Breaking Bread with Tom Papa - Episode 105 - Judd Apatow

Episode Date: May 17, 2022

Mr. Comedy, Judd Apatow shares his new doc 'George Carlin's American Dream' and I share bread and Ciambella! Also check out Judd’s new book of interviews ‘Sicker in the Head!’  Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

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The Conditions It's Appal It's time for breaking bread with Papa Hey! Don't you know? Hey, it's how we go.

Hey, it's time for Breaking Bread with Papa. Hey, don't you know? Hey, it's also a show. Hey. Hey, everybody, welcome to another edition of Breaking Bread with Tom Papa. I am Tom Papa, and I've got a good one for you today. Our guest today is the very talented connoisseur of comedy, great filmmaker, great stand-up comedian all-around good guy, Judd Apatow. Yes, he has a new documentary coming out on HBO

Max all about George Carlin called American Dream and I watched it. And for someone who knows everything about Carlin, it was a bunch of new stuff. It was really, really well done. I'm very excited to sit down and talk with Judd today. You are going to love it. I also baked to kick-ass bread. And he got a little bit of my Chiambela, my beautiful Italian grandma lemon cake. Oh, boy. He should, he should just, he should put me in all movies from here on out just for the Chiambela. We'd like to thank the good people at Helix Sleep. We love Helix Sleep. They have made me a better sleeper with their beautiful mattress. I took their two-minute sleep quiz, you can do and they'll match you to a mattress that will give you the best sleep of your life.

I know some of you are sleeping on some saggy old mattresses at night. You deserve better than that. So give yourself an upgrade and find your perfect mattress at helixsleep.com slash papa. Also like to thank the good people at every plate. Every plate. These people give you these amazing meals for just $1.79 per meal. show up at your place, go to easyplate.com, enter the code Papa 179. That's Papa 179 because it's $1.79 per meal.

That's everyplate.com. Enter the code Papa 179 for just $1.79 per meal. That's up to a $104 value. Good meals, healthy stuff. You're going to love having these people as a part of your life, and we love having them as part of the podcast. So Judd Apatow. The great thing about Judd is he loves comedy.

He, I mean, he's created all these amazing shows. He's worked, I mean, you go through all the meaningful comedies in film and television and girls and Talladega Nights. And, I mean, he's just, the list is so long. and the great thing about him is that he is a stand-up at heart and he just he has just dedicated his life to this stuff and just find such joy in being around it and has done this great job of actually making things that if you're a comedy fan and new generations of comedy fans uh you're just we're just lucky to have him He created this, did this great documentary with, I'm going to call him one of the loves of his life,

Gary Shandling. And now he's doing this one, or did this one, with George Carlin. I mean, these are two giants. And to really dive in and tell the story, it's a big responsibility, you know, to actually create pieces of art off of artists' work. You don't want to diminish it. You don't want to make it smaller. You want to, and you know that all these great people who are inspired by these types of people are going to digest it.

So there's only one person that could make this stuff, and that is Judd. He, for all the great stuff that he's done, though, he's such a great, just great guy, as you'll see in this conversation. I mean, he's just raised a great family. He just loves hanging with other comics. We did a couple shows at Largo together where he was. kind of finding his way back after the pandemic and was wondering what he's going to talk about on stage and didn't want to just go up there and just start babbling. He wasn't really sure what he wanted to do. So the two of us would just go up and be involved in this conversation for about,

I don't know, 20 to 30 minutes. And he's so easy to talk to. And he's so funny. There's definitely, there's the combination of the every man just kind of like cool guy but there's also a lot more at work he's always thinking of lines as you'll see in this conversation he doesn't let things go by without knowing that it's his responsibility to continue to be funny and uh i just can't it's just one of those guys that you're just lucky to uh have in your life if you are in comedy and i'm glad that he came to the table and I was able to give them this great bread and this great Chiambela and introduce them to all of you in hopefully a different way. Hopefully like the Carlin documentary introducing Carlin and showing you things that maybe you didn't know, maybe this podcast will show you some things you don't know about Jud.

So let's get to it. Enjoy them in a conversation with Jud Appetow. Well, thank you for being here. I know you came a long way and I was only kind of came. getting that you should probably get a hotel. Yeah, well, sometimes people give you the Zoom option these days. They're like, you know, or we can do it Zoom and they give you that look like, but it will suck on Zoom. I know.

And it's funny now because we're so used to, like, avoiding, driving and going places. I know. And so we all did so many podcasts at home. Yeah. And they were fine. And now, you know, like, I'm going to do Whitney Cummings podcast and like, yeah, it's in Woodland Hills. And you're like, so do you think I have to go to Woodland Hills to do this? because that's not like a podcast.

That's half my day. Yeah, that's the whole day. I got shit to do. And I thought about it for a long time. Like, how much do I like Whitney? Do I owe Whitney anything? What did she do for me? I decided I liked her.

I decided I liked her. I'm going to get the car to do it. Yeah. Yeah, I haven't noticed a thing from doing our radio show, all Zoom, like 90% since it's the troubles. And when I run into people in real life, they forget that they even did the, thing, because we don't really connect that way. It's just another screen. As much as like you can get a good conversation going, it's not, it doesn't have that depth. It's weird. We're not really friends from our, from our podcast. Yeah, right. Exactly. You get really intimate for an hour and you

see him like a year later. Hey man, what's up? Right. You told me things. I know. Remember you telling him about your mom? I had that with my book, you know, not to plug sicker in the head. Yes. But you know, you get, you know, you get your hour with Lynn Manuel Miranda and like this is a beautiful thing that will last our entire lives. And then, you know, when you meet up again, it doesn't, it doesn't feel like it landed as much for them as for you. I know. Because they do 200 of them. The book is so good. Here's the best part about the book is, uh, this is a fake book. It's not, it's not even the book. It's just a cover on a different book. What book is it a cover on is a good question. What do you mean? They just sent it to me to

show me what the cover looked like. Oh, that's hilarious. Oh, my God. It's the Ben Rhodes book after the fall, which is about hungry, which is, by the way, I think, a great book. But it is, uh, it's not even the book. That's so funny. Oh, that's hilarious. I've been on when I was on the road, uh, signing books after my shows, uh, a couple of the galley copies got through like we're in the pile and people came back up to the line like, um, there's something wrong with this one. Yeah. There's like blank pages and X marks. Uh, well, first, before we get into all the projects. This is the bread I baked you.

That's more important than the projects. It's a, it's called a country brown. Nice. And it's a whole wheat. It looks beautiful. It'll probably need some toasting. This bread lasts for like three, four days. And this, I made it yesterday.

It's gorgeous. And when you make the bread for the show, are you excited to make the bread for the show? Is that a time for yourself? Or do you go like, oh, God, I can't have another bread because we're doing the damn show? No, because I'm always baking bread. I'm always messing around.

So then when I know, like, oh, this is Judd's bread, it steps you up. Oh, that's fantastic. Yeah, you're like, okay, this has got to be good. Please don't be messed up. Don't be flat, don't the thing. And then the big conflict this morning, because I thought we were doing it yesterday, and it ended up being today. And yesterday, I made one with walnuts in it.

And I was like, I don't know, is Jetta walnut guy? He had nut and the bread guy. You know what? I don't think we know yet. That might have determined it for the future. I've never sought it out, but I have never rejected it. Right. So I had, I make two at a time. So I had two walnuts and two of the other ones. And this morning for breakfast, I taste tested both of them from my loaves.

And they're both really good, but this one's better. This one's better. Yeah. And is baking, baking bread like a meditative thing? 100% See I This is what I'm realizing Lately

My wife gave me An article about hoarding And it was about How like hoarders Have ADD Because they look at all their shit And they're like I don't know where to put all this

Because they're having an ADD meltdown Right Right And she's like I think maybe this is why you're such a hoarder Because I don't like throwing anything out And I hoard everything Like I'll sit on the phone

And look at articles on Apple News and just saved fruit, like looked at the section that has the saved ones. You never go back. I just, for some reason. Just accumulate it. Just to know they're there, like one day, no, they're there. Like, one day, maybe I'll get to it. A person who won't throw out like an 80-year-old bird cage.

