Speaker 1: Pushkin Lets Talk Easy. I'm samfordgo so welcome to the show. Today.
Speaker 1: I'm joined by writer, director, producer, and comedian Judd Apatow.
Speaker 1: He's responsible for creating some of the biggest American comedies
Speaker 1: of the two thousands, including The Forty year Old Virgin,
Speaker 1: Knocked Up, Funny People, and train Wreck. In recent years,
Speaker 1: he's shepherded a handful of young filmmakers as an executive producer,
Speaker 1: bringing projects like Girls with Lena Dunham and The Big
Speaker 1: Sick with Kamal nan Gianni and Emily Gordon to life.
Speaker 1: This year alone, he served as a producer on Bros.
Speaker 1: With Billy Eichner, a co director on the HBO documentary
Speaker 1: George Carlin's American Dream, and the author of Sicker in
Speaker 1: the Head, a collection of interviews with some of the
Speaker 1: funniest people working today. Now. There are plenty of reasons
Speaker 1: why I wanted to sit with Judd, but chief among
Speaker 1: them is the twentieth anniversary of The Larry Sanders Show
Speaker 1: starring the late Gary Shandling. Chandling was a mentor to Apatau,
Speaker 1: the person who really kick started his remarkable career, which
Speaker 1: eventually included a documentary He made on Gary called the
Speaker 1: Zen Diaries. As you'll hear, Shandling meant the world to Judd. Hell,
Speaker 1: he meant the world to me, and I never even
Speaker 1: met the guy. So we do talk a lot about
Speaker 1: the Larry Sanders Show and its legacy, but we also
Speaker 1: discuss Apatow's journey from Long Island to Los Angeles, his
Speaker 1: enduring love of stand up comedy, and most importantly, his
Speaker 1: late mother, Tammy Shod Wherever you are right now, to
Speaker 1: everyone listening, I wish you safe travels around the holidays.
Speaker 1: If you don't do Thanksgiving, I hope you can take
Speaker 1: the time to unwine just the same, maybe even throw
Speaker 1: on a Judd Apatow comedy, whatever works. However you spend
Speaker 1: the next week. I really appreciate you being here for
Speaker 1: this very special episode with the one and only Judd Apatow.
Speaker 1: Judd Apatow, pleasure to meet you. Great to meet you.
Speaker 1: I feel like I know you from listening, and what
Speaker 1: are the impressions? You know what I noticed from your
Speaker 1: first episode to now, you have refined how you speak
Speaker 1: on the show. It evolved from like a young person
Speaker 1: who mumbles a little bit and isn't aware that there's
Speaker 1: a performance in how you speak to a very refined,
Speaker 1: unique way of talking. And I noticed that sometimes if
Speaker 1: I listen back to me doing stand up, I'll think
Speaker 1: I'm talking so fast they can't even hear what I'm saying.
Speaker 1: They can't even hear the joke. And I'll hear that
Speaker 1: the joke didn't work, and I'm like, yeah, because no
Speaker 1: one heard that. Because I'm like, you know, you ever
Speaker 1: going to a room and it reminds me to slow down. Well,
Speaker 1: we're gonna try to slow down in this back and forth.
Speaker 1: I don't usually do these outside of the studio. It
Speaker 1: feels like a road game for me. That's right, why
Speaker 1: don't we set the stage. We're in your office. This
Speaker 1: seems to be the writer's room. Is that it says
Speaker 1: a writer's room, conference room. This is a new building
Speaker 1: that our business is in, and now we have a
Speaker 1: very severance like office. It's big and empty with not
Speaker 1: many people in it, and they all look kind of
Speaker 1: lonely and lost. As someone who's made films about friendships
Speaker 1: and camaraderie, it's ice cold in here. Just emotionally though,
Speaker 1: just emotionally, it does remind me of what I imagine
Speaker 1: you were doing back in high school, where you'd interview
Speaker 1: comedians for your high school radio station. You were fifteen
Speaker 1: years old when you started doing this in the years
Speaker 1: nineteen eighty two. You take the train in from Long
Speaker 1: Island head down to New York City. Do you remember
Speaker 1: the first interview where you left it and thought, I
Speaker 1: think that went pretty well. I think I thought that
Speaker 1: almost every single time, but because I couldn't believe anyone
Speaker 1: would talk to me. So for me, it was more like,
Speaker 1: I'm home. I'm obsessed with comedy and show business and variety,
Speaker 1: and I have this thought, I want to meet these people,
Speaker 1: probably because I realized I want to enter their world,
Speaker 1: and is it possible that they're real? Could I exist
Speaker 1: in their world in some way? So the idea of
Speaker 1: talking to them was about testing out if it's possible
Speaker 1: that I could work in show business. So by meeting people,
Speaker 1: I thought, Oh, they're just normal people writing jokes, making movies.
Speaker 1: I'm kind of like them. I was a cocky kid,
Speaker 1: but I was very scared during a lot of the
Speaker 1: interviews and didn't do a great job. And when I
Speaker 1: listened back, I'm very embarrassed at what I was saying.
Speaker 1: Most of the time, What would you do? I don't
Speaker 1: think I really understand what they did to have deep questions.
Speaker 1: It was a lot of So how'd you get started?
Speaker 1: Is how he sounded. Yeah, I'd a very hide New
Speaker 1: York accent. So Steve Allen, what's it like hosting the
Speaker 1: Tonight Show? And I loved it. I had the greatest time,
Speaker 1: and I couldn't believe that it was working because I
Speaker 1: would call people's publicists and this was before the Internet.
Speaker 1: No one wanted to talk to Jerry Seinfeld for an hour.
Speaker 1: I think he still wishes it was that way. Well,
Speaker 1: that's the funny part is I think the publicists wanted
Speaker 1: to look like they were doing a good job. But
Speaker 1: back then, no one really wanted to talk to comedians.
Speaker 1: There was no long formats. For me, the idea of
Speaker 1: hearing Jay Leno talk for an hour was my dream,
Speaker 1: but there was no place to do that, and so
Speaker 1: I thought, well, I'll just do that myself because I
Speaker 1: have a lot of questions, and all those questions are
Speaker 1: things I wanted to know so I could figure out
Speaker 1: my life. And they were very nice. Jerry Seinfeld couldn't
Speaker 1: have been nicer to me, and I think that is
Speaker 1: also something that changed me and inspired me because it
Speaker 1: made me realize, Oh, you can be a good person
Speaker 1: and affect people's lives just their manners. A lot of
Speaker 1: these people's manners made me go, oh, I guess I'm
Speaker 1: supposed to act like that as I turned into an adult.
Speaker 1: For context, you're this teenage kid that comes from ssiocet,
Speaker 1: the kind of kid who would write a thirty two
Speaker 1: page book report on the Marx Brothers that was unassigned, Yes,
Speaker 1: for fun. The kind of kid who religiously sat in
Speaker 1: front of the TV from three thirty in the afternoon
Speaker 1: till one thirty in the morning watching The m of
Speaker 1: Griffin Show, Dinah Shore, Happy Days, Laverne and Shirley Letterman,
Speaker 1: and then of course The Tonight Show. When it came
Speaker 1: to this project in high school, did conducting these interviews
Speaker 1: just feel like a natural evolution of that enthusiasm? Yes,
Speaker 1: because for years I was writing letters to people trying
Speaker 1: to get their autographs. That started at the end of
Speaker 1: elementary school. Do you like the characters in King Comedy?
Speaker 1: When I saw King of Comedy, I thought I want
Speaker 1: to be in that group. I wanted to be Republican.
Speaker 1: I didn't think he was a bad character. I thought, Oh,
Speaker 1: that's the dream. That's terrifying. It was my favorite movie instantly.
Speaker 1: Why should he leave Jerry Lewis alone. I don't get it.
Speaker 1: Sandrew Bernard is making good choices. Right now. He's saying
Speaker 1: please when he's asking for the autograph, banging on the window.
