Episode 103 - Judd Apatow Pt. 1
Marc:Lock the gates!
Guest:Are we doing this?
Guest:Really?
Guest:Wait for it.
Guest:Are we doing this?
Guest:Wait for it.
Guest:Pow!
Guest:What the fuck?
Guest:And it's also... Eh, what the fuck?
Guest:What's wrong with me?
Guest:It's time for WTF!
Guest:What the fuck?
Guest:With Mark Maron.
Marc:Okay, let's do this.
Marc:How are you?
Marc:What the fuckers?
Marc:What the fuck buddies?
Marc:What the fucking ears?
Marc:What the fuck nicks?
Marc:Welcome to the show.
Marc:I am Mark Maron.
Marc:This is what the fuck.
Marc:I am in my garage at the cat ranch in Highland Park, California, which is east of the center of Los Angeles.
Marc:I'm excited about this show.
Marc:You should be excited too.
Marc:This is going to be an interesting show.
Marc:It's a little different than the type of shows we usually do.
Marc:It is a two-part show.
Marc:It features someone I know you're all familiar with.
Marc:Let's set it up this way.
Marc:I got an email late June from Patton Oswalt.
Marc:Wanted to know in the subject line... Judd Apatow wants your email.
Marc:Wanted to ask you before I gave it to him.
Marc:I assume you're cool with this... Patton.
Marc:Huh.
Marc:Well, let me think, Patton.
Marc:Of course I'm cool with it.
Marc:Send Judd Apatow my email address.
Marc:What does he want?
Marc:I've met Judd a couple of times, but I, you know, I don't, you know, it could be anything.
Marc:He might want me to star in his next film.
Marc:What are the chances?
Marc:No, but it doesn't matter.
Marc:Here's what he said after he got my email address.
Marc:I'm digging your podcast.
Marc:If you ever need a burnt out Jewish writer of schlubs as a guest, I am in Judd.
Marc:Now, to me, this was extremely exciting because Judd Apatow is probably the biggest name in film comedy.
Marc:He's one of the original comedy nerds, if not the first comedy nerd.
Marc:He might have invented comedy nerds for a few reasons, primarily his involvement in writing and directing and producing Freaks and Geeks.
Marc:He was also involved on a production level in The Larry Sanders Show, in the writing level, The Ben Stiller Show.
Marc:His first film, The 40-Year-Old Virgin, and he did Knocked Up.
Marc:He did Funny People.
Marc:He did a bunch of film producing.
Marc:Anchorman, The Cable Guy, Talladega Nights, Step Brothers, Walk Hard, Superbad.
Marc:Jesus Christ, he's done a lot of movies.
Marc:But this was a spectacular bit of flattery.
Marc:Getting this email from Judd was very validating to me, and it was very exciting to me.
Marc:And of course I wanted to have him on.
Marc:So we went back and forth a few times with the emails, trying to figure out when we could do it.
Marc:He's a busy guy.
Marc:He's a big movie producer.
Marc:But he's a very sweet guy.
Marc:So we work out of time.
Marc:So I go to his office and we lay it down and we sit and talk for a couple hours.
Marc:Now, what's great about me hooking up with Judd Apatow is that him and I have a lot in common.
Marc:I watched Freaks and Geeks recently.
Marc:I didn't watch it when it came out.
Marc:I'm a little older than Judd.
Marc:I knew about Freaks and Geeks, but I just never got around to watching it.
Marc:So literally, just by coincidence,
Marc:Within a week or so of getting the email, before I got the email from Judd or Patton, I just watched all of the Freaks and Geeks.
Marc:And there was one moment in Freaks and Geeks, in the whole series, that resonated with me more than any other.
Marc:And I'm going to talk to Judd about that because what I realized about Judd and what I know about myself was that we are...
Marc:deep fans of comedy, that we obviously come from something similar in the fact that whatever our childhoods were like, that comedy was really one of the few things that made us happy, that made us feel good, that took away the pain, that gave us a sense that things were going to be okay.
Marc:Comedians from as early as maybe when I was 11 years old, I just always loved comedians.
Marc:See, like when I was a kid, I remember going to see Jackie Vernon when I was like 11 years old.
Marc:My parents took me to a dirty club.
Marc:I've talked about this a bit on the show and it was just mind blowing to me.
Marc:You know, comics always made me feel better.
Marc:I wanted to talk to comics.
Marc:I saw George Carlin when I was in fourth grade and he signed my cast.
Marc:I I would watch the comics after school.
Marc:I would stay up, you know, on Merv Griffin on the Mike Douglas show.
Marc:I remember the first season of SNL.
Marc:I would stay up and watch all those late on Saturday nights because I was a huge John Belushi fan and Chevy Chase fan when I was in college in the first season of Letterman.
Marc:I never missed Letterman.
Marc:It's just it's a it's a mindset.
Marc:But it comes from a deep love of comedy.
Marc:So I go talk to Judd and it turns out he's really the same way.
Marc:That he is an extreme fan of comedy and has been since he was very young.
Marc:To the point where he, when he was 16 years old...
Marc:Did a series of interviews with comedians, but he was able to talk to people like Jay Leno, people like Jerry Seinfeld, Gary Shandling.
Marc:And he happened to have these tapes.
Marc:He had the tapes that he made when he was in high school digitized, and he gave me access to some of them.
Marc:And what we're going to do with this first episode is we're going to talk to Judd a bit.
Marc:And then we're going to listen to Judd as a 16-year-old interviewing Jerry Seinfeld, Jay Leno, and Gary Shanling.
Marc:And what his intentions were around those interviews.
Marc:But also just listening to a true fan of comedy and listening to these time capsules.
Marc:I mean, these are 1983 that these interviews were done.
Marc:And Judd doesn't, he said he doesn't listen to these at all anymore because they make him uncomfortable.
Marc:But I was thrilled to have him and thrilled to have the time with Judd to do this thing.
Marc:And I got to be honest with you, when I went over there, I was in my standard...
Marc:sort of self-doubting, kind of existentially challenged, depressive drive down to Santa Monica to do an interview with really the biggest producer of films in the comedy genre that is alive right now and knowing we're peers and having never really spent time with him and I was judging myself.
Marc:And something happened after these interviews, after I talked to him,
Marc:I just... He's a super nice guy, and also, like, I felt like I was talking to another... Just a comedy fan.
Marc:Just a guy who loved comedy.
Marc:And stand-ups.
Marc:And if I am anything, you know, I am a stand-up.
Marc:For better or for worse, or, you know, wherever my career may or may not be, I mean, that's how I identify myself.
Marc:That's what I do.
Marc:It was just touching.
Marc:I felt much better.
Marc:It changed my entire disposition after I talked to him.
Marc:So...
Marc:So here's what we have here.
Marc:This first part one is going to be talking to Judd about some of his childhood, but getting into these interviews that he did when he was 16 years old and listening to some of those.
Marc:And then part two will be more of a traditional WTF interview.
Marc:And as you'll find in these interviews that Judd did when he was 16, it really is basically what I'm doing now.
Marc:So he was way ahead of the curve on that as well.
Marc:So you can just grab a mic like a stand up.
Guest:All right.
Guest:I'm holding the mic.
Guest:Is it happening now?
Marc:Yeah, sure.
Marc:This is it.
Marc:Do you want to lay down some rules?
Guest:I have no rules.
Marc:I'm in Judd Apatow's war room.
Marc:Is this the war room?
Guest:This is the situation room.
Marc:Oh, the situation room.
Marc:A lot of boards, things being outlined.
Marc:That's right.
Marc:You seem to have a similar problem that I do.
Marc:I can't fucking read your writing.
Guest: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?
Guest:Yes, and so I found a way to have terrible handwriting that only I could read.
Guest:So if I was writing some joke about impotency or something...
Guest:Exactly.
Guest:He's showing me his handwriting and it is unreadable.
