Episode 104 - Judd Apatow Pt. 2
Guest: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, we're doing 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:Nice to have you back.
Marc:We are about to begin part two of the Judd Apatow interviews.
Marc:I did a two-part interview.
Marc:Obviously, many of you listened to the first one where I talked to Judd a bit about how he started, but more importantly, we showcased
Marc:basically his version of WTF, which he did when he was 16 years old, segments of the interviews he did as a high school student with Jerry Seinfeld, Gary Shandling, and Jay Leno, and really learned about how this was really Judd trying to put together his future.
Marc:And now that we are in his future, in this episode, we're going to talk to Judd about where he's at now, how he feels about comedy, about his own films, about his career, and about...
Marc:how his life is as usual.
Marc:So this is more of a traditional WTF interview.
Marc:So let's get right to it.
Marc:This is part two of the WTF Judd Apatow interview.
Marc:Enjoy.
Marc:I met you briefly.
Marc:The first time I met you was at a party at Stacey Nelson's house.
Marc:She was a publicist.
Marc:I was dating her.
Marc:I was being held hostage at her house.
Marc:I did the A-list.
Marc:I think it was 1989.
Marc:Amazing Jonathan.
Marc:I met you at a party and you insisted that I was never going to leave L.A.
Marc:And I left.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:And I wish.
Marc:Why would I say that?
Marc:It was one of those weird moments where we're like, you know, everyone's hanging around and you go like, you know, so what are you doing here?
Marc:And I'm like, I'm just I'm staying at her house and I got to go back to New York.
Marc:He said, you'll be back.
Marc:You'll be like, it was like almost ominous.
Marc:And like I and then he said, you shouldn't leave.
Marc:It's something to that degree.
Marc:But I left.
Marc:I probably should have listened to you because I didn't come back for years.
Marc:But there was that whole crew there at that time.
Marc:It was Ben Stiller.
Marc:And I imagine that's around the time that you guys were working on the show.
Marc:Was that 88?
Guest:The show is 90.
Guest:We probably started working on it in 91.
Guest:Yeah, to 92.
Marc:And that was the first real TV job.
Guest:I mean, I wrote stand up for a few comedians.
Guest:And when they did specials, I would, you know, I'd be a co-producer or something.
Guest:So I I wrote with Roseanne her act for a year.
Guest:And she did this great HBO special where she wore a gold lame Elvis outfit.
Guest:Right.
Guest:And she shot it in Minnesota.
Guest:And I wrote jokes for Tom Arnold and wrote a few specials for him.
Guest:But then I met Ben at an Elvis Costello Unplugged concert.
Guest:And we both knew HBO was looking for a show, a sketch show.
Guest:And we thought of something in two weeks and sold it.
Guest:And at the time we sold it, people thought we had been friends forever and we had known each other for 14 days.
Marc:And are you still friends?
Marc:Yes.
Guest:Because I talked to him.
Guest:Did you listen to that one?
Guest:I did.
Guest:I enjoyed it.
Guest:I enjoyed it.
Guest:It was fun hearing him talk about the days when we were first getting started.
Marc:Now, like in Funny People, you saw that footage of you and Adam and Janine.
Guest:Yes, and Ben.
Marc:And what year was that, 89 or 88?
Guest:That was 89 or 90.
Guest:And in the footage in the beginning of the movie, you see Adam making a phony phone call.
Guest:And actually, I shot it in our apartment.
Guest:And Ben Stiller and Janine Garofalo are there laughing.
Guest:So you see them very briefly in the opening credits.
Guest:And at the time, Adam was so funny but had no outlet.
Guest:So he would make phony phone calls for hours and hours.
Guest:And I thought he was so hilarious that it didn't make sense that I wouldn't record it.
Guest:I felt bad that they would disappear and never be heard again.
Guest:So first I would audio record them and then video record them.
Guest:Do you have all that stuff too?
Guest:I have all of it.
Guest:When we were doing Funny People, I found hours and hours of Adam Sandler funny phone calls.
Guest:It was always calling Jerry's Deli and complaining about the roast beef and saying it made him sick.
Guest:And they would always be so nice.
Guest:And then he would be an old lady and he would negotiate getting a free sandwich.
Guest:And he'd go get it or he wouldn't?
Guest:He would never go get it.
Guest:But it was always like...
Guest:Could I get a free sandwich for my trouble?
Guest:And they would say, okay.
Guest:And he would say, well, I had turkey, but I don't want to get hurt again.
Guest:Could this time I get the roast beef?
Guest:And he would keep them on the line for 20 minutes negotiating the sandwich.
Guest:And...
Guest:As a comedy nerd, I knew that's the guy.
Guest:To me, it was no different than watching one of the people I looked up to who was on TV.
Guest:And we all had a sense, oh, Adam's going to hit.
Guest:There's no way this doesn't happen.
Guest:He just delighted us.
Guest:I mean, he made us laugh so hard.
Guest:And back then when he wasn't making movies or on Saturday Night Live, he...
Guest:took all the energy he uses now to make these movies and would just do it to you.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Or strangers on the street.
Guest:I mean, he would try to be funny in situations where now he's probably too tired to bother being funny, like a phony phone call.
Marc:now that's so you had that sense of him and you keep using comedy nerd but back then they didn't that didn't exist you were just a guy that loved comedy i remember moving to la and i started doing stand-up at this place called the la cabaret in the valley in encino
Guest:And I started meeting comedians for the first time personally, not just interviewing them.
Guest:And I realized they're all like me.
Guest:They all like the same stuff.
Guest:I finally can talk to people about Monty Python and the weird sketches in the last 10 minutes of Saturday Night Live and the Marx Brothers.
Guest:And I felt like the B-girl in the video.
Guest:And then they opened the gates and there's like 100 other B-girls.
Guest:I used to cry watching that video because that's how I felt.
Guest:Moving to Los Angeles, hanging out with Dana Gould, talking about Elvis Costello songs and all these things that we were into.
Marc:Well, that's a pretty... There is a level of really bright comics, but there's also the other level as well.
Marc:Sure.
Marc:I avoided them for the most part.
Marc:You found who your crew was.
Marc:Now, what is it?
Marc:Like, I guess from my own personal knowledge.
Marc:So now, you know, the ones you wrote, you wrote 40-Year-Old Virgin.
Guest:With Steve Carell.
Marc:And you wrote Knocked Up?
Marc:Yes.
Marc:And you wrote Funny People, obviously.
Marc:And you wrote, you didn't write Superbad, you produced.
Guest:I produced Superbad, yes.
Marc:You produced the Pineapple Express.