Speaker 1: I wanted to be banging on that window with the
Speaker 1: light bulbs. Poppety, You're the fourth person to ever say that,
Speaker 1: and so I think that was the first attempt to
Speaker 1: make that connection. You know, my grandmother was very close
Speaker 1: to this comedian Tody Fields, and so in our house
Speaker 1: and with our family, people talked about her as if
Speaker 1: she was this incredible, brilliant legend, and I think the
Speaker 1: glamor around that had an effect on me. My grandfather,
Speaker 1: Bobby Shadd was a jazz producer, and I knew he
Speaker 1: had produced Jamis Joplin and Charlie Parker and people like that.
Speaker 1: And he was a hustler. He was a kid who
Speaker 1: raised his own money from his job to hire jazz
Speaker 1: musicians to record for him, and then he would print
Speaker 1: up the records and sell them to recondstource himself. I mean,
Speaker 1: that's how he started, and I think that planned a seed, like, oh,
Speaker 1: you got a hustle, and so the idea of hunting
Speaker 1: comedians down to talk to them was the hustle you've
Speaker 1: said in the past. I'm one of the big reasons
Speaker 1: you started doing these interviews was because my parents had
Speaker 1: just gotten divorce and it was a time of a
Speaker 1: lot of drama in my family and I had to
Speaker 1: find something to distract myself. It was a way to
Speaker 1: survive in this world because I had lost a sense
Speaker 1: of safety at your core as a teenager in that time.
Speaker 1: You mentioned the sense of safety. What did you feel
Speaker 1: like you lost, Well, we were very upper middle class.
Speaker 1: Then suddenly my parents broke up in seventh grade, but
Speaker 1: then they got back together, and then two years later
Speaker 1: they broke up again. So I was telling someone that
Speaker 1: moment when your parents sit you down to tell you
Speaker 1: they're getting divorced happened to us twice. So that's, you know,
Speaker 1: the safety. And I really enjoyed my friends, my house,
Speaker 1: my world. So the idea that oh, everyone is going
Speaker 1: somewhere else and my mom is moving out east to
Speaker 1: the Hampton's and I'm leaving my dad and my sister's
Speaker 1: kind of going back and forth and my brothers moving
Speaker 1: to California, just everyone moved in a different direction, like
Speaker 1: was just not the same. And then we were exposed
Speaker 1: in a very nineteen eighties way to every detail of
Speaker 1: the divorce, where now people hide it and they go
Speaker 1: to therapists together. I guess that some people try to
Speaker 1: consciously uncouple, and you know our friends, they go to
Speaker 1: therapists to figure out how to do it commonly and lovingly.
Speaker 1: But that wasn't how they did it in the eighties.
Speaker 1: My parents are listening. They're going through it right now.
Speaker 1: They split up before I was one. Whatever, this conscious
Speaker 1: uncoupling thing, you've never seen it. I've heard of it.
Speaker 1: I've also heard a big foot did not happen exactly.
Speaker 1: So that's the safety thing, is the erratic nature of it,
Speaker 1: and also being exposed to adult problems when you are
Speaker 1: too young to understand what they are, and seeing your
Speaker 1: parents in conflict when you don't really understand all the
Speaker 1: levels and they expose you to it. That was the
Speaker 1: part that was most difficult. It wasn't really them separating.
Speaker 1: It was the fact that they didn't like each other anymore.
Speaker 1: And as a kid, you think, but I am them.
Speaker 1: So you're both sides of two people that are in
Speaker 1: conflict and you feel like both of them. And so
Speaker 1: you know, if your mom's mad at your dad, you
Speaker 1: think I am my dad. So if you don't like him,
Speaker 1: I'm half him, and vice versa. All of it was
Speaker 1: very strange. What were those problems that you felt like
Speaker 1: you couldn't handle? Back then, I think it was the
Speaker 1: idea that it was a betrayal to be happy. That's
Speaker 1: how I look at it. What do you mean that
Speaker 1: my mom was so upset by the fact that this
Speaker 1: divorce was happening and I lived with my dad. For
Speaker 1: me to be happy in this situation without her was
Speaker 1: a betrayal she wanted to do to stand up for her. Yes,
Speaker 1: And you know that's a difficult thing when you're a
Speaker 1: kid because you don't even know what's going on, right.
Speaker 1: And my dad's thing was he didn't talk about it,
Speaker 1: and he thought that's the kind thing he was doing
Speaker 1: by not talking about it at all. So I was
Speaker 1: getting too much information from one side and zero from
Speaker 1: the other side. Do you think it was the kind thing?
Speaker 1: I think the ultimately it was not helpful. But back then,
Speaker 1: you know, you know, it was today. They should have
Speaker 1: just sent me to a psychiatrist and I should have
Speaker 1: gotten something to help. My dad once did this thing
Speaker 1: that's so funny in retrospect that it says a lot
Speaker 1: about the times, and this says, you know, forty years ago,
Speaker 1: when people didn't really know how to handle these things emotionally.
Speaker 1: I was in the house and I found this book
Speaker 1: and it was called Growing Up Divorced and it was
Speaker 1: basically about the power struggles within a family and how
Speaker 1: it affects children during a divorce. And I picked it
Speaker 1: up and I read a bunch of it, and it
Speaker 1: was helpful because it pointed out the dynamics of what
Speaker 1: was happening. And a few years ago I said to
Speaker 1: my dad, you know, you never really talked to me
Speaker 1: about any of it. He said, yeah, but I left
Speaker 1: you that book. I left out that book. And I
Speaker 1: was like, what are you talking about. He's like, I
Speaker 1: remember I left out that book, Growing Up Divorced. I
Speaker 1: was like, you left it out? Like yeah, I put
Speaker 1: it on the coffee table and I said, but how
Speaker 1: did you know I looked at it. Well, you took it, yeah,
Speaker 1: but you didn't know I read it, So you were
Speaker 1: like relying on this random book that I would read
Speaker 1: on my own and never discuss with anyone for my
Speaker 1: mental health during this. But I have a lot of compassion,
Speaker 1: you know, for him, because as someone who was young
Speaker 1: and got married young, he didn't know how to get divorced.
