicked out of this program. I�m never going to be able to do that.� But then you get the tools, and one of those tools is the confidence to say, �Of course I can do that.� It was so important for me to be able to get that foundation.
Judd: When I first started doing stand-up, I was watching the highest level of it with Jim Carrey and Sandler and I just thought,
Peele: One of the breakthrough moments for me was realizing that, you know, you can take all the classes you want and learn and practice and get all the advice from other people, but it�s really like learning an instrument that has never existed until you were born. No one can tell you how to play that instrument. There�s a part of that journey that you have to figure out for yourself.
Key: And then there�s putting your own spice on it.
Peele: Yeah. When I moved to Chicago, I was like, All right, I want to be a sketch comedian and my power is going to be in the fact that I�m going to dedicate myself completely. There�s not going to be a fallback, you know? I�m going to watch people give up and I�ll still be there, learning from it all, and if I stay with it, I�ll be successful. That was everything.
Key: Part of Jordan�s X factor is that nobody out-hustles him. You can try, and you will fail. Which, of course, makes your job easier if you�re working with him. So even if you�re excelling, he�s there taking the pressure off. He�s the anchor.
Judd: I always wanted to be that guy, too. Like, no one is going to do more than me. You see so many people who are great but they don�t go that last twenty-five percent in effort. It�s what Seinfeld talks about, how he just gets up every day and writes for two hours. Every day, he sits alone in a room with a legal pad. And I guarantee you that one percent or less of comedians do that.
Peele: You know, after ten years in Hollywood, you really see the system is set up to sap money from people who are trying to get into the business. It�s just set up that way. There�s so many things that people are told they
Judd: A lot of people ask me, �How do you get people to read your scripts?� And I�ll go, �Did you
Key: Yeah. You�ve got to just do the show first. I mean, that�s the way it�s always worked.
Judd: So now that the sketch show is ending, do you guys have a vision for the next phase of your career?
Key: Yeah, I mean, in my mind�and I think I have probably said this to Jordan in some form or another�it�s almost like, boy, wouldn�t it be great if we could be the next Pryor/Wilder? You know, go off and do maybe three projects that fulfill us, and then come home and see each other? I think we have the ability to do that.
Peele: We�re never going to have another version of this.
Key: We�ll never have another version of this.
Judd: You really have very few people in life you get along with, especially in a creative situation. Some people are great together but then they just can�t stand each other because every time an idea is accepted or rejected, there�s so much on the line emotionally or self-esteem-wise. When you find people who make it work, it�s that much more important.
Peele: Absolutely. Before I met Keegan, I could spend a week with my best friend in the world before getting sick of him. But because we�ve got something more important than us that we�re working for, it has put us in this category where we could spend years with each other and always have this positive working relationship where we�re trying to make each other laugh. It�s a special thing.
Key: The love�our love�is wrapped up in the work. There�s this goal that we�re always trying to achieve together. We know we can�t achieve it alone. It works because of a mutual respect for each other.
Judd: It doesn�t seem like it takes you two a lot of effort.
Key: No, it doesn�t, and I think that�s because, as different as we are energy-wise, we�re very similar in a lot of other ways. Our backgrounds are similar. We�re nonconfrontational guys. You know, I don�t believe in the idea that conflict must exist for creativity to flourish. That�s such a false thing. For us, it always goes back to the respect thing. It�s just releasing the ego. I just hold his hand and we jump off the cliff. He�s got me. If he says, �This bit is going to work,� it�s gonna work.
Judd: That�s just so rare. In the world of comedy, so many people are so damaged that even though they say, �I got you, no matter what,� a fair amount of time they�re really like, �Well, fuck you, I�m doing it this way.� So for two people who are healthy to say to each other, �I got you��and to believe it�is a beautiful thing.
Peele: The best moments I�ve ever seen in improv are funnier than the best stand-up bits that I�ve ever seen. There�s something that can only happen between two people collaborating, and I just think that two people with the same vision is better than one.
In 2007, the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences asked me if I was interested in putting a panel talk together. I said yes, but only if I could invite James Brooks and Larry Gelbart, and spend an hour talking about comedy. I knew I had no business being on the same stage as these guys; nobody does. I was simply thrilled to have the opportunity to sit there and talk to them, and I knew at some point that a photograph would be taken of the three of us onstage, which I would cherish for the rest of my life. So yes: I did it for the picture.
Why did I pick James Brooks and Larry Gelbart? Because two of the most formative shows of my life, the shows that trained me in comedy�not to mention how to be a human being�were
Everything flows from these guys.
Judd Apatow: There�s an enormous amount of pressure here right now. This is a pressure cooker.
Larry Gelbart: For the record, dying is harder.
Judd: Oh, yeah.
James L. (Jim) Brooks: This means I have to go.
Judd: Anyway, it�s exciting to be here. It is an honor to share the stage with the two men who are the primary reasons I wanted to be involved in comedy, and I also feel bad about your being here, which clearly demeans you. I was looking at everyone�s credits on Wikipedia last night, and it was embarrassing. I felt bad. I read them and thought,
Jim: You�ve done more pictures than I�ve done this year.
Judd: Oh, Jesus. Anyway, when I was a young man and, you know�
(Clip from
Judd: I really like that movie. It�s a great, strange movie with a tone that�s all its own. Whenever I�m working, I get nervous when there aren�t laughs�I�m always trying to figure out what that balance is: How do you deal with the question of how funny should it be, and is there a moment when things become too funny and you lose the humanity?
Jim: It�s a great clip and it�s a great question.
Larry: And here�s a great answer: You are your own gauge for what is funny and what is not.
Jim: Great answer.
Larry: Thank you.
Judd: (
Jim: Can we just show it, and then talk about it afterwards?
Judd: Okay. I hope it�s one of my movies.
(Clip from
Judd: You just went blue. You went blue.
Jim: I think the unfortunate expression is �seminal joke in motion picture history.� I think it changed movies a little. And I think the film itself had about as many tens in it as anything I�ve ever seen�just huge, huge jokes. But everything sort of pivoted off of this one joke.
Judd: And the masturbation sound effect was good work. Good sound work there. I think it might have been Ben Stiller but someone was telling me about having to do a scene where they masturbated on the screen and they said that what�s embarrassing about it is that in a way you�re revealing to your crew how you masturbate.
Jim: There was a very forlorn masturbation scene in
Judd: That�s right, the phone sex sequence. You know, when we were working on
Larry:
(Clip from
Jim: Larry, Jack Benny was singular, don�t you think?
Larry: I think it�s his only successful film. He was in a string of terrible movies, but this worked for him.
Jim: But his energy just�
Larry: Amazing. It was amazing. The story of this film was that Carole Lombard, who co-starred with him, was touring the country selling war bonds and she died in a plane crash and so they did not promote the picture. They thought it would be in bad taste to have her laughing on screens all over the country when, in fact, she had died. Mel Brooks redid it, of course, with his wife, Anne Bancroft, a number of years later.
Judd: Larry, how did you become a good writer? Where did that transition happen?
Larry: I learned the difference between good and bad and I opted for good.
Judd: That will help all aspiring writers. But was there a moment, as you transitioned from writing jokes for comedians and sketch comedy to storytelling, that was seminal for you?
Larry: The stage play A
Judd: (
Jim: Well, I had television, and there�s nothing better than to do a show every week. That was my college: I learned from the actors on
Judd: There�s so much depth in the work, though. Was there someone that taught you about that early in your career?
Jim: I don�t know how that happened. I remember there was a writer named Leon Tokatyan, who was on the
Larry: The worst thing we had to accustom ourselves to was self-censorship�not the censorship that we all know about, but
Judd: And now look what�s happened.
Larry:
Judd: Which obviously was a big influence on me because it�s a sweet story but it also has some very broad set pieces. That�s always fun to do�
Larry: You have an ability to mix the crude with the sweet, which is amazing. People talk about laughing one minute and crying the next, but to be repulsed one minute and then enchanted the next? That�s a gift.
Judd: I remember watching episodes of
Jim: It�s so weird. We were just talking about that today, and I got so messed up, being so heavily nostalgic about it because I�that was the best job of my life. There was nothing better for me than
Judd: In that scene, Judd Hirsch wants money so badly that he steals it out of Reverend Jim�s pocket and then slowly you realize that Reverend Jim knows that he did it and shames him. It�s a really powerful moment. Those kinds of turns were very influential to me, in what I try to do. Okay, now we�re going to show some clips from our own movies. Do we want to see that?
Larry: Sure. I�m tired of watching them at home.
Judd: I guess, you know, the first one is mine�
Larry: That�s amazing.
Judd: Well, then it can be topped by yours. You see, if I�m last then I don�t look good.
Larry: Of course. We�ll do it according to our gifts.
Judd: Exactly. So this is a clip from
(Clip from
Larry: Good stuff.
Jim: Were you nervous about that scene? Was it always looming for you?
Judd: Well, when we hired Catherine Keener we were all a little scared of her. It was amusing that she was there, every day, and going really hard-core Method with our movie. We tried hard to make her scenes good, mostly because I thought that she would yell at us if they weren�t. For this scene, I wasn�t sure how funny it would be. There was a script but then we let them go to town on each other, and then they ended up with this weird Einstein run. A moment like this only works because you�re really getting a sense of how Catherine Keener fights in real life.
Larry: She must have had a great time, right?
Judd: She seemed to enjoy that day. I have to say, she fought well. When that scene worked, it surprised me that it could get dark and the laughs could continue. I was really excited by that because it worked in a different way. Okay, now we�re going to go to the next clip, which is from Mr. Brooks. Can I say where it�s from? Do you want to introduce it?
Jim: Which one is it?
Judd:
Jim: Oh, yeah. The reason I picked this is because I think of anything that I�ve ever done�you know, what I got a chance to say in this scene, and it�s always a little dangerous to delve into that territory, was and is enormously important to me. So that�s why I wanted to show it.
Judd: I know it well and I�m excited.
(Clip from
Judd: That was amazing. A perfect scene, and a perfect movie. It really is, as is
Jim: It was great. First of all, she and Albert both did four years in acting school, totally trained actors. They both went to Carnegie Mellon. Which is interesting because not a lot of people assume it about Holly, and not everybody knows it about Albert. She�s a very dedicated actress. Well into the shoot, I finally said to her, �Am I allowed to talk to you about making something funny?� And she really thought about the question. She took it seriously and then she said, �Yes, you can.�
Judd: What is the gestation period like for one of your screenplays?
Jim: Seasons pass, years fall away. I take a long time.
Judd: And what about you, Larry?
Larry: First comes the phone call�you know, I�m the odd man out here because you guys get to direct what you write. I get to defend what I write�and not always successfully. I�ve had every kind of experience, from terrible to rotten, and no two are alike.
Judd: What was the worst?
Larry: We are about to see a clip from
Judd: A very painful process. Even though it�s combative to make a movie like
Larry: I know things are wrong. There�s one scene�I don�t know how it got past continuity, but it depicted a night that was at least four weeks long. That kills me.
Judd: So
Larry: Oh, I don�t care. You can play it or not.
Judd: What specifically about the process was so painful?
Larry: It was a battle of egos and wills and I just withdrew from the combat�which is to say, I was fired. It�s better left undiscussed.
Judd: All right, well, let�s watch it. Do you want to watch it?
Larry: I�ll sit here and look at it. I�ll watch it.
(Clip from
Judd: We love it.
Larry: I didn�t say it wasn�t wonderful.
Judd: What was your reaction the first time you saw it?
Larry: I saw it in a screening and I whispered to Sydney Pollack, �Can you get Jessica Lange out of the picture?� She went on to win the Academy Award, of course, which shows you how smart I am. It was a mix�it�s still a mixed bag of feelings.
Judd: Who are other comedy writers-directors that you admire who are currently working today?
Jim: I just always think, whenever I see anybody else�s work, how tough it is to get it right. It�s so hard to get the opportunity these days to do a film you care about�that you want to make and somebody lets you. Anybody who gets that, for starters, I like. And when it�s pulled off, it�s just extraordinary.
Judd: I remember there was an event at the Museum of Television and Radio where you talked a little bit about honoring your characters, and I found that inspiring as I was heading into writing
Jim: When I just saw
Judd: How much do you think of the audience when you�re writing�or do you primarily write for yourself and not worry about what they�ll get?
Larry: I don�t worry about what they�ll get. I write for myself on the assumption that there are a number of people who have similar sensibilities and will appreciate what it is that I thought was good enough to present, not to them but to me.
Jim: Well, on the ride to the preview, any thought of writing for yourself leaves me. Let me tell you the greatest story about people who genuinely work for themselves: John Cassavetes did a picture called
Larry: Ben Gazzara.
Jim: Ben Gazzara. They were pals and they basically started independent film. They were standing at the back of an audience�and I heard this from Cassavetes, this story�and people started leaving the theater during that scene, considering it so awful. And they clapped each other on the back and said, �We did it.� That�s a true story.
Larry: That�s wonderful.
Jim: That�s as pure as it is.
Judd: Larry, can you talk a little about your time working on
Jim: And can you say who was on staff, too, Larry?
Larry: The truth is, I was never on
Judd: So you could feel it every day, that this was an all-star team?
Larry: The individual successes came later, but we just knew that we were the best around. Fame and celebrity were not part of it. It was just knowing you were with a great bunch of guys. There was one woman�Selma Diamond on
Judd: How long was the show?
Larry: Too long. It was an hour live, in front of an audience, of course�no laugh track, no sweetening.
Judd: Was that the most fun of all the experiences that you had?
Larry: Well, it was the most fun of that kind of fun.
Judd: What�s your writing schedule like? How do you work?
Jim: Why do I experience every question as if I have to confess to something? It�s, uh, I have an erratic daily routine. I always hope for three hours in the morning. I rarely get it.
Larry: I get up very early, four, five o�clock in the morning. It�s just a sneakier way of living longer, really. And I just sit down at the keyboard and work on several things. It�s probably better to work on one thing at a time, but you have to keep feeding the beast and hopefully, an outline�yes, I have to outline. I may deviate, you know, find myself inventing a dozen off-ramps, but I have to have a map to start with.
Judd: I haven�t figured it out. Before I had children I would get up about noon and watch the
Larry: Things like peeing with a boner?
Judd: Yeah, all the pride I feel. Let�s go to another clip. We�re closing in on the end of the night so we�re going to go to a clip right now from
Jim: This is a very odd clip, and Mark Andrus, who wrote it with me�Mark wrote the original screenplay and it brought me into a kind of situation that I would never have brought myself into. And this scene is very odd because when you see it you�re not sure if you want any laughs. I hope there are jokes in there, but I�m not necessarily going for that.
(Clip from
Judd: At the time, I heard you did a lot of research on OCD but you also did a lot of work with the idea of the dog and the dog�s personality. Would you like to speak to that?
Jim: I�m a nut on research. I get very obsessive about it.
Judd: How do you know when you�ve accomplished everything you set out to accomplish in a film?
Jim: I don�t know if that�s happened to me yet.
Judd: Larry, what about you?
Larry: Now we get into the writer-writer as opposed to the writer-director. As the writer, I�m rarely around at the end of the picture, including the wrap party.
Jim: Have you seen pictures of yours without wanting to fix something?
Judd: Well, I shoot an enormous amount of film, and when I�m shooting what I think to myself is,
Jim: Sometimes in
Judd: When you watch
Jim: I haven�t seen it in a long time, but I get knocked out by actors. The thing that keeps me from really hating the experience of seeing these pictures again is that I get lost in the acting.
I remember the day someone handed me a DVD of a movie called
Afterward, I emailed her immediately. �Hey,� I wrote, �if you ever need someone to help you screw up your career, call me.� The next day Lena emailed back, thinking that I was one of her friends goofing on her. I soon found out that she had just begun to develop a television show for HBO with my friend Jenni Konner. They asked if I wanted to come on board and help, which led to one of the greatest creative experiences of my life: working on
Lena Dunham is one of the few people on earth who I have never gotten into a fight with. Even in the throes of a production, when deadlines are looming and people are exhausted and unpleasant, every moment with her has been a joy.
Judd Apatow: So.
Lena Dunham: So.
Judd: I wanted to ask you where you feel like you�re headed, after accomplishing so much at such a young age. You�re in this position of getting to say a lot with your show and your book and everything else you�re doing. How do you feel about what you�ve been able to express so far?
Lena: It�s mind-blowing to me. And because so much of the stuff I�ve been able to make is so personal, there�s always the fear that you�re going to run out of gas. But in the past few years, to my surprise, I�ve become more politically and historically engaged, which has given me this whole other area of human stories to explore. I have all this stuff percolating in my head now which, for the first time, isn�t just about me�and that�s an exciting feeling. All of the projects I�m thinking about now, none of them are about a twenty-seven-year-old girl who�s pissed at her mom. They all share my concerns, in a way, but on a different scale and in a different time period. I�m excited by the idea of moving out of super-confessional stuff.
Judd: When you started, it almost felt like you were writing about your life in real time. But then your actual life started veering pretty dramatically from the character you were writing about.
Lena: Totally. And my life also became my work, which is the thing I�d always wanted�to be a person who worked so much that I wasn�t even available to go to dinner. It�s not like I�m out on the town every night, collecting crazy new experiences, but I am expanding my brain. I feel so hungry for information. I go home every night and I read like half a book and three magazines and some old articles from the Internet. It reminds me of college, when I would go into the library and check out ten Criterion Collection movies and then watch them all over the weekend. I remember coming out of those weekends, feeling like,
Judd: What do you think people have taken from
Lena: It�s impossible for your own brain to comprehend that other people are seeing this stuff, translating it, analyzing it, outside of your own bedroom or whatever. But I guess the thing that�s most exciting to me is when men, particularly fathers, tell me that the show has allowed them to understand their wives or daughters better. That, to me, is a really moving compliment.
Judd: I imagine that�s especially true for parents whose daughters are going to college.
Lena: Yeah, and who feel like,
Judd: We thought, in the beginning, that people would have debates about the show, for sure, but I don�t think that we thought there was much of a political statement being made. I first realized the debate would happen in the second episode, when we were talking about whether Jessa was going to get an abortion.
Lena: Yeah.
Judd: And I said, maybe she shouldn�t have an abortion in the second episode.
Lena: Your quote was, �There�s Jerry, there�s George, and then there�s their crazy neighbor Kramer�and you�re having Kramer shoot someone in the face in the second episode. And I�m not saying abortion is like shooting someone in the face, but I am saying we�re asking a lot of the audience if Kramer gets an abortion.�
Judd: Right. But then, after the first season, when you realized that people were dissecting it and debating it and trying to figure out your politics, it never felt like any of that got in your head or affected your writing. One thing I always tell people is that, when we�re in the writers� room, all that talk doesn�t affect you negatively. It doesn�t impact the creative process. Why do you think that is?
Lena: I think it�s because the writers� room is the place where I feel most comfortable. That�s the safe space. And so I think I was always determined not to lose that. I wish I could be the person who never reads reviews, but I totally check out what�s happening online and I have a pretty good sense of the dialogue around the show. But at the same time, you can�t internalize it. That is just gonna kill whatever is exciting or thrilling or organic about the process. There were definitely times where you and I talked about trying to respond to criticism that we found frustrating, but doing it in kind of a wink-wink way.
Judd: Like when we had Donald Glover on the show and you revealed to him that, on some level, you liked dating him
Lena: It was thrilling and it added to her image of herself as a liberal woman who came to the city to have certain kinds of experiences.
Judd: I don�t know if I ever quite landed on what my official position was about making the show more multicultural. Some people say, Well, New York is multicultural but there are plenty of people who go to school and, if they�re Caucasian, they have mostly Caucasian friends. Whether that�s healthy or not, it�s not misrepresenting the world. But what�s really wrong with television is that African American show runners are not being encouraged to create shows. What some networks do is try to make themselves feel better by jamming some �diverse� characters into their shows.
Lena: What I always say�and it�s kind of my stock answer because I think it�s the true answer�is that I�m grateful that the conversation around diversity is happening, period. We�ve introduced characters of color, and we�ve done it in a time frame that makes sense to us. What was hard is when people were saying, �You�re racist and your family�s racist and look at you and your racist show.� Being assigned a label like that, especially when you consider yourself to be a liberal person, is distressing.
Judd: I didn�t expect Chinese filmmakers to represent the Jewish nerd experience on Long Island.
Lena: And you shouldn�t! But what�s interesting is that what people were also responding to�which is a real criticism and one I take seriously�is that, if you look at the show, it doesn�t look like the New York I know. So we�ve been more attentive to that, trying to look at each neighborhood and go, Okay, who lives here and what would it look like and what feels real?
Judd: So much of the conversation about diversity on TV should be about subscribers and advertisers. If the networks thought they could make more money creating shows with diverse casts they would do it in a second. They�ve clearly decided there�s not enough money it. Every once in a while they throw a bone to the idea of diversity, but it�s not a high priority.
Lena: It�s awful and distressing. But as you proved with
Judd: I remember working on a black cop movie.
Lena: Which one?
Judd: I shouldn�t say because of the story I�m about to tell. But there was a black character�a gigantic star�and in the movie, he had a romance with another black actress. And I noticed that they never kissed in the movie. I asked about this and the producer said to me, �Yeah. Internationally, people don�t like to see black people kiss.� And you could tell that the black star understood that as well. They were all pandering to cultural prejudices or what they
Lena: That is one of the most upsetting things I have ever heard.
Judd: Yeah, and if you think about it, it�s very real. It�s all of those prejudices�like people say comedies don�t work in Asia. So you�re saying that Asian people don�t laugh, they only want giant robots? It�s all driven by money, ultimately.
Lena: Because of what HBO�s value system is, I feel like I�ve been able to avoid the part of the job where those awful truths are revealed to me.
Judd: Has it ever hit you that, in terms of the nightmare of television and development, you haven�t had to suffer?
Lena: I think about that all the time. Every time I meet someone who is going through the network TV process. They seem so beaten down. And your stories about your own career when you were younger�I have all these moments where I�m like, I am never allowed to complain about anything ever in my life because of how easy I�ve had it.
Judd: But it�s also, I think, one of the main benefits of your show. You are not reacting from the place of someone who has been beaten up and, as a result, is flinching and making choices based on having been beaten up on other projects. Your lack of history is what makes the show feel pure.
Lena: I feel so lucky because I�ve never had to take a note that I didn�t agree with. I�ve never felt like my vision has been diluted. And that�s a crazy thing to be able to claim. Judd, I have a question I have always wanted to ask you, but because this recorder is turned on, I feel emboldened to do so. Do you think people are scared of you?
Judd: Scared of me?
Lena: Yeah.
Judd: I, uh, I don�t know. David Milch said something to me once, which I�d never considered before: He said executives don�t want to give notes and don�t want to stand behind their opinions. Executives want
Lena: That�s so interesting.
Judd: As soon as I made people money, some people went away, but I never felt anyone being afraid of me. It was more like, �Oh, everything he does seems pretty solid. I�m going to let him do his thing.� Everybody told me you get five bombs before you go out of business. You can withstand five. Your budget will get lower every time you have a bomb. If you have three bombs in a row, then your budget�s going to drop to like eight million dollars. At five, you�re done.
Lena: Five bombs in a row?
Judd: Five bombs in a row, and you�re done.
Lena: Have you had five bombs in a row?
Judd: I�ve had things that are a wash. Nothing I�ve done has been a
Lena: I want to make more movies because it�s something I love doing. I love the format. But TV is the best. When we first started, James L. Brooks said to me, �If a TV show is working, it�s the best job you�ll ever have.� And he was totally right. But there are stories I want to tell that aren�t serialized stories. Let�s see. I also want to write a novel. That�s something I have always wanted to do and then, at a certain point, kind of thought to myself,
Judd: I guess I�d like to experiment with having more drama and a little less comedy in some films. But I don�t sit around thinking,
Lena: What do you think about the trend of comedians being obsessed with the idea of becoming dramatic actors? I was just rewatching a Joan Rivers documentary, and in it, she�s crying because she says no one�s ever going to take her seriously as an actress and being a comedian was just a thing to do. Do you relate to that?
Judd: I think comedians are interesting when they have other facets. Sometimes I feel like a goofball�I just feel dumb and want to process all my thoughts through humor. Every once in a while, it�s a way to make things less painful. But then you begin to feel like you�re always trying to filter life through funny and you wonder: Is this insincere on some level? Sometimes I feel like I�m making jokes because I�m uncomfortable with my own thoughts and opinions. I feel this need to make it entertaining for you. I think that�s one of the reasons why so many comedians want to do dramatic acting. At some point, you get the urge to drop the cover and just be real.
Lena: It�s less so now, but sometimes, when I had a serious thought, I would almost say it in a goofy way�like, I�d take on a weird voice so I�d be like (
Judd: When you were in college or when you were making
Lena: As a teenager, I had a whole idea of what my life would look like. I wanted to live in Brooklyn. I wanted to have a dog. I wanted to have a cute boyfriend with glasses. But in college, I thought I was going to make weird movies, be a professor of women�s film at not that good of a college, and just have a cool, weird life where I met interesting people and organized events. I guess my model for a creative life was much more of an artist�s model and much less of a Hollywood model, if you will. So the past few years have been strange. I�m still navigating the difference between what�s happening now and what I thought my life would consist of.
Judd: You don�t seem like you�re shutting down emotionally from it all, though. I�m sure a lot of it is that you�re happy and in a happy relationship so you�re not fully exposed, and some part of you remains intact.
Lena: And I have a partner and a fun life and we are always working, so it feels like a safe place to be. But it definitely seems like this business gives people a weird chip on their shoulder:
Judd: I�ve seen people burn out and people lose touch with why they work. I�ve also seen people who satisfy so many of their dreams that they just become lost. That�s what
Lena: Something that strikes me about your work, every time I rewatch it, is that there�s a real morality to it, a sense that we�re all supposed to treat each other kindly. A sense that we�re all here to take care of each other and to serve a purpose in the world. There�s this real message of hope. I find it comforting.
Judd: But you also notice the repetition of that at some point. And so lately, I�ve been thinking of writing about sacrifice. I�ve never written anything about people who are willing to sacrifice for other people. We�ll see if I can pull it off, but I�m very aware that I�ve been writing in a certain vein for a while now, and that I could keep rewriting those ideas in a million different ways.
Lena: That�s why watching you reengage with stand-up is exciting. In a similar way, what writing the book did for me was allow me to�it�s not like I�m talking about experiences in the book that I haven�t talked about in the show. I�m talking about sex. I�m talking about growing up. I�m talking about being female. I�m talking about my body. I�m talking about my family. But now I get to talk about these things from this super-personal place. By reengaging with your stand-up at this point in your life, you�re getting to come at the topics that matter to you from a totally different angle.
Judd: Yeah, and switching modes forces you to really slow down and think things through. Because you go through life in a haze, staring at your phone and watching
Lena: That�s the reason I make things. Some people make stuff because they want to provide escapist entertainment and blow up cars. Some people make stuff because they want to put out a message of social justice. For me, the seeds of what I do were planted by sitting in my room, reading confessional poetry, and listening to Alanis Morissette and thinking,
Judd: What about your work as a director? What has surprised you about doing so much of it, and directing so many different actors?
Lena: I love it so much, and I came in thinking that my first two loves were writing and acting. Directing was the thing that I could take or leave, but now, after four years of doing the show, it�s like my fiendish obsession. I�ve had such a steep learning curve. Blocking, camera, lighting, and also getting to engage with all these actors, who approach it in a totally different way. I�m realizing how malleable you have to be and how open you have to be, if you want to meet an actor on their level. I�m eager to direct something that I�m not in. The next step in honing the craft would be totally removing myself as an actor so I can get super-focused on someone else�s performance, to really get in there with them.
Judd: What�s your relationship with Adam Driver like? Because, to me, in addition to building an incredible relationship with all the women on the show, you have stumbled into this magical pairing with this incredible actor. He�s truly headed toward world domination now, but, you know, it started with you and him together, and the work you guys did creating this bizarre, unique person, a character that I think is unprecedented on television. That relationship seems to keep morphing.
Lena: I love Adam so much, and I know for a fact that I didn�t know what I was doing as an actor until I met him and he forced me. I�m not saying I�m brilliant now, but he forced me to stop and take stock of what was happening when I was in a scene. He forced me to slow down and pay attention.
Judd: He�s so present.
Lena: He�s so present, he won�t let you do anything else. If he thinks you�re not present, he�ll fucking slam his fist into a wall to elicit some adrenaline reaction within you. I feel, in many ways, that Adam was my teacher and also that we worked together to figure out what those first scripts
Judd: Do you think he connects to you in the same way, or is he having a different type of experience?
Lena: I don�t know. I only know what he�s thinking when we�re working. When we�re in a scene, I feel like I have a really good sense of what he needs and where he�s coming from. But when we�re just like eating lunch and having a conversation? I have no fucking idea.
Judd: You�ve had a similar relationship with the women of the show, and, you know, we talked before about how, in television shows sometimes, the cast gets crazy after a few years. At a certain point, everyone comes to dislike each other. But for you, it has evolved in such a positive way. I mean, you�ve known Jemima [Kirke] forever.
Lena: Twenty years now.
Judd: And Zosia [Mamet]. What�s that been like, having that bond with all of those women you work with now?
Lena: I think I assumed just because girls can be so annoying, it was somehow going to devolve into one massive catfight. Like you said, that�s what you always hear about television shows: By the end, nobody�s speaking and everyone�s arguing about who gets the best hairdresser. But we all have been through this thing together and we�ve stayed connected. We�re all really different but we support each other�s decisions and there�s a real beauty to it�we�re not best friends, going out together every Friday night, but I know that if I needed something, they would be there in a second. There�s an essential net of support. I also have so much respect for like how each of them is navigating their career in a really different way but totally owning it. Each girl is totally carving her own destiny. Zosia�s writing a feature and Jemima�s making paintings and Allison [Williams]�s playing Peter Pan and they�re each doing their thing and it�s crazy. Allison�s getting married now. Jemima�s married and a mother of two. Zosia and I both bought homes with our boyfriends. It has been this weird journey to adulthood�and by the time the show�s done, we could all be carrying babies around.
Judd: Maybe that�s when the show should end.
Lena: Totally.
It�s always fun to do an interview with my wife, Leslie, because she�s always hilarous and we�re often right on the edge of getting into a real argument the entire time. It�s such a tightrope walk when you do personal work�let alone work that involves your wife and kids, and is inspired by your life�and then have to talk about it with journalists. The problem is, Leslie and I have different ideas about how we want to portray the level of truth involved in our movies. I probably lean�out of pure laziness�toward talking about it as if it mostly comes from our lives, or at least an emotionally truthful place. Leslie prefers to say that the majority of what we do has been fabricated. The truth is probably somewhere in the middle, but this does lead to some tricky moments when we try to talk about our work with other people.
Leslie is my muse in ways that people don�t fully understand. When I have an idea for a movie, she�s the person that I kick it around with. When I�m outlining a screenplay, she�s the one who says, Well if you�re going to do this scene, then why don�t you do that scene, too? Many of the scenes I�ve written were Leslie�s idea, but I won�t get more specific than that here because I want people to think they were all my idea. If any of our movies resonate with people in any way, Leslie�s courage to explore these difficult, emotional areas is the reason why. She never thought of herself as a comedian�comedy is just something that seemed to happen to her. Which I am eternally grateful for, because there is no one I love working with, or being with, more.
Judd Apatow: Well, there�s nothing funny about the ups. That�s the whole point.
Leslie Mann: Every other movie is about the ups. Or the end.
Judd: I was just thinking about doing something about family but I hadn�t thought of an idea. Then I thought about how I liked Pete and Debbie in
Leslie: It was a tense day. The kids were being pains. So it was maybe not the best time to talk to me about it. But we talked about whether it would be a good idea, whether it would be good for the kids.
Judd: You resisted the idea of using the kids.
Leslie: No, I resisted that on
Leslie: Nothing. Judd manipulated me, lied to me, and steamrolled me. He told me he was auditioning kid actors while I was busy doing something, then: (
Judd: I think naturally we steer it. There�s way more that could be in there�.
Leslie: But you would want to slit your wrists if you saw that version.
Judd: I don�t remember. At some point someone must have pitched the idea�.Maybe Megan.
Leslie: Oh, I doubt it. It was you, and you�re trying to put it on someone else. I�m sure Megan would not push the boob touching.
Judd: I would not have pushed it.
Leslie: What is wrong with you? You�re like a dirty man.
Judd: Is that scene dirty?
Leslie: No, I don�t care. But a lot of people seem interested in it�.It was your idea. Admit it.
Leslie: Nuh-uh. Jim Carrey wasn�t there, so Judd was reading Jim�s part. I don�t remember Judd at all.
Judd: I had little birds and hearts floating round my head and she didn�t even notice.
Leslie: I had a bit of a crush on Ben Stiller, so maybe that�s why. I was focused on my work. I�m professional. Also, Judd was talking like
Judd: This is a lie!
Leslie: It�s true. He would send his sister to my trailer to tell me about all these dates he was going on.
Judd: She just likes me, so she says nice things. I didn�t send her.
Leslie: He
Judd: I just forced you to be around me more than you wanted to be. It was subtle stalking.
Judd: No.