Guest:Yeah, and I wrote the story with Seth and Evan.
Marc:But now, what is the role?
Marc:Because I'm unclear.
Marc:I never really understood show business, which is, you know, you can see.
Marc:But when you produce something, when your company, whatever's on that board right now becomes a movie, are you that involved in all of your productions?
Marc:What is the role of a producer?
Guest:I think it's different for every producer.
Guest:Some producers might just help you sell something, get you the money to make it.
Guest:Some producers are very deeply, creatively involved in every step of the process.
Guest:For me, I'm a writer, so as a producer...
Guest:the thing that I can do that's most valuable is, from the earliest stages, talk about the story with you and pitch it around and try to make it better.
Guest:And then I have failed enough in this business to know what can go wrong.
Guest:Like what?
Guest:And what are your failures, do you consider?
Guest:Well, I certainly had a lot of experiences where I didn't control the casting.
Guest:And so early on I realized, oh, if I can't hire the right actors...
Guest:It's not going to work.
Guest:Even if they're great actors, if they're the wrong actors, it's a disaster.
Guest:Or if we lose control of the script and you get rewritten by a stranger, it's going to be terrible.
Guest:So there's hundreds of lessons that I took a beating to learn.
Guest:And so now when I meet a young writer, so if it's Seth Rogen and Evan Goldberg, and they've been working on Superman for seven years, literally they started working on it when they were 13, 14 years old.
Guest:There's 100 landmines I can help them avoid because I got blown up by them before.
Marc:But it seemed to me that that movie made sense for you because it did what you like to do.
Marc:It seemed to me that that movie had elements that were so personal and clearly so genuine that they were undeniably real.
Guest:That's what I loved about the script.
Guest:They showed me the script in 2001 or 2002, and we did a table read of it where Seth would play one of the kids, and him and Jason Segel read it.
Guest:By the time we had it made, they were too old to play those parts.
Guest:But I related to a story about two nerdy guys realizing that they went all the way through high school and never learned how to talk to girls, never learned how to be social.
Guest:They just hung out with each other.
Guest:And now they're going to go to different colleges and they're fucked.
Guest:So in a panic, they try to make up for lost time.
Guest:But over the course of many years of reading it and punching it up and talking about it, we all figured out that it really was a love story about high school friendship and what that means.
Guest:And once everybody tuned into that and we hired Greg Mottola to direct it, it actually...
Guest:in addition to some amazing comedy writing, became an emotional movie.
Guest:And that's why I think those guys made a classic, because it's strangely powerful in the way it reminds you of how much you loved your best friend in high school.
Marc:Yeah, it was one of the things that really drew me more into your work.
Marc:And also this Freaks and Geeks, and this is a recurring theme with you, is that these socially awkward, alienated guys that have to deal with that and have to group with each other and sort of have this different type of strength to get through things.
Guest:Cocky nerds.
Guest:Me and Leslie always talk about it.
Guest:It's people who think they don't.
Guest:think ill of themselves.
Guest:They actually think that there's something special about themselves, but no one's noticed it.
Guest:And so the characters on Freaks and Geeks, the geeks, they look down on the people who beat on them.
Guest:But they still are terrified of them.
Guest:And so that's what makes them interesting.
Guest:But they know they're superior.
Guest:Yes, they have an air of superiority as as they're getting pummeled.
Marc:Right.
Marc:And did you was this something that you carried in your life?
Marc:Do you think that would you hang, you know, outside of your fear of bankruptcy, some of the momentum of realizing your dreams and your ambition on that, on just this idea that, you know, it had to happen?
Guest:I did have a sense that I was interested in something that no one else was interested in.
Guest:And because of that, I might be able to slip in the door because there was zero competition.
Guest:When I was into comedy and comic books as a kid, there literally was not one other kid to share it with.
Guest:I didn't have a friend who would also love Seinfeld or X-Men comic books in 1976 or 77.
Guest:I was alone.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:And I did think it was kind of cool.
Guest:I never thought I'm a loser for liking this and no one else does.
Guest:They were all into Pete Rose or the Steelers.
Guest:And I had some sense that, oh, I'm going to be the only person who does this.
Guest:So I'm going to get a job.
Guest:This will happen.
Guest:There's no competition here.
Marc:Well, I guess you and Ben and Freaks and Geeks and the Ben Stiller Show and Mr. Show to some degree really created this community of comedy nerds in some ways.
Guest:Do you feel that?
Guest:I think that Ben, in a lot of ways, is the beginning of comedy.
Guest:Much of what's happened in in modern comedy.
Guest:He did the Ben Stiller show on MTV, which was a Larry Sanders ask show where he it was behind the scenes of a sketch show where Ben was kind of a jerk.
Guest:And he did it with Jeff Kahn, who worked on the Ben Stiller show.
Guest:And Harry O'Reilly was one of the actors.
Guest:And he did this great U2 sketch, parody of the U2 playing on the roof.
Guest:And Richard Grieco parody, Looker.
Guest:And he did filmic parodies.
Guest:We used to call it SCTV, if they had money.
Guest:Yeah, yeah.
Guest:And I met Ben after he did that.
Guest:So when we created the Ben Stiller show together, I didn't know what the hell I was doing.
Guest:Ben knew how to make short films.
Guest:I just was the guy trying to hopefully figure out how to not have Ben realize I didn't know how to do anything but write stand-up jokes.
Guest:So I'm just keeping my mouth shut and listening to Ben.
Guest:Because he was already brilliant and had a vision for what this was.
Guest:And slowly I figured out how to...
Guest:run a writing staff and edit.
Guest:But I was faking it.
Guest:I was faking it for a long time.
Marc:Is that what everyone does, though, for the first couple jobs?
Guest:It is what you do, but I was in charge of the writing and editing of the show.
Guest:And so it was not like faking it as a staff writer.
Guest:I literally was 24, 25 years old with no...
Guest:Background at all.
Guest:And I hired people with Ben who were brilliant, like like Dino Stamatopoulos and Bob Odenkirk and Brad Forrester, David Cross.
Guest:And and and so.
Guest:In a lot of ways, it was trying to manage these personalities who were bursting with energy.
Guest:I mean, Bob was the funniest man in the world.
Guest:I mean, the energy he had during the Ben Stiller show, when he didn't like someone else's sketch, he would be like, oh my God, we can't do that.
Guest:Who wrote that?
Guest:Your unfunny uncle?
Guest:And I was so intimidated because I wasn't anywhere near as strong as Bob was.
Guest:But I also had to pick what sketches of Bob's we would shoot on the show.
Guest:And then David Cross came on for the last few.
