Speaker 1: This is Alec Baldwin and you're listening to Here's the Thing. Judd.
Speaker 1: Apatow's films include The Forty year Old Virgin, Knocked Up
Speaker 1: and Funny People, all of which feature emotionally immature men
Speaker 1: forced to grow up after confronting, respectively, sex, responsibility, and death.
Speaker 1: While his films are not autobiographical, they all attempt to
Speaker 1: answer the same question, one that Apatow himself grapples with,
Speaker 1: can you become a grown up and still enjoy your life?
Speaker 1: Of all Apatow's movies, his most recent This is forty,
Speaker 1: which opened the weekend before Christmas, may be his most personal.
Speaker 1: It stars his wife, Leslie Mann, and his children Maude
Speaker 1: and Iris, who play her kids in the movie. It's
Speaker 1: here where Apatow's complicated and nuanced, comedic point of view
Speaker 1: collides with marriage, work, and family. It sounds horrible, but
Speaker 1: do you ever wonder what it would be like if
Speaker 1: you your wife were separated by something bigger? Death? Like
Speaker 1: her death? I have given it a fair amount of thought,
Speaker 1: not any painful way, which is like a gentle floating off.
Speaker 1: It's got to be peaceful. I mean, this is the
Speaker 1: mother of your children. And then the new wife would
Speaker 1: be great. God, I can't wait to meet my second wife.
Speaker 1: I hope she likes me better than this one. Judd
Speaker 1: Apatow began studying the art of making people laugh as
Speaker 1: a kid when he would rush home from school to
Speaker 1: watch TV from three thirty until after midnight All in
Speaker 1: the Family, Rhoda, Mary Tyler Moore Taxi on the weekend.
Speaker 1: He transcribed the bits he heard on Saturday Night Live.
Speaker 1: You're listening to club comedy w k w Z and
Speaker 1: Siancet with Judd Apatow. This is Jerry Seinfeld. In high school,
Speaker 1: Apatow had a radio show in which he interviewed comedians
Speaker 1: such as Jerry Seinfeld, Gary Shandling, and John Candy so
Speaker 1: we could learn as much as he could about their craft.
Speaker 1: I think to talk about era type of comedy that
Speaker 1: you do, how do you describe it? It's sort of funny,
Speaker 1: observational with like a twist at it. It's not some
Speaker 1: people just tell the joke like an observation and that's it,
Speaker 1: but you add a whole need to mention on it. Yeah. Well,
Speaker 1: it's one thing to see something, you know, and I
Speaker 1: think the next step is to do something with it.
Speaker 1: You know, like, I'm like, I'm doing this routine that
Speaker 1: but this guy that was on that's incredible as you
Speaker 1: gotta caught a bullet between his teeth. It's like, you
Speaker 1: see a thing like that and you go, what the
Speaker 1: hell is that that? She's a bullet And now I
Speaker 1: don't know what's funny about that, but I think to myself,
Speaker 1: there's something funny about that, and that's what I like
Speaker 1: to do now. Apataw was arguably at the top of
Speaker 1: his game and seems to have his hand in nearly
Speaker 1: every meeting success of the last seven years. He was
Speaker 1: a producer of Anchorman, super Bad, Bridesmaids, and is currently
Speaker 1: an executive producer of the hit HBO show Girls. But
Speaker 1: even after the commercial and critical success he achieved, John
Speaker 1: Apatow still craves reassurance. I need constant approval of my
Speaker 1: writing as I'm doing it. So I will show people
Speaker 1: the first scene, the first ten pages people, anybody. I
Speaker 1: will show anybody. I literally will send it to friends.
Speaker 1: You know. Jake Kazan, who directed and produced on Freaks
Speaker 1: and Geeks and Undeclared, is one of the first people
Speaker 1: I show things too. But I'll show it to the
Speaker 1: studio because I don't like that moment when you have
Speaker 1: a finished script and you go, I wonder if they'll
Speaker 1: like it. So if I send them thousands of pages
Speaker 1: over the course of two years, they're so confused that
Speaker 1: there's not a moment of truth and to bury exactly
Speaker 1: and when it when it really gets down to it.
Speaker 1: Lena Dunham and I were working on Girls Uh with
Speaker 1: a Jenny Connor who runs Girls, so that was happening
Speaker 1: parallel to me making This is forty. So we would
Speaker 1: literally spend two hours breaking Girls stories and then two
Speaker 1: hours talking about this is forty and then near the
Speaker 1: end I'll get the courage up to send it to
Speaker 1: like Eric Roth and James L. Brooks and Camerons. Is
Speaker 1: influence to you, Yeah, He's probably the biggest influence. I
Speaker 1: think his whole approach to stories is just imprinted in
Speaker 1: my mind from my childhood watching Mary Tyler Moore and Taxi.
Speaker 1: That's how I feel like stories work. Normal people with everyday,
Speaker 1: normal problems, trying to get along, trying to make their jobs,
Speaker 1: in their love and their life work. And his work
Speaker 1: always ends with some beautiful grace note which is always
Speaker 1: hopeful yet realistic, and I remember them from when I
Speaker 1: was a kid. How you know. There was a taxi
Speaker 1: episode where Louis d Pamo was dating a blind woman
Speaker 1: and he was so in love, and then she was
Speaker 1: having an operation to get her side back, and he
Speaker 1: thought she's gonna dump me, which you can see, you
Speaker 1: can see, and then of course she loves him and
Speaker 1: thinks he's beautiful. And as he walks out of the room,
Speaker 1: he throws something in the garbage and he says, I
Speaker 1: guess I gotta get a real ring, and and I
Speaker 1: love how he would pull that off. So he's very helpful.