Right. And so I'm realizing that I have a, that I'm much more attention deficit than I thought, which is why I don't do things like baking bread. Right. So I need, I need to focus. It does need focus. I used to play a little guitar terribly, but I just, take out the old James Taylor songbook and like try to play stuff for an hour or two.

Yeah. And I realize, like, I don't think I've done that like consistently for 20 years. Because the ADD, I think. You think the ADD is increased? I think it's increased from like the phone and the social media. Ah. And just working and right. So I feel like I'm ping ponging in my brain way more.

And I need a really boring meditative thing. Well, it's really interesting because the bread baking, I, equate the bread baking with peace in my life now because that means it's a three-day process. So that means that I know I'm not on the road for like I have those days. And everything's kind of, and I'm not when I'm in town. I'm not like banging around doing a whole bunch of stuff because, you know, it starts in the morning and then you've got to shape it and do stuff by the night. Yeah. There's all these kind of things.

So I'll be like thinking, well, if I have a nine o'clock at the store, I've got to shape it before eight so I can get in the garage. It's like having a puppy. I got to be home to walk the dog. It totally is. So, yeah, it actually kind of, kind of, is like, it's like a goal of calmness now. The zen of baking bread. Yeah. I need a thing like that, but you've got bread.

So I needed to be like lasagna. That would be funny. Like an 80 level lasagna. Judd is really, he just travels with lasagna. All right. And now this I brought you because it's morning and a favor with a coffee. and I made this. This is a Chia Bella.

You made that. I made this, which is a lemon cake. On Mother's Day, I realized I didn't have any sweets for Cynthia. You could make lemon cakes at your house. I didn't even think that was possible. Yeah,

I know. That's a bakeable in-house thing. It makes me so proud. And it has like, it's in like the bun cake thing, so it looks kind of lumpy. Yeah, it's a beautiful thing. But.

Let me say something. That's my favorite thing in the world. It is. You ever go into Starbucks and they have like the crap version of that? And it has a little bit, right frosting. Well, not too much. Easy. But there's no frosting at the top.

Sometimes I'll buy it and just eat the frosting part. Just lick it like an Oreo. And then you look at it. It's like, I don't want to get sued by the Starbucks people, but I'm pretty sure it's like 800 calories. Like it's your whole day of food is this one thing. But the fact that you can make the great version at home. This is the great version because the frosting for me is too much. It's like too much of a sugar dump.

Yeah. And there is definitely sugar in this, but this is a little bit more of a, this is a cake your grandmother would give you without feeling too guilty that she's going to, like, she's not going to wreck your day and bring you back to your mom. She might give you the Entebens version. Right. So, yeah, you can have that at any point that you want. But you said you're fasting. Well, I went a little crazy on Mother's Day and ate. You know, every once in a while I'll take an occasion that's meant to celebrate someone else.

Yeah. And I will use it to indulge, like, an addiction to food and pizza and cake. Like, well, we can have gelato. It's your special day. Because my wife will indicate to me, stop eating and, you know, hurrying your drive to the grave. She wants me to live. Does she monitor you? Well, it's not like she's monitoring.

It's, you know, it's looks, but then, you know, we can tell when I'm out of control. It used to be I would fight, fight it like, hey, don't, you don't worry what I eat. And then at some point, like, she's so correct. You're just living in shame all the time. And so during the pandemic, we stopped eating red meat. And then I lost like 16 pounds or something like that. Just from that? Well, from that and just trying to not be an animal.

And then started exercising walking mainly, hours and hours a day. Right. You're a crazy person, like two hour walking. This is what Cedaris did. Yes, yeah, but he picks up garbage. Yeah. Cedaris makes him garbage rich. I'm not doing anything to help anybody.

But he does that as probably like a meditation too, he said. Yeah. He writes and he cleans up his neighborhood. I think the queen gave him a medal for this. Oh, really? I may be wrong. I know if the queen herself, but I know that surprises got involved. Wow.

And then slowly gained it all back and lost it again. Really? And now I'm about halfway up. And then I started getting a little. crazy with the food because I had COVID. Uh-huh. And I always remembered like, when you have COVID or you have any disease, don't have sugar. Right.

It's really bad for your system. It's stressing your system out. But then like three days of the COVID, I'm like, I think my COVID wants a pine of haggadas. And I went a little off the rails eating badly at the end of COVID. God. I still got better. It's amazing these extremes, isn't it? Like I'm the same way.

Like I'll go all in and just devour every, like I can't stop. Like, hand up. fulls of cheese. It's as I'm cooking and it's just like I can't stuff. And then the only way to do it is to say I'm eating nothing. I need that now. So it's a it's a it's a preset. There's this like food assistant fast. It's called prolon. You give you a little box and it has like a little plastic bag with like four olives in it. That's like your snack and a little bar for breakfast and then like a soup. But it's really like a little bag of some sort of powder. And you put it in water and boil it. Oh God. The thing that I like about it. Yeah.

I don't get that hungry. I can handle just eating the weird teeny amount. But I love that I'm making a choice that I'm not allowed to choose what to eat. Right. Because I'm, again, the hoarding, I'm a little out of control. Yeah. So if you put a piece on the table, in my head, it has to be completed. Like if you have like two, I might have six.

If you have four, I'll have two. If you have zero, I'm going to have six. Like I have a weird thing. You know how they say, like get a small place. And if you make all your food on smaller plates, psychologically, you just want to finish and you're done. But I got a big plate house. Right. And I'd like them to be done.

We have big plates. It's all big plates. I always, I was saying to somebody the other night that I don't have, oh, she was, I was with Kira Soltonovich. We were doing a show. And we went to eat after. And I was like, oh, do you want this? You want some more of this? And she was like, no, I can't.

I just. And I was like, I don't have that. Like, I don't. Like, I don't have, like, I will just keep eating. Yeah. It's only the socially unacceptable part of it that people are going to start looking at you like you're a weirdo or disgusting. That's the only reason that I'll stop. See, where my head went, as you said, like, the only socially unacceptable part to me, the social unacceptable part is slowing down.

And you know what it is? I try to, like, trace it back, like, food issues. Right. One is my mom loved to just stuff me. It was like a love thing. My mom was very needy. So if I indicated I was happier eating like a half of Entemans cake, she would give it to me. Right.

Like if I'm like, make me grilled cheese, make me three hamburgers. She would just, she was all about giving the food. So that was like love. Then my parents got divorced and I learned how to cook shitty things like grill cheese and hamburgers. We had a little grill in the center island in my house. And at like 11, I was so proud that I could make a hand. hamburger. And so I would make hamburgers every day. I would make four patties, two double hamburgers, almost every day in grilled cheese and Entemans cake when I watched Merv Griffin.

Yeah. And then when my friends and I got jobs as dishwashers, we had money. And we're like, let's go to beefsteak charlies. They have an all you can eat ribs. And as like 15, 16 year olds, we thought it was so adult and manly to go to like an all you can eat restaurant or red lobster. And it's some of my favorite memories is gorging myself on food. So now if you were like, a hundred percent. You look great. I think you could eat a pizza right now.

The level of joy I get from eating the pizza, it's so much bigger than the shame afterwards. That's the problem. I don't have enough shame. No, 100%. My wife didn't grow up that way. I grew up very similar to the way you do. My mom was making all this stuff. And my father was, I always remember.

going to White Castle, him introducing me to White Castle. And the whole object was to eat as many as you could. And we would sit in this car and stack them all on the dashboard and just plow. And it was just so we were so, you know,

we were bonding and just having, I'm with my dad and you just show me this thing and all you can eat thing. The beefsteak Charlie really makes me laugh because I don't know, was that an East Coast? Well, we couldn't believe, I mean, it was funny because we really thought we were geniuses taking advantage of the system.

Right. By like not eating for the whole day and going to be St. Charlie. We're going to show them. We're going to show them. It's like the most hilarious thing would be to see how much you can max out and all you can eat things. Yeah. And White Castle, I forgot which comedian it was.

I don't know if it was Bobby Collins. Yeah. It's the person I think of, but it might not have been who used to say, yeah, White Castle. It turns into a fart in your hands. On Long Island, it was all White Castle jokes. Right. So many white castles. So many.

