The Bill Simmons Podcast - Ep. 12: Judd Apatow

Episode Date: October 21, 2015

HBO's Bill Simmons talks to Judd Apatow about today's comedic landscape, living in a social media-driven world, Adam Sandler's career to date, 'Freaks and Geeks' in 2015, fame and celebrity, parenting, and developing talents like Seth Rogen and Amy Schumer into movie stars. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

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Your company is only as good as the people you hire. When you're short-staffed, there's no time to deal with all the different job sites until now. Thanks to ZipRecruiter.com, you can post to 100-plus job sites with one click and have the best chance of finding that perfect candidate. You can instantly be matched to candidates from over 6 million resumes. Welcome to Bill Simmons Podcast, taping this on a Friday. It's running this week when you're listening to it. Judd Apatow, we're finally doing this. We've talked about it for a long time. And I like getting you right now because you just did a whole media search for Trainwreck like three months ago.

That's right. How many in-depth interviews can one man give over the course of a month? That is a very good question because I made a choice for Trainwreck to do a lot of press uh i felt like you know when you're breaking somebody who people love but isn't a movie star yet you just have to do everything because you have to assume there's so much noise out there that if i do 40 interviews that most people will hear half of one yeah and so even though you you're sick to your stomach at babbling so much, there's only about 300 comedy nerds in America who will listen to my WTF and my Bill Simmons

and my, you know, you made it weird. You had a big Rolling Stone one. You had a whole bunch of them. Yeah, and it's always precarious because you feel like, wow, in any of these, I could end my career. Right, or say, or you have one sentence in a 5500 word interview and that's what everybody grasped onto no it is an art to not end your career

yeah it really is like you have to because i when i work with you know people who are just beginning to do a lot of press there's always that moment where you have to explain to them here's the ways you can end your career. Try not to do that. One thing I always tell people is don't trash other people. Yeah. A lot of young people, they'll like do their first interviews and suddenly, you know, they're either talking 9-11 conspiracies or they're just trashing a comedian they don't like or a movie or a TV show. Right. they're just trashing a comedian they don't like or a movie or a tv show right and i always say there's nothing that makes you look like a bigger jackass than attacking your uh you know your fellow

writers and directors and comedians yeah it's not hip-hop it's not hip-hop and go back and it is a drag that you can't be honest about all of your opinions about things but also we all know the work is so hard that to go like that movie wasn't funny right you look like such an asshole because they tried to make it funny we're all trying well i really liked your interview book i emailed you after i read it because there was so many different nuggets in there oh thank you listening to um chris rock who chris box first of all he was a really good interviewer i liked his hbo show i thought he did a good job of getting stuff out of people but then the interview you had with him i think he talks as well about the effects of fame on people and what it's like to go through that process that's like one of my little pet weird things that I love. I love,

I love when people are famous and then talk about actually some of the difficulties of being famous. Cause I think when you're, you know, normal people are like, well, obviously it'd be awesome to be famous. You're rich. You get to do what you love to do.

That sounds great. Sure. And meanwhile, the more people you hear who talk about it candidly, they're like, yeah, it's, it's, it's actually, it feels kind of empty. Or you feel this weird pressure and all that stuff. But he was great at talking about that. You're usually not allowed to talk about it.

Yeah. I mean, we definitely live in a culture that if you say anything, if you complain about people bugging you while you're eating, most people are like, oh, fuck you. I hate my job. I'll take your job and have people bug me while i eat so it's hard for most people to understand what it's like to give up all anonymity and you know for me i always feel like i'm in the perfect uh space of almost nobody caring at all and the few people that care when they bump into me are pleasantly amused but really don't want to talk to me for more than 30 seconds right and i remember going uh to see a clippers game with shandling years ago and you know most people don't recognize him but the people who do are thrilled to see him

and gary said i i'm at the perfect i'm at the perfect level but then other people you know if you walk down the street with adam sandler literally every single person will stop and try to talk to him yeah in the friendliest way they love him they feel like he's a part of their family he feels accessible to them i remember i was with him and there were so many people in san francisco trying to talk to him that we just took a left and went into a korean deli to you know to buy a stick of gum or something to just you know just to get a breath yeah and then they were so excited the The employees at the Korean Deli. And some people really enjoy talking to people.

Adam really likes talking to people and is from the school of I have everything because of you. And I like to meet everybody. But other people hate it. Yeah. They just feel intruded upon. I had a meeting once with John Malkovich. And I'm sure he likes talking to people. But he did say, you know, it's very weird to be in a restaurant and know that a fair

amount of people are photographing you while you're eating without asking your permission. Like you're a zoo animal. Yeah. That it's just a weird reality. And now you don't know if people are videotaping you. Sometimes people pretend to take a picture of you, but they're videotaping you. Because they can grab the picture later. Yeah.

And that's kind of messed up. Because what if you're in a bad mood right before you give them the fake smile? I took a picture with the Rolling Stones once. A friend of mine was like, hey, they're doing some meet and greets before this show in london they bring me and my wife in and the rolling stones suddenly just like walk in they're like okay stand there and they're just you know grumpy and whatever they don't give a crap they're just taking pictures of the beer distributors and whatnot. When we got the photo back, it looks like we have been friends for 30 years. They turn it on for the one snap.

But we literally did not even speak. Yeah. And, but what if I had video of the 20 seconds before and after? And then, hey! The annoyed, you know, the annoyed, well, I was going to say Bill Wyman, but he's not there anymore.

So it seems like with fame, like, so with athletes, it doesn't matter. They're playing a game. They become more and more famous. People know, so they sign autographs, but they're playing sports. Actors, maybe they get a little more reclusive. I don't know.

Music tends to seep into the lyrics. They're trapped on the road. They're in a hotel. But for comedians, it's the most interesting because like I was, Eddie Murphy was my guy. That's my favorite guy ever. And he became too famous. And part of his comedy was he noticed everything and he, he tweaked people and he made fun of people.

But now he's trapped in his little mansion in bubble hill but this a little like george simmons and funny people where it's like you're this famous comedian you made it but now you're kind of trapped with yourself how are you going to be funny anymore when that happens yeah and i'm always fascinated by that i'm fascinated by people who can keep it up who can stay, who can stay engaged and have new ideas. Like Larry Gelbart, you know, until the day he died, was writing amazing movies and was so funny to talk to. And those are my heroes. People can keep it going.

I had me and Bill Hader just went to go hang out with Mel Brooks the other day. We just went to his office to just chat with him for fun because he's the greatest of all time. Yeah. And he's so freaking funny yeah he's 89 years old he's about to go do another production of one of his musicals he's i mean he's riotous and it's fun because he has stories but you always try to think of a question that will elicit an answer that he hasn't given before. It's probably impossible.

What is he, 90? 89, 90? Yeah. Who can I ask? What question about Howard Morris can I ask? Or just some obscure Carl Reiner question where it's not one of his regular stories that he's going to remember something that he hasn't thought about in 40 or 50 years. But those guys are very, you you know they're still fully engaged and sharp so in the last year and a half i started doing stand-up comedy i know i've been fascinated

by this you're 22 years or something yeah i stopped in 92 yeah and i had done it a couple of times when i was writing jokes for funny people and every once in a while i'd get up at like an alternative club and tell a story but really hadn't done it for real and now i'm going to play carnegie hall november 14th isn't that how many people is that that's about 24 oh wow yeah it's a lot and uh mike brabiglia is going to be there and some special uh guests uh and so please go the tickets are almost sold out but it's been really good for me because it is the moment when you would never do that again i'm 47 years old i'm about to turn 48 and i thought oh if i don't do this now oh i'm never gonna do it again and i was watching amy do stand up and have a fun time and play these huge crowds.