Speaker 1: And in the middle of this is for You, I
Speaker 1: emailed James Brooks and I said, remind me what the
Speaker 1: movie is about. Again I forgot, and he sent me
Speaker 1: a long email saying, this is what your movie is about.
Speaker 1: So you kind of I'll let you say this, but
Speaker 1: it sounds to me like you swim in kind of
Speaker 1: a pool or a stream with a lot of people
Speaker 1: who make films, and you're and you're open to their
Speaker 1: suggestions and you're open to their ideas. If you talk
Speaker 1: to a multitude of people for their ideas, which ones
Speaker 1: do you? I mean in the end, you decide. In
Speaker 1: the end, you choose. I've always had faith in my
Speaker 1: ability to make that call, so I don't mind a
Speaker 1: lot of feedback. In doesn't confuse me if everyone says
Speaker 1: something different. I mean, I come from television and rooms
Speaker 1: of people arguing about story, and my formative years were
Speaker 1: spent at the Larry Sanders Show, where you were a
Speaker 1: great guest, and I one of the great early moments
Speaker 1: of my career was I wrote a bunch of those
Speaker 1: scenes and in the episode you were in, and I
Speaker 1: just saw it on TV the other day I was home.
Speaker 1: My favorite line, which was when Shandling goes to the
Speaker 1: wings of the stage when I'm on the set and
Speaker 1: I'm not quoting it properly, but rip says, what's the matter?
Speaker 1: He says, I can't help it. I keep seeing him
Speaker 1: having sex with my wife, and he says, and she's
Speaker 1: on top, and Rips says, the lazy bastard. That's a
Speaker 1: that is I wrote that joke. I know I wrote
Speaker 1: that joke because I was so proud of that joke.
Speaker 1: And I remember when you came in to the first
Speaker 1: day of shooting and to do the quick rehearsal and
Speaker 1: Gary was giving you ship from the second you walk
Speaker 1: in the doors, like Alex, you need a lozenge. You
Speaker 1: need a lozenge, and you said, right, that's how it's
Speaker 1: gonna be, Gary, That's how it's gonna be. And it's
Speaker 1: one of the great episodes. So so I think that
Speaker 1: that was not your first job though. My first job
Speaker 1: I used to write jokes for comedians. I wrote jokes
Speaker 1: for Rosanne's nightclub act for one. Why did you did
Speaker 1: you do stand up periodical? I did it for for
Speaker 1: seven years. It's all I wanted to do. But I
Speaker 1: very quickly realized I was better at creating sketches or
Speaker 1: dramatic situations to get my point across. And as a
Speaker 1: straight monologist, I wasn't interesting the way my roommate Adam
Speaker 1: Sandler was or Jim Carey. I just as a fan,
Speaker 1: I knew, oh, I'm not these guys you really felt
Speaker 1: that were oh yeah? Because and then we were in
Speaker 1: l A. At the time I was in l A,
Speaker 1: I lived in North Hollywood with Sandler. And how long
Speaker 1: did you live with Sandler? It was under two years,
Speaker 1: And I mean it was the most fun time ever.
Speaker 1: Every time we see each other were like that was
Speaker 1: the best. You know, we were just so into doing
Speaker 1: stand up and back then Sandler wasn't famous, so he
Speaker 1: was really silly all the time and very obnoxious and
Speaker 1: trying to make strangers laugh. He really engaged the world
Speaker 1: for his own amusement, less to protect that he does now. Yeah,
Speaker 1: he he just loved, you know, asking pulling people over
Speaker 1: to ask for directions in the car and doing something
Speaker 1: crazy to them. I mean, it sounds ridiculous, but he
Speaker 1: was the guy that would fart in the elevator and go, Judd,
Speaker 1: come on, we're in an elevator. Uh. And that disappears
Speaker 1: when you get famous. So you brought this up there,
Speaker 1: you know. Well, but you brought this up and I'm
Speaker 1: I can't say I'm glad you did. But in your movie,
Speaker 1: Paul Rudd is in bed with your wife. Yes, yes,
Speaker 1: he's in bed with his wife, and to torment her,
Speaker 1: he just rips off a series of well placed like
Speaker 1: he's turning over cards in a game. He's like, he
Speaker 1: rips a couple of parts there. But you that's not
Speaker 1: how you live, right, Well, it's a that's a complicated scene.
Speaker 1: And what's funny about that? Says you know, they're having
Speaker 1: a very serious conversation about their finances, which are not good,
Speaker 1: and they're watching security camera footage waiting, trying to figure
Speaker 1: out who's stealing from them, and they see Megan Fox
Speaker 1: fooling around with someone at work, and then Leslie says,
Speaker 1: at least she's getting some and his reaction, after a
Speaker 1: few moments of feeling attacked is to just fart. It's
Speaker 1: like a monkey. It's kind of like saying, you know,
Speaker 1: screw you. And Rudd did it as an improv. It
Speaker 1: wasn't in the script. Yeah, it wasn't in the script.
Speaker 1: And Leslie knows, okay, if anything happens off page, I
Speaker 1: need to go with it. And she's furious and you
Speaker 1: see it in her eyes and she's really genuinely disgusted,
Speaker 1: and you get kind of a real sense of what
Speaker 1: marriage is like off of just a stupid yeah marriages.