Leslie: Yes we do! Are you serious?
Judd: We�ll agree on some things. But there�s some comedy I�ll love that�
Leslie: Like what?
Judd: You wouldn�t sit and watch Monty Python movies with me.
Leslie: I love Monty Python movies. What are you talking about?
Judd: But I�ll watch weird comedy all day long and you�ll want to watch
Leslie: That is a good show.
Judd: I don�t think so.
Leslie: I thought you said we didn�t have the same sense of humor?
Judd: I think maybe you�re not drawn to spend as much time with it as I am. I�m fascinated by how it works or
Leslie: You don�t know me at all. You seriously do not know me. You are so self-involved that you have no clue who I am.
Leslie:
Judd: I thought you hated that. I�m joking! Come on, our daughter�s named Maude. So we�re in tune there.
Leslie: Are we in tune or out of tune? You keep changing
Judd: I�m trying to make this interesting! I�m shaking it up.
Leslie: Shake it up by leaving.
Judd: What are your favorites?
Leslie: I have three:
Judd: Okay, we�re in tune.
Leslie: Right after that. It was his back.
Judd: I herniated my disk right after
Judd: It felt so bad. I had a rebellious streak that it was better to be a cool, indie geek than a mainstream rock star.
Leslie: It was awful. He was really stressed out and that put a lot of pressure on me. We had a new baby. He was such a nightmare. Just kind of on another planet, stressed-out and unavailable. Obsessing about work�But he�s kind of still like that. I�m really tired of it.
Judd: I could talk for hours about
Leslie: Do you know what I did? When his back went out, I went to New York and did this little film with Jeff Goldblum and I had my first love scene with him. So I was really enjoying myself and I felt terrible about it. Judd was literally being operated on�
Judd: On my spine.
Leslie: And I was in bed with Jeff Goldblum! And Jeff is very Method and he wants to rehearse�
Judd: But this as a business can just consume everything. When you have a family, you�re worried. And for Leslie, you�re always auditioning and waiting to see if people like you. Eventually we thought,
Judd: We got shut down after two days. They thought Steve Carell looked like a serial killer.
Leslie: They thought Paul Rudd was fat.
Judd: They thought I was lighting it like an indie. They literally shut it down in the middle of the day. They didn�t even wait�.I decided not to yell. That was a turning point. I decided just to listen and not react at all. I didn�t tell them it was insane to shut down a production and cost themselves half a million dollars when they could just call me at night and discuss it. Because I didn�t yell, it resolved itself much quicker.
Judd: We started up again two days later. It was really silly.
Leslie: You made some adjustments. Paul went on a diet. He literally stopped eating. What did you change with Steve?
Judd: Nothing. Steve decided the character would be a little more Buster Keaton�esque. He was low-energy and everyone else was spinning around him. Everything we shot in those first two days became some of the funniest stuff in the movie. It was the speed-dating sequence. So there was no purpose to it.
Leslie: If you look at Paul Rudd in the speed-dating sequence compared to the rest, he�s, like, ten pounds heavier. Then in the rest of the movie his hair looks cute and he�s thinner.
Leslie:
Judd: Almost beat for beat. From the doctor not showing up to getting the doctor you rejected earlier and asking him to deliver the baby and him being mean to you. We knew it was a crazy story. The last third is almost exactly what happened. Leslie goes into labor and I call my doctor but he�s out of town.
Leslie: But we saw him about three hours before that and my water broke. He said, �No, your water didn�t break, you can go home.� He wanted to leave town and go to a bar mitzvah in San Francisco. So I think he lied to me and said my water didn�t break, which is really dangerous. But he�s such a stupid fucking asshole and I hate him. So we wound up with this guy who had giant hands, like Shrek. And there were complications and he was mad at us and he reeked of cigarettes and it was just horrible. But it made a good movie.
Leslie: I would audition for dramatic parts and people would laugh at me�not ideal at the time�so slowly I realized the comedy world is where I belonged.
Judd: I wanted to be funny more than I was. I realized, when I worked with people, that I could write in their voices. So I could write jokes for
Judd: I probably thought I could become Eddie Murphy�.But I didn�t do any of the acting side because I was confident that I was terrible. Even when I did stand-up, I was smart enough to know that I had no life experience or real opinions. So it was more fun for me to write for people who had really strong opinions, because I didn�t care about anything but being a comedian.
Leslie: It was a decision made by Jim Henson.
Judd: I auditioned for him for this reality show where he gave cameras to a couple of comedians who traveled round the country. I auditioned with Adam Sandler and David Spade and Rob Schneider. Jim Henson said he wanted to buy all my ideas but didn�t want to cast me because I lacked warmth.
Leslie: From the guy who created the Muppets.
Judd: From the guy who taught you how to
Leslie: It was just more tiring, but he protected me from all the stresses from the outside world. I don�t know what the budget is or what the politics were. It was just a safe world for all the actors. I was so grateful for that. Thank you, honey. I kind of like you a little bit more again.
Judd: See, we�ve gone full circle. She hated me and then she likes me again. This is my day. This is my life.
Louis C.K. is one of those people who are so brilliant and funny and uncompromising that sometimes I need to avoid their work. When I was writing
It is worth noting that we conducted this interview in Louis�s kitchen in New York City and, as we spoke, he made me a delicious dinner of steak and beans. For a moment, I felt like I was one of his kids, and I came away thinking,
Judd Apatow: I was reading an article about you recently and I saw that you had an experience a little like mine�as a kid, I worked at a radio station, and you, somebody got you a job at a TV station?
Louis C.K.: Yeah.
Judd: I had a guy like that, too. He ran the high school radio station and treated us like adults. He was the cool guy. He would curse and he went to NYU with Martin Scorsese and taught film at the high school and he made me think that you could do anything, even as a little kid. So I had a radio show and interviewed all these comics. And I�m wondering what that was like for you to have this teacher who said, I�m going to hook this kid up.
Louis: In junior high school, I did nothing but drugs. I got in trouble all the time. I was a messed-up kid. And then in my first year of high school, I stopped all that and became a good student, but the problem was, by then, all my friends from junior high school had dropped out�like, every one of them. Five of my friends dropped out of high school after one year. And there was this kid Neil who lived a block from the high school and everybody would be there, at his house, partying every day�from nine in the morning, when his parents left for work.
Judd: Where did Neil�s parents think the kids were?
Louis: They couldn�t control it. Both parents worked. I mean, everybody I knew was getting high and nobody could do anything about it.
Judd: Did they assume the kids were going to get jobs when they were that young?
Louis: Everybody had jobs. I had a job. Sophomore year of high school, I worked at Kentucky Fried Chicken. Everybody worked at fast-food places. So all these kids were told by their parents�the parents got together and said, Just get out of school and work. The idea was that they were all going to come back to school a year later and try again. Anyway, all of a sudden all of my friends were getting high every day and I couldn�t resist, so I just stopped going to school.
Judd: What grade is that? Tenth?
Louis: Tenth grade. And before that, I was a great student. I was getting A�s. So there�s this meeting with all my teachers and my mom came and they told her: �Your son�s not coming to school.� And my mom, who thought we were out of the woods, was like, �God damn it.� It was a great meeting because I felt like I was able to be honest with it all. My mom and I had been through a lot together, and I said, �I�m having a hard time staying here. I get depressed in school and it�s hard.� And one of my teachers�he was my homeroom teacher�he just said, �Well, you can�t do
Judd: Would you edit? Did you work the cameras?
Louis: I just started doing everything. I sucked in the learning. I would sit and watch the news editor. I learned how editing worked, and I was very good with machines. I could fix cameras when they broke and stuff. So I became the kid everybody trusted. They let me take the equipment home. If you could fix it, nobody cared. So I became a pet there, and everyone treated me like a grown-up.
Judd: I did the same thing at Comic Relief. When I was in college, I saw on TV that they were planning to do Live Aid but with comedians. It was called Comic Relief. I called up and said, �I will do anything.� I was eighteen. �I�ll do anything, just let me help.� They said, �Well, we don�t have anything,� but then three months later they called back and said, �Come in and help us.� I started putting on benefits around the country at all the clubs. But it was the same attitude: I am going to be your go-to guy. And that�s what you want your kids to have. It�s hard, I think. I talk about this all the time with my kids. The reason why you do that is because you can see your demise if you
Louis: Wow, yeah, I don�t know. Who knows what�s in store for our kids. It might not stay like this forever. I always say that to my kids. I probably lay it on them a little too much. Someday they might be saying to their friends, �My dad used to have a house on Shelter Island, and he had a boat.� I mean, for Jim Carrey�s climb and everything that happened for him�the massive success�he�s looking for work. You
Judd: When things started going really well for you, were you able to enjoy it?
Louis: Oh yeah. I remember the first time I did
Judd: That�s the big thing about it hitting a little later in life. You�re wise enough to realize:
Louis: I�ve never had all-at-once successes. I�ve never had any big leaps, the rags-to-riches thing. Everything has been one foot in front of the other, one step at a time. So many times I heard, You�re up for this thing, this is the one, and it�s going to be huge. And it never happens and then it�s back to coming down to earth. You get blue balls from that, you know�like,
Judd: What was the big one of those for you?
Louis: I met with these people at Good Machine, which was an indie film group. They were making some great stuff, and they repped this movie I wrote called
Judd: End of story.
Louis: Yeah, no�so it didn�t get made, obviously. And I had to come down from that. Oh, that fucking hurt. That was brutal. There were a few of those kinds of things. I thought I was going to be on
Judd: In a good way or bad, do you think?
Louis: I�m glad I didn�t get it. I�m glad for every single thing I didn�t get.
Judd: I always felt the reason why I was interested in comedy was that I was on some level hostile and looking for answers. When you look back, what do you think was the fuel for your work?
Louis: I think comedy is a freeing thing. It�s not even an escape. It just feels good. You know what I mean? My parents were divorced around the same time as yours�I was in fifth grade, ten years old. Those were formative years. I was awkward and I couldn�t quite score the way everybody else did. I didn�t feel like I was succeeding as a kid. I was bad academically, always behind, always in trouble. I had friends and stuff, but I didn�t feel like I was winning in school. And comedy was this amazing thing because comedy is like saying the wrong things�when you see a grown-up do it and they succeed at it and get applause�
Judd: When did you tune in to what comedy was?
Louis: My first love was Bill Cosby. My friend Jeff had a whole stack of his records; we would just sit and laugh. I loved the sound of it. I loved the sound of his voice and hearing the audience and the nightclub feeling and how it sometimes felt like a concert. I used to listen to how the record
Judd: What�s the thing that Cosby did that you wish you could do?
Louis: I wish I could control myself like he did. I wish that I could�talk�like�this�on�stage. Respect the negative space. Respect the silence, let it alone. I wish I had that kind of control. I came up in the Boston clubs scene where�
Judd: It�s combat. You learn it as combat.
Louis: And I still�whenever I�m watching my opening act on the road or if I�m in a club, I�m like,
Judd: It all changes when the crowd is there to see you. How many years has it been for you where they�re really there to see you in a big way?
Louis: I had done
Judd: Three months in advance.
Louis: And I was like, �What the fuck did you say to me? They want to start
Judd: Does it change your act?
Louis: It�s a huge amount of pressure. �Cause you have to be really great. When you�re the headliner at some club, you�re just the last guy. You do forty-five to an hour, close strong, and make people feel like they had a complete eat. When you do well as a headliner in a club, people are like, �That guy was good, that guy was good.� But in a theater, there is an enormous amount of pressure because this is their choice for the night. So you want to deliver. And I get anxious about that. Once you�re doing twenty-five hundred seats, five thousand seats�there�s a whole other thing there. It has to be phenomenal.
Judd: And you�re turning the whole act over, too. Carlin would turn it over, but he did it over a few years�.
Louis: He did a gradual thing. But for me, it was more interesting to do it this way, to think of each year�s act like a different book that I wrote.
Judd: Are you aware of how much that�s changed comedy? How everyone else is looking at their acts because of you?
Louis: I�m not aware of that. I know that some people don�t like it that I say�Look, when I started doing a yearlong tour and a stand-up special, the next time I would tour, it seemed natural for me to let my audience know it�s a different show. You�re seeing a different show. I never was bragging to other comedians. Some comedians got pissed off because they thought I was bragging. I don�t give a fuck what they think.
Judd: I do feel a sea change from it. It seems to have inspired people to work harder, to evolve who they are on a daily basis. I used to work with Larry Miller at the Improv, and he was incredible, and he had this polished act. He was the one who urged me to write more. To treat it like a job. He�d do his Thanksgiving bit, and it could be one of the best bits of all time, but now I feel�in the best possible way�that comics feel the pressure to be in the moment with what their life is, with their act.
Louis: I think it�s better. Chris Rock taught me a lot about this kind of stuff, but I really learned it from Carlin. I remember I was in the parking lot of the Yang�what�s that Chinese restaurant in Boston that does comedy?
Judd: The one that Steven Wright was discovered at?
Louis: No, not the Ding Ho. The Ding Ho was gone. I can�t believe I�m blanking on it, �cause I did so many gigs�I opened for Jerry Seinfeld there. But anyway, I was sitting in the parking lot and feeling like shit and listening to this interview with Carlin. And he said that he gets done with his jokes and moves on. And I thought,
Judd: But you stuck with them.
Louis: Yeah, you stick with them. Because you don�t need anything else. I got all these tools, I know how this bit works, I know how this bit works. So I started thinking about that and then, years later, I was talking to Chris Rock and he said, �If you do
Judd: And it grows around it?
Louis: Yeah, it grows around it. Because something�s there, when there�s nothing there. So I thought,
Judd: That�s not how you do it now?
Louis: I do. I mean, the last hour I did, I feel like it�s my last one for a little while. But it�s like, how many of these things do you need to do? Also, I love club comedy. I miss it. I miss fucking around on the club stage.
Judd: Is that what you want to do now?
Louis: Well, my TV show has me in the clubs. Sometimes when I�m filming my show, the Comedy Cellar is a location, so if I have extras hanging around, I bring them downstairs and do a set and they�ll kind of chuckle and I�ll use it on the show because I�m able to do weird little bits that don�t quite make any sense. But I�m getting into different-sized things these days. Like, I just did
Judd: It was a dark monologue, the one you did.
Judd: I mean, you don�t usually hear people talk about religion and death�
Louis: No, not at all. That�s the stuff that I�ve been doing, and I was saving it for the series but I thought,
Judd: It played really well. I mean, watching it on TV. It sounded like it was all going well.
Louis: I trained for it by going to really shitty places. I never worked so hard on a set in my life, certainly not a four-to-eight-minute set. I did a lot of bad places with open mics where it�s all, you know, bitter comedians and no audience. I remember one place there was literally water leaking on the floor next to me and there�s a guy in the front row on the phone and I was like,
Judd: Is dress rehearsal the first time Lorne sees the monologue?
Louis: Yeah, Lorne really helped me because I did the first show�you know, the worst thing that can happen in an important show is when the rehearsal goes well. It just hurts you. You need caution and an alert mind to do this kind of thing. And I came out for dress and I did twelve minutes and I fucking killed. And nobody had seen it. Nobody had seen the material because I had been running out at nights to do it. So we have the between-show meeting and Lorne�my manager had said to me, �Don�t let Lorne cut a single minute. Do twelve minutes like you did in the room,� and I was like, yeah. After all this work I did do to humble myself, I was really jacked up. So I go into the meeting and I�m like in this big, leather chair and Lorne says, �Have you had any experience at
Judd: I haven�t worked there but I know the moment you�re talking about.
Louis: Everybody�s there. It�s like meeting the president. It�s, like, very important. And he says, �So you did twelve minutes in the monologue. How much do you want to do on-air?� I said, �I want to do all twelve.� And he goes, �You�re not doing twelve.� He goes, �It was good but there was a lot of air in it, a lot of stopping and starting. I know there are cuts in there.� My faced turned red. I was angry. I was like, �Well, I don�t know. I thought it was pretty good. And fuck you.� I was really mad. And then later this woman comes in and says, �Uh, we�re one minute under.� And so I go, �Then I�m doing twelve.� And Lorne turns to me and goes, �Calm down.� I was really insulted. He said, �I�ll give you seven and nobody�s ever done seven.� And I said, �What if it goes long? What if I go over and I end up doing ten or more?� And he goes, �Then we�ll know that you�re very undisciplined and that you�re unprofessional.� And everybody laughed. So I said, �I want to see the monologue from rehearsal.� And he goes, �Show it to him.� My point was to prove how great it was. And I watched it and I was like,
Judd: And you have to act and work the other sketches, too.
Louis: Yes, it was high pressure. Very high pressure.
Judd: How do you remember it all?
Louis: Well, because you fucking better know it. You fucking better know it. I mean, I had to switch the order. I had to change stuff. I just told myself,
Judd: And that was the day that you realized Lorne knows what he�s doing.
Louis: He knows exactly what he�s doing. He�s so smart, but he scared me. And I needed to go in scared.
Judd: You
Louis: I remember when I was a kid, Billie Jean King was doing that Battle of the Sexes thing�I don�t remember if it was happening when I was a kid or if I saw a show about it. But I was so impressed with her. She reminded me of my mom and I just thought she was the coolest person and I hated Bobby Riggs because my mom was a single, working mother. They toured together and did these interviews together, and he was always going, like, women should just go back, put on a tight shirt, and make me a steak. He said this amazing shit and she�s just sitting there with a smile on her face. And they turned to her and they say, �How do you feel about all this?� And she says, �Well, all this does is put pressure on me. Everything he says just means that I have to beat him.� She gets this big smile on her face and says, �I love pressure.�
Judd: Wow.
Louis: And I never forgot it. I was like, fuck that. That was such an interesting notion�that pressure, give me, give me, give me, because all that�s going to do is make me better. Like, eating pressure. Having it be fuel. I like that. Whenever I realize,
Judd: Was that an historic moment for you, hosting
Louis: When I worked at
Judd: I can�t imagine how scary that is.
Louis: I was really scared.
Judd: Like,
Louis: Yeah, everything. Everything.
Judd: How long do you think you can do your show for?
Louis: I don�t know. I feel like I have to take it year by year. This year was a totally different experience than last season. I didn�t do it like a job. I decided I don�t need to go and try to make movies or anything. This show was a good job. It�s a good thing to be doing creatively. I had this thing that I was going to make a movie. And I�d been saving it and I said,
Judd: There�s a type of storytelling, and movies are not hospitable to it. It�s a miracle when shows fall together and you feel like,
Louis: TV shows are about getting the right tuning. It�s like trying to crack a safe. Once you get it, it starts paying off like a slot machine creatively�like, I created a machine that makes paper cups, you know. I just sit there and stack them. And it keeps running as long as people want paper cups.
Judd: Whose voice is in your head that�s wise?
Louis: A collection of people. My mom is a big part of that for me. She�s got a calm and thoughtful approach to things and, yeah, it�s her, it�s me�I feel like I�ve invented a lot of that for myself. Sometimes it�s friends like Chris Rock, who is one of the smartest people I know. It�s different people who have said stuff to me and then things I�ve learned.
Judd: My mom was very manic and up and down�you know, super nice but also super screaming and crazy. You get that implanted in your head. Like, if you have the solid mom implanted, moments come up like
Louis: That�s right. I mean, it�s funny. Chris Rock is a lot of those for me. I remember when I did
Judd: �We don�t need you.�
Louis: �Quit.� I had a few moments like that. But once I had a kid, I remember thinking, you know,
Judd: What are the things that you�re trying to say on the show about being a parent?
Louis: I always try to show that I don�t have any control as a parent, you know what I mean? I did this thing with the little one on the show and I�m telling her this thing about don�t look into your neighbor�s bowl unless it�s to check if they have enough. I try to teach my kids this kind of thing. The reason why we cut sandwiches in half is so you can offer somebody a piece of your sandwich. You don�t need the whole sandwich. Everybody in your line of sight, you offer it to them and if nobody wants it, then hey, you get a whole sandwich but you�re only supposed to eat half. I tell them these things.
Judd: Do they believe you?
Louis: Sometimes.
Judd: And you don�t know what sticks or how it sticks, because I�ll say something to my daughters and I�ll think they don�t care at all, and then a year later, in conversation somehow it comes up that they remembered that.
Louis: Yes, that�s right.
Judd: It�s interesting to me because I have two daughters. And it really does change your reality when you spend an enormous amount of time only with women and little girls. It�s a very sweet, intimate relationship. Like my daughter�I know you hate all the cellphone stuff, but she�ll text me all day during school and tell me, like, �I just cried during Spanish class because the teacher asked me a question and I didn�t know the answer and I cried and I�m in the bathroom right now.�
Louis: Isn�t that nice that she�s reaching out to you that way? I don�t hate the cellphone stuff, by the way. I think you have to�
Judd: No, I agree with everything you say about it. It�s a battle to figure out how to manage technology with kids.
Louis: Yeah, it is, but it will be a battle for them for their whole lives, too. I mean, when I�m at my best, I leave my phone around without looking at it and I only use my computers to write or edit or whatever. My favorite part of the year is when I�m editing my show because I can�t touch the Internet; I�m using my computer to edit. Because it�s a sickness. Like right now, because the show is on the air, I�m reading shit about it and about myself and I�m tweeting because I never tweet. I don�t partake in that back-and-forth thing, but when I do because I�m tweeting to promote and then I�m like,
Judd: They start shaking.
Louis: They itch, they shake, they can�t listen to each other�it hurts them to not have their phones. And she�s observing this because she�s not one of them. It�s a big caution for her. So when she does get one, she�ll have a better shot than I have and that her friends have had.
Judd: What�s hard is that they are afraid to drop out of this mass communication. But like I�ve said to my daughter, �Maybe you should be known as the kid who is hard to reach.�
Louis: That�s right. That�s the coolest possible thing you can be. But it�s pollution. It�s pollution. You need time by yourself. I was watching
Judd: When I�m working sometimes, I have this book of Cassavetes interviews at hand. He just has so many quotes about doing things differently�one of the quotes is something about, I don�t care if people like the movie, I just hope, in ten years, it�s still stuck in your craw somewhere. Like, they�re still thinking about it.
Louis: You want it to be compelling, that�s all. The likable thing is not really worth much. It�s a low-wattage bulb, you know. I remember when I did
Judd: Had he read it?
Louis: I don�t know. Somebody actually brought that up: Did you read the script? �Because,� the editor said, �we kept to the script pretty much. Did you approve this movie?� And David Gale said, �I think something�s lost on you. I think you�re not getting something.� �What am I not getting? What am I not getting about you taking four, by the way,
Judd: Oddly, those are the ones that people keep watching and talking about.
Louis: No, that�s right. And I think I�m able to do that on the show because the show doesn�t have an obligation to tell a whole story. Sometimes we tell two in one episode. I had an instinct that I should try to be as bold as I can about how I play with the format because I�ll chase away everybody who doesn�t like it and then I�ll get fans who do like it. If the net number is high enough, I�ll keep the job. And if I keep the job this way it�s a great fucking job. I never cared if I got canceled. That�s the only thing that makes me do this stuff well, is I was willing to let the job go any day.
Judd: I always heard that from Larry David. That was his big inspiration. He was willing to walk away from
Louis: You have to be willing to say, �Let�s not do this show. Let�s not do it.�
Judd: Do you notice a common theme when you look at the show, or is it too soon to tell? For a lot of people, when you see their body of work, you realize there are certain things that concern them. They make mirrors of their lives. Do you notice that for yourself?
Louis: I don�t know. I don�t know if there�s a common theme. I guess I�m always trying to figure something out on the show.
Judd: Is it self-discovery?
Louis: I like to put myself into fucked-up situations and make mistakes and deal with it. I like to do that over and over again on the show, and maybe I like to do that in my life also. I read in some places that the women on my show were all crazy. They didn�t say that for the first couple of seasons, but people started to go, �These women are all fucking nuts.� For me, it�s because that�s an interesting problem, that�s all. It�s an interesting story.
Judd: I�ve gotten in trouble for having strong women or angry women or dealing with those types of problems that people would say, Oh, you�re being a misogynist. Even Katherine Heigl said, �Oh, you�re making the women out to be shrews.�
Louis:
Judd: Are you a therapy person?
Louis: I used to go to therapy, but I can�t do it now because it�s been too long. It�s like not going to the gym for a long time. I don�t want to start all over again.
I�ve done a fair amount of interviews in my life, but the one that people mention to me the most is the one I did for Marc Maron�s
Judd Apatow: All right, I�m holding the mic. Is it happening now?
Marc Maron: Yeah, sure.
Judd: This is it.
Marc: I am in Judd Apatow�s war room. Is this the war room?
Judd: This is the situation room.
Marc: Ah, the situation room. So this is your office? A lot of boards, things being outlined. It�s like�I can�t read your fucking writing.
Judd: Well, part of the reason why I have bad handwriting is when I used to do stand-up comedy, I would write jokes on planes and I was always embarrassed that the person next to me would see what I was writing about.
Marc: Is that true?
Judd: Yes. And so I found a way to have terrible handwriting that only I could read, so if I was writing some joke about impotency or something, it would be unreadable.
Marc: You did it by design?
Judd: I did. And I still do it now, so if my wife sees any weird notes or joke ideas or things that might be offensive, there�s no way she can read it.
Marc: Because I�m sitting here thinking, like,
Judd: It says �sperm issues.� Yes, it does. But that would be in all of my movies.
Marc: And then it just, the rest is undecipherable.
Judd: Exactly. And it shall be until America gets to see this.
Marc: So I just watched
Judd: Oh, wow.
Marc: It�s nothing personal. I miss a lot of things. And the interesting thing to me is�the scene that resonates almost more than the rest to me is when Bill is watching Garry Shandling after school. It�s one scene, but, for some reason, I was like,
Judd: There�s a scene in the show where Bill Haverchuck, played by Martin Starr, comes home after school and you can tell he�s a latchkey kid and no one�s around and his mom�s a former stripper. And he looks really sad and he watches Garry Shandling on
Marc: That scene?
Judd: That scene. And that was probably the turning point for my whole career, realizing that the little moments that I thought were boring or just not interesting to other people are actually the things that people would be most interested in. I always thought I was a bore. That�s why I quit stand-up comedy.
Marc: Was your mom not around?
Judd: I lived with my dad after my parents got divorced. And I just didn�t do any after-school activities. I just went in my room and closed the door and I was in my fantasy world, watching, you know, Michael Keaton do stand-up on
Marc: I had that same experience. Because one of them�like I still remember one of the moments I decided to be a comic was watching Jay Leno. I don�t know if it was on
Judd: I remember going to see
Marc: In New York?
Judd: In Los Angeles, when I was in high school. Dr. Ruth was the other guest, and she�s taking calls, giving sex advice, and Jay Leno realizes that this makes no sense because the show doesn�t air for a month and where are the calls coming from? Like, is there someone backstage doing this? He calls her on it, like, �These are not real calls. Where are these people coming from?� And I thought,
Marc: Did you read �My Favorite Jokes� in
Judd: I used to transcribe
Marc: How old were you?
Judd: Ten. I have the transcriptions of Bill Murray�s Oscar picks bit from �Weekend Update� in notebooks.
Marc: Why did you do that?
Judd: I don�t know. I think that I was in some way trying to figure out how to get into that world�how does it work? I wanted to break it down somehow. It wasn�t conscious.
Marc: Did you used to do that with stand-up as well?
Judd: I didn�t. I did it with
Marc: You were an original. Comedy nerds didn�t exist yet. You were just a kid who was precocious in a sense. I was the same way in that I related to these comics. They made me feel better. They had a certain amount of control, it seemed. They could handle shit.
Judd: They had a stance on why the world didn�t make sense, and they would call everyone on their shit. I couldn�t get enough of those people.
Marc: I�ll tell you something Harry Shearer said to me, and I want to get your opinion on it. He said the reason why people are comedians is to have control over why people laugh at you.
Judd: I look at it this way: When someone is laughing, I know they don�t dislike me. I don�t know if they
Marc: Really?
Judd: I once received a call from Steven Spielberg. Steven Spielberg, who I used to work for at DreamWorks, was trying to reach me to say that he liked
Marc: What is the wound? Because I know I have it.
Judd: You know, I�m not sure exactly. I�ve had therapists who say everything that happened to you happened in the first three years of your life�
Marc: Yeah, let it go.
Judd: It may have just been the way your mom looked at you. I mean, who knows?
Marc: You believe that?
Judd: I don�t know. I don�t know if that�s true. I do know that in every situation that I walk into I feel like the weirdo. I feel like that awkward guy picking up my kids from school. I feel that way on the sets of my own movies.
Marc: Uncomfortable in your own skin?
Judd: I never feel like I own the moment, you know.
Marc: You feel like you�re a
Judd: I just feel like a punch could come from any direction even if I�m everyone�s boss. And the thing is, no one ever punches me. What I�m realizing is,
Marc: A lot of that movie was drawn from your early career with, you know, I mean in the sense that Garry Shandling was your mentor, right?
Judd: I had a bunch of mentors. People were very nice to me when I was young. Shandling hired me to write the Grammys for him in 1990.
Marc: How old were you?
Judd: I was twenty-three. And then he hired me on
Marc: Here�s me as a pregnant woman.
Judd: Exactly. Here�s me at my neediest. Here�s me screaming at the crowd. I mean, your thoughts are coming out in different ways. And some of it is observations of other people. Some of the rants in
Marc: You don�t see it as much as you used to. I mean, in the clubs. I don�t know how often you go out there anymore, but there was a time when that generation�there seemed to be a little more freedom and a little less eyes on everybody. There was a time in the eighties where the meltdown was fairly commonplace.
Judd: Those moments between midnight and one-thirty in the morning at the Improv�that�s where a lot of the great things happened.
Marc: How many of that generation have sort of disappeared, or no one knows anymore? Are you ever saddened by that?
Judd: I did go into Best Buy once and a comic who was hilarious was a salesman there. That was rough. That made me sad because I thought,
Marc: But is it that that same sort of wound that you�re talking about can also swallow people? And the fact is that you were able to manage your talent and be political and ambitious enough to get what you wanted to get done, done.
Judd: I was very lucky that part of my dysfunction as a person is a terror of bankruptcy�financial bankruptcy, not emotional bankruptcy. So as a young person, I thought ten years ahead. I had a show in high school where I interviewed comedians like Leno and Seinfeld and John Candy.
Marc: How did you manage to get hold of them?
Judd: I used to call their publicists and say I was from a radio station in New York, and they were too lazy to look it up and figure out that it was a high school radio station. I was afraid that I was going to not be able to take care of myself in my life, so in my head I always thought,
Marc: Were you freaking out inside, talking to Seinfeld? What were you really trying to do there?
Judd: It happened right after my parents got divorced and I just thought,
Marc: You were sort of in crisis mode.
Judd: I was
Marc: Oh my God.
Judd: Rick Messina is the great manager who went on to represent Tim Allen. Back then he managed the East Side Comedy Club on Long Island, which was the first comedy club on the Island, and a bunch of other clubs. So when my parents got divorced, my mom got a job seating people at her former bartender�s comedy club. I mean, this was the dream situation for me. This was ninth grade, and it�s the summer, and my mom is seating people at a comedy club. Every weekend, I would go watch every show�Leno, Paul Provenza, first show I ever saw of a young comedian. And years later I thought,
Marc: That�s sweet. So okay, you saw Leno, you saw Provenza. This was 1980�what?
Judd: This was �82 or �83, and then I got a job at Rick Messina�s comedy club as a dishwasher so I could see the comedians. Then I realized that I can�t see the comedians, I�m in the fucking kitchen. So I switched to a busboy at East Side Comedy Club. Eddie Murphy used to come in, and Rosie O�Donnell was just starting at that time. I would watch the comedians, and I thought,
Marc: It�s terrifying.
Judd: And John Mulrooney�s hosting the open-mic night. And he just, I mean, it was pandemonium. He would kill and insult the crowd�
Marc: I remember him.
Judd: And he was fantastic. But to go on after that, when you have no idea what you�re doing and you�re seventeen years old? There�d be twenty comedians who�d all get five minutes. And you never knew if Mulrooney was going to do twenty minutes between acts and so you might get on at eight-oh-five, or one in the morning.
Marc: You are the real deal. You came from a real comedy background in a way that none of us did. Many of us who started on those open mics didn�t watch comedy until we were stuck in those rooms and we
Judd: From the earliest time, I understood that people got onstage with mics. I never had any interest in doing anything that I�m doing right now. It was not part of the dream. If you listen to those early interviews I did, it�s all about joke writing. It�s not screenwriting. I�m not talking about how I love movies. I want to understand the mechanics of a dick joke. That�s my vision quest. When I interviewed Seinfeld the first time my brother was with me and you can hear him laughing. He�s laughing in the background, and to us, it was like being in the room with Paul McCartney. It was. I think, to some extent, we had a vision for what Jerry Seinfeld was more than Jerry Seinfeld had a vision of what Jerry Seinfeld was. It was like being in a small club seeing R.E.M. in Athens, Georgia, in the early eighties and knowing what they would become.
Marc: A really small club. Just you and your brother.
Judd: Exactly. And the great thing about it was most of those people were very, very nice and so it also made me feel like,
Marc: In retrospect, have you brought it up to Leno and Seinfeld and Shandling that you interviewed them when you were sixteen?