And I got just jealous. And I felt like it was unfinished business that I stopped it before I had really figured out how to do it the way I wanted to do it. I remember seeing a Young Comedians with you. Yeah, 92. Somebody famous was on it. Well, it's actually a pretty interesting one. Hosted by Dana Carvey. Yeah. Andy Kindler, Janine Garofalo,

Bill Bellamy, Nick DiPaolo, and just an explodingly hilarious Ray Romano. Unbelievable. Where all of us at the taping, we were shooting some, you know,

some interviews before the show. And Ray, years before the TV show. How would you know? Ray's so funny that we were all looking at each other like, before the show and Ray who years before the TV show, how would you know? Uh, Ray's so funny that we were all looking at each other. Like when did Ray become a superstar? And you could see, Oh,

this is going to happen. He is, he's hit another level. And, uh, and Adam Sandler has gotten up a bunch at some shows I've done recently. And he hadn't been doing stand-up in I don't know at least 10 years and I think it's just something that people if they have the energy

for it should do because it's great to talk to the audience directly yeah it affects you when you're writing a screenplay at home I think it wakes up some neurons in your head or just some conversation with the audience. So it is sad that Eddie Murphy doesn't do it because I guess he's having more fun recording music in his house or whatever his lifestyle is. I never think. Just spending money. Yeah. And he still got the money. Well, you said, one of the interviews I read about you, you said one of the reasons you came back was because you felt like your self-esteem was slipping and you wanted to get, you know, regain some of it by by having conquering a fear, just going on stage and delivering jokes. Yeah. You know, on one level, I thought, why am I not doing it?

And when I stopped back in the day, one of the reasons why I stopped is I just kept getting offered writing jobs and I didn't have time to get up every night and I was getting paid real money to you know create the Ben Stiller show with Ben and it was a lot better than getting paid four hundred dollars to fly to Texas for a week yeah and but also I thought I always used to think who cares what I have to say? Just shut up, Judd. Who cares? No one cares. You have nothing to say. And it took me decades. It really took me until I did Freaks and Geeks and the 40-Year-Old Virgin to realize that my stories would connect with people and that they are interesting and that everyone's story is interesting i mean i really i've always believed that almost any person i've ever met would be an amazing actor or it would be a fascinating character in the right story yeah and that all of our stories are great so i started doing it again as a way to say like

you're not a fucking asshole like you you're valid to speak just like anybody else is. And, uh, and it's fun and you're allowed to have fun because I think that's a, another thing sometimes I think. Well, you also have, you have material that resonates with me just because, you know, some of the stuff you've done,

at least the stuff I've seen has been about like just your daughters making fun of you and just trying to fit in, in this house with three females and all that stuff. Yeah. Yeah. Because I get 35 minutes out of that. Oh, I could talk about it for hours. I went to see Taylor Swift with my daughters, and I could talk about it for so long about how uncomfortable it is

to be 47 years old at a Taylor Swift concert because you're not allowed to not enjoy it because then you look like a jerk, but you're not allowed, you're not allowed to not enjoy it because then you look like a jerk, but you're not allowed to enjoy it too much because if I'm dancing around, it's really creepy. Well, especially you, like somebody gets their cell phone out. Exactly.

I can't rock to shake it up. And then the only way that you can really watch the show appropriately is with respect. So you could watch Taylor Swift and go, I got to admit, she's good. She's really good. She's really good. Yeah. That's your sense.

Like, you know what? She is a legend. She I get it. I get it. And and every day with my kids, there's something like that. Like I was telling somebody, I feel like I'm living vicariously through my kids. So they're 13 and 17, you know, and my wife. Same age as Obama's daughters, by the way.

Exactly. And don't think my kids don't know that. And I think I'm kind of living their life with them. Like when I was a kid, my parents didn't know what i was thinking or doing or feeling yeah you're trapped in your room i don't tell them like who i had a crush on and who i was brokenhearted from i mean very little communication my kids tell me every single thing that happens every second of the day they'll they'll text me during school so in a way it's like i'm living their lives with them so i'm'm living the life of a 47-year-old man.

But you're a 16-year-old girl. And I'm a 17-year-old girl trying to get into college. And I'm a 13-year-old girl waiting to get her period. I'm living it all simultaneously. And it's a lot. So your daughter, Maude, is the older one, right? Yes, yes. She's 17.

And she's been on Twitter for a while. Yes. So do you read her Twitter and you're trying to decode different moods and all kinds of stuff? I don't have to decode because she's telling me everything that's happening every second of the day. I mean, you know, she's doing college applications now, so I'm getting a full play by play. And girls are very dramatic. It is a funny thing. Because boys don't really communicate.

And so they'll be enraged about something, and then I'm all worked up about it. You know, some girl they're in a fight with, and I'm like, well, what are we going to do about that girl? And then they'll just drop it on a dime. And it's like it never happened. And then I'm like, but aren't we still mad at her? Right.

Like, no, they don't care. So I have to like find a way to have like some distance from them because their, their emotions change. It is amazing. It's like you spend a lot of time.

My daughter's only 10 and a half, but you spend a lot of time going, wait a second. I thought you hated her. Oh no, no, we're fine. We worked it out.

You said yesterday, you said you want to run her over in a car no no it's good now no it's fine you know we talked yeah it is the swoons see you didn't have a boy the boys they're just dumb for like eight years they're just like dumb little lumps of potatoes

they just kind of bump into stuff and fall down and they fart and they're happy and they take dumps there are moments when i think it would be nice to have a dumb boy around uh instead of like hilarious brilliant maniacal uh little girls who are reading into every single interaction and comment take everything personally but they're so funny and uh it's just it's like there is that it does make you believe in like the karma of the world that like a ridiculously goofy man who doesn't understand women right thrown into a world with three women i often say three ages of the same woman and true because they are very they are closer to your wife or my wife or anyone's wife.

There's so much of your wife and the daughters. It's almost hard to separate it after a while. Well, there's no pride in a girl being like her dad. No one's like, I'm just like dad. Not at all. So that's been great. And then it extends to working with Amy Schumer and Lena Dunham and Jenny Conner and all the women that I've gotten to work with. So you've figured out women.

You're the first person who's ever figured them out. I figured nothing out. I've just karmically accepted the universe wants me to try to figure it out. Your daughter was on Twitter pretty early. And she was in a bunch of your movies. It seemed like you were okay with just, here are my kids. You can recognize them.

You can tweet at them. I'm the opposite. I'm terrified of anyone knowing who my kids are. Yeah, it's a weird thing. We've debated it a lot. On one level, I like that Maude can express herself. She's really insightful and hilarious. And she gets a big reaction on Twitter.