Speaker 1: You watch security footage to see if Megan Fox is
Speaker 1: stealing money from your company, and she's banging her boyfriend
Speaker 1: on the desk, and you get your wife gets horny
Speaker 1: and you feel fretted with us. You fart on her exactly.
Speaker 1: That's how marriage is. Yeah. Now, the other question I
Speaker 1: have apropos of the movie was so I'm thinking, Rudd,
Speaker 1: it's either the highest honor or he's the goat, because
Speaker 1: you're you know, you're lying in bed with your wife,
Speaker 1: who has made a lot of great films and funny films,
Speaker 1: and you say, uh, what's your nickname for your wife?
Speaker 1: I asked, just called les Is it le Leslie? Well,
Speaker 1: the funny thing is I always call it Leslie And
Speaker 1: then she's like, Judd, my name is Leslie Leslie. It's
Speaker 1: not less Leslie. Literally say her name, it's Leslie. Leslie
Speaker 1: is when I'm in Cambridge now exactly. So you're there
Speaker 1: with her and you say to her, I'm just envisioning
Speaker 1: this scene where you look at her and you say, baby,
Speaker 1: who's the guy that you like most want to have
Speaker 1: sex with? It was like, and just be honest with me.
Speaker 1: We've been together while we have two kids. You know
Speaker 1: it's me. I'm making a film. And she says, God,
Speaker 1: Paul Rudd, and I mean that you crossed his name
Speaker 1: off the list. I know he's never doing my film.
Speaker 1: Or is it like you put him in or do
Speaker 1: you say to her, baby, who's the guy that you
Speaker 1: view as like a brother, Like if you had sex
Speaker 1: scenes with him, But this wouldn't mean you'd be like
Speaker 1: like fooling around with your brother, Paul Rudd. That's where
Speaker 1: you gonna hire him. She's disgusted, uh, and and that
Speaker 1: makes it okay to watch them fool around. I I'm
Speaker 1: always disgusted when she feels around with anyone. I remember
Speaker 1: when we shot the Cable Guy, she kissed Matthew Broderick
Speaker 1: and then when they parted, I saw in the dailies
Speaker 1: there was like a spit string that connected them for
Speaker 1: like a foot and lady in the and so yes,
Speaker 1: I'm glad that unless they're lying about being disgusted by
Speaker 1: each other, because I may be the fool they are lyned.
Speaker 1: That's terrible because I know because I've heard that before.
Speaker 1: I've had my ex wife has got you know, Russell
Speaker 1: Crowe's got his tongue into her spinal fluid and she's like, no, no,
Speaker 1: it was just nothing, it's nothing. Well, the day I
Speaker 1: had back surgery for a herniated disc back in the
Speaker 1: year two thousand, Leslie couldn't be there because shest Leslie,
Speaker 1: Sorry Leslie, I couldn't be there because she was Mrs
Speaker 1: apt She was shooting a scene where she was making
Speaker 1: love with Jeff Goldbloom, and you just know he's all
Speaker 1: handsy in between takes. You know, he's just for pushing
Speaker 1: buttons and a woman and you don't even know we're there.
Speaker 1: Exactly What does the director Jodd Apatau do when Leslie
Speaker 1: Man passes? You know, when you know people so intimately,
Speaker 1: you knew she was in. I asked her before I
Speaker 1: write the script. You know, I'll say, are you comfortable,
Speaker 1: you know, doing a fictionalized version of how we feel
Speaker 1: about this time in our lives. And I'll start telling
Speaker 1: her some of the story and then she starts pitching
Speaker 1: me Debbie's point of view and scenes. A lot of
Speaker 1: scenes in the movie here Leslie standing up for her character.
Speaker 1: So it's balanced. It's it's not like I write a
Speaker 1: script and handed to it is a collaboration. She help
Speaker 1: you with it. Get a good woman's perspective, Oh yeah,
Speaker 1: because I have no woman's perspective at all. This is
Speaker 1: fifteen years of marriage and her explaining what I do
Speaker 1: wrong put into a movie and knocked up. There's a
Speaker 1: line she has which we took from her life, which
Speaker 1: was just because you don't yell doesn't mean you're not mean.
Speaker 1: And that's the kind of insight I would never have
Speaker 1: my daughter. She goes, Mommy yells at me ten times
Speaker 1: more than you do. But when you do it, it's different,
Speaker 1: she said, exactly. And also the whole idea of how
Speaker 1: I can be detached and shut down and not want
Speaker 1: to connect with anybody, and how it's a you know,
Speaker 1: an emotional abandonment to people when you do that too much.
Speaker 1: But you know some people, like for me, I get
Speaker 1: just overwhelmed. I got a numb out for a while.
Speaker 1: You gotta have a little Walden time exactly. And sometimes
Speaker 1: it's in the bathroom with an iPad, and you gotta
Speaker 1: have to read those scenes when when she's coming to
Speaker 1: the bathroom and Rudd is sitting there with you, that's you.
Speaker 1: It is except him as a sanctuary. But she would
Speaker 1: never ever knock on the door or open the door.
Speaker 1: But when I walk out, she'll say, what were you doing?
Speaker 1: And I'm like, I'm going to the bathroom. She's like,
Speaker 1: you were tweeting, and I'll say, I isn't. I wasn't tweeting.
