The Rich Roll Podcast - Judd Apatow On Comedy, Creativity, And Embracing Your Inner Weirdo

Episode Date: July 24, 2023

One of the most acclaimed filmmakers of his generation, today Judd Apatow graces the podcast to discuss his fascinating perspective on filmmaking, storytelling, creativity, and more. From directing This Is 40, Knocked Up, and The 40-Year-Old Virgin, to serving as producer for Anchorman and executive producer for Freaks and Geeks, Judd has made an indelible mark on Hollywood. Today we unpack the experiences, philosophies, and strategies that have shaped him into the unparalleled creator he is today. We explore his creative process, his approach to storytelling, the lessons he’s learned from working with some of the biggest names in the business, and how he pays it forward. This conversation left me with a newfound appreciation of comedy not only as an art form—but as a powerful means of grappling with the complexities of the human experience. I hope you enjoy this one as much as I did. Show notes + MORE Watch on Youtube Newsletter Sign-Up Today’s Sponsors: BetterHelp: BetterHelp.com/RICHROLL Timeline Nutrition: Timelinenutrition.com/RICHROLL Momentous: LiveMomentous.com/RICHROLL Babbel: Babbel.com/RICHROLL Whoop: WHOOP.com  Plant Power Meal Planner: https://meals.richroll.com Peace + Plants,

The Rich Roll Podcast. You can't think yourself into writing, but you can write yourself into thinking. So just start. Emmy-winning writer, producer, director Judd Apatow. The man behind almost at least half of the funny movies and TV shows you've seen this century. Looking at your IMDb, I mean, it's, you know, it's a hundred miles long. From where you sit right now, do you reflect back on it and think, my life is a dream?

I moved to LA and I met all the other people in comedy. Adam Sandler and Rob Schneider and David Spade and Jim Carrey. And that was our world and our crew back then. It was like running a race with all your friends. People are interested in the struggles of people that we're all struggling. We root for people to do better because we're trying to do better. How do you survive high school? How do you survive having a baby?

How do you make your marriage work? You have to be willing to be vulnerable and put yourself out there. The greatest gift you can give people is your story. I got a couple more things I would very much like to mention before we dig into this one, but first. We're brought to you today by recovery.com. I've been in recovery for a long time. It's not hyperbolic to say that I owe everything good in my life to sobriety. And it all began with treatment and experience that I had that quite literally saved my life. And in the many years since, I've in turn helped many suffering addicts and their loved ones find treatment. And with that, I know all too well just how confusing and how overwhelming

and how challenging it can be to find the right place and the right level of care, especially because, unfortunately, not all treatment resources adhere to ethical practices. It's a real problem, a problem I'm now happy and proud to share has been solved by the people at recovery.com who created an online support portal designed to guide, support and empower you to find the ideal level of care tailored to your personal needs. They've partnered with the best global behavioral health providers to cover the full spectrum of behavioral health disorders, including substance use disorders, depression, anxiety, eating disorders, gambling addictions, and more. Navigating their site is simple. Search by insurance coverage, location, treatment type, you name it. Plus, you can read reviews from former patients to help you decide. Whether you're a busy exec, a parent of a struggling teen, or battling addiction yourself, I feel you.

I empathize with you. I really do. And they have treatment options for you. Life in recovery is wonderful, and recovery.com is your partner in starting that journey. When you or a loved one need help, go to recovery.com and take the first step towards recovery. To find the best treatment option for you or a loved one, again, go to recovery.com. One of the most acclaimed screenwriters, filmmakers, and comedic minds of his generation, today, Judd Apatow joins the podcast to share his experience

and wisdom on filmmaking, on storytelling, comedy, creativity, mentorship, parenting, and basically life. Over the course of his much-storied career, Judd has worked alongside some of the industry's brightest stars, helping to catapult their careers to new heights. some of the industry's brightest stars helping to catapult their careers to new heights. His ability to identify and nurture talent is unmatched, and his keen eye for storytelling has made him a sought-after mentor and creative collaborator. Judd has also made a significant impact as a documentary filmmaker, a stand-up comedian, and as an advocate for many causes, including mental health awareness. He fearlessly explores the human condition, often shining a light on the poignant and vulnerable aspects of our lives with his