Speaker 1: My mom didn't know how to get divorced. A lot
Speaker 1: of the relationships were very complicated through the family and
Speaker 1: the extended family. But that's what I was left with,
Speaker 1: which is to read this book alone. But that's how
Speaker 1: people were. They weren't really sure what you would tell
Speaker 1: a child about your feelings. I mean, I don't think
Speaker 1: I talked to my mom about the divorce till she
Speaker 1: was very ill, near the end of her life. I
Speaker 1: don't think I ever said to her what happened? Really, yes,
Speaker 1: I just i'd never talked to her about it. I
Speaker 1: mean I never just looked her in the eye and
Speaker 1: said what happened. At that time, you felt like you
Speaker 1: couldn't ask that well. There was so much pain around
Speaker 1: it and so much anger that you would just avoid
Speaker 1: the subject. You would hope that it would just heal
Speaker 1: and you could move on, because it was always bubbling
Speaker 1: back up, even decades later. So I just thought, can
Speaker 1: we talk about anything? But but then later you realize
Speaker 1: exactly what you're saying. I should have talked about it earlier,
Speaker 1: but I also was too him at church. I know
Speaker 1: that's what you're supposed to do. Well, in their defense,
Speaker 1: we should paint a full picture. When they split up,
Speaker 1: your mom became a hostess at the East End Comedy
Speaker 1: Club in Southampton, which allowed you to be in that
Speaker 1: space and take in all of those performances. And then
Speaker 1: when you decided to do stand up performing an open mics,
Speaker 1: your father would drive you to these clubs like Chuckles
Speaker 1: and Governor's Comedy Club, and so they did deeply support
Speaker 1: you and show up for you. And I'm curious, what
Speaker 1: was it like to have parents that were supportive in
Speaker 1: nurturing your dream simultaneously upending your life in many ways. Well,
Speaker 1: that's the confusing part of it, because I had a
Speaker 1: very good relationship with both personally, and it only got
Speaker 1: difficult as a result of how they were having a
Speaker 1: conflict with each other. And when you're young, something that's
Speaker 1: probably a pretty universal conflict. Nothing's happening that wasn't happening
Speaker 1: in probably half of the houses in America at the
Speaker 1: time feels like the most important thing in the world
Speaker 1: because it is. Yeah, because it's your whole life. Whom
Speaker 1: I having dinner with, who's helping me with my homework,
Speaker 1: who do I lean on? And so seeing them in
Speaker 1: distress and also seeing them not be able to solve
Speaker 1: a problem like how do we get along? And at
Speaker 1: the same time, they never doubted for a second I
Speaker 1: could succeed. So even as a little kid, when I
Speaker 1: was like, I want to be a comedian, they were like, great,
Speaker 1: you definitely couldn't do that. You'll be very, very successful,
Speaker 1: and they meant it. And that gave me a found
Speaker 1: to have a lot of courage to take risks, because
Speaker 1: everything about comedy is a risk. You never know if
Speaker 1: any joke's gonna work, you never know if you're going
Speaker 1: to bomb. You don't know if your movie is going
Speaker 1: to be good or bad. So to have that foundation
Speaker 1: with the ultimate gift and Yeah, my dad would drive
Speaker 1: me and you'd drive a half hour to drive me
Speaker 1: off at a club and then he'd show up three
Speaker 1: and a half hours later to pick me up at
Speaker 1: the end of an open mic night. And he did
Speaker 1: that for a long time, and the joy they took
Speaker 1: from me chasing my dream. They loved every second of it,
Speaker 1: and that was a big thing for me because I
Speaker 1: don't have that feeling that things are impossible. I'm certainly
Speaker 1: insecure like anybody else, but I have enough of a
Speaker 1: foundation that I didn't give up or I didn't get
Speaker 1: thrown when I've had things not work. It's the only
Speaker 1: object constancy I have from that foundation. You graduate high
Speaker 1: school at seventeen, you move out from New York to
Speaker 1: Los Angeles, where I think you're attending the USC Film
Speaker 1: School that was in nineteen eighty five. By nineteen eighty seven,
Speaker 1: you run out of money to keep going. And I
Speaker 1: want to sit with this moment that you meet Adam
Speaker 1: Sandler at the improv and the two of you decide
Speaker 1: to rent an apartment in North Hollywood. There's a lot
Speaker 1: to impact, but most importantly, what was the apartment like?
Speaker 1: Were you the clean roommate? Were you the passive aggressive
Speaker 1: roommate that Sandler to leave a bunch of dishes around
Speaker 1: and then pretend he didn't leave them. You just want
Speaker 1: to a fifth level Yeah, fifth level general atmosphere. Well,
Speaker 1: the apartment in North Hollywood was in a two story
Speaker 1: building surrounding a pool, so maybe there were sixteen units
Speaker 1: above us were some exotic dancers, and it was a pleasant,
Speaker 1: semi clean, not that old, but built quickly type of
Speaker 1: apartment complex, and we were thrilled to be there. We
Speaker 1: were in heaven. He paid four seventy five a month.
Speaker 1: I paid four twenty five because the bathroom was in
Speaker 1: his bedroom and I had to use the guest bathroom.
Speaker 1: And Adam was not clean, but not it wasn't out
Speaker 1: of control. But he had a mattress that he threw
Speaker 1: on the floor that he slept on. So there was
Speaker 1: probably a box spring with no sheet, a mattress with
Speaker 1: a sheet that may have never been cleaned the entire
Speaker 1: time we lived there, because we didn't know that you
Speaker 1: cleaned the pillowcases and the sheet, What do you think
Speaker 1: happen to them? Slow disintegration probably, and then nothing on
Speaker 1: the walls. Adam didn't hang a thing. He didn't even
Speaker 1: take a piece of tape and put up a picture
Speaker 1: of a loved one and a fair amount of things
Speaker 1: on the floor. There was an answering machine in the
Speaker 1: old fashioned style. I have a picture of it where
Speaker 1: you could really get the feel of it. And you
Speaker 1: see it in the beginning of Funny People. You can
Speaker 1: see the room because I show some phony phone calls
Speaker 1: that I used to videotape, mainly because he was so funny.
Speaker 1: I thought this is too weird to disappear like this
Speaker 1: is great, and I think we had generally had a
Speaker 1: pretty good time. You know, it was an interesting moment
Speaker 1: in life because we could pay our bills. We didn't
Speaker 1: really have much money, but we had enough to pay
Speaker 1: our bills. We weren't scared, and we would sleep till
Speaker 1: eleven o'clock or twelve and then go to the movies,
Speaker 1: and then as it got to the night time, we
Speaker 1: would go to the improv and do some sets and
Speaker 1: then eat fet Achini l Frady at two in the morning,
Speaker 1: and then go do it again the next day. And
Speaker 1: that was our whole life. It sounds beautiful. It was
Speaker 1: like a pure moment as a twenty year old. Both
Speaker 1: of you have this shared stand up dream. But you
Speaker 1: once said being around Adam and Jim Carrey, who you
Speaker 1: were occasionally writing for, was alternately hilarious and depressing. Why
Speaker 1: was that, Well, I'm a gigantic fan. So I met
Speaker 1: Adam when I was nineteen or twenty. I saw him
Speaker 1: at the comic strip in New York and then met
Speaker 1: him when he moved out to LA and as a fan,
Speaker 1: I just thought, Oh, that's the guy. That's the guy
Speaker 1: the way you would watch TV and go, oh, d
Speaker 1: Murphy's is going to be a star when you saw
Speaker 1: him in the first episode of Saturday Night Live. And
Speaker 1: I wasn't alone in this. A lot of people thought
Speaker 1: that about Adam upon first of watching him. Oh, this
Speaker 1: is a level of creativity and charisma that's nuts, and
Speaker 1: he's going to do a lot of great things. And
Speaker 1: as also a fan of comedy, I looked in the
Speaker 1: mirror and thought, I don't have most of that. You
Speaker 1: do have a slow realization of where you're strong and
Speaker 1: where your limitations are. And you're around fifty comedians pretty
Speaker 1: consistently at the improv and you could tell oh, that
Speaker 1: one could become the next Rosanne and that one's funny,
Speaker 1: but probably is gonna not have that career, And sadly
Speaker 1: I had that awardess about myself, and so I was
Speaker 1: both thrilled and having a great time, but also feeling like, yeah,
Speaker 1: I don't think my sets are as good as him.
Speaker 1: You said once it's like being in a band and
Speaker 1: your friends are the Beatles. Yes, exactly. Well, yeah, if
Speaker 1: you look at Jim care you know, there's an argument
Speaker 1: we made that Jim Carrey is the greatest comedy star
Speaker 1: of all time. So if that's the guy you're hanging
Speaker 1: out with or you're opening up on the road for him,
Speaker 1: it is like opening up for the Rolling Stones and going,
Speaker 1: I don't think I'm as good as the Rolling Stones,
Speaker 1: and you shouldn't be that depressed because there's only one
Speaker 1: Rolling Stones, just like there's only one Jim Carrey. But
Speaker 1: on some level you're like, God, I wish I was
Speaker 1: the Rolling Stones. I understand. When I moved to Los Angeles,
Speaker 1: my roommates were Dick Cavin and Terry Gross, and Terry's
Speaker 1: highlighters were all over the place. But at the same time,
Speaker 1: Jim and Adam really loved what I was doing. They
Speaker 1: liked my stand up, they liked kicking jokes around with
Speaker 1: me and writing stuff together. Adam was always a giant
Speaker 1: supporter of everything I was doing commedically, so that was
Speaker 1: a big deal to me. But at the same time,
Speaker 1: it is hard to realize, oh, I'm not going to
Speaker 1: turn into Bill Murray. I have to do something else,
Speaker 1: and I didn't prepare to be a director or a writer.
Speaker 1: I went to film school for eighteen months, but slowly
Speaker 1: I was like, everyone seems to like it better when
Speaker 1: I write them jokes than when I tell them shows.