Beefsteak, Charlie, the logo was a big man with a handlebar mustache, wasn't it? Yeah. Yeah. It's shrimp. Oh, you could eat shrimp. I remember when we realized that you could make shrimp yourself. Yeah. This blew our mind.

You could go to a supermarket and buy shrimp and boil it. And we would buy like cocktail sauce and act like we were 50 years old when we were children. So we're smoking cigars. Yeah. The food is the best. That's the worst part about it. Well, yeah, especially if you don't, you know, if you're not addicted. to do drugs or you're not addicted to women or alcohol.

It's like, what else are we supposed to do? Like, give us something. There's no bad meal. This is the thing where I have the opposite of my wife. We're like, if we go to a restaurant and it's terrible, she's kind of bummed out. She's like, that was a wasted meal. In the worst restaurant, I'm so happy. If I hated the meal, I'm like, that was still kind of fun.

I know. Yeah, my wife will say, oh, the food wasn't very good. It's like, that's not the point. We were sitting together. We were gorging ourselves. I ate something. Like, I really am more about, like, the feeling, the post, like, pass out exhaustion from eating too much. Like, it almost doesn't matter how I got there.

Yeah. So what's a, what's a normal breakfast for you? Like, when you're not fasting, you're just feeling okay. You know, how do you start you going to be? For a while, I was buying these cereal. Like, it's like, you know, what do they call it, like a cacao, you know, grains, you know, some form of a. granola. But really it's just all hidden sugar. But it presents itself as health food. Yeah. And it doesn't quite taste like chocolate, but it's in the universe of something like chocolate, you know,

some sort of nibs or something. And then I would eat it and it'd be like, I'm eating healthy. This must be good for me. And then one day, like I checked a label. I'm having like a thousand calorie breakfast with this little cereal. Right. So I've slowed that down. But, you know, a friend of I had a friend that created this bagel store in Connecticut called like Pop Up Bagels or something. I think that is the name. It was an article about it in the New York Times yesterday. Oh, really? My friend introduces me to him and he's like, this guy makes the best bagels in the world.

He's like decided to make the best bagels. Wow. And they were the best bagels. And he was like having a thing where he was like cooking for people showing them what it was at my friend's house. And I sat there and ate three bagels just with butter. Yeah. That's what I like. Bagels with like a pound of butter on it.

Butter is so good. There's this French butter and I literally, this is, this is me being a bad host. I wanted to get you this wheel of butter, this French, because it's kind of in off Sherman Way. Yeah. It's like this one place where you can get it. There's two places in L.A. where you can find it. It's so good. I'll still get it for you. But you put that butter on it. Oh, my God. And then you have to have three. That's how it with bagels when you go to three. Three is really big time. It's like during the pandemic, there was a day where I, I.

had two pints of ice cream. I had never gone to the second pint. I never even thought that that was an option. And then one day I went to the second pint. I just started another one and finished the second pint. And I thought that is a bad crossing over. Yeah, that is. Are you back to red meat?

I haven't gone back to red meat. I went back to chicken. I didn't eat chicken for about a year or so. And I should reduce that. But then whenever you try to eat healthy, people are like, yeah, when you eat chicken, you're basically just eating like, shit. They just sit in their own shit.

I would eat fish. It's all, you're just eating like tiny plastic. Like the whole fish is basically tiny plastic granules. You know, when you're having lettuce, it's just like it's rocket fuel. Because where they do it, they fly the rockets. I know. And then I just want to kill myself.

I know. There's no, yeah, there's no justice. There's no, like, guilt-free anything anymore. Then you just want to go to Wendy's and have a chicken sandwich. I know. I I have this app on my phone that it's about bird ID, I think it's called, and you literally open up the app when you have birds in your yard, and you can either take pictures of them or you can just press record, and it takes their songs, and it shows you, oh, there's a house

wren in your yard, and there's a bluebird, and they show you the thing, and I was like, this is so nice, and I showed it to my wife, and she's like, yeah, I wonder how many birds there where, you know, like 10 years ago. I was like, oh. I thought you were saying, I wonder how many Russian bots are now tracking your movements because you showed them where you live. Yeah, there's like, right, exactly.

There's either spies or there's global warming or there's just like, can we just enjoy the house run for a second? I mean, not to slide it into a plug, but I will anyway. So I made this George Carlin documentary. And George Carlin, at the end of his life, when he was doing stand-up, He switched his point of view to everything is falling apart, so I'm just going to enjoy watching it. Yeah, I'm going to root for it.

And it was a very weird point of view. And at the time, people were split about it. I loved it. But he just said very clearly, we have fucked up the world. We have fucked up the earth. We're being cruel to each other. The human race is a shit show. I think he said, when you're born into the human race, you're going to take it to the freak show.

And when you're born in America, you get a front row seat. Right. And his whole thing was, I'm just going to love it. And I think the bit I remember it started. with us when you go see like a like a car race how you like root for the crash for the crash that he's rooting for like the end of the human race yeah and he would do these long bits where he would explain how much he loves when things are on fire and accidents and uh and i i have to say as i'm 54 i'm beginning to slide into that point of view because it is a result of we don't seem to be

fixing anything and mentally I need a place to sit. That's it. That allows me to not be stressed all day long. That's exactly it. I had the same thing. I love the documentary, by the way. Thank you. It's going to be on HBO max on the 20th.

20th and it'll be on HBO. Thank you for sending it to me early. I literally, I'll get back to that point to the point we were making, but I love Carlin, you know, got a painting of him in my, in my office. And I was like, all right. Yeah, I know George's. story. I'll watch it for Judd, but this is good. And there's so much new footage and angles that I didn't know about. And I really thought I knew everything about him. So that,

kudos to you for that. That was like... No one knew anything because he never talked about his family on stage. Yeah. And he didn't really talk about anything personal other than when he was a kid. He talked about some stuff about being a kid and class clown. But he didn't talk about raising his daughter Kelly or his marriage. And it's intense stuff. I mean, it's real intense, really intense stuff.

But even just the show business stuff, I mean, you really just mind the hell out of it. That's the hoarding. Because if you say to me, George Carlin had this incredible career, hundreds of spots on TV. Yeah.

Maybe a thousand. As a hoarder, part of me goes, how do I get people to see it? Yeah. Like, I feel bad that somewhere there's a Tonight show

from 1974. That's genius that no one will watch anymore. Like that's my psychological problem as it actually bothers me. Right. So to be able to excavate it and go, oh, I got to show you this clip of him and Richard Pryor on the John David Summer Show

in the mid-60s where they're wearing sweaters telling the worst corny jokes before they figured themselves out. Like the joy to like offer that to you. Yeah. Yeah. That was kind of the problem with it. There was a bunch of things where you're like,

I want to see the rest of it. this. I want to see the rest of this thing when he, him and his wife, when he's got that weird hair and him and his wife are actually on this panel. They're at a morning show in L.A. Yeah. And it's the early 70s. And he had a very funny kind of almost like professor like attitude in certain spaces and interviews. Yeah. It was a little condescending. I can't say I liked it. Like he had a gear that was like explaining what I do here. Especially in the early 70s. Right. And he's on his and talking to these like kind of what seems like religious type morning show people. I think they were like LA morning show like, you know, AMLA back then.

And he's just talking about how he does drugs at a time when no one said that. Yeah. And also talked about that he thought it was okay for his daughter to smoke pot. Yeah. And these people look like they were going to have a heart attack. They were like, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha. And his wife agrees with him. Right.

And then Kelly said to me, when we found it, his daughter. Yeah. Oh, my mom is hammered on that show. Like, she's drunk. Yeah. And, but he really wanted to say at a time when people really hadn't started saying it yet, that big pharma wants you attack, once you addicted to these drugs, whether it's like diet pills

or whatever. Yeah. And the alcohol industry wants you addicted to this. Tobacco. And they've just randomly decided that pot is bad when maybe it's better than all of it. Yeah. And so, you know, 40 years before it got legalized, he was telling the country, this makes no sense. whatsoever.

He, it was really, it was really, uh, remarkable. And that's what was so kind of upsetting. I was one that was upset at the end when he's searching and searching and searching, but he always had a little bit of hope. And then at the end, actually at the very end, he kind of gave in a little bit. Yeah. And showed a little hopefulness. Yeah.