Speaker 1: She's like, I can see your feed if I was
Speaker 1: going to the bathroom, and I was tweeting about it exactly,
Speaker 1: don't doesn't everyone. I'm marketing our movie from the toilet,
Speaker 1: but so you know, it's very fictionalized in a story,
Speaker 1: but the emotional things that we're arguing about make their
Speaker 1: way into the movie. Now, when you start a film
Speaker 1: like this, and you've had tremendous success in the last
Speaker 1: couple of years and in movies, which is tough in movies,
Speaker 1: in my mind is the toughest of them all. And
Speaker 1: so you step up and you do this movie, and
Speaker 1: is there a fear when you begin? Do you think
Speaker 1: to yourself, Oh God, this is the one. All the
Speaker 1: wheels are going to fall off, Like what's your disposition
Speaker 1: when you start shooting? You know, I have both sides.
Speaker 1: You know. I want to succeed because I just want
Speaker 1: to be allowed to continue making movies. I also have
Speaker 1: a rebellious streak, which is I do have some sense
Speaker 1: of what makes a very commercial movie, and I'm working
Speaker 1: partially against that. Like, as the attention span of the
Speaker 1: audience gets shorter, I want to make longer movies to
Speaker 1: say there's something wrong with you that you can't sit
Speaker 1: for two that with this film, I deliberately do it
Speaker 1: with all of them because I feel like, you know,
Speaker 1: this is the only time we're going to get with
Speaker 1: these people. Why do you need to rush to get home?
Speaker 1: And I like movies like Jerry McGuire and in terms
Speaker 1: of endearment and movies that were over two hours. It
Speaker 1: takes an extra twenty minutes to explore, you know, more
Speaker 1: dimensions of people. And no one says anything that you're
Speaker 1: out there with the studio is not I mean, because
Speaker 1: those guys, that's pretty much the first thing out of
Speaker 1: their mouth is Jed, can't we we need a hundred minutes?
Speaker 1: Bab Yeah. The funny thing is they're all like I
Speaker 1: think maybe Knocked Up was to ten. So I've set
Speaker 1: this pace, this very slow pace. It's funny because the
Speaker 1: Hobbit and all these limits, they're all to forty five.
Speaker 1: They're all like a half hour past me, and I
Speaker 1: feel like, you know, my characters. Uh. Someone said to me,
Speaker 1: you're basically saying, these people are worth your time. And
Speaker 1: sometimes I watched the movie because I have to watch
Speaker 1: it hundreds of times, I think, wow, this is long.
Speaker 1: I'm really putting people through it. But there is a
Speaker 1: part of me that feels like good experienced this. This
Speaker 1: is life and it's funny and it's difficult and and
Speaker 1: I need the time to do the full ride of that.
Speaker 1: So on day one, I'm both trying to figure out,
Speaker 1: like marketing wise and concept wise, a way to make
Speaker 1: it sell while thinking I'm sneaking some John Cassavetti's Robert
Speaker 1: Altman aspect into a mainstream comedy. When when when you
Speaker 1: do a film like this as Knocked Up begets this film,
Speaker 1: does this film does right away? Do you start thinking
Speaker 1: of other ideas whether you do them or not, do
Speaker 1: you like One of my favorite moments in the film
Speaker 1: is when it's towards the end of the film and
Speaker 1: they're at the party and the guy the Life Coach
Speaker 1: is hitting on Megan Jason Jason Siegel is saying, what's
Speaker 1: his character's name, Jason Jason. He's saying to her, you know, yes,
Speaker 1: I will Jason. What over the line is? He demands
Speaker 1: that she repeat Now that would be a funny character
Speaker 1: in a movie. Life Coach is just h Absolutely. I
Speaker 1: think I think that about most of the characters I
Speaker 1: especially coming from TV. I love that there was Rhoda
Speaker 1: after Mary Tyler Moore or Frasier after Cheers. So anytime
Speaker 1: a character works, I could watch it, you know, I
Speaker 1: could watch, uh, either of the leads of super Bad
Speaker 1: go off on their own, Michael Sarah's character or Jonah
Speaker 1: Hills or the Cops. Once it exists, I'm kind of
Speaker 1: more depressed that we're not doing more stories. And that's
Speaker 1: just my whole thing. I don't like to let go.
Speaker 1: So if someone said they're gonna make a movie about
Speaker 1: what happened to Albert Brooks's character from broadcast News, I'd
Speaker 1: be the happiest man in the world. Had you known Brooks,
Speaker 1: had you been acquainted with him and had worked with
Speaker 1: him before, and you did this movie with him. I
Speaker 1: met him in the early nineties when I was working
Speaker 1: at the Larry Sanders Show. I had dinner with him
Speaker 1: a couple of times with Gary, and I was just
Speaker 1: in awe to be around him because his Saturday night
Speaker 1: live movies were really big influence on everything we did
Speaker 1: at the Ben Steeler's Show. And obviously, you know, defending
Speaker 1: your life in modern romance and real life, you know, was, Yeah,
Speaker 1: it's the template for a certain type of you can
Speaker 1: never see And in the same sentence again, although my
Speaker 1: daughter watched Laws in America for the first time the
Speaker 1: other day. She's fifteen, and at the end, she said
Speaker 1: to me, what's the nest egg? She goes, She's like,
Speaker 1: I literally thought the money was in an egg. Uh.