I think she has like 150,000 people following. And we bump into people and they'll know her a little bit just from her opinions about things. But there's definitely creeps out there. Yes. Lots of them. And we's definitely creeps out there. Yes. Lots of them. We certainly keep our eye on it. And I don't know. I really don't know if I'm correct on anything to do with the internet.

I talk a lot about it in my stand-up because on one level, I think all the social media and addiction to phones and computers are going to make them disabled they're just going to be idiots socially yeah but i also sometimes think or am i like the old guy who doesn't like when elvis shakes his hips and i just don't get how the world is morphing so in a way i'm hedging my bets because there's a part of me that thinks they completely have no attention span i mean the amount of selfies being taken in my home you you would think that all these girls think that they're going to become famous photographers because they literally take hundreds of photos all day long and you do think what was i doing at that age was i being

productive yeah with us there's like probably seven photos of when we were eight years old oh there's whole eras of me that don't exist hey there's me try to find a picture of me in college there's two photographs that prove that i went to college uh everything is covered now but when i was a kid yeah did what did I do with my time? I was just in my house watching Love Connection. We had like 11 channels. Exactly. And we had sports and movies.

I watched Love Connection. I watched Live at Five with Sue Simmons and Jack Cafferty. I'd watch Merv Griffin, The Tonight Show, Letterman. So is it worse what they're doing? Because they'll just sit and they'll download the Hamilton soundtrack and then learn everything about, you know, everyone in that show. Like they're processing so much information. You know, I bought maybe 35 albums when I was a kid. I had my Linda Ronstad's greatest hits.

I had my Chicago album. Hall and Oates. You know, they're going through the whole history of music every week. I am jealous of that because we're within a year of each other. But I remember like in 1986 when you could start really buying CDs when they were all out there. It wasn't a giant catalog. But now if you're 15, you have 50 years of CDs and songs and all kinds of stuff to sample. And when they discover something, they eat it all.

Like if you say, hey, you should check out Pink Floyd. You know, like two days later, they'll come back. Yeah, I listened to every Pink Floyd record. But then they'll never listen to it again. It's like they'll decide what they think of it and just move on to something else.

The thing I don't like about social media and the internet in general, this has turned into two old guys on the couch complaining about the new people but when we were kids and when we were in high school like people hit us but we didn't really know what other people thought you know what I mean?

I loved Letterman I started taping it on the VHS. We had a VHS in 1982, and I would tape it and watch in the mornings. I loved it. And I knew one other kid in my class who liked him. And that was it. And we'd say, hey, did you see the viewer mail?

But now I would have all these people to experience Letterman with, and I would feel like I was part of a community. Back then, it was just you. Yeah, I feel that there's something troubling about it all because there is a digital black hole that like there's so much material yeah so many people looking at so many things and also swaying people certain directions right yeah where it's almost like you feel like you have to follow the crowd I worry about individual thought yeah because when I was a kid, I did the same thing. And I think it was both lonely, but it made me feel special.

Yeah. I felt special that I liked Monty Python and no one in my entire school could give a fuck. Right. That was a big thing for Paul Feig on Freaks and Geeks. He felt it was important to identify those nerds as loving great comedy like Steve Martin and Monty Python and that they were outcasts because of it. But now maybe the entire school is talking about James Corden doing, you know, car karaoke with Stevie Wonder. I feel like you were involved directly with two of the last things that were like that. Larry Sanders. Oh, yeah.

Which was the internet was just starting but it wasn't you know people had email people barely knew how to put a euro in but like that was my show i mean that's you know and i was living in boston a couple people i worked in a bar restaurant with and we sunday nights we watched it and it was like the season finale the series finale of it had like 20 people over. Oh, sure. And it was like a real thing. But we had no idea there were other parts of the country that cared about the show like this. I mean, it got nominated for Emmys and stuff, so we knew it was respected.

We lost a lot of Emmys. People wrote about it, but we didn't know it resonated like it did. But now it feels like a whole other thing. And then I think Freaks and Geeks is like that, too. If Freaks and Geeks comes now, now 2015 it's a completely different experience you have people trying to save the show after two episodes i would guess right netflix they're binging it well yeah it would have just been on uh hbo or netflix and lasted forever netflix would have been the best move i feel like just dump them all well at the same time no well i'm

of two schools with with the binge watching okay like i watched narcos recently yeah phenomenal just phenomenal and and leslie and i couldn't have enjoyed our three days with narcos you know you watch that's the thing you go on vacation with a tv show now. But I really like with Girls, which is on HBO, that people talk about it and argue about it for a week before you get another one. The show we're doing for Netflix now, which comes out in the spring, is called Love. And it's about a relationship between Paul Rust and Gillian Jacobs from Community. And it's just a relationship in slow motion. So you're just seeing them meet. It takes a lot of episodes before they even go out on dates and but we are making it with the assumption that people will watch it in two sittings so it's 10 episodes oh that's

in our head it's all about flow into the next episode because there's no chance you're not going to watch three to five when you sit down. Bloodline was like that. I feel like with Bloodline, they had three episodes of shows, but they were like, people are going to binge watch these and they'll be half asleep. So just make sure there's a lot of scenes of people outside in the Florida Keys. Make sure Kyle Chandler has sweat patches every 20 minutes. People are just going to keep watching.

I agree with you, though. I personally, and I'm probably old school or an old fart on this, every 20 minutes and people are just gonna keep watching i agree with you though i i i personally and i i'm probably old school or an old fart on this but i like the every week thing i like the ability you know i was at dinner the other night a double date with my wife and we all started talking about the affair yes which was two episodes in and it was like all right if that's on netflix one couple's ahead of the other couple. Oh, we've watched eight episodes. Don't tell me, don't tell me. And then you have that whole thing.

It's nice to be in the same track. Yeah, it's just a very weird time. I have to say, as a creative person. Yeah, I was going to ask you. It's got to be bizarre. I'm very torn about it. I'm torn because I'm doing the HBO thing. I'm doing the Netflix thing.

You know, we're doing movies. You know, I work with Funny or Die. So I have my hand in all of it. But there is a part of me that feels freed by the fact that there's a lot of content. Well, and also a lot of different ways to do it. Yeah, there's a lot of freedom to do things, to be left alone. I mean, we weren't left alone in our early days working on TV. And we were canceled or people gave us crazy notes that we were always at

war over. So now with HBO and Netflix, they let you do your thing. There's thoughtful people giving notes, but they will basically let you have your vision in a very positive way. But you also know there's 8 billion shows and you don't feel like you're making impact where in the old day, maybe 110 million people would watch the final mash. You don't get that sense of the world, you know, all having seen last night's all in the family. And even if they did, there's so many shows coming on next week

that the discussion of that ends immediately and i think this extends also to the news 24-hour news cycle so much content people can't hold on to anything to even solve problems like the climate yeah you know wars because we're so distracted because there's so much coming at us that we'll forget about the refugees because Hillary Clinton did a good job last night in the debate. And that makes my head spin. I don't even know what I make of it. I feel like we know too much. I don't want to know about every crime committed on earth every day, war every tragedy every good thing every nice bra a pop star war and took a picture of herself in yeah it does make me want to hide under the covers and just do nothing and maybe get old tapes of love connection and watch them by myself

and i do feel like everyone's head is spinning and it's it is also why we people are amused by donald trump you know it's just someone grabbing the fucking attention yeah there's so much shit so i'm gonna be so horrid that you have to listen to me because i'm so fucking amusing even though i don't know what i'm talking about yeah Yeah. I'm a casino owner. I know nothing about how to negotiate with the Chinese. And a former reality host. Exactly. And so that's what's scary about the world. You know, how people grab attention.