Marc:It is.
Guest:To me as well.
Marc:But you do it by design?
Guest:Really?
Guest:I did it.
Guest:I found a way and I still do it now.
Guest:So if my wife sees any weird notes or joke ideas or things that might be offensive, that there's literally no way that she can read it.
Marc:because I'm sitting here thinking like man I got the scoop I got there's a whole movie outlined on that board and all I can make out I think down on the lower left it doesn't say sperm issues it says sperm issues yes it does but that that would be in all of my movies
Marc:And then it just, I just see turns bad and the rest is undecipherable.
Guest:Exactly.
Guest:And it shall be until America gets to see this.
Marc:All right.
Marc:Well, we won't tip it anymore.
Marc:But you've got like 12 projects going on right now?
Marc:15?
Guest:Well, right now we're finishing up shooting a movie called Bridesmaids that Kristen Wiig wrote and Paul Feig, who created Freaks and Geeks, is directing.
Guest:She wrote it with Annie Mumolo.
Guest:And there's an enormous amount of funny women in it.
Guest:It is...
Marc:Is this an answer to the criticism that perhaps you've been a little hard on women?
Guest:It's funny.
Guest:Is it an answer?
Guest:As soon as I met my wife, Leslie Mann, who's an actress, she was always fed up with how bad the parts were for women.
Guest:So whenever I write, I try to write better parts for women, partially so she won't be mad at me, whether or not they're for her or anybody.
Guest:And...
Guest:But I'm not a woman, so my first instinct isn't to write the female movie.
Guest:And whenever I write women in my movies, I always try to be truthful and show them warts and all the way I show men.
Guest:And it's interesting because some people say, oh, you're making the women out to be bitches.
Guest:And I think, well, I don't know.
Guest:Seth Rogen, in the middle of an earthquake, runs out of the room with his bong and doesn't worry about his pregnant girlfriend.
Guest:Right.
Guest:So why can't you show women making mistakes?
Guest:I think the male mistakes are just as bad as the female mistakes.
Guest:But I do know that I've showed women be much more hostile in movies than a lot of people have seen before.
Guest:And that's partially a reaction to a lot of movies where the women are so perfect and they're gorgeous, but they can't find a man.
Guest:And it didn't feel truthful.
Marc:it's either that or I'm just I've just been yelled at by a lot of women throughout my life well I think that's I think what you say is a good point though that for some reason even when men are being dicks they're they're somewhat endearing to most people yes and that the the idea that even capturing women properly on screen it doesn't happen that often
Guest:I think that a lot of times they're the goal to get this beautiful woman to like me.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:And in some of the movies we've done something different, which is, you know, I'm in love with her, but it might be really complicated to have a relationship with her.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:And I remember after the 40-Year-Old Virgin came out, there was a nice review in The New Yorker, and David Denby said, you could tell it's going to be really hard to...
Guest:for the 40-year-old virgin to be in a relationship with Catherine Keener, but it'll be worth it.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:And that inspired me.
Guest:Like, oh, you can show that relationships are really complicated, but it is worth it.
Guest:And over the years, I've realized that almost everything I thought I was right about in relationships with women, I have been wrong about.
Guest:In real life?
Guest:In real life.
Guest:Like, everything where I was very confident that I was correct was
Guest:I think I was wrong completely.
Marc:I think that's a lesson we're supposed to learn.
Marc:I think we're wired that way.
Guest:It took me 25 years to figure out that I'm wrong.
Guest:And you should be thankful every day for the woman you have.
Guest:I mean, there was that moment in Knocked Up where Leslie says to Paul Rudd,
Guest:Just because you yell doesn't mean you're not mean.
Guest:Right.
Guest:And a lot of people would walk up to me and say, wow, that's... Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Guest:I've thought that about my husband for a very long time.
Marc:Really?
Guest:But that is a male thing, which is I'm controlled.
Guest:Just because you don't yell.
Guest:Yes.
Guest:Right.
Guest:Because I hold everything inside.
Guest:Right.
Guest:I'm superior because I'm not expressing emotions when, in fact, I'm just making myself sick by not expressing all my emotions.
Guest:I'll show you.
Guest:I'll get cancer.
Guest:I must be right because I'm quiet.
Marc:Isn't that called passive aggression?
Marc:It is, yes.
Marc:Well, I think that's a good place to start some of the conversation because I just – not that we didn't start it, but I listened to – or I watched Freaks and Geeks for the first time.
Marc:Oh, wow.
Marc:Recently.
Marc:Don't know.
Marc:I it's nothing personal.
Marc:I just I missed a lot of things So it's literally fresh in my mind and it the interesting thing to me is that the one scene that resonates almost More than the rest to me is when when Bill is watching Shandling after school Yes, like it's one scene I mean do people say that to you often because out of that entire series for some reason for me I was like that was beautiful
Guest:You know, there's a scene in the show, for people who haven't seen it, where Bill Haberchuk, played by Martin Starr, comes home after school, and you could tell he's a latchkey kid and no one's around, and his mom's a former stripper.
Guest:And he looks really sad, and he watches Gary Shandling on the Dinah Shore show while making a grilled cheese sandwich and eating chocolate cake.
Guest:And he goes from being really sad to laughing his ass off.
Guest:And The Who was playing that song, I'm the one, I'm one, or something like that.
Guest:And after we made it, Jake Casson said to me, that's the most personal thing you've ever done in your career.
Guest:And it's the best thing you've ever done.
Guest:That scene.
Guest:That scene.
Guest:And that was probably the turning point for my whole career, was realizing that the little moments
Guest:that I thought were boring or just not interesting to other people are actually the things that people would be most interested about in my work.
Guest:I always thought I was a bore.
Guest:That's why I quit stand-up comedy.
Guest:I figured I'm not angry enough.
Guest:I don't have a strong enough point of view.
Guest:So I became good at writing for other comedians or writing movies in the voice of other comics.
Guest:And it literally took me 20 years to think, oh, these little things that happened to me
Guest:are what people will connect with.
Marc:Yeah, absolutely.
Marc:And sometimes I'm a little dumbfounded in the sense that out of all the things, I didn't read anything on that, and that resonated with me, that there are moments that you capture, and even in the films, where they're undeniably real.
Marc:So there's something that they have that transcends anything that can be manufactured.
Yeah.
Guest:Yes, I think that when you watch a scene like that, you realize that happened.
Guest:And it happened to you.
Guest:It happened to me.
Guest:And I used to go home every day at 3 o'clock from school.
Guest:My friends played sports.
Guest:I had a lot of friends, but I didn't play sports.
Guest:And I would go home and watch the Mike Douglas show.
Guest:Merv Griffin.
Guest:The Dinah Shore.
Guest:Merv Griffin.
Guest:The Tonight Show.
Guest:Letterman when he started.
Guest:And...
Guest:I mean, there was a fair amount of time where I was watching TV from about 3, 3.30 till 1.30 in the morning.
Guest:Right.
Guest:For years.
Guest:Was your mom not around?
Guest:I lived with my dad after my parents got divorced, and I just didn't do any after-school activities.
Guest:And he didn't care.
Guest:No one cared.
Guest:I mean, I just went in my room and closed the door.
Guest:And I was in my fantasy world watching Michael Keaton do stand-up on the Mike Douglas show.
Guest:And I couldn't have been happier.
Guest:And I look back on it as a great time.
Guest:I don't think, oh, that was so sad.
Guest:I was alone in my room.
Guest:I was like Bill, laughing my ass off, watching Jay Leno in 1979 on the Mike Douglas show.
Marc:See, I had that fucking same experience.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:I still remember one of the moments I decided to be a comic was watching him, Jay Leno.
Marc:I don't know if it was on Mike Douglas, but I remember the joke.
Marc:They were cutting away to a commercial, and he was on that ridiculous set.