Judd: I�ve mentioned it and none of them remember it�and they don�t seem very interested in it, either.
Marc: But these guys gave you a blueprint for your life.
Judd: Yes, they did. And they don�t completely get the significance of it. Because they might be having that effect on a lot of people.
Marc: I find that hard to believe, because if somebody writes me an email or even says that I�ve changed them in any way, not only does it make me feel good but I have to fight the urge to go, like,
Judd: Maybe they do get it. Maybe it�s just something that�it�s hard to express or connect about because it is such a powerful thing. It�s weird to look someone in the eye and say, �You�ve changed my life.� You know, I treasure when Seinfeld sends me a note and says he likes
Marc: All right, so at some point you come out here. I met you briefly. The first time I met you was at a party at Stacey Nelson�s house. She was a publicist. I was dating her. I was being held hostage at her house. I think it was 1989. I met you at a party and you insisted that I was never going to leave L.A., and I left.
Judd: Really? Why would I say that?
Marc: It was one of those weird moments where everyone�s hanging around and you go, �So what are you doing here?� And I�m like, �I�m staying at her house, you know, I�ve got to go back to New York.� You said, �Oh you�ll be back. You�ll be back.� It was almost ominous. But I left. There was that whole crew there at that time. You know, it was Ben Stiller and�I imagine that�s around the time that you guys were working on
Judd: The show was �91. We probably started working on it in �91 and it aired in �92.
Marc: And that was your first real TV job?
Judd: I wrote stand-up for a few comedians and when they did specials I would be a co-producer or something. I wrote with Roseanne, I wrote for Tom Arnold. Then I met Ben at an Elvis Costello concert and we both knew that HBO was looking for a show�a sketch show�and we thought of something in two weeks and sold it. People thought we had been friends forever, but we had known each other for fourteen days.
Marc: In
Judd: Yes, and Ben.
Marc: And you were all in�what year was that, �89 or �88?
Judd: That was �89 or �90. And in the footage in the beginning of the movie, you see Adam making a phony phone call, which I actually shot in our apartment back then, and Ben Stiller and Janeane Garofalo are there laughing, so you see them very briefly in the opening credits. At the time, Adam was so funny but had no outlet so he would make funny phone calls for hours and hours. I thought it was so hilarious, it didn�t make sense
Marc: Do you have all that stuff, too?
Judd: I have all of it. When we were doing
Marc: You keep using that term,
Judd: I remember moving to L.A., and I started doing stand-up at this place called the L.A. Cabaret in the Valley, in Encino. And I started meeting comedians for the first time, personally, not just interviewing them. And I realized,
Marc: This is a recurring theme with you. These socially awkward, alienated guys that have to group with each other and sort of have this different type of strength to get through things.
Judd: Cocky nerds. My wife and I always talk about it. It�s people who think they don�t think ill of themselves�they actually think that there�s something special about themselves but no one�s noticed it. And so the characters on
Marc: You and Ben Stiller really created this community of comedy nerds in some ways. Do you feel that?
Judd: I think that Ben in a lot of ways is the beginning of much of what�s happened in modern comedy. He did
Marc: Isn�t that what everyone does for the first couple of jobs?
Judd: Yeah, but I was in charge of the writing and editing of the show. And so it was not like faking it as a staff writer. I was twenty-four or twenty-five years old with no background at all. And I hired people with Ben who were brilliant, like Dino Stamatopoulos and Bob Odenkirk and Brent Forrester and David Cross, and so in a lot of ways it was trying to manage these personalities who were bursting with energy. I mean, Bob was the funniest man in the world. The energy he had during
Marc: Then you went on to do
Judd: That�s where I learned how to write stories. Garry was nice enough to hire me on that show after
Marc: You wrote sketches and jokes.
Judd: I knew how to write �Legends of Bruce Springsteen� but I didn�t know how to write about
Marc: How did that go?
Judd: It didn�t go well. It didn�t go well at all. I mean he, he was a blustery guy. But correct most of the time, and a wonderful person who would always wind up doing what you were trying to get him to do, but if you walked up to him and said, �Rip, I think you need to play it a little nervous here,� he�d say, �I�m not
Marc: Do you think Garry is an underappreciated comic?
Judd: He�s the best. I mean, what he did with
Marc: But also the idea that it�s not just the work ethic. All guys who do well work hard. But to create a cast of characters who work within show business that are pathologically selfish and narcissistic and not great people is, uh, difficult. It�s challenging to find heart there. And Garry clearly did�on that show, he did. You find heart through the weaknesses of all these extreme narcissists and lunatics. And I think that in some ways, in
Judd: That�s true, and Garry used to always say, �
Marc: When you look at the comedy movies that come out now, I admire the direction you�re going because I like�I like to
Judd: Yes.
Marc: You�ve produced movies like that, no?
Judd: I�ve produced some movies that are better than others.
Marc: I�m not putting a judgment on them.
Judd: There are movies that are a little more premisey and there�s movies where you�re sticking very close to the truth, and sometimes when you reach for a joke�I always call it
Marc: In your mind, what is the perfect comedy that you judge all others against?
Judd: There are a few movies I always go back to. I always go back to
Marc: Because of the emotional variation?
Judd: When you can do that well, it�s a big deal.
Marc: How about
Judd: Oh yeah,
Marc: But it�s interesting to me that for the most part, outside of appreciating it as a classic, Woody Allen is not an inspiration for you particularly?
Judd: Well, I never mention Woody Allen because some of his stuff is so great you feel like a fool even mentioning that you�re even in the same business as him. It just feels awkward to say I do what he does. But also, I think probably when all that stuff happened to him, and his family and the stuff with his kids, there was a part of me that disconnected. Maybe after I read the Mia Farrow book I just was like, I got a little creeped out. And my incredible worship and affection got dented. I don�t know where I stand on any of it. He�s stranger than I thought he was. And darker than I thought he was. So I don�t connect to it in the exact same way as when I was a kid watching
Marc: When I read
Judd: You don�t want to know too much about anybody. I mean, if you read a Groucho biography, you�ll be like,
Marc: Yeah. Now, do you do Marx Brothers?
Judd: I�m obsessed with the Marx Brothers. They were on TV all the time, and I have to say they were the first comedy act that I connected to. I think it was because it was so rebellious. Groucho was basically saying, �This is all bullshit,� and for some reason I couldn�t have taken to it more.
Marc: Did you feel that because you�re not that aggressively, you know, �Fuck you�? Do you feel�
Judd: I never felt that way enough to be super-funny, quite frankly. There were comedians when I first started out who were working, like Kinison and Bill Hicks, and those were the guys that were the best guys when I first started. They were hilarious because there was such rage and self-righteousness and they thought they had the answers for everything. I never felt that way about myself. I never thought I had any answers for anything and I wasn�t as mad as them. I was just trying to meet a girl and to get to second base. As I�ve gotten older I really do believe that life is about finding ways to connect to other people, and I�m more attracted to a James Brooks sensibility, where all of these stories are about how people finally come together.
Marc: I think that�s where the joy is. That�s where humanity is. I think there�s sort of the �Fuck you, I�m better than you� or �I know more than you� or �Life is fucked.� I come from that mold and now that�s all melting away.
Judd: That�s why I made
Marc: To push it a little further.
Judd: I�ve listened to your show a lot and you talk a lot about your family and what makes you feel separate from other people, and that�s what interests me now: Why do I feel separate? Why am I still in my room watching TV? In my mind, I�m still in that room and I�m not as connected to other people as I want to be, so I�m trying to do that. But even when I�m doing it, if I�m at a party or I�m at school, there�s a part of me that wishes I could run out and sit in my room and watch
Marc: Why are we so afraid of joy?
Judd: That�s the question. And I�ve thought about it a lot, and I think it�s because we think right behind joy is a knife that will cut our throat if we really feel it. It�s almost like a laugh�your chin goes up and your throat is exposed.
I spent a fair number of my teenage years sitting alone in front of the TV late at night, watching
I showed up at his hotel in New York, where he was promoting a new season of
On the night that Steve Martin won his lifetime achievement Oscar in 2013, I was lucky enough to wrangle an invitation to go back to Steve�s house for a celebration. There weren�t many people there. For a while, it was just Steve Martin, his wife, Anne, Martin Short, Tom Hanks, Bill Hader, and me, and as a group, they were as funny as anyone I have ever been around in my life. Just a shocking level of intelligence and humor. That night, I went home and thought:
Judd Apatow: When did your comedy career begin?
Martin Short: In 1972, I did a show called
Judd: And what did that lead to?
Martin: It led to just kind of continually working in Toronto. Canada is a great place to work, because you�re not pigeonholed. There�s no star system. You�re not put in a kind of �He does that and that�s all we�ll ever ask him to do� role. So, you can do commercials and Shakespeare for radio and musicals�you can do anything, if you get the job. I did all that for about six years, until �78 or so, when I joined Second City. Then I did that for a couple of years and then did it in the States and did a series called
Judd:
Martin: The story of my life.
Judd: How does Second City work?
Martin: It works in a�it�s very organized. The set show is from nine until ten-thirty and then there�s a break and there are improvisations. They are free, so if you�re arriving at eleven you can watch them, and they are based on suggestions from the audience�they fall under different categories of places or current events. Then you go backstage and you put up this piece of paper with all the suggestions and you have about ten minutes to come up with a scene. You might give the lighting guy a cue, like, �Okay when I reach this line, cut it� or �We�re going to go in this direction.� Sometimes the lighting guy is very important�he might look at a scene and take it out earlier, let it go. The scenes are taped, so four minutes later when it�s time to write another show, the main bulk of the show, the part that people pay for, you sit around saying, �Wait a second. There was a scene I did one night, an improvisation�what was that scene about a cabdriver?� And then they pull out the tape�when I was there, they were audiotapes, but now they�re audiovisual tapes�and you look at it and you remember what you said. Then you start rewriting and building it.
Judd: You have ten minutes to do fifteen different pieces. How do you handle that? Does it always work or�
Martin: No, often you bomb. You bomb bad. But it doesn�t matter because the audience knows you�re improvising, and so they�re kind of with you. I mean, it�s fun.
Judd: How does it work [on
Martin: Yes, we do. The cast writes but there are five additional writers. You come up with an idea, you write it out, and you take it into weekly or biweekly meetings where everyone sits around in a circle over a big desk and reads the material. The material is voted on, whether they wanted it in the show, and sometimes, very few times, a sketch is totally thrown out. Usually what happens is suggestions are offered from everyone in the room about how it could be better, and that sketch is taken away and improved, and read again, and passed, and put up on a bulletin board, and through that a show is assembled.
Judd: Do you have an audience?
Martin: No.
Judd: Does that help the show, you think?
Martin: For the kind of show
Judd: Do you have a laugh track?
Martin: Yes.
Judd: And do you think that hurts the feel of the show? Because sometimes those are not so good.
Martin: It�s like anything: If it�s done well, it doesn�t. If it�s done badly, it does.
Judd: Anybody that we would know who you worked with on Second City?
Martin: You mean, onstage?
Judd: Yeah.
Martin: Well, Catherine O�Hara and Andrea Martin, John Candy, Eugene Levy, Dave Thomas�
Judd: They were all doing that at the same time they were doing
Martin: Some had left and some would come back for a month. That�s what was great about Second City. You could go back if you wanted.
Judd: How do you become part of Second City? Isn�t there an audition where they make you do characters?
Martin: There is a system. There�s an audition where you have to do five characters coming in a door and then you leave and you come through the door again as another character. If you�re good at that, you usually get into the touring company, and you do resorts up north, like any touring company. From there, you go to the main company.
Judd: Did you ever do stand-up comedy, like in a club?
Martin: Yeah, I played with that a little bit in California, but it�s just not as much fun. When I was doing
Judd: You like the challenge of bombing?
Martin: No, I don�t like bombing.
Judd: Or the challenge of knowing it could go down the tubes?
Martin: I�m not crazy about risking it, except it does feel great when it succeeds.
Judd: Were you funny as a kid? Class clown?
Martin: If you call this funny, I guess. I fooled around a lot, yeah. Some teachers thought I was a saint, others a nightmare.
Judd: The ones that thought you a nightmare: Why would that be?
Martin: I would just constantly fool around.
Judd: Did you go to college?
Martin: Yes. I graduated as a social worker. I was�I originally went into premed and then I realized I hated science. I did two years of premed. So, I switched to social work, and that�s where I met Eugene Levy and Dave Thomas�I went to school with them.
Judd: What do you think about Rick Moranis and Dave Thomas making�I guess they just finished their movie
Martin: Oh, it�s great. It�s great.
Judd: Is that strange, when a little skit turns into a big hit?
Martin: Yeah. Dave is a good friend of mine and he is constantly amazed, too.
Judd: Okay, so when you�re doing impressions in the show, do they write sketches for you and then say, �You�re going to have to do an impression of so-and-so,� and then you have to develop it?
Martin: Well, a lot of the impersonations, you write yourself. I�m trying to think. There�s a few instances where someone will say, Will you play this person? And you�ll try to figure it out.
Judd: How do you develop the impression itself? Do you just wing it?
Martin: I look at tapes. Makeup can take three or four hours, so I sit with a Walkman on and listen to the voice, and sometimes I�ll get certain phrases that the actual person�when I was doing Huntz Hall, there were phrases he would use and I would lift those phrases out and put�even if it was just a word or two words together, a certain sound, you know�I�d put them into the script. You can mimic that.
Judd: You also did a Robin Williams impression. You did all the different little characters that he does, and it was amazing. How did you develop that?
Martin: Well, I know Robin, so there�s all different things�there�s his �ha ha,� a laugh which he rarely does on television, and I�that was from seeing him on
Judd: Do you have any idea what you want to do after
Martin: My dream is to do a Broadway show. I�ve always wanted to do a Broadway musical. I like doing television. I get terribly unhappy if I�m not doing something comfortable, and if I don�t think it�s particularly good.
Judd: Are there any skits from
Martin: Um, I guess the one�there are two sketches that�there are three sketches�no, there�s four, eight, twelve sketches that I feel strongly�No, I guess like a sketch called �Oh That Rusty,� which was about a child star who had been playing an eight-year-old for thirty-one years, and now he�s real old and fat; but he would wear a wig, and they would have to build the set real big to make him look young and to make the show relevant in the seventies, they fired his mother and hired a seven-foot-two black guy to play his father so he would look short in size.
Judd: I liked �The Boy Who Couldn�t Wait for Christmas.�
Martin: That�s a strange one. That�s just a short little piece about a guy who can�t get to sleep before Christmas, and that�s the kind of piece that you write and you kind of�it�s real personal, so you write it alone in your office and you hand it in and go home because you�re assuming that people are going to say, �How does this happen?� �Well, look, he�s tired.� You know? Then you get a phone call that says, �We like it.� Oh, good. Okay.
Judd: How much rehearsal time goes into something like that?
Martin: Not a great deal. But there�s a Sunday rehearsal, where we�ll sit and discuss with the director how we like things done, and he�ll say to us, �No, it�d be better this way,� and you work out the scene. Then you rehearse a couple times on the floor, two, three, four times. I like to do lots of takes.
Judd: What do you find funny?
Martin: There are not many things that I
When I was growing up on Long Island in the 1970s, one thing was understood: Nobody was funnier than Mel Brooks. Yes, we all enjoyed our Woody Allen movies and our Blake Edwards movies, but there was never any real debate: Mel Brooks was the king.
He is the original gangster of comedy. His work dates back to Sid Caesar and Carl Reiner, for chrissakes. He is the 2,000 Year Old Man. He�s responsible for, at minimum, two of the top ten comedies of all time,
I hesitate to use the word
Mel Brooks: So, what was it before Apatow?
Judd Apatow: What was it before? It was Apa-toe.
Mel: Okay, not such a big move. I mean, people from Europe, they made
Judd: Oh, you mean before they shortened it? I think it could have been Apatovski.
Mel: Yes, it could have been that. You have no idea?
Judd: I think it was Apatapatovski. There�s this strange man that keeps sending me information about my history and I�m not even asking him to do it. He recently sent me a photo of my great-great-grandfather�s cemetery plot.
Mel: Where, in the Bronx somewhere?
Judd: Brooklyn. He said, �I just happened to go to the gravestone of your family member.� Should I be nervous?
Mel: No, there�s a lot of people like that. They don�t mean any harm. There�s a guy that sends me stuff on my Uncle Louis. His people came from Poland. My people came from Kiev. I don�t know what they�re talking about but anyway, I had an Uncle Louis. My real name is Kaminsky. K-A-M-I-N-S-K-Y. Danny Kaye�s name, too. A lot of talented guys named Kaminsky. I think Hank Greenberg�s name was Kaminsky. Anyway, so he was telling me about my Uncle Louis, who was a zealot. He was a rabbi and a zealot in Poland. And it�s where we just keep moving. We move, you know, they arrest us, and then we move. And so Uncle, Great-Great-Great-Great-Uncle Louis, my grandfather�s uncle, was always getting arrested. I asked the guy, �Well, why?� He said, �Well, on Saturday he would pick up a brick and break windows and they�d say, �Louis, you know we�re Protestant, we�re Catholic, we�re open for business. We�re not Jews.� He said, �Nobody should be open on Saturday.� � So I come from that stock. You can see a lot of that in me. I�m a bit of a zealot. I�m a zealot when it comes to bagels. I have never eaten�I think I�ve eaten two or three bagels in California and I just break into tears. It�s the water.
Judd: You�re not on that non-gluten kick.
Mel: No.
Judd: You�re full gluten. Well, I should do this introduction of you because it�s a long one.
Mel: Really? Why don�t you do the highlights of Mel Brooks? Go ahead.
Judd: Well, according to this�
Mel: Like the highlights of
Judd: Okay, ready? (
Mel: Right, I also got other awards. I have a fifty-yard dash from PS 19. I have many awards that I just don�t brag about. But they�re important to me.
Judd: Are they, though? Do you care? Like, do you care that you won the Oscar?
Mel: You know, when I was younger, I really did. It was thrilling. But then as you get older, you�re more interested in your cholesterol.
Judd: When a bad movie wins an Oscar, do you get mad because you�re like,
Mel: No, no, no. I forgive and forget. It�s not good to have a grudge against anything.
Judd: Actually, I disagree. There are a lot of reasons to have grudges. I�m mad at everyone in this room right now. This is quite a crowd we have here.
Mel: We have a good crowd.
Judd: These are fans. These are hard-core fans.
Mel: And they�ve washed.
Judd: Yes.
Mel: They�re all clean. I�m smelling, they all smell good.
Judd: Well, our first question here�people are going to stand up and read questions.
Mel: Sure.
Judd: Steve Bugdonoff. Glendora, California. Did I say it right? How did I do with my pronunciation?
Steve: Horrible.
Judd: Oh no. Let�s hear it. Let�s hear what it is.
Steve: It is Bogdonoff.
Judd: Bogdonoff, see, that is not the way anyone says that name.
Mel: You are the only one who would say Bogdonoff. We have Bogdonovich. We have ways of saying Bogdonoff. But most of us would say Bugdonoff. Even though it�s your own name, I think you�re in the minority. I mean it.
Steve: First of all, Mr. Brooks, thank you for this opportunity. As a longtime fan, my question is: Classic comedy like
Mel: I agree. Probably couldn�t. The N-word couldn�t be used as frequently and spiritlessly.
Steve: Yet the film so perfectly lampoons bigotry, so my question is: How do you feel about today�s standard of political correctness?
Mel: I think that word in and of itself is pale and kind of weak. And jejune. I�m very bright. Jejune. Jejune�you�ll have to look it up�but it�s just timid and I don�t think anybody really covers racial hatred the way it should be covered. I agree with you. I agree with you even though you say your name wrong.
Judd: How did people react to it at the time?
Mel: At the time, there were letters. There were many letters from many people that said, How could you
Judd: The next question is from Richard Walden.
Richard: It�s an honor.
Mel: It�s a pleasure.
Richard: Who was the funniest celebrity you know? And I don�t mean someone who is funny on camera, but someone we might not think is funny, but in real life�
Mel: Carl Reiner is a seriously, seriously funny guy. He lost his wife, Estelle�she was a great singer, great person, great friend of Anne and I, just a wonderful person. Carl is still alive, he�s ninety-one. He�s a great comedian to this day. Estelle used to just rifle through magazines to buy things. She bought things through the mail all the time. She�d pick a dress, she�d pick a thing. She�d pick an iron. If there were Ginsu knives, Estelle had them. So anyway, the doorbell rang after she had passed away and a guy came and said, �Package for Estelle Reiner,� and Carl wondered what it was and he took it and he said, �It�s not a package for Estelle Reiner; it
Judd: You and Carl are as funny as ever, but do you find that other funny people you hang out with have stayed funny�or did some people lose their sense of humor? I mean, why is it that you guys are always current and hilarious and it didn�t fade at all, in any way?
Mel: Yeah, there�s a couple. I don�t know, even someone like Shecky Greene, one of the funniest guys that ever lived, went through a dark time. He had stage fright and suddenly he wasn�t funny for three or four years. I think he�s back doing everything well. Unless he�s dead, I don�t know. But people go through different periods and they�re assaulted by different memories or psychic problems or just physical maladies and they just don�t feel
Judd: Was it a big deal for you to make yourself a star of your movies?
Mel: It was. You know, I would have been a star ten years before I became a star. There was a great, great star, a great actor-comedian, Sid Caesar. And had I not run into Sid Caesar I probably would have gone from the Borscht Belt��You�re looking at me, ladies and gentlemen, I met a girl who was so thin, this girl was so skinny you can�t believe it. I took her to a restaurant, the ma�tre d� said check your umbrella. That�s how skinny this girl was��and, you know, those were the kind of jokes that I used to do. God bless. Anyway, I ran into Sid Caesar and I realized, you know, this guy�s truly a genius, because he�d be in a sketch with Imogene Coca and she would go on and on about a car that was wrecked because it backed into the drugstore and then it smashed into the candy store, and he�Sid thought it was somebody else and he was laughing. The greatest laugh you�d ever heard. He was just on the floor spitting with laughter, and then, little by little, he realized that Imogene�it was his car. It was the family car. And then he just got quiet and more quiet. And then without asking him, without rehearsing, without directing him, she kept on with the story and tears ran down his eyes. You know nobody came with glycerin. He just cried. And the audience went bananas. The greatest sketch ever. I was one of the writers.
Judd: But did that delay your feeling like you should be the star because you were watching the greatest?
Mel: No, I was seeing stardust and I was seeing magic. And I was seeing real comedy and that was enough.
Judd: All right, the next question is from Don Moore.
Don: Yes sir. I was just wondering, Mel, you�ve had such a long career in show business and a successful career, does it bother you on any level that your legacy will be that of funny guy, comedy writer?
Mel: Strangely enough, I�ve always been just a little irritated, perturbed, upset that I have never been recognized in this business by my peers�by my fellow directors�as a director of movies. I have never been saluted or, really, thought of. I�ve been thought of as, you know, a funny writer, a producer of funny stuff and a performer, a funny performer, but I�ve never been considered�Kubrick thought I was a good director. Hitchcock thought that I should have won the Academy Award for
Judd: When comedies work, they feel effortless, so I think people get no sense that it took so much more work than making CGI dragons fly. They don�t really give people credit for that.
Mel: You�re right. They see what�s green screen and think,
Judd: I think that�s always been the case with the Oscars.
Mel: Well, Woody won for, you know�
Judd:
Mel: Yeah,
Judd: Well, they think misery is harder to create.
Mel: I think to make people sad is easier than to make them laugh. I do. I mean, they�re both hard, you know. Dickens did them both. Nikolai Gogol. Those are two guys you should read if you want to do sad sometimes and you want to do comedy sometimes.
Judd: I think there�s nothing harder to do than make a movie that is tear-down-the-house funny. It is harder than any kind of movie to make. To figure out a way to get that kind of momentum, that kind of joy from the crowd�to create tension and release, tension and release, for ninety minutes? I mean, I saw
Mel: Well, look at the cast. You had Peter Boyle. Cloris Leachman alone could have carried that movie. Gene Hackman, without money, without�you know, we gave him some billing at the end, you know, to play the blind man and pour boiling soup on Peter Boyle�s crotch. I mean, that was so�
Judd: See, I wouldn�t think he would be funny, Gene Hackman. How did you know Gene Hackman was that funny?
Mel: I like comedy that just strays an inch from reality. If it strays an inch to the right or left then it�s really good because you don�t, you feel it so real, you don�t expect it to explode. Gene Wilder does that for me every time. He�s very sincere. He�s very emotional. He cares so much. You couldn�t ask for a better real actor to play Dr. Frankenstein.
Judd: Wilder is your De Niro.
Mel: He�s actually my Alberto Sordi. If you know anything about movies, Fellini�Alberto Sordi was his leading man, his comic leading man, in those early pictures. He went on to Marcello Mastroianni for
Judd: What about Marty Feldman?
Mel: Oh, Marty Feldman is�I don�t know. God put him together. We had nothing to do with it. The only way to hide from Marty Feldman was to put your nose against his. And then he can�t see you because his eyes, his eyes go out the sides, you know. But we used to, I mean, Jesus, it�s so wonderful. It was thrilling making that movie because Madeline Kahn, the funniest, the funniest, most moving�I mean when she did Lili Von Shtupp in
Judd: Our next question is from Maria Markarian. How did I do on that one?
Maria: Very well, actually.
Mel: You�re in my next picture, Maria.
Maria: Let�s do it.
Mel: Just your name. You may not do a lot, but I like the name.
Maria: So my question is, aside from Carl Reiner, who has inspired you the most in your career?
Mel: I guess, you know, that�s a good question. I don�t know. It could be Buster Keaton. It could be Charlie Chaplin. Those guys inspired me. I was about nine years old and I used to go to Feltmans and Nathan�s in Coney Island and Feltmans would have these silent movies. You�d have a knish or a hot dog for a nickel and maybe three cents for the root beer. It was incredible. And then you�d see, they�d show Harold Lloyd, you know,
Judd: Okay�
Mel: That�s my answer.
Judd: Our next question is from Cindy Kapp.
Mel: Spell Kapp. K-A-P-P?
Cindy: Yes.
Mel: Oh gee, how do you like that? You know there was somebody in music�Kapp Records.
Cindy: Yeah.
Mel: Do you know that? Are you related?
Cindy: Kapp was shortened from Kappulski.
Mel: Oh, Kappulski. Well, good shortening. Tell the family well done.
Cindy: Thank you. All right, my question is: What movie or project are you most proud of, and if you could go back and do something differently, what would you change and why?
Mel: You know, it�s hard. It�s like children. It�s hard to pick. But I do have some favorites that I am really proud of. I�d say an underrated movie that I�ve done that I�m proud of is
Judd: Are you writing a musical of
Mel: I am working on a few tunes. I don�t know if it�ll ever come to, you know. But finding Broadway was a thrill for me after sixty years of fooling around in TV and films. When
Judd: Are they doing it around the world now still, productions of it?
Mel: They did �Springtime for Hitler,� they did
Judd: Yeah.
Mel: It�s in Akron, Ohio, now in some high school. I swear. I mean, if I�m needy, I could go see a couple of high school kids do
Judd: Oh, absolutely. Our next person is Miriam Kavas from Panorama City.
Miriam: Well, first of all, thank you for the many years of enjoyment that you�ve given everyone. My question�
Mel: This is good. I�m enjoying myself here. This is wonderful.
Miriam: Which of your productions have given you the most satisfaction?
Mel:
Judd: I realize that is one of the many ways I�ve imitated you, by working with my family, and with my wife, Leslie.
Mel: That�s great.
Judd: Do you have the best memory of anyone you know?
Mel: Uh, yes. I think I do have the best memory of anybody I know. Because I want to remember more than anybody I know.
Judd: Do you currently have a writing schedule? Are you writing or are you just doing work?
Mel: I have an office and I go every day and make notes. I have a little upright piano, and sometimes I compose a little bit, but I don�t know. I don�t know if anything will happen but, you know, I try to stay interested.
Judd: You�re open to inspiration.
Mel: I�m open to it. I�m desperately waiting for it.
Judd: Can we talk about me for a bit? I have to say as a young, young man�I remember when the VCR was invented and we had, we had
Mel: How old were you then?
Judd: I was born in �67. So you know eight, nine, ten. I must have watched those movies hundreds and hundreds of times, and it�s always fun to go to a theater and see them with people. If anyone gets a chance to see them in a movie theater with a lot of people, there�s no experience like watching
Mel: I know. The thrill is seeing it communally. Seeing it in a movie house on a big screen. And that�s, you know, television is wonderful and DVDs, they�re wonderful, but they are really a disservice to movies. I mean, you enjoy somebody cackling from the balcony. You enjoy people around you joining you in the laughter.
When I dipped a toe back into the world of stand-up comedy in the summer of 2014, one of the people performing in the clubs with me almost every night was a thirty-year-old man named Michael Che. At the time, he had just left
Judd Apatow: Well, you�re in the thick of it, aren�t you?
Michael Che: I�m definitely in the thick of it.
Judd: Belly of the beast?
Michael: Absolutely.
Judd: You�re kicking ass, though. You�ve taken to �Weekend Update� so quickly. Does it feel that way to you?
Michael: You never feel that way. You always feel like there�s more shit to do�and you need to tighten and tighten and tighten it. Hopefully, by the second half of the season, things start to feel a lot smoother as we get a better sense of what we can do and what we can get away with.
Judd: As an outsider, it seems like you�ve found your angle on it. And you and Colin Jost�the pairing works so well. It�s exciting to watch it come together so fast.
Michael: It�s definitely the hardest thing I�ve ever had to do in comedy. It�s exciting to know that it can still get better and go further, you know.
Judd: It works because you guys are so different.
Michael: We�re completely different. We answer questions different. We dress different. Everything about us is different, but nothing�s forced. It�s not like they like put us together like some buddy cop movie, but it totally could be.
Judd: In the beginning, Colin seemed so anal and tight, and you�re so loose and confident, it seemed like you brought something out in him that helped him discover what his point of view on the news is. The interplay between you was fascinating. I felt like I could see you guys figuring it out.
Michael: They wanted us to be different than what Seth was doing. They wanted it to be fresh. You know, Norm Macdonald�s update was nothing like Dennis Miller�s and Dennis�s was nothing like Kevin Nealon�s and Kevin�s was nothing like�you know, everyone�s different. Then, Jimmy and Tina. The one thing that really jumped out to me about them was that there were no runs, really. There was mostly just headline punch lines. I wanted to do something where we could go on a run with the story and inject more personality and opinion. That�s what makes
Judd: I think the only person who did anything close to what you�re doing was Norm Macdonald.
Michael: Every generation has their �Update� host, you know, the way the people have their Johnny Carson or their Jay Leno or their Jimmy Kimmel. Norm was the �Update� guy when I was a kid, so he�s the one that will always seem the rightest to me.
Judd: People forget that Norm was fired for making O.J. jokes after NBC told him to stop. [
Michael: People don�t even know that.
Judd: He also did an enormous amount of aggressive Michael-Jackson-is-a-child-molester jokes.
Michael: Super-aggressive Michael-Jackson-as-child-molester jokes. Super-aggressive Germans-love-Hasselhoff jokes, too. It was edgy stuff, but it�s just not the same climate today. Now it�s this whole thing of you are what you tweet. I could know you for twenty-five years, I could have followed your whole career, but if you tweet something I don�t like, that means you�re just this kind of a person and you should never have a job again.
Judd: Treacherous waters.
Michael: Oh my God.
Judd: At any moment, some joke you make in the middle of the night can end your career. It�s a very different time for humor because you have to assume, with any great joke, it�s going to anger a certain percentage of the audience�and those people now have a way to communicate their rage. You can unleash the lunatics no matter what side of the issue you are on.
Michael: And it�s so passionate on Twitter. But if someone recognizes you on the street, it�s like, �I�m your biggest fan.� Everybody I�ve ever met is my biggest fan and everybody on Twitter thinks I suck and shouldn�t have a job. Obviously these people are not my biggest fans and obviously these people don�t hate me. But it�s a strange thing that people do.
Judd: Twitter�s just this place where the twenty percent who hate what you do will just let you know, and then it feels like eighty percent hate it. I don�t love Spanish rock and roll, but I�m not on the Internet trashing it all day long.
Michael: Right.
Judd: But somebody is.
Michael: The funny thing about �Update� is that people have these irrational expectations. Every week, people yell at me, like, You should be fired, they never should have given you the job. But it�s not like they picked me over any of the old hosts. They�re gone and they�re not getting this job again. I�m not Amy and Tina. You�re not going to get Chevy Chase back just because you miss him.
Judd: People love to debate what works on SNL. In every era of the show, people love to trash it while loving it and watching it. But the audience never seems to understand that the whole show is written in a week and the fun of it is trying to see how many good ones they can uncork.
Michael: I always say that, too, when people compare the show to other sketch shows. We do a completely different thing. If we were a taped show that was condensed to a half hour, if we were able to get every perfect shot that we needed with directors, it would be the best comedy show on TV. But we can�t do that. If we had the talents of Will Ferrell and Tracy Morgan and Adam Sandler and we could just focus on making a half hour of perfect comedy, it would be insane. If our star each week wasn�t a person who has never done comedy before and we didn�t have to write every sketch about them and their ability and skill set, it would be amazing. But that�s not the way the show works�and that�s what makes it so special.