You know, how quickly we absorb things and forget about things. I won't talk about Narcos in three weeks. Right. But I'll still talk about Lou Grant. You know, I'll remember that show i'll remember the white shadow i think you hit it though i think there was less stuff that captured our attention back then so the stuff that did capture it was the you know like you noticed the white shadow poster i had here when i came in now it would be like you know it could be one of 200

posters 30 years from now. Exactly. You know. Well, Netflix is going to put 26 series on a year. And so we're all going like, oh, they're all so good. How many can we watch? You can't. And it also seems like the quality is there's a lot of good to pretty good to good to very good. Yeah.

And it becomes a case of I know I'd like that. Do I want to to very good. Yeah. And it becomes a case of, I know I'd like that. Do I want to spend eight hours? Yeah. I don't have to watch it, but I know I'd like it if I watched it. Yeah. But maybe I'll save it for later.

And then you never watch it. Yeah. I have like 20 shows like that. I know I'd like it. I'll get to it one day. I'll get to it. Hey, we should do an ad. What are we promoting right now?

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your first purchase every ticket purchased on seat geek is backed by a 100 guarantee so download the free seat geek app enter promo code bs just do it um you've worked with you've worked with a lot of famous successful people over the years and you what's really interesting about you a lot of one of the things that's interesting you've caught people at different points of their careers right so like Shandling who I'm all-time most fascinated by you caught him at the tail end of the best show he was ever gonna make and he knew it was the best show he was ever going to make and in your book you dropped a bunch of hints about yeah it was a little dysfunctional there the last year year and a half like well i was there

uh from not the beginning second season right but i was really uh close friends with gary when he was casting the show and and when when he, when he first thought of it and it was, uh, you know, writing it. So I did get to see the whole thing. He's a lovable guy. Yeah. But it seemed like, so what was going on on that show? Because you said you, you basically learned from that show a bunch of things not to do.

Well, from a leadership standpoint, from a leadership standpoint from well there's a lot of collaborative standpoint all that stuff yeah i mean there's something about auteur television yeah which is uh you know the best of television you know singular voice yeah matt weiner you know doing mad men or larry david doing curb your enthusiasm or david chase doing the sopranos you know, doing Mad Men or Larry David doing Curb Your Enthusiasm or David Chase doing The Sopranos. You know, that's as good as creativity gets when people really can do what they want to do. And they're in their groove and they're brilliant. But when you add that that guy is the star of the show. That's when it gets kind of like a player coach in basketball or something? Yeah. It makes it a thousand times more difficult because it's a full-time job starring on a television show.

Yeah. And so the second that that's what's happening, you need your writing staff and your directors to work at a very high level. And if you're going for greatness, and I've worked in every scenario, but with somebody like Gary, he's going for. Right. He's one of the greatest comedy ever. Every episode, he, you know, his standards could not be higher. Now, one of the best pieces of advice I ever got when i was about to do freaks and geeks jay kazan and i went and had lunch with stephen bochco and stephen bochco said

making television is basically impossible there's not enough time there's not enough money there's not enough brain power yeah so you always have to remember that you're basically trying to put 10 pounds of shit in an eight pound bag. And that's what happens every day. It just, it's not exactly functioning right. But you just do what you have to do. You do the best you can. You have to just do the best you can.

And so those situations where Roseanne is running her show and Gary, you know, his shows brett butler maybe being the worst example yeah i mean they're there it's hard especially when the person at the center is a genius and he is always going to be more talented than every single person working at the show yeah so if gary hires a writing staff and and I'm not exaggerating. You had a murderer's row as a writing staff. You need the greatest writing staff ever because Gary is the best comedy writer that you can be.

Yeah. There's maybe five or six where we go, there's Larry David and Seinfeld or Phil Rosenthal. So inherently the staff is not as good as Gary. Right? That's the issue. And so then scripts come in and sometimes they're great. There's certain people like Peter Tolan

who would just write the greatest scripts of all time. But a lot of times scripts aren't as good. And now Gary doesn't have that much time to fix everything because he's acting for 14 hours a day but he has to go home and fix it or fix it at lunch or fix it on the weekend so there's an inherent stress to making a show like that's not sustainable for more than five six years well yes but that's about the life of a show yeah and and gary completely pulled it off yeah i mean the show when i go back and watch it, it's stunning.

I like that the last two years were my favorite two years. I mean, I actually thought the show got better pretty much every year. The second to last year was probably the best start to finish. Yeah. I mean, it's remarkable. And so, you know, that's what the stress of a show is like. And I know that as a showrunner on shows that, you know, when I what the stress of a show is like. And I know that as a showrunner on shows, that, you know, when I like assign a script,

if it comes in and it's bad, you just think, oh God, I gotta fix this. I gotta find somebody to fix this. There's an inherent stress in that. But I always loved it. You know, we used to debate it a lot. At Sanders, we would say, would you wanna work for to debate it a lot at sanders we would say would you want to work for a

genius uh in a difficult situation or would you rather work for like someone who's really easy going and do mediocre work yeah who's a b minus and i always thought i want to be with the genius and and so i had tons of fun and always got along great with gary and and gary uh you know to sit next to gary while he's writing you know so i'd go to Gary while he's writing, you know. So I'd go to his house on the weekend, there'd be a script, and Gary would be, I'm mainly there to make it fun and to kick it around with Gary, but really it's the moment where Gary's going to focus and rewrite this script.

Yeah. You know, to watch it happen, it was, you know, the best moments of my comedy career to just see Gary suddenly. It just it's on. He's hitting his groove. He's in the zone. He's fixing it. And that's almost like going to grad school for you.

Yeah. That age, right? Yeah. It's just like watching. She's in grad school. And him talking about these characters and, you know, people like Gary and James Brooks to them. You know, these characters are real and you have to honor them and you have to do right by them. And they want them to be, you know, honest and, you know, dimensional and flawed.

And they just care so much. And those are the people that I always wanted to be around. And, you know, Gary's the funniest. I mean, how funny is, is crazy. And there's been very few people who've been insanely funny and really human who can talk about what it's like to be a person on earth in a very deep way. How close was Sanders from Gary not acting anymore and Jon Stewart just being the star of the show and then the show continuing for like two, three, four more years? How close did we get to doing that? I wasn't really in those discussions about it. So I'm not sure exactly why it didn't happen.

It would have been an interesting... It's an interesting what if, like in pop culture history. Like imagine if that happens. Now maybe Stewart doesn't do the Daily Show and a whole bunch of dominoes happen. It was such a brilliant stroke of Gary's to end the show by getting pushed out by Jon Stewart because that's what happens to everyone.

Symbolically, yeah. Out of the blue, like, oh, you know. New guy. There's Conan and there's Leno and then Leno's out because of Fallon and that pressure of what is the moment when if we don't replace the guy, we're going to be behind in five years?

So even though Leno's number one forever, with no signs of slowing down, they have to think like, but if we don't make this change, we're not going to be set for the next era. That was actually one of the most brilliant moves any network's made in the last 25 years was the timing of when they did the Fallon move and tried to use the Olympics.