Marc:And he said, what happens now?
Marc:Does the chair fold up into the wall like we're on a game show?
Marc:Am I going to disappear?
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:And it was just a moment.
Marc:It was a beat.
Marc:But I remember thinking it was the most hilarious thing I'd ever heard in my life.
Guest:I remember going to see the Merva Griffin Show being taped.
Guest:That's how into it I was.
Guest:In New York?
Guest:In Los Angeles when I was in high school.
Guest:And Dr. Ruth was the other guest.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:And she's taking calls, giving sex advice.
Guest:And Jay Leno realizes that this makes no sense because the show doesn't air for a month.
Guest:And where are the calls coming from?
Guest:Like, is there someone backstage?
Guest:So he calls her on it.
Guest:Like, these are not real calls.
Guest:Where are these people coming from?
Guest:And I thought, that is the coolest guy in the world.
Guest:I want to be that guy.
Guest:And that is all I ever wanted to be when I was a kid.
Guest:I wanted to be like Leno and Seinfeld and Michael Keaton as a stand-up.
Marc:yeah i vaguely remember michael keaton as a stand-up it seems that my guys like i remember yeah i remember seeing leno on shows i remember i don't remember seinfeld that much i remember richard lewis a lot uh on letterman david brenner david brenner used to be the king of the mike douglas show yeah yeah he would be you know he was he guest hosted like the tonight show like 70 80 times or something so those were your guys keaton
Marc:uh seinfeld and uh and who's the other one uh and jay leto and leno i mean i used to love jeff altman used to make me laugh the other night yeah i said we'd mentioned him on the podcast recently you know he's he's i would still go to the comedy store sometimes and he's he's back around you know the butt steak guy in the oh so funny pulling up his pants
Guest:And I couldn't get enough of it.
Guest:And I've looked back on it and wondered, why did I like it so much?
Guest:What was it that I was attracted to where I was obsessed to the point of highlighting the TV guide so I knew when –
Guest:the comics run each show did you read my favorite jokes in parade magazine that knows that Sunday it was a Sunday insert maybe no I didn't have it maybe you're a little younger than me but used to be in parade magazine the last page used to be a thing called my favorite jokes where they just have comedians jokes yeah written there I used to transcribe Saturday Night Live because there was no there was no VCR when it first aired so I would record it on a audio cassette
Guest:How old was the first season you talking about?
Guest:Like in 77?
Guest:So you're like 10?
Guest:How old were you?
Guest:10.
Guest:I have the transcriptions of Bill Murray's Oscar picks bit from Weekend Update in notebooks.
Guest:Why did you do that?
Guest:I don't know.
Guest:I think that I was in some way trying to figure out how do I get in that world?
Guest:How does it work?
Guest:I wanted to look at it on paper.
Guest:I didn't know that's what I was doing.
Marc:Right.
Guest:But I did it to understand it.
Guest:Because you thought it was so funny.
Guest:I wanted to break it down somehow.
Guest:Really?
Guest:Like an equation?
Guest:I guess.
Guest:It wasn't conscious.
Guest:Did you do that with stand-up as well?
Guest:I didn't.
Guest:I did it with Saturday Night Live sketches and some Twilight Zones.
Guest:I would write out the opening to the Twilight Zone.
Guest:I wanted to be able to tell it to my friends.
Guest:So you performed it?
Guest:Yes.
Guest:To your friends, I mean.
Guest:No, not really.
Guest:I mean, just maybe a line or two.
Guest:Right, right.
Guest:But, you know, okay, so in 75, I was 8.
Guest:That's when Saturday Night Live came on.
Guest:And Steve Martin hit 76, 77, 78.
Guest:That's the...
Guest:height of Richard Pryor, Monty Python was hitting America.
Guest:I was losing my mind with comedy nerdness.
Guest:Well, it wasn't even invented yet.
Marc:You were an original.
Marc:The comedy nerds didn't exist yet.
Marc:You were just a kid who was precocious in a sense.
Marc:Because when you think about what a lot of other kids, because I was the same way in that I resonated with these comics.
Marc:They made me feel better.
Marc:And I thought they had a certain amount of control, it seemed.
Guest:Yes.
Guest:That they could handle shit.
Guest:Well, they had a stance on why the world didn't make sense.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:And they would call everyone on their shit.
Guest:And I look back and think, I must have been angry that I wanted Leno to call everybody out and Seinfeld to say, look how ridiculous all is.
Guest:And especially George Carlin, anyone who called bullshit, I couldn't get enough of those people.
Marc:I saw him when I was in like fourth grade, I think, or fourth or fifth grade, I went to see George Carlin.
Marc:And I remember those records.
Marc:I remember having them.
Marc:And, you know, I'll tell you, Harry Shearer said something to me that, just to get your opinion on it, he said the reason people are comedians is that it's to have control over why people laugh at you.
Guest:I've looked at it this way.
Guest:When someone is laughing, I know they don't dislike me.
Yeah.
Guest:I don't know if they like me, but I know in that moment they don't dislike me.
Guest:And that's why I get the need for constant approval.
Guest:Because if you're smiling, I know you don't hate me.
Guest:I don't know if it's positive, but I'm not in the negative.
Guest:And that's why when we were making funny people and I thought a lot about comedy and why I was obsessed with it to the point of sitting down and listening to 30 of your podcasts in several days.
Guest:a lot of it was about that you know why do i need that much approval is there any point where i get enough approval and i'm full and i've realized that there is no point really i i received a letter from steven spielberg steven spielberg who i used to work for for a long time at dreamworks uh was trying to reach me to say that he liked knocked up
Guest:And I so wanted a letter from him.
Guest:I just, Polfi got one when we made Freaks and Geeks and I was so jealous that he got a letter saying that he loved Freaks and Geeks.
Guest:And I didn't return the call and I told my assistant, can you say Judd's out of town and is it possible that he could write a note just so I can have the letter?
Guest:I wanted, I knew a compliment was coming and I'm so wounded I needed to have it forever.
Guest:And he sent me the dream letter, the beautiful, beautiful letter with nothing but kindness.
Guest:You know, a great guy.
Guest:It's just what you want to feel whole as a person.
Guest:And I have it.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:But what happened afterwards is I thought to myself, this is the best you can do.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Who else do I want to compliment me?
Guest:How many of these do I need to feel good about my work and myself?
Guest:And how it doesn't last and the wound is still there.
Guest:What is the wound?
Guest:Because I know I have it.
Guest:Have you figured out what it is?
Guest:I'm not sure exactly.
Guest:I've had therapists who say, everything that happened to you happened in the first three years of your life.
Guest:So yeah, let it go.
Guest:It may just be the way your mom looked at you.
Guest:Really?
Guest:I mean, who knows?
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:You believe that?
Guest:I don't know.
Guest:I don't know if that's true.
Guest:I do know that in every situation I walk into, and it doesn't matter whether things are going well for me in life or career-wise or not,
Guest:I feel like the weirdo.
Guest:I feel like the awkward guy picking up my kids from school.
Guest:I feel that way on the set of my own movies.
Guest:Uncomfortable in your own skin?
Guest:Just, I never feel like I own the moment.
Guest:You know?
Guest:I feel like you feel like you're a victim of the moment.
Guest:I just feel like, you know, a punch could come from any direction, even if I'm everyone's boss.
Guest:It doesn't matter.
Guest:Like, that's what I'm realizing is, you know, you have to just realize, OK, that's how you're wired.
Guest:And so you're able to transcend it.
Guest:And that it's if I just acknowledge it, some of it will disappear.
Guest:And that's a little bit of what Funny People was about, which is.
Guest:He gets sick and says, what was the point of all this?
Guest:I'm here in this house and I'm all alone and everyone outside likes me.
Guest:I don't have, you know, strong relationships.
Guest:And why did I do this?