Judd: Are you enjoying focusing on �Update� and not writing sketches as much anymore?
Michael: �Update� is such a specific thing. With two people, it has this strange kind of momentum�you know, you never
Judd: In the last year, you�ve had all these big experiences: writing for
Michael: It was a lot. Especially during that time when I knew I was coming back to
Judd: How did you get out of
Michael: Jon was really cool about it all. He understood the opportunity and he was like, �I�m not going to hold anybody back.� It was a lot like when I left
Judd: You didn�t realize Lorne had a master plan to get you back.
Michael: I don�t know that he did. I�m still not sure.
Judd: Lorne Michaels outplays everybody again.
Michael: Who knows. But that guy�s smart, man.
Judd: His success rate is ridiculous.
Michael: Yeah, he knows what he�s doing. What other show, what other producer, can lose Chevy Chase, John Belushi, Bill Murray, Will Ferrell, Phil Hartman, Chris Farley�who can lose all of those people and still have a relevant show? If
Judd: What is your relationship like with him?
Michael: I�m friendly with him in a strange way. I mean it�s obviously a boss relationship�we�re not getting coffee and talking about girls�but he�s been super-supportive. Anytime I�ve had an issue I could talk to him about it and I never felt disappointed walking out of his office afterwards. He could be Darth Vader if he wanted and we�d all be okay with it and thankful to have the job. But he�s not. He has helped me believe I can do this job. To get his blessing is a pretty cool feeling.
Judd: I�m considerably older than you, so I remember when
Michael: It�s amazing that it�s still important to people. We still have fans who are fourteen and fifteen. It�s like Looney Tunes. My father grew up on Looney Tunes and I grew up on Looney Tunes. It�s a thing you can share.
Judd: I would always sneak over to the show when Sandler was there. It�s just fun being around it. All the musicians hanging around, the incredible collection of people. Do you enjoy that part of it?
Michael: Oh, yes. I�ve seen Eminem, I�ve seen Jay-Z, I�ve seen Justin. But I don�t think anyone has generated as much buzz since I�ve been there as Prince. It was crazy. Everyone wants to be next to Prince.
Judd: Did you get any alone time with him?
Michael: Hell no.
Judd: Who have you gotten to meet who is meaningful to you? Was there anyone who blew your mind?
Michael: Steve Martin. It was at an after party. I got to talk to Steve Martin about comedy and that was just like, what the fuck. This is the biggest comedian in the world. Like, he was
Judd: How many years had you been doing stand-up at this point?
Michael: Four.
Judd: Wow, your rise has been so fast.
Michael: It has been insane. If you had told me five years ago that I�d get to do all these things in the next thirty years, I would have been like, �Sign me up.�
Judd: What do you think accounts for the fact that you haven�t lost your mind?
Michael: Probably because I love doing this more than anything. Comedy isn�t boring to me. That�s where my sanity is. It�s all the outside stuff that�s exhausting and stressful. The onstage stuff, the crowd, the performing�that never gets old.
Judd: How closely were you following comedy as a kid?
Michael: See, I came from a funny family. You know how some families are super-athletic or whatever? In a lot of families, sports are the most important thing�who�s the best football player or who�s the best ball player in the family? Well, comedy was the hierarchy in my family. We�d all get together and just snap on each other and make fun of each other. The level of respect that you got in my family came from being funny. I looked up to the funny people and I wanted to hold my own against the older kids and the adults. We always watched
Judd: Your brothers and sisters were much older than you?
Michael: Much older. My closest brother is eight years older than me and my oldest brother is like fifteen years older than me. I�m the youngest of seven. And when you�re around kids that much older than you, you have to be quiet and find something to entertain yourself. A lot of times, I would be put in front of the TV.
Judd: What was the vibe in your family in terms of career? For me, I saw comedy as a way to escape. What was going on in your family?
Michael: We came from a poor family. Everybody had regular jobs. No one did anything that was super-successful in our family. It was more like, �Don�t be a bum. If you�ve got to be a carpet man or whatever, that�s fine; we don�t care what you do as long as you�re not a bum.� And I started comedy late. I started when I was twenty-six. As arrogant as this may sound, I knew I wasn�t going to be in some cubicle and wasn�t going to be a fireman. I knew I would do something creative. I was always the creative type. I worked as an artist for a while. I used to paint portraits and do graphic design and stuff. I would make a little bit of money and then lose a bunch of money, and by the time I was twenty-six, I was just really down on myself. I felt old. Twenty-six is a weird age because that�s when all your friends are starting to do well�you know, they�re out of college, they�ve gotten their careers started. And I felt like I was nowhere. I was twenty-six, but I felt like I was forty-six. That�s when I decided to try comedy. And once I did, it just clicked. It was like love at first sight.
Judd: Within the year, you were working the clubs in New York, getting real gigs.
Michael: It started to roll quickly. But that�s also the benefit of doing it in New York City, where you can get up five times a day if you hustle. You could go to five different open mics a night, and really get a handle on a joke. It was like I was charging a battery�every single day, just relentless. I would get certain jokes so good that they almost couldn�t
Judd: Who did you want to be, as a comedian?
Michael: Eddie Murphy made me want to be funny. But the Chris Rock and George Carlin specials, when they were saying controversial things and had points�I was like,
Judd: Now you�re in a place where you can say those things and a lot of people will listen to it every week.
Michael: Nothing is more exciting than being able to say an opinion into camera and wait for a reaction. That�s the ultimate goal. That�s the high. You want to write something that people hear and go, �Oh fuck. How does he come up with that and he�s absolutely correct? I can�t believe they put that on TV.�
Judd: It feels like we�re in the middle of a great moment in comedy. It feels like Comedy Central and UCB [Upright Citizens Brigade] and the Internet have just turbocharged everything. And I think all this competition has made comedians better.
Michael: There�s such a need for comedy now. Everything has to be funny now. A car insurance commercial might be the funniest thing you see all day. Sports announcers are funny. Everybody�s funny. There�s a comedy writer for every single thing. You get comedy from everywhere now, and it�s breeding a society that wants to laugh. There�s so much competition, but there�s also so much room for more voices. It�s inspiring a lot of good comedy. A lot of different comedy.
Judd: Do you love working at a place like the Comedy Cellar?
Michael: It�s insane. It�s like our Apollo.
Judd: Yeah, just to go in there every night and see, like, Dave Attell and then Dave Chappelle and then Chris Rock�there�s just an enormous group of talented people there every night. They kill so hard. Are there particularly special moments that come to mind when you think about that place?
Michael: Yeah, my first night there. I show up and the guy at the door is like, �Yo, man, you might not be able to go on tonight because Chappelle is about to get up and we don�t know when he�s coming off.� And I was like, �Damn.� But there was another slot later on and the guy said maybe I could get on that. And I was like, �All right, cool, whatever.� So you know, Chappelle�s onstage. He�s killing for like forty-five minutes. Uncharacteristically gets offstage after like forty or forty-five minutes; everyone assumed he was going to be up there all night. So the next comedian to get onstage is Chris Rock. He gets onstage, and does like forty minutes. And the next comedian that gets onstage is me. I�m like, Fuck you. But you know what? It was good. And you know why? Because that crowd had seen ninety minutes of the best comedians in the world. I could not ruin their night. There was nothing I could say that was ever going to wipe that smile off those faces, man.
Growing up, I was completely obsessed with
There was one writer I admired above all others�he also performed on the show occasionally�named Michael O�Donoghue. He had what we used to call a sick sense of humor. He was one of those preternaturally gifted, big-brained
Judd Apatow: How would you describe your type of humor?
Michael O�Donoghue: I don�t know. Everybody else calls it sick or something, but I find it healthy. I think humor should deal with the tensions that are going on in society. And our society�s really different now than
Judd: What would be an example of that tension?
Michael: I recently flew with Eastern Airlines, which is�as I was flying, I wrote a thing called �TransEastern Airlines.� It was like flying in a cattle car with wings. It�s a line like, �You�ll feel like you�ve never left the ground because we treat you like dirt.� It was entirely based on flying Eastern, where they treated you like garbage. And so I wrote a sketch about it.
Judd: What is
Michael:
Judd: They�re going to release it as a movie in a limited�
Michael: It was careless, the movie, because it was spaced for commercials. It was really strange. And also they have not perfected that tape-to-film process, so it looks real mushy when you watch it.
Judd: What happened? You wrote it, and they okayed it, and then once it was made, they didn�t want it?
Michael: That was exactly what happened, odd as it may sound. They invested a lot of money in it�three hundred thousand dollars�which I think is a lot of money. And they didn�t even bother to look at it at NBC.
Judd: They didn�t even screen it?
Michael: A couple of the censors looked at it, but none of the brass looked at it. A lot of television critics really liked it. It�s very strange to me, the whole history of that thing.
Judd: And how did it do in the theaters when it came out?
Michael: Terrible. It looked bad. It was made for television, not for movies. When you write for late-night television, you�re fighting sleep. So the way that you program is you put your best thing first, and your second-best thing second, and your third�because you�re just trying to fight sleep. So the junk is at the end. That�s
Judd: How do you write a movie like that, because it�s very peculiar. I mean, the skits�
Michael: Well, it was written very quickly. It was written in a couple of weeks. It was written off of a sort of video theory that it�s more fun�if you can�t be funny, be weird. It�s just as good, maybe even better. That was the comedic theory behind it. Sometimes we would just be strange for no good reason. It keeps me amused.
Judd: What kind of reaction did you expect people to have when they watched it?
Michael: Well, some would laugh, which happens. Some would be annoyed. Ah, more were annoyed than laughed. Whatever
Judd: You�ve had enough of TV comedy?
Michael: I�ve had enough. It�s frustrating, live TV. Actually, there�s a different way to do live television, but�
Judd: How would you like to do it?
Michael: Shoot it all with creepers.
Judd: With what?
Michael: Shoot it all with creepers�handheld cameras. Put the cameras on the stage with the actors. Can I use obscenities in this�where is this broadcast, because I�m watching my language as I talk.
Judd: We�ll bleep it out.
Michael: Ah, okay. Well, then. I don�t think anybody gives a flying
Judd: Do you think when they did the �new�
Michael: Jesus, yes. All TV knows is winning combinations. Of course they should have been trying something new, something interesting. Something that made us, in the first two or three years, look like fools�like
Judd: What kind of humor don�t you like?
Michael: Almost everything. Aside from the stuff I write, there�s not much that appeals to me. I�ll watch�I like individual performances of people like Michael Keaton, who was wonderful in
Judd: You don�t like the normal comedy�you like a different element in it.
Michael: Well, I think Erik Estrada is the funniest man in America. I will say that. I watch
Judd: Are there any topics you think
Michael: No, no, I�ve never found anything that�s�
Judd: Even like topics like cancer?
Michael:
Judd: When did you first start working in comedy?
Michael: That�s hard to say. I was a serious literary writer writing for the
Judd: Now, what kind of comedy did you do on the radio hour?
Michael: Essentially the sort of the thing that they�re doing on
Judd: Such as?
Michael: He did a guy called Craig Baker, the Perfect Master�the eighteen-year-old perfect master�and it was just funny. It�s the concept of�instead of this guy living in India, he was just like this asshole kid who lived out in Champaign-Urbana, Illinois. Which is where John is from. And Indians would come to seek guidance from this dumb kid. It was funny. He just said, �Well, drink a lot of beer and go to Fort Lauderdale, and you need to mellow out, man.�
Judd: How did this all lead into
Michael: Lorne Michaels, the producer of
Judd: Then at Marvel Comics.
Michael: Yes, exactly. And the wing of that company went bankrupt and Lorne had kept offering me a television show and I didn�t want to do television. Then I had no choice but to do television or magazine�I had no way to earn money, so I said, �Okay, I�ll do your television show.� I was sort of backed into it.
Judd: How did they decide what kind of show they wanted?
Michael: Well, they didn�t�this got decided by getting a bunch of smart people in a room. The results were that show.
Judd: Now, when
Michael: I was for the first show, as a matter of fact. And then, I don�t know why I was eliminated from that slot�I think it was because Lorne was having some problems with Chevy. But I�m not a particularly good actor.
Judd: But you starred in the first sketch of the series?
Michael: I did. I did the first sketch. The Wolverine sketch. God, that was scary.
Judd: Why is that?
Michael: Because nobody�d ever done live television. Twenty million people are watching you. My little heart goes thump, thump, thump, thump. I thought I was going to pass out from fear.
Judd: So it was only for the first show that you were a prime-time player?
Michael: I think I was in the second show as a prime-time player, too. And then I was dumped somehow. I don�t know.
Judd: Why weren�t you on the show more often?
Michael: Lorne didn�t like me in the show that much.
Judd: Really?
Michael: Yeah. I wish I had been on the show more. It was always a problem about writing and acting for that show at the same time. All this crap about�
Judd: Isn�t there a lot of competition being on the show?
Michael: You bet.
Judd: Were you on the show straight through for the entire original run?
Michael: No, I quit after three years.
Judd: Why?
Michael: People were giving me shit. At a certain point, I didn�t want to go through these comic meetings where my work was discussed. I figured I�d proven that I could write stuff. I just wanted to do what I wanted to do. I got fed up with the whole process.
Judd: Because I can see how they would question putting some of your stuff on the air.
Michael: Yeah, me, too.
Judd: I can see how somebody could question, you know, the Mike Douglas sketch. [
Michael: Well, you know, they actually went for that one easy. I don�t know why. I used to do it at parties with my friends. I originally did it on
Judd: The other night, I saw�do you ever watch the repeats?
Michael: No.
Judd: Why not?
Michael: Because I don�t live in the past. That just dredges�I know exactly where I was during that period. It�s like asking about Beatles songs. I don�t care anymore. Game over.
Judd: What kind of arguments did you get in with the censors?
Michael: Well, the censors were actually pretty nice people. They had this concept that people turning the dial would hit NBC and go, �Ah, NBC: the quality network. Oh, now my children are safe to watch this.� But people have no idea what network they�re watching.
Judd: What would be examples of the skits they didn�t let on?
Michael: Oh, a lot of �em. The thing I got fired over last time was this piece about NBC president Fred Silverman called �The Last Ten Days in Silverman�s Bunker.� It�s built with Fred Silverman as Adolf Hitler and they would not let it on. It was a twenty-minute sketch starring John Belushi as Silverman. Twenty minutes. And they fired me for having written it.
Judd: They ripped Silverman up in the show, though.
Michael: But not the way I ripped him up. They
Judd: So this is when you left the show. This is the�
Michael: This is the last time. Grant Tinker, the president of NBC, personally axed me. That bitch.
Judd: What were the contents of that skit that were so�
Michael: It�s been a long time. It, ah�you sort of had to see. Silverman always had some new wacky idea of some show that was going to bring him back on top. It was all Silverman talking to his generals. He had a show called
Judd: And then you left the show�what did you do in between the time you left and when you came back?
Michael: I wrote a song for Dolly Parton called �Single Women.�
Judd: Are you serious?
Michael: I am serious. Top ten. One of the top ten country songs in the country. In fact, I just wrote two more country songs. It�s easy. It�s just a skill I have.
Judd: I don�t know if you�re kidding.
Michael: I swear to God. See, I wrote a lot of music for the show. I wrote music for Madeline Kahn.
Judd: �Antler Dance�?
Michael: I wrote �The Antler Dance.� Of course, the legendary �Antler Dance.� I wrote �The Castration Waltz.� And then I wrote �Let�s Talk Dirty to the Animals� for the Gilda Radner show. And suddenly it occurred to me:
Judd: Why did you decide to come back to
Michael: Money and the promise that I could do whatever I wanted. As it so happened I was totally boxed by a big towheaded dork called Dick Ebersol and his Judas accomplice, Robert Tischler. And they hired people like�ah, you know, not a box of talent between all of them. All I had was Eddie Murphy and Joe Piscopo, who�s decent. Lame writers. I was totally miserable. I was nuts and finally they fired me.
Judd: So when you came back, did you know as soon as you got there that this wasn�t gonna work?
Michael: Yeah, I began to get some idea. I tried. I brought in a couple people, but really�we just couldn�t do anything, it was impossible, and I actually sort of engineered it so I�d get fired.
Judd: So you wrote that skit that got you fired because you wanted to get fired?
Michael: Oh, yeah, I was asking for it. �Come get me.� I was just being so obnoxious. I was dressing like a maniac. I was attacking the cast. I did something so funny. There was a Christmas show, and afterwards, there was a meeting. And they came in, they thought I was gonna give them presents or something. I did. I gave them an honest evaluation of their talent. I ripped them apart.
Judd: What did you say?
Michael: I was on a roll. I was just on a tear and I went through every one of �em. Ah, they made me angry.
Judd: Did you write anything at all that you liked?
Michael: I wrote some things�I did the TransEastern Airline ad during that period. I did, I don�t know, a couple of things I like. But it was uphill all the way.
Judd: And then you left and now you�re working on a screenplay?
Michael: I�m working on a screenplay with Mitch Glaser, one of the writers from
Judd: And what kind of story is it?
Michael: It�s a serious detective movie with real violence and real villains. The hero is a funny kind of guy. He�s an asshole. He likes to jerk people around; that�s how he gets his kicks. Somewhat like me in a way. Very much based upon me.
Judd: What�s gonna be in the screenplay that the masses are going to enjoy?
Michael: Sex and violence, you know. They always go for that. This is just loaded with sex and violence. It�s very funny.
Judd: And people will like it? I mean it�s not just for people who like and enjoy humor, but I�m sure, you know�
Michael: I don�t care about people over forty-five. They can be tossed in a shallow grave, as far as I�m concerned. I don�t write to them. Let
Judd: If you could move into doing whatever you want to do in the future, what would it be?
Michael: Rule the earth. And people would have to do whatever I say, and give me their stuff�all their stuff belongs to me if I want it. It�d be great.
I met Larry Gelbart at the end of his life, and I�ve always regretted that I didn�t get to spend more time with him. I was juggling a bunch of projects at the time, basically just being my distracted self, and when he died, I had this feeling of devastation. Because I realized I had missed it. I should have found a way to connect with him more.
So, when I was introduced to Mike Nichols, I resolved not to make the same mistake again. I was alert to the idea that every moment with him was precious. I asked questions, I listened. He was already in his eighties, but still sharp as a tack, funny as can be, but also incredibly open and willing to tell me anything I wanted to know about his journey and his work. When I would have breakfast with him, I would record our conversations because I knew he was saying so many things I would want to remember for the rest of my life.
When
Judd Apatow: This is so exciting. I�m such a gigantic fan of yours. Many years ago, when I first tried to write a good screenplay, I wrote a screenplay with Owen Wilson. We drove across America, trying to write it, and I remember being in a hotel, watching
Mike Nichols: It�s funny. I�m trying to think back to what we said to each other about Benjamin. We said very little to define him because we�d had this very strange experience, which was as we saw boy after boy come in to play him, it never seemed right. We�d seen every actor in the country in that age range, which was actually seventeen to thirty�that�s how old Dustin was at the time. Thirty. He was, in fact, two years younger than Anne Bancroft. But I had seen him playing a transvestite fishwife in a play called
Judd: That�s a good question. When we did
Mike: It�s interesting that Wes, you, and Louis C.K. are all people who are deliberately going in the other direction�untheatrical, unleading people, uneverything. It�s so refreshing and�in
Judd: Maybe we should take a look at a clip from one of your movies, just to embarrass me.
Mike: Can we do a clip that I brought that�s not from one of my movies? I�m very boring on this particular subject. This is a moment where I think we can watch an actress invent movie acting. Sound movies didn�t happen until about 1930. That�s how young talking movies are. And there was a stage when movies were like plays: They were photographed. And then after that, they were like plays photographed with some reality beginning to show except in the acting, because the acting was still catching up. You can see, in this clip, that they are character actors and they�re very good but they, you could put them a mile away on the stage. And then here comes Garbo and you can actually see her in this clip�you can see the character thinking something, realizing something about herself. It�s not
(Clip from
Judd: We�ve come a long way, we really have.
Mike: We have. When you think that, right around this time, the whole idea of acting in a movie was being invented by Garbo and Barbara Stanwyck and Bette Davis and a lot of people�they were doing less and less. What�s interesting is that being inexpressive becomes the big deal. The most famous line in the history of movies is somebody saying something wrong. It�s the line, �Here�s looking at you, kid.� But Bogart actually says, �He�s looking at you, kid.� That little inexpressive nothing became a classic thing. And the big stuff sort of went away. That�s my first point and probably my last.
Judd: You started in improv. What was that transition like, from improv to acting and directing? Who taught you how to do this?
Mike: Improv taught me how to do it. Elaine and I were very lucky because our pals that we started with at this improv place had no particular idea. I mean, there were big talks about socialism and stuff, but nothing you could act. So we had to go out there and learn through horrible trial and error what you need to do to make an audience happy. And slowly, we discovered a principle. Elaine used to say, �When in doubt, seduce.� Because seduction is immediately a scene. And, of course, so is conflict. If you say black, I say white, and we have a fight. There only is one other kind of scene, I discovered�there are fights, seductions, and negotiations. Most of Shakespeare turns out to be a negotiation because it�s all about power and rulers and so on. When you�re making it up, you learn what has to happen to keep an audience interested and excited but, most of all, laughing. And then it becomes part of you. For instance, when I started to direct my first Broadway play, which was
Judd: The first things you did, right out of the gate, were ridiculously successful. Your comedy team, your first play,
Mike: Well,
Judd: Why did you give up acting?
Mike: I didn�t like it. I�m too good of a director to like me as an actor. I can get better people. So I did. And I just liked it more. I liked being there much more than being here. I still do.
Judd: And you did
Mike: No, I don�t think so. I think
Judd: I was a stand-up comedian. I was like you�a stand-up comedian who realized I could get better people to act. At some point, I realized my friends were way funnier than I was as a performer. So I started writing. I would write for them. And then slowly they would give me jobs, which turned into punch-ups and screenplays. But I really wanted to be Jerry Seinfeld. That was my only intention when I was younger.
Mike: What did Seinfeld mean to you?
Judd: In terms of what comedy meant to me, I liked Seinfeld, but I liked that comedians were pissed off. I liked that they said everything wasn�t fair. People like George Carlin would talk about the injustices of the world. Richard Pryor and Monty Python mocked how society worked�class systems and government. I was just attracted. I must have been very hostile as a kid. I didn�t know why, but I liked that people were telling everybody to fuck off. But I found that I didn�t have very strong opinions when I was a stand-up comedian. I didn�t have the anger to do it. So I wrote.
Mike: You saved yourself, you know. Because the one thing I understood the minute we were all comedians in this group�and I saw what happened to some people and less to others�is that it�s very, very corrupting to the spirit, doing comedy. You have to be almost a saint like Jack Benny was, like Steve Martin is, to avoid being corrupted by it. There�s very little work where the work and the reward are simultaneous, and comedy is that. And you can see it doing terrible things to people because it�s constant, instant gratification. There are people who can resist it, like Chris Rock. People of a certain character and high intelligence know how to avoid it. Were you aware of having to build certain things in to protect yourself from that happening?
Judd: I would always get post-stand-up shame. If I was really funny, when I got home, it wasn�t that I thought,
Mike: I never told this to anybody, because it�s so sort of depressing and pointless, but I had a sadist fantasy onstage. I figured each laugh was me cracking a whip. But there�s this weird thing that happens to you when you�re out there, dressed funny. You can wear better pants and stuff because you�re not a character. You can feel like you�re even sexy in everything because you�re up there and the audience is doing what you want. I didn�t love it but I also didn�t suffer from it as Elaine did. We closed the show while we were still sold out because she couldn�t take it anymore. I kept saying, �Take
Judd: Who�s the funniest in person that you�ve collaborated with? Neil Simon?
Mike: Neil was very, very funny. I think the most difficult person to work with, because we were in such pain all the time, was Robin Williams. You just pray he�ll stop because you might get in real trouble if you don�t stop laughing soon. While they were lighting a scene, he would do these improvs that I can�t begin to describe. Once there was an astounding one that lasted about twenty minutes�we were all begging him to stop. The next day I said, �How much of that could you do again today?� And he said, �Oh, none. It�s gone.� It was all unconscious.
Judd: In your directing, do you prefer doing comedy? What�s the difference between doing something like
Mike: I think all good plays are both. You can�t be only funny. And God help any play that is never funny.
Judd: I�m always happy when the idea is something serious and we find a way to get people emotional about it but still get some laughs in. We were talking about, you know, scenes where people fight, where you still can get laughs but the fight is still real and intense. Maybe we could show a clip from
(Clip from
Mike: Your movie is so entirely about being that thing that isn�t two people but something more. How you get it and how hard it is to maintain and how, since it leads to the best thing of all, which is children, how central it is to our lives. It is our lives. But your take on it, which is to concentrate on the most unsentimental parts of it, that every�even taking a dump. How much more down-to-earth can you get? But it�s not only about love; it�s about spirit and it�s about what love really is, which is not mawkish; it�s an everyday happiness that you couldn�t describe to a Martian because it looks like something else. Happy people look like something else. They don�t look like happy people. Have you ever noticed that? They look like involved or maybe even angry people.
Judd: Happy people look crazy. I mean, the people who
Mike: Yes, there�s something wrong with them, clearly. But I think that in a weird way, your trademark is: How far do we go in our ludicrousness? There�s no end to it. It can go as far as you like. But the thing that happens when you have a baby and you�re both in bed with a baby�for the first week, two weeks, three weeks, and then forever�is simply like nothing else in the world. You can�t celebrate it in a mawkish way because then it�s somebody else. To do it your way, you can�t do it without laughs. You can�t do it in life without laughs, either, because you�re right into it. And also, I have to confess, I�m a sucker for metaphor. I go on about it too much and I keep saying metaphor is dead, nobody wants metaphor. As Nora Ephron said once: �Well, I feel terrible about the metaphor, but what can I do? It�s like the whale, you know?� And then I realized it was bullshit and I was very pretentious to worry about it because it�s there or it�s not there and you don�t have to name it or analyze it. Sometimes I get a script and I think,
Judd: We�ve talked about the fact that life is overwhelming. There�s a lot, there�s too much to handle. You�re trying to be a good spouse and a good parent and have your kids do well at school and you�re trying to take care of your health and you�re trying to deal with your extended family. And, at some point, it really brings you to the brink of losing your mind. You�re trying to get along with your spouse at the same time and there always seems to be a lot of humor in this failed attempt we all make to just be able to do it all. And that was the original idea behind the movie. But I think that what happened was, as we got more specific, it became more universal. The smallest details are the details that people come up to me and say: �I�ve had that conversation seven times this week.�
Mike: Exactly. It�s everybody together saying, Oh God, that�s so true. And therefore, it�s not bad taste, whatever that is, and it�s not a metaphor: It�s life.
Judd: I didn�t start out thinking that I would make personal movies. I started out writing broader comedies, but this area has interested me and I feel like, you know, you write movies to figure out why you�re writing the movie. That�s something I read somewhere and I thought,
Mike: There�s something very important here, which I think is when it�s your time and when it isn�t. If you make movies, your early movies are about your time. Everybody knows the story you�re telling. Nobody says, �Why are you telling me this story?� Because everybody in your generation is in that place, roughly, and they recognize it. It�s a direct communication. It makes perfect sense that you�re making something that did not exist before. But it�s also incredibly familiar because you�ve hit the mark. You�ve found a part of people that feels new. It has its own language, its own insults, its own ethos. And then, when you get to middle age, that doesn�t work anymore and you�ve got to do other things.
Judd: Do you feel comedies don�t get the respect they deserve?
Mike: That�s funny you should say that. I think they get the respect they deserve. They�re always more successful. People are happier with them, they live longer. What movie is enshrined like
I sometimes worry that I am going through life using only a small portion of my brain. This worry is at its most intense when I spend time with people like the writer, director, and actress Miranda July, who has this way of coming at everything from a special, never-before-thought-of angle, a quality that fills me with jealousy and rage. Every thought she has is original�or at least, feels that way to me. I love her, but damn if she doesn�t make me feel like I�m not seeing the world as clearly as I should.
A few years ago, she asked me to do an interview with her, and the only rule was that we were not allowed to ask each other anything related to show business. Admittedly, this is hard for me. But in the end, she brought something out of me that I don�t think anyone else has. Attention all interviewers: Somewhere in here is a lesson about how to open someone up to new thoughts and ideas.
Judd Apatow: Okay, first question is: What was your scariest nightmare? Miranda July: Like an actual asleep nightmare?
Judd: Yeah.
Miranda: Occasionally I write them down, which is probably why I remember it. I had taken this suicide pill that would kill me. Then after I took it, I strongly realized I didn�t want to die�
Judd: Oh no!
Miranda: But I had an antidote. I took it and was
Judd: And then you woke up feeling refreshed?
Miranda: (
Judd: The one I always remember was really vivid�like it was actually happening. It�s me on a plane, I�m the only one on it. It�s going in and out of mountains and steep cliffs and it�s clearly out of control. And I used to have nuclear war nightmares all the time as a kid. The sirens going off. I don�t know why they stopped; maybe we�re safer now?
Miranda: Yeah, or are we?
Judd: Actually it�s worse now but for some reason I�ve tricked myself into thinking that�s not an issue. Okay�your turn.
Miranda: What�s one good thing and one difficult thing you feel like you got from your father?
Judd: Well, my dad was a big fan of comedy, and I think he thought he was funny. I can�t confirm that his sense of humor
Miranda: Right. The idea that trying to be funny might be a �thing that one does.�
Judd: His success rate is lower than he thinks. (
Miranda: I think I have some of that, too, for similar reasons. I guess that�s a little bit of a director thing. I feel like it�s in overdrive for me right now but it�s like,
Judd: (
Miranda: My first instinct is to say yes and that I wouldn�t be able to do what I do if I didn�t. I�m counting on everyone to catch my heart, you know, to be able to understand in the deepest way that I can get it across, so in that way it�s like I�m practicing that faith. But on the other hand, I was listening to the radio and it seemed that literally every day there would be a new gun violence thing. At the same time I was struggling with problematic friends and struggling with the part of myself that sometimes wants to just get rid of a friend. Like, I�m overwhelmed, I can�t figure out how to deal with it, and I just think in my head,
Judd: You�ve hit the mother lode! You live in a fantasyland where I can make it just three things. I am
Miranda: But what about right now? Top three things you feel guilty about right now.
Judd: I always feel guilty about whether or not I�m being a good enough husband and parent. I�m always guilty about not taking better care of myself. And I�m usually guilty about not being helpful enough to people in my extended family who need assistance. Because no matter what you do it�s not enough. And people resent you the moment they ask for help, so it changes your relationship instantly. You have problems but then you become part of an ecosystem of their problems.
Miranda: Okay. In your experience, is it true that men are more visual and women are more mental in terms of what turns them on? I didn�t make this up�this is, like, a thing. Men are more visual; just looking at a woman�s body can turn them on. Whereas women, they�d rather think about sex to be turned on.
Judd: Oh, I�ve never thought about that before.
Miranda: Really? What do you think about? Or are you too busy being guilty?
Judd: Yeah, I�m too guilty to think about any of these issues. (
Miranda: Even in the best of circumstances, if the man is David Beckham, Victoria is still not�it doesn�t do anything for her. She has to pretend that she just met David for the first time, or that she�s David�s secretary, or�
Judd: Or that he�s a Jewish comedy writer.
Miranda: (
Judd: She�s probably bored. He has the abs. But it gets repetitive. There�s only so much you can do with rock-hard abs, because there�s not enough skin to work with. It�s like making love to a piece of slate.
Miranda: So you don�t really have anything to say about this? That�s fine.
Judd: You�ve seen
Miranda: Not too many people. I always have close women friends. There�s my friend Sheila Heti, she�s a writer. In fact, I sent her these questions and she just answered them all. (
Judd: Admire? I need her phone number. I just always think,
Miranda: Yeah, I do a certain amount of saying, �Well, this is boring,� or �Here�s something insignificant I want to talk about.� I usually try and preface it with some sort of diminishing thing.
Judd: Do you cry during therapy?
Miranda: Not as much as I did with the old, bad therapists. I feel like I�m just a better person with this new one so I don�t need to cry as much.
Judd: I don�t like to cry, because then every session when I
Miranda: With this therapist, the first session I ever had with her was really terrible. I was really angry with her but I forced myself to go back and tell her how she�d fucked up. It was an amazing way to start because it got to the important stuff right away and how she dealt with that was, like, really smart. I don�t think in the past I would have been willing to come back. I would have quit.
Judd: I just disappear. Then I feel guilty for years that I didn�t tell the doctor why I stopped coming and I assume that they�re haunted by it. But they�re not haunted by it.
Miranda: The therapist I left this therapist for, I�ve still never told her. I figure she just thinks I�m busy with the baby.
Judd: Just send a card: �Doing great! Don�t need any mental health support�thank you for fixing me!�
Miranda: I really want the old therapist to know how much better this new one is.
Judd: Send them another note: �Why did you waste seven years of my life?� Okay, next question: Do you have any food issues?