And they felt like Kimmel was gaining momentum with younger viewers. And they were like, we got to do this now. Most times networks are like two years too late. They were actually like the right timing for once. And you never know who the network executive that's making that decision. You can have an idiot running the network and he mistimes all that picks the wrong guy

makes it unpleasant hurts everyone's feelings and another executive might find a way to thread that needle to make everyone right okay and transition well and that was the that was the politics that gary was fascinated with this relationship between incredibly insecure artists and this and a network and ratings so they're trying to be happy in life and pull off the show and I've said this before but Gary said you know the Larry Sanders show is about people who love each other but show business gets in the way yeah and I always thought, oh, wow, that's an amazing way to think of it. I never in a million years would have known that. But as soon as he said it, I really understood what he was going for.

So you worked, then you worked with Sandler, right as he's at the tail end of one of the best comedy runs anyone's had, and was probably at a point where he's like, all right, now what do I do? And I think comedians, especially the A-list comedians, seems like about seven, eight, nine years of movies. And then the audiences, you can kind of go, you know, one of two ways. Either you're making the same movie you already made. Some of them, they delve into drama a little bit. They start taking more chances because it's almost

like they're not sure what to do well i think for all of us that i'm always fascinated by that for myself too i mean i'm doing a romantic comedy now i'm very aware it's somewhat in the spirit of of uh knocked up and yeah train wreck and sometimes you think oh this is what i do i like showing relationships and you know people acting real and human and maybe going a little edgier than some people would go. Or am I out of gas? Right. I got no other move. You're doing a horror movie all of a sudden.

Wait, what's happening? I mean, I'm not like Ron Howard. I'm not going to pull a beautiful mind and an insanely brilliant race car movie out of my ass. That's not what I could do. I love that movie. Oh, it's amazing. I thought that was maybe his best movie. Yeah, and hilarious and exciting.

But I'm just not that. I'm not going to suddenly, you're not going to hear like Judd's doing the next Iron Man. Right. You know who you are. So we all are trying to figure out like, okay, where do we stretch? And when you stretch there's

always some people they're so thrilled that you're pushing yourself and then there's always the people who are like why aren't you doing the thing that you always yeah do and i love any artist i like i love that neil young's like fuck you i'm gonna sound like a robot on the new record i want to try that i don't care what you think i heard him on a american masters and and they said how does that feel to you like you know if it goes badly and he's like you know i'm always excited that i just got away with taking another risk i'm just so excited that i i slipped another one by yeah i'm paraphrasing he said none of those words so we're all trying to do that and I think you know comedians are great

actors so Sandler was so good as an actor in Funny People and it was very collaborative I actually think that was his best performance and you know in the first 20 minutes of the movie one of the recurring gags is that what was the movie that he was in

it was like some do-over some giant movie yeah movie that he was in it was like some uh do-over some giant movie yeah yeah and he was like the it was the posters are all around the house baby with yeah yeah it's a baby with an adult brain but it seemed like that was a proxy for kind of like the worst way his career could have gone had he just started making those kind of movies right well it was funny because we talked about it at the time yeah we said and i said you know i don't want the guy to be richard pryor i would like the guy to be dangerfield yeah that you know dangerfield was a guy who made uh you know movies uh you know he wasn't trying to do the apartment uh so it was you know mange a mainstream comedy

guy who also in his act did not want like dangerfield didn't tell you about his personal life yeah he just wanted to make you laugh you shit yourself and but yet there always felt like there was an emptiness to it also because he was somewhat of a tortured guy and i didn't really know him but he would go on stage at the improv and sometimes just show up and just not do the jokes and just talk about how he was feeling. Yeah. And it wasn't even comedy. It was it was revealing and sad and amazing. Like he would go on stage and go, you know, sometimes life makes perfect sense.

And then you come. And it was dark it was dark and that's what we were thinking about is a guy who he wants to make people laugh but he's left empty and he's he's he's uh giving up so much to be that guy that he hasn't really figured out how to have friends and relationships yeah so when he gets sick he literally has nobody to turn to except an ex-girlfriend he can try to win back and some young comic who'll kick kiss his ass uh and so in picking the the movies for his career uh you know we said oh no he should be the guy that's just going you know what

will make people laugh like me talking like a baby me in a baby body or or whatever and at the time we were like oh people always debate like are we making fun of our own movies are we but it really was more like the the comedian's career you know we've all made all of those you're not betting a thousand well i always say i was saying this to my wife the other day you know movies are like being a baseball player you know you're doing great if you're one for three yeah and so when you look at the streak that some of these guys have been on you know how many great hilarious movies guys like sandler and jim carrey have it's stunning when you go to the imdb imdb page and uh yeah jim carrey's kind of if he was a baseball player he'd almost be

like you thought pds were involved or something because it's been like it's been like a 20-year run no and i mean i mean the amount of like mega hits and hilarious movies sandler made is crazy but i think we're all trying to figure out you know what do we want to talk about because you know i've done stuff about every era of life already. So I'm almost like waiting for something to happen to me to write about. And I feel like a lot of these modern comedy stars, if you go back and look at some of the older comedy stars from the 70s, if you really look at their careers, they have three movies you like.

Yeah. And a lot of these guys... That's what I was saying. It's like a seven-year run. And then you never know after that. I mean, you'll look at Sandler's thing and you go like, oh, my God, there's 14 of these that are like my favorites. See, I've turned, like Sandler, he had a lot of movies I liked. And then there were the movies that everybody was like, oh, my God, this is Adam Sandler. But then if you have kids that are in the age range that those movies are targeted for it all makes sense

my kids love adam sandler every single movie that he makes they love and they've watched like the grown-ups ones like i watched grown-ups on an airplane i was like i don't get it and then my kids have watched it 15 times i think they've've actually seen Grown Ups 2 more than Grown Ups 1. But now I get it. Sandler's making movies for his kids. Right? And for that whole generation. But then he'll make the ones for himself, too.

Well, I think his intention is to try to make people laugh really hard. I mean, we don't really put it in these terms. But it is like a real noble life to go i am just here to put a damn spotlight as many faces as i can and make you laugh as hard as i can and but yet we're all like in a way like rock bands you know like look at you too you know they put out all these records but in a way everyone's in waiting for them to slip yeah and like if you look at the last record they put it on everybody's uh app oh yeah god forbid you get a free record people are furious yeah people are furious it doesn't really make any sense it's not like something you would

anticipate yeah um and but if you wait six more months and listen to the record, the record is phenomenal. I saw it in concert. It holds up with everything. And they still throw great concerts. Yeah, and they're amazing. Awesome tour, whole thing. So for anybody who's been in the business for 20, 30 years, you're just looking for new ways to be inspired and ways to connect with people. So whether it's like a great song or a funny movie,

we're all just digging and going, what else is there? You figured out one of the secrets, though. I know what one of your secrets is. What's that? You know how to find talent. Yeah. You find younger people that are on their way up, and you kind of help them go from point A to point B.

And you've done it again and again. So with Amy Schumer, this is the complete opposite of what the Chandler thing was. And even a little bit what Chandler was. Because you don't know if she's a movie star. You think she is. But she doesn't totally know. And the studio doesn't totally know. Were there insecurities as she's making that movie?