Guest:And that's what, you know, people say sometimes you make movies or you write things to find out why you made the movie.
Guest:And, you know, that's what that whole experience was about.
Marc:And that a lot of that was drawn from your early career with, you know, well, I mean, in the sense that, you know, you were sort of you had a mentor in Shanling, right?
Guest:I had.
Guest:Yeah, I had a bunch of mentors.
Guest:People were very nice to me when I was young.
Guest:I always try to clarify to people the reason why it took me so long to make a movie about a mentor relationship.
Guest:was because people were so nice that there was no story.
Guest:Shanling hired me to write the Grammys for him in 1990.
Guest:How old were you?
Guest:So I was 23.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:And then he hired me on the Larry Sanders show after the Ben Stiller show got canceled.
Guest:And has been helpful to me on everything I've ever done.
Guest:So there's no great shandling story.
Guest:I used to write jokes for Jim Carrey and worked on some of his movies.
Guest:So I had to fabricate a character that was an amalgam of...
Guest:a lot of people, but slowly you realize, oh, it's just me.
Guest:It's just the worst part of me.
Guest:And then suddenly it all makes sense.
Marc:So almost like your dreams are supposed to be everybody in your dreams is you.
Marc:So now you can look in the same way that in your movie, somehow or another, everyone's you.
Guest:It does work that way.
Guest:It's different sides of you.
Guest:Here's me at my worst.
Guest:Here's me at my angriest.
Marc:Here's me as a pregnant woman.
Guest:Exactly.
Guest:Well, yes.
Guest:Here's me at my neediest.
Guest:Here's me screaming at the crowd.
Guest:I mean, so your thoughts are coming out in different ways.
Guest:And some of it is observations of other people.
Guest:Some of the rants in Funny People were based on me watching Rodney Dangerfield at one in the morning yell at the crowd.
Guest:And one night he was in his bathrobe or something.
Marc:Sure.
Marc:He used to get out of his car in his bathrobe.
Marc:Where was this?
Guest:At the improv.
Guest:And he gets on stage.
Guest:And he just didn't do his act.
Guest:And it was fantastic.
Guest:Your favorite comedy fan moments.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:And he said to the crowd, yeah, sometimes life makes perfect sense.
Guest:And then you come.
Guest:And then there was a woman there.
Guest:And he says, yeah.
Guest:Oh, yeah, yeah.
Guest:You're beautiful.
Guest:You're beautiful.
Guest:You'd be different.
Guest:You'd love me for me.
Guest:And it was brutal.
Guest:It was brutal to watch.
Marc:Because at that point, before he was medicated, the sadness and the anger, he couldn't hide it anymore.
Marc:And when you get a few cocktails.
Guest:And it was fantastic to watch.
Guest:And I've seen a bunch of people have that meltdown where it's one in the morning and they drop the act and they tell you what they're going through.
Guest:That's my act.
Guest:Yes, exactly.
Guest:Well, that's my favorite part of comedy is when you get to that next place.
Guest:And when my favorite scene in Funny People in terms of the performance was Adam singing the song at the piano, Fuck George Simmons.
Guest:He just improvised it.
Guest:He said, tonight I'm going to do something on the piano.
Guest:And we were trying to create one of those moments where someone just has the meltdown in front of the crowd.
Guest:And after we shot it, I said to Adam, I don't know if we could use that.
Guest:That was pretty crazy and dark.
Guest:And then one of the editors put it together.
Guest:And I thought, yeah, that captures those moments.
Guest:I remember seeing Paul Rodriguez one night late at the improv.
Marc:just go on a rant and and he it was one of the funniest sets i've ever seen in my entire life you don't see it as much as you used to you know i i mean in the clubs i don't know how often you go out there anymore but you know there was a time that generation there there was there seemed to be a little more freedom and and a little less eyes on everybody you know you can still see it at the comedy store and i don't go to the improv much but i mean that there you there was a time it seemed in the 80s where the meltdown was fairly commonplace
Guest:I remember seeing Larry David rant at the crowd.
Guest:And those moments between midnight and 1.30 in the morning at the improv is where a lot of the great things happened.
Guest:What, did you just hang out there?
Guest:I was the emcee.
Guest:I used to emcee four or five nights a week at the improv in Hollywood.
Guest:How old were you then?
Guest:From about 88 to 93.
Guest:So from the time I was about 21 to...
Guest:24 years old so i was there every night i watched everybody and i remember you know when michael richards got in trouble for for his yeah his his performance that night i had seen him do things like that but it really was for comedy's sake he always had a point it was crazy and experimental and daring and
Guest:But it certainly wasn't racist at all.
Guest:So when I saw that, I thought, oh, he just did it bad that night.
Guest:Right.
Guest:And it came across wrong.
Guest:I'd seen a lot of comedians do things like that.
Guest:Sure.
Guest:And in the age of YouTube and everyone having a camera,
Guest:You can't do that anymore.
Guest:And I remember when we were working on Funny People, Sandler was working on his act.
Guest:And it was scary to think we were going to write all these jokes for a bitter character.
Guest:And they started appearing on YouTube as if it was Adam doing his act.
Guest:And that's scary for comics now.
Marc:Yeah, I think also that with Michael Richards, the context, people don't know him as a comic.
Marc:Our experience of people, even as Sandler as a comic, I think that gets further away for some people as well, doesn't it?
Marc:I mean, he doesn't do it much anymore.
Guest:No, that was, for me, the treat of making the movie, is that I am a gigantic fan of his stand-up comedy.
Guest:So making the movie was a way to force him to write a new hour, and we would go to comedy clubs.
Guest:And he did it?
Guest:And he would do stand-up, and he was hilarious.
Guest:I mean, some nights it would go...
Guest:awfully and some nights he would kill and it was way dirtier than his act used to be because that's what I was requesting was a certain an act that was filled with denial I thought well George Simmons doesn't actually tell you the truth and you might understand from the context of the movie that he's doing a silly joke but actually it's covering up for a real wound but I didn't want him to be Richard Pryor I wanted him to be more like Rodney
Marc:Well, that scene where you had some of those guys sitting around that table.
Marc:Who was it?
Marc:Monty Hoffman, Paul Reiser.
Guest:Carol Liefer.
Marc:Carol Liefer.
Guest:George Wallace was there.
Marc:That is a crew of comics outside of Reiser that not many people know.
Marc:I mean, this is the interesting thing about comedy, and I think you know it.
Marc:It's just how many there are, how many of that generation...
Marc:have sort of disappeared or no one knows anymore.
Marc:Do you ever, are you ever saddened by that?
Marc:I mean, I know you seem to be on the pulse of what's happening, but I mean, in terms of that old guard or like people that you knew growing up, are you saddened by what happens to comics as they get older?
Guest:I did go into Best Buy once and a comic who was hilarious was a salesman there.
Guest:And that was rough.
Guest:That made me sad because I thought I was never as funny as that guy.
Guest:That guy really used to kill.
Guest:And it happened another time at a car dealership.
Guest:Because there were those guys who would rip the house down.
Guest:But at some point, you can't go on the road anymore.
Guest:If you want to have a life and kids, you can't be on the road 35 weeks.
Marc:But also there's the element that that same sort of wound that you're talking about can swallow people.
Marc:And the fact is that somehow or another, for reasons that maybe you know, I don't know, you were able to manage your talent and be political and ambitious enough to get what you wanted to get done done.
Guest:I was very lucky that part of my dysfunction as a person is a terror of bankruptcy, financial bankruptcy, not emotional bankruptcy.
Guest:True.
Guest:Spiritual bankruptcy.
Guest:So as a young person, I thought 10 years ahead.
Guest:So I had a show like this in high school where I interviewed comedians like Leno and Seinfeld and John Candy.
Guest:How did you manage to get hold of them?
Guest:I used to call other publicists and say I was from a radio station in New York and all the publicists were too lazy to look it up and figure out that it was a high school radio station.