Miranda: I�ve never had, like, �I�m going to get fat� food issues�which I have to say I credit my mom for. She just never picked up on the fact that she was supposed to worry about those things and was always like, �Let�s go get a doughnut!� in a really benign way. But I love different kinds of restrictive diets. If I�m meeting a new person, and hear that they�re on some kind of new restrictive diet, I want to hear all about it and possibly get on it myself. I like different forms of self-discipline. Like, I had no reason to be gluten-free, but then someone said, �Oh, you know it�s not great for your breast milk.� I was like, �Great! I�ll go off gluten!�
Judd: We went to an allergist and it turns out our kids have no allergies to gluten. But our house is totally gluten-free. Every time we go to the supermarket my child is desperately sneaking a loaf of white bread into our cart like it�s Oreos! I couldn�t have more food issues. For me food is such a reward. It�s all about fun. For me to think of food as fuel is extremely difficult. Food is happiness. I like being stuffed. I like being so stuffed I can�t get up. Like when you�re in that haze of exhaustion.
Miranda: Haze�like a drug.
Judd: How has having a child changed the way you think about your pre-child life? How has it changed you?
Miranda: I�m kind of amazed to see that the massive amount of time I spent thinking about my feelings turned out not to be vital to my existence. In fact, having less time to think and having to simply
Judd: I was forced to realize how self-centered I was. I found it hard to shut my brain down so I could just hang out in my kids� reality. It�s easier now because my kids� realities are more like my own. We can talk about
Miranda: I�d like it to be just like now�writing and surrounded by people I love�except I want there to be zero anxiety. I want to feel like I�m sitting in a Jacuzzi all the time.
Judd: I want to be like Mel Brooks. A great memory, a lot of energy, still making people laugh. I do not want to be like Jack LaLanne, pulling fifty boats as I swim across a lake. Do you have a conception of the afterlife? Are you a spiritual person?
Miranda: You know, it�s funny. I just wrote that I
Judd: I have some friends who had near-death experiences who felt a presence tell them to go back. It was not their time. That is all I can hold on to. When I am creative I think something more is going on, so maybe it does not end. I don�t think I am going to get ninety virgins or hang out in a beautiful kingdom. My biggest fear is that I will become a ghost and be forced to hang out in some house watching a bunch of jackasses live their lives. I don�t want to be a tree. I know that is supposed to be a beautiful thing, to become a tree or a beetle. I am not into that. I would like to stay me.
Miranda: What are the top three times you�ve been most freaked out in your life so far?
Judd: One, when I was in sixth grade my friend�s brother grew pot in his room. One day my friend got his hands on a joint and we attempted to smoke it in the middle of the night at a construction site. Before we took a real puff a security guard pointed a flashlight in our direction and we ran for miles and miles and miles as if he was hot on our tail. There is no chance he took even one step in our direction. We stared out the window at my friend�s house for a half hour, terrified that he would knock on the door and tell our parents. The next year I was so scared that my friends were going to become potheads that I switched social groups. My new friends eventually became the real potheads of the school, and after two years I ran back to my old friends, who never bothered to try it again. Two, when the Northridge earthquake happened it really felt like nuclear missiles were falling from the sky. The noise and the shattering of glass freaked me out. My girlfriend at the time seemed to have a bit of a mental break. Afterwards I wanted to go back to sleep. She wanted to look around so we went outside and every time we passed a cracked section of sidewalk she laughed nervously in the way bad actors pretend to be crazy people on the TV show
Miranda: One, aforementioned birth of baby. Two, that girlfriend you had who had a mental break during the earthquake? That might have been me. I was in bed and the next thing I know I�m on all fours growling in the corner. I was so scared I turned into a dog for a moment. Three, various flights with extreme turbulence. I grab the stewardesses, the people next to me�I pretty much do the dog/earth quake thing but without going down on all fours because the floor�s gross. Last question: Can you try to give a little running narration of what it�s like in your head, how the thoughts come and go? Are there fully formed words and sentences? Is it incessant and talky? Do you compose emails in your head? Or are you more in the moment than that?
Judd: My mind is a noisy place. I tend to look for problems so I can solve them before they blow up in my face. I am like a lookout for disaster. I also have a voice that tells me to calm down. I have a TM mantra and every once in a while I try to breathe and think about some piece of advice I have heard or read, usually from the book
Miranda: Many words and fully formed sentences. Whole emails written out in my head. Lots of planning thoughts�like every single moment planning what I�m going to do in the next moment, the next hour, the next day, week, year. I have the next ten years planned, work-wise. I also think a lot about washing the dishes or vacuuming. The more boring the task, the more of my mental space I have to devote to it. I also instruct myself a lot, like: �Robot, go brush your teeth.� I lay in bed and think about what I�ll bring in my carry-on bag on a trip I�m going on in five months. Sometimes I instruct myself to �free fall��exist without thinking. It feels like falling through space. I can also get super-duper focused, wormhole-style. That�s the space that I go into when I�m working�about five hours a day. It goes by in a flash.
Back in the late eighties, a friend of mine�fellow comedian and
For the next several years, I spent a lot of time with Roseanne trying to craft a standup act that wasn�t just about raising her family and growing up poor, but about what it was like to now be rich and mega-famous. It always felt odd to me, as a twenty-two-year-old guy without a ton of life experience, to be writing jokes for an ass-kicking middle-aged woman who happened to have multiple personalities. I used to force her to sit with me and tell me her life story, so I could try to get in her head. The depth of her experience and imagination was astonishing.
This was all happening at the absolute height of Roseanne mania, with the national anthem scandal, and the very public divorce from Tom Arnold, and the number-one show on television, year after year after year. Many people only remember the drama that surrounded her at that time, but I believe that
Judd Apatow: How much stand-up are you doing now?
Roseanne Barr: None.
Judd: None?
Roseanne: I�m writing jokes. I write about fifty jokes a day for nothing.
Judd: Do you get onstage at all?
Roseanne: No. I have horrible stage fright�you know, how you go through the bipolar stage fright thing? Then you go on drugs to get over the stage fright and perform but then you�re not funny at all.
Judd: Were you always scared when you did stand-up, to the point where you felt like you needed to be medicated?
Roseanne: No, it was only after
Judd: Is that the worst part of success�that it defines who you are and what you do? If you succeed in one area, people think you should stay in that area.
Roseanne: They don�t even know who I am. They think I�m Roseanne Conner. It�s like, �You�re not a writer. You�re not even a comedian. You�re Roseanne.� And then I was like,
Judd: It�s like Archie Bunker going on tour as a stand-up.
Roseanne: I�m going to do whatever it takes and I�m not going to let them�I�m not going to let this not make me funny�so I suffered the indignities. I see other comics going through the same shit. Once you make it, it�s, like, well, you�re not like hungry or whatever. What the fuck am I supposed to talk about now? My maid?
Judd: I think about that, too. Did I have a different point of view when I was broke? I don�t think I did. I mean, obviously a lot has happened but I don�t know if my point of view about things changed.
Roseanne: Define
Judd: Well, I shared an apartment with Adam Sandler and the rent was four hundred and twenty-five dollars a month and I was just trying to make enough money to eat and go to the Improv.
Roseanne: How old were you then?
Judd: Twenty-two, twenty-three.
Roseanne: What did you guys do to make each other laugh�or were you just depressed all the time?
Judd: It was very different because Sandler�it was clear that he was going to be a big star from the second you met him. It was fun because he had the charisma of a worldwide comedy star but he had no outlet for it, so his outlet would just be hanging out with you at Red Lobster. He had all that power and energy, and he would try to be that funny with you all day long because he had no one else to do it with.
Roseanne: Oh, shit. That�s what�s worth it all. That�s what I miss: There are no comics to hang with and make each other laugh. I miss that a lot.
Judd: I went to the Comedy Cellar in New York recently. You go there and there�s this group of people working hard, making each other laugh, hanging out all night long and�you know, when you have kids and a life, it becomes hard to say, �Honey, I�m going to go hang out at a club for a few hours�.�
Roseanne: That�s why you need to have a screening room. That�s what I used to do, but then I couldn�t do it anymore because I had to home-school my kid. So I had no life.
Judd: How did that work, homeschooling?
Roseanne: Argh.
Judd: Leslie and I always talk about that. Wouldn�t it just be easier? School ruins everything. You�re stuck in their schedule. The schedule doesn�t make sense because the kids have to get up too early. They�re too tired. They have too much homework. They have no life. Was homeschooling better?
Roseanne: It was a fucking ball. I�d be like, �We�re going to Paris and we�re going to go to the Louvre to study art,� you know. We did awesome shit like that.
Judd: But it�s a full-time job.
Roseanne: Yeah. But I had two tutors because I can�t fucking read. I�m blind.
Judd: How old is your youngest?
Roseanne: He�s eighteen and he graduates, please Lord, in three weeks.
Judd: And he�s homeschooled?
Roseanne: No, he was. He went back to school in eighth grade because he got over the hyperactive stuff. He was so hyper, they wanted to put him on drugs.
Judd: He just pulled out of it? Some kids get over it.
Roseanne: The thing is, they�ve got so much focus it�s like they�re
Judd: And then you melt down and get nothing done. It�s just that your brain is trying so hard getting so much done and then you realize you�re not getting anything done. I actually was diagnosed a few years ago with obsessive-compulsive thinking. That�s probably from childhood trauma�from being hypervigilant. But I think it makes you a good producer and performer and writer. The thing that ruined your life makes you good at your work. And then you get rewarded at work, so you don�t bother to fix it in your life.
Roseanne: That�s exactly right.
Judd: So what did you do about that?
Roseanne: Things happened to me that�you know, I got pregnant with my son and I had to have a fifth baby. But let�s talk about the obsessive-compulsive thing for a minute. I was told when I was a girl that every Jewish woman has to have five children to replace three-fifths of our people that were killed. That�s how I was raised.
Judd: Wow.
Roseanne: In an apartment building with survivors from concentration camps. So I had trauma because I couldn�t even talk.
Judd: Parents don�t realize that when they teach you about the Holocaust too early, it ruins you for life.
Roseanne: It ruined me for life. I remember the exact moment well�I was like three and they had the TV on and they were of course enjoying the Eichmann trial. When they weren�t talking about Eichmann, they were talking about babies on meat hooks. They used to say it in front of me. I was so horrified by the world but I looked at the TV and it showed the piles of bodies, and I was like,
Judd: I didn�t go to Hebrew school. My parents went the other way�everyone in the family became atheist. No one was religious. That was their way of dealing with the Holocaust.
Roseanne: God is dead, that�s what they said.
Judd: But I remember I went to Hebrew school once with a friend, just visiting. And they showed the Kristallnacht documentary and it definitely messes with you. That, and a fear of Russia.
Roseanne: Yeah, no shit�the Russians. I remember having dreams of black airplanes hovering over the house, and it was Russia. Russia was coming in black airplanes and they were going to kill us all. In school, we had to practice getting under the desk for air raids and shit like that. It was drilled in�that fear, was always there.
Judd: The next holocaust, the nuclear holocaust. I used to have nightmares all the time about it. I don�t know the first comedy that you were interested in, but I didn�t understand how I was processing any of that. I just knew that I liked the comedy figures who told everybody to fuck off. So I loved George Carlin and the Marx Brothers. I loved that the Marx Brothers were saying that all of the rich people and the leaders were idiots. I was obsessed with them. I bought every book. I was looking for somebody to say, �Isn�t the world crazy? This all makes no sense.�
Roseanne: I loved the Stooges. I thought they were gods. And I still do. It was fucking godly. Because it was like, you know, one�s making fun of Einstein, one�s making fun of Hitler. They�re making fun of the politics of the world. They were fucking deep thinkers, and their subject matter was deep, too.
Judd: It�s a survival mechanism, when you�re a kid, to like that stuff. When did that interest turn into being funny for you?
Roseanne: My dad was a big fan of comedy. He wanted to be a stand-up, so he made me that way. My dad loved Lenny. He also loved Lord Buckley and jazz and stuff. He was a hipster. My parents were kind of beat-nicky, you know, for Salt Lake City.
Judd: Did people in Salt Lake know you were Jewish?
Roseanne: They knew. I mean we never lied about it but it�s a real weird place. Like, when I was three, I fell and I got Bell�s palsy in my face. My mom said the first day she called the rabbi and they said a prayer for me but nothing happened. The second day she called the Mormons and they said a prayer for me and my face was healed, so my whole life was going around as a Jew who was giving talks in Mormon churches about being healed by the Mormons. That was my life.
Judd: It�s interesting that when you get older and you�ve raised kids and you�ve had your life, you look back at things that your parents did and you think,
Roseanne: I think parents don�t know what to say and, like, Jews�it�s better to say nothing so that the kid comes and parents you.
Judd: That�s exactly it.
Roseanne: I think we know�as Jewish parents, or maybe it�s all parents, ethnic parents�that our kids are frigging way smarter than we are.
Judd: And they�re supposed to make
Roseanne: Kind of.
Judd: That�s what makes you a comedian. I�m a big self-help freak and I read all those books and they�re always about mirroring, that when you�re with your kids, they�re supposed to see themselves. They�re not supposed to see your need. If they see your neediness then they just try to please you and they lose the sense of who they are because they�re trying to please you. And that�s what seems to create a comedian, too: How do I make other people happy?
Roseanne: Yeah, a people pleaser kind of thing. But my humor, I think, came from wanting to disarm people before they hit me. My family were hitters. And if you made them laugh, they didn�t hit you. My dad wouldn�t hit me if I got him with humor right between the eyes.
Judd: What age were you when he would hit you?
Roseanne: Always.
Judd: Even into like high school?
Roseanne: Oh, yeah. He�d walk over and smack me upside the head for whatever. I used to bite my nails a lot�I learned it from my dad, who bit his nails to where there was no fucking nail at all and he couldn�t bend his fingers and he�s like this all the time, just like anxiety, you know. And so I�d sit there biting my nails and he�d look at me and he�d go, �Stop fucking biting your fucking fingernails.�
Judd: Because he loves you.
Roseanne: I�d be like, �Well, you�re biting yours.� And then he�d laugh. But sometimes he wouldn�t. You never knew when it was coming. He�d sneak up behind you while you�re biting your nail and crack you in the back of the head so hard that your knuckles would go straight up your nose and stuff. He hit me in the head constantly. He�d hit us all in the head. And hard, too.
Judd: We can�t get our kids to do anything.
Roseanne: Maybe because we don�t hit them.
Judd: Did you go to therapy and try to fix yourself, to learn how to not do it to your kids?
Roseanne: Yeah, but by then I had already done it.
Judd: To your first few kids?
Roseanne: Yeah. So then I�d correct it. You go to each one of them and let them curse you out and say all the shit that they want to say to you. And just go, �Oh, honey, I did it and I�m sorry.� That�s hard.
Judd: And how do they do after that?
Roseanne: Thank God, they are all functional and brilliant, creative people.
Judd: Well, almost no parents do that. Own up to their mistakes.
Roseanne: It�s the hardest thing.
Judd: My mom could never do that. Well, right before she died, very briefly she said she was sorry for anything she might have done wrong. But for the most part�I once begged my mother to go to therapy and then sent her to my therapist. When she came back, I said, �How did it go?� And she said, �He told me that I�m right about everything.�
Roseanne: That�s a good one.
Judd: We have to have those conversations sometimes with our kids, where we say, you know, �We�re not perfect people. We make mistakes and we have issues.� And we try to explain what they are as they�re happening. Like, �This is my issue and maybe that�s why I did that. Sorry.�
Roseanne: Well, I took all the shit off my kids because I knew they needed to say it. I was lucky enough to be able to say it to my parents, too, and do some healing.
Judd: And it somehow got you here. That�s the hard thing, too, which is: If your childhood didn�t happen, nothing else would have happened.
Roseanne: I don�t know about that. My shrink says, �Don�t say you�re funny
Judd: Were you high school age?
Roseanne: No, I was in my forties. It�s real deep mental illness shit, man. But I got over it. Not over it, but I live with it.
Judd: Where do you think it comes from?
Roseanne: I think both of my parents and my grandparents were divided people, too. I mean, who�s going to live through the Holocaust and not be fucked up? I can�t blame my parents. I had a good teacher, too. I had a good rabbi. He�s on the other side now, too, but he helped me put it in perspective and that was all while I was doing pretty deep therapy and I just put it all back together, all those fragments which I kind of remade the world in my mind so that it made sense. It�s like, you know, this is hell.
Judd: What is hell?
Roseanne: This planet.
Judd: Can you experience reality with MPD? Do you still experience reality where you feel like different sides of your personality are handling different situations?
Roseanne: Less than in the past. I used to never sleep more than three hours a night because I always was�you know, the whole comic thing was a big thing in my head. The comic, the writer who did stand-up. That was a separate state and I�d just get into it and, fuck, I don�t want to know anything else. I�d neglect my health and my life. Once it started, there was no fucking way out. It was too much. Your head�s like�you have no balance at all.
Judd: Because getting successful and being a performer, it feels like safety, but it�s a safety that you can�t maintain because you�re abandoning everything else to achieve it.
Roseanne: You can�t ever be how you are. It�s like, Oh you�ve got to do these interviews, you have to go talk to the press and stuff�which is a scary thing.
Judd: They want to set you off.
Roseanne: They do, because they�re just evil.
Judd: And you
Roseanne: Yeah, and that took me a while. That�s what I wanted to do. Plus I have Tourette�s.
Judd: How does that show itself?
Roseanne: I have to be the one who barks out what I had conceived as the thing that must be heard. And sometimes I didn�t even fucking believe it, but, you know, in my head it was the perfect state of freedom. I have to say it. Because I have all that Jew Holocaust shit, you know. I mean when I used to play Barbies with my Mormon neighbor friend, it was always, �Oh, we�re going to go on a date. Ken�s taking us out and we�re going with Ken on a date.� And I was like, �We�re parachuting behind enemy lines to save the Jews.� That�s how I played Barbies. It was just otherly.
Judd: Were you doing stand-up before you were married?
Roseanne: No, I had three kids when I first started stand-up.
Judd: Who did you see doing stand-up who made you think,
Roseanne: When I was little, my dad and I would watch
Judd: Alan King.
Roseanne: Alan King, oh my God. And Jackie Mason, Jack E. Leonard, and Leonard Barr�my dad said maybe we�re related to him. And then I saw Richard Pryor and that was it.
Judd: So you�re a housewife and it�s floating around the back of your head somewhere that it would be great to do this?
Roseanne: I always knew since I was three. When I was little, that was one thing that I was told in a vision: I was going to have my own show when I grew up. And it�s going to be funny and it�s going to be like Danny Kaye, who was another one of my idols.
Judd: So you always had a vision�
Roseanne: I was always into TV. I knew I could get in the business somehow and find a place. I don�t think I thought of what I could accomplish in the larger sense of it.
Judd: So in your head you knew it was going to happen and then you�re having kids. At some point, you have to make the move to do it. What was the trigger?
Roseanne: I was a cocktail waitress and this guy�I got tips because I made them laugh, plus you had to have half your ass hanging out. I made them laugh so they�d give me big tips and this one guy one time, he said, �Hey, you�re so funny you should go down to this comedy club downtown.� And I was like
Judd: That�s incredible.
Roseanne: It was almost a year and then I went down there and did my five minutes. I look back on it now and I�m like, it was pretty ballsy that I said the things I said. They immediately banned me and said don�t ever come back here.
Judd: Do you remember what was in the five minutes?
Roseanne: I made fun of male comics. I was very political.
Judd: Did you talk about being a housewife also?
Roseanne: No, it was radical, feminist politics.
Judd: Did you get any laughs?
Roseanne: The first time, I got killer laughs. And people came up, and they were nice to me. So I couldn�t wait to go back the second time, and then I got way over-cocky. And I ate it like a dog�s death. The indignities.
Judd: What did your husband say when you told him you were going to be a stand-up?
Roseanne: He wanted to be one, too. He helped me write. We�d sit down and we�d write jokes�my sister, too. I�d be sitting in a restaurant with her, and�when I was little my mom used to read this book
Judd: How many years of this before you moved to L.A.?
Roseanne: Five.
Judd: It is interesting, if you watch the arcs of so many comedians. At some point, they just become themselves.
Roseanne: That�s exactly it.
Judd: And something amazing happens. Like everyone�s looking for their angle, looking for their angle, and then they just�they become powerful.
Roseanne: You synthesize it all. You integrate it�like okay, this part of me wants to say this. This part of me is interested in that. I don�t want to be ordinary. I�m willing to do the work. I�m willing to suffer the indignities of comedy. Because I want to be great. I don�t want to just be good. I want to be great.
Judd: So how long was it, between moving to L.A. and getting
Roseanne: It was a dream. All these comics were coming to Denver headlining, and I�d open for them. There was a Denver �Laugh Off� thing and it was me and fifteen guys�and I won. Everyone was like, wow. That was a big accomplishment. It was an accomplishment that all the guys were rooting for me, too. That was fucking mind-blowing after all the shit I had to do. I forgot what you asked me.
Judd: How long until you got on
Roseanne: Oh, so everybody goes, �You need to let Mitzi see you at the Comedy Store.� And so, you know, I planned it with my husband, the whole thing. I went there on a Monday night. It was like a fucking dream. Came off the stage after my first five minutes and Mitzi was like, �Go do twenty in the big room.�
Judd: Immediately?
Roseanne: All the waitresses told me she had never done that before. So I went in the big room�this is all happening in one night�and I come offstage, and there�s George Schlatter. And he�s like, �I�m producing a show��it was
Judd: You didn�t even know he was in the crowd?
Roseanne: No. You know, with my gruff thing, I was like, �Get in line.� And he�s like, �No, no, I�m Jim McCawley, and I want you on.�
Judd: How did your husband handle your success?
Roseanne: I was really a housewife. And then suddenly, I�m like eighteen weeks on the road without my kids and my husband�he didn�t know what to do. He slept in a lot of mornings and they missed school. You know, he�s a guy. I came home after like six weeks�
Judd: He was working at a post office, right?
Roseanne: No, he had quit. He quit after I started to tour. So I went and got the kids. They lived with me in a one-room apartment on Laurel Canyon Boulevard. I�d bring them to the Comedy Store and they�d just have to sit up there. It was hard.
Judd: How old were they at the time?
Roseanne: They were all under twelve.
Judd: So the two older ones kind of know what�s happening?
Roseanne: Yeah, it affected them. I wasn�t there to crack down on them as much. So they went wild. We all fucking went wild. You know, it�s just so consuming, it�s eighteen hours a day, and you turn to your husband or your sisters or family to help you but nobody can do it as well as the mom. So it�s just suffering guilt every fucking minute until you�ve got to do drugs to handle the disappointment that you�re causing your kids.
Judd: It�s the aspect of show business that most people don�t think about�the circus aspect of it. Whenever I see some famous person get married to another famous person, my first thought is,
Roseanne: I know exactly how it works. You just talk on the phone and they�re living in a world that doesn�t exist like you do. I just always tried to stay in as much as I possibly could. It was really hard because, you know�you don�t want to work, but you don�t know when you�re going to get your next job.
Judd: It could all end tomorrow.
Roseanne: And everybody�s like, �You�re fucking rich,� but they don�t get it. They don�t get that you have to fucking
Judd: And it keeps you sane, but it also creates all�
Roseanne: All the problems. But then it�s so worth it when you�re getting those laughs. It�s like,
Judd: Was it possible to have balance when you were doing the TV show?
Roseanne: No.
Judd: So when you were working, you were so split off�you focused on the work so intensely that you couldn�t be present in the other parts of your life?
Roseanne: Correct.
Judd: It�s funny because I used to scream at everybody at the beginning of my career. I�d get really emotional. I�d project all my issues about my parents and safety onto the executives so every conversation where they gave a note was life or death and they tried to destroy me.
Roseanne: Once the show was number one, it was like, �Don�t ever come down here again, motherfuckers. Don�t fucking come down here.� I felt shut down when they�d come and stand there. I�d be like, �Nobody with a suit is allowed on this stage.� They�re just judging and you feel the weight of them. They�re looking for a flaw. They�re waiting to hurt you.
Judd: How much of that, in retrospect, was bad management or treating talent like a piece of meat or a commodity?
Roseanne: It was treating talent with contempt�and it wasn�t just me. It was just the way it was then. I�m glad to see people are taking more control of their product these days, but back then it was like, whoa, they just, they didn�t respect talent. They had to humiliate and belittle people who had talent.
Judd: That�s how they controlled things.
Roseanne: It�s a pimp mentality.
Judd: How did you take control of your show?
Roseanne: I�d be standing there during the filming, crying. I got a woman manager after every fucking guy would say the same shit: �Shut up and take it, you�re getting paid.� So I got, like, Diane Keaton�s manager, and she was very well connected with Freddie Field and people like that, so she had power. And she was like, �Your star is in tears on this comedy. Do you even notice that
Judd: And then it aired and the ratings were�
Roseanne: Number one. It premiered at number three, and then it took
Judd: Then you had the moment where you�re like, �Okay, now here�s how we�re going to do it.�
Roseanne: It was that voice that I always have with me. I said, �Either he goes�,� and they knew. So they go, �Well, he�ll go, but he�s not going until [episode] thirteen.� So that was seven more or something. And I�m like,
Judd: How do you look back at that time�because, creatively, those first Tom years were really strong.
Roseanne: I think we had three really good years before that, too.
Judd: He came on at the end of season four?
Roseanne: The end of season three. And everyone hated him so he didn�t�it was like season four that we got the comics on instead of TV writers. I always wanted that. I loved funny people over story people. It was about the jokes and I like jokes. Jokes were the only reason we were ever on that long.
Judd: How many good Tom years were there?
Roseanne: Zero good years.
Judd: Was it just batshit crazy the whole time?
Roseanne: A living hell. Unfuckingbelievable living hell. Like I didn�t have enough troubles? Now I�ve got a drug addict running around my fucking house? You know, then I�m getting a divorce and kids are in my house. Just not fucking good at all. But at work, it was fun. Because it was like, I want this, let�s try this, let�s try that. It was like, Let�s fucking take this down. I want gays on the air. I wanted a teenage girl who was negative like I was.
Judd: What are the parts of the show that you look back at with the most pride?
Roseanne: From the first battle, it seemed like�I felt like Wonder Woman battling back the Nazis or whatever, it was kind of like that. It was Halloween and they wouldn�t let me do a show on Halloween. Because they said the Bible Belt doesn�t like Halloween; they think it�s witches and shit. So I�m like, �Well, then I�m a witch. And I want Halloween.� I just, I couldn�t stand people saying what the fuck I could do. The next thing was an unemployed husband. They didn�t like that, either. They didn�t like smart-mouthed Darlene. They didn�t like Darlene. And you know, so Darlene was a big one for me because I�m Darlene. I was Darlene! That�s who I was, you know.
Judd: Did you feel like it was an honest depiction of working-class America?
Roseanne: I liked that it was like, This shit sucks. That was real to me. And also, I wanted to show a different kind of love that wasn�t that phony bullshit love. It was love through bad things. I was on a fucking mission for sure. I felt like the Messiah and Wonder Woman all rolled up into one. I felt like Robin Hood. I felt like Jesus. Plus, I had a killer cast that could make anything. I had great writers. Christ, I�ll never get that again. It was like the real golden age, another golden age of television. Today they want no part of anything having to do with class on TV. No part.
Judd: Why do you think that is?
Roseanne: Because it�s too true.
Judd: I think the paradox of being a comedian is you become a comedian because, on some level, you�re so insecure that you need people�s approval. And then you put yourself in a position where you can get an enormous amount of disapproval but it�s worth the risk because�
Roseanne: The damn indignity.
Judd: I�m going to risk making a movie and maybe the world will tell me they hate me. Like, I want some love but I might get some hate. And there are certain people who are like totally fine with that. But there�s craziness in it, too.
Roseanne: Well, I think you�ve got to get like that.
Judd: Is that healthy or is it also detached in some way?
Roseanne: All of it is just too hard. But when you�re doing it�I remember I asked my rabbi that once. I said, �Does this shit ever stop? You know, the crazy?� And he said, �It stops when you�re doing it.� And I thought,
Martin Scorsese�s
Judd Apatow: Okay, here we go. So how has your life changed since
Sandra Bernhard: In my career? Well, probably the most important thing that has changed is that I can get interviews for things. People are interested in finding other films for me.
Judd: Is that what you�ve been doing, reading scripts?
Sandra: Yeah, reading scripts and developing things of my own.
Judd: And now you�re getting stand-up jobs everywhere?
Sandra: Yeah, but I�m not going to be doing comedy clubs anymore. I�m doing more musically, developing my act more as a whole package, as opposed to just comedy.
Judd: Do you get recognized on the street?
Sandra: A lot. I�ve always been looked at because I have one of those kinds of faces�people think they know me. But now, it�s like they do. So it�s kind of neat.
Judd: What do they say?
Sandra: Oh, well, most people are just incredibly supportive, and say, �God, I loved you in the film, it was a wonderful performance.� You know, lots of good.
Judd: How did you get that part?
Sandra: I auditioned for it out in L.A., along with lots of other actresses. And then I met De Niro and Scorsese over a period of two months.
Judd: Were they intimidating?
Sandra: No, because I really wasn�t that into their films at the time. I walked in just sort of, �Oh, hi.� Real casual.
Judd: How about Jerry Lewis?
Sandra: He was more intimidating than they were.
Judd: What do you think about him? I mean he used to be such a crazy young guy, and now he�s, like, an old man.
Sandra: He�s a crazy old man. He�s not that old, first of all. I mean, he�s pretty much the same. People don�t really ever change that much, you know. They slow down a little bit. But he�s still totally crazy.
Judd: And did they let you improvise on this movie?
Sandra: Most of my part was improvised.
Judd: Like whole scenes?
Sandra: Yeah. A lot of what I did in the movie I improvised before I went on my auditions.
Judd: Didn�t they cut a lot of stuff you did?
Sandra: No. People think that, you know. There were just different takes. I mean, I did like the same take only different improvisation. It was a matter of which improv Marty preferred.
Judd: So what do you think about your character?
Sandra: I think she�s somebody that, at the time, I could relate to, and was very close to who I was emotionally. I was very needy and I wanted things to happen in my career that weren�t happening. I was alienated and lonely and all those things that she felt. So she was easily understood. I mean, now that it�s changed my life, I don�t feel so close to that character, and I don�t think I should. I don�t think it would be a healthy way to relate to people.
Judd: When you saw the film, what did you think?
Sandra: I was pleased. I was especially pleased with my part.
Judd: Yeah, you got great reviews. They said you carried the film.
Sandra: To a certain degree, I guess I did. I certainly interjected a lot of excitement and energy into it. Which it needed, I think.
Judd: So what was your childhood�
Sandra: Typical and not typical. I was raised half in Michigan and half in Arizona. I was born in Michigan, in a middle-class, upper-middle-class, Jewish family. My father�s a doctor, and my mother�s a nurse. Three older brothers. The thing that made a difference is that I was the youngest, and the only girl. I think I got a different perspective on life than most people do, because, you know�I had to hold my own in a family of men.
Judd: You had to be tough.
Sandra: Not tough, just learn how to get attention.
Judd: Through being funny?
Sandra: Yeah, I was always funny. And pretty intense.
Judd: Popular?
Sandra: No, not really. I mean I had a lot of friends but I never thought of myself as popular because, I mean, I was always kind of thin and, you know, different. I felt more self-conscious.
Judd: So who did you idolize as a kid?
Sandra: Carol Channing. I saw her in
Judd: Any other comedians?
Sandra: No, not really. I mean there were comic actors and actresses, you know. A woman had a show called
Judd: When did you decide you were gonna be a comic? High school?
Sandra: I never made the choice to become a
Judd: And what was your first comedy stage like?
Sandra: It was pretty good. I was confident because I didn�t know what to expect. I just watched other people, so I sort of imitated�
Judd: Where did you do that?
Sandra: At a place called the Ye Little Club.
Judd: How long did it take you to get confident as a performer, comfortable onstage?
Sandra: I�m still doing that. It�s an endless process. I mean, you get more and more confident. Especially when I got the movie. That set me off.
Judd: How would you describe your act onstage? Because you seem very different, from�I mean, I saw you and you seem like a different person onstage.
Sandra: Well, you have to be. You have to have some sort of a persona onstage to get your point across. And you�re not gonna just walk up there casual, like you�re carrying on a conversation and, you know, be entertaining at the same time. That�s a part of me, that character I use onstage. It�s a part of who I am. But you just can�t do that all the time without burning yourself out.
Judd: So how have you handled everything? Fame?
Sandra: Quite well. It hasn�t radically changed�I mean, I didn�t make a lot of money. If I made a lot of money, if I was rich right now, it might have changed my life a little bit more. But I�m pretty much in the same financial position. I�m okay, but�you know.
Judd: Do you think you�re gonna be a superstar one day?
Sandra: Well, I think I�ll be�I think I�ll be pretty out there. I don�t know if there�s anybody that�s a superstar anymore. That�s sort of a thing of the past.
Judd: So what would success mean for you, then?
Sandra: Working a lot. Doing good work. Having people respect me. Being recognized by the public and having power to do what I want to do.