Or did you know the whole time, she's a star. This is going to be big. Well, in a way, you put yourself in a trance you just think you just talk yourself into it well comedy is an experiment every every joke is an experiment that's the thing that's i think that most people don't understand that when it's done well it feels very effortless that's why comedies don't get awards like you know which is outrageous i mean i mean i was watching um the steve jobs movie so uh michael fassbender i said that correctly right yes um you know he's an amazing actor but i don't watch it and think it's more difficult to accomplish than what amy schumer does in train wreck uh yet, because it makes people happy,

I think people take it less seriously. And meanwhile, the degree of difficulty is probably a notch higher. William Goldman had a great thing. In one of his books, he wrote about how he thought there's something about Mary should have won the Oscar. In like 98, he was like, what's harder to do than to make an entire movie theater like just

be doubled over in laughter multiple times in the same movie and it was like and what was a more iconic scene than the zipper scene in the cum in the hair you know yeah he's like those scenes won the year and we're not recognizing this that's a mistake yeah and so you know as much as i really love the steve jobs movie and i I thought Seth was amazing in it. I was just so excited for him because he was so good. It is that funny thing where people don't understand what is so difficult about that. And we always laugh and say, you know, if I didn't have to put the jokes in the movies, these would be much easier to make. Oh, you just want the story without the joke part?

Because figuring out where the humor is and how to keep it real and organic and grounded, but still to elicit laughs and, you know, other emotions, you know, it is very complicated. I think what Amy did was brilliant and revealing. And she's so funny, but she'll tell you the truth. She'll take emotional risks. Anytime I said to her, do you really want to reveal that in the movie or say that?

There was never a moment where she hesitated for a millionth of a second. There's a shamelessness, which I liked. And I think that's really hard for an actor to do, where they're just like, I don't care. I don't care what I look like in this scene. I don't care what you think of me. It's amazing. And she also is comfortable that I like myself. And I think if you really get to know me 100%,

at the end of it, you'll get me. You'll see some of yourself in me. And that experience will be worthwhile. And there aren't that many people who do it. I've worked with people on scripts and they'll say, oh, I can't talk about, you know, that person in my family like that. Or I can't say that about myself. But the people who do do it. I'm jealous of those people.

Yeah. It's remarkable when people are brave like that. Seth is like that. Seth is like that in the sense that Seth never has to think about whether or not he's going to say something. He's very comfortable just coming from the place of I'm going to live in complete truth.

Whatever I'm feeling, I will tell you it. I'm not going to play some game of filtering all this and trying to look good. I like who I am. I like my opinions. I'll will tell you it I'm not gonna like play some game of filtering all this and trying to look good I like who I am I like my opinions I'll just tell you what they are and uh and that's why he's so funny and that's why people like him they know he's not full of shit and you is it fair to say you probably have the biggest attachment to him since you've known him since he was like five years old basically yeah when he's a teenager but he's been in almost everything you've been in or cross paths with

it or whatever yeah it's a very unique relationship because i met him when he was 16 years old and it's interesting did you know right away you knew there's something about him i knew right away that he would be great as a snarky part of this group on Freaks and Geeks. And Jake Kazan and Paul Feig and I, we all instantly said to each other, what's going on with this guy? This guy's hysterical. And you also didn't get a sense that he knew how hysterical he was. I think he probably did. But you didn't feel that. He always had the great voice, too.

He just felt different all the time. He just was a unique person. Yeah. And then as we worked with him, we realized, oh, he's actually not kind of this tough, hard guy. He's a complete softie. And he's brilliant and emotional and he isn't at all what we were you know we were looking for a guy to be kind of the funny but mean freak yeah and then you know we learned more about him and that's then we started softening that character to the point

of where we did an episode where he finds out that his girlfriend was born with ambiguous genitalia and the doctor had to decide whether or not to make her a man or a woman when she was born yeah and we wrote this really funny but really sensitive to the issue episode because we knew seth could handle it and then he was such a good guy. Yeah. That watching him come to the realization that he loves her and that it doesn't bother him, we thought was a great story and a great showcase for Seth. And in our heads, we're like, oh, my God, this is like showing Seth as a movie star. And while we were making it, I remember Jake Kazin saying that. He's like, oh, my God, Seth's a movie star. And we were so excited and then to see what he's done as a director and writer with evan goldberg who we've had the same experience with uh you know it's uh it's remarkable it it really is and i'm just a fan just as i feel

like a fan of seth like i was a fan of uh ste Steve Martin when I was a kid. I just want to see what he's going to do. Were you scared for his life last year? I didn't really think of it in those terms. I felt bad that with the interview that they had made a movie that I thought was really funny and did do something that's important. We should remind the world that those people are suffering and yeah starving and being murdered that's the point of comedy and satire yeah i mean they did it in a big silly movie but they made a lot of a lot of points in it and you know it's all it was ultimately a good thing for the world to you know have to think about some of it yeah i don't think anyone thought that they

would pay attention i think i think everyone thought well they may like put out a we hate america you know a piece of publicity at some point but no one's gonna do anything the weird part is we still don't actually know if they did anything i don't think they know a hundred percent about what that was i don't know what to think until vanity fair does the 27 000 word feature about what actually happened so i'm just they did it already fortune magazine did i need another one so i felt for them comedically and as artists but they handled themselves really well through all of it and again it just goes back to this weird world we live in now with shared information and everyone is connected and even the head of north korea i if they were responsible

is paying attention and everyone is both paying attention and forgetting instantly. Because even that gets forgotten, that that happens. But wait, before we do that, if you love football, check out Topps NFL Huddle. That's the NFL's officially licensed digital trading card app with new cards released daily. You can trade with other users, collect your favorite players and make trades with other users. Even better, play your cards and earn points in real-time daily games based on how players perform on game day. So there's a little fantasy football element to this too.

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Because I always feel like this stuff is generational, but it's also like mini-generational. Because I even noticed it at Grantland. The guys and girls that were there from age 30 to 35 were multitaskers, which I'm not. Our generation is you do kind of one thing and you might be able to do two, but you can't do five. But then the people that were like 25 to 30 were the ones that actually grew up with the Internet. They could listen to a podcast. They could G chat. They could write emails and read the Internet at the same time.

I was like, what is happening? So is there a difference between 13 and 17 yeah because i think that the instagram phenomena is more uh about my 13 year old's world and snapchat or no just the the selfie culture yeah you know the complete i don't like the selfie culture nobody with a daughter likes it yeah I was doing this joke on stage where I said, you know, the funny thing about all that is it's like we've all decided that we used to take pictures of other people. And we but secretly we all wished we could only take them up ourselves. Like we really didn't want to. We were just waiting for the technology to only photograph ourselves so you know this you know this snap chat uh you know a lot of that is

a new generation's thing apparently that's how they're communicating to the 13 range to avoid the parents where they just send little quick snapchats like hey we're meeting at bobby's house at 8 30 and then it just disappears there's no trace well there's so many like deep levels to it like yeah it's like espionage like if they take pictures of their friends like say they're all at a party yeah if they post it they they know on some level they're sending a signal to all the kids who weren't invited to the party yeah it's insulting uh or if they don't like you know say who's in the photo like if if they don't mention that you're in the photo. There's a great documentary about it on CNN last week about what it's like to be a 13 year old in this culture.