Guest:And then you felt like, oh, this guy's in a whole other world with Bob.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:And they didn't write together at the time.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:that sensibility that they did just on the last episode or two of, of the Stiller show.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Um, I think sparked their interest in working with each other and doing Mr. Show because after a bunch of episodes, uh,
Guest:The show expanded past Ben's sensibility, and we started to have some room for the sensibility of the supporting cast and the other writers.
Marc:I used to live with Dave in Boston.
Marc:When he did Cross Comedy and they moved out here, Dave already had a very specific point of view.
Marc:And Bob is very different in a lot of ways.
Marc:But it's interesting that...
Marc:that with Bob's ridiculousness and amazing commitment to getting laughs at it by pushing this absurdity, Dave has got this weird, angry heart to him.
Marc:And the mixture really kind of worked pretty good.
Guest:I remember going to those tapings and being baffled at how funny they were.
Guest:I see myself in the crowd in some of them.
Guest:You do.
Guest:And I really was in awe, and still am.
Marc:But you went on to do Sanders, which is another defining show for comedy nerddom.
Marc:I mean, that's an amazing show.
Guest:That's where I learned how to write stories.
Guest:Gary was nice enough to hire me on that show after the Ben Stiller show, but I had never written a story before.
Marc:Like a full script in a way.
Guest:I didn't know how to write for people.
Marc:He wrote sketches and jokes.
Guest:Yeah, I knew how to write legends of Bruce Springsteen, but I didn't know how to write about people.
Guest:And Gary was very nice, and I was there on and off for five years, and he ultimately allowed me to direct an episode, and that's how I started writing.
Guest:But it was an amazing place to be and also scary because it's Rip Torn and Jeffrey Tambor.
Guest:It was just scary.
Guest:Yes, and brilliant and terrifying.
Guest:And imagine having to walk up to Rip Torn and give him a note to change his performance.
Guest:How'd that go?
Guest:It didn't go well.
Guest:It didn't go well.
Guest:At all Did he ever blow up at you?
Guest:I mean he he was a blustery guy at that time.
Guest:Yeah, but correct most of the time Yeah, and no 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 could you I think you're a little You know nervous here.
Guest:I'm not nervous
Guest:I'm in charge of the place.
Guest:Okay, Rip, I'm sorry.
Guest:I don't know.
Guest:Okay, we'll just do it the way you want to do it.
Guest:But just by planting the seed, maybe he'd come around to you.
Guest:Three takes later, he might give you one.
Guest:And then he would walk up to you.
Guest:Ah, did you like the one I did the way you wanted to do it?
Guest:That was all right.
Guest:And you did feel like, I am watching...
Guest:Some of the greatest actors of all time, certainly some of the greatest comedic actors of all time.
Guest:And when they did the last scene of the Larry Sanders show where Jeffrey Tammer goes off on Rip and Larry and says, there is a book being written about Hank Kingsley and you are not in it and you are not in it.
Guest:Fuck you.
Guest:I forgot the exact words.
Guest:They did it in one take and wrapped the series.
Guest:that's ballsy guys what if there was a hair in the gate there were guys at the top of their game yeah and so it was fun to to learn from them and Gary is you know certainly there's no one better at writing comedy and writing stories and just by watching him fix things somehow
Guest:I learned a lot of what I know how to do, just observing how he would think things through.
Guest:Do you think he's an underappreciated comic?
Guest:I mean, what he did with the Larry Sanders show is an achievement that it's impossible to even explain.
Guest:If you can imagine having to write a show, he's the head writer, and then you have to rehearse it for three days and then shoot the entire show in two days, so 17 pages a day.
Guest:while punching up next week's script and editing two shows.
Marc:And also the idea that not just the work ethic.
Marc:I'm finding that all guys who do well work hard.
Marc:And this is my own question about funny people as well, that to create a cast of characters that work within show business, that are pathologically selfish and narcissistic and relatively not great people,
Marc:Yes, is it's difficult.
Marc:It's challenging to find heart there.
Marc:And he clearly did.
Marc:And on that show, he did.
Marc:You know, you find hard through the weaknesses of all these extreme narcissists and lunatics.
Marc:And I think that, you know, in some ways and funny people that, you know, that was your quest as well, that it's very hard to sell show business as being a reasonable place for human beings to work.
Guest:That's true, and Gary used to always say, the Larry Sanders show is about people who love each other, but show business gets in the way.
Guest:And I've always thought that's true of any story.
Guest:What's getting in the way of people who love each other?
Guest:And with funny people, I thought, well, what gets in the way for George Simmons is that he's so funny and people love him so much on a grand scale that it allows him to never grow up.
Guest:Because no one can really call him on his shit because he has approval from millions.
Guest:And only when life is about to end does he realize, I'm alone here.
Guest:I paid a massive price to be this guy.
Guest:And we all know people like that.
Guest:Was there a sense that he hated what made him famous, though?
Guest:I think what I was intending to do was to have him have a career that you couldn't, in hindsight, be super proud of.
Guest:where Adam in life has done a mix of big crowd-pleasing movies and Paul Thomas Anderson and James Brooks movies, and he's very daring as an actor, and he's done things on the entire spectrum.
Guest:I wanted this to be someone that was a little more like Dangerfield, where he just did Back to School, and that was his world, and that it wasn't enough to feel great about it.
Guest:He wasn't Richard Pryor.
Guest:In fact, we shot a whole scene where he explained that all comedians are liars.
Guest:And Seth says, you should talk about being sick.
Guest:Why don't you talk about being sick?
Guest:And he says, no one wants to hear that.
Guest:That's for poets.
Guest:and singers no one wants your comedian say uh you know you know i'm dying here's some jokes yeah he goes you know he goes all comedy is a lie seinfeld he knows where the socks are he knows where the sock disappeared in the dryer he dangerfield says he gets no respect everyone kissed his fucking ass his entire life it's bullshit he goes i don't even know if richard pryor was black
Guest:That wasn't in the movie?
Guest:It felt a little inside baseball for the movie.
Guest:Are you happy with that movie overall?
Guest:I am.
Guest:It's a painful movie in some respects because it's so personal.
Guest:I'm also deeply embarrassed.
Guest:I'm proud, but it's like standing naked in terms of it has little shades of all sorts of things that I struggle with.
Guest:And I knew that I was going to put people through something.
Guest:So where in a normal movie, you think, all right, well, the 40-year-old virgin needs to find love.
Guest:And when he gets laid and gets married, the crowd is ecstatic because he's a nice person and he deserves it.