Speaker 1: And I was so excited to meet Albert that afterwards
Speaker 1: I went home and I wrote down every joke he
Speaker 1: said at dinner, like I still have like the journal
Speaker 1: entry where he's making jokes about the Menendez case. You
Speaker 1: don't kill your parents and buy a rolex. You don't
Speaker 1: do that. So I wrote the part just for him,
Speaker 1: hoping it could be good enough. I never want to
Speaker 1: ask anyone that I look up to to be in
Speaker 1: my movie if I don't think it could be as
Speaker 1: good as their movies. You know, I don't want to
Speaker 1: be their crappy movie. And so that's why I tend
Speaker 1: to work with young people, because they have no no, no,
Speaker 1: they don't I won't be their worst standards aren't set
Speaker 1: in stone yet. Yeah. Now, when with Brooks, when you
Speaker 1: work with people like that who are veteran, if you
Speaker 1: will are very experienced and have a bed tremendous success,
Speaker 1: what's that experience like for you as a director, meaning
Speaker 1: do you do they come in and they just start riffing,
Speaker 1: and are they rewriting and improvising and you just let
Speaker 1: it go? Or do you sit there and you do
Speaker 1: find a way, a politic way to sit him. I'd
Speaker 1: rather to confine ourselves to this what's on the page,
Speaker 1: not specifically with him, but with any of them that
Speaker 1: come in. Well, I precious, are you about what you've written? Well,
Speaker 1: I'm never precious about anything other than my intention. So
Speaker 1: I know what I'm trying to accomplish with the character,
Speaker 1: but I'm very open to it morphing based on the
Speaker 1: interaction with the with all the actors. So with Albert, obviously,
Speaker 1: I'm terrified because I'm working with someone who's clearly more
Speaker 1: talented than me. So I'm trying to figure out how
Speaker 1: to manage my idea for the story and tap him
Speaker 1: for everything that he's worth. So I want him writing
Speaker 1: and thinking and pitching me. I mean, I spent a
Speaker 1: year in a room trying to think of an original
Speaker 1: character that he hadn't done before, but I would still use,
Speaker 1: you know, his great comic sensibilities. And then I brought
Speaker 1: him into a rehearsal and we did the scene has written.
Speaker 1: We did ideas that I had, and then I just
Speaker 1: let him play and improvise and pitch me things. And obviously,
Speaker 1: at the end of the day, if you were to
Speaker 1: like write down which are those lines are Albert's, you know,
Speaker 1: it becomes the majority, which is the intention to give
Speaker 1: him a space where he's comfortable enough to you know,
Speaker 1: to email me at night a better line which you
Speaker 1: would do with that died. Before any scene, I get
Speaker 1: a little email from Albert what if he said, did it?
Speaker 1: And it's always better than my joke And as long
Speaker 1: as you're comfortable. Oh, I'm thrilled. It's not because I'm
Speaker 1: coming off from an experience with the television show I did.
Speaker 1: There was there was a very strident, very unbending rule
Speaker 1: that we had to shoot everything has written, and there
Speaker 1: was no you couldn't change a word, or we could
Speaker 1: do alternate takes and change things, but we had to
Speaker 1: shoot everything has written with no exceptions. Pretty much. Well,
Speaker 1: I definitely start that way when we shoot. I like
Speaker 1: to do all of the improv and playing primarily in
Speaker 1: the rehearsal, and then when we get to the set,
Speaker 1: I'll shoot my polished version of the scene and I
Speaker 1: will get it verbatim, and I make sure to get it.
Speaker 1: Then I'll start telling them things that we all thought
Speaker 1: of during rehearsals that I didn't put in, but then
Speaker 1: I still whar I'll do like a week early, like
Speaker 1: four months out from shooting, and then another week like
Speaker 1: a month out, and a couple of table reads in
Speaker 1: the middle, so it's like a TV show a few times.
Speaker 1: But then I'll let them play on the day. But
Speaker 1: it's different in movies because you're just shooting a third
Speaker 1: as many pages as you are with a television show.
Speaker 1: So when we did the Larry Sanders Show, they would
Speaker 1: rehearse and let everyone goof a little bit, but on
Speaker 1: the day there was no time to to goof off.
Speaker 1: If I was directing Freaks and Gigs, I might let
Speaker 1: Jason Segel really go if I was the director, But
Speaker 1: if I wasn't the director, I would have to say,
Speaker 1: you gotta get the script. I have time to wonder
Speaker 1: what's going to happen if I'm not there. How many
Speaker 1: pages would you shoot a day? Would you say, what
Speaker 1: was what was the shooting schedule? How many days? On
Speaker 1: this is forty I think it was fifty eight, and
Speaker 1: you know, we wind up shooting four or five pages
Speaker 1: a day, but at Larry Sanders we shot seventeen pages
Speaker 1: a day. This is Alec Baldwin, and you're listening to
Speaker 1: here's the thing coming up more with screenwriter and movie
Speaker 1: director Judd Apataw. This is Alec Baldwin. Forty year old.
Speaker 1: Virgin was Judd Apatow's first major box office success. It
Speaker 1: was also the first film Apataw directed, a transition from
Speaker 1: writing that was fairly seamless. I was deucing on Anchorman,
Speaker 1: and I hadn't directed a film before, but I knew
Speaker 1: that Steve Carrell was one of the funniest people I've
Speaker 1: ever seen. He was crushing so hard every day on
Speaker 1: the set that all the actors were baffled, and how
Speaker 1: how funny he was. And he wasn't someone that was
Speaker 1: in line to be the lead of a movie. He
Speaker 1: was just one of the great, hilarious supporting actor people.