Judd: And if you could do anything what would it be?
Sandra: A lot of films, more money. Interesting films.
Judd: Serious films?
Sandra: Serious and comedy both.
Judd: Say Eddie Murphy gets fifteen million to do whatever he wants. You would like something like that, I guess?
Sandra: Well, I don�t think I need fifteen million dollars�
Judd: Creative control over your work, then?
Sandra: Yeah, I want creative control. I�m not looking to make a billion dollars. I want to be comfortable, but I�m not starving for that kind of�that�s egotistical to me, and bullshit. And they don�t do that with women, they only do that with men.
Judd: Why do you think that is?
Sandra: Because men control the business, men are in power, and men want to keep men in power.
Judd: How long did it take you to get relaxed onstage, so that you could just interact with the audience?
Sandra: I did that almost from the start. I was never really comfortable doing it, and I wasn�t sure what I was gonna say, but I did it anyway. That�s how I wanted to relate as a performer. I never wanted that wall up, you know. I didn�t want to just tell jokes. But I wanted to relate to people so I was willing to take that risk of getting a bad reaction.
Judd: Did you ever get a bad reaction?
Sandra: Sure. A lot. I still do. Kind of a general thing in the audience. Audiences can turn real vicious sometimes. You know, collectively. Audiences are not to be trusted until you�re about halfway through the show. They can turn on you. They�re very�people are weird, they�re like wild animals.
Judd: And that happens to you even now?
Sandra: Once in a while, there�ll be a smattering of people who�ll come�it�s happened a couple of times at Carolines. Some people came in. And there was just�they wanted to start problems with me. They really didn�t know who I was and they came anyway, so they just talked, and I said, �What the fuck are you doing here?� You know what I mean? �People are here to have a good time, I�m here to entertain them. These people know who I am, they respect my work�and if you don�t know what I�m doing, and you don�t like it, then get the fuck out.�
Judd: And you just say that to them?
Sandra: That and a lot of other things. I�ll ride their asses all night, because they don�t shut up. They just keep going and I just keep going right along with them. Something interesting always comes out of it.
Judd: What would you consider your worst moment onstage?
Sandra: My worst moments are when my energy is low. When I�m really tired, and my energy is bad, then I�m vulnerable.
Judd: Do you think there�s anything that a comedian
Sandra: I don�t know. I have a lot of opinions on that. I guess�I guess, you know, it depends on the person. You can�t generalize.
Judd: You don�t think there�s anything that�s off-limits? I mean, I�ve seen some pretty crude stuff.
Sandra: See, I have a lot of opinions on comedy. If you get me started on that, then I�ll say my opinions, and I�m gonna regret it.
Judd: You�re gonna say something that you�re gonna regret?
Sandra: Yeah, because I don�t think that there are very many people that should be doing comedy. Because I don�t think most of them have a point of view or an attitude or a conviction.
Judd: Do you think comedians should make a statement, like a political or social kind of�
Sandra: I think if you�re really good, you do that without trying to. You invoke emotions from an audience without being obvious about it. But the art of being a great performer is almost a dead thing. There are very few people who dedicate their lives to being a real artist and to the artistry of performing. Because there�s a whole�it�s not just standing up there. It�s a movement and it�s a tone of voice and it�s a seduction and it�s a school of thought. The old entertainers, they knew everything. They knew how to dance, and they knew how to sing. They
Judd: I was reading somewhere that there�s a Steve Allen book and it said that he didn�t think that the old comedians could stand up to anybody from today. I guess he�s talking about Henny Youngman and, I don�t know, maybe Jackie Gleason, all of those old comedians doing stuff they did like in the Catskills in the forties. He said that they wouldn�t stand up to anybody today.
Sandra: I don�t know about that. I think times are different. And like I said, in those days, comedy wasn�t something you just got into because it looked accessible, and easy, and you could make some fast money. I mean, those people were
Judd: Is there anyone right now that you just like�is there anybody you look at and say, �I wish I could be that good�?
Sandra: I think people think that about me right now.
Judd: Yeah.
Sandra: I�m more interested in what I�m doing�I�ve been through that already. I�m beyond that. Christ, if I was still at that point, I never would have gotten the film.
Judd: So you think you have it down?
Sandra: Oh no, I don�t have it down. But I�m certainly doing what I believe is true to what I think, and honest. I mean, I believe that people are talking about me. And I can�t think of anybody who impresses me right now as much as I impress myself.
I�ve known Sarah Silverman since she moved to California to do standup when she was twenty-one years old. Back then, she was the young, hilarious girl who was from the same town in New Hampshire as my friend and roommate, Adam Sandler. That always seemed so weird to me, the idea that two brilliantly funny people could come from the same small town.
I�ve been lucky enough to spend a lot of time with her in the intervening years, in a work capacity (we worked together at
Judd Apatow: I was thinking recently about the first time I met you. You were so young.
Sarah Silverman: That was back when I was, like, really doing stand-up.
Judd: Did you go straight from high school into the clubs?
Sarah: Yeah. When I was seventeen, I went to summer school in Boston. I knew I wanted to be a stand-up but I�d only done it at high school assemblies and stuff. But I went up at open-mic night at Stitches when it was on Mass. Ave., and that was the first time I ever did stand-up. It was my third year of high school. I remember the comedian who was onstage when I first went in to scope it out, too. Wendy Liebman.
Judd: Wow.
Sarah: And she did two jokes. I completely remember that night. I have this sense memory of walking through the doors and the first thing I heard was her saying, �Someone thought I was Lady Di, but it turned out that they were just saying, �Lady, die.� � And then the other one was�wow, I ruined that joke.
Judd: I was interested in comedy from a really young age, too. As a ten-year-old kid, I was watching a scary amount of Merv Griffin and Dinah Shore.
Sarah: Oh, my mother always loved Dinah Shore because she said she did her own hair. She thought that made her so down-to-earth.
Judd: What drew you to try comedy, though? Why did you like it so much?
Sarah: My dad taught me swears when I was a toddler and I saw, at a really early age, that if I shocked people, I would get approval, and it made my arms itch with glee. I got addicted to it. It became this source of power in a totally powerless life.
Judd: Did your dad get a kick out of it?
Sarah: He thought it was funny to teach his three-year-old daughter swears.
Judd: What do your parents do for a living?
Sarah: My dad is alive. I always say, �He was a retailer,� and then people go, �Oh, did he die?� But no, he�s just retired. His dream was to be a writer�and he wrote all these books that he self-published when he retired�but he was always a retailer. He owned a store called Crazy Sophie�s Factory Outlet. And he did his own commercials. I have a bunch of them. They�re amazing. He has such a thick New England accent. You can�t understand a thing he�s saying. He�s like, �When I see the prices at the mall, I just want to vomit! Hey, I�m Crazy Donald!� He was Crazy Donald, like Crazy Eddie, only in New Hampshire.
Judd: That must have been a big deal, in a small town in New Hampshire, growing up with your dad doing commercials.
Sarah: Yeah, he was always on the radio waves talking about his sales, and jean brands that you never heard of, like Unicorn. And my mom was like Shelley Long in
Judd: Did they stay married?
Sarah: No, they got divorced when I was like six and a half, but I was thrilled because they hated each other. I mean, I never saw a loving glance or a smile between them until long after they were divorced. Now they�re close. They�re like army buddies, you know. Like siblings. My mom is sickly and my stepmother checks in on her almost every day.
Judd: So your dad remarried and his wife is close with your mom?
Sarah: Yeah, they�re all close. My mom remarried, too. They both found the loves of their lives, so I was able to see�unfortunately, not in my formative years�but I was eventually able to see what a loving marriage can look like.
Judd: Do you like trace your sensibility to anything specific other than your dad being amused by watching you shock people?
Sarah: I never consciously set out to talk about taboos or anything like that. That was just what the household I grew up in was like. There weren�t any boundaries or a sense of, like, �Maybe let�s not say that in front of the kids.� It was all out there, you know, and I didn�t know better. I mean, honestly, a lot of the human etiquette I learned in life I learned from, like, thank-you notes and dating Jimmy Kimmel. I have great parents and they both taught me great things, but it was just different. My formative years were boundaryless.
Judd: But was there a core of morality to it?
Sarah: Oh yeah, definitely. We had no religion at all but we were Jews in New Hampshire, and my sister�who is now a rabbi�said it best: We were like the only Jews in Bedford, New Hampshire, as well as the only Democrats, so we just kind of associated those two things together. My dad raised us to believe that paying taxes is an honor, that it goes to important things for everybody. We were never to complain about that shit, or be all about keeping your money or whatever. Now I look around and realize that was special. Money is seen as such a positive thing now, we try to get as much of it as we can and that�s okay because it equals success. It�s sad.
Judd: My parents didn�t talk about religion, either. And then, out of the blue, my brother became an Orthodox Jew and moved to Israel. I always think it�s funny how, in the same family, one person looks for answers through comedy and another through religion.
Sarah: My sister and I are so close, and so different. I don�t have religion at all. Love and science are my religion. And Kermit the Frog and Mister Rogers.
Judd: That�s so funny, because whenever I need to equalize myself and bawl my eyes out, I will go online and watch Jim Henson�s funeral on YouTube.
Sarah: I�ve got to see that. I will not be able to keep it together because, honestly, I�ll just fucking sing �It�s Not Easy Being Green� or �Rainbow Connection� and cry.
Judd: That�s what I do late at night. I just go down the Mister Rogers�Jim Henson wormhole of tears. But those two guys are a good religion. How does your sister talk about Judaism?
Sarah: It�s funny because sometimes I�ll get cunty with her and I�ll be like, �Oh, so you believe there�s a man in the sky?� I just can�t get my head around it, you know. And she�ll go, �Well, I like to live my life as though there is one.� And I�m just like, �Oh, you�re beautiful.�
Judd: Why can�t you get your head around it?
Sarah: I can be cynical. But I don�t think of myself, at my core, as cynical. So much of it is location. Like, who is Muslim? Who is a Jew? Who is a Catholic? Who is a Christian? Who�s Buddhist? Ninety-nine-point-nine percent of it is where you happen to be born. So how can one be right and another be wrong? It seems pretty clear to me that it�s a coping mechanism for people who cannot handle the not knowing of things. I am okay knowing I will never be able to comprehend the world.
Judd: I wish I could convince myself to believe the way your sister believes because I�m so exhausted from not believing.
Sarah: I actually don�t think that she believes in God, necessarily. I think she just loves the ritual of religion and finding meaning in every little thing. She loves living her life that way.
Judd: Do you think she believes that God is involved in people�s lives?
Sarah: Yeah. But she isn�t one of those �Oh, let�s pray for this tumor to go away� people. You know what I mean? She just loves the ritual of finding meaning in everything. I don�t know. I don�t think she believes in, like, a male God or anything. She�s a major feminist, a liberal hippy-dippy granola rabbi.
Judd: She doesn�t believe in a God that is actively involved in people�s lives, making choices?
Sarah: She doesn�t believe that God is rooting for the Giants and not the Patriots. She�s not fucking ridiculous.
Judd: I�m jealous of those people. I plan on tricking myself into believing in religion one of these days. I�m going to pick a religion and then hypnotize myself.
Sarah: When the rest of my family is in a crazy, neurotic tizzy, she�ll be like, �It will work out.� You know.
Judd: I always feel that my only connection to anything spiritual�and this might be sad�is when a joke comes to me. In that moment, I feel a different kind of connection than I do during the rest of the day.
Sarah: Because you can�t make it happen. I mean, I have to sit and sit and work on my jokes. And it�s just such torture for me and I think,
Judd: Do you put time aside to write?
Sarah: No, but when I do, it always pays off. I don�t know why I�m so afraid of setting aside twenty minutes of sitting-down time. It�s always fruitful, you know. But I just fight it so much.
Judd: Seinfeld said he sits and writes for two hours every single day.
Sarah: Seinfeld and Chris Rock, they�re just that incredible combination of funny and not lazy, which is very rare and special and completely failure proof. I remember before I did my HBO special, Chris screamed at me�in a loving way, but still. He was like, �You need to do two hundred shows in a row and a month straight on the road before you even
Judd: Who are the comics you look up to? Who�s had the greatest impact on you, would you say?
Sarah: Early on, Garry Shandling. When I first started hanging out with him, he was always so giving of what he knows and what he learned. I definitely learned to embrace the quiet moments onstage from him�relaxing and not fighting with the crowd, not raising your voice, not ever trying to win them over. I also started out with Louis [C.K.] and David Attell. I remember the very first time Louis saw me. I was just starting and I had this affectation, where I would pull the mic away from my mouth. And he was like, �You shouldn�t do that. It looks weird and it�s a bad habit to get into.� And so I stopped, you know.
Judd: What is it like, at this point of your career, to look back on what all these people you came up with have accomplished?
Sarah: It�s so exciting. You know, everyone�s got their own velocity. Life goes at different speeds and there�s no real time frame with comedy. Louis has been brilliant for thirty years, but it has been so exciting to see, these past five years, the world getting Louis fever. On the flip side of that, there is the waste, the ones you know that were everyone�s favorite�you know, there�s so many times I will find myself talking to someone, �No, no, you don�t understand, he was the king, he was everyone�s favorite comic,� and people only see a guy as washed up, with no place to live, who can�t get his shit together. It�s so frustrating. You just want people to understand. Like I said about Seinfeld and Chris Rock, they�re a great combination of brilliance and hard work. There are people who are brilliant and don�t work hard, and there are people that are brilliant and sabotage themselves, and both are just so hard to see. Every once in a while, you forget there�s nothing you can do about it, and so you scramble around, trying to get something going for them, and then you come to the realization that they�ll never let it happen. You don�t get what you want, you get what you think you deserve. With people like that, they�re just not going to let themselves succeed.
Judd: And you end up with survivor�s guilt.
Sarah: It�s awful. You must know comics in their sixties who didn�t parlay their act into writing or acting or producing, and so they�re just fucked. Even the cruise ships don�t want them anymore.
Judd: Yeah. I feel like it�s a miracle when you can separate yourself from the pack enough to make a real living.
Sarah: Comedy is like alcoholism. You�re surrounded by people who are getting high all day, fucking around, and just being comics�and time passes, you know.
Judd: None of us have any other skill to fall back on.
Sarah: Yeah, exactly. There are a couple of comics that�like, I have a friend who just found a whole new career as the old black man in a bunch of commercials, and it�s exciting for him. Like, he can buy people drinks and stuff and it�s nice. But, you know, he didn�t have teeth for a while. I mean, you forget that comics, for the most part, don�t pay any attention to�I mean, with women comics it tends to be different because we�re not disgusting pigs, but a lot of comics don�t even know to like floss and brush their teeth, you know what I mean? And their teeth, I have to tell you: There was a time where I just bought a ton of dental care products and gave them out to my guy comic friends because they didn�t know any better. I mean, I don�t know how they get pussy. When I drive them in my car, and they get out, I have to Febreze the whole area. It�s insane. Like hygiene is just something you don�t need if you�re fly enough to get girls or something. But it�s bad and death creeps in through the gums.
Judd: I think a lot of the reason why I�ve done okay was growing up with the terror of not doing okay. From an early age, I tried to teach myself how to think ahead. But I know plenty of people who are funny and don�t have those types of skills.
Sarah: I�m somewhere in between. I�m so much more famous than I am financially successful. I mean, I live in a three-room apartment. I mostly make free videos on my couch. But I am fine.
Judd: Is it because, creatively, you�ve done what you�ve wanted to do?
Sarah: I�ve always kept my overhead low so I could do whatever I want. I think of myself as lazy with spurts of getting a lot done. I find myself rooting against things sometimes because I get excited at the thought of a clean slate. I also really like sleeping. My friends make fun of me because, you know, I love hanging out but I always hit a point in the night where I just want to get home and sleep. I have a very active dream life and I have to be there a lot.
When
People talk a lot about me being a mentor to Seth, or having discovered Seth when he was a kid, but here�s the truth: Seth�s sense of humor has influenced everything I have done. I feel very maternal toward Seth�so when he makes a movie like
David Denby: One of my distinguished predecessors, Pauline Kael, used to put down movies by saying that they were �deep on the surface��meaning that there was nothing underneath.
Judd Apatow: After thirteen. We shot eighteen.
David: You shot eighteen and only thirteen aired?
Judd: Thirteen aired and then they dumped it.
David: And then
Judd: Yes.
David: And was also canceled. Do you ever wake up at night and have revenge fantasies?
Judd: Well, the same guy who canceled
David: Oh yes, yes you do.
Judd: As I realized that we were about to be canceled, that day
David: I�m sure that you will�
Judd: This is
David: Mr. [William] Shawn, the very squeamish editor of
Judd: I guess the first frontier is the Jewish penis and then the last frontier is the uncircumcised penis.
Seth Rogen: I won�t touch that.
David: We�re not going to go there. Okay, Seth was born and raised in Vancouver and started performing stand-up comedy in a lesbian bar when he was thirteen. Is that correct?
Seth: It is.
David: Now, was this before or after your bar mitzvah�and what in the world was your material?
Seth: It was after my bar mitzvah and it was just about my life, about my grandparents and my bar mitzvah and high school and trying to meet girls and stuff like that.
David: I don�t want to get too personal here, but were you prematurely testosteroned? When did you get that bottom octave?
Seth: The bass? I don�t know, I always had a raspy voice from years of physical mistreatment to myself.
David: So you were in Vancouver and Apatow shows up with a casting call for
Seth: I had been doing stand-up for a while and it became clear I was going to fail out of high school, so I thought I should try to get some money. I had gotten an agent and I said, you know, maybe I should start to audition for things because stand-up comics don�t make a lot of money from just doing stand-up comedy. So she said okay, and
Judd: They do that for everybody.
Seth: Yeah, they do.
Judd: I saw Seth on a videotape at home. They sent me like thirty or forty people from Vancouver and we wrote a generic
Seth: I related to it.
David: Seth, you were writing from a very early age with Evan Goldberg, and I think that I read that the first version of
Seth: Actually, I think we were a little younger�around thirteen or fourteen�but no, it was about guys our age. The characters just slowly got older as we got older until we graduated and then we couldn�t take the characters with us beyond that point.
David: So you just kept writing it and rewriting it over a period of years.
Seth: Yeah, for around twelve years. If they made it when we were twelve�I mean, it would be pathetic.
Judd: But the penis sequence was in draft one.
Seth: It really was. What�s sad is that a fair amount of the jokes in the movie were in the draft we wrote when we were twelve years old. It�s sad reading it because I have not gotten any funnier in the last fifteen years of my life.
David: Judd, you said somewhere when you were doing stand-up comedy that you found it hard to develop a persona for yourself as a stand-up comic, and that struck me as interesting because I never heard anyone say that. Explain what you meant.
Judd: Well, I did stand-up when I was seventeen years old, and you really don�t have any life experience to draw on and so I wasn�t mad about anything. I was just kind of like a really bad Bill Maher. I would go on the road and open up for Jim Carrey, and I would watch him and think,
David: You wrote for a lot of people and�
Judd: It was easier to write for other people. I could sit in my house when I was twenty years old and write jokes for Roseanne Barr about stretch marks, which is very weird, but I could write it. I remember I had one joke�and I really don�t understand how I wrote this at twenty because I didn�t even know what a stretch mark was�which was, the only way to get rid of stretch marks is you have to put on another ten pounds just to bang it out. I wrote for Roseanne for a year and I�d go to her house and hang with her and Tom and write jokes, but I really wasn�t thinking about my own personality.
David: When Seth and his partner, Evan Goldberg, were working with you in Los Angeles, I read somewhere that you sent them writing exercises like: Come up with ten comic ideas in the next three days. Were there other writers you were schooling this way? You sound like a fencing master or Karate Kid or something.
Seth: I didn�t even finish high school.
Judd: Oh Jesus. And you know, I saw from day one that this was one of the funniest guys I�ve ever encountered. He was capable of anything. I thought that when he was sixteen years old, watching him act on the show, watching how his mind worked. And so Evan would come out sometimes in the summer and they would do rewrites of
David: Let�s get into
Judd: Paul Feig hated all the high school shows that were on TV at the time, which were all filled with very handsome, pretty people. He thought there should be a show about slightly less pretty people. He just thought there should be a show about his goofy group of friends, and that was his inspiration to talk about his childhood in Michigan and�you know, that�s how it all began. He had this idea of a show that moved a little slower. His theory was it would be like what storytelling was before everything got sped up by MTV editing. I was heavily influenced by
Seth: That�s bullshit.
David: I�ve been looking at it recently and some of them really go deep. There�s the episode where Jason Segel plays the guy who is not terribly bright, just wants to more than anything else be a drummer, and he plays with his friends and goes to an actual audition for a real band and totally bombs.
Judd: It�s the end of the episode.
David: That�s getting kids where they live.
Judd: It was a pretty dark episode. �Here�s your dream. You suck at it. End of episode.� And we wondered why we were canceled.
Seth: I know. People don�t want that?
David: And there�s a kind of neo�Howard Stern episode�
Judd: We were trying to come up with a story line for Seth to have a girlfriend. And it was near the end of the run and we clearly knew that we were going to get canceled, so we were being a little bolder with our ideas. As kind of a fuck-you to the network, like, If you�re going to cancel us then we�re going to do the episodes that we want to do and we�ll just go down swinging�or as Michael O�Donoghue said when he was at
David: Do you remember shooting that scene?
Seth: I do. Me and Jason and James really got along well on the show and we had a good dynamic and it was never our instinct to rush through things, I would say. I mean, we would make a fucking meal out of it if we can. I�d say one line all day if I could, but it was always really easy and it never seemed like a
Judd: I remember watching that scene and thinking,
David: When are girls going to figure out that the jocks become used car salesmen and the nerds become, you know, Judd Apatow and Bill Gates? Why aren�t they on to that by now?
Judd: You know, that�s�uh, maybe they are. Any high schoolers here getting laid? Any nerds getting a lot?
Seth: Have you seen Kelsey Grammer�s wife?
Judd: David Spade.
Seth: David Spade. Bill Maher, even. Come on.
David:
Judd: Steve was really funny when we were shooting
Seth: Oh, it was crazy.
Judd: And so I said, �Hey, if you ever have any idea of something you can star in, let�s do it.� And he came up to me and said, �You know, I did this sketch at Second City that I played around with and never finished. It was about a guy playing poker with his friends and they were all telling really dirty sex stories and slowly you realize that he�s a virgin and his stories make no sense.� And then he said�and you know his example was, �You know how like when you�re with a woman and you feel her breasts and it feels like bags of sand, and you know how like when you put your hand in a woman�s panties and there�s the baby powder?� I just clicked in and thought,
David: Did the two of you then sit down and co-write it, and work together in a room somewhere?
Judd: He would come to the office and we would just bang it out. Very quickly, we realized that it should be real and that the character should be quiet. Steve and I talked about it as almost a Buster Keaton�type character. That he would be quiet and then he could get mad but he wouldn�t be a wallflower. He would be a really normal person. And that came from going on the Internet and finding all these blogs from middle-aged virgins�they all seemed a little scared, like it just got by them.
David: But his whole personality is shaped around this thing�his consumer choices, his temperament, everything. Because he just can�t get past that one thing. So it�s one of the most incredible pictures about neurosis�
Judd: It�s something that I kind of understood. That�s what a lot of
Seth: I saw my moment. Judd was very happy. He was on the phone. He was like, �We�re
Judd: Well, in my head I�d always wanted Seth to be in it. I tried to get Seth to be the lead of
Seth: They literally laughed.
Judd: And so I was just so afraid that, like, what if I want Seth to be the lead and they say no? I was just hoping I could get it approved without telling him and then he got aggressive in the meantime. But Seth was a giant inspiration on that movie. We couldn�t get
Seth: Steve had his reservations, I would say, about it. He actually had me write up a version of the script that was rated PG-13 at one point and I did it just so he could see how lame it was. I think he was underestimating his own sweetness and how much that would come across. I always thought he�s so likable and so nice that you could have the most despicable language and activity in the world surrounding him but he�s like the, the anchor of niceness, so you can get away with any of that stuff.
Judd: We did a table read with all the actors and I was so nervous that the script wouldn�t be good enough to amuse Catherine Keener�
Seth: Yeah.
Judd: We worked really hard on Catherine Keener�s part because she�s scary. You know, you don�t want Catherine Keener mad at you. She literally had just finished a Daniel Day-Lewis movie and a Sean Penn movie and then she�s, like, with us idiots, you know? I don�t want her to notice that this was a career mistake for her. So then we did a table read and Catherine and Steve murdered and Seth and Romany [Malco] and Paul just ate it.
Seth: Ate shit.
Judd: Yeah, and then we went into rehearsal and played around and we started telling sex stories and talking about our relationships, and Paul was very funny, getting mad about women who broke his heart and playing the guy who couldn�t get over it. And Romany had the craziest sex stories. He was like, �I lost my virginity when I was eight.� And we were like, �What?� And he says that in front of Sharon Waxman from
David: How did
Judd: I had a lot of ideas about pregnancy because every time my wife and I went through childbirth, terrible things would happen with the doctors and the nurses�people being mean and not showing up or me cursing someone out, or them cursing me out. And so I thought,
David: I know you had an early version of the script and you called in actors and you did a table reading. Explain how that works.
Judd: Yes, well, I wrote the first draft when I was producing
David: It�s unusual. There are legendary directors like Bergman and Ford who have worked with stock companies, but this must be fairly unusual in studio Hollywood today, to be able to draw on this many people. I mean, some of them were working. Some of them were not working. You were able to call them in and get them to read for you just like that? It�s an amazing advantage, isn�t it?
Judd: The stock company is mainly Seth.
Seth: Yeah, and my idiot friends.
Judd: I love all the people from
David: And the guys in the movie were your friends.
Seth: Yeah, those are my actual friends. I lived with almost all of those people at one point or another in conditions similar to that of the movie. It�s funny because they kept coming to me during the rehearsal process and saying, like, you know, �I don�t
David: I don�t have to tell you that there were some women who were upset because the Katherine Heigl character goes through with the pregnancy and there isn�t more, at least, discussion in the film about abortion�
Judd: We knew this would be an issue. To me, the interesting part of the movie is the people deciding not to have an abortion and, you know, from my perspective I think that there�s certainly people that the second that they get pregnant, no matter what the circumstances are, there�s a part of them that says,
David: Your wife, Leslie Mann, gets angry in this movie.
Judd: And at home.
Seth: Yeah, exactly. I wasn�t going to say anything.
David: Elaborate on the connection between the home arguments and the movie arguments.
Judd: In a lot of ways, the movie is two phases of my and Leslie�s relationship. What I wanted to do�and was really happy that she had the courage to do�was to explore us at our worst. And yes, Leslie
One of the most rewarding parts of putting this book together was that it was really an excuse to continue my artistic education. I don�t know if you would call Spike Jonze a comedian, at least not in the classic sense, but it is definitely not a stretch to say that certain moments in his films�in
Spike is a true individual, one of the few people whose work I watch and then think,
Spike Jonze: It�s interesting how you�ve become, like, this mentor to so many comedians. I mean, at one point, you were just a young kid, but somewhere along the line, you made the transition to being this mentor who enables all these other creative people to be creative, as well as doing your own stuff.
Judd Apatow: Well, when I was a kid I spent all this time interviewing comedians and they would, in turn, sort of mentor me. Later, I opened on the road for Jim Carrey, and then Garry Shandling hired me on
Spike: How old were you when you were on that show?
Judd: Twenty-six.
Spike: That was a great show.
Judd: I learned everything from watching Garry. We had a similar sense of humor, so he liked having me around. It put him in a good mood. Some guys pitch jokes and when they�re really off, it throws you.
Spike: It kind of takes energy from the room. It�s like, Okay, now we have to dig out.
Judd: Exactly. Because some people, they pitch jokes, they�re in the ballpark and they make you laugh and think of something else. Other people pitch jokes and the room dies. I was mostly in the ballpark and I think it helped Garry get to what he had to think about. But I wasn�t thinking about mentoring anyone when we started working on
Spike: Was that your first solo show?
Judd: Well, I created
Spike: You were really young then.
Judd: I was twenty-four and I didn�t know what I was doing. I just watched Ben to figure out what
Spike: Like who?
Judd: Like everybody. Even Rogen, who was sixteen years old. Riotously funny, but a strange guy. And as we watched we thought,
Spike: It�s crazy that all of those guys were on that show.
Judd: Yeah. And so, for me, the idea of mentoring came from a place of:
Spike: Totally. There are so many people I met through her and opportunities I got through her. She recommended me for videos and let me tag along with her as she did a Sonic Youth video. She gave me a crash course in making music videos by letting me do that. And the way I met her was so roundabout in the first place. I did a skate video with my friend Mark Gonzales. It was called
Judd: Just handed it to her cold?
Spike: It wasn�t planned. It was just�he had it in his car and he was driving by. He�s like, �Oh, yeah, there she goes,� and he stops. �Hey, guys.�
Judd: And it changes your life.
Spike: It changes my life. And then Kim called me up and left a message at my house. It�s like, �Hey, this is Kim Gordon from Sonic Youth and we want you to come shoot a video with us,� and I�m like,
Judd: That is crazy. Let me ask you a question, because I actually don�t know much about the earliest part of your life. You grew up in Maryland? Were you a part of the skateboarding thing in Maryland?
Spike: Yeah.
Judd: Did you do videos there as a kid, or just when you came out here?
Spike: I did, but not skate videos. In high school, we made these little videos on camcorders but they were always edited in camera.
Judd: I remember doing that, too.
Spike: You�d press the button and it would take two seconds for the thing to start recording and then it would always be like somebody waiting and then they�d start moving.
Judd: Who were you hanging out with back then? The nerds? Indie kids?
Spike: There was one video class in our school, and it lasted for one semester, until they realized they didn�t have a teacher to teach it. So most of us would just go down to this basement room where there were these 1950s cameras and a switcher and we kind of fooled around with it. Mostly, the kids just used it as study hall. But then one kid brought in a camcorder from home and we started making videos. I don�t know what kind of kids they were. My world was outside of school. I went to school as little as possible. I went to the BMX shop instead and went on tours in the summer.
Judd: You were racing BMX?
Spike: Freestyle, not racing. I was skating, too.
Judd: And that eventually took you out to L.A.?
Spike: I started going out there when I was fifteen or sixteen. I was going on these summer tours with this bike team called Haro. Even before that, I met these guys named Andy Jenkins and Mark Lewman at a magazine called
Judd: So you went back to Maryland, and you�d write for them from Maryland?
Spike: Yeah.
Judd: And
Spike: Yeah. In my senior year, they asked if I wanted to be an assistant editor after I graduated.
Judd: And what did you think was going to happen? What were you trying to do?
Spike: I was worried. I was worried that adulthood sounded scary. I thought I was going to go work at this BMX magazine for a year before I went to college because I thought you were supposed to go to college and you had to go to college.
Judd: It was a gap year.
Spike: It was a gap year.
Judd: You�ve had a long gap year.
Spike: Yeah, I still haven�t gone back. But I just thought I had to go to college or I was going to be a fuckup and a failure. My parents went to college and it just, it was scary�that question of what am I going to do for the rest of my life, and how am I going to support myself?
Judd: What were you going to study if you went to college?
Spike: I didn�t know. I did apply in my senior year, before I got that job offer. I applied to all these film and TV schools, communication schools.
Judd: I went to USC film school.
Spike: I applied there. I applied to all of them.
Judd: I had terrible grades but I wrote an essay that was all about how much money I was going to give them when I was successful. I went into great detail.
Spike: That�s way more sophisticated than I could have ever been at that age. I wouldn�t have had the confidence to put my point of view and personality into it.
Judd: I had an English teacher in eleventh grade who asked us to write our autobiography. I didn�t want to write it because my parents were going through a difficult divorce. So I just made one up about how I was undercover at school and I was sleeping with all the teachers. I just wrote this very aggressive, funny essay and she pulled me aside and said, �You�re funny. You could be like Woody Allen.� I always wished someone would say something like that to me.
Spike: You mean you wished that before? I had no idea who Woody Allen was in high school. Like, I was so beyond�
Judd: You weren�t watching movies then?
Spike: I was a late bloomer in a lot of ways.
Judd: But so I tried to get into film school because I couldn�t think of a major that matched up with wanting to be a stand-up comedian. What made you want to go to film school?
Spike: I definitely knew I liked film. I mean, I liked photography. I didn�t understand how film worked, but I would certainly be hypnotized. I liked
Judd: Did you read?
Spike: Not a lot, but yeah. I think that I might have had some reading problems. I�m still a super-slow reader. If somebody wants me to read their script, it�s like dread�I know it�ll take me a good six hours to read it. But, you know, I wish�I think it�s rare to find a teacher like you had. I had a photography teacher in high school who was cool and encouraging, Mr. Stallings. But for the most part I would write something that I thought was funny, a short story or something, and the teachers would say, �Bad handwriting, bad grammar, no paragraphs.� They would rip it apart and give me a bad grade.
Judd: No acknowledgment of the soul of it?
Spike: No acknowledgment of the humor or imagination or whatever. In elementary school, they thought I had learning disabilities and they wanted me to get tested, you know, at the room down the hall. There was a special classroom for kids with learning disabilities.