trademark blend of humor and honesty. So today we unpack the experiences, philosophies, and strategies that have shaped Judd into the unparalleled force he is today. We explore his creative process, his approach to storytelling, the lessons he's learned from working with some of the biggest names in the business, and how he pays it forward. Not going to lie, this one was a thrill. I hope you enjoyed it as much as I did. So without further ado, this is me and Judd Apatow. It's super nice to meet you. Thank you for making the time to do this, inviting me into your beautiful offices here. Just for the person

who's listening or watching who has a creative impulse and they feel like they have something to say or there's something deep in them that feels like they want to express an emotion, a thought, a story? How do you speak to that person who is trying to, you know, bring forth some expression into the world? I mean, I struggle with it too. I mean, I think the best advice is, you know, writers write. You just got to write. You have to be willing to throw it out. You have to be willing to do it just for yourself. And everybody is interesting. It took me a long time

to think anything about me was interesting. I always wrote for, for people like Jim Carrey, who were, seemed fascinating. And I always thought, God, I'm so boring. What about this life is interesting. And then when I finally realized maybe what I'm going through is interesting, my career completely took off. The moment I just accepted that, like the 40-year-old virgin, it's just an expression of my own anxieties. And people really connected with it. So you have to have some confidence that your story is interesting.

Someone said, the greatest gift you can give people is your story. And that was a big thing for me because I really thought, who the hell wants my story? And so you have to be willing to be vulnerable and put yourself out there. I mean, there's a lot of work that you have to do, but you have to do the same thing that I do every day, which is, can I just let it go? Just see what comes out of me. And, you know, there's simple things that are really helpful. You know, one is from, what is her name? She has a book, Bird by Bird. Oh, Anne Lamott. Anne Lamott. And she has, she had the line in one of her books where she said, it's a down-up theory. You got to get it down, then fix it up. George Saunders said a version of that, which is, you know, I can write a really mediocre

short story, but give me five years to punch it up and it'll be great. You know, you have to just like see what comes out and trust that. And then you switch gears. Like for me, creativity is always, there's one mode, which is spewing. And then one switch gears. Like for me, creativity is always, there's one mode which is spewing and then one mode which is assessing and editing. And you can't do it at the same time. And I think a lot of people, the reason why they're not creative is they try to do it at the same time.

They're judging every sentence as it's coming out. And you have to just kind of blow it all out. And then the next day, look at it and go, what's a value here? And I feel like that's maybe the most important lesson that I've learned. Yeah, beautifully put. I mean, I think even the precursor to that, the thought that I don't have anything worth saying or my life isn't interesting enough, like overcoming that hurdle to even get to the point where you're sitting down ready to write anything down and understanding that your experience has value. You know, the specific is the universal,

like the more specific you are about it, the more opportunity there is to connect with something universally human about all of us. And, you know, you growing up in suburban, you know, Long Island and having the experiences that you had and the fact that you, you know, kind of had to go to war with yourself over the value of your own experience is, I think, interesting and instructional and inspirational that you had to do that for yourself to get to that place of like freedom to express. Yeah, it took a long time. And I worked with people who did it like Shanling and Paul Feig on Freaks and Geeks. And on Freaks and Geeks, I started pitching some more personal stuff and I saw that those

scenes were good. Yeah. I wrote a lot of stuff about divorce on the show and Bill's mom dating the gym teacher and Neil's obsession with ventriloquism as a way to deal with his parents' divorce. And I saw, oh, that stuff seems to be working and it's small. I mean, even like, if you think of like the moment you first tried to kiss a girl, is there anything more dramatic than that? But we all have that moment. And all these moments can be fascinating. I mean, I think a lot of my best work is just

someone's pregnant. What do we do? I mean, they're not, it's not Ghostbusters. Right. It's, it's just the simplest thing. In, in recovery, there's a saying like the facts of someone else's experiences may be different, but the kind of emotional landscape, the emotions are what you can connect with when people share their stories, et cetera. And even if you think, and you were talking about this with respect to a 40 year old virgin,

like it's really a story about like shame and guilt, which is something most people can connect with in various ways. And it's draped on this very heightened story about this extreme character. But part of the reason why I think it's a big hit is because beneath the surface, it's grappling with something that everybody can relate to. Yeah. It's about, am I lovable? Am I a freak? And how that can get enlarged and shut down your whole life. So when we started writing that, Steve Carell and I,

we said, let's just write it real. What would this feel like? How would it have happened? If you tried to face it and you didn't know how, what disasters would happen along the way? But that is why people connect to it because Steve does such a good job being really honest about how scared he is to be found

out and that there's no way at the end of the day you would want to be with him. And I think everybody on some level has that voice. If you really knew what I was like, you would run. Yes. And then at the end he says, I'm a virgin. I always have been. I'm a virgin. I always have been. I am having, I will admit, like in a moment of vulnerability to begin this, I'm having a little bit of an outer body experience. You're somebody who's like been in my life, you know, in a parasocial way for, you know, and I'm sure you have this experience a lot. So it's, you know, it's meaningful for me to meet you and for you to be open to doing this. And it happens to be occurring on an important day for me because 25 years ago this day,