Speaker 1: And I always like, I like those guys to be
Speaker 1: the lead. I always want, you know, I want to
Speaker 1: see yeah, yeah, Well beyond that, I want to see
Speaker 1: George Went. I want to I want to I like
Speaker 1: seeing I like because that's who I feel like. I
Speaker 1: feel like the side guy, and I always want to
Speaker 1: follow them home. And so I said to Steve, do
Speaker 1: you have any ideas for movies, because you definitely could
Speaker 1: carry a movie. And he said, there was a sketch
Speaker 1: at Second City we did once that we never quite finished,
Speaker 1: which was about a poker game where they're all telling
Speaker 1: sex stories and it's clear that one guy has never
Speaker 1: had sex, and everything he says it makes no sense.
Speaker 1: And he's saying, yeah, you know, like when it's such
Speaker 1: a girl's breast, it feels like a bag of sand
Speaker 1: and you go down your pants and there's all that
Speaker 1: baby powder, and and he said, so, you know, I'd
Speaker 1: love to play a forty year old virgin. And just
Speaker 1: because I'm such a nerd and so insecure and ashamed
Speaker 1: of everything in life, I just immediately understood what he
Speaker 1: meant and that you could do something very sweet and
Speaker 1: riotously funny. So we wrote it together. Now, so when
Speaker 1: you direct the film, how is the technical challenge for
Speaker 1: you or how is the technical aspects of it for you?
Speaker 1: Grown because it is filmmaking, and are you like do
Speaker 1: Mr and Mrs Apatow sit in the screening room at
Speaker 1: nine and watch Citizen Kane, and look at that, there
Speaker 1: is a man. Look at the rack focus. You know,
Speaker 1: do do you watch scenes from films and say that's
Speaker 1: what I want there? It is right there, Leslie, look
Speaker 1: at that. Look at how you pan over at that moment.
Speaker 1: That's not me at all because I came from being
Speaker 1: a stand up comedian and it was old dialogue. It
Speaker 1: wasn't visuals, so I never tuned into that. And I
Speaker 1: have no brain for the technology, so I can't remember
Speaker 1: the lenses and what they do even now, Like what
Speaker 1: do you do. I hire people who are really good
Speaker 1: like other people. Well, it's not a total surrender because
Speaker 1: I will show them what I like and they can
Speaker 1: turn it into technology. So I fade and Papa Michael,
Speaker 1: who did you know? The Descendants and Sideways shot a
Speaker 1: lot of movies. I love how they look, so I know, okay,
Speaker 1: this this look will be correct. And then we watch movies,
Speaker 1: and you know, I always I'm trying to model my
Speaker 1: work after movies like The Last Detail, the how Ashby
Speaker 1: movie or Coming Home. I like movies that feel almost
Speaker 1: like a documentary, at least for my personal directing. I
Speaker 1: want you to forget I exist, and I'm trying to
Speaker 1: make it as voyeuristic as I can make it. In
Speaker 1: some ways, it's like Larry Sanders. I like that look
Speaker 1: for comedy for what I do before where I came here.
Speaker 1: This morning, I was sitting with my wife and she
Speaker 1: was watching uh Netflix, because my wife is and you know,
Speaker 1: she's a little younger than I am. Shall we say,
Speaker 1: there's a whole uh library of films that she's heard
Speaker 1: of and not seen or haven't he hasn't even heard of.
Speaker 1: So she's watching the Graduate and that's a young Nicol,
Speaker 1: that's an early Nichols. He's doing the storytelling what the
Speaker 1: camera and he's telling the joke with the camera even
Speaker 1: And I was just was wondering if that's something that
Speaker 1: that each film do you make, do you commit more
Speaker 1: deeply to understanding how to do that or well, I
Speaker 1: have a sense of if what I'm trying to do
Speaker 1: is coming across and and visually I'm a little bit
Speaker 1: more of a I know it when I see it,
Speaker 1: Like it just feels like I need to be tight here.
Speaker 1: It feels like I need to be wide, And I'm
Speaker 1: making a lot of unconscious choices about space and tension,
Speaker 1: but I'm not sitting there storyboarding it. Just in the
Speaker 1: moment I kind of have a sense of it is
Speaker 1: how far way I should be from Leslie if she's
Speaker 1: yelling at Paul and the graduate is a kind of
Speaker 1: a great example. I did a Q and A with
Speaker 1: Mike Nichols at the Museum of Modern Art recently, and
Speaker 1: we were showing clips of our movies and talking about movies,
Speaker 1: and then he shows that sequence where he plays the
Speaker 1: two Simon and Garfunkel songs, and it's just the greatest
Speaker 1: sequence you know of any movies in this genre. It
Speaker 1: is fun to do to try to do that, but man,
Speaker 1: no one ever did it better than him, telling a
Speaker 1: story through pictures and music. Do you do you in
Speaker 1: your filmgoing into your film viewing? Are you what do
Speaker 1: you like to watch? What's entertainment for you? As you're
Speaker 1: a TV show, I'm not talking about the ones you produce. Yeah,
Speaker 1: what's one you really admire that's out there this season?
Speaker 1: I'm a big documentary person, so I loved searching for Sugarman.
Speaker 1: I did if I did so. I did a screening
Speaker 1: of that in a Long Islands summer. We had him come,
Speaker 1: Rodriguez came away. It was weird. It was freaky, and
Speaker 1: I mean I saw I love beautiful documentaries. I had
Speaker 1: never seen the HBO move V that Mike Nichols did
Speaker 1: of Angels in America, which was unbelievable, unbelievable. And you know,
Speaker 1: I love mad Men. I can't get enough of mad Men.