Guest:But to start with a person who's damaged and isn't necessarily nice to everyone around him, and at the end of two and a half hours, he's slightly better with the potential to maybe get a little more better than
Guest:Isn't the most satisfying journey because that was the point of the movie, which is even getting a terminal illness will not change the worldview of certain people.
Guest:Did you do things in that movie because you were frightened that that would be too heavy?
Marc:Did I make adjustments to soften it, soften it or to add elements out of out of maybe some sense of insecurity?
Guest:I think I went the other way with it, which is at the end of the edit, I removed a lot of jokes because I didn't think it was truthful.
Guest:And so there were certain scenes where I could have gone to a bigger attempt for humor.
Guest:And I thought, but you know what?
Guest:He wouldn't do it there.
Guest:Right.
Guest:That's what I like about the movie.
Guest:It's meant to be a movie that sticks in your craw.
Marc:No, it does.
Marc:And I'm in show business.
Guest:Yeah, exactly.
Guest:But there is a pain in making a movie like that because when you're super crowd-pleasing, the crowd tells you.
Guest:And when you're trying to be somewhat crowd-pleasing but really more make people think about something that they really don't want to think about at all,
Guest:which is how would you handle looking death in the eye, you get more polarized reactions.
Guest:And for me, I'll never know how I did because I'll never get a fresh view of the movie.
Guest:For me, it's all an intellectual exercise at some point because nothing will surprise me.
Guest:Right.
Guest:Some people say if you can't argue about a movie, it's probably not worth too much.
Guest:So I figure, well, at least they're arguing about it.
Marc:Yeah, there were definitely arguments about it in people I talked to.
Marc:And with that disease, what was the thinking around that disease?
Marc:Did you have to decide a disease that wouldn't be too horrendously disturbing or that had a possibility where he could recover or that was something a little unknown?
Marc:Yeah.
Guest:I didn't want to go into a chemo movie.
Guest:So I did find a disease which is a form of leukemia where there is a treatment that is available up north that does work for 10% of the people.
Guest:It's all truthful stuff, and it isn't one of those diseases where all your hair falls out.
Marc:So you had to do some homework around a disease that wouldn't undermine your movie or put it into a different perspective.
Marc:Well, we've all seen that movie.
Yeah.
Guest:And so how do I not do that movie?
Guest:I want Adam to get sick, but I don't want it to be about how hard it is to take your medication for more than a minute or two.
Guest:And that does happen to people where, like, out of the blue, you're better.
Guest:Now what the fuck are you going to do?
Guest:And sadly, I've seen that happen to people very close to me where...
Guest:When they think they're going to die, they get very connected and more intimate and they drop a lot of the bullshit and they're more loving and they have a different perspective.
Guest:And then maybe a month later, they're told that they're better.
Guest:And all those old neuroses return slowly.
Guest:And the person you were before you ever got sick starts to want to come back.
Guest:And are you going to change completely?
Guest:Are you going to change a little bit?
Guest:There was a...
Guest:there was something that inspired the movie, which is there was a, you know, an executive of a TV network, and he said, and he was sick, and then he got better, and he said, you know, when I was sick, what I realized was, we can be number one again.
Guest:And me and my friend said, he's the only person who learned nothing from a life-threatening disease, and that was part of the inspiration for the movie.
Guest:What if you learned nothing, or almost nothing?
Marc:Now, when you look at the comedy movies that come out now, I admire the direction you're going because I like things that feel.
Marc:I like to feel things.
Marc:Because I don't do it in real life if I can't do it sitting in front of me.
Marc:I watched Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid the other day because it was on a British Airlines.
Marc:I was coming back from London.
Marc:They had it in the collection part.
Marc:And it was great.
Marc:Yes.
Marc:It's a great movie.
Marc:And I laughed and I cried and it's much Cassie and the Sundance kid.
Marc:You know, it's not supposed to make that happen.
Marc:But I had this weird moment where I realized that I don't experience much joy in life and that there are things like movies and like you're talking about comedy when you were a kid and also your reverence for for continuing to admire comics, which you do in comic actors.
Marc:You know, that's part of experiencing joy and life.
Marc:And I guess that, you know, I admire your angle on it, and I have a harder time.
Marc:It seems that there's a trend in comedy movies now that you might start with a pretty good story that seems kind of human, but out of some weird fear or overcompensation, it just goes into fucking ridiculous land.
Marc:Yes.
Marc:Now, you've produced movies like that, no?
Guest:I've produced some movies that are better than others.
Marc:Yeah, I'm not putting a judgment on them.
Guest:Yes, there are movies that are a little more primacy, and there are movies where you're sticking very close to the truth.
Guest:And sometimes when you reach for a joke, I always call it sweaty.
Guest:When something gets sweaty, like you could tell...
Guest:They feel they need a joke here.
Guest:Right.
Guest:And they're reaching for it.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:When it doesn't work, it's brutal when things aren't organic.
Guest:And also when you see movies that you can tell that nobody's passionate about it.
Guest:It's just a project.
Guest:It's a way for people to get paid.
Guest:You know what those movies are.
Guest:When you see a movie that Sean Penn directed.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:you realize he's not fucking around.
Guest:It's like listening to a Nirvana record or something, like Warren Zevon's last album.
Guest:This is not a job.
Guest:They have something to say.
Guest:And in comedy, the people that we like the most, when they score, they have something to say that's important to them, whether it's Chris Rock's stand-up special or Curb Your Enthusiasm or Ricky Gervais and The Office.
Guest:Sure.
Guest:They're not fucking around.
Guest:And to me, that's what I'm always looking for.
Guest:Seven, Evan, would kill for Superbad.
Guest:It's not some comedy movie to them.
Guest:It's the most important thing in their lives.
Guest:And there are things in it that they want to say.
Guest:And there are things they want to do comedically that they think haven't been done.
Guest:So there's a passion level that's not there in...
Marc:In those movies, the comedy product.
Marc:Yes.
Marc:In broad sort of farce, kind of like, you know, let's just keep getting more ridiculous.
Marc:Which has its place.
Marc:And sometimes it works.
Guest:Sometimes it's hilarious.
Guest:Sometimes people come up with just a weird idea and it's just funny.
Guest:It's just that for some reason they nailed it.
Marc:Yeah.
Guest:Just for fun.
Marc:I agree.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:And I think that definitely has value.
Marc:And the other thing that I wanted to talk about was I believe that somehow or another you've redefined Jews.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:in movies and on TV.
Marc:It seems that with Jason and with Jonah and with Seth, who are a force, a comedy force as actors now and writers, there's none of that shtick anymore.
Marc:And these guys are Jews, aren't they?
Guest:I think that they are.
Marc:You don't ever think about that?