Guest:But I was afraid that I was going to not be able to take care of myself in my life.
Guest:So in my head, I always thought, well, what do I need to do?
Guest:OK, I'll interview these comedians and they'll tell me how to be a comedian.
Guest:They'll tell me how to write.
Guest:They'll tell me what it's like.
Guest:And to be 16 years old and sit down with Jerry Seinfeld and for half an hour he literally tells you how he writes a joke, how he first got on stage, how long it took him to get good, it just changed everything for me because I thought, okay, it takes seven years to find your character.
Guest:When did this all start being funny as a kid?
Guest:Yeah, I guess so, although it was not like a real...
Guest:I wasn't a class clown, per se.
Guest:I mean, I wrote some funny things for the newspaper, and I was always trying to be funny around my friends.
Guest:And watching comedy was the thing I enjoyed more than anything else.
Guest:I was obsessed with, I knew every comedian, I knew all their routines, you know.
Guest:I loved it so much.
Guest:That's how I got into it.
Guest:I wanted to be around it, you know.
Guest: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 work at it.
Guest:When did you first do it?
Guest:I did it at Catch a Rising Star one night.
Guest:My first time on stage, I write the whole act out, you know, and I put it there on my bed and I rehearse it over and over again.
Guest:I'm standing there with a bar of soap, you know, like it's a microphone.
Guest:And I get up on stage and I got this thing memorized cold.
Guest:I get up on there, it's gone.
Guest:I can't remember a word, a thing.
Guest:I stood there for about...
Guest:30 seconds with saying absolutely no just standing there freaking out I just couldn't believe that all these people are 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 driving
Guest:Your parents.
Guest:And people started laughing because they thought, this is my end.
Guest:And I couldn't, I mean, I couldn't even really hear them laughing.
Guest:I was like absolutely panicking.
Guest:And I think I lasted about three minutes and I just got off.
Guest:And that was my first show.
Guest:And what was it supposed to be?
Guest:Like, what was the original jokes that you wrote out?
Guest:Oh, there's a couple I'm still doing.
Guest:The bumper car routine.
Guest:I don't know if you've ever seen that.
Guest:I do this thing about...
Guest:There's always one bad driver in a boat with cars.
Guest:It's like one helpless kid who's like, as soon as the ride gets started, he gets stuck in a pack of empty cars.
Guest:Father and son team are spinning around, you know.
Guest:How old were you when you did it the first time?
Guest:22.
Guest:21 maybe.
Guest:I was still in college, I think.
Guest:And what did you study in college?
Guest:Theater and film and television.
Guest:I did two majors.
Guest:And how long did it take you to develop the act so that you got laughs steady?
Guest:It depends on what you mean by steady laughs.
Guest:I mean, the worst I ever was was I would bomb every other time.
Guest:That's how bad it was in the beginning.
Guest:And then it progressed to that point, and eight months after I began, I was making a living.
Guest:At Catch Your Eyes and stuff?
Guest:At the comic strip, actually.
Guest:And how does that work when you audition and then get steady work?
Guest:Well, you audition, you start off at 3 in the morning, and you fight your way through the order, hopefully by doing better than the guy that they put on ahead of you.
Guest:And the next night they put you on ahead of him.
Guest:Then you try and do better than the guy who... And they watch you, and it's, of course, a lot of politics, but basically if you're good, people notice it.
Guest:That's the greatest thing about comedy, which is really the big reason I got into it, is if you've got talent,
Guest:It's unmistakable.
Guest:And no one misses it.
Guest:And you don't have to wait around for a break.
Guest:It's very easy to get a break.
Guest:It's very hard to be good enough.
Marc:So now you're 16 years old.
Marc:You're talking to Jerry Seinfeld, even though he wasn't huge yet, in the sense that he didn't get huge for another almost 10 years from when you talked to him when you were 16.
Marc:But he was your hero.
Marc:Or one of them.
Guest:Yes, I used to watch him on the Merv Griffin Show and the Tonight Show.
Guest:I think he started doing talk shows in the late 70s, Seinfeld.
Guest:I just know that because at the Comedy Magic Club, he signed The Wall in 1978.
Guest:But to me...
Guest:He was the greatest.
Guest:There were the three or four people that I loved, and Seinfeld was definitely one of them.
Guest:And I used to go see him at Caroline's in New York because it was the only comedy club that would allow kids in.
Guest:On 9th Avenue, the old one.
Guest:Yes, because it was a supper club.
Guest:So I could go there and have dinner with my friends when I was 15, 16 years old and go see Pee Wee Herman or Howie Mandel or whoever.
Marc:Oh, my God.
Marc:That's so long ago.
Marc:That club, it was a nice club, the separate room or the dinner club.
Marc:It wasn't the second one or the third one.
Marc:It was that first one.
Marc:The first one.
Guest:The first one, it seemed to seat about 85, 90 people.
Guest:And people would have a fancy dinner and see a comedian.
Guest:And it almost felt like something from the 30s.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:Oh, yeah.
Marc:It was like a burlesque.
Marc:Not burlesque, but it had class.
Marc:It seemed like it had class.
Marc:But when you're sitting there, you seem pretty calm.
Marc:You don't seem... You're a fan, but you're also... You're fairly deliberate.
Marc:You have a plan.
Marc:You have an interview.
Marc:I mean, there's one of these interviews.
Marc:I think it was the one with Seinfeld where you're like, I think that's it.
Guest:were you freaking out inside or were you what were you really trying to do there i truly think that it happened right after my parents got divorced and i just thought i gotta get my shit together i gotta get something going in this life i really need to take care of myself because when your parents get divorced they just make terrible mistakes yeah and they fight and you see that adults have very real flaws yeah
Guest:And I think my instinct was, oh, my God, maybe they're wrong about all sorts of stuff they've been telling me.
Guest:And if my mom thinks my dad's the devil and if my dad is enraged at my mom, then maybe some of this advice they've been giving me is wrong about things.
Guest:I mean, I don't think he's the devil.
Guest:He's very nice to me.
Guest:And it just completely threw me.
Guest:Like, what is it?
Guest:What?
Guest:Because it's important that you just believe your parents.
Guest:They know what they're talking about.
Guest:And there's a comfort in their saying.
Guest:And so when you see them at a terrible moment, at their worst, and they're screaming at each other.
Guest:And it's really madness for a couple of years.
Guest:My reaction was, first, nothing is true.
Guest:I don't believe anything.
Guest:I don't know.
Guest:I can't rely on these people because they can't rely on each other.
Guest:And they've bailed on each other.
Guest:And I felt in some way, I felt bailed on.
Guest:Like, oh, our whole family isn't important enough for you guys to just...
Guest:figure out how to get along.
Guest:You're literally going to, you know, one of you is going to leave and I'm going to see the other one like randomly.
Guest:And it was terrible.
Guest:And so going to talk to these comedians felt like, okay, this is the direction that safety is in.
Marc:So when you were asking Seinfeld about, you know, where he saw his career going, you were like, this is an option.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:The real question was, where is my career going?
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:And I really was curious.
Guest:I mean, how do you get on stage?
Guest:Do you sign up?
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:How many minutes do they let you do?
Guest:You were in sort of a crisis mode.
Guest:I was in total crisis mode.
Guest:I was losing my mind.
Guest:I thought, I need a job.
Guest:But I also had a sense that my parents were not going to be able to afford college.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Because they were having financial problems.
Guest:And even though I was getting ready to go to college, I didn't have a lot of comfort that I would be able to complete it.
Guest:And so I thought, well, why don't you just jump right into your dream?
Guest:Just have the balls to do it.
Marc:And all these things you were doing in the guise of, you were using these on the radio show in high school.
Guest:I probably aired four of them.
Guest:And the entire idea of interviewing comedians was a ruse.