Speaker 1: I remember I wrote a sketch for Adam when he
Speaker 1: got Saturday Night Live, and I said, can you just
Speaker 1: hand this in as if you wrote it so I
Speaker 1: could see if I'm good enough to write for Saturday
Speaker 1: Night Live? And they did the sketch. Was around that
Speaker 1: time that you realized it was easier for you to
Speaker 1: comedically get inside someone else's hand than it was getting
Speaker 1: inside your own head. Well, certainly it was a skill
Speaker 1: I had from being a fan. I could imagine what
Speaker 1: people would say, and I didn't know myself that well.
Speaker 1: I wasn't sure what I would say. I wasn't angry,
Speaker 1: I wasn't cynical, I wasn't that imaginative. I was just
Speaker 1: a nice guy from Long Island. I didn't have rage.
Speaker 1: I had some good jokes and it was fine. It's
Speaker 1: amazing I got as far as I did at that time.
Speaker 1: But when sitting with Jim Carrey, I could take that
Speaker 1: ride with him and come up with really wild stuff
Speaker 1: and we would laugh. And I wrote a bunch of
Speaker 1: sketches with him for a Living Color that they did
Speaker 1: like the Vera Demilo's sketches, and that was very, very exciting,
Speaker 1: and I felt that way with a lot of people,
Speaker 1: like Oh, I can sit with Roseanne and write in
Speaker 1: her voice. And I did that for a long time,
Speaker 1: and it took a long time for me to go
Speaker 1: but what would my voice be? I mean, it took
Speaker 1: another ten years for me to even consider what my
Speaker 1: point of view was. It almost sounds like it was
Speaker 1: helpful that you were kind of this amorphous thing so
Speaker 1: that you could basically be a vessel or just a
Speaker 1: catalyst for all these other voices, because he didn't quite
Speaker 1: know what yours sounded like. Well, I think my lack
Speaker 1: of belief in myself made me a good person for
Speaker 1: other people to collaborate with, because so many people were great,
Speaker 1: but they didn't want to write for other people. Adam
Speaker 1: wasn't going to write jokes for other people. He knew
Speaker 1: what he needed to do to break through for himself,
Speaker 1: and all that energy went into figuring himself out and
Speaker 1: writing his jokes. And beginning to write movies. But I
Speaker 1: needed money and I needed to pay my rent. And
Speaker 1: I also I never for a second thought, at like
Speaker 1: twenty two, like I'm gonna write a movie starring Judd Apatow.
Speaker 1: It never even occurred to me that that was a
Speaker 1: thing that I could do. Looking back now, like, why
Speaker 1: didn't I could have said, I'm gonna write my Swingers
Speaker 1: about myself? Never thought of it, literally never entered my brain.
Speaker 1: What would that have looked like? What would that movie
Speaker 1: have been? Your Swingers twenty something Judd appata movie. I
Speaker 1: mean it ultimately became knocked up, but I needed another
Speaker 1: twenty years to figure that out, putting a pause on
Speaker 1: the conversation. Well, right back with Jodd Appataw. In those
Speaker 1: early years, you needed money to pay rent, to keep living,
Speaker 1: you write and sell jokes to other comedians. I think
Speaker 1: you started selling jokes to a ventriloquist. Yes. I wrote
Speaker 1: a couple of jokes for Jeff Dunham with my friend
Speaker 1: Joel Madison. I wrote for George Wallace and Taylor Negron
Speaker 1: a couple of times, and did some work for Dennis
Speaker 1: Miller for this HBO special, which was a pregame show.
Speaker 1: For the Paul Simon Live in Central Park concert. What
Speaker 1: were those jokes? I remember one joke which is one
Speaker 1: of my favorite jokes I ever wrote, which is Paul
Speaker 1: Simon is about to hit the stage with the twenty
Speaker 1: two musicians from around the world. It took to replace
Speaker 1: art and that was a great experience. And so Tom
Speaker 1: Arnold had me write jokes for him, and then I
Speaker 1: wrote some HBO specials for him. So yeah, then I
Speaker 1: got to write for Rosanna after writing for Tom, and
Speaker 1: I really enjoyed that work, mainly because it was an
Speaker 1: extension of doing the interviews. And now certain people are saying,
Speaker 1: you can jump in the process with me, and so
Speaker 1: that was also the dream. I can sit at a
Speaker 1: table with Rosanne in her house and kick around jokes
Speaker 1: about stretch marks. This is the dream come true. I
Speaker 1: want to go to the year you're hired on the
Speaker 1: Larry Sanders Show. I think it's nineteen ninety three, is
Speaker 1: that right? The program just celebrated I believe twenty years
Speaker 1: this year. Gary always said that The Larry Sanders Show
Speaker 1: was about people who love each other, but show business
Speaker 1: gets in the way. Did you find that to be
Speaker 1: true in the moment that while you're working in show
Speaker 1: business as a twenty something, did you find that there
Speaker 1: were a lot of people seeking connection but the industry
Speaker 1: kept getting in everyone's way. Well, there are certainly some
Speaker 1: of that when you're young in comedy, because people are
Speaker 1: very competitive. So as you start doing well, some of
Speaker 1: your friends are suddenly mad at you or they're weird
Speaker 1: with you, and that was a surprise. But I do
Speaker 1: think that you're young, you have a delusional confidence about
Speaker 1: what you're capable of and where this can go, and
Speaker 1: everyone has it. So if you're in a group of
Speaker 1: one hundred comedians, if suddenly you have a moment where
Speaker 1: you rise and have some opportunities, it's natural that people
Speaker 1: who are also fiercely trying to get ahead, that some
Speaker 1: people would be like, fuck that guy. But sometimes it's
Speaker 1: your friends. You know, Now that I'm older, I think
Speaker 1: we all get it. That's what you do when you're
Speaker 1: in the middle of that madness of ambition, and then
Speaker 1: you calm down later in life. But it did require
Speaker 1: madness when you're a young person to think any of
Speaker 1: it was possible. The odds are so long that the
Speaker 1: only way you would ever attempt it is because your
Speaker 1: brain is built to believe when there is no reason
Speaker 1: why your brain should believe. What about the madness it
Speaker 1: required to make the Larry Sanders Show. You had a
Speaker 1: front row seat to seeing Gary make this week after week. Yeah,
Speaker 1: how did you process that at the time? Well? Gary
Speaker 1: was always a genius and very kind to me, but
Speaker 1: also very complicated as a person. What does that mean?
Speaker 1: He had very high standards and if people couldn't meet them,
Speaker 1: he took it as an attack. But really, no one
Speaker 1: is good enough to keep up. Only a few people
Speaker 1: could really keep up with Gary, did you. I don't
Speaker 1: think I did totally, but I was always in the
Speaker 1: ballpark and he enjoyed the conversation with me, and I
Speaker 1: generally was pretty close, just because I think I was
Speaker 1: like him in what ways, in the ways we were neurotic,
Speaker 1: and like our mother issues and our insecurities. I just
Speaker 1: was in the world of him and he knew that,
Speaker 1: and so even though I wasn't necessarily providing the greatest stuff,
Speaker 1: he enjoyed talking about it with me, and I was
Speaker 1: having fun at the show. A lot of people were
Speaker 1: stressed out, A lot of people started hating Gary because
Speaker 1: of the way he would be rude sometimes usually because
Speaker 1: he was exhausted, and the way he was judgmental because
Speaker 1: that was his job to say this script's good or
Speaker 1: this script's bad. And if he wrote a bad script
Speaker 1: and someone told you, and maybe told you not in
Speaker 1: the nicest way, you get mad. But for me, I
Speaker 1: was so happy to be there that I was just
Speaker 1: having a black you know, And I wasn't in a
Speaker 1: position of power. I was mainly just pitching jokes and
Speaker 1: writing an occasional script for the first few seasons, and
Speaker 1: then I helped run this show in the last season,
Speaker 1: so I just got a kick out of it. And
Speaker 1: I really felt for Gary because I could see that
Speaker 1: there was too much work for one person to do.