Marc:I come from a family of hardcore atheists.
Guest:No, but culturally Jewish.
Guest:I mean, I couldn't be more of a Jew for someone who is less of a Jew than anybody.
Guest:I feel it genetically.
Guest:And I've thought about it, but not too much, because I don't really understand it.
Guest:But there's something in me, whether it's how I observed my family and how it wired me to behave...
Guest:None of it is from religion or a belief in God, but some of it might be from a post-Holocaust lack of a belief in God.
Guest:Because when I was a kid, although people went to temple and every once in a while people would bring out the matzah, everything.
Guest:everyone didn't believe in God.
Guest:Sure.
Guest:In a hardcore way.
Guest:But there's a cultural Jewish thing.
Guest:But they were Jews in my uncle owned the deli.
Guest:But there was a darkness to their point of view.
Guest:I mean, their basic point of view was nobody said life was fair.
Guest:That was the only spirituality I was given as a kid.
Guest:They never said life makes sense.
Guest:They never said there's balance in the world.
Guest:They never said you'll be reincarnated.
Marc:It's not fair and fear bankruptcy.
Guest:Exactly.
Guest:That's what
Guest:It was.
Guest:Fuck them before they fuck you.
Guest:And it was a little dark.
Guest:And so I'm sure some of that seeps in.
Guest:It's not all the neurotic, I could never get a girl Jew.
Guest:I mean, Seth Rogen thinks he can get Katherine Heigl to have sex with him, and he pulls it off.
Guest:And I've seen a lot of guys do it.
Guest:That's why it was funny when some people said, that could never happen.
Guest:And I thought have you ever been out on the street have you ever looked at couples?
Marc:Yeah, there's plenty of goofy Jews with gorgeous Schicks I mean, that's what Annie Hall is about sure Yeah, and and I just think that all of them have a very unique timing I mean like they just have a peculiar timing physically those three guys I mean as comedic actors are really fucking unique and they're also working in their own timing that's what I mean is reshaped and
Guest:to serve them i'm not writing in some david mamet style timing that they have to do i'm listening to seth's voice and and trying to figure him out and that's that's the the that's the real challenge and gift of writing is to be able to understand that much and that comes specifically from writing for comics
Guest:I think so, because I've tried to combine understanding myself and paying attention to other people.
Guest:So I may be writing something I feel very passionate about, but I know when we shoot it and I play around and rehearse, I want to get to how...
Guest:sandler or seth or jonah behaves so that i can hear them and let them do their thing because i i never feel like my jokes are the most important i'm happy for them to beat every joke i wrote i'm just trying to get you know it's kind of a half-assed robert altman where robert altman always wanted something else to happen yeah separate and that's you know what i hope my favorite moments in the movies are like
Guest:When Leslie yells at the doorman and just starts screaming, doorman, doorman, doorman.
Guest:I mean, those aren't scripted moments.
Guest:I just know at some point Leslie's going to get unhinged and what she would actually say will come out.
Marc:And you just let it happen.
Marc:Yes.
Marc:That moment in Jonah's moment in 40-Year-Old Virgin was too much in the store.
Marc:I mean, I can't even explain that comedically.
Marc:I can't.
Guest:I mean, that's just a 19-year-old kid who has one line in the movie.
Guest:And on the day we shot that scene in The 40-Year-Old Virgin, it rained.
Guest:And so we had like three free hours.
Guest:And as a goof, I said, let's let Jonah improvise with Catherine Keener just to see how scared he gets, just to see what he does.
Guest:And he was so funny.
Guest:We were just having the best day of our lives, watching him curse out Catherine Keener.
Guest:And he did say, enjoy your fucking bankruptcy.
Guest:And it was just very funny.
Guest:And then we never tested it when we would show the movie.
Guest:And on the very last test, we said, let's chuck in like 90 seconds of Jonah being mean to Catherine Keener just to see if people like him.
Guest:Not that we thought we'd put it in the movie.
Guest:And it just got such giant laughs.
Guest:We thought, well, maybe for no reason the movie can stop its story cold to just let Jonah Hill go nuts.
Guest:And people liked it.
Marc:So what is your perfect, in your mind, what is the perfect comedy movie that you judge all against?
Marc:Or two or three?
Guest:There are a few movies that I always go back to.
Guest:I always go back to Fast Times at Ridgemont High.
Guest:It pulls off a couple of things at the same time.
Guest:One is it has this really hilarious, broad humor with Sean Penn as Spicoli.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:But Jennifer Jason Leigh gets pregnant and has an abortion in it, and it's played straight.
Guest:And he's able to be incredibly truthful, but he can get to broad.
Guest:Who directed that?
Guest:Well, it was written by Cameron Crowe and Amy Heckerling directed it.
Guest:And that has always been one of the main models.
Marc:Because of the emotional variation.
Guest:Can I have this feel real but still whack Steve Carell?
Marc:Right.
Guest:Can I have you care about him, but when I wax him, does the reality level not go out the window?
Guest:Right.
Guest:And so when you can do that well, it's a big deal.
Guest:So that's a big one for me.
Guest:Terms of Endearment, I always go back to as a movie about something very serious that's hysterically funny.
Guest:And all the classics like Annie Hall and Dr. Strangelove and...
Guest:I was watching Tin Men the other day, all those Barry Levinson movies.
Guest:How about The In-Laws?
Guest:I mean, yeah, The In-Laws, all the old Albert Brooks movies.
Guest:Anytime you talk about it, you feel terrible because there's 10 more behind everyone you could mention.
Marc:But it's interesting to me that for the most part, outside of appreciating it as a classic, as an inspiration, Woody Allen is not one for you particularly.
Guest:Well, I never mentioned Woody Allen, one, because...
Guest:Some of his stuff is so great, you feel like a fool even mentioning you're in the same business as him.
Guest:It just feels awkward to say I do what he does.
Guest: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 me.
Guest:a little bit.
Guest:Maybe after I read the Mia Farrow book, I just was like, got a little creeped out.
Guest:And my incredible worship and affection got dented.
Guest:That happens.
Guest:And I don't know where I stand on any of it because I thought it was really interesting seeing that movie about him touring Europe with his wife.
Guest:And he seems very happy and his wife seems very devoted.
Guest:But then there's another side to it where you think,
Guest:He's strange.
Guest:He's stranger than I thought he was and darker than I thought he was.
Guest:And so I don't connect to it in the exact same way as I did when I was a kid watching Take the Money and Run and just thought this is the funniest man on the earth.
Guest:I know too much now.
Marc:Right.
Marc:And also it turns out that his insistence on distance from the character is disconcerting.