Guest:It was just an excuse to force Jay Leno to talk to me for an hour and a half.
Guest:Because every kid has that, like you want to meet a star and you want to ask them how they do it.
Guest:And especially if you want to do what they do.
Guest:So how can I get in a room and say, how do you do it?
Guest:Right.
Guest:I know to a normal fan, you might give me 90 seconds.
Guest:Right.
Guest:But if I can pretend that I have a radio show, you'll give me an hour.
Marc:And also, comedians love to talk.
Marc:I mean, I know, I've done interviews with college kids and whatever.
Guest:You're like, oh, this is a fine opportunity for me to be influential.
Guest:Exactly.
Guest:This child seems very impressed with me.
Guest:I must be important because look how he's listening to me as if it might change his life.
Guest:It did, though.
Guest:It did change my life.
Guest:And when those comedians were in that stage, people weren't that interested in them.
Marc:And the Leno thing, what was interesting in you talking to Leno in 1983 is that he was the least disciplined out of all of them, that he was just a sort of kind of the proletariat comic.
Marc:He didn't write anything down.
Marc:He saw it specifically as a job.
Marc:If you can't do your job on any night, you shouldn't be doing it.
Marc:And he was really kind of sarcastic, and you brought that up.
Marc:You were very concise with him.
Guest:How would you describe your comedy if you had to say it?
Guest:It seems a little sarcastic and observational.
Guest:Yeah, that about sums it up, I guess.
Guest:Sarcastic and observational.
Guest:I guess, I don't know.
Guest:I try not to, you know, I don't even say I'm a comedian on stage.
Guest:I mean, I just kind of do it and let people form their own opinion about what it is.
Guest:I mean, to sit and pontificate about the wonder of it all is a bit narcissistic.
Guest:I don't know.
Guest:You just do it, and if it seems instinctively funny, you know, that's the thing.
Guest:As you move along in the business and you get a little bit more experience, like now,
Guest:I can go into Letterman, think of a joke that day, and do it on the show, and 99% chance it'll work.
Guest:Whereas the old days, you kind of have to go over the routine more and more.
Guest:You know, the more experience you get, the more attitude your material becomes, and you can just talk, and it comes out funny, you know.
Guest:Working with audiences is like being an animal trainer somewhat.
Guest:You know, if you go in the rain and you're a little bit nervous and your hands shake and the animals sense it, they rip you apart.
Guest:The same thing with audiences.
Guest:You know, if you get up and go, hi, everybody.
Guest:How you doing?
Guest:People go, get off the stage.
Guest:They're not going to laugh.
Guest:But if you use a little bit of authority and kind of take charge.
Guest:Is most of your humor worked out on the stage?
Guest:I mean, some people work it out on paper and they think about it.
Guest:Oh, no, I don't have anything on paper.
Guest:No, I've never written anything down.
Guest:I suppose I should.
Guest:Everybody says, oh, you should make notes.
Guest:I seem to remember the funniest stuff and forget the stuff that isn't that funny.
Guest:Once in a while I forget a funny one.
Guest:No, I don't write anything down.
Guest:I should, though.
Guest:You're right.
Guest:I see you have notes and everything there.
Guest:I don't have any of that.
Guest:I should keep copious notes, but I don't.
Guest:So how do you keep it from getting boring if you're playing so many places every night?
Guest:Um, I mean, it's a job.
Guest:You have to do your work, you know?
Guest:I mean, you can't... It's not a hard way to make a living.
Guest:It's a fun way.
Guest:You make a lot of money for having essentially a good time.
Guest:And if you can't get up for it,
Guest:Well, then get out of the business.
Guest:You know, people say, well, gee, what happens when you're just not in the mood?
Guest:Well, I mean, the worst I ever have is a bad hour.
Guest:You know, most people have a bad day.
Guest:I mean, if I can't fake it for an hour.
Guest:You know, my wife can tell.
Guest:My wife will say, gee, you didn't seem quite up as you usually are.
Guest:But I don't think most of the audience can tell.
Guest:I mean, because you're a professional.
Guest:It's like anything else.
Guest:You know, you do your job.
Guest:You can't say, oh, I'm too tense tonight.
Guest:I can't go on, ladies and gentlemen.
Guest:Do your work.
Guest:You know, that's part of the business.
Guest:But don't you ever get bored of it?
Guest:I get a kick out of doing it.
Guest:I change it a little bit on a nightly basis, and you try out new jokes and whatnot.
Guest:I mean, the whole idea is to keep coming with new things and new ideas.
Guest:Sometimes you work an hour just to get one new line in, just to get to that point, you know.
Guest:And that's what I do.
Guest:No, it doesn't get boring for me.
Guest:I really like it.
Guest:My parents got divorced, and my mom moved to Southampton.
Guest:And my parents used to own a restaurant, and the bartender at the restaurant was Rick Messina.
Guest:Oh, my God.
Guest:So Rick Messina, who's the great manager, represents Tim Allen.
Marc:And also managed Rodney's Club.
Marc:in New York for years, in Dangerfield.
Guest:No, he managed the East Side Comedy Club on Long Island, which was the first comedy club on the island, and a bunch of clubs.
Guest:Oh, he didn't work with Dangerfield?
Guest:He may have later, but it was East Side Comedy Club and then East End Comedy Club.
Guest:So when my parents got divorced, my mom...
Guest:had no money, got a job seating people at her former bartender's comedy club.
Guest:And I, I mean, this was the dream situation for me.
Guest:So this is ninth grade, ninth grade.
Guest:And it's the summer.
Guest:And my mom is seating people at a comedy club.
Guest:And so every weekend I would go watch every show.
Guest:And it was Leno, Paul Provenza, first show I ever saw of a young comedian.
Guest:And I,
Guest:years later i thought that's really kind of the worst job ever what what could my mom have gotten paid sure to be a hostess at a comedy club and i like to think that she did it because she knew i would like it she never said that you can't ask her my mom she died a few years i'm sorry and and that's how i like to look at it like that was like a gift to me yeah
Marc:That's sweet.
Marc:Okay, so you saw Leno, you saw Provenza, this was 1981.
Guest:So this is 82 or 83, and then I got a job at Rick Messina's Comedy Club after that as a dishwasher, only so I could see the comedians.
Guest:Then I realized, I can't see the comedians, I'm in the fucking kitchen.
Guest:So I switched to a busboy.
Guest:And I was at Eastside Comedy Club, and Eddie Murphy used to come in, and Rose O'Donnell was just starting at that time.
Guest:And I would watch the comedians, and I thought, I don't have the balls to tell these people I want to do this.
Guest:It may have been obvious to them, but I couldn't even tell anyone I was so scared.
Guest:So after I did the radio program, in my senior year of high school, I finally got up at open mic nights.
Guest:And was awful, just so awful.
Guest:Paralyzingly, it's so terrifying.
Guest:And John Mulroney's hosting the open mic nights.
Guest:Oh, what happened to him?
Guest:And he just, I mean, it was pandemonium how much he would kill.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:And he would insult the crowd.
Guest:I remember him.
Guest:He was fantastic.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:I'm sure he still is.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:But to go on after that when you have no idea what you're doing and you're 17 years old.
Marc:And you had to wait for God knows how long.
Marc:I mean, there was that whole thing that people forget that like literally if you were doing an open mic, could he get any special treatment?
Marc:And the host, it all depended on his humanity, how he was going to treat you and what he was going to put you through.
Guest:And there'd be 20 comedians all who get five minutes.
Marc:Yeah.
Guest:You never knew if Mulroney might, you know, he might do 20 minutes between acts.
Guest:Right.
Guest:And so you might get on at 8.05 or 1 in the morning.
Marc:So you started, you like the real deal.
Marc:I mean, you came from a real comedy background almost in a way that none of us did.
Marc:I mean, you know, many of us who started in those open mics didn't watch comedy until we were stuck in those rooms and we had to.