I was like broken and on my way to rehab and thinking like my life was completely over. And so I'm very present at the moment, reflecting back on this arc that I've been on. Congratulations. And so to be sitting with you here today is sort of a punctuation mark on that, which is cool. I feel like it's going to be your best podcast ever. I think so. We are holding that vision. Yes. It has to be. We can't have

the 25th anniversary with a really lame podcast. Yeah. Let's not do that. One thing, you know, we lived very different lives, but I think one thing that we share is a curiosity about other people. You have plied that curiosity and created a career out of it that began at a very young age, interviewing comedians when you were in high school for your radio show.

My aperture is a little wider. Like I just talk to all different kinds of people that fascinate me and inspire me in different ways. And in thinking about kind of your origin story and how you started with this obsession and fascination with comedy and comedians and the kind of gumption to reach out to these people as a young person and having them be receptive,

had it been the era that it is now, 100% you would have had a podcast, right? Exactly. This would have been a podcast, not a high school radio show. And then that continues to this day with the books that you do. And you've been able to kind of maintain that level of curiosity, that fascination with comedians and comedy, despite the fact that you're, you know, at the kind of apex of that ecosystem, that world, like what is it about other comedians and comedy that you still, you still want to like learn from these people? You still want to figure out what makes them tick?

I just always had this weird instinct to get in the room with people. I think it's because I was just such a fan to start. So the idea of meeting anyone was a big thing for me as a little kid. Oh, you could meet Robert Conrad. Remember Robert Conrad from Bob the Black Jeep? When I was a little kid, we were on vacation and like, there he is. Oh my God, let's chase him. Let's find him. And so I collected autographs. And my grandmother was friends with this comedian, Toadie Fields, who was a Joan Rivers-like comedian. She sang, and it always seemed like she was the coolest person that we knew. People talked about her in a grand way.

Like, there was this special person in our lives, Toadie Fields. And she was a not classically beautiful woman. That's what she talked about on stage, but loved herself, self-deprecating, hilarious, amazing singer. And at one point, she had diabetes and she had to have her leg amputated. And I went to see her when I was 10. And I always look back at it and think, it just must have had a massive impact to see her get all of these standing ovations, and the crowd loved her so much. And I probably felt other and weird and a nerd. And to see this woman, who was so wonderful,

get that type of reaction, I think it had a big effect on me. Like locked in on your brain? I think somewhere. I just saw like, oh, there's other paths to success. You don't have to be the quarterback. You don't have to be the most handsome guy in the room. There's a way to connect with people.

And so I always loved watching comedians on the talk shows and was always tracking them like they were athletes. And it just never ended. After I interviewed people in high school, I met Dave Eggers, the writer, and he has a charity, 826, which raises money for literacy programs around the country. And I said, well, I have all these old interviews.

Maybe we can put them in a book and I'll give all the money to you and I'll do a couple of new ones. And it just sold a lot. And I noticed that it had a big impact on young creative people. So then I said, well, maybe I'll do another one of almost all new ones. And then it's just an excuse for me to just say what I said when I was a kid, how do you do it? Why do you do it? How do you feel? And now that I'm in the same profession as everyone, it's like, how are we doing? Here's my experiences. Are you okay? Are you falling apart? Are you insane? Are we evolving? And so the conversations get much richer than when I was 15 years old. Right, right, right. And do you feel like you're still

learning about comedy? Oh, yeah. That there's no end to what you can discover? No end because there's no answers to anything in comedy. I mean, you know how they know, like there are certain beats in music that will always make you dance. There's just themes that are consistent. With comedy, it's really an experiment and you just don't know if something's going to work ever. Right. No matter how much you think you know, you might make a movie, go in a movie theater, you're sure it's rocking and there are places where it just bombs

and you were completely wrong. Right. And there was no way to anticipate that. Do you find that exciting or frustrating after all these years? I mean, there is, yeah,