Guest:And it's a lie.
Marc:You want to believe it's a lie.
Guest:You believe it's a lie.
Guest:I think it's it's it couldn't be a bigger lie for him to say I'm not like my characters or this.
Guest:These aren't ideas that I believe because that writing doesn't make sense.
Guest:If you see bullets over Broadway, a lot of it, you know, there's that section where when the character says the heart wants what it wants.
Guest:Well, isn't that the story of this section of his life?
Guest:He wanted this woman at all costs.
Guest:And I'm not judging it either way, but I know he's revealing parts of himself in all of his work.
Guest:And so for him to say, I'm not like that.
Guest:I don't feel that way as the character does in Stardust Memories.
Guest:Well, I've been through a lot of the experiences that he's been through, and I understand why he felt that way and made Stardust Memories.
Guest:So to say, oh, that's just a character.
Guest:I mean, everything's.
Marc:60% made up but there's 40% true in all of it right but what I'm saying is that like you know the thing you want to believe about that character is that he struggles with this shit and when you read about the reality of it that you know he was a lot more calculating and a lot more selfish and dubious that's what's disconcerting
Marc:That he didn't fight what the heart wanted.
Marc:Sometimes you have to fight.
Marc:Exactly.
Guest:There's plenty of things I want that I should not take.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Yes.
Guest:So that makes it more complicated for me.
Guest:I mean, that's the perfect argument for I should know nothing about the people who make art because it affects how I watch it.
Marc:True.
Marc:When I read Please Kill Me about the punk rock scene in New York, about Lou Reed, as shitty as those, I knew they were all drug addicts and everything else, but Lou Reed was such an asshole, it just fucked it up for me.
Marc:I don't read much about comics because I know how filthy we all are.
Guest:Yes.
Guest:You don't want to know too much about anybody.
Guest:I mean, if you read the new Groucho biography, you're like, God, Groucho was a prick.
Guest:Not like a funny prick, a real prick.
Marc:Do you do Marx Brothers?
Guest:Yes, I'm very obsessed with the Marx Brothers.
Guest:Because of who taught you to like the Marx Brothers?
Guest:They were just on TV all the time.
Guest:And I have to say they were the first comedy act that I connected to.
Guest:And I think it was because...
Guest:It was so rebellious.
Marc:They were on New Jersey TV and New York TV on Channel 11 or whatever.
Marc:Constantly.
Guest:Right.
Marc:And like with the Little Rascals in Three Stooges.
Guest:And then Abbott Costello was on constantly.
Guest:But Groucho was basically saying this is all bullshit also.
Guest:Right.
Guest:And flipping the bird at all of the rules and government.
Guest:Right.
Guest:And for some reason, I couldn't have taken to it more.
Guest:I just...
Guest:I mean, Groucho, when I was in sixth grade, I wrote a 30 page book report about Groucho that was not assigned in school.
Guest:I just wanted to write it.
Guest:That's weird.
Guest:Yeah.
Marc:But did you feel that because you're not that aggressively, you know, fuck you.
Guest:No, I don't think that's my point of view anymore.
Guest:My point of view.
Guest:It was, though.
Guest:Well, I never felt that way enough to be super funny, quite frankly.
Guest:There were comedians when I first started out who were working like Kinison and Bill Hicks.
Guest:And those were the guys that were the best guys when I first started.
Guest:And they were hilarious because there was such rage and self-righteousness and they thought they had the answers for everything.
Guest:And I never felt that way about myself.
Guest:I never thought I had any answers for anything.
Guest:And I wasn't as mad at them.
Guest:I probably didn't know as much about the world as they knew.
Guest:But I wasn't mad like Kinison was mad.
Guest:I was just trying to meet a girl and get to see a good pace.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:But you respected that.
Guest:And that's interesting.
Guest:But I'm sure I had anger.
Guest:But as I've gotten older, I really do believe that life is about finding ways to connect with other people.
Marc:I'm more attracted to a James Brooks sensibility where all of these stories are about how people finally come Together that's where that I think that's where the joy is I mean I think that's where Humanity is I think they sort of like you know the fuck you I'm better than you or I know more than you or life is fucked like I you know I come from that mold and now that's all melting away and I don't I don't always know what to do with it and what replaces it when it melts away I
Marc:On a good day, a certain gratitude and belief that I should probably try to enjoy my life before it goes away.
Marc:On a bad day, self-pity, resentment over disappointment.
Guest:yeah that's why that's why I made funny people I mean it's exactly that he has a moment where it melts away and then suddenly he's better and what do I do and I don't know what to do yeah maybe I'll just go fuck my old girlfriend yeah and steal her from maybe maybe she'll make me feel better about myself yeah yeah and and I swing back and forth all the time and it's a weird position for me because I think well I've really done a lot of what I wanted to do why am I even doing it now
Guest:what's left to say that I haven't said I can kind of rework it but I'm also am I doing it for approval or do I really want to express something so as I like here I'm writing a new project that's what I struggle with which is
Guest:Okay, what haven't you said?
Guest:Have you made your main points?
Guest:You don't want to be working just to work.
Guest:Yeah, and what?
Guest:And so I don't know.
Guest:Do you have any answers?
Guest:Well, we'll see how I do with the next movie.
Guest:You just like to stay busy?
Guest:I've covered a lot of ground, and now I'm trying to say, well, here's where I'm at now.
Guest:And the next movie is just, here's where I'm at now.
Marc:Well, how is it different?
Guest:in terms of what I'm trying to write?
Marc:Well, yeah, I mean, just like, you know, whatever you're doing right now, I mean, you know, given, you know, you've had a beautiful run in ups and downs and an arc, and now you're a grown-up, a grown person, and, you know, you're writing a new movie.
Marc:What's different?
Guest:I think...
Guest:Well, I just want to go deeper and more personal every time to the point where you start writing and you think, can I even say this?
Guest:Who will I hurt if I express these ideas?
Guest:You know, am I giving up too much history of my experience?
Guest:Uh,
Guest:But there's no way to dig it out without going to the places that you normally would hide from everybody.
Guest:And so it's just it's literally just going deeper.
Guest:There are things I did in the other movies where I reference an attitude.
Guest:But I didn't really explain where it came from.
Guest:So in Knocked Up, there's a sequence where Paul Rudd is on mushrooms.
Guest:And he's like, I can't accept her love.
Guest:I can't accept her love.
Guest:And he's on mushrooms.
Guest:And then the next time you see him, he's happy and he's married.
Guest:And you realize, well, it's bumpy, but they always get back together.
Guest:And that's what the relationship is.
Guest:But as I write the next thing, well, maybe I want to show you what happened in between.