But the flip side to it is they're so used to criticism that they're hardened in a way that we weren't. But what I don't like about it is, you know, when I was a kid, I could just hide for four years. Yeah. Because they're sharing where they are every second of the day, by taking photographs of themselves and looking where everyone else is,

you always know if you looked good or what people think of you. I didn't really think about that. I was very simple. I had two friends and there was usually a girl i was stalking right and i only had a major crush on yeah i only wanted to get that one girl to like me and i had two friends that we would have fun the idea that all day long you're trying to get 40 different people to comment about how you look and what your plans were and you're all aware of where you are in the

popularity structure to me would be unbearably stressful and it also makes me think is no one ever going to write a short story again like does anybody have the attention span to do the type of creativity that takes a lot of time and and thought because everything is built for consumption in one second and then instantly forgotten that's what worries me about twitter because you know when we were growing up if you wanted to express yourself you wrote a short story you wrote a column or newspaper you made a song you wrote a song you wrote poetry you did all these things as your outlet. Yeah.

Now that outlet is a lot easier. Now I could be like, hey, here's my 140 character tweet. Here's my Instagram photo with a sarcastic caption. And now I don't have the need to write that short story. Yeah. And I think that's not a good thing. Albert Brooks was talking about this. And I don't want to quote him incorrectly

but i think what he was talking about was it satiates your need to be creative yeah and then you are less likely to get your actual work done coffee shop for four hours writing something or whatever however you do it but that being said we are probably completely wrong and there'll be just as much stuff and they'll find their own way to do it. And we are the people that are at the beginning of not getting it. No, but here's the flip side. So when we were kids, it was really hard to see great stuff.

How would you see it? We didn't have a ton of channels. I remember I went to a birthday party once in Massachusetts, whatever, like a couple months after. Remember the movie Victory with Sly Stallone? Of course. Somebody had a birthday party. And they had the video of Victory, and they showed it for all of us.

And we were like, this is amazing. This was just in the theater, and now we're watching it at Danny's house or whatever, kid. And now if you're a kid, you can watch any movie you want. Like your daughters can catch up on 98 of the 100 best comedies that ever were made. So maybe that offsets the other stuff. I would hope so. My daughter, Maude, is very educated about television and movies and is sophisticated and hilarious.

And that is my it's my hope. But I guess as a parent, we're just all terrified. But I would assume my parents were terrified because all I did was watch Love Connection and Merv Griffin. When I was in seventh or eighth grade, they literally bought me a motorcycle so I would leave the house. They bought me a dirt bike because they were so afraid for me because I watched 10 hours of TV a day. And is that any different than what they're doing? See, I'm with you on that. I was the same way. I watched every TV show and I watched all the sports games. And look, you're fully employed. It all paid off.

I have a job, yeah. I'm using the fact that I watched MASH and All in the Family and The Odd Couple every day for 10 years in my work. You know what it is? It's my Malcolm Gladwell 10,000 hours. You put in 10,000 hours of TV. But their 10,000 hours is just 10 10 000 hours of tv but their 10 000 hours is just 10 000 hours of taking pictures of themselves so what's so after train wreck comes out then it's out you promote it it does well amos schumer becomes a big star now it's in like

the hotel pay-per-view circuit exactly i know i pretty soon ends up on cable yeah you're at airplanes edited airplanes eventually cable but it's been it's pretty much the run you know you're you're now is there is there a letdown factor after that is it almost like winning a title or making the finals or something where afterwards you're like ah now it's the off season. I mean, it's all strange because as a child of divorce, I hate when these things end. Yeah. And it's a weird business to be in when a lot of the times you have a very intimate experience with people for a few years and then it's just over. Yeah. And then you try to get other things going and you hope that you can and sometimes you do and sometimes you don't.

I mean, I miss Eric Bana. We hung out with Eric Bana for three months and we had the best time ever. And I don't like that aspect of my business. It's so funny. All summer, like Grantland, I was there four years, hired everybody who was there and

and we were pretty tight and spent a lot of time with them we grantland holiday parties and and then all of a sudden one day i'm not going in there anymore and it really affected me like i really felt like all these people were part of my family and now it's like all right well i guess i'll see them occasionally yeah at like drinks maybe it's maybe i'll have an opportunity to steal them back at some point maybe i'll rehire a couple of them no it is it's very sad yeah it is it's like it feels like almost like graduating high school or something that's why i couldn't even recover when freaks and geeks was canceled oh my god i just thought oh i want to hang out with these people and everyone's so creative. We're in a groove. And I probably had a nervous breakdown from it that took about 12 to 15 years to work through.

Because that was like your baby. Did you put all your eggs in that basket mentally? I didn't look at it that way. It was funny because I was doing another pilot at the same time with Amy Poehler, David Krumholz and Kevin Corrigan and Andrea Martin. And it was about a young therapist and I loved it. And that's what I wanted to do that year. And then I was helping Paul Feig with Freaks and Geeks, which he created and, and I was excited about it, but then my pilot didn't get picked up. And so I, you know, worked full time with Paul and Jake Kasdan and then you just fall in love with everybody and the work

and you just know something magical is happening so when it ends it rocks your world in ways that you don't anticipate did you feel like you failed when it got cancelled

I didn't think I failed. I thought that they were. Because you knew people loved the show. Yeah. But it's more like they blew this for me. It's kind of funny. I think that we felt a responsibility to have the show feel like it was finished. So we shot the last episode two or three before we got canceled. Oh. Because we were so- So you were that worried at that point.

Yeah, we were like, let's shoot the finale. We didn't even tell them it was a finale, but we just reordered it so that even if they said you have to stop shooting now, there would be an end to the series or at least an episode that could be the end and yeah it is like a responsibility to the characters in the world to the fans yeah i remember saying to paul feig paul write the finale let's get it going and paul directed the the finale beautifully and and uh and then it became

a little bit of almost like a mini-series so you could watch it and it although you want to know what happens to them it has a great conclusion and uh so would you say is the right age for kids to watch freaks and geeks like 12 i think you could watch it at 12 or 13 i mean the only thing that's actually that in it is uh that you'd to discuss marijuana. I was going to say there's some pot, some pot usage. There's not much sex in it. I mean, it's and I always think that whatever age you think is the right age for your kids to watch anything. They've been watching things that are way worse two years before that. Oh, yeah.