that sort of quality of comedy, the elusiveness of it, you just don't know. It's something you can't quite, I mean, there's rules, I'm sure, and there's structure and all of that is wrote for you, I'm certain, but on some level, the mystery of it all persists. And there's something about standup where you can get up and practice it and you get the feedback in real time and you refine, et cetera. But when you're making a TV show or a movie,

you're operating a bit in a vacuum. Yeah. Because you don't know how it's ultimately going to play, even if you're laughing. Or I guess you just have to trust your instinct and surround yourself with talented people. And why do people laugh? Because I'm not very intellectual about it. There are people who could really talk about laughs

and why it happens and surprise, and they understand the psychology. I have no idea. I'd never talk about it in why it happens and surprise and they understand the psychology. I have no idea. I'd never talk about it in those terms. Really? So when people say, what is comedy or try to get philosophical about it? Yeah, I know nothing. I really do know nothing other than instincts. And I know that people are interested in the struggles of people that we're all struggling and watching other people struggle in ways that we relate to makes us laugh and we root for people to do better because we're trying to do better. So I understand, you know, the core emotional rules of it, but why,

you know, Maya Rudolph in a wedding dress going to the bathroom in the middle of the street gets a big laugh. I can't really scientifically explain it or anticipate it because what we usually do is we shoot something like that. And if it doesn't work, we cut it out. A year later, you're like, did it get a laugh? And if it didn't, that's just not in the movie. So I always overshoot and shoot a lot of extra things because I don't know. On top of that, there's this added layer of timeliness to the whole thing. Like it's rare for a comedy to hold up over decades.

A lot of comedy, you go back, you thought it was hilarious. You can't wait to share it with your friend. You're like, wait, you're not laughing anymore. For every life of Brian, there's tons of movies out there and TV shows that just don't, for whatever reason, hold up in that way. Like, what is it about comedy that roots itself to the moment in a way that, you know, drama seems to be able to transcend a little bit more easily? I mean, sometimes the pace of things change. I'm not asking you to answer questions that you said you don't want to answer.

I mean, I think about things that haven't held up. I mean, things don't hold up usually because they're not authentic in some way. I feel like if you're true to your time and true to the characters and the story, they have a better chance of holding up. If you see The Apartment, the Billy Wilder movie, you know, with Jack Lemmon and Shirley MacLaine, it completely holds up. And there's a lot of movies like that, but sometimes when you're taking big swings or doing sillier things, maybe as time passes, you go, oh, that was too broad, or we don't get those references anymore. But I'm pretty sure if you watch Airplane today, you would laugh your ass off. That holds up still, yeah. And anytime something of mine airs somewhere or is on a new streamer,

I love going online to see what people make of it now. So Funny People, which we made in 2009, it just went up on Netflix. It was number five on Netflix. And so that's probably, it could be more people than saw it when it came out. Right. That's a weird thing about the streamers. I'm sure it's a love-hate relationship that you have. But the ability for those platforms to resurface older material and suddenly put it in front of way more eyeballs that ever saw it on its initial run. It's remarkable because that's all you want is for your things to not disappear down the algorithm in some digital black hole.

This Is 40 has been on Netflix, and people walk up to me more than they did when it came out. And that's great because I feel like people don't watch it as if it's old. They really watch it like it's brand new content. And if you, you know, other than sometimes the phones are larger. Everyone's going, why does Adam Sandler have a flip phone? I mean, you know, I always try to dress people in clothes that I think will not age badly. So, you know, Seth Rogen's in a t-shirt. Yeah, he could be in a t-shirt today. It doesn't make it look like it's the 40s.

Freaks and geeks is like that. I mean, my kids love that. You know, that felt like it got new life during the pandemic. Maybe not to the extent of something like, you know, The Office or Friends, but, you know, to have new generations discovering stuff that you did a long time ago has to be cool as well. Yeah. I mean, no one watched Freaks and Geeks when it was on. That's why we were canceled. So the fact that, you know, that was 24 years ago that people are watching it right now.