Speaker 1: And of course he's cracking because he's the writer. He's
Speaker 1: kind of semi directing a lot of it. He's editing it,
Speaker 1: he's producing it, he's booking it. He's got to think
Speaker 1: about next week's episode, and it was too much. And
Speaker 1: then if you handed him next week's script and it
Speaker 1: was bad, he would just think, so, now I got
Speaker 1: to fix this. Great felt insurmountable. And back then people
Speaker 1: didn't know how to set up those productions to protect
Speaker 1: what is now the Larry David or the tena FA
Speaker 1: Back then, people didn't understand how much time you needed
Speaker 1: to do that work if you had to star and write,
Speaker 1: so it was set up in a really stupid way.
Speaker 1: And then he was constantly saying, no one's protecting, no
Speaker 1: one's taking care of me. And then people would be
Speaker 1: mad at him because he was basically on fumes a
Speaker 1: fair amount at the time. When you got to the show,
Speaker 1: Gary said to you, Oh, you're going to learn so
Speaker 1: much here. What did you feel like you needed to
Speaker 1: learn from the Laray Stander show. Well, when he said that,
Speaker 1: I'm sure I didn't understand what he was talking about
Speaker 1: at all because at that time, all I had written
Speaker 1: with sketches at the Ben Stillers show. I hadn't written
Speaker 1: any screenplays, so I knew nothing. I knew nothing about storytelling.
Speaker 1: I was a complete blank canvas. I didn't understand human behavior.
Speaker 1: And that's what these stories should be about, all the
Speaker 1: ways in which we stumble through life. And he thought
Speaker 1: that people try to present themselves as different than they are,
Speaker 1: and it was a metaphor of the curtain. Here's the
Speaker 1: way people will behave in front of the curtain and
Speaker 1: behind the curtain and all the ways we try to
Speaker 1: appear like we have our ship together, like we know
Speaker 1: what we're doing, when inside were all kind of falling
Speaker 1: apart and a disaster. And what was fascinating about it
Speaker 1: was Gary was looking deep inside of himself and he
Speaker 1: hated the idea of ego and Hollywood ego, but clearly
Speaker 1: he was a person that struggled with that. He wanted
Speaker 1: to be successful, he wanted to be respected, and he
Speaker 1: found it funny the way people seek approval more than
Speaker 1: they want to give love or be present. So he
Speaker 1: was fascinated with Buddhism and that was his goal as
Speaker 1: a person. So when you look at the office of
Speaker 1: the Larry Sanders Show, it's as far away from Buddhists
Speaker 1: beliefs as you can get. It's if I get a raise,
Speaker 1: I'll be happy. If the show goes well, I'll be happy.
Speaker 1: He would do the show and then go on a
Speaker 1: date and show the show he just did to the date.
Speaker 1: That's what he was exploring, that kind of neediness because
Speaker 1: he wanted to get rid of his neediness and his ego.
Speaker 1: And it was, you know, a lifelong suit and it's
Speaker 1: not like it happened, but he was trying. Yeah, it's
Speaker 1: bottomless because Gary struggled. You know, he had a lot
Speaker 1: of childhood trauma when his brother passed away and his
Speaker 1: family just basically stopped talking about it. He didn't really
Speaker 1: have a way to heal from it and grieve in
Speaker 1: a healthy way. And I think that's what his work
Speaker 1: was about, the ways that we aren't honest with each other.
Speaker 1: One thing Gary always said was people never tell each
Speaker 1: other the truth, and if they do, it's shocking, like
Speaker 1: to look at someone and really be truthful. I remember
Speaker 1: there was a scene in the first episode I ever
Speaker 1: directed where he's with Ileana Douglas and the episode is
Speaker 1: about their relationship problems because she's gonna be on the
Speaker 1: show and he doesn't know she's a good guest, and
Speaker 1: there's a moment where they're like fighting and then it
Speaker 1: gets very upsetting, and then Gary just goes, I'm a
Speaker 1: talk show host. I'm all fucked up. And it was
Speaker 1: one of the most revealing moments in the whole series,
Speaker 1: because that's really the essence of it all. I'm gonna
Speaker 1: talk shows, I'm all fucked up. But the show was
Speaker 1: ending in a couple of weeks. So if you can
Speaker 1: stick around, maybe we can make it work. Yeah, you
Speaker 1: saw the episode recently. I watched it last night. Oh really,
Speaker 1: so that's the first thing I ever directed, was that episode.
Speaker 1: I didn't watch it by random. You happened to watch
Speaker 1: two hundred episodes in the last week or two. I
Speaker 1: did rewatch that episode last night, and then, of course
Speaker 1: I watched the finale of the show, which comes right after.
Speaker 1: And I wanted to sit with this moment because the
Speaker 1: series finale was in May of nineteen ninety eight. You
Speaker 1: had been married for a year to Leslie, you just
Speaker 1: had your first daughter the year prior, and with this show,
Speaker 1: like you said, you directed your first episode of television
Speaker 1: for a comedian. You grew up in miring. And I
Speaker 1: was wondering about this because when Kamal nan Gianni and
Speaker 1: Emily Gordon premiered The Big Sick at Sundance, they were
Speaker 1: at a party and Leslie came up to them and said,
Speaker 1: enjoy this. I want you to really enjoy this moment
Speaker 1: because it's never going to happen again. And I was thinking,
Speaker 1: were you able to enjoy that moment? Were you able
Speaker 1: to listen to her advice? Back in nineteen ninety eight,
Speaker 1: when it seemed like the professional and personal we're both
Speaker 1: flourishing at the same time. Well, I was thrilled with
Speaker 1: MUD's arrival, and there was a lot going on there
Speaker 1: because for anyone having their first job, you just have
Speaker 1: no idea what you're doing, and you're just getting hit
Speaker 1: with a sledgehammer every day all the time. But it
Speaker 1: was a great moment and we had an enormous amount
Speaker 1: of fun with it. At the same time, I had
Speaker 1: to work, and I felt a pressure to have a
Speaker 1: job because suddenly I'm not alone. And the last season
Speaker 1: of the Vlarry Sanders Show was really fun but stressful
Speaker 1: because Gary called me and he said, I need your
Speaker 1: help this year. Will you help me run the show
Speaker 1: with the Adam Resnick? And I said, Gary, I really
Speaker 1: appreciate our friendship. It's very important to me, and I
Speaker 1: don't want to do it if at the end of it,
Speaker 1: you're going to hate me, because he ended a lot
Speaker 1: of relationships with people he respected when they couldn't pull
Speaker 1: off running the show, and it happened a fair amount
Speaker 1: of times, and so I just looked him in the
Speaker 1: eye and said, you're not allowed to hate me, and
Speaker 1: I'll just try to help you as much as I can,
Speaker 1: and he said, okay, And we had a great year.
Speaker 1: Now that it wasn't hard, and there was a lot
Speaker 1: going on, and there were things that were intense, but
Speaker 1: I enjoyed being with him and I enjoyed pulling him
Speaker 1: into writing. So when something was bad, I just said, Gary,
Speaker 1: it's fun. Let's figure it out. This is fun, this
Speaker 1: is what we do. And I think in the end
Speaker 1: of it, Gary thought I did pull it off so
Speaker 1: as insecure as Gary always was and as tough on
Speaker 1: the material as he always was. When that season ended,
Speaker 1: Gary thought, it's exactly what I wanted it to be.
Speaker 1: And for me, having stepped into that role with Adam Resnick,
Speaker 1: I just thought, wow, that's a miracle. And so much
Speaker 1: of it is Peter Tolin. But to get Gary to
Speaker 1: be happy with the season and especially the finale, I mean,
Speaker 1: that was the best feeling in the world. So were
Speaker 1: you happy? Yeah? I think I was happy. I mean
Speaker 1: the one thing I did for the finale, which Gary
Speaker 1: wrote with Peter, Gary said, can you ask Jim Carrey
Speaker 1: to do it? And we had been asking Jim Carrey
Speaker 1: for six years to do the show and he just
Speaker 1: never would book it. He never said no, but he
Speaker 1: just didn't allow it to get booked. And I called
Speaker 1: Jim and I said, this is your last shot. It's
Speaker 1: the last episode. And he said, well, I'll do it
Speaker 1: if I can be the best person who's ever done it.