Marc:But you were actually just compelled to be there as a busboy.
Marc:What were you, like 16 then?
Marc:Yes.
Marc:15?
Marc:16.
Marc:16.
Guest:that's hilarious so you wanted nothing more than to be in the comedy business from early on from the earliest time i understood that people got on stage 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 if you listen to those interviews
Guest:It's all joke writing.
Guest:It's not screenwriting.
Guest:I'm not talking about how I love movies and I love paying attention to what the cinematographers are doing.
Guest:I literally want to understand the mechanics of a dick joke.
Guest:That's my vision quest was to figure that out.
Marc:And that's what you got from Gary.
Marc:I mean, it was interesting.
Marc:There's a couple moments that are great in these interviews is that...
Marc:And I know it just from doing it because you're really doing some version of the show I'm doing now when you're 16.
Marc:Without the courage to go personal.
Marc:Right.
Marc:But it's there because there's a vulnerability to you because of your age.
Marc:And you wouldn't expect you to get too deep in terms of what their life is or could you help me with my parents' divorce.
Yeah.
Guest:That would have been the best version of it.
Guest:If I asked how to write a joke and then went, my parents are fighting a lot.
Guest:And why do you think that they have this animosity towards each other?
Marc:But that's the only difference between what you did when you were 16 and what I'm doing now.
Marc:Exactly, yes.
Marc:But there's moments where I'm interviewing on this show where I'm thoroughly entertained by who I'm sitting with.
Marc:And it's a great feeling to be like, there's times in these interviews where you laugh, where it's so clear that this is the best show in the world.
Marc:I mean, I'm the only one here.
Guest:Well, when I interviewed Seinfeld the first time, my brother was with me and you could hear him laughing.
Guest:I heard the second laugh, yeah.
Guest:And he's laughing in the background.
Guest:And to us, it was like being in the room with Paul McCartney.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:It was.
Guest:Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.
Guest:I think to some extent...
Guest:We had a vision for what Jerry Seinfeld was more than Jerry Seinfeld had a vision for what Jerry Seinfeld was.
Guest:Yeah, yeah, because he thought he was the best.
Guest:Yeah, it was like being in a small club, seeing R.E.M.
Guest:in Athens, Georgia in the early 80s.
Marc:Right, right.
Guest:We knew what we were seeing and who we were talking to.
Guest:A really small club, just you and your brother.
Guest:Exactly.
Marc:Because what happened to me when I was listening to that, I did what you do when you listen to good comedy with somebody else.
Marc:You started laughing at the bumper car joke, and then I started laughing in my car coming over here, because I don't know that joke.
Marc:But it's a great joke.
Marc:It's a great observation.
Guest:And the great thing about it was most of those people were very, very nice.
Guest:And so it also made me feel like, oh, this is a world of strange people who might accept me one day.
Guest:I don't feel that different than Seinfeld.
Guest:He grew up on Long Island.
Guest:I grew up on Long Island.
Guest:So did Paul Reiser.
Guest:I felt like, oh, I am one of you.
Guest:I just haven't figured out how to do it yet.
Guest:Right.
Guest:Now, the shambling conversations,
Guest:So that was the first time you talked to him.
Guest:That was the first time I ever talked to Gary.
Guest:Somehow I hunted down a very weak publicist and convinced them to let me talk to Gary.
Guest:I guess at the time that wasn't a big deal because Gary was just opening up for Joan Rivers in Vegas or something.
Guest:He was still a very young comedian.
Marc:Well, that's interesting that the theme of all of these clips is that, you know, none of them were as big.
Marc:as they became.
Marc:I mean, this was just them.
Marc:None of them had broken yet.
Guest:Yes, I just, I have to be proud of one thing.
Guest:I had good taste in comics.
Guest:I did like the right guys.
Guest:You know, I was a comedy writer before I was a comedian.
Guest:Really?
Guest:Who did you write books?
Guest:I wrote for Sanford and Son and Welcome Back, Cotter.
Guest:Really?
Guest:And, gee, the Harvey Korman show.
Guest:I wrote for about six sitcoms before I said I wanted to do stand-up.
Guest:So I have an ability to write jokes, which I like to do.
Guest:So every now and then I'll be writing about my life and I'll just think of a joke.
Guest:And it's just purely, really a joke.
Guest:What would be like an example of how a piece of material got thought of and how it developed?
Guest:Well, I'll tell you an interesting story.
Guest:I mean, this is unlike other material of mine.
Guest:I do this joke in my act that I've heard every excuse
Guest:for a woman not going to bed with me.
Guest:I think I've heard them all.
Guest:I remember this one girl actually said to me, look, not with this Falkland Island thing.
Guest:And I said, that was over a year ago.
Guest:And she said, I still haven't gotten over it yet.
Guest:And I said, well, I can understand that, Mrs. Thatcher.
Guest:Now, I can tell you about the derivation of so many jokes.
Guest:Because some of them take literally a year from the time I get an idea to the time I get the line exactly right.
Guest:And I'll tell you what I'm working on after this.
Guest:I'll tell you a real current one.
Guest:Okay.
Guest:But with the Falcon Island joke, I got the idea.
Guest:When the Falcon Islands were going on, is it about two years ago now?
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:I actually wrote a joke where I used to come out and I used to say, boy, I'm just not meeting any women.
Guest:I don't know if it's this Falkland Island thing or what.
Guest:And then as time went by, I changed it to, I've heard every excuse for a woman not going to bed with me.
Guest:I remember this one girl said, not with this Falkland Island thing, which is very hip and it gets a laugh.
Guest:And I was telling David Brenner that joke.
Guest:And David says,
Guest:Then you ought to say, that was over a year ago.
Guest:Because that's funny, because, you know, you should say, well, that was over a year ago.
Guest:And then I said, well, she still hasn't gotten over it yet.
Guest:And then later came the tag of, well, I can understand that, Mrs. Thatcher.
Guest:So it just kind of kept going, you know.
Guest:It just kept going over time, that joke.
Guest:And it really is a joke, although it is my sort of perspective.
Guest:And you said there's another one?
Guest:There's one I'm working on now.
Guest:I actually did this joke on the Tonight Show, but in a different way.
Guest:This is also just a stupid joke, really.
Guest:But I said I've been taking... I went to a health food store, and I've been taking bee pollen, bumblebee pollen, to increase my... It's supposed to increase your lovemaking stamina.
Guest:So I've been taking about...
Guest:2,000 milligrams of bee pollen a day.
Guest:And the other night I woke up in the middle of the night and started to fling myself against the screen door.
Guest:And I started to shout, someone turn off the porch.
Guest:And it's interesting because I don't know how this joke is ultimately going to evolve because I actually did this joke on the Tonight Show where I just said...
Guest:I took 2,000 milligrams of bee pollen, and now I'm afraid the first time I make love I'm going to die right afterwards.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Because that's what bees do, and then I said, oh, I'll wake up the next morning, I'll be flinging myself against the screen door.
Guest:But now I've 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?
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Well, just to be, I mean, just to tell you, and this is not a great joke either, but I do this joke about, um,
Guest:I read this article in the newspaper that we tend to pick out mates who look like us.
Guest:Which is a scary thought.
Guest:We tend to pick out mates who look like us.
Guest:So I've been standing in front of the mirror with a wig and dress on, so I don't know where I want to see her.
Guest:Now, what's funny is I originally, when I wrote that joke, I used to say, I'll stand in front of the mirror with lipstick on so I'll know her when I hear.
Guest:And then I tried, I'll stand with a wig and lipstick on.
Guest:And so you just keep playing around with it.
Guest:But you play around with it.
Guest:I don't play around with it always in an intellectual way.
Guest:I play around with it instinctually.
Guest:So I'll get on the stage, and because I am...
Guest:I really am naturally funny, and it comes from instinct.