And, yeah, I rarely meet young people that haven't seen it, which is crazy. Right. And lately I've been trying to think, can I let go of my sense of time? So like I made things in many different eras, many different years. Can I look at it like they all are from the same moment? Like, why do I have to think of it as something 24 years old? Could I think of Freaks and Geeks like we did it this year? So when you're making it, you're conscious of that timelessness quality. Yeah. And for myself, too, in my emotional relationship to it, things that are in the distant past, can I refresh it in my own mind and go, what's the difference if I made that in

2005 or in 2023? Yeah. Well, you mentioned authenticity. I mean, that's certainly a huge recurring trademark or theme in everything that you do. And the work that you've done that has stuck with me, and we're like the same age, so the work that really resonates with me is the more personal stuff. Like this is 40 and funny people. And I feel like you, like if I had to think of what distinguishes you or a hallmark of everything that you do, it's sort of taking those mundane quotidian moments that

are highly relatable, telling those stories in a very specific way that's authentic to you, like that idea of the specific is the universal, like the more specific in a counterintuitive way becomes the thing that connects with the most number of people, and telling stories that kind of fall in the gaps between what we're used to seeing,

like in between the highlights, like what's going on, you know, at breakfast or whatever, you know, in a way that is probably, you know, very specific to your life. And yet you're touching on something that, you know, we can all connect with. It's funny you say that because when we did this TV show Love on Netflix with Paul Rust and Gillian Jacobs, the whole idea was to show every single step in a relationship. So if they bumped into each other and then didn't talk for a few weeks, let's show the few weeks.

Let's show the pauses in between. If they break up, let's show what they do when they're broken up and who else they go out with. And then later they come together. I mean, that's always something that I'm interested in. At some point, someone said, you know, these are movies where you take the supporting actors or actresses and make them the leads. These are the characters. It's like if there was a movie about Bruno Kirby and Carrie Fisher from When Harry Met Sally, you would love that movie.

Right. Like, I want to go home with them for a little while. Right. The side story over there. Yes. That's the side story over there. Yes. Like, that's the more interesting thing. Is that a conscious thing when you're reviewing material and trying to figure out what you want to be involved in? Like, the process of deciding where you're going to invest your time and your energy for the next, you know, however many years it takes to get something onto a screen?

I think I just relate to those people. And so, I'm always in that space because I don't relate to the super handsome hero. I like that kind of movie, but I, I relate to the goofy person next to them who's too tired to keep up as they're going up the mountain. That's, you know, I'm a John Candy guy. And so, and I always feel, you know, a little bit insecure in spaces. And so, and I always feel, you know, a little bit insecure in spaces. And so most of the comedy comes from, you know, whatever. My anxieties, things I'm trying to get over, things I'm trying to learn about or deal with. And so it inherently isn't heroic.

It's just, how do you survive high school? How do you survive having a baby? How do you make your marriage work? How do you survive having a baby? How do you make your marriage work? The simple things, to me, have so much drama in them because that is the most rewarding stuff, but also the most challenging stuff. And the weirdos, making heroes out of the weirdos or the people that are in between, like in the cracks. Yeah, I mean, I remember we were promoting Knocked Up, and Seth was always really funny about the fact that the poster was just his face.

And it said, what would you do if this guy got you pregnant? And Seth said, so that's enough to sell the movie? Just my face is enough? And he was like, it doesn't make any sense because everyone is like me. He's like, the world is like me. No one's like Brad Pitt. They're like me. I'm not the exception. And I think that's true that we all feel like that. I don't know how many people feel strong and fantastic. They're accomplishing their goals and feel mentally strong. We all feel

like a mess. So it's fun to write about people who are a mess. Yeah. That's the same thing with the show Girls. Like I was reading that, what's that HBO book? Oh, kind of like the history. Tinderbox. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Tinderbox. And there's a whole section on there on how Girls came to be. And at one point, Lena shares her like two-page brief or whatever about the show. And it's all about like the people that she grew up, like there's Sex and the City and there's these other shows, there's Gossip Girl, but like, what about like my friends and what happens when you graduate college

and you go to New York City and you're trying to figure things out? Like I've never seen that on television. Those are the people that I relate to, my generation, et cetera, that are kind of have been overlooked in the media landscape. And I'm sure a big reason why that show is so special

is because it was telling those stories that had yet been told. Yeah. I mean, she always thought it was funny to have people who feel like they're owed the world. So they get out of college and they think, here it comes. Life is about to be handed to me on a silver platter. And then nothing goes right. And they're not as smart as they thought they were. The jobs don't come as easily. And that's what she found hilarious about,

you know, that premise and all the weird relationships and friendships that you have at that time in your life. Yeah. In terms of, you mentioned, like, you like to write to whatever you're going through or, you know or kind of staring in the mirror, looking at your neuroses or whatever kind of issue you're trying to work your way through. I know that like self-help books and all that kind of stuff has been kind of a touchstone in terms of how you think about this stuff

and try to develop characters out of what you're reading. Like how has that played into your work? Like what are the, I mean, I texted Pete Holmes earlier today and I was like, I'm going to talk to Judd. He's like, he loves Eckhart Tolle. He's a deeply spiritual dude, you know? That's so funny. I think, you know, my history with self-help is funny. I remember my dad My history with self-help is funny. I remember my dad, when he was a younger man, married to my mom, at some point read the Wayne Dyer book, Your Erogenous Zones. And then very quickly after that, my parents got divorced. Did you have like, were there like Erica Jong books laying around your house?