Like you'll go. I don't know if my kids ready for freaks and geeks but if you go in your kids room at midnight they're probably watching scream or rent or just something challenging youtube which we didn't realize with my son who's turns eight next month but didn't realize that he was like on youtube watching the 100 greatest horror movie deaths and stuff like that and all of a sudden he broke out of jack nicholson shining at first i'm like wait a second what no how do you know about the shining you have to give up because there's no way to stop it you you have to um you have to just get them to talk to you about it

right that's what it is is we you can't restrict it because they will see it anyway they'll watch it on their watch around they'll watch it on a toothbrush the screen is everywhere their friends have it the friend's parents don't pay attention so they're going to watch anything they're going to come home and just you know ask you about uh you know human centipede when you least expect it or you know out of the blue you know they'll be like uh why do why do they have dolls with replaceable vaginas so you just have to be ready to to share and and answer things like my kids told me about a video okay here's the video these a man and woman kill a bear in a tree the bear falls out of the tree dead and they instantly

go fuck on it i swear to god it was a real video that went around the internet so we all can agree that's the worst thing you've ever heard in your whole life so imagine having to explain it to your children. Like, well, you know, you shouldn't do that. Most people don't do that. I mean, all day long you're faced with them, you know, seeing the worst behavior of human beings. And you have to try to explain why people do it and why you shouldn't watch more of it because i would be afraid to have a boy who wants to seek that stuff out because i think if i was young i would be obsessed with just finding weird you'd watch the worst stuff yeah i agree my daughters are like that's gross and then they you know they see it occasionally but for the most part they're

more interested in you know a new you know, Drake video or something. They'll still enjoy an anchorman farting or, you know, montages of models falling on the catwalk. But for the most part, they're not deviant. But boys are deviant. It's probably scarier with boys. Yeah. Our son found on Hulu. They had all the South Parks.

Yeah. And he's watching him. And I was like, well, he's way too young for that. But at the same time, that's a great show. I want him to have a sense of humor. Exactly. Maybe he can handle it. And then like one day later, he's in the kitchen and my wife said something to him and he goes, suck my balls.

We're like, all right, this is over. No more Southpark. But then you have to decide, do you care if your kid says, suck my balls? I think we do it. At this point, yes. The answer is yes. Because that is it. Like, I showed South Park to my kids probably too early.

I just wanted a South Park buddy. I wanted to be able to watch it with someone. I watched a Louis episode with my daughter. And then suddenly Chloe Sevigny is masturbating underneath a table and you have to decide how many seconds will I watch this with her before I have to shut it off? And it lasted way longer than I expected. But that is the debate at our house all the time, which is, is it bad to say suck my balls or is it really fun? And is it maybe one of the good things in life well your wife is a long time actress so i'm sure she's more of a push the envelope type right i

think as a family we've given up on uh well now that at this age on you know restricting language yeah and all of that we get i mean we we get a kick out of it and i you know as long as people are kind and your kids are kind they can scream about their balls all day long all right so when's the carnegie hall thing carnegie hall is uh november 14th it's part of the new york comedy festival yeah when's this run um who knows tuesday or wednesday next week wednesday next week wednesday next week wednesday next week i'm at the gotham comedy club with pete holmes oh it'll run by then um and then trainwreck is available in every hotel room in america yeah 1999 i think trainwreck

comes out in about two weeks on blu-ray there's a lot of extras that are actually pretty cool if you if you want to see me talking to LeBron James a lot. If you like to see the intimacy. Oh shit, I never asked you. I had two small things to ask you. Okay. All right, we'll do these and then we'll go. One, does it bother you when you're flicking channels

on cable and one of your movies is on like TBS or Comedy Central and it's just been, the scenes have been mutilated because they have to do stuff for, do you ever get used to that? I've recently. Well, not that recently. For the last four or five years, I do the edits myself.

Oh, you do it for. For network TV. Oh, that's that's great. So some of my early films. Some of my early films are still kind of butchered. But the last bunch, you know, when I record the adr sessions like their voices i'll try to get some decent curse replacements right i remember i saw glenn gary glenn ross and you know al pacino's like you you stupid bunt cake you bunt you know uh so i try to try to face is the worst one

sometimes i'll recut the movie because I'll go This scene does not work Without the curses Or whatever the dirty part is And I'll I'll say Give me the footage And I'll cut a completely Different version of the scene

Or find a scene For the TV version? Yeah Find a scene that wasn't In the movie ever And re-edit the scene Sometimes they say I think

I wish people did that more though Oh no I quietly do it Like they've said to me Like Can you cut 12 minutes Out of funny people So it fits The amount of time yeah and i'm like oh it's gonna ruin the movie and then i go off and i cut 12 minutes and i'm like that was a pretty good cut but i just get mad

because i feel like people are like your movies are long i'm like well then why do you go home and watch seven episodes of Breaking Bad in a row? Like you'll watch seven hours of Narcos. Give me eight minutes. You and I are kindred spirits because my columns are always too long. Everybody says your movies are 15 minutes too long. It's like, hey, whatever. What is 15 minutes between friends? So LeBron James.

Yes. Your best LeBron James story. My best LeBron James story. That you haven't said on an interview yet. Yeah, that's an interesting question. What is the best LeBron James story. My best LeBron James story. You haven't said an interview yet. Yeah. That's an interesting question. What is the best LeBron? I mean, he's probably he's about as famous as anyone you've been around. Yeah. I mean, it's fun when LeBron James is around us because although we're like sports fans, we're not like insane sports fans like we would be much more excited you know if uh you know um you know lily tomlin dropped by the sets yeah that's just because we're comedy nerds uh so as a result we are very respectful and we love him but we're not like shaking in our boots the way the the super hardcore fans would and as a result i think he really likes hanging out with us because we're not weirdos that way that's interesting so he he probably felt you're not gawking at him and no no

he is six foot nine 270 that takes a little while exactly he's bigger in the chair and so i think that he enjoyed being with us because you know we really like him as a person like we we fell in love with him as a just a guy who was really funny and fun to work with and who would just shoot the shit with us he was very casual and so and now you're gonna direct space jam too i'm all for it you're ready throw your hat in the ring i was gonna make some money get some points me and lebron have some chemistry we've got some comedy uh chemistry because i'm very uncomfortable around athletes most of the time like when we did uh kicking and screaming yeah mike ditko was in it and i don't think i said three words to him because i don't know all the

old football stories or even current football enough to shoot the shit with him so then i'm all i'm just left with like so mike are you gonna get the steak or the chicken today like i'm left with like nothing but you know, how's that knee brace? Does that work for you? Well, LeBron is like a legendarily funny guy behind the scenes, like with teammates and stuff. So I'm not surprised that he probably loved being around all the comedy nerds. Well, I think all those guys are used to busting each other's balls.

Yeah, totally. They built up really strong comedy instincts. But the funny thing about LeBron is we were talking about comedy movies, and he was really sophisticated about it. He knows his movies really well, and he was talking about different actors and actresses and who he liked and who he didn't and who he thought was doing strong work now versus other work.

And I thought, oh, he's on top of this. So he could do Boomerang 2, maybe write and direct it. Well, I was thinking more of, shit, I couldn't pull the reference fast enough. Oh, you had it? It was right there. Bowfinger. Bowfinger.

Oh, interesting. LeBron James in Bowfinger. You know the secret with professional athletes that become that famous? What's that? They watch a ton of TV and they check their Twitter replies all the time. That's we like they don't have a lot of time i mean they don't have a lot of they're not hanging out with people they're kind of trapped all the time

on a plane on a hotel suite in a car that's why they do that's what we love is that athletes and sometimes like musicians they know their comedy really well because they're stuck on the bus and the plane all day long yes so you'll bump into any of those people. And they're on charters. You'll bump into like Neil Young and he's seen like every goofy movie ever made. You know, that's the funniest part. They all walk hard inside and out. And that's the best.

Judd Apatow, I'm glad we finally did this. We got it done. It's done, man. All right. Thank you so much. Thanks for coming here. Sure. Don't forget, my podcast

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