But it's a fascinating thing because he's so dark. His act is so dark. So dark. And it's a diatribe against people for not. making better choices about how they take care of each other, how they take care of the earth. Because he was an environmentalist from the late 60s he talked about it. Yeah.

And so he was kind of like, ah, fuck it. Yeah, he turns about it. His attitude. And then Roseanne has him on her talk show in the, I guess it's in the 90s. Yeah. And she says, I think that you're positive and that this is a joke stance because you're disappointed in us. And he admitted it.

Yeah. And she was relentless, too. She wasn't, she didn't just, like, lob a question. She really stated, I'm not buying it. You do have hope. You are. You're tricking us. And I always thought that that's what it was.

That he's basically saying, who cares to get the audience and go like, I care? Right. That he went so far as to push you back into the light. Oh, that's an interesting way to look at it. Because he said, he goes, you know, beneath a cynic is a disappointed idealist. Yeah. And I, but I do think that's an end of your life, you know, when you get to be in like, your 60s, you start going well,

it's not going to get cleaned up while I'm around. So I guess I don't give a shit. Well, that's the thing. Yeah, I mean, that's what you were saying before. And I had the same thought when I was in my 30s. I was watching that and I was like, and I remember telling people,

there was that one special. I'm like, he didn't give us any hope in that one. And that really, that was really upsetting. And now I do know what you're saying. Like, to be able to say, fuck it. It's hilarious.

what's happening. I hope the Democrats and the Republicans devour each other. I hope we run out of water because it's a cop out because you're realizing I'm not going to be able to do it. He puts it on you.

Yeah. And you accept it because it's more comforting than feeling guilty in your nice house thinking oh maybe we shouldn't fill the pool up. But as a 30-year-old you think when you saw it that it made

that it made you take action, but you think that your reaction was, I don't like it. Like, it got under your skin in a way that would lean you positive to wanting to fix something. It definitely lingered. It definitely made you think, right? Yeah.

Like a biofell like him. Yeah. I mean, I wasn't running out to soup kitchens and, like, helping people out. But it, for someone who does care,

yeah. It stuck, it's to this day. It was like, oh, man, what was he doing? Like, what was he doing?

worked. It did work. It did work. That's how I look at it now. When I watch it, I think the world has gotten worse. So all of his premises are correct. I know. Because he was like, you know, we get the shitty politicians.

We vote for. Yeah. And he said, you're letting people control you. You're letting corporate forces control politics. And then you go, it didn't get better. So I guess he wasn't dark enough. Yeah. Dinner is.

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and you won't be so cranky and you won't get in fights with people on the road and your life will be better. Well, what do you think about that part when you're talking to Jerry and Jerry has Jerry always has that stance

of and Vonnegut kind of went to there also at a certain point who's kind of in between Jerry and George. But Jerry essentially was saying no one's mind gets changed from a joke. Jerry said that I'll think,

I'll change what I think of that comedian because they were so good at being able to put that into a joke. But no one, you're not changing the world with comedy is basically what he was saying. And it's in a great moment because other people are saying that he was. Yeah. And then Jerry is like, no. No.

And which is so great, like, Jerry. Yeah. He's like, I love it, but I don't love it because of the, it's political. He's, I don't believe in the philosopher comedian. Yeah. I believe in the funny comedian. And he was, and he made me want to be a comedian. And so he's like giving him praise, but saying, yeah.

That's not the thing I'm praising him about. I think the material is incredible and funny. Yeah. And because that's, you know, Jerry's not trying to change people's minds. He's the no growth. He's a no learning guy. Right. But there are people who are like, no, I want to change people's minds.

although in the book I interviewed a Samantha B. And I asked her this question because she has her incredible show where she talks about politics every day. And she said, I don't think I'm changing anyone's mind. I think I'm telling people who basically agree with me that they're not crazy. And I thought,

that's great. That's a great way to put it. I'm lifting the spirits of the people who are fighting for ideas that I believe in. You're not losing those people. Yeah. You're at least keeping them on the team. You're the coach saying, we can still do this.

One thing that we found when we were going through all of Georgia's stuff was a letter from Jerry to George just saying, I can't believe how great that special was. And it was one of his darkest specials. And it was just a beautiful letter from Jerry just saying how everything was perfect. Jerry wrote his obituary for the New York Times. Really? He wrote, yeah, it's really good. He wrote the op-ed after George's.

George's passing. And it's really well written and really respectful. And the thing that I really remember from it was how we're all, as comedians, we're all thinking, like, what subjects can we get? What jokes can we tell? What can we touch on? What can we talk about? And basically paraphrasing, just know that George was already there before you.

Like, he had mined so much. He covered all of it. Covered all of it. Well, he would seem to be the first person you really noticed was putting out a new hour what felt like every two or three years. There was a new special. And as a young person who wanted to be a comedian, they were people that you saw that they never changed their act.

Their whole lies, Don Rickles, like, it's the same act. And then suddenly George Carlin, and to a lesser extent, Robert Klein, were putting out a lot of material. Yeah. And it seemed so impressive. Like, oh, my God, he writes a new set. I mean, no one wrote news. sets that you knew of.

No. Back back in, oh my God. Early 80s. I mean, it was the beginning of, okay, there's a second special from Richard Jenny or somebody. Yeah.

Oh, he was the first person, Richard Jenny. Yeah. You were like, oh, he's incredible comedian and writer. Right. And he can keep making these. Right. Yeah. But there wasn't the, there wasn't the pressure to do it.

There wasn't, and George just kind of put it on himself. Like now everybody can stream and ever going to be see stuff. And Louis was a big part of it too. And there was no Leno special back then. Right. Like that was also like his point of view, which is, why would I give my act out? I want to do it and change it and have it grow.

But I don't want to put it. Yeah. Why would I burn my act? He always says, my act feeds me. My act pays me. Like, why would I just give that away? I remember I'm saying that to me on the set of the Tonight Show. I was like, what?

I thought that's what we're supposed to do. It's just keep putting stuff out there. But it's an interesting arc with, and this is another kind of cool thing from the special that I didn't really, that was like a cool and like new thing for someone who knew and knew everything about, thought he knew everything about Carlin, was when you look at the scope, like 40 years of him doing it. Like we all know the story of, oh, he started out pretty straight and then he becomes hippie. And then he, but there's so many other arcs in it, which of course for someone who cares, it is going to dip.

Yeah. Because you couldn't keep like he comes out and he changes and he's, and the war is happening and all this stuff is so ripe for commentary. If you're railing against the system, it's all there. But you can't keep that up. You've got it. And he has that kind of a thing, which I would call maybe a dip in his career for different reasons. And there's like drugs and there's other stuff.

But I think more than anything, he just had to hang around and gather up information about the landscape to understand it again. it's not something you could comment every year. He needed to take like a beat and come back 15 years later with more potency. And I think that he had to keep working. So in these periods where he probably was running out of gas, he put out like five albums.

You could see that the sixth one would be scraping bottom for a little while. Of course. And so he needs the money because he didn't pay his taxes for a few years. It was vague as to what went wrong. Yeah, right. We never could get to the bottom of, was it a choice, was it a mistake? He probably was just on a lot of drugs. Who knows?

Maybe he was anti-government or at the time. We couldn't get the answer. Couldn't. But the interest was enormous. It was like the days of Willie Nelson where, like, you know, people would really get buried by having made mistakes for their taxes. Now no one pays taxes.

How broke was he? Did you know that part of it? Like, was he struggling for a long period? It really just felt like he had to stay on the road to pay it off. So he just wasn't. home as much as he needed to be as a parents and a family person because it wasn't like now where somebody like jerry signfoil can go out Friday Saturday right and you know do some big shows yeah

do really well yeah and then hang out with their kids yeah i mean back then you would go out for three weeks he was gone you know you're not flying you know you know in the easiest way and you were driving a lot and i think later on i think he did get a plane he did get a plane yeah he talks about a Being on the plane with the Coke. Yeah, doing cocaine alone on his plane. Because he didn't do coke with people. Yeah. He did it alone.