Remember, I'm okay, you're okay? Yeah, the early era of that. I think that was really the only book that was in the house, but it had an effect on my dad. I think him and my mom went to the therapy, and on the first day, he said to me, the therapist went too hard at your mom, and so she won't go back. And so that was the first time I heard about self-help. But when I was a kid, I was home a lot. My, my friends all played sports and I didn't. And I would go home every day and watch Donahue. I would watch Phil Donahue every day and they would,

all these self-help people would be on or just, you know, shows about people's problems in the pre Oprah era. Right. And Stanley Siegel's another guy who had a show like that that was edgier. And so it was always interesting to me, but then I met Gary Shandling and he introduced me to Buddhism and he gave me this book, A Feather on a Fan and another one called Turning Your Problems into Happiness. And that was the first time I paid any attention to it as a young person, because my parents didn't really teach me anything about any of it. And it wasn't really in the culture. So I probably should have gone to a therapist as a teenager, but no one did. Nobody was doing that. And if you were to go,

it was pathologized. There was something tremendously broken about you. It's funny looking back because I graduated high school in 85. Me too. Back then, I mean, I really don't remember one person who went to a therapist. There was nobody out of the closet. Our school couldn't have been less diverse on Long Island. And there was just so much we didn't know anything about. Right.

It's like when David Sedaris writes about the fact that he went to a speech therapist where he just realized that everyone there was gay. Right. That's what it was like back then. Like people weren't tuned into who you were and how to help you with your problems. And it was a big deal when Kramer versus Kramer came out or Terms of Endearment.

Like, oh my God, these are movies that are dealing with, you know, challenging emotions. It's sort of like, it was like a watershed. Like, we don't talk about that stuff. I just watched Kramer versus Kramer again. I can't say it fully holds up. It's really rough on Meryl Streep. I mean, you watch it through the lens of today

and it's like the great ending, the triumphant ending is that the kid leaves his mom to stay with his dad and she gives up her child. Yeah, that would not get greenlit today, I don't think. But that's what you did, right? Well, you stayed with your dad. I was with my dad. When your parents split up, right?

My mom moved out and I just wanted to stay in the same town. I didn't want to leave. And I just thought, I don't care what you do. I'm staying in this house. Like my friends are here. You're not going to separate me. Right. So it wasn't a choice of parents as much as location. Yes. And that consistency, just the consistency of my friends. And it was, you know, middle of

junior high school. And it was a funny time because everyone's parents got divorced at some point during our childhood. Literally no, there were no kids whose parents can get divorced. And in our neighborhood, it was pretty upper middle class, middle class in most of the town. And then you would, your parents would get divorced and then you would move into an apartment complex. Right. Down the street. Literally like a mile away, you'd see like, oh, look, they moved into Hidden Ridge. That's where we moved. And that's how you knew that people's parents got divorced.

Yeah, it was an interesting time because it was sort of the first era where there was acceptance around divorce, but all those people got married too young in an era in which you're just expected to get married as soon as you graduate college or, you know, your high school sweetheart or whatever. I was looking at a picture of my parents' wedding this week and I would, it was a party and I literally thought it was my mom's sweet 16. Right. They're so young. They're so young and they're like, no, this is their engagement party. They met in summer camp. But yes, it was just a different time and no one knew how to talk about anything. My dad, when my parents split up, I was living with him. It was just me and him for a while. And I saw a book,

it was called Growing Up Divorced. And I picked it up and looked at it. And it was kind of helpful. It was like explaining what the parents were going through. And I never talked to my dad about it. I just thought it was like some book that he had to deal with me. Oh, he sort of placed it there quietly for you to discover. He placed it there. But I said to my dad recently when I realized that he placed it there. Because I said to him once, you never talked to me about how it was going, my feelings. You never explained anything to me. And I think he thought the good thing that I'm doing is I'm not going to war with your mom. She's mad at me, but I'm not going to say anything bad

about her. But we didn't really talk emotionally because I don't think people really knew how back then. So he left out this book. And so recently I said to him, but you never asked me if I read the book. So just because I moved it, maybe I would have read one page. Don't you think you should have followed up? Well, I mean, there's a lot of threads he could have pulled. You know what I mean? Like, I'm sure in his mind, he's like, look what I did. You know, like that's, you know. The book's in his room.