Speaker 1: And I was like, okay, okay, Jim, you'll be the
Speaker 1: best person who's ever done it. And Jim and I
Speaker 1: one day were the improv. We were performing in the improv,
Speaker 1: or he was performing and we met these people at
Speaker 1: the club and we go back to their apartment and
Speaker 1: it's not like a date thing or it's I don't
Speaker 1: know why, it was just like a weird thing. Yeah,
Speaker 1: we'll go hang out with you. So this woman suddenly
Speaker 1: takes out a vinyl album of dream Girls and puts
Speaker 1: on Jennifer Holiday singing and I'm telling you the big
Speaker 1: number and she lips sings it. It was like a
Speaker 1: David Lynch scene, and it was just crazy and kind
Speaker 1: of hilarious, but like crazy, like why are we here?
Speaker 1: So I always remembered that strange moment, and so I
Speaker 1: said to Jim, maybe you should sing, Maybe you should
Speaker 1: sing that song. And then Jim just crushed it. And
Speaker 1: maybe was the best person who ever did the show.
Speaker 1: It's possible. It's such an insane bit and the gumption
Speaker 1: required you watch it. It's like this is Jim firing
Speaker 1: on all cylinders. I remember he did it once and
Speaker 1: then afterwards Garry was like, I think we got it,
Speaker 1: and Jim's like, no, I'd like to do it again.
Speaker 1: I can do it better, and Gary goes, you could
Speaker 1: do that again. Let's take a look at that girl
Speaker 1: was upset about Larry leaving the show. As I am
Speaker 1: say no way, no no, no, no, no no no,
Speaker 1: we'll live in We're not living no way, no way,
Speaker 1: yeah scream. When we put that moment in the documentary
Speaker 1: about Gary, I got the dailies and I looked at
Speaker 1: all the takes and I saw that my mom was
Speaker 1: in the audience, which totally surprised back. Forgot she was there.
Speaker 1: So I'm looking through the daily my mom is in
Speaker 1: the crowd. And then I looked in the audience and
Speaker 1: Mark Flanagan, who owns Largo, and John Brian are in
Speaker 1: the crowd. And I wasn't friends with them then, and
Speaker 1: so I re cut the song and used a different take,
Speaker 1: and so in the documentary it's not the way it
Speaker 1: was cut for the show. It's like I just did
Speaker 1: this recut and made a point of like showing my
Speaker 1: mom and showing planning, and so, I mean, it was
Speaker 1: a pretty intensing to stumble upon sort of artifact that
Speaker 1: you didn't know existed. It just reminded me how much
Speaker 1: how much my mom supported me. That she was there,
Speaker 1: and she was the person that took a shitty job
Speaker 1: at a comedy club, probably to give me access. She
Speaker 1: never said that, but I always thought she must have
Speaker 1: taken that to give me access. And then to see
Speaker 1: her there, and then I was like, it was nice
Speaker 1: that I had her there because it wasn't always an
Speaker 1: easy relationship. So I felt good that, oh I made
Speaker 1: sure my mom was there. Yeah, it's a tough one
Speaker 1: because you always wonder how did I treat her, how
Speaker 1: did she treat me, especially when relationships are complicated. So
Speaker 1: it just made me so happy because she looked so
Speaker 1: happy in the footage. It's hard because when one's parents
Speaker 1: get a divorce, your field division already is pretty you know, myopic,
Speaker 1: because you're a kid, and so in that small window
Speaker 1: that you have if your parents split up, all of
Speaker 1: a sudden. All you see outside that window is all
Speaker 1: the shit and all the debris that comes from the
Speaker 1: fallout of two people breaking apart, and in your case,
Speaker 1: you had two very supportive parents, but a mother who
Speaker 1: took that job in Southampton, and of someone who also
Speaker 1: has a very supportive mother. I often think about it
Speaker 1: being too late to say thank you like enough, you know.
Speaker 1: I try to say it to people. My mom was
Speaker 1: at some event that I was speaking at when she
Speaker 1: was really ill, and I made a point of saying
Speaker 1: everything I would want to say to her in front
Speaker 1: of a lot of people about what she meant to me,
Speaker 1: what she did for me. And it's funny because a
Speaker 1: few weeks ago, Bud Freedman came to Largo to see
Speaker 1: me and Adam Sandler, and we were on stage together
Speaker 1: and after Adam said we would just chat on stage,
Speaker 1: and we knew Bud Freedman was there, and we made
Speaker 1: a point of just saying how much we loved him
Speaker 1: and how everything that happened to us happened because of
Speaker 1: his belief in us and him giving us opportunities. And
Speaker 1: then he just died and I just felt, well, I
Speaker 1: got a chance to tell him very explicitly, and I
Speaker 1: always I am aware of looking for those opportunities. It's
Speaker 1: so great that anyone who watches the finale of the
Speaker 1: Larry Sanders Show could potentially pick up on that little
Speaker 1: tidbit of your mother in there. But that's going to
Speaker 1: live on long after we're passed. I mean I did
Speaker 1: a similar thing when we did This Is forty. My
Speaker 1: grandmother was in it, and she says something that she
Speaker 1: would always say to us, which is like, you know,
Speaker 1: life goes fast. Don't blink. You blink and you're ninety,
Speaker 1: don't blink. And you know, we had her with that warning,
Speaker 1: and that was like an important thing to have her
Speaker 1: in the movie. You know, she exists forever. Now she's gone.
Speaker 1: I think that's part of what I like to do
Speaker 1: with all the projects is do something that Gary showed me,
Speaker 1: which is this blurring of the line of reality and fiction.
Speaker 1: You know, scenes are fake, but they come from some
Speaker 1: truth and sometimes people are playing themselves or they're playing
Speaker 1: characters saying things that they've said in real life. And
Speaker 1: I think that a lot of times I see projects
Speaker 1: like Lena Dunham's Tiny Furniture, and I think, yes, that's
Speaker 1: the kind of thing I love. I love that her
Speaker 1: mom is played by her mom, and it's her family
Speaker 1: and it's her apartment. And I know it's fiction, but
Speaker 1: I also know it comes from a deeply truthful place.
Speaker 1: And that's what Gary always was trying to accomplish. You know,
Speaker 1: how how deep can you go? How how truthful can
Speaker 1: you get? Can we go to that period after you
Speaker 1: leave The Sander Show where that line seems to be
Speaker 1: blurred a whole lot? In the mid two thousands, you
Speaker 1: make Four year Old Virgin and Knocked Up. And it's
Speaker 1: around this time that you Leslie and this and this
Speaker 1: growing family kind of feel like the normal people with
Speaker 1: daily struggles that you know, attracted due to stories that
Speaker 1: Gary wrote or James L. Brooks wrote. What was that
Speaker 1: period like in the mid two thousands as you started
Speaker 1: making films like The Four year Old Virgin and then
Speaker 1: Knocked Up? Well, I, you know, I was working on
Speaker 1: Freaks and Geeks, which is very much about Paul and
Speaker 1: his childhood. But we all were making contributions of things
Speaker 1: that had happened to us and relationships we had had.
Speaker 1: And I started writing about divorce through Sam Levine's character
Speaker 1: Chur Sam Levine becomes obsessed with ventriloquism, which was a
Speaker 1: way of talking about my obsession with comedy. And also
Speaker 1: through the Martin star character, Bill have her Chuck him
Speaker 1: dealing with his parents, his mom dating and how awkward
Speaker 1: that was. So I tried to insert a lot of
Speaker 1: that into the show. And there were certain sequences like
Speaker 1: the one where Bill is the watching television and watching
Speaker 1: Gary schandling to the whose song I'm One, which were
Speaker 1: very personal and I noticed that they came out well
Speaker 1: and I was able to communicate something in a way
Speaker 1: I never had been able to before. So when the
Speaker 1: show ended and I was trying to figure out how
Speaker 1: to write, I dug deeper. And then when we did
Speaker 1: Knocked Up, it was a way of talking about you
Speaker 1: know what it's like to be in over your head.