Judd: Do you think your reading problems made you more visual?
Spike: Maybe. I mean, it does seem like directors often come to directing through either photography or writing and I was definitely more, you know, I liked writing. But as soon as I got to the magazine in California, I started focusing on photography because it was more exciting to me.
Judd: What were you getting paid?
Spike: Fifteen grand a year, and then I got a raise to eighteen grand a year.
Judd: That�s not bad.
Spike: That was amazing, actually. For back then, a kid right out of school? And I loved what I was doing. After a year I thought I was going to stay out here for another year and then go to school
Judd: This was your college.
Spike: This was my college. And I was around all these other really creative writers and photographers and interesting people. I would just watch them, watch how their minds worked, ask them all a million questions, and be inspired by them.
Judd: I had such a similar trajectory, because I came out to college and I knew I couldn�t afford it. There was this ticking clock. I only went for a year and a half but I knew from day one that my parents wouldn�t be able to afford it. I knew it could end any day. I got a job at school making burritos and I was making a little money trying to do stand-up comedy at night, but it dawned on me that no one in my family was obsessed with figuring out how we were going to pay for it. My whole family was happy when I dropped out. But when I was in high school I wrote for
Spike: From the time I was thirteen, I was so into the BMX and skate world�that was like the comedy world to me�but I kept thinking,
Judd: What did your parents think of you going deep into the BMX world?
Spike: My mom was very encouraging, I think, because she saw how excited I was about it.
Judd: She recognized that sense of fun.
Spike: Yeah, I think so. I think she trusted me. Looking back, I had a point of view about what things meant to me and she saw that. Like if you�re told that something should be taken seriously, you should try and figure out why before you take it seriously. I always wanted to know why before I believed something.
Judd: The thing I was thinking when you were talking was when we were young, there was no Internet. When I was interested in a subject�like, oh,
Spike: Yeah, but my mom was really encouraging in wanting me to work at this BMX shop in Rockville or to go on tour, or letting me move out to California. She was super-supportive of it. But, yeah, I�d be gone for three months on summer tour and she wouldn�t know where I was.
Judd: I would never think to do that in a million years. My daughter�s sixteen. The idea of shipping her out�But I did the same thing. I would just jump on the train and go to Poughkeepsie to interview Weird Al Yankovic. I didn�t know where I was. I used to go to the city by myself all the time when I was fifteen.
Spike: My dad lived in New York so I would go back and forth. I went to school a little bit in New York and, yeah, by the time I was ten, I was wandering around the city by myself all the time.
Judd: That�s when the city was dangerous.
Spike: We got mugged in Central Park. I�d get chased on my BMX bike. But also, going back to the idea of�one of the things I got from working in the bike shop and just being a part of skateboarding in general is that everything�and I would have never known this intellectually at the time�but in skateboarding, the city is a playground. The city is for you to reinvent. You�re looking at it in a different way than everybody else is. You�re looking at handrails in a different way. The things that people might sit on to have lunch, the ledges, you�re looking at what you can do, tricks you can do or lines you can do and everything is to be invented.
Judd: Is skateboard culture progressive? Because it seems like there are so many artists that come out of it. Like, I love Mike Mills. There�s so many others, too�Templeton and all of the
Spike: There�s no one way to do skateboarding. It is athletic but it is also really creative. It�s a very individual, individual-minded thing. And especially in the eighties or early nineties, when it wasn�t that popular. It wasn�t on TV. It didn�t have the X Games. We didn�t have skate parks. You had to go out of your way to be a part of it.
Judd: No tennis player or baseball player has ever directed a good movie. I mean, it is interesting when you think about how many filmmakers and artists come out of skateboard culture and zero come out of football, baseball, tennis, soccer. It�s not part of any other sport.
Spike: I think it�s�there�s a number of things. One is that you�re not told how to skate. In other sports, somebody�s telling you: �This is the way to do things.� There�s a discipline to it. In skateboarding, you create your own discipline. You�re in a bank parking lot with your friends at night and you keep throwing yourself down a set of stairs trying to land a trick. Your friends are skating, too, and you are all supporting each other, but you keep slamming and getting up because you want that feeling of mastering it and rolling away. There�s no coach. Also, and this is in other sports, too, when you�re trying to land a trick, the methodology of getting that�it�s like this sort of OCD thing, where you�re getting closer and closer every time you flick the board. The way you�re sort of visualizing your body doing it. I remember being about seventeen or eighteen and there was this kid Matt Hoffman, who is this amazing BMXer. We are great friends and used to travel together and shoot photos a lot. He�s probably one of the most notable BMX guys. He invented so much. He was the first guy to ever think of building a mega-ramp and almost killed himself learning to ride it. He told me about the idea of visualizing a trick and he never read it anywhere, he just discovered it. He realized that he had to start picturing in his head what he was going to do because he was inventing stuff that no one had ever done. Once you see somebody else do it, you can do it. But if no one�s ever done it before, you don�t know it can be done. You have to do it in your head and
Judd: That�s like thinking you can do a video with a man running on fire that�s shot in twelve seconds and then slow it down and that�s a video. That�s visualizing something that hasn�t been done before.
Spike: We never asked permission.
Judd: Studios today are in a weird position because they want to do the thing that will make the most money but they also know that they need innovation and they have to have something new and exciting for the audience to get them into the theaters.
Spike: And they have a fiscal responsibility to the people giving
Judd: They thought you were going to do
Spike: Yeah, maybe.
Judd: And when did they find out that they weren�t getting
Spike: About ten months after we shot, I showed them a rough cut, and that�s when they were like,
Judd: When you were making it, did you think, like,
Spike: I want the studio to make their money back and I want to be able to make movies in the future. And when I�m making a movie, I want to be responsible and listen to the concerns of the people who gave me the money. But at a certain point, I have to put that all out of my mind because it�s not the responsibility of that movie. That movie�s responsibility is to be true to itself. If I don�t get to make another movie, I�ll make something else. I�ll make a movie for a million dollars. I�ll go write a short story. I�ll go write a book. I believe that. I mean, if I�m put to the test, I hope it�s true. I hope it�s not just a romantic idea.
Judd: That approach frees you up to be as creative as possible because you�re not completely reliant on Hollywood or the studio system to keep you working.
Spike: With
Judd: They all wanted their say?
Spike: They were all nervous about�
Judd: Isn�t that the worst, when you can sense that jobs are on the line? I�ve made movies and then the next year people have been fired and it�s not necessarily
Spike: I feel like even if they�re going to lose their jobs they can�t possibly care about the movie as much as I do. And they can�t possibly go to the lengths that I�ll go to protect it. With every film, I�m so grateful that they made my movie and I will extend myself to keep the conversation open and hear their thoughts. But with
Judd: It takes a long time to find the people who get what you do. The first half of my career, I was always at war with people. We would fight and scream and curse and cry and I was a terror because people didn�t understand what I was trying to do. They were so mad at me, like I was letting them down. Because
Spike: We�ve been lucky for sure.
Judd: They do the math: Okay, it cost us a hundred, it needs to gross three hundred.
Spike: And it�s a weird movie. Some people find it very sad and strange or dark and that doesn�t feel like a �family film.�
Judd: It�s a remarkable movie, but it�s so daring. When I watch it, I think,
Spike: There are people who like it and people who don�t like it. I don�t even know how to judge that kind of thing. I just know it�s true to what I set out to make, and it feels dangerous in the way I promised Maurice Sendak it would feel. When I first started talking to him about the movie, it always scared me because I loved the book and I didn�t want to fuck it up and I didn�t know what I could possibly add to it. And then I finally had the idea of what I�d add to it, which is: Who
Judd: With a movie like
Spike: The thing I�m realizing is that I just don�t start to make another movie until I feel clean again from the last one.
Judd: That can mean years in between.
Spike: I took a while after
Judd: Because you do get a kind of post-traumatic stress from making these movies.
Spike: It maybe seems obnoxious to say that, but it�s true.
Judd: I think it�s because you�re so vulnerable. You put so much of your heart into it and some people are deeply moved and touched, and other people could give a fuck. Twitter is a funny expression of that. You can get so much praise and then just someone�s just like, �This was forty minutes too long.� You know.
Spike: It�s like, �Meh.� (
Judd: So you decided to make a movie about a guy who wants to fuck a computer. Am I going to get to work again? (
Spike: I love the story of Louis C.K. I love the story of him finding his voice when he�s thirty-five and, like, and a lot of it having to do with his kids, having kids, and�
Judd: Just realizing that�s interesting. See, I never thought I was interesting. I stopped doing stand-up because I thought,
Spike: And when did that change?
Judd: My Maurice Sendak moment happened with Warren Zevon. I wrote a movie with Owen Wilson in the late nineties and I went to meet with Warren Zevon about scoring it. I was talking about handing it in to the studio and being anxious about getting their notes. And he looked at me like I was crazy for even getting notes, or wanting notes, or caring about what the notes would say. He�s like, �What do you care what they say? That�s not what this is about.� And then I just clicked in, like:
Spike: It�s so complicated. There�s so many thoughts and feelings I have about all that. One of which is maybe slightly defensive. Which is: I feel like
Judd: There�s something about being alone in the woods.
Spike: Yeah, so now that I�ve been defensive, I�ll answer your question. I think
Judd: What do you think people took from
Spike: Um, what�I�m not sure�.I think to answer that question honestly makes me anxious because I�m still recovering from six months of talking about that movie. Maybe I�m a bit fried right now since it�s still fresh. It took a lot out of me. But to be clear, I�m so grateful for the response it got, the reception it got. And grateful that I get to make movies and that anyone is interested in talking to me about it in the first place. But it�s also complicated just because of how
Judd: The experience of making movies is�if you do work that�s personal, you�re putting yourself out there in a way that people don�t understand. They really don�t. I made a movie with my family and it was made up, but it did cut to the core of everything we�re debating and worried about and thinking about. And it takes years to recover.
Spike: Yeah. I feel ridiculous to complain about it but I�m just giving myself time to recuperate. Making a movie takes so much out of you, but it also gives you so much. When I lock picture�it�s like a relationship ending, and there�s something bittersweet about it, too. It�s a love relationship in one way, in terms of negotiating what you need from it, and what it needs from you. It�s also a parent relationship, in that you can�t need too much from it. You have to give to it unconditionally and you have to allow it to be who it is�not to put your needs on it. And then you let it go�it graduates high school and you send it off into the world; you�ve done everything you can do. When I finished
Judd: It�s deeply sad that it ends. If I think about anything I�ve done�when we made
Spike: I don�t know what to say.
Judd: Am I in the ballpark of what you were exploring?
Spike: For sure, for sure. You know, relationships are so infinitely complicated. And I think that intimacy is equally so�.I was trying to write about all of that, trying to write about it in as complicated a way as I knew how at this time in my life. As you said earlier, every day we�re in a different mood and see things differently. And our emotions are so completely convincing to us, so I tried to write about all the confusion of that�but also the way we believe things so truly�the way, there�s the moment, you know, where Joaquin is talking about how he is never going to feel anything new again. And he believes it so convincingly and then, the next day, he�s believing something totally new. And feeling that with complete conviction that that is true, too. Luckily, we have these irrational emotions, emotions that make life large and�it�s just not like this series of rational decisions and logic. It�s the magic of it and the poetry of life. I don�t know. You saying that definitely moves me. When you�re talking about the idea of loving your ex, and being able to hold on to that amidst all the other feelings of being heartbroken or sad or missing something that�s gone�something dies when a relationship ends. It is a death because that thing that was the two of you together was alive and now it won�t be and the only two people who really knew that thing that was alive are the two of you. No one else knows.
Judd: I think about my girlfriend from high school and all of our dreams at the time and I almost�You know, a lot of times I�m tempted to reach out to her but I don�t because it�s almost, it�s so
Spike: Yes, every movie, I�m working stuff out.
Judd: Joaquin Phoenix is so amazing in
Spike: So many times I felt,
Judd: In the writers� room on
Spike: Or you are really lucky if they�re a genius and easy to direct, like Meryl Streep or Rooney Mara. They are easy and amazing and they work in a different way. I don�t even understand it. Somehow they are both emotionally in tune, totally real in the smallest moments and completely directable and able to make the smallest or biggest adjustment from take to take.
Judd: It�s not pure pain. But some of those pure pain people are remarkable.
Spike: Like Gandolfini. He was so raw. It was so exciting to work with him, but it was intense, too. Scary even, because he would get so upset at himself if he did something that felt false. But what he gave me and that character and the movie was a piece of himself. He breathed his life into the film with all his heart and pain and sensitivity. I loved that man.
Judd: Do you ever think, like, you�re like the guy in the BMX shop, for so many people? That they look at you as somebody who doesn�t follow the rules and lives in this fully creative world and does things differently, and promotes �newness�?
Spike: I�d be flattered if I was.
Judd: Was Maurice Sendak like that as well?
Spike: For me, for sure. He�s a real artist. And to be able to have the kind of friendship and collaboration I had with him was like�you know, a gift for life. He�s somebody who�s unafraid to be honest in all its messiness. The same thing with Charlie Kaufman. Being friends with Charlie and being able to work with Charlie is hugely inspiring.
Judd: It�s like you continue to find that person. When you think of Maurice Sendak, is there a thought or philosophy that immediately comes to mind?
Spike: I met him when I was twenty-six and we worked on a movie that didn�t end up happening. And at that point, I really don�t think I understood what being an artist meant. He would talk about it often and I would nod. And over the years, we stayed in touch, we stayed close, but it wasn�t until the third time he offered me the book that I had the idea I was talking about earlier. I was like thirty-three, and that�s when we started working together. And we became close. I just think he was an artist till the day he died. I think now I know what that means in terms of living honestly and creating honestly. Actually, Maurice and Charlie remind me of each other. They�re very similar people in terms of their willingness to throw down against anything they think is bullshit. They are not careerists; they are making what they are making because they have to. Out of all the people that have influenced me, those guys are two of the biggest.
Judd: What about something like
Spike: Similarly. I mean, funnily enough, the two guys�so it�s me and Johnny Knoxville and Jeff Tremaine that created the show and later the movie, and we are really close, too. I met Knoxville in my early twenties out here in L.A. when we were both figuring out what we were doing. And Jeff I�ve known since I was twelve. Jeff introduced me to the Ramones, took me to my first hard-core shows in D.C. He was two years older than me. And when he was sixteen, he had a car and we�d build ramps together and skate.
Judd: He sounds like the coolest guy in the world.
Spike: He was cool. Oh, Jeff was cool.
Judd: You�re twelve and have a cool fourteen-year-old who showed you all of that stuff. That�s a big deal.
Spike: And then I helped Jeff get his first jobs out here. One of them was at the skate magazine where I was working,
Judd: Is that where they did the first Johnny Knoxville getting shot?
Spike: Yeah, it was all through the
Judd: A professional extra?
Spike: And he also landed a Taco Bell commercial. And he was like, �I got a Taco Bell commercial!� We were all in our mid-twenties and I introduced Jeff to Knoxville and they started doing stuff for the
Judd: For your own safety?
Spike: No, we did what we wanted to do. We also felt like MTV wasn�t really promoting it that much because they were so nervous about it. They were really into it because it was so successful but they were also nervous about it and getting shit for it. And it just felt right to end it. We ended it on a high.
Judd: What was the criticism? That it was bad for our culture?
Spike: I mean, yeah. It was the downfall of Western civilization.
Judd: It wasn�t just that it was something that kids have done forever.
Spike: Certain age groups would view it as nihilistic. So anyways, we ended up canceling it. But they didn�t want us to cancel it, obviously. So we said, �What if we do a movie as our last episode?� The movie was so fun and we had such a blast doing it.
Judd: What a great fraternity of people that is. The camaraderie of it.
Spike: We�ve been through life together. We�ve done so much together now. I�ve known Jeff for over thirty years. That�s crazy. I�ve known Knoxville for twenty years, and a lot of the guys�we�ve been through it together. And we have a lot of it on tape, too.
Judd: It may be the funniest thing ever. I remember watching a little bit of it with my daughter�and she was too young to watch it. I was surprised at how dirty it is. But I couldn�t resist showing it to her. I don�t know if she was nine or ten at the time, but I�d fast-forward past anything bad. The next thing I know, someone�s balls are on the screen and she�s laughing as hard as I�ve ever seen her laugh in my life. I mean it just brings such joy to people. When you watch it, you think:
Spike: We just stumbled on it. I don�t think we had any idea.
Judd: It makes you feel like you�re fifteen again. The friendship and craziness and that tension before they do crazy things�it�s that nervous energy that really brings you back to middle school. In the best possible way.
Spike: That�s what it�s like when we�re out there, feeling it. We are laughing. We are laughing more than anybody else. We just think it�s the funniest thing in the world. You can�t force that kind of chemistry, and we�re very protective of that. We only do it if it feels right. It was fun to do the last one,
Judd: I watched that with my eleven-year-old. I was like,
Spike: That�s so sweet.
Judd: That�s how life works in our house.
Sometimes I would watch
Stephen Colbert is so funny, and such a nimble and versatile comedian, but he also seems to be a spiritual man who has found a measure of true happiness. That�s something I don�t understand at all, so I was thrilled to get the chance to ask him how this happy-funny combination is possible, with the small hope that he would say something that would change my life forever. I think he did say it at one point, and I intend to have it printed on a plaque that I can put on my refrigerator. I can�t remember what it was, though, because I was too pissed off to hear it.
Judd Apatow: It�s hard to believe you�re in the final few weeks of your show. Is it tough to focus on making this last run great when you have this giant new thing looming?
Stephen Colbert: It is. When you do a hundred and sixty shows a year, it�s really hard to produce that much material. As I used to say, �All I want to do is eighty hours of comedy this year that I wouldn�t mind my friends seeing.�
Judd: (
Stephen: This year I�m just working on an eighty-hour comedy project. That�s it. Listen, before I knew how horrible it would be, the strike in 2007 sounded like a great idea.
Judd: Are you burned out?
Stephen: I�m not, really. I�m not burned out�people may be reading this book centuries from now, so I�ll have to remind them that I play a character on my show, and he�s modeled on punditry, and I no longer respect my model. That�s my problem. Regardless of whether I was moving on to something else after this show, I don�t know if I could have done it much longer, because you have to be invested in your model. And I really am not. I can�t watch that stuff anymore. That�s what burns me out, not the grind. I
Judd: Yeah.
Stephen: And that�s part of the skill, to be able to coalesce and synthesize everything into a single mouth. So, I don�t mind that. That doesn�t burn me out. But now that I only have ten shows left, everything is harder. It�s harder to only have ten left, because the way you prepare for a hundred and sixty shows is to build this enormous machine that is constantly firing information or jokes or script ideas that you�re collecting as you go along: That one will work, that one will work, that one will work, throw that one away. And then you sweep them into a pile and say, �What does that mean? What are those about?� And then you go, �Oh,
Judd: And sometimes the speed of things and the sense of it never ending is what keeps you from feeling nervous.
Stephen: Exactly. And when you have a certain number of shows left, you get afraid that, right at the end of the race, you�re going to drop the baby.
Judd: It seems like people in this position respond differently. Like, when Conan O�Brien was getting canceled at
Stephen: He seemed very free.
Judd: The rage fired him up.
Stephen: Yeah.
Judd: It�s like you�re in a David Chase situation right now. You�re ending
Stephen: (
Judd: Looking back, what was the main input for the show: the comedy or the politics?
Stephen: I once had a teacher who would say, �Write what you know, and write what you are interested in.� I also had an improv teacher who said the first thing you are emotional about onstage is what the scene is about. So, regardless of what it is, you have to follow that rabbit hole. That�s where you�ll make your discoveries. I am an actor who became a comedian, and I wanted to do something with the skill set that I established; someone who was an actor who became an improviser, and through improvisation, learned dramatic structure and applied that to comedic scenes and sketch comedy�and then, for some weird reason, got hired by
Judd: (
Stephen: I look like the Man. I look like a very hegemonic figure. So, I said,
Judd: I�ve realized that later in life, too. For a long time, I thought getting into comedy was an unhealthy choice. Only recently did I begin to think it�s a healthy choice.
Stephen: Yeah, exactly. To me, it was. It�s almost like committing myself to flossing and exercise. I don�t really want to do anything other than comedy, and so did we talk about things that mattered to me? Did we occasionally invest our scripts with a satirical meaning that was overt? Yes. But, it�s always comedy first. Because that�s what I love. That�s what keeps me going and alive.
Judd: When did that kick in for you, comedy as a point of view, as a way of dealing with life?
Stephen: I don�t know if there was necessarily a moment. I remember when I was younger�I knew a guy, a great improviser, and I�m not going to name his name because of the advice he�s about to give in this little story. He said, �You have to see the world differently than the audience does.� Like, you have to put yourself in a state where you see the world differently than the audience does, because then you will surprise them with your choices. Comedy is all about surprising the audience with your choices. It might be something that is familiar to them, but they�re surprised you�re willing to say it. He said, �If you have to do heroin, do heroin. I would recommend you do heroin.�
Judd: Okay. (
Stephen: But also, when I was a kid, we had a tragedy in my family. My father and two of my brothers, Peter and Paul, the two closest in age to me, died in a plane crash. I was ten years old, and my mother, who had always been a very religious person�not overtly related to their death�would say to me�if anything was wrong with my life, if anything was going wrong�she would say, �Look at this in the light of eternity. What is this in the light of eternity?� In other words, don�t worry about this little thing.
Judd: Yeah.
Stephen: And that light of eternity is another way of looking at everything. See it in the light of eternity. Don�t see this as your momentary worry. So, that helped me not worry, and because my father and brothers had died, what could worry you more than that? From that point on, I never worked in school again. I maybe did my homework six times from age ten to eighteen.
Judd: Wow.
Stephen: I barely graduated. I just read a lot of books, so I incidentally learned enough to bullshit by. There was no threat that anyone could hold over me. Nothing seemed important. So that made me think differently about almost everything that normally happened to a child. What are you going to threaten me with? What could a teacher possibly threaten me with?
Judd: Your mom sounds wonderful.
Stephen: She was a lovely lady.
Judd: It�s a great piece of wisdom, and her strength must have been ridiculous to be able to communicate that to you in a way that it landed. Because some kids�their parents would look at the big picture and then go take drugs and disappear.
Stephen: Well, I did take drugs.
Judd: (
Stephen: But my mom was not bitter. She did not become a bitter person. She had an excuse to be, and she did not. She stayed grateful for life. And her example kept me from�I was a broken kid, don�t get me wrong, but I did not compound that by feeling guilty about not doing work, which is actually beside the point. The real point is it forced me to look at the world differently because, suddenly, the value system of checks and balances against the young mind did not mean anything to me anymore.
Judd: I can sense that spirit in your work. I noticed it when you performed for George Bush at the White House Correspondents� Dinner in 2006, that level of confidence and not caring. I don�t think many people have that. I watched Leno do it once and he looked exhausted and nervous, and he had a rough set. Actually, what made me laugh the most is that he had to sit next to the first lady for like two hours before he had to do his set, and it was fun to watch them run out of things to talk about.
Stephen: I sat next to Helen Thomas. And she said, �So, are you going to do
Judd: (
Stephen: And she goes, �How did you like the party beforehand?� Because there�s this big party beforehand, with the president, a few cabinet members, heads of news organizations, and maybe the Super Bowl quarterback, you know.
Judd: Yeah.
Stephen: And my mom, who loved the president, was there, with my brothers and sister. And Helen Thomas says, �Did you like the party?� I say, �I liked that party, yeah. It was nice. My mom had a good time.� And she said, �Now, after that party, are you going to do all of your jokes? Because that�s a smart party. There�s a lot of people�I�ve sat next to a lot of comedians who are cowed by that party.�
Judd: Oh, wow.
Stephen: Because you�re there, you�re being chummy with the guy you�re going to be making fun of. So I say, �Oh, yeah, I know what that means, but I think I can do it because
Judd: I�ve always thought there should be a documentary about that performance.
Stephen: Well, there�s a lot to talk about.
Judd: Looking back on it, after 9/11, everyone was afraid to say the president didn�t know what he was doing or was making terrible mistakes. And that felt like the first time that someone said, �Oh, by the way, this guy might not know what the fuck he�s doing at all.�
Stephen: I wouldn�t say I was the first person to do it, because Jon certainly was doing it on his show.
Judd: But not to his face.
Stephen: Well, you don�t get an opportunity to do that very often.
Judd: Yeah.
Stephen: You know, there�s a woman I get my coffee from every morning. She is not a native to our country, she wasn�t born here. And she said to me the week of that dinner, she said, �Stephen, you look so tired, why do you look so tired?� I go, �Well, Anna, I been working late after the show. I�m writing a script to get ready for the Correspondents� Dinner. I�m going to perform for the president.� She said, �You perform in front of the president?� I said, �Yeah, I�ll be like five feet from him.� She goes, �But you�re a satirist. You�re a critic. You�re going to do your jokes right next to him?� And I said, �Yeah.� She took my face in her hands and said, �This is a good country.�
Judd: Did you have a sense of the importance of the moment
Stephen: Oh, no. Hell no. I knew what it was. I was thrilled to do it, because I knew I�d never be�I knew I�d never get this shot again. I just wanted to get to the next joke and the next joke and the next joke.
Judd: Yeah.
Stephen: I did ten minutes on the president and I did ten minutes on the press, too, which people forget. The last ten minutes were on the people in the room. And it was�there was something you were talking about earlier that made me think of the story about the party beforehand. Oh, I know what it was: It was feeling nervous sitting next to the first lady before you go in.
Judd: Right.
Stephen: After Helen Thomas asked me if I was going to do all my jokes, she looks down the table and the president is sitting there with his cards, about to go up and do his bit. And she goes, �He�s going over his cards, too.�
Judd: (
Stephen: I said, �Oh, Helen, I can�t look at him right now.� And she goes, �Why not?� And I said, �Because he can�t be a person. He has to be his ideas.� He has to be his policies. I feel for another performer, but he has to be the object�he has to represent his policies and the actions of the administrations for these jokes to come out of my mouth. I can�t make a joke about a guy worried about his bit at a banquet.
Judd: When you did the routine, were you registering the reaction from him or the first lady?
Stephen: No, no. I know I�ve said this to some people before, but C-SPAN is not an entertainment company, and they don�t mic the room. So, what you didn�t know, if you watched at home, was that a lot of material was landing.
Judd: Yeah.
Stephen: It just wasn�t landing for the people on the dais, or the people in the front row, who were all from the news organizations who need to not piss off the people on the dais. But, you know, as a comedian, if a thousand people are laughing, that sounds like a lot of people. That sounds like bacon frying. It�s a big crowd. There were three thousand people in that room, so if a thousand of them laughed, it still felt like a great response.
Judd: Yeah.
Stephen: So, I did not feel like I was grinding my way through the indifference of a hostile audience. I didn�t think I was throwing Molotov cocktails. And that wasn�t my intention, either. I was there to do jokes, just like I did them on the show. I didn�t do anything different there than I did on the show.
Judd: What�s fun is that now you�ll probably end up talking to the president about it at some point, because it�s inevitable he will be a guest on your new show.
Stephen: I don�t know about that. Nothing�s inevitable. I would like it, though. I wrote him a letter afterwards saying I hope he enjoyed it, it was an honor. Maybe he burned it.
Judd: What is your sense of how Republicans and Democrats feel about your show?
Stephen: I mean, it has been hard to get Republican politicians to come on the show. But I saw this study once many years ago, from Ohio State University, the graduate program there. They did a study of self-identified conservatives and self-identified liberals, and they got a group that self-identified in those categories, and that also both sides identified as fans of the show, and they had them watch the same video, then they said, �What do you think his actual political position is here?� Democrats believed that I was a liberal or liberals believed I was a liberal pretending to be a conservative, and conservatives who enjoyed the show tended to think that I was a conservative pretending to be a liberal pretending to be a conservative.
Judd: (
Stephen: And I don�t really want to correct either side, because there are times I agree with my character. And I really don�t want the audience to know when I do. I love that, man. That�s the triple gainer. I purposefully jumped over the line a lot at the beginning of the show so people would be confused.
Judd: Is it strange for you, as a comedy person and an improviser, to be tossed into the center of public political life, and to be surrounded by the players�
Stephen: That was the point of it. The whole point of it was to do that. Jon Stewart used to say when we were over there, �We�re the kids in the back of the class shooting spitballs, you know?�
Judd: Yeah.
Stephen: And I wanted to be the spitball. I remember when I ran for president for the first time in South Carolina, people�people who have known me for years and really understand me�would call me up and say, �Listen, you got to help me out here. I am trying to deal with people who are freaking out about this. Is this real or is this a joke?�
Judd: (
Stephen: And that�s the first time I realized what I really liked about this. If it wasn�t real, it wouldn�t be a joke. Or it wouldn�t be a joke I�d want to do.
Judd: Yes.
Stephen: I wanted to do it to see what it was really like, because when I really ran, I really had to deal with federal election law. I really had lawyers up my ass. I really had to find out, like, Wait, I can actually be sponsored by Doritos? Okay, my candidacy can be sponsored by Doritos, but I can�t actually talk about Doritos when I talk about my candidacy? Or I can eat Doritos that I bought myself, but I can�t eat Doritos that Doritos gave me? Or, like, when I actually formed a super PAC, or sponsored the Olympics, or testified before Congress, or held a rally with Jon on the Mall, or�We always say here that we can make jokes about anything. Where do we point the gun?
Judd: Yeah.
Stephen: The hard part is deciding what�s worth shooting.
Judd: How much money did you raise?
Stephen: Over a million dollars. Significantly over.
Judd: Why do you think people gave you money?
Stephen: They wanted to play the game. We established this lovely relationship with our audience where�early on, we called them the Colbert Nation, okay? �I�ve got to watch where I point this thing, okay? You people are powerful, I�m your leader. We�re going to change things. We�re going to make the world a better place.� I said that on the first night, and I started calling them the Nation. Well, what we didn�t realize is our audience was accepting our initiation that they were a character in the show. And that super PAC was the ultimate game they played with us. We went and held rallies. We raised money. We ran commercials. We got in trouble. We said, �You give us the gun and we�ll go fuck shit up. We�ll start shooting it in ways that are both legal and unethical.�
Judd: (
Stephen: And our audience enjoyed being in a little gang. That�s a fun thing. We all had a place. There was an intimacy that I would never want to lose again. I know that�s possible now, and I never want to lose it.
Judd: Were you thinking about winding down the show before the offer to do the talk show came in?
Stephen: Yes. As I said earlier, I was sick of the model. And I realized:
Judd: What are your thoughts about switching to something that is just transparently your personality�and about, on some level, sincerity?
Stephen: We shall see, Judd Apatow. We shall see.
Judd: Were you a fanatical Letterman fan?
Stephen: Yeah, yeah. I mean, I am the ur-audience. His show started in �82, the year I started college. Dave was it. Johnny was great, I loved Johnny. I�m the youngest of eleven children, and my elder sisters would wake me up to watch Carson with them because they didn�t want to watch it alone. I would be like a toddler watching Carson with them, but Dave�Dave was like us. Dave was stupid. And I loved it. His disrespect was to his own form.
Judd: I was completely obsessed with Letterman, too. When I was in college, I�this is a terrible story. I haven�t told it in a long time, but I sent a letter to every single staff member at
Stephen: Oh my God. You know, I was offered a
Judd: And you didn�t take it?
Stephen: My girlfriend my senior year of college�she was coming out to New York and I came with her. She was interviewing for an internship at
Judd: Did the breakup soon follow?
Stephen: We did not last the summer. But I turned the job down, because I was like, �What? You don�t pay? How can I go to New York and not�what? What do you mean I move to New York and you don�t pay me? What do I do, live in a trash barrel?�
Judd: See, I would have lived in the trash barrel.
Stephen: It would have been fun, but again, it wasn�t on my radar.
Judd: And when did you�just so I understand the trajectory a little bit, you were attempting serious theater at this point?
Stephen: Yeah, I was studying at Northwestern University�s theater program, and you know, I was doing Stanislavski and Meisner and I was sharing my pain with everyone around me�it was therapy as much as it was anything. I met a guy there who said, �Hey, have you ever seen comedy improv?� I said no. He said, �Well, I�m going down to see these guys in Chicago do something called
Judd: Yeah.
Stephen: And I went and saw people improvise one-act plays based on a single word, and I was immediately hooked. I went, �I don�t know what that is, but I have to do it. I have to get onstage and perform extemporaneously with other people.� I loved the ensemble feel of it. I continued to do straight theater, kind of avant-garde black box kind of theater, but I was getting paid to do comedy. And then realized I really like it actually. I really love these people. I met Amy Sedaris and Paul Dinello at Second City. They changed my life. If I hadn�t met Paul and Amy, I don�t think I would have gone into comedy. They became my family.
Judd: But before that, you didn�t think,
Stephen: I didn�t know what it meant to do comedy in high school. I didn�t even perform until I was a senior.
Judd: Wow.
Stephen: On anything. I was just a kid in the back of the room, you know?
Judd: Let me just switch topics here. The one time I was a guest on your show, which I enjoyed a great deal�
Stephen: I�m glad to hear that. You came on pretty early, when we hadn�t had many entertainment figures on. I wasn�t sure how to adjust. I�m glad you had a good time, because I was very nervous to have you on.