He's fine now. I don't have to ask him if he's depressed. Oh, that's amazing. But to me, that's hilarious. Like, that's comedy. Right. Like, I think it's so funny. And I've tried to figure out how to tell that in stand-up.

I've never really worked it out. But that is what I find funny about life. Like, you're a kid. Your parents are getting divorced. They're at war. Your dad doesn't want to communicate with you. He leaves a book out on a coffee table that never, ever asked you until you're, like, 50 years old if you picked it up and what did you

what did he say when you finally raise it with him he's like i figured you read it and i'm like but you don't know he's like yeah but uh i saw that you you took it meanwhile your mom i read that like that so she worked in this comedy club, but you didn't find out until later that my mom was so mad when her and my dad split up. She really enjoyed her middle-class life and playing tennis and taking care of the kids. And suddenly, she's in the middle of this divorce and she has to get a job. Everything about her life changed. Her parents were both, after being very wealthy, were also having serious financial problems. And so she waited tables, she sold ads at a, at a radio station. But my mom was hilarious because she really didn't want to do any of it.

Like, you know, she, she would just say like, this is a nightmare. You know, she wasn't like, I'm really learning about hard work and connecting with new people. And that's really putting me in, in, uh, in a new space, which I'm enjoying. It was just like, this sucks. Right. Upper middle class, uh, single mom. Yeah. And, uh, I didn't really understand it till years later, you know, close to when she died she died, we started talking for real about some of it about 12 years ago. And then after she died, my aunt told me that my grandfather would be on the road. He was a jazz producer, and he would leave for a week or weeks at a time. And he would always come back and bring her a dress.

And he did that because he felt bad about leaving. And in a way, love became presence, became materialism. And so my mom had that thing where it meant a lot to her to have a nice pair of shoes. And I never understood it my whole life. I lent her money once and she she would get a like a she'd lease like a mercedes but then she'd have no food to eat right and i'd say why don't why didn't you get like a camry and she said because i'm not an animal and it was like that was her in a nutshell but i didn't understand that it was really connected to love is materialism. It's these gifts. That's what her makeup was.

And so now she's in Southampton living in a guest house of someone because she can't afford anything but a guest house. And she takes this job seating people at a comedy club because my parents owned a restaurant and the the bartender left and he became an owner of comedy clubs and then he was tim allen's manager and drew carey and he became very successful but at that time he had just started opening up some comedy clubs. And I always thought, how much could they have paid her? I mean, what do you get paid in 1983 to seat people for a few hours? It's just at night. It's not even like a full-time job. And then I thought,

she must have done it because she knew I wanted to see that world. Consciously or unconsciously, because you knew I wanted to see that world. Right. Consciously or unconsciously, it was almost the most important moment in my life that my mom took that. And so for one summer, I could go to every show all summer, go see Paul Provenza and Jay Leno

and all of these people. And someone showed me, there was some pictures of the club and I literally found a picture of a show that I was at and it was Paul Provenza and he had taken a giant umbrella and he was doing a picture of a show that I was at and it was Paul Provenza and he had taken a giant umbrella and he, he was doing an impression of E.T. in the woods, turning like an umbrella into a satellite dish. And I was like, I was in the back of the room when this photo was taken in 1983. And so I'm always very thankful to my mom and to my dad

who drove me to comedy clubs at night. I mean, when I was in high school, I started doing standup and he would drive me to Chuckles and Miniola and come and pick me up in the middle of the night. So they always, as much as they weren't getting along, both of them believed I could succeed. They never had any doubt. And I think that their belief that this was worth doing made me confident enough to take big risks. That's really beautiful. You know, that's like what a gesture on your mom's part. And then that belief that your parents had in you, like this kid who knew very early on what he wanted to do,

what he was obsessed with. I mean, that could be a gift and a curse. That's something I'd be curious to ask you about, to have that conviction at such a young age about what you wanted to do with your life, but to have that support and not have parents trying to talk you out of it, or you should be a dentist or, you know, like that's the more typical, you know, especially with comedians, right? Like that's a tough road. But to have that, you know, to have that like vote of confidence in your parents. So when you reflect back on your life from where you sit right now, do you reflect back on it and think my life is a dream or I can't believe I'm here? Or do you feel some sense of

like inevitability or pre-doctrine? Yeah, of course I'm here. I deserve to be here. My parents believed in me. I had the conviction to do it. I worked hard. Yes, I own this spot. Like where does the confidence and the ego like crash into the neurosis and you know what I mean? Like what does that like stew look like?