Speaker 1: And Seth when he met his wife Lauren. On their
Speaker 1: first date, they got into a car accident, and Seth
Speaker 1: said that the date didn't go well, but because they
Speaker 1: been in a car accident together, they felt that they
Speaker 1: should at least have another date. So I had been
Speaker 1: talking to Seth and he was talking about some ideas
Speaker 1: he wanted to do, which were very imaginative, and I said,
Speaker 1: I said, I don't think you need to do any that.
Speaker 1: You're so funny. You could have something very normal happen
Speaker 1: in life, and I think it would be fascinating because
Speaker 1: it happened to you, like you could get someone pregnant,
Speaker 1: and that would be enough for me to watch a
Speaker 1: whole movie. And then I realized, oh, we should do that,
Speaker 1: and so I went off to write that, and you know,
Speaker 1: a lot of things that had happened fit into it,
Speaker 1: like our doctor not showing up to the birth, and
Speaker 1: the things that I had made notes about that I
Speaker 1: thought were so crazy that they were destined to be
Speaker 1: a sequence in a movie. That period is so interesting
Speaker 1: to me because what comes after in two thousand and
Speaker 1: nine is a movie called Funny People. It seemed like
Speaker 1: that film allowed you and Adam Sandler to make a
Speaker 1: picture about the dream you shared in nineteen ninety one
Speaker 1: in that North Hollywood apartment. When you look back at
Speaker 1: that movie, now, what do you think it says about
Speaker 1: the dream you two had, And what do you think
Speaker 1: it says about the journeys you two went on to
Speaker 1: attain it. I think, you know, a lot of these
Speaker 1: movies happen in a weird fever dream. I mean, you know,
Speaker 1: my mom was sick and I was thinking a lot
Speaker 1: about her ride. There were moments where she thought she
Speaker 1: would get better. There were moments when she did and
Speaker 1: think she would get better because she'd be on all
Speaker 1: these different experimental medicines for ovarian cancer. And I noticed
Speaker 1: that when she thought she was going to die, she
Speaker 1: seemed happier. She seemed released from a lot of her
Speaker 1: worldly concerns and her neuroses. And then she would find
Speaker 1: out all the new medicines working, and then she would
Speaker 1: get caught up again and get very neurotic. And at
Speaker 1: the same time, I was also thinking, is there a
Speaker 1: way to talk about mentorship? There were so many people
Speaker 1: that helped me out. One day I realized, oh, that
Speaker 1: could be the same movie. It is about our love
Speaker 1: of comedy and our excitement when anyone let us in
Speaker 1: the door, and when we were able to meet our heroes,
Speaker 1: and then some moments when we realized our heroes were
Speaker 1: very seriously flawed, and that part of our journey would
Speaker 1: be to avoid some of the traps they fell into
Speaker 1: or some of the ways they approached their lives. We
Speaker 1: don't want to become egomaniacs. We don't want to wind
Speaker 1: up alone in a house not really knowing how to
Speaker 1: have deep, real relationships. And I think that's especially an
Speaker 1: example of a movie that you're not even sure what
Speaker 1: you were writing about till years later. So anytime I
Speaker 1: see any event, I think, oh, I didn't even know
Speaker 1: what it was, because at the time I thought, well,
Speaker 1: in some ways Adams playing my mom. And then other
Speaker 1: times I watch and think, well, this is like a
Speaker 1: message to me and Adam not to turn into George
Speaker 1: Simmons and to value love and friendship and famil before
Speaker 1: show business and ego, which is also a result of Gary,
Speaker 1: which is Gary's work was about, like, don't become Larry.
Speaker 1: You know, Larry wasn't like a bad guy. This is
Speaker 1: supposed to be someone that had gone to a slightly
Speaker 1: darker place and needed to wake up. The relationship between
Speaker 1: the seth Rogue and character and the Adam Sandler character,
Speaker 1: the younger comic and the older celebrated season comic, it
Speaker 1: was hard for me to not think of you and
Speaker 1: Gary in that dynamic. Well, the big difference was that
Speaker 1: at the end of that movie, the way George Simmons
Speaker 1: shows Seth's character that he cares about him is he
Speaker 1: writes jokes for him, so he's not just a taker.
Speaker 1: So the whole movie's a taker, and at the end
Speaker 1: he gives. And the truth is that Gary always gave.
Speaker 1: He wasn't like George Simmons in that way. Certainly there
Speaker 1: were some elements of like a guy alone, but Gary
Speaker 1: wasn't aggressive like that. He wasn't you know, Edgy, Oh,
Speaker 1: Gary gave you the ending in forty year old ver. Yes,
Speaker 1: Gary was the one who said the movie needs to
Speaker 1: be about love, and you need to figure out how
Speaker 1: to show that the sex is better when you're in love,
Speaker 1: that his sex is better than his friends sex. And
Speaker 1: he would just push me so hardly. You've got to
Speaker 1: figure it out. And then Steve Krell one day said, well,
Speaker 1: maybe we just do a dance. And it only happened
Speaker 1: because Gary wouldn't stop pushing me. So he was always
Speaker 1: showing up at every table, read at every cut. I mean,
Speaker 1: when Gary died, I went to all my emails and
Speaker 1: read them, and every email where I asked Gary to
Speaker 1: do something or show up or help me, he said yes.
Speaker 1: In ten years of emails, I was just bawling at
Speaker 1: the monitor reading these emails because it was literally every
Speaker 1: single time the idea of mentorship, which is so central
Speaker 1: to funny People. It seems like after that film, that
Speaker 1: becomes a huge part of your life to kind of
Speaker 1: help shepherd these young comics and help them tell the
Speaker 1: stories they're meant to tell. After a movie like that,
Speaker 1: did you feel like you wanted to become the guy
Speaker 1: Gary was to you in those emails? I don't think
Speaker 1: I thought about it consciously. You know. I would hire
Speaker 1: people to write for shows that I was working on
Speaker 1: or running, so that was part of what I did.
Speaker 1: And at some point after Freaks and Geeks, I thought
Speaker 1: everyone here is so talented and we haven't scratched the surface.
Speaker 1: So I would push everyone like, why don't you learn
Speaker 1: to write like you got anything? You have any ideas,
Speaker 1: And a bunch of people did. So. I don't think
Speaker 1: I consciously was thinking I want me to be like Gary,
Speaker 1: but I think that was in me like Gary had
Speaker 1: wired it in me, so it didn't have to be conscious.
Speaker 1: It was just, Oh, Seth and Evan wrote super Bad,
Speaker 1: let me see if I can help them with it.
Speaker 1: Then Jason Siegel wrote Forgetting Sarah Marshall. Maybe we can
Speaker 1: see if we can get that made, and maybe we
Speaker 1: can get nixt Holar or who's a writer and undeclared
Speaker 1: to direct it, and because debut, and then that just
Speaker 1: kept happening because those people were so strong and they
Speaker 1: had a lot to say. And what I realized was
Speaker 1: there's a moment in your youth where you have your
Speaker 1: big story and a lot of people early in their lives,
Speaker 1: they make their boogie nights, you know, their passion project.
Speaker 1: So it's not their tenth movie, like I'm number one
Speaker 1: or number two. The level of passion is through the roof,
Speaker 1: and oftentimes there's a lot of ideas that can be
Speaker 1: expressed in the best way. The first time King of
Speaker 1: Staten Island Pete Davidson has a lot to say, a
Speaker 1: lot to show people, and you only get to make
Speaker 1: one of those. I mean, hopefully you make a lot
Speaker 1: of great movies and personal movies in your life. But
Speaker 1: that's a moment I'd like being a part of. Is
Speaker 1: what's the most important story you ever could tell? I'm
Speaker 1: thinking for you, we've been referencing freaks and geeks throughout
Speaker 1: this conversation. I feel like we have to watch that
Speaker 1: scene with Martin Starr and front of the TV. That
Speaker 1: is very much an emblem of you coming of age
Speaker 1: in Long Highland. Can we do that for sc Sure?