It was like a almost again, like a OCD thing or an attention thing. Like he was self-medicating because I think his mind just raced and raced and he loved writing. And he would sit alone and listen to music and write. And it wasn't a social thing. Right. It was to keep going. You keep the engine going. But I always think it's like a band.

It's like you two or something. You put out three or four great restaurants. records and then you experiment and it either works or it doesn't and then maybe you have one that's you know not like one of the better ones and then out of the blue it explodes again yeah and you break you do octum baby or something yeah and then you're searching again and when you have a 40 50 year career right you know it's has to you have a fallow periods and your fans stick with you it's like I'll watch any cohen brothers film tarantino film because you're just you know they're they paid all three years.

You fell in love with them and you don't care if like what happens. It's just like you're going to go for the ride. And he did have that following that like stayed with him. But the cool part about him too is that he even up to the end was still getting young people. Like it wasn't just an old crowd that aged with him. He was, why do you think that was? Why do you think young people were always into him? Yeah, I don't know because like I go to concerts of people that I liked 30 years ago.

And the crowd is my age. Yeah. And there's some younger people, but they're not really replenishing. Right. There's a great Steely Dan book. Donald Fagan wrote a diary of being on the road with Steely Dan about five years ago. And what's hilarious is him just talking about how old the crowd is. There's really hilarious entries.

It looks like the crowd was on an iron lung tonight. And he's really dark and hysterical about it. But you do notice it. I noticed it. And I did Carnegie Hall. I was like, these people are all 50 years old. Right. Every single person.

Yeah. I have not lured a 20-year-olds. I know. To this Carnegie Hall. Yeah. And I was thinking about it. Like, he had the elements of the things that I always loved about him. And maybe this, we'll see what you think of this.

He was, he would talk about weighty stuff, but he would also be silly. And, you know, in your, in your documentary, you talk about he's doing this whole thing on farts. And I always remember Carnegie Hall. He's like, you know, doing those stuff. But he's also being a crab walking across the, across the stage. But do you think another part of it is that he seemed dangerous, like young people, if you curse more, if you, like, it seems, and maybe it's just the cursing, it makes it seem for a 16-year-old, it makes it seem dangerous and so you want to lean into it.

Do you think there's something to that? And he's angry, like a teenager. He's pissed and he's doing something that a lot of people, and a lot of, like, adults don't like. he's troubling people. Right. And I think that, you know, he's saying things that you're not supposed to say out loud. I mean, you know, in the early 70s, he's doing bits about, you know, going to church and just not believing anything they were saying. Yeah.

I mean, he went very, you know, anti-God. Right. And he has big bits about the dangers of people being spiritual and believing God and how it manipulates you. Yeah. Even if you disagree with him, it's fascinating, hardcore approach. I mean, there's that one joke where he says, you know, the sacredness of life, sacredness of life. He goes, religion is like the number one cause of death.

Right. Yeah. I love the way he describes God, like this magical man in the sky. And he's like, he hates you and he'll devour you and he'll put you in hell if you're bad. But he loves you. You give him money. You love you. You kiss his ass.

Right. He loves you. And he needs money. And in the last week or two, you know, because of all that's happening with Roe versus Wade, he has the best bit about that. Amazing. And it just goes around the internet. He just captures the whole thing.

And it's all about, you know, conservatives like you. When you're in the womb and after that, they don't give a fuck. Fuck you. What does he say? Like when you're pre-born, they like you. and when you're preschool, you're fucked. They don't want to pay for anything. No Medicare, no health care, no welfare, no nothing.

Yeah, it's amazing because when the Rowe thing happened and you're like, his take is, like, you're thinking as a comedian, like what is the take, what is the thing? And when he just comes out, basically says, no, they're just against women. They just don't like women. They don't want women have power. You're like, yeah, he nailed it.

I mean, that still hasn't changed. And the environment, the thing about the earth just shrugging off the humans. Yes. The earth will be fine. That's circulated like a couple years ago, that circulated. Well, he has that bed where he says, what would the earth do if there was these people on it, like, hurting it? And he basically says it would create the earth would create AIDS. Yeah, create viruses to, like, get rid of the thing that was.

annoying it. Yeah, right. And hurting it. And yeah, that was his whole thing. The earth will be fine. We're, we're fucked. We're the ones who'll disappear.

It's so far. And it's so dark and troubling, you know. Yeah. He had all these little post-it notes with lines and, and one of them just said, like, I just want the audience to know I'm thinking. Right. Which is a great way to look at it. I know.

It's not like, you don't have to agree with everything. I'm just, I'm thinking. Yeah. I'm kicking it around. And, yeah, there were all these other. notes. One said, you know, in America, it's all about seduction and then betrayal. You get seduced into believing something and then betrayed. I think he felt that way about a lot of politics. Wow. What was it like, what did he have? Like, was it notebooks? Was it tons of handwritten stuff?

Like, what was around? He seemed like he was one of those, we'll write on anything people. Uh-huh. So there's notebooks, but a lot of post-it notes. Like, Shandling didn't really have a world of tons of post-it notes and index cards. What was funny about going through all Gary Chandling's stuff. Because you see like the history of him

trying to figure out how to be a writer. In the beginning he did try to write all his jokes on index cards or every joke was on a separate index card and he literally even had a little like a filing system. I found like a little box. But you could tell he gave up on it

in like two days. Like he spent a night writing it all out on different cards and then has the little dividers with the topics and it never looked at it again. But I found on a wall, on a cork board,

you know, there was all these magazines and things that made me things that inspired Gary in his office. You know, when you put things in a cork board and then you never do it again for the next 20 years, but it just sits on your cork board. It's like stuck in time. But he had this joke and it said

a lot of people asked me where I was on 9-11 and I say which one, I had 28 bad 9-11. And he never did that joke, but it was just sitting there. That's great. What did you, I was thinking about that on the way over, because you take these, you know, you have, you have a lot of comedy with both of your books and just all your interviews from a kid. And you just always been a student of it and dove into it. I guess this is a two-part question. You took deep dives, though, with with Shanling and with, and, with Carlin.

The first question is, what is the differences? Because they're both geniuses. What did you come away with? Like, what was similar and what was different about them? Yeah, because they are different, but there are more similarities than I thought. Uh-huh. I mean, Gary was a real, he was a real writer, but he also loved to discover things on stage. He liked to play with the audience, and he could write on his feet.

and he was really trying to get to the truth of himself. And George Carlin was not. George Carlin wasn't going on stage discussing how George Carlin feels why he's behaving the way he behaves. Yeah. He was a social commentator and he was fascinated by language and behavior, but not his behavior. Right.

So he has some, there are some random things here and there, but a shockingly small amount of self-exploration. Yeah. Where Gary was all self-exploration. Right. But they had similar moms, just in a sense that Gary had your classic smothering, controlling, kind of neurotic and in the end, pretty toxic mom. Right. You know, Gary wanted to marry him.

Yes, yeah, that was his joke. You know, he had that great joke where he said, you know, his mom said, you wanted to marry him. And he said to his therapist, the therapist just went, like, did the expression that the blackjack dealers do? Gary had a great joke where he said, I want to, you know, usually it's like, you know, Mrs. Gary Shanling, but he always said he wanted to get a woman to change her first name and her last name, so he could say, this is my wife, Gary Chandler. But, so George Collins' dad was really abusive. So when George Collins was one, the mom, like, ran away with George and his older brother,

Patrick, who he was already abusing. Who was a pisser, by the way. What a great guy that was. Hysterical, the coolest guy. You just passed away a few weeks ago in the 90. So funny. Man, it's like if Carlin never left a trailer park. Like if George Carlin just stayed and just was complaining from his chair.

And he sold cars, and I think he rode on the George Carlin. He did everything. And at the end of his life lived in Woodstock. Yeah. But I think he also was amused for him, his attitude, his older brother. Yeah, keep the New Yorker. keep the new right he brought when he brought him on the tv show yeah he said i what is my what do you want me to do george he said keep the new yorker true or something like yeah he knew like he would

tell me if i had slipped yeah he became an la guy on a big show that's very new york but uh so the mom takes them and they leave they run away and just to raise him alone but she's a very strong uh i guess tough drove him crazy being controlling and everything you know there were some parents back then especially who are like, what you do is a reflection on me. And it's all about their enjoyment of it or them feeling good about it. Yeah. And that was certainly a relationship that was difficult for him. Yeah.