Speaker 1: I like drama that that's funny, you know, the Departed,
Speaker 1: you know, those those things that are they're also funny,
Speaker 1: like good Fellas. I'm king of comedy, you know, I'm
Speaker 1: always attracted to to uh. I mean, for me, the
Speaker 1: Sopranos does that better than anyone ever. I mean, it's
Speaker 1: it's it is a dark comedy to me when I
Speaker 1: when I watch it. Uh. And this year I'm just
Speaker 1: you know, I'm just kind of catching up with with
Speaker 1: everything that that's coming out. I haven't I haven't done
Speaker 1: my uh my Lincoln Run. And especially like John Regie
Speaker 1: directed episodes of thirty Rock. We worked together Sandra show.
Speaker 1: And I'll watch the show and I'll notice, like, this
Speaker 1: is a really specifically amazingly funny episode, and I'll go, oh,
Speaker 1: you could just you can tell it's like watching the
Speaker 1: you know the yeuh same with you. Van Patton directed
Speaker 1: episodes of The Sopranos. There are certain people on television
Speaker 1: you know their episodes are gonna be really great. Well,
Speaker 1: you love it. You love episodes. You love shows where
Speaker 1: even the smallest details and the most inane little things
Speaker 1: stay with you. Like I was addicted to The Sopranos,
Speaker 1: probably from the third season on. There was this scene
Speaker 1: where Steven van zandt is walking outside and they're talking
Speaker 1: about some grave mafia business, him and Jimmy and they
Speaker 1: make a decision, or Jimmy Gandolfini makes it says he's
Speaker 1: made up his mind to do some horrible thing, and
Speaker 1: they're walking into the very grim and Steve I'll never forget,
Speaker 1: he just is walking with him for like a beat,
Speaker 1: and he just kind of turns from and goes, it's
Speaker 1: the right thing to do. He just says the phase,
Speaker 1: it's the right thing to do. He goes, it's the
Speaker 1: right thing to do. And probably for the next year
Speaker 1: and a half, I said that phase, no matter what
Speaker 1: you like, it just gets in your life and in
Speaker 1: your blood. And those people in the tone, the tone
Speaker 1: most of all. Now, um, I would imagine you still
Speaker 1: have as some directors I know, probably the ones who
Speaker 1: have less success than you've had at the box office
Speaker 1: with your films as a director, they still right even
Speaker 1: when they're not directing. Are you in a world now
Speaker 1: where you only want to write and direct or you're
Speaker 1: still writing for hire? Are you doing both or you
Speaker 1: purely going to write and direct only now? I'm not
Speaker 1: doing any uh writing outside of things that I might direct.
Speaker 1: I have decided to co write a few projects with
Speaker 1: some friends who have great ideas that I'm trying to
Speaker 1: help them get there faster, and I know I potentially
Speaker 1: could direct it. For the most part, I'm just writing.
Speaker 1: But the way that I'm writing with other people is
Speaker 1: you know, by being you know, a producer on Girls.
Speaker 1: So I'll gonna interview Lena. Yeah, she's spectacular and and
Speaker 1: and really fun to collaborate with. So to be just
Speaker 1: part of the staff on that show, helping her figure
Speaker 1: out what story she wants to tell, and just looking
Speaker 1: for holes in the ship, just anything that could go wrong.
Speaker 1: I'm trying to anticipate and help her with. That's very
Speaker 1: fun and gratifying. And then I try to write, you know,
Speaker 1: one episode a season with her, which you know, I
Speaker 1: learned a lot from being with someone who's so courageous
Speaker 1: in her writing. She's not worried if you like her.
Speaker 1: It's pretty amazing to be around someone who's is so
Speaker 1: in their moment and has uh so much they want
Speaker 1: to express. So I find it kind of reinvigorates my
Speaker 1: own writing and my own tapping into my thoughts. So
Speaker 1: do is there is there an actor out there, whether
Speaker 1: they're a well known comic performer, you know, like Carrie
Speaker 1: and Sandy and those kinds of people who were at
Speaker 1: the top of that game. Is there someone out there
Speaker 1: who you think about you you'd like to work with,
Speaker 1: it you haven't worked with. Well, I'm such a fan
Speaker 1: of so many people that if anything, that becomes frustrating
Speaker 1: to me because I think, wow, it's taking me forever
Speaker 1: to make four movies. There's only a couple of parts,
Speaker 1: and how many things am I going to write? And
Speaker 1: so usually the idea arrives and then you realize, oh,
Speaker 1: this has a good part for John Lithgow, this makes
Speaker 1: sense that he do this, And it starts there because
Speaker 1: I really, you know, I love so many people that
Speaker 1: I that would drive me crazy at the prospect of it,
Speaker 1: and that this leads perfectly to what exactly. You're You're
Speaker 1: probably the only person I've encountered based on what you
Speaker 1: said about you know, you're sprawling. Appreciation with these people
Speaker 1: is and I mean this genuinely. Someone has to re
Speaker 1: make It's a Mad, Mad, Mad Mad World. Someone has
Speaker 1: to get together the cavalcade. I actually have thought about that,
Speaker 1: and not that it would be that movie, but I
Speaker 1: have thought, can I think of a reason for all
Speaker 1: these people to exist? Wenty of the biggest names, you know,
Speaker 1: what space would they all be in? And I've taken
Speaker 1: in my head as far as thinking, could we make
Speaker 1: a movie for charity? I wanted to do a remake
Speaker 1: of It's a Mad Men Man memory give everybody some
Speaker 1: points so that if it's gonna make a lot of money,
Speaker 1: that if we make money, they make money, but up
Speaker 1: front they collapse their fees because we're going to do
Speaker 1: a big piece for charity. The only idea we make
Speaker 1: a movie for charity, because that's the only way you
Speaker 1: could do it, Like, you couldn't even begin to figure
Speaker 1: out the back end deals to you should make is
Speaker 1: about the making of a movie for charity. Uh, exactly
Speaker 1: make a movie about the movie. Yeah, it could be.