Guest:of how people come back together and what those moments are about and why someone feels that way.
Marc:Yeah, to push it a little further.
Guest:I mean, I've listened to the show a lot and you talk a lot about your family and what makes you feel separate from other people.
Guest:And that is what interests me now, which is why do I feel separate?
Guest:Why am I still in my room watching TV in my mind?
Guest:I'm still kind of in that room and I'm not as connected to other people as I want to be.
Guest:So I'm trying to do that.
Guest: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 the Merv Griffin show alone.
Guest:I know.
Yeah.
Guest:but i do enjoy when those moments of connection happen and that's why are we so afraid of joy i mean that's the the question i and i've thought about it a lot and i think it's because we we think right behind joy is a knife that will cut our throat and if we really feel it
Guest:It's almost like a laugh and your chin goes up and your throat is exposed.
Guest:And if I laugh too loud, someone will slit my throat.
Guest:And so that's the terror of joy.
Guest:If I enjoy this as completely as I want to, it's going to hurt.
Guest:hurt when it goes wrong.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:And the mistake is it hurts already.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Like keeping shut down is what really hurts.
Guest:Right.
Guest:And so it doesn't actually make sense.
Guest:And you have to think about it all the time to know that's what's happening.
Guest:Like, I'm not actually enjoying this.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:And if you're thinking about it, it stops it from happening.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:And then you're not present.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Because you're waiting for a punch.
Guest:That's how I feel like.
Guest:I feel like I have my dukes up all day long looking for someone who's going to punch me.
Guest:And here's the thing.
Guest:No one ever punches me.
Guest:Maybe back in the old days, but that's not what happened.
Marc:But you don't feel driven by that, though.
Marc:See, like, you know, when people say, like, but isn't that what drives you?
Marc:And, you know, what would you be without that?
Marc:And, you know, I don't know.
Marc:I think if you separate yourself from the work and through everything else, that that inability to accept love or that inability to feel that, I mean, the truth, there can't be a knife there.
Marc:But I just don't think that we have a general trust of the universe for some reason.
Guest:No, because we came from these crazy, for me, post-Holocaust Jews who don't trust that the world is safe.
Guest:And also from divorce when you were young.
Guest:Yeah, when your parents get divorced and suddenly you think, oh, life collapses suddenly.
Guest:Suddenly you say, hey, Judd, can you come down in the living room?
Guest:We need to talk to you for a minute.
Guest:Mommy's moving out.
Guest:And you think like, well, that's got to happen again.
Guest:I don't know when it's going to happen, but I better be ready for it.
Guest:And staying ready for it is what detaches you from life.
Guest:And for me, that's been the great lesson of marriage.
Guest:And my beautiful wife and beautiful daughters is...
Guest:They will not accept that.
Guest:Daddy needs to be here and needs to be happy and connected and present.
Guest:And so it forces me to do the work to not be the guy who wants to detach.
Guest:Or split.
Guest:Yeah, and that wiring is intense.
Guest:And I've had to also accept I shouldn't beat up on myself because I'm wired that way.
Guest:I can't be mad at myself, but I can just keep coming back.
Guest:And that's all I can do.
Guest:I just got to keep coming back.
Guest:And in my work, when I look at it and go, what did I write about?
Guest:It is about that.
Guest:It's about the 40-year-old virgin hides in his room and plays with his toys because he's afraid that people are going to tell him, you know, you think you're a freak?
Guest:You are.
Guest:And so it takes so much for him to put himself out there to find out, oh, he is lovable.
Guest:She loves him.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:And the same in a way with Seth Rogen.
Guest:There's this beautiful woman.
Guest:She does love you.
Guest:You don't have to stay stoned all day long.
Guest:You can enter into this experience or even funny people.
Guest:Adam can open up to the fact that Seth is a good guy and can be his friend.
Guest:And there might be a different way to do this.
Marc:Though out of all of them, that one you don't feel is going to stick.
Yeah.
Guest:You feel like he's going to have the hardest time.
Guest:And in a way, it's the most truthful.
Guest:Right.
Guest:Because people, you know, I've been in therapy for a very long time.
Guest:It's a small incremental adjustment that happens and you have to really work to make the change.
Guest:Be vigilant.
Guest:Because it's like biofeedback.
Guest:You're trying to, through repetition, change where your mind goes.
Guest:How you're hardwired.
Guest:I mean, you're in therapy now, right?
Guest:No, I need to be.
Marc:Did you ever go?
Marc:No.
Marc:I did for a while.
Marc:You know, it helped me, you know, and I'm at this juncture now where I clearly have to go back.
Marc:Something just happened.
Marc:I'm not sure what.
Guest:Yeah.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:Like all of a sudden, like, you know, I've been feeling pretty good, you know, about this and about my comedy and about a lot of stuff.
Marc:And then I don't know, just something just went.
Marc:And you have that moment where you're like, I fucked up two marriages.
Marc:I'm respected, but I'm not hilarious to everybody.
Marc:But I never sold myself that way.
Marc:A lot of things start to crumble.
Marc:And all of a sudden, you're alone.
Marc:And I wish I had more toys.
Marc:I don't even go to TV.
Marc:I'm not nerdy enough to have a real outlet.
Marc:I'll just sit there and just beat the shit out of myself.
Marc:And there's nothing staring at the wall.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:Oh, yeah, man.
Marc:Hardcore.
Marc:Like, don't interrupt me.
Marc:Don't take me away from this.
Marc:And that was the weirdest thing about being on that plane last week and watching that movie.
Marc:Like, I had that moment.
Marc:It was that Havershock moment.
Marc:Watching fucking Butch and Sundance.
Marc:Because there's that moment.
Marc:That's a funny movie.
Marc:Yes.
Marc:And there's that moment where, you know, can I move?
Marc:You know, where there are those unforgettable moments and he does it and it's like I'm crying and laughing at this thing and moved by this thing that always moved me.
Marc:And there's no reason I can't do that more.
Marc:Like what I'm saying to you, Judd, is I got to plan my escapes better.
Marc:Like if I can just, you know, make a list of all the things that take me out of me in a healthy way, I'll be okay.
Guest:I feel the same way.
Guest:If I miss a few weeks of therapy, my therapist goes away several weeks and then comes back for several weeks.
Guest:So he's always gone a third to a half of the time.
Guest:And I slip back.
Guest:I slip back every time.
Guest:And you don't know what happened.
Guest:I like to read self-help books voraciously.
Guest:I just read them constantly.
Guest:You do?
Guest:And if I just stop for a week or two, my mind just goes to a dark place.