And Gary had a similar situation with a very controlling Jewish mom. Right. Didn't want him to talk about his brother dying. We found this incredible video where the dad started telling the story about how Gary did well, in spite of the fact that his brother passed. He was a kid from cystic fibrosis. And as he's telling it to some interviewer who's doing a piece about Gary,

his mom says, no, we don't want to talk about that here. And you can tell that's what the house was. Right. We don't want to grieve. We just want to never talk about it. Ordinary people. Yeah.

Yeah. And then there's an amazing thing in the documentary where George Carlin brings his mom out on the Mike Douglas show. And his mom is so happy and so confident and starts telling us

story about George and she kills. Yeah. And he looks like he is in so much pain. I know. Watching it. And his mom even like starts the thing off by saying how she loves Michael Douglas. And not George. And not George. Yeah. It's rough. So they had that connection. And also I think George Conn, in his life landed in a philosophy that was similar to Gary's, which was, I don't know if it's Buddhism or just a sense of that. We're all connected. And we have to lift each other. And we have to lift each up. And I think George talked about it almost like we're all part of the big electron. We're all and I think his daughter, Kelly, said that from taking acid, he had that feeling of we're all one. And that is where Gary was at the end of his life. So even though their material, their

exploration was different, they both believed that. Right. Yeah. It was interesting. George had these moments like it was only in interviews though where he would almost choke up. like he would talk about, you know, how much he loves people or loves running into people. Doesn't like groups. Doesn't like groups. Yeah. I love people on an individual basis. What a great laugh.

Yeah. Yeah. He's like, when you have groups sooner or later, they start wearing hats. They start wearing hats. Which is funny because the Trump thing is all the hat, right? Yeah. Like, George Trump saw none of that. He's like pretty soon they're wearing hats.

They're pretty wearing hats. Yeah. And visiting you in the night or something like that. Yeah. But it's interesting. Like, I wonder why George. didn't want to talk about it on stage ever. Like there was never that,

like he never really did. There was never. I wonder if it's because he really had a serious drug problem for a long time. His wife had a serious alcohol problem. A lot of it from being left alone while he was on the road and not having a sense of her own purpose. And then she found it later in life.

And maybe he was just ashamed of what he was as a parent. Because he didn't want to explore what was happening. And maybe it wasn't something that he felt, Like he could talk about truthfully without self-examination. That would be difficult for someone who was addicted. Yeah. As a comedian and a good dad, do you think he could have been George Carlin if he had been like, no, I'm just going to, I'm going to focus on my family more?

Probably. I mean, I don't know if people knew how to do that back then. Right. I think that they didn't. Uncharted. Well, I think that. Comedians have figured out so many ways to make the life work. Yeah.

Like this. You have a podcast, so you don't have to be on the road constantly. You have something else that you do. Yeah. You can make films. You can act. You can, you know, host things. You can, like, we've all found, like, tons of ways to make a living.

And he did. You know, he had books and he would act. But I don't think that the system was built yet because there were comedy clubs, which he did not do. Right. And they were theaters. And he felt the need to. be on TV a lot to keep his exposure high so that people would buy the tickets.

Because if he put his show on sale, there was a couple of thousand. Yeah. When you don't sell, you're really screwed. And I think he was stuck in a cycle of very hard work. It's a great point. He didn't figure out the hustle that allowed him to do it less. Because it didn't exist yet. It was kind of one of the first guys touring that way.

Like we were all privy to all the information and how it works. and what you can do. And when you... He wasn't moving the merch. Yeah, he wasn't, he didn't have a merch guy, right? Exactly. He wasn't selling stuff online.

And also, he probably didn't make that much money on his specials. Yeah. And it just wasn't like crazy lucrative as it has become for some people now. Right, right. For the people at his level. Like he would be, you know, Bill Burr right now. Right. You know, right.

But I don't think he ever really got to that like Madison Square Garden. place. No. You know, I think he was in those whatever one to six thousand cedars for most of his life. And it was probably hard to move, move those tickets all the time. Oh, God. Yeah. Hustling and going and doing press.

And just when she talked about, Kelly talked about him being so tired. He was just so tired at that point. Then he gets a TV show and he was working harder than he ever played. That was the easy road. It was the sitcom. And then he's fighting with Sam Simon who created the Simpsons. And he realized, oh, this. is a completely different war.

Yeah, and it was 14-hour days there. It's like, I'm not getting on a plane, but I'm still not a hour. He got Chandling's life, which was, it buries you. Yeah. It takes everything from you. I mean, there's a great line from Seinfeld when he's talking to Gary. I think it's in the documentary where he says, you know, when you do these TV shows, you know, it's, you're in a fight with your show.

And the show always wins. Like, you quit. Like, sooner later, it's one way or another, you get. defeated by your show. I always remember Jerry would say TV eats people. Yeah. It does. I don't think people really understand how much work it takes.

How much mental work. Yeah. Like when you think about Seinfeld, how many episodes that him and Larry made. Right. And had to figure out and think through and perform and edit. Each one could take a year off of your life. God. Now, what's been your experience in the balance of your life and your, you know,

know, you have a successful family, but also a successful career, the balance of film and your life. Well, I'm always thinking about that. That's all I think about. And I have to say, I do look back now that my kids are out of the house, like freshly out of the house. And I think, Leslie, I made big sacrifices to be around and to build it around them. And I think we did pretty good.

Yeah. You know, we were, we were around. around and we still found a way to do projects. Like, you know, during the pandemic, you know, we were all in the house and we had a nervous breakdown and we knew like we needed to get out of the house. Like, it was bad and I had this idea for the bubble and I thought maybe I can get somebody to let me make a movie about what's happening and it was small and like a small cast and contained and me and Leslie and Iris can do it together and still support.

each other during a difficult time, but while working and not just stuck in the house, learning how to make pizza and stuff. And so we always thought about that. That's what this is 40 is. That's what working together on funny people and knocked up is how can we have our lives connect? Right.

And not all the time. We go almost five years not doing it. It wasn't constant. But it was recurring that we would say, how do we shoot in the valley? How do we shoot? Can you shoot a movie in Brent Right. You know, there was one time where we bought a house and we were shooting, this is 40,

and we literally moved down the street from the house in the movie where we shot. And I would just walk like 800 yards to the house. Like that was the ultimate setup we were going for. Yeah. I watched this great, it was great. It was on Turner Classic. It was about Harold. He was a storyboarder.

And his wife, who was a. researcher for film. It's just embarrassing that I'm forgetting their names. It was a documentary done like in the 80s, maybe in the 90s. And it was about this couple. And she was an orphan and he had his own thing and they built the life together. And they were very successful. I mean, they worked on everything.

She was this researcher like in Paramount, like tons of books and getting all the stuff for all these great films. And he was doing all the stuff for the graduate and I mean, all these amazing. And working with all these great people. people. And the one thing that from the documentary that stuck out, which is in line with what you're talking about, how you succeeded, was that they realized he was, he couldn't survive a marriage if he was off in Budapest working for eight months. And she was in L.A. in the research library and not having some commonality in their life, you're now living two separate lives.

You needed to share. You have to have common experience. experience and how do we do that? How do we bring these two things together? Otherwise, what is a marriage? Yeah, especially in this business. Yeah. It's hard. You do have to find a way to to be present. And so much of what we enjoy is going on the road and making a movie.

Yeah. And so if I make a movie, I'm like, okay, I've got to live there. Right. If it's not in LA, I'm like, okay, I'm going to New York for three and a half months, four months. and we only did it once where we moved somewhere, like the family moved. Yeah. When we did Talladega nights.

Okay. The whole family, we moved to Charlotte. And of course, it ends. And then we're all like, should we just stay here forever? We love it here. You always want to stay there forever. Yeah. But it was a great experience.

My kids went to school there for a semester. Yeah. Into like the school, like in the system. Yeah. And we were like, oh, this is what it would be like if we just stayed here and we're not circus people lived with normal. nice people. Right.