Speaker 1: It also you know there we have so many friends
Speaker 1: that you know, we appreciate each other's work, but we're
Speaker 1: not like kids anymore. And you do feel the window
Speaker 1: closing of when is there going to be an opportunity
Speaker 1: for five or six of these guys to do something together?
Speaker 1: And so you know they're how old fifty four? It's
Speaker 1: like forget it? So I and that's why I made
Speaker 1: this is where to have these like age issues. So
Speaker 1: I I try to think ahead of my friends. Like
Speaker 1: my friends are all forty five fifty Okay, what is
Speaker 1: the movie we would make in our fifties? And I'll
Speaker 1: five years ahead begin to start planning. Your kids are
Speaker 1: in your movie? You put your own children in the movie?
Speaker 1: That is true? And what effect does that happen to?
Speaker 1: Like do your kids now do they close their bedroom board?
Speaker 1: And they don't, they don't come in here without a script? Well,
Speaker 1: talk to me. There is a little of daddy. Why
Speaker 1: wouldn't you let me work for anybody else? And because
Speaker 1: I didn't put them in the movie to start a career.
Speaker 1: I just wanted this idea to work. And I wanted
Speaker 1: to capture a real family and have people on screen
Speaker 1: that look like they love each other. There's true intimacy
Speaker 1: on the screen that you cannot children or your children.
Speaker 1: So your old your elder daughter is how old? Fifteen? Right,
Speaker 1: So she's at that age where you know everybody, you know,
Speaker 1: she just wants to throw a bomb on everyone, and
Speaker 1: it's a very tough age. But your younger daughter, and
Speaker 1: she's like the sunshine coming out. I mean, the kids incredible.
Speaker 1: Do they want to make movies? Well, I was my
Speaker 1: ten year old. She literally will say I don't want
Speaker 1: to be an actress. So she's kind of cool. I
Speaker 1: think she probably wants to write. And then Maud is
Speaker 1: doing a lot of things. She's uh, she interviewed one
Speaker 1: direction for teen Vogue and her acting is so good
Speaker 1: here that I am concerned that we'll get, you know,
Speaker 1: the call out of the blue from James Cameron to
Speaker 1: ask her to ride a magical dragon for seven months,
Speaker 1: and then I have to say, Maud, no, you actually yeah,
Speaker 1: you have to you have to finish school, and then
Speaker 1: she'll hate me for the rest of her life. I
Speaker 1: could have been at Avatar too, and you ruin it.
Speaker 1: You said you want me, you want me to wait
Speaker 1: until I mean, this is fifty You're Ashole. So it's
Speaker 1: a it's a miscalculation based on my own greediness to
Speaker 1: capture how great they are from my movie with no
Speaker 1: you know, forethought of how it will affect their lives.
Speaker 1: But they did really enjoy making the movie, and they
Speaker 1: fought so much in the movie and in life that
Speaker 1: since the movie they've gotten along great, Like it's almost
Speaker 1: like by playing out the drama of the ridiculousness of
Speaker 1: their sibling rivalry, they had to think through like why
Speaker 1: are we fighting? What is it about? And on some
Speaker 1: unconscious level they've gone easier on each other since we shot.
Speaker 1: It's so funny because that's the old actors ten it
Speaker 1: that gets passed onto you that every role you play,
Speaker 1: perhaps embedded in that role is an opportunity for you
Speaker 1: to say goodbye to some party yourself you don't like.
Speaker 1: I think that's true. I I look at every movie
Speaker 1: as a letter to myself telling me something that I
Speaker 1: need to know about how to live my life. That
Speaker 1: I'm I'm only on some level making these movies to
Speaker 1: say Judd, pay attention, Judd, live in the moment, because
Speaker 1: I am, you know, a detached writer who who needs
Speaker 1: to be brought into the moment and a lot when
Speaker 1: she saw the movie when it was finally done, what
Speaker 1: was her comment to you? Uh? In the beginning she
Speaker 1: worried if it didn't end happy enough. And then while
Speaker 1: we were editing, and now she she really loves it.
Speaker 1: And I kind of like that it has that question
Speaker 1: mark at the end, which is, you know, it's hard work.
Speaker 1: It's gonna be hard work, but they love each other
Speaker 1: and it's definitely worth it. I think that sometimes she,
Speaker 1: you know, worries that it could go slightly darker by
Speaker 1: like four percent than it needs to, where I like
Speaker 1: that question mark of you know, we're all struggling, but
Speaker 1: it's okay, that's what life is. And still people say
Speaker 1: I'm resolving it too much, so you can never walk
Speaker 1: that line. Some people want it so dark and some
Speaker 1: people are so pissed. It's not all jokes, so you know,
Speaker 1: I'm always in the middle. Writer director Judd Apataw He
Speaker 1: says he still wonders what's left to say that he
Speaker 1: hasn't said. Don't worry, Judd, turning fifty will give you
Speaker 1: more than enough for a sequel. This is Alec Baldwin
Speaker 1: and you're listening to Here's the thing,