Guest:I just start, I ad-lib different things in that joke all the time, and then I just hit wig and dress.
Guest:As subtle as it sounds, it makes a difference.
Guest:Yeah, like all comedians, you know, ad-lib jokes and keep them in the act, but do you sit down and actually, you know, with an idea and sit down and try to work it out on paper, or no?
Guest:Yeah, I do both.
Guest:I mean, because I often ad-lib an idea, I mean, really often, and write it down, and then sometimes I develop it further, and
Guest:That was the first time I ever spoke to him.
Guest:Then I met him when I was working at the Comedy Magic Club and my manager, Jimmy Miller,
Guest:was there and he said, hey, Shandling's going to do the Grammys and he needs jokes.
Guest:And he said to Gary, you should hire Judd.
Guest:Judd will write you some jokes.
Guest:And then Gary didn't really respond.
Guest:And then three months later, out of the blue, he called me and said, can you help me write some jokes?
Marc:Did he remember you from when you were in high school?
Guest:No.
Guest:In fact, I probably didn't mention that for years.
Guest:Really?
Guest:After that.
Guest:To any of these guys?
Guest:No, that was never my in.
Guest:I never tried to connect that I had met them.
Marc:But in retrospect, but now have you brought it up to Leno and Seinfeld and to Shanling that you had interviewed them when you were 16?
Guest:I've mentioned it and all of them don't remember it and don't seem very interested in it.
Guest:either.
Guest:Seinfeld was very nice.
Guest:He just said, I totally forgot about that and got a kick out of it.
Guest:But these guys gave you the blueprint for your life.
Guest:Yes, they did.
Guest:And those people don't get completely 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 change them in any way, not only does it make me feel good, but I have to fight the urge to go, like, how?
Guest:Well, hopefully, maybe they do get it.
Guest:Maybe it's just something that it's hard to...
Guest:It's hard to express or connect about because it is such a powerful thing.
Guest:It's almost weird to look someone in the eye and say, you changed my life.
Guest:It's almost a stalkery thing to do.
Guest:But in some way, I've been a little bit connected to some of those people and they've been very nice to me as the years go by.
Guest:I treasure when Seinfeld...
Guest:sends me a note and says he likes funny people or something.
Guest:It means more to me than he ever could know.
Guest:Because I literally thought about him as I made it, and I thought, one day Seinfeld's going to see this.
Guest:I better not fuck it up.
Marc:Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Marc:In the channeling conversation, I learned something there.
Marc:I could hear you, because the...
Marc:The conversation is very specific, and you said it was your first conversation with him, and it's about writing jokes and about, more so than any of the other interviews, about the career of writing.
Marc:Yes.
Marc:That there was something, but you're telling me that you're only coming at this from a comics point of view, but he says that I wrote for television shows.
Guest:It probably planted the first seed that I should be a writer.
Guest:And when it was time for me to go to college, I didn't know what to major in because I only wanted to be a stand-up comedian.
Guest:So I applied to USC Cinema School.
Guest:because i didn't know what else i would do i didn't really want to make movies but i i i became a you know i was studying screenwriting at usc and maybe that was part of people like shandling saying you know you have to write for yourself you have to you know create your own destiny and and that maybe it had more of an effect than i
Guest:I thought about.
Marc:The greatest thing about all of these is just comedy somehow saved our lives when we were kids.
Marc:Like I, you know, when I think back on it, of Leno and Merv Griffin and of Shandling when I first saw him, that, you know, they, to me, that they had control of everything.
Marc:They could do this thing, this thing to make people laugh, to bring, I mean, they were, they were, they saved my life somehow because I remember watching all of them.
Marc:And then when you're talking to Shandling and to hear these guys
Marc:you know talk about this joke thing that just the joke thing like for him to say that it could take a year to tag a joke because I'm the same way I mean things just sit there and then you don't know when the tag's going to come and that's part of the thrill of being a comic and Leno talks about it a little too that he doesn't write anything down and that Shandling sometimes writes things down and you know Jerry's very anal about constructing things but the thrill of a joke spontaneously happening is really the thrill of doing this thing
Guest:And you could be your own man.
Guest:That's what I took from it.
Guest:Oh, I can work on this on my own, practice it, write it, and absorb the blows of being terrible at it for a few years.
Guest:But if I'm committed, I actually can do this.
Guest:If I'm great at it, I will have a career.
Guest:And it's all up to me.
Guest:It's not up to anybody else.
Guest:It's just what I put into it.
Guest:if I believe in myself.
Guest:And that was an empowering idea.
Guest:Because I was very comfortable saying, I'll take a crappy job for 10 years to figure out how to do this at night.
Guest:That was never something that I was afraid of.
Guest:And I often think that it's ridiculous that in this business, at some point, you start to make a living at it.
Guest:Because it is the perfect example of something you would do for free.
Guest:And I say to my kids, I don't know what you want to do for a living.
Guest:I just lucked out that the thing I do
Guest:pays well, but I would do it anyway.
Guest:It's just, it happened to be a weird jackpot.
Guest:But if it was like 18 grand a year, I probably would be doing it right now and we would be in a tiny apartment together.
Guest:Going over my act.
Guest:Exactly.
Guest:Where do you go from here?
Guest:Like right now you're established.
Guest:That's one of the top comedians, and you get work not only in the clubs, but in Atlantic City.
Guest:How much farther can you get?
Guest:Because only a certain amount of people work shows by themselves at the Universal Amphitheater.
Guest:Right.
Guest:Well, to do that, you have to have exposure.
Guest:And how you get that is a tricky point that I'm at, that everyone that you'll be talking to is at.
Guest:Because there's a lot, you could do a TV series, you could do a sitcom, which a lot of people don't want to be associated with.
Guest:You could do movies, they're hard to get, it's hard to have a hit.
Guest:You could just do stand-up and hope that you catch on after a while, like Gallagher, you know, and you got specials and did it that way.
Guest:There's a lot of different ways.
Guest:I'm going to do acting.
Guest:I'm going to do some acting because it's easy for me.
Guest:And there's a lot of good vehicles for exposure as an actor.
Guest:And...
Guest:But stand-up is what I am.
Guest:I'm a comedian, you know, and the acting will just be to improve my visibility.
Guest:And what kind of vehicles are you looking for?
Guest:Quality.
Guest:That's my only real consideration.
Guest:It could be anything as long as the people are trying to do something good.
Guest:There's a lot of things I've been offered that I didn't do because...
Guest:I don't want to do a piece of junk.
Guest:I'm not starving, you know, and I feel a responsibility to the people that like what I've done so far.
Guest:And I think the only reason they like what I've done so far is because I've done everything I can to make it really high quality stuff.
Guest:So I want to stick to that.
Guest:What would success be if you achieved success of everything you wanted to do?
Guest:What would it be?
Guest:At what level?
Guest:I think what Bill Cosby is doing, to perform in concert, to perform in the top rooms in the country, to be, well, he does his commercials, you know, but to be well known and to be considered one of the best stand-up comics you can see.
Guest:That's what I want to be.
Guest:I want to be the best that I can possibly be.
Guest:I'll let you do it.
Guest:Okay.
Okay.
Marc:That's part one of a two-part interview with Judd Apatow.
Marc:Part two will be coming up on Thursday.
Marc:And in that one, we really talk about, you know, comedy philosophies.
Marc:We talk about movies, movies he's made, his favorite movies.
Marc:And we really talk about how he feels about his career and where he's at now.
Marc:And of course, I talk about myself a bit.
Marc:So look forward to that.
Marc:Judd Apatow, part two, coming up in just a couple days.
Marc:And you can go to WTFPod.com.
Marc:Send me some feedback on these episodes if you like and get on the mailing list so you can know ahead of time what's happening.
Marc:That's WTFPod.com.
Marc:And obviously you can get all the links to all the other stuff there.
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