This is what that life would look like. And it was hard to then go back to Crazy L.A. Yeah. And every once in a while when my kids, when they would be acting out or we'd be having a real problem, you know, that's when the conversation would be like, we never should have left Charlotte.

People were normal there. Ours is New Jersey because all our families are New Jersey. People are just normal there. Just act like normal kids. They don't need this giant thing for a party. So what is your, is it your, is it your, in your self-analysis, is it your ADD or is it your love of comedy that keeps you cranking out all of this stuff? I mean, you're always, you're always, always making stuff showing up as a stand-up. Like that is an obsession, like more than anyone else.

Like everybody has their things, but you devour and, and, you. you're thankfully for all of us you're cultivating all of this stuff i mean just to have these two books in my office i mean really just to flip open you know is an amazing thing what is it what part of you is do you think it started as a dd and morphed into love of comedy i don't know it's a good question because another add thing that happened was when i was a kid i would sit in my room i had this chair this weird metal chair and i would lean back against my armoire. I would watch like Mike Douglas and Dinah Shore every day.

Like I got home for like two hours they would be on. And then I watched live at five with Sue Simmons and Chafferty. With some ribs from beefsteak Charlies. I watch all like with his sitcoms and cheers or whatever. Then I'd watch Carson, Letterman. But all I'd like leaning back in this chair. And I used to, and I had this weird OCD thing or I don't know what it is. I thought it was like an obsessive compulsive thing where I would tap along with

with them talking and count their syllables. And having, and I, and I'd have to end on a pot on a even. And then I would start it again and do it for a while and then have to end on an even even. And I would just do it the whole time, almost not even knowing I'm doing it. Right. I've done it my whole life. My wife started noticing I was doing it with my toes, like flicking my toes while I'm watching TV. No.

And then one day I like went online and just happened to stumble into some article that said, yeah. It's some form of calming yourself. Like they now they teach like tapping is a thing that calms you down. Right. Whatever it is, it was some weird human instinct that I don't know if it connects the two sides of your brain, but that the tapping and the counting is like grounding in some way. So lately I've been thinking, I don't know what the hell my brain is doing.

Yeah. I don't really quite understand because it is racing and running and wanting to think and wanting to work. But lately it's also exhausted and is just like, Why don't you stop? Right. And every once in a while we'll go to Hawaii for a week. And after two or three days, like, I'll find the other gear, the non-work gear.

Right. And I get happy in it. Can you stay in it? No. Yeah. I mean, I could if I just didn't leave. But in L.A., as soon as it starts, so much of my drive is don't fuck it up. So if I'm making a George Carlin documentary, the entire time for two years in my head, I'm like,

seriously, you can't fuck it up. I mean, every comedian in the world would think you're the biggest idiot ever, if you make the shitty George Carlin documentary. And then if you make a movie, you're like, yeah, I hope this isn't bad because it's going to be everywhere. And it's almost like that terror of failure or humiliation. Yeah. It's such a driver, but it feels bad.

And so I've tried to get rid of it, but it's just that critical voice. And it does keep me on my toes working, but it's so unhealthy. Is it, though? I mean, depending on how loud you let it get. Right. Yeah. Well, yeah. And also you've been successful, so it should quiet down at somebody, but it doesn't. Right. Exactly. Because then you just start thinking like, am I like getting older and lame? You know, it doesn't matter how well you do. There's always the voice going like, yeah, but you don't know what the fuck's going on anymore. I know. Kids are into different shit. You're not in sync with anybody. And then something goes well. And then it's like, yeah, but the next one won't make sense.

I know. But you know what? Have you ever met anyone that? And you meet so many people that are successful. And have you ever met a really good artist who is content, like, with their work? I mean, I think that you just, you always, everything is an experiment. It's like writing a joke. If we write a joke at home and we try it tonight, we have no idea if it will work. Right. And the fact that a thousand other jokes have worked does not increase the chances that we're correct.

Right. I mean, there have been so many jokes. I'm just so cocky to get out there. And, like, there's no noise at all from the audience. And you're like, wow, in my head, I felt the real. of how this would play. And they don't even recognize it as a joke. I think you're still doing the setup.

And that I think is why we like it is the constant. You're always on your toes. Yeah. Always. You know, how good you are. And I guess we like it. I just would like to,

you know, the thing I've been thinking about lately is a lot of this Buddhist idea that you have to become comfortable with how uncomfortable you are. That you're always uncomfortable. And it's okay to live in that. Yeah. And then you just kind of settle into it. You know, like groundlessness.

Yeah. Like, you know, everything is shifting all the time. And you just go, it's fine. And that's what comedy is. Every moment on stage, you have no idea. You could be killing and go, like, this thing could totally fall apart. At any second, you could just lose rhythm. Or sometimes you're just, you're performing and you realize you don't even feel anything

you're saying. Right. Like, sometimes you're in the moment. And, like, you're really, like, telling a friend. And other times, like, you're just, like, saying it. And then the crowd feels it and it just starts getting quieter. Same words, almost said the same way. I know, but there's nothing behind it.

Yeah. Like, he's left. He's not here anymore. He started thinking about dinner. He got tired. You ever get a set like you're at the cellar and it's a 15 minute set? And like you do it really well. Like eight minutes in you like you feel your body.

You go, I'm tired. Right. Exactly. I do this thing lately where you start leaning on the stool. Where you just like a couple fig games. And it's like this is really just. purely out of energy. Energy loss.

Like, I'm going to the comedy seller next week. Because I haven't really written any new jokes since the pandemic. Really? I was busy on the bubble and the Carlin thing. And I couldn't really figure out what my attitude should be now. Like, am I happy? Am I cynical? Am I melancholy?

Am I reflective? I don't know. And so I haven't really been doing a lot of stand-up. Just at some Largo shows where I mainly talk to people. Yeah. I convinced Jim Carrey to come in one night. We just talked on stage. Really?

Amazing. But I said, damn, and I got to figure this out. So I called in for like eight zillion sets at the cellar next week. Oh, what? Just for that? And now I'm so scared to have nothing to say that I'm writing. Yeah.

Yeah. Oh, but after one set there, the great, because they're not long and you just kind of get up. And it's just, oh, by the, you're going to get so much work done. You can always bail in eight minutes.

Yeah. The next comic's happy you got off. Yeah. And you and I did the same thing at Largo. Yeah. Where a couple times. And yeah, you were definitely searching. You were definitely kind of feeling it out.

And we would always naturally come back to our families. Exactly. And then every once in a while I'm like, should I talk about that? Or the fact that they left the house, does that mean it's over? But then I realized, no, there's a funny thing happening now. Yeah. Post them leaving. Yeah.

Which is about how do you create what this new relationship? relationship is where you're not in charge. You know, and you're, I was trying to write something about how you become like their advisor. And they don't have to listen. So you have to be a trusted advisor and you can't get mad when they don't take the advice. Yeah. So you're trying to find a little pocket for yourself in their lives where they will check in with you. Yeah.

Because the best thing ever that happened in all my parenting was one day, out of the blue mud just said to me, and maybe she was in like her, she was like, 20 or something. She's like, I always remember that time you said to me. And I thought, she remembered a piece of advice. And she said, I remember you told me that Michael J. Fox said in his book, you shouldn't worry about things, bad things happening, because then if they do happen, you just suffered twice. And she quoted my quote of Michael J. Fox. That's great. It was the only time in my whole life, I thought, yeah. I saw the A, B, like something stuck. Yeah, like something stuck that wasn't just you doing something stupid in the kitchen.

Dad's an idiot. Yeah, because you think as a parent all the time, like, how do I give them the little wisdom that I found? And yeah, that's amazing that actually stuck. I haven't gotten there yet where they're like, you know. Well, they're honest with you afterwards. Right. So, like, when they move out and they realize,

like, you can't control them anymore. Suddenly they tell you what they were thinking and what they did. So you have this, I was trying to find a way to write about this, we're just out of the blue they'll just be like oh yeah I was stoned that whole year and you're like what

you know and they tell you the story so that's what really happened that night it's like suddenly like oh I thought that happened no that's not what happened here's what really happened and they just tell you all these like incidents you never heard about

oh I couldn't tell you they had to call an ambulance I remember telling my parents things 20 years later. And they didn't like it. They didn't like hearing it. Because it ruins your perception as a parent of what you were doing and how in control you were and how, what a good job you were doing.