Judd: The background of it is very strange, which is, I was in the car on the way to the show, and my mom, who has since passed away, called me right as I�m pulling up to the studio, to tell me that her chemotherapy didn�t work. It felt like I had just been told that she was going to die.
Stephen: Oh God.
Judd: Then I had to get out of the car and do
Stephen: I�m so sorry.
Judd: It was an out-of-body experience.
Stephen: I have performed after someone I love died. Like finding out moments before and having to walk onstage. It�s possible.
Judd: Oh, it is. I actually felt I did much better as a result of it because it freed me up to not be nervous and roll with it. It was actually a great thing to do, and you were so nice and came into the dressing room beforehand and said, �Okay, I�m about to be really awful to you. Enjoy yourself!� It�s one of my strangest showbiz moments.
Stephen: I can imagine.
Judd: I need to look back and look at it.
Stephen: Twice I have performed having just found out that someone I loved passed away, and I had to go on immediately, and I can�t watch�I haven�t watched either one of them and it�s been many years. I just can�t bring myself to watch whoever that guy was that got through it.
Judd: And in the middle of all this�
Stephen: I just know that nobody knew. I also said to everybody, �It�s important that no one knows this happened. I don�t want to be a brave person, I just got to do my job.�
Judd: That�s why I didn�t tell you.
Stephen: I�m glad you didn�t. I probably would have burst into tears and threw my arms around you.
Steve Allen was the first interview I ever did. We met at the St. Regis hotel, in New York City. I had no idea what I was doing. He was someone I had seen on numerous talk shows, and I had a sense that he was somehow integral to the history of television and, more specifically, late-night comedy. He didn�t have to be kind to me, a pimply kid with a tape recorder, but he was. He sat there for an hour, in his suit and tie, answering all my questions in great detail and with total respect. I remember thinking,
I was too young to know much about his show, beyond some clips I�d seen on TV, but I was aware that many of the things I loved about
Judd Apatow: So what is the point of rereleasing these old comedy albums?
Steve Allen: None of your business, Judd. I can�t go around telling every Jack, Tom, and Harry what I�m up to. It�s for me to know and you to find out. Ha, ha, ha. The point of rereleasing these records, Judd, is to make a bundle. I used to be in the laundry business and I miss all that bundle making. No, I�ll tell you why: It�s a public service. We did the albums originally�well, I did the calls on the air, back in �62, �63, �64�and the albums were big hits at that point.
Judd: Do you have a lot of other albums?
Steve: I haven�t done many comedy albums over the years. There was, besides
Judd: One thing I noticed about the albums was, when I listened to them�I have to say that I went home one night and listened to both of them straight through and I was up till four in the morning because I was wide awake from laughing�
Steve: (
Judd: I was up, hysterical. And the thing that I noticed was that the laughter in the background�I never hear laughter like that on TV, ever.
Steve: Yeah. That�s a very important thing you put your finger on. It has nothing to do with me, because on some of the calls I hardly make any contribution at all. Jerry Lewis was ninety-eight percent of the funniness there. But you�re absolutely right. There was something about television comedy in those days. The laughter was fresh and genuine and real and warm. Those shows were never sweetened. That started with
Judd: The thing I noticed was that everything you did,
Steve: Yeah, that�s it. First of all, it was new to the audience. They hadn�t seen it fifty-seven times. Whereas now�in a talk show or a comedy talk show setting, it�s really quite difficult to do anything totally unlike stuff that�s been done before. It�s not that I�m so much more creative than any of the other guys. It�s just that I had the good fortune to do it first. But at the moment, I can�t think of any feature of those shows which was not originated on one of our early shows.
Judd: Right now, most shows on TV are formulized. Johnny Carson comes on, does his monologue, does a skit or his little thing, and interviews three people. There�s nothing like what you were doing. Do you think they could reproduce what you did today?
Steve: I don�t think most people could, no. I don�t say that in any conceited sense. It�s just that I prefer to work loose. In the case of Johnny, it�s hard to criticize him personally on this, because he�s been there for twenty years. Why should he bother to be inventive now? It�d be as pointless as Bob Hope suddenly doing inventive things. It could hurt them, you know. But it would drive me nuts to do the same thing every night. I�m not saying I�m better or worse than they are, it�s just that I don�t work that way. For my own piece of mind, I had to do new stuff every night, and I learned very early in my career, even before I was working in television, that the biggest laughs in show business, for me, came the same way the biggest laughs in reality do: out of whatever the reality of a given exchange of a social situation is. One example that pops into my mind was back�oh, when was it? Forty-eight, let�s say. In addition to a regular late-night comedy and talk show I was doing in L.A., I was doing some evening network things for the CBS Radio Network. And right in the middle of a live show one evening, there was an ungodly noise, an annoying noise, just behind some closed doors at the back of the stage. And I knew it could be heard all around the country. I mean, what was this (
Judd: One of the things you originated was talking with the audience at the beginning of your show, which they do on other shows now. How did that come about?
Steve: I didn�t originate taking a hand mic into the audience. There were noncomic fellows who did that before me. Notably Tom Breneman and a fellow named Don McNeill. They were very popular on the radio in the mid-1940s chiefly. They were sort of genial masters of ceremonies. And sometimes Art Linkletter would go into the audience with some specific gimmick in mind. Like, let�s see who has the most outlandish thing in her purse. �All right, madam, will you stand up and open your purse? Oh, look here, it�s a dead mouse,� or whatever, you know. Except that�s a funny joke. They wouldn�t say that. They would just talk about whatever was really in the purse, and �Thank you, here�s fifty dollars� and sit down. So they had done that before. But I was the first comedian to do it.
Judd: And you had regular audience members that were there all the time.
Steve: I don�t know how that came about. I guess it was just that they were lonely people who had nothing much else in their lives and they could go to this party every night and have a few laughs and be given some recognition. I used to love to talk to the regulars, as they were called, on the old
Judd: Didn�t you turn one of your audience members into a movie reviewer?
Steve: His name was John Fisher. He was�I guess now we would call him a hyperkinetic personality. He talked sort of uncontrollably fast and effusively. He was an upstate farmer type. And I asked him one question when I first met him one night. It was something like, �Hello, sir, what�s your name?� And most people say, you know, �Charlie Feldman,� and just hang there. Which is really more sensible, because I only ask that, I didn�t ask for their serial number, you know. And he gave me about a nine-minute answer. He just couldn�t stop his mouth. �I�m John Fisher, and I live up in Solo, New York, and I have a potato farm up there and I just come to talk, because I seen the movies, the one with Clark Gable and Myrna Loy.� And he sort of reviewed the whole movie for us. Obviously that�s hysterically funny and I have nothing to do with it. He�s the one that�s getting the screams, did not know why he was getting laughs. So when he finally shut up, I said, �Well, John, that was a very interesting movie review, would you like to come back and join us from time to time?� He said, �Yeah, sure,� and gave me another six-minute answer. So we signed him up and we would get tickets to the new movies and he would go see them and come in and give us these dumb reviews of them. You know�it�s funny. And he never knew why it was funny.
Judd: And you used to do remotes from the street in the beginning of the show?
Steve: I�ve always loved the idea of getting cameras right out into the street. Sometimes I was out there with them, but more often I was not. More often I was just onstage looking at a television screen. So I could see what the cameras were seeing, and just saying, I hoped, funny things about them. And there again, people would say, �Boy, you were funny.� It was nice of them to say that but what often was funny was the situation. My contribution may have accounted for only, you know, fourteen percent of the funniness. Some years back, when Dick Cavett was doing his talk show on ABC, he took a week�s vacation and asked me to fill in for him, so I did. And we did the camera on the street every night and had tremendous luck. First of all, you see different things on the streets of New York than you do in Hollywood. And you have the advantage in New York that you�re generally right on some street. Whereas at NBC Burbank, if you open the back door, you just see part of the parking lot. In this case Dick was�I guess up at Forty-eighth Street. Anyway, one evening, we punched up the camera, just at random. And just in time to see one of those city trucks that hauls away illegally parked cars. It was a mystery thing and the whole audience went, Whoa boy, who�s going to get hauled away? So I was doing a play-by-play and the truck stopped right in front of the theater and the guy jumps out and, you know, does the thing with the hook and the chain, and suddenly from the balcony you see a guy say, �Oh no��it was his car that they were hooking the bumper up. I said, �Is that your car, sir?� And he said, �Yeah.� And I said, �Well, come on, run down!� And the band played chase music, and we had a shot of this poor guy running down from the top level of the balcony. And he runs out into the street, now he�s on camera and it�s like a silent movie and he�s pleading, you know. And the guy says, �No, it�s just my job.� He flicked his cigar all over him, and took his car away. Well, that was sad for him, but hysteria for the audience.
Judd: One thing I read was that they dressed you up as Superman in the street. And people just looked at you like you were just anybody and you just flew away and they didn�t even say anything.
Steve: That was when we were doing the talk show in the early sixties from Hollywood. We were opposite a crazy hangout for Hollywood eccentrics, an open-all-night place called the Hollywood Ranch Market. And we did our show late, so it was kind of a pretty zany neighborhood�perfect for our purposes. And I had done a number of Superman sketches over the years. Because anybody with glasses, dark hair, an old fedora, and a gray suit looks like Clark Kent. I never looked that much like Superman, but I did a great Clark Kent. However, as soon as I put on the Superman suit, it never seemed to fit trimly, it always looked like baggy underwear. So right away it was funny before I did anything. So I had the Superman suit and the Clark Kent attire over it. One night I ran out and the cameras were there and they had a phone booth set up across the street�you know, so I could change clothes like Superman. I ran in and I tried to change like I did in my dressing room, where I had plenty of room, but you don�t have much room in a phone booth. If you�re not Superman, it�s tough. I need a lot of elbow room. So I couldn�t get my pants off. I looked like a jerk. A man trying to take his pants off in a phone booth. At this point a guy walks by carrying a bag of groceries, coming out of a grocery store. So I say, �Hey, Mack, you got a minute?� He says, �What?� I say, �Can you give me a hand here?� He puts his bag down. He says, �What�s the problem?� I say, �I can�t get my pants down.� So I sit down on the little seat in the thing and I stick my legs out and this guy pulls my pants off for me. And then I stand up and I throw the hat off and now I�m dressed like Superman. I say, �Thanks a lot.� He says, �Don�t mention it,� and he walks away. Now, if that happened in Cleveland, the guy�d say, �Hey, what are you, some kind of a nut?� But in Hollywood and New York, they don�t even notice. Because they see craziness around them all the time.
Judd: They used to make you do those weird things all the time. I remember I saw one sketch where you were made into a human tea bag.
Steve: Yeah, they had a big�I don�t know where it came from�but they had this big plastic tank. See-through plastic. It was about maybe seven feet deep and six feet wide and four feet the other way. They filled it with warm water and then they attached about a hundred tea bags to my body, and so I made tea for the whole neighborhood. They would never let me know�by �they� I mean the production staff�exactly what was planned. Sometimes just at the last minute, you know, I�d have to find out because I would see what I was getting into. But whenever they could keep it from me, they would. Because they had discovered that I was much funnier if I did not know for sure what was going on. I would often have a hint that it would be messy. They would come to the dressing room and say, �Underdress.� So I would wear a pair of swimming trunks or a tight kind of a jockey short thing or something underneath. And sometimes they would say, �Wear one of your Hong Kong suits.� They meant, we don�t want one of your nice suits to get cream pie on it or dog food or mustard or whatever they were gonna hit me with. But beyond that, I did not know what the heck was up.
Judd: What do you consider the highlights of the show? Comedic highlights?
Steve: My weekly check was hysterical.
Judd: (
Steve: I don�t know. It was funny every night, actually. Just recently, I was listening to one particular show, because we�re putting together the comedy albums. And it�s remarkable how many of them hold up, if you can just hear them. Often, we�re just describing what�s going on. Once we had a woman�a nurse�come in from the blood bank and just take my blood. The point of it was to show how simple it is and that all of us should give blood. That�s not an inherently comic notion�certainly there�s nothing funny about giving blood. But when you do it in front of three or four hundred people, it somehow
Judd: What was it like having Lenny Bruce appear on the show?
Steve: Lenny was a brilliantly inventive and original comedian, as the world now does not have to be told. There was never any fear in my mind that he would say or do anything in poor taste, although at the time he was saying things that would�ve been construed as poor taste in a club. But he was very intelligent and we were friends, and he would�ve never done anything of that sort on the air. And in fact, he did not.
Judd: The last time he was on, didn�t they have to cut something out, something he was talking about?
Steve: I don�t know. Sometimes there would be discussions about production details, which did not come to my personal attention because I was usually busy enough the day of the show. What Lenny did do at the time�and nobody censored it because nobody knew what it meant�is a little routine about glue sniffing. This was probably the first time sniffing of glue was mentioned on a nationwide basis in the comic context. In fact, the nation as such knew nothing about that at the time. That there were just a few weird kids sniffing airplane glue. But anyway, Lenny did about four lines on that and nobody cut them out, because it would be like today somebody wrote a thing about spaghetti sniffing. You know nobody would cut that because they think,
Judd: What kind of man was he?
Steve: He was neurotic and self-destructive, but absolutely brilliant in his comedy. A true original. He was the first guy�first comedian, I should say�to speak the language of musicians. Which is now common. Even squares now say �hip� and �cool� and �I dig� and �you know, baby� and all that stuff. But in the thirties and forties only jazz musicians used that language. And Lenny was the first of the comedians to do so in his performing. He had sort of a musician�s sense of humor. It was very hip and courageous. He would discuss politics or religion or sex or social attitudes. And he was a true pioneer.
Judd: How do you choose the subjects for your books,
Steve: Very much at random. It�s all a matter of personal judgment. For the most part I write about people I personally think are funny. And that solves one problem, because the world does not need Steve Allen explaining why Joe Dokes is terrible when he does comedy. Therefore, when I write about somebody, it�s because I like their work and it�s very easy to make the appropriate compliments. There was one exception to that, but I did it only after the performer had died. He was a great performer, a great song-and-dance man. A very important figure on Broadway and in films, an old comedian of the 1920s and �30s named Eddie Cantor. In my opinion Eddie was a cute, likable, lively, vivacious personality. But I never thought he was terribly funny. So I took about twenty-seven pages to say that. But again, since he was already dead, I couldn�t hurt his feelings.
Judd: You did the same with John Belushi. That wasn�t very complimentary.
Steve: On the contrary. If you�ll reread it you�ll find it was highly complimentary. But it gave both the bright and dark sides of it.
Judd: You said other performers were a lot more talented.
Steve: I considered Aykroyd funnier, I considered Bill Murray funnier. I considered Chevy Chase funnier. But there are a lot of compliments for John in the chapter. But I could not avoid discussing John Belushi, simply because Belushi himself sort of forced that on the public consciousness. It was not anything particular in my own reaction to him. I�d already discovered that, although I could laugh at what was funny in his work. I liked a lot of what he did in the
I don�t think anybody has made me laugh longer or louder than Steve Martin. When I was young, I loved him without even understanding the premise of his act. I didn�t realize that he was poking fun at the self-importance of showbiz personalities, or the clich�s of comedy. There was this whole meta thing going on that was completely over my head. As a ten-year-old kid, I just thought he was insanely weird and funny, and I didn�t know why, and I didn�t want to know why, because it didn�t matter to me.
I can remember my dad bringing home Steve�s
As I entered middle school, my obsession with Steve Martin only deepened. I had a grandmother who lived in California, and when we would go visit her, I would beg her to drive by Steve Martin�s house. (Yes, I�d found out where he lived.) It was this solid white house with no windows. I imagined it as this bunker filled with light. I begged her to drive by not because I thought I would see him�although I badly wished that would happen�but because I just couldn�t believe there was a structure that actually contained him. It seemed impossible to believe he existed and was somebody you could talk to.
Then one day in the summer of 1980, as we drove by his house, I saw him standing there in his driveway. I can�t quite remember what he was doing; maybe he was washing his car, maybe he was raking leaves. All I know is I yelled for my grandmother to stop the car. My brother and I got out. I ran up to Steve and said, �Hey, can I get an autograph?� And he said, �No, I�m sorry, I don�t sign autographs at my house.� �Well,� I responded, �then can you sign it in the street?� (Which, looking back, was not a bad joke for a thirteen-year-old.) No, he said, sorry, he didn�t sign autographs at his house, because if he did, then everybody would walk up to his front door and ask for things and that wouldn�t be good. I did not understand this logic at the time. (I understand it today, however: If you knock on my door, even if you are from a charity, I will call local security.) I wasn�t done yet, though. I started begging him, �Please, please, I�m from out of town, I won�t tell anyone where you live, I�ll never bother you again�.� But he wouldn�t break. He smiled�and kept to his policy.
So I ran straight home and went to my room and wrote him a long, crazy letter, the spirit of which was: I have bought everything you�ve ever made, and you wouldn�t live in that house if it weren�t for people like me. And then I demanded an apology.
I went back to his house a few days later and slipped the letter into his mailbox. (Notice that I didn�t mail it, for that extra stalker touch. Yes, Steve: I know where you live.) I�m pretty sure it was several pages long.
About six months later, long after I stopped thinking about how I was wronged, I received a package in the mail, which contained two copies of
This story always gets a laugh, but to me, it�s more meaningful than that: This moment with Steve made me think I must have made him laugh, or he wouldn�t have gone through the trouble of sending me that book. And if I could make Steve Martin laugh, maybe I was funny enough to go into this comedy business I�d always dreamed about, after all.
Decades later, I met Steve Martin�formally, in a non-stalkish way�for the first time at a work-related meeting, to discuss a project he was kicking around. At the meeting, I was urged to tell that story, and so I did. When it was over, someone said to Steve, �Is that how you remember it?� And Steve responded, �Actually, I believe I was the one who knocked on Judd�s door.�
Judd Apatow: It takes a lot to get up onstage and perform. What drove you to try it?
Steve Martin: I didn�t even know what stand-up was in the beginning. I started off in magic so I liked the idea of performing onstage and stand-up�I kind of defaulted into it because, at some point, I realized the magic thing was a dead end and stand-up had a future. So I started to pare away the magic tricks. I fell into stand-up because it seemed like there was opportunity in it. It was the path of least resistance.
Judd: What about before that? When you were a teenager, did you just want to get out of the house and be in front of people? For me, my parents got divorced. And so, as a teenager, I thought,
Steve: I definitely wanted to get out of the house and I wanted to have a job. I don�t know why, but the idea of working at Disneyland�that was, you know, fantastic.
Judd: You lived near there, as a kid, right?
Steve: I lived two miles from there and I would ride my bike there. Two miles seemed like such a long way to a kid of ten.
Judd: You did it at ten? Wow, times have changed. Most people today won�t let their kids leave the driveway until they�re seventeen years old.
Steve: Yeah.
Judd: My parents never knew where I was. My whole childhood, they would have no idea how to find me, from after school until seven at night.
Steve: I had the same thing.
Judd: What did your parents do?
Steve: My dad was a Realtor, and my mom stayed home. She was fascinated with show business.
Judd: So you had one parent who was fascinated by show business, and the other who�
Steve: Oh, my dad wanted to be in show business, too.
Judd: What did he want to do?
Steve: He wanted to be an actor, but he gave it up for the family. He had to. He couldn�t earn money.
Judd: Did he actually attempt it?
Steve: Yeah. I have a photo somewhere of him in a play. He was very young. I also have a photo of him�a publicity photo�that I�m in with him. I was like four or five. I didn�t understand it as a kid. In the photo, the police are taking him away and I am the forlorn child.
Judd: My dad quietly wished that he had pursued a career in comedy, but he never said that to me. He only told me decades later. But there were always a lot of comedy albums around the house. I would put on one of your albums when we were driving somewhere�like, we would drive to South Carolina on vacation�and he didn�t mind if I kept playing it for five hours straight. He would laugh his ass off. But he never told me he was
Steve: I think there was an element of that. There was almost a condemnation of the type of material, the type of act it was, yeah.
Judd: Because it was the sixties and everything was changing?
Steve: Yeah, everything was changing out from under him.
Judd: Did he like any of the comedians that you were making fun of?
Steve: I don�t think he perceived what I did as parody. I think he just�you know, he was critical. The first time I did
Judd: That�s terrible show business advice. My dad, when my parents got divorced�and I�m just saying this because I think it�s so funny how men acted, pre-therapy and pre�the days of people talking about their feelings. When my parents got divorced, I lived with my dad. My mom moved out. And one day, he left out a book on the coffee table called
Steve: I had the same. My dad said to me once�and this was after I�d grown up: �I didn�t teach you about sex because you learn about that on the school yard.�
Judd: Oh, that�s funny. But what I found fascinating in
Steve: Yeah.
Judd: I was struck by that kind of commitment to healing or connecting. It�s difficult to do that.
Steve: Well, part of it is selfish. I didn�t want my parents to die and then have all this guilt, you know.
Judd: Their guilt or your guilt?
Steve: My guilt. You know, they raised me. And now I�m raising them. That�s what it is when they get older. You can�t just strand somebody.
Judd: When you were starting out in the early seventies, did you feel like you were a part of the comedy scene?
Steve: There wasn�t really a comedy scene.
Judd: What about when you were doing
Steve: I was always on the road, so I didn�t have that opportunity to feel like a part of
Judd: And then the other side won.
Steve: You can do that for a while, and then�
Judd: It seems like everyone has a kind of transitional moment in life. Adam Sandler and I tried to put it in
Steve: Did you ever do stand-up?
Judd: I did it from the time I was seventeen until I was twenty-three or twenty-four.
Steve: That�s a long time.
Judd: But then I stopped because I was getting a lot of writing offers and not a lot of performing offers. I just thought,
Steve: That�s the way I feel, too. I found it really hard to make a funny movie. Plus, in movies, the strikeout ratio is so against you.
Judd: But your ratio, when you write, is like one hundred percent. You haven�t written that many movies in the last ten years or so, but do you like the writing part of it?
Steve: It�s excruciating.
Judd: Did you stop because it was exhausting, or because you had a bad experience?
Steve: It�s just so frightening. The pain of it. And that first screening is so awful.
Judd: We just had a great screening of a movie, and the numbers were fantastic. And then someone at the studio called and sounded disappointed. That haunts you.
Steve: Yeah.
Judd: It�s like,
Steve: It�s like what Brian Grazer said to me once. He was giving me advice as an actor or as a deal maker or whatever. And he said, �Always be just a little bit disappointed.�
Judd: Albert Brooks told me the reason he doesn�t make more movies is not about the difficulty of writing the movie or making the movie, it�s about the release. He said, It�s so painful. The press, the response�
Steve: It�s hard.
Judd: But isn�t that also why it�s so fun, that uncertainty and pain? Is that what you feel when you�re out making music now, touring with your band?
Steve: It has been a joy to get those chops back. Get a new joke. Get a new thing, you know.
Judd: How many years ago did you start performing live?
Steve: Five years ago.
Judd: Was that terrifying?
Steve: It was. But doing those shows made me sharper on the talk shows, gave me more material. And it made me sharper in my stand-up career because the last ten years have been nothing but award shows�giving them and receiving them.
Judd: But that�s a lot of appearances. And don�t you find that there�s a moment when you go,
Steve: Absolutely.
Judd: On the other hand, Martin Short�s speech about you at the Oscars for lifetime achievement was incredible.
Steve: He was great.
Judd: Was that as special a night as it seemed?
Steve: It was a big deal for me, yeah. First, I never thought I would get an Oscar. Although, you know, Nora Ephron said once, I don�t care who you are, when you sit down to type the first page of your screenplay, in your head you�re also writing your Oscar acceptance speech. And when you�re an actor and you�re giving your performance you�re also thinking,
Judd: All those movies exist and they�re on all the time.
Steve: Yeah. And, you know, I saved all the scripts. That�s the only thing I saved. I never got them autographed or anything but I had them bound in leather. Sometimes I look at them, look at the titles, and think,
Judd: All of them?
Steve: All of them. But then sometimes I think,
Judd: It�s like baseball.
Steve: It�s hard to hit a lot of good movies. Very hard. I didn�t know that at the beginning. I thought every movie I did was going to be good. To me, there�s like three levels of knowing if a movie is good. One is when it comes out. Is it a hit? Then after five years. Where is it? Is it gone? Then again after ten�fifteen years if it�s still around. Are people still watching it? Does it have an afterlife? Like,
Judd: But then it becomes the most beloved�
Steve: Well, I don�t know if it�s beloved. They tell me it is, but I don�t know.
Judd: When I was working for
Steve: Absolutely true. I find that the joke you put in that really shouldn�t have been in the movie because it was a personal favorite or something is the joke that stands out ten years later.
Judd: Let�s talk about
Steve: I didn�t have any way of comparing. It was my first movie. Everything I�d done had been a hit, so I just assumed that it�d be a hit, too. You know.
Judd: It�s one of those movies that completely holds up.
Steve: It�s held up for a long time, yeah.
Judd: Would it be painful to sit and watch it now?
Steve: Yeah. It would.
Judd: What is the high point of your career, then? What film or moment do you instantly go to in your mind?
Steve: You mean, in terms of movies that I�ve done? I can think of scenes that feel really funny to me, but I don�t resee a lot of my movies. I actually avoid it. Unless it�s by accident. In terms of movies, they are usually the ones done by somebody else�
Judd: You should watch
Steve: I know that film pretty well. John Hughes was a special kind of genius.
Judd: It is a masterwork, and I refer to it when I�m working with people because I think that movie has a lot to teach people who are trying to do comedy. That scene where you and John Candy have a fight in the hotel room is as perfect as, you know, Albert Brooks and Holly Hunter�s fight in
Steve: Why do you think that was? Because it turns around or because I realize that I hurt him?
Judd: You go off on him so hard because you�re so frustrated and you�ve lost your sense of his humanity and then he stands up for himself and just says, �Well, I like me.� It goes from riotously funny to almost mean-spirited to truly sad. It can make you cry in an eighth of a second. It�s just your chemistry with him. How vulnerable he instantly becomes, and how you react to that, how it stops you in your tracks. Like,
Steve: We really got along, John and I. There�s a scene in that movie that makes me laugh�we�re in a car going the wrong way, and then we pull over. John and I are just sitting on a suitcase talking, but we�re also scared, and we look at the car and it spontaneously bursts into flames. Poof. John Hughes was the master of those comic timing moments. That guy really knew something.
Judd: Did you become close with him?
Steve: It was funny. I did for a while, but then he just sort of stopped. He was a strange guy.
Judd: There comes a moment when your kids start asking to see your movies. For a while, my daughter would give me a hard time because she wasn�t allowed to see my movies because they�re all R-rated. It�s hard to delay kids to fifteen, sixteen years old, especially when they have the movie on every gadget in the house. But I finally opened up the door. It was this big deal. I was like, �Okay, you can watch them now��and then she had no interest in watching them. So now, anytime she watches a movie that�s not one of mine it�s an insult to me. �Why are you watching
Steve: I loved
Judd: Thank you. It was fun writing about comedians. Adam Sandler and I thought a lot about Rodney Dangerfield when we were making that movie. Rodney was someone who just seemed unhappy with the ride.
Steve: I met him once in Vegas, in the seventies. And immediately, when we sat down, it was like, �So-and-so stole that joke from me.� I remember thinking,
Judd: Brenner is so funny. I used to watch him on
Steve: He actually helped my career quite a bit.
Judd: How so?
Steve: It was �73 or �74, and I went to see him somewhere in Washington, D.C. He was really hot at the time, hosting
Judd: How did you arrive at the ideas in your act, early on? I mean, you were taking apart what it means to be a comedian. It was not observational comedy. The act itself was fascinating.
Steve: I was lucky to have come up in that era because today, every area is covered and there�s so many good people. If I was starting now, I�d be lost.
Judd: But no one�s doing the type of comedy you were doing. There are really smart comedians, but there�s not a lot of conceptual comedy out there.
Steve: I think it�s a dead end, you know.
Judd: Because it runs out of gas?
Steve: Yeah.
Judd: You can�t keep doing it?
Steve: I mean, I�m still around, but I couldn�t have kept doing
Judd: You�ve developed a different comic persona now, which feels distantly related to that. When you host the Oscars, I can sense that you�ve redefined your persona.
Steve: Yeah, I have. I didn�t want to do the same old thing and I didn�t want to look like I was doing the same old thing. That extreme physical thing has totally gone out of it. And I love playing the egotistical asshole.
Judd: I�m always fascinated by people�s comic journey�when they get bored and say, That�s enough. There are people like you, who seem to find new things to keep them interested, and there are people who say, I�m just going to hang out at the house. It�s a real challenge because success never satisfies whatever you thought it was going to do for you. You think,
Steve: I read a book in college called
Judd: When you got bored of doing stand-up, was there a part of you that thought,
Steve: No. I was just beaten down.
Judd: And you feel the joy again, now that you�re out touring and making music?
Steve: I really enjoy doing the shows, but the wear and tear�I have a daughter at home. It gets a little painful.
Judd: When did you start playing the banjo?
Steve: I�ve been playing it for over fifty years now.
Judd: The second I hear that instrument, it makes me feel that happy Disney feeling. I read something where you talked about how fun it was to be creative with something that�s completely nonverbal.
Steve: I think playing the banjo has extended my brain life by another ten years.
Judd: Because it just connects everything?
Steve: Yeah, just thinking in another way.
Judd: Do you feel like this is a common trait, among the people that you�ve chosen as intimate friends? This creative searching? Is this how your friends also deal with this ride?
Steve: Yes.
Judd: Everyone around you seems to have a sense of humor about it, but they�re also working really hard.
Steve: Everybody I know�I�m talking about Tom Hanks, Mike Nichols�
Judd: Lorne.
Steve: Lorne, yeah. Marty. All of us, we know how lucky we are. Everybody says, Oh, God, we have such a nice life, you know. We�re lucky to have had this happen to us.
Judd: Yeah.
Steve: Everybody is grateful.
My parents, Maury Apatow and Tami Shad, either exhausted at the end of their wedding, or pretending to be. 1964.
Me dressed as Harpo Marx for Halloween. Never been happier. 1975.
With Jay Leno backstage at Rascals Comedy Club in West Orange, New Jersey. 1984.
Interviewing Jerry Seinfeld at his West Hollywood apartment. Notice the lack of decor. 1983.
Me being way less funny than Robin Williams on
Dennis Miller before hosting the
Steve Allen waits to speak into my gigantic tape recorder. 1983.
Martin Short and me. One of us is aging badly (not Martin). 1984, 2013.
This is how comedians dressed on the 1992 HBO
A bunch of idiots trying to get stage time at the Improv. (
My first gig writing for the HBO special
(
Traveling with Jim Carrey to London for the
Me, Ben Stiller, and �Saul.� 1993.
Kenan Thompson at sixteen. Me at twenty-seven with mullet. 1994.
Leslie Mann and me on the set of
Rip Torn, Garry Shandling, director Todd Holland, and me (looking on while wearing a free
Me and Busy Philipps�s head talk to (
Jon Stewart at my thirtieth birthday party. I�ve only aged thirty more years in the last seventeen. 1997.
This photograph of the cast of
Adam McKay and Will Ferrell invite me to join the Funny or Die team.
Interviewing my heroes Mel Brooks and Carl Reiner at a Twitter event.
Laughing with James L. Brooks at the Motion Picture Academy.
I copy everything from Harold Ramis, including his poses.
The cast of
Me wearing a nicer suit than Paul Feig at the
At the end of
Jimmy Fallon and me. Ew.
Four completely sober men on the set of
Amy Schumer, Bill Hader, and I pretend to laugh for the photographer.
The Apatow-Mann family, modeling our asses off at the
This looks like the Apatows at home, but it�s actually the set of
For Leslie, Maude, and Iris.
And for Mom and Dad. Your support�and the mental health issues you gave me�made all of this possible.
I�d like to thank Andy Ward, Michael Lewen, Dave Eggers, Andrew Wylie, Kaela Myers, and Amy Reed for their invaluable work putting this collection together.
I�d also like to thank my representatives: Jimmy Miller (since Comic Relief �87), David Kramer, Matt Labov, Bryan Wolf, and Sam Fischer.
Thank you to these special people who believed in me early in my career, before there was any reason to: Jack DeMasi, Josh Rosenthal, East Side and East End comedy clubs, Governor�s Comedy Club, Chuckles Comedy Club, Budd Friedman and the Improv, Jamie Masada and the Laugh Factory, Joe Drew, Sammy Shore, Bob Zmuda, Chris Albrecht, Rick Messina, James L. Brooks, Al Jean and Mike Reiss, Garry Shandling, Roseanne Barr, Tom Arnold, HBO, Ben Stiller, Jim Carrey, Adam Sandler, Steve Brill, Kevin Rooney, Allen Covert, Jack Giarraputo, Paul Feig, Adam McKay, Will Ferrell, Jake Kasdan, and Steve Carell.
JUDD APATOW is one of the most important comic minds of his generation. He wrote and directed the films
@JuddApatow
Author�s proceeds, minus agent fees, are being donated to 826 National, 826 LA, and 826 NY�organizations that provide free tutoring and literacy programs. For more information, go to www.826national.org.