Speaker 1: It free is the same and a feeling again, I'm
Speaker 1: a loser, no chance to win, but I'm one. It
Speaker 1: gets me every single time. I cry, every single time.
Speaker 1: I could cry one hundred times in a row watching that.
Speaker 1: Everybody has the same reaction to it because it's just
Speaker 1: about the loneliness of being a kid and trying to
Speaker 1: find ways to be happy and the ways you self
Speaker 1: soothed through food and television and comedy, and it's a
Speaker 1: lot of people's childhoods is going home alone, figuring out
Speaker 1: what to do to have an okay day. And to
Speaker 1: see Gary always hits me because he was the person
Speaker 1: I was watching as a kid, and so the fact
Speaker 1: that I got to know him and he was a
Speaker 1: mentor and helped me so much, it's almost too much.
Speaker 1: It's funny because I was talking to someone just the
Speaker 1: other day about Gary, and we were talking about just
Speaker 1: someone that comes into your life and just says, hey,
Speaker 1: I'm gonna help you learn how to write jokes. I'm
Speaker 1: gonna help you learn how to direct. I'm gonna help
Speaker 1: you with your movies. I'm gonna teach you about Buddhism
Speaker 1: like it's a lot of beautiful gestures, an enormous amount
Speaker 1: of generosity from a very neurotic, fascinating, hilarious person who
Speaker 1: was also struggling in a lot of ways. You know,
Speaker 1: he really took great care of me. It's just such
Speaker 1: a blessing that I stumbled upon him. I guess my
Speaker 1: last question for you. In that scene, you have Bill
Speaker 1: age fourteen, fifteen, laughing, eating, watching Gary Shandling on The
Speaker 1: Dinah Shore Show. And of course we can't separate the
Speaker 1: character Martin stars playing and who you were as a teenager.
Speaker 1: And as I'm thinking of you as a teenager, I
Speaker 1: want to go back to the interview you did with
Speaker 1: Gary in nineteen eighty four. Toward the end of that talk,
Speaker 1: you asked him about what he'll be doing five years
Speaker 1: from now, and here's what he said. I hope the
Speaker 1: comedy will be even more honest than it is now,
Speaker 1: more personal because it takes time for people to get
Speaker 1: to know you. I mean, Richard Pryor is perfect example.
Speaker 1: If you look at what he was doing ten or
Speaker 1: fifteen years ago. It's different than what he does now.
Speaker 1: Because we know him. He can just get up and
Speaker 1: start talking about his life and that's the funniest stuff.
Speaker 1: And so we leave for you at fifty four, do
Speaker 1: you still have that same desire to get up there
Speaker 1: on stage or get behind the keyboard or behind the camera.
Speaker 1: Do you still have that same desire to talk about
Speaker 1: your life in ways that are honest and personal? As
Speaker 1: Gary would say, that's the right question. And I'm definitely
Speaker 1: in open space right now trying to figure out what
Speaker 1: to write about, what to do. And I have a
Speaker 1: couple of ideas, But every time you head into a project,
Speaker 1: do you take a deep breath because you're just jumping
Speaker 1: off a cliff And that's where I am now. I
Speaker 1: have to figure out, Okay, which one do I want
Speaker 1: to jump off a cliff with? And what else is
Speaker 1: there to say that I haven't said before? Do I
Speaker 1: have a new insight? Do I have a new area
Speaker 1: that needs exploring? And I'm sure I do. But it's
Speaker 1: challenging because when you've made a lot of things, you've
Speaker 1: covered a lot of ground, and you do have to
Speaker 1: be willing to take massive risks and be willing to fail.
Speaker 1: That's all it's about, is can I find it in
Speaker 1: myself to say this is worth risking massive failure to
Speaker 1: try to tell this story as well as I can.
Speaker 1: And I usually get there at some point, like, all right,
Speaker 1: let's go do this and see what happens. I always
Speaker 1: think it's like jumping in a frying pan and then
Speaker 1: for like a year you've literally just been grilling in
Speaker 1: a frying pan. Then Suddy, it's over, and you're like,
Speaker 1: that was so crazy that we did that, Like we
Speaker 1: literally made this crazy movie. And then you're just like
Speaker 1: and then you kind of rest for a year or two,
Speaker 1: and then you're like, should I jump back in that
Speaker 1: frying pan. It's gonna hurt, but it'd probably be worth it.
Speaker 1: Let's do it. So that's where I'm at now. So
Speaker 1: you're ready to jump, almost ready to jump. I gotta
Speaker 1: figure out what's in the frying pan I'm jumping in with. Well,
Speaker 1: whatever is in there, so long as it has all
Speaker 1: the ingredients of a story that we've been talking about,
Speaker 1: the things Shandling showed you, the things I think you've demonstrated,
Speaker 1: and so many of the movies we've talked about. Then
Speaker 1: I'm excited to see it. That's what I'll be thinking
Speaker 1: about it. The keyboard you waiting, Samfra goes away. Trust you,
Speaker 1: I'm gonna only thing of you up and put a
Speaker 1: picture on the keyboard and say one person is very
Speaker 1: open to this. Sometimes that's all you need. Whatever you
Speaker 1: need for me, like Gary, I will be there. Thank you,
Speaker 1: John Apatow, appreciate the time. That was fun and that's
Speaker 1: our show special. Thanks this week, Debree Kelly and Kate
Speaker 1: Rosenbaum at IDPR, Cassidy Allah and of course John Appataw
Speaker 1: for links to his new docuseries George Carlin's American Dream,
Speaker 1: his latest films including The Bubble and Bros. And his
Speaker 1: book Sicker in the Head. You can visit our show
Speaker 1: notes at talk easypod dot com. If you enjoy today's conversation,
Speaker 1: I'd recommend our episodes with Lena Dunham, Billy Eichner, mag Stalter,
Speaker 1: Nick Kroll, Quinton Brunson, Bill Hayter, Abby Jacobson, Nick Offerman,
Speaker 1: and George Saunders to hear those in more Pushkin podcasts.
Speaker 1: Listen on the iHeartRadio app, Apple podcast, Spotify, or wherever
Speaker 1: you like to listen. You can also follow us on Twitter, Facebook,
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Speaker 1: If you want to support us in other ways, Reviewing
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Speaker 1: listen is still the best way for new listeners to
Speaker 1: find the show. As always, Talk Easy is produced by
Speaker 1: Caroline Reebok. Our executive producer is Janick Sobravo. Our associate
Speaker 1: producer is Caitlin Dryden. Today's talk was edited by Caitlin
Speaker 1: Dryden and mixed by Andrew Vastola. Our assistant editors are
Speaker 1: Clarice Gavara and Lindsay Ellis. Music by Dylan Peck, illustrations
Speaker 1: by Krisha Chanoy. Photographs are by Maria Alvarez. Video and
Speaker 1: graphics by Ian Chang, Derek gaberzach Ian Jones, Ethan Seneca,
Speaker 1: and Layla Register. Special thanks to Patrice Lee, Kaylin Ung
Speaker 1: and Paulina Suarez. I'd also like to thank our team
Speaker 1: at Pushkin Industries, Justin Richmond, Julia Barton, John Snars, Karrie Brody,
Speaker 1: David Glover, Heather Faye Miila Belle, Eric Sandler, Nicole Morano,
Speaker 1: Maggie Taylor, Morgan Rattner, Jordan McMillan, Isabella Navarez, Maya Kane,
Speaker 1: Carli mcgliori, Jason Gambrell, Malcolm Gladwell, and Jacob Weissberg. I'm
Speaker 1: Sana Fragoso. Thank you for sending the talk easy. I'll
Speaker 1: see you back here next Sunday with Jonathan Majors. Until then,
Speaker 1: stay safe and so on.