Guest:And what happens is when I feel good, I get lazy and think I don't need to do the work anymore.
Guest:And it just happens quickly that I drift and I don't realize that I've drifted back to life.
Guest:my old wiring.
Guest:And it's very, it's disconcerting.
Guest:And it is easier to watch Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kids than to sit alone in the room or to have a conversation with another human being.
Guest:That is the weird thing.
Guest:It's painful to connect sometimes.
Marc:When you're that sad.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:Because when you feel the sadness tugging at you because you can feel it in your heart that like, you know, you're like, you know, you can't hide it.
Marc:And there's part of you that wants nothing more than this for it to have somebody make it better.
Marc:But you don't want to put that on them.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:So you're sort of like, no, fuck you.
Marc:And it takes courage to feel it.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:To go all the way into it.
Guest:They go, what is it?
Guest:To then pull out of it.
Guest:And you need someone there to do that with, right?
Guest:I don't know.
Guest:I don't know.
Guest:Is that what the therapist helps you on some level?
Guest:I mean, I enjoy therapy, but I know that I don't do as much work by myself as I should to keep present.
Guest:Like I've always known that if I meditated for 15 minutes in the morning and 15 minutes at the end of the day, my life would be completely transformed.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:And I have never done it once.
Guest:The same way.
Guest:It's like I can go 90 seconds, and I will feel better even on 90 seconds, but I won't do it.
Guest:And the part of me that won't allow me to do it is the part that wants to watch the Merv Griffin show.
Guest:The part waiting for the punch, waiting for the knife.
Guest:Yeah, it's like I'm protecting you.
Guest:If you meditate, you're going to think about how...
Guest:None of this shit makes sense.
Guest:And I guess a Buddhist would say, no, if you meditated long enough, you would know that it all makes sense.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:But there's a part of you that's like, no, it doesn't, because no one said life was fair, and you're going to just look into the dark abyss in your quiet meditation and realize there's nothing fucking there.
Guest:Well, we should try it.
Guest:Let's make a meditation pact.
Guest:We should do a meditation pact.
Guest:If you do it, I'll do it.
Guest:I will try to do it.
Marc:Now, what is this book that you've done for the McSweeney's people?
Guest:This is something I'm oddly excited about, which is I was talking to Dave Eggers and was a part of helping raise money for these tutoring centers he has across the country.
Guest:826.
Guest:And they're in New York and San Francisco and Michigan.
Guest:And it just hit me, oh, maybe I could put out one of those books, which is a collection of my favorite pieces of humor.
Guest:So the book is called I Found This Funny.
Guest:And...
Guest:What is funniest about the book is most of it isn't funny.
Guest:I couldn't help myself.
Guest:And I just put in a lot of short stories that I love that most people would finish and say, oh, that was kind of depressing.
Guest:That really wasn't a funny short story.
Guest:There's...
Guest:There's a short story by Raymond Carver called Elephant, I believe.
Guest:There's a Flannery O'Connor story in there.
Guest:Known for being hilarious.
Guest:Known for her hilarious prose.
Guest:It is actually funny, though.
Guest:Andre Dubu, a writer who wrote a short story that became the movie In the Bedroom.
Guest:But in addition to that, there's a television pilot that Robert Smigel and Conan O'Brien wrote for Adam West 20 years ago called Look Well, which is an incredible piece of comedy writing.
Guest:There's my favorite Adam McKay, Tom Giannis sketch from Saturday Night Live and these Tony Hoagland poems and Simon Rich poems.
Guest:humor pieces and stuff from Jack Handy and a piece of Steve Martin's memoirs.
Guest:And it's everything that I love to read in this one 480-page book that's perfect for the bathroom or an airplane.
Guest:Well, that sounds good.
Marc:So that's not out yet, right?
Guest:It comes out in mid-October.
Guest:And what's funny is when you do a collection of humor, when it's done, you kind of think you wrote it.
Guest:All I wrote was the first four-page introduction and picked everything.
Guest:But I've tricked myself into thinking I wrote the Ernest Hemingway short story in it.
Guest:And I wrote the F. Scott Fitzgerald, Pat Hobby story in there.
Guest:In my head, I'm so proud of it.
Guest:Like I did something, but I really just said, use those.
Guest:You just made selections.
Guest:But it took a year to select them.
Guest:It literally took a year of reading.
Guest:Well, I'm looking forward to whatever I can't read on that board.
Guest:I'm trying to think if there's anything on this board.
Guest:This is a board of ideas for the new movie that I'm writing.
Guest:I'm trying to think if there's anything here that makes sense out of context.
Guest:Paul Rudd's in it?
Guest:Paul Rudd is in it, yes.
Guest:That's the one clue.
Guest:Right there it says, is it Rudd's birthday?
Guest:That's all they get.
Guest:Let's not give him any more.
Guest:And it says piano recital.
Guest:That's all you can know.
Guest:Brooks arrives.
Guest:Is that Albert Brooks?
Guest:Who knows?
Guest:That's yet to be determined.
Guest:Is it a man named Brooks?
Marc:Okay.
Marc:It could be any kind of a Brooks.
Marc:Well, this has been great and cathartic, and I feel better.
Marc:I felt shitty when I got here a little bit.
Guest:Not because of you.
Guest:Yes.
Marc:Do you feel better?
Guest:Here's the thing about me.
Guest:I like to do anything that doesn't involve writing.
Guest:So you think, I got to get going because Judd has things to do.
Guest:What I'm thinking is, Mark, don't leave.
Guest:You're going to leave me alone with the typewriter, and there's a blank page.
Marc:All right, Judd.
Marc:Thanks for talking.
All right.
Marc:Okay, folks, that's it.
Marc:That is the two-part WTF Judd Apatow interview.
Marc:I got to tell you, he was just a genuine, nice guy and a hard worker and a funny fucking guy.
Marc:And it was lovely talking to him.
Marc:Please go to WTFPod.com for all your WTF needs.
Marc:You can go to the WTFPod shop to get any one of the three premium episodes.
Marc:Enjoy those.
Marc:And please go to punchlinemagazine.com for any of your up-to-date comedy news.
Marc:Standuprecords.com for their comedy selection.
Marc:And I really appreciate y'all listening.
Marc:Hope you dug the show.
Marc:Justcoffee.coop.
Marc:Hang on.
Marc:Pow!
Marc:Wow.
Marc:I think I shit my pants.
Marc:Justcoffee.coop.
Marc:Thanks a lot, folks.
Marc:Why can't I just figure out an ouch?
Marc:Why can't I just get off?
Marc:Just get off.
Marc:Just stop.
Marc:Bye.
you