We're kind of the opposite. We're so happy they're telling us it. Oh, yeah. We're just so happy that they would tell us now. I know. Oh, completely. Well, that's, again, that's a sign of success in the family that they're, you know. But they will hang out with you at all.

Like we're going to go on vacation and they're, coming with us. And the idea of going on vacation, like as an adult, right. But my parents would not be something I would have considered. It just wasn't like how everything worked in our family. Right. And I think for most families, I don't know that. But like, we're just like, come hang out with us. We'll make sure, you know, it's fun. Yeah. Well, yeah, that's one thing that I keep banking on is, well, they're going to be poor for a while. So if they want to do anything. That's all you have at some point. Yeah. you know, I'll fly a first class.

I used to do this joke I said, you know, like, where I always flew my kids first class from when they were little kids. I'm like, I worked my whole life to get into first class. I'm not going to fly coach just to teach you values. How do you, how do you figure out where you're going to put your focus? Because like now you've got this idea for, for, I've got to get, back on my stand-up and take care of that, but I know without you telling me that there's a film percolating, there's probably another book percolating, probably another comedy compilation of

some port in the mix. How do you allocate your time? And do you feel like, do you ever crave giving all of your time to one thing? Yeah. Well, I did that once. I wrote a movie with Owen Wilson in the 90s, and I spent like a couple of few years on it because I thought, well, that's how like James Brooks does. He spends like four years of a movie writing a script. I'll do it that way. He's trying to make a masterpiece. And then like we finished it and no one would make it.

And so I'm like, okay, it's all about back burners. How many burners can you have going? Let's go. Get these plates squirreling up in the air. People will just say no. Right, right. And so, yeah, it is a tough decision because you want to be able to be pulled, you know, by the undertow in a way. Yeah.

So if I meet Lena Dunham and she has a great idea. Right. And her and Jenny Connor want me to help out on girls, it might change the next six years of my life. Like, okay, I'm going to give a pretty big hunk of my bandwidth to this. Right. And so in the era of girls, I'd made very few movies. Right. But I thought, this is like really fun and it's working and I love it.

And it's not burying me. They're working way harder than me. but I'm writing. I'm reading all the scripts. I'm giving them notes. I'm a great outside voice to track how everything's going, but I still can be with my kids. I don't have to sit on the set.

And it made life work for a long time. And then at a certain point, it's like making the bubble. You just go, what is life like right now? Where should we be? And now, like, I will think, when is Maude doing Euphoria again? Okay, so she's not going to talk to me then.

And, you know, what's Leslie doing? And where's Iris going to be? And then I try to figure out, should we do something together? Oh, there's a little hole there where I probably, it would be good to be busy then and not at this other time. Right. So much of it is just a time management. Yeah. You know, when I make a movie, you think, oh, I have to go away for three months.

It's not that. It's a hard part. It's the six-month tale of editing. Right. And so then if everyone wants to have a little freedom to do something, you think, you know, Yeah. If I'm like, well, I can't leave town for six months because I'm editing, it becomes like a year of dad can't be flexible in any way. Right, right.

Which obviously is a great problem to have. But if I decide in that year to go, I'll just do stand up here and there. Then I can have fun, be less stressed. Right. And then if they get a job, I can go live in the city where they're working. Yeah. So that's, I'm always on my toes one. wondering, you know, do I strike and make something now or just sit around and work on the book?

Like, oh, I could work on the book from anywhere. Yeah. So it's more of organizing how the projects are going to fit in your life than what's going to turn you on creatively. Well, both. And then, you know, something will demand. Right. Do it.

So, right. With the King of Staten Island, you know, I felt like, oh, okay, there's this window of time. If I made a movie with Pete, it will be in a year in that summer. Right. You know, he's free from S&L. We'll do it that summer. So I need to get the script with him and Dave Cyrus ready for that. Right.

And then I'm very passionate about it because I really liked that it was about him sharing his experience and about the sacrifice of firefighters. And I really loved meeting all those people and trying to get a story like that out there. Right. Exactly. And so then it just pulls me in like, okay, that's worth this huge hunk of energy. Yeah. Right.

And then it ends. And you're like, okay, I got it. I'll just interview people for a book for a year so I can recover. I hope you like the bread. Thank you, sir. I will like the bread. I'm going to eat it.

Do you have a good knife? Do you have a good serrated knife? Yes. All right, good. I have these knives. Toast it, put some butter on it. And I'm going to take the parkechip. I mean, that's where I'll cheat on my fast.

This is good. I mean, this is a grown-up lemon thing. The only reason why I'm fasting is There is a moment where you put on a suit and you just go, it doesn't look good. That's the only reason I would ever lose it. Like, I'm on Colbert next week. And it's just, if the gut is, it was out wide enough that the whole suit,

coolness disappears and I look like Mel Blank or something. Right, exactly. That's what I always think. I always want to be, I always want to be Carrie Grant. And I know I'm just like a used car salesman. I'm like Lou Jocobi. Right. One last question.

You're making all of this stuff and you're also a student of comedy and the Carlin part of it and everything. We all touch on similar stuff, right? We're all kind of, there's definitely like Jerry talking about George, like George was there first. He's like, we're all mining really a lot of stuff and in your films and the books, everything. What is the, what is the purpose of it all? do you think? What is the purpose of us all going out? Is it merely just, are we an entertaining distraction for people?

Or are we continuing a conversation into the future that people, artists started before us? It's funny because there's so much stuff out there. There's so much content that it's very easy to go, what is the point of doing any of this? And I can get in that headspace of why do? it does it matter that if there's 500 TV shows why would I make one right that's why I always like to go to areas where other people aren't like the documentaries about comedians right the books of interviews because there's not a ton of them right right and but then everyone's all you meet somebody and they just say that what you did

touch them in some way or made them happy or yeah you know I ran into this woman and she just told me this beautiful story about that she used to watch knocked up with her dad and her dad died and she watched she saw it the other day right to think about her dad and you realize oh that's happening all the time yeah i just don't know it yeah i usually won't bump into that person right and that i always quote this thing that i heard somewhere the the best gift you can give people is your story and that's how you feel connected to people and i think about what's been important to me like when i was a kid and i saw say anything you know or broadcast news yeah and so whenever wherever I'm insecure, I don't know the purpose of it, I just think of how much a movie meant to me.

And to create one that could mean something to someone else. It's like a song. Like, what life be like without Warren Zivon happens? Like how much it's changed my life. Yeah. Just making that connection. And even if it's in a club, which I like, I like the idea that there's 200 people there. And it's just gone.

And it was that moment. And it was really intimate. Yeah. and connected and then it's gone. And it's not judged, it's not reviewed. It's just, that is all life is. And that's the essence of life, which is, it's fleeting. And it's a collection of these moments.

Right, right. But it's contagious. Yes. Like that one little show, there's people walking out and carrying it and then making something or changing their life where it is kind of this ongoing thing. Really great. Well, you're the best. What's that cup?

I didn't even notice that cup. This is a cup I got from the Kelly Clarkson show. I filled it with hot tea. And I didn't know that this is the kind of cup that makes the tea never cool down. So I was in the car. After like 15 minutes, thinking it cooled down, I took a big swing and just burnt the hell out of my mouth. And that is Kelly Clarkson's revenge for us using as a reference in the 40-old Virgin. Well, thanks for being here.

Thanks for the books. And thanks for the Carlin documentary. It really is good. people are going to love it. Thank you. Yeah, well done. All right, Aaron, we got it. All right, everybody. That was our big conversation with Judd Apatow. I hope you learned a lot of neat things. I did. Very thoughtful, very smart. Who doesn't love Judd Apatow? Go check out the documentary on HBO Max, starting on the 20th. Also, revisit the Shandling documentary and get the book, Sicker in the Head. All the money goes to charity. and this is Sicker in the Head Part 2.

Both books go for good causes, and they're just great to have a round to thumb through if you just want to read some great stuff about some of your favorite comedians. That's it. Thank you for joining us at the table. We'll see you next time. Enjoy your life.