Well, comedy was the only place that I ever felt really confident. It's the only place where I... And there was never a plan B. There was no plan B. Yeah. There's never a plan B. I just thought there's some place for me in this world.

Maybe I'll be a writer. Maybe I'll be a comedian. Maybe I'll act. Maybe I'll direct. I just knew there's got to be something. But, you know, back then there were 50 comedy clubs in the country and no one in my high school wanted to be in comedy. So I thought. And comedy is not, was not like it is now.

Not, not. You know, it's not, there's this industrial complex around comedy. There's no internet. Yeah, yeah, yeah. There's no podcast. I mean, now all the comedians are playing, you know, arenas. Then it was like just Steve Martin and there weren't that many clubs. And so it really felt like, oh, there's room for me in this world. It was accessible.

Yeah. And then no one else was interested in it. You know, so I thought I'm kind of lame in high school, but this thing that I'm interested in that no one else is interested in, I know it's cool, but no one here thinks it's cool. Even one of my friends said to me, at some point in the last 10 years,

I finally get what you were doing back then. Now? It took that long? Now I know why you were watching the Dinah Shore show every day and Merv Griffin. No one really got it, but that made me feel like, okay, there's a place for me in this space. And then I moved to LA and I met all the other people in comedy.

And suddenly I had all these friends who had basically lived the same life as me in their little town. There was no subreddit, though, where you guys could all like chat about like your weird obsession that no one else had. No, you'd have to show up at a comedy club and do open mic nights and you'd meet all the aspiring comedians. I used to start out, you know, I started out with people like Doug Benson and Andy Kindler and, you know, we would just go to the clubs every night. And then I met, you know, Adam Sandler and Rob Schneider and David Spade and Jim Carrey. And that was our world and our crew back then. And we all had the same dream and also the same path to do it, which is write jokes during the day, get on stage, see if they worked.

Every night, maybe that set will be a little bit better. And then maybe one night someone important will see you do it. And that was the whole path of comedy, which I love that it was that simple, like get funny, get noticed. And it seemed very fair. You know, none of us really had any advantage. It was just, we had to make Bud Friedman like us. So he'd put us on stage of the improv. And then if he did, maybe the tonight show would show up or maybe they'd put us on Evening of the Improv. And it was really fun. It was like running, you know, like a race with all your friends.

It happened, I mean, the way it appears, it looks like it all happened pretty quickly for you. I mean, you move out to L.A., you go to USC for a year, two years? Year and a half. Year and a half. Drop out, move in with Adam Sandler. Do you just met him at the comedy clubs or how did that happen? I met him at the comic strip one day and then he moved to LA and I met him when he first moved out to LA and he had just graduated NYU. And it's funny because I was at USC, my

parents couldn't afford my tuition. I wasn't doing well because I got there when I was 17 and I was in over my head and I was very immature and creatively, I hadn't even begun to understand anything. And then I went on the dating game and I won. So they said, you have to go on this trip to Acapulco, which happened in December during like the last two weeks of finals. And I couldn't afford to go to school anymore. I was tired of begging my parents to try to figure out how to get the tuition. So I just went to Acapulco going to college. I just was like, just bailed so hard on the whole thing.

What was the impulse to go on the dating show though? Do you just went and stood in that line, like by the studio or how does it, you know, like back then, just something fun to do. I think we were all scouted that the shows like that would want comedians, young comedians. And I wasn't a good comedian at that point,

but they just wanted people who were comfortable with themselves on those shows. And, but that's how I felt at the time. Like this is not working here at school and I can't afford it. And everyone here seems way better at me than this, than I am. And so I did that and said, okay, I'm just going to focus full time on standup. And then, you know, a couple years later, I met Adam. And, you know, we were doing the same thing, just trying to figure out how to be funnier. Yeah. It was an interesting time. I feel like that period was an inflection point in comedy and how the entertainment industry sort of interfaced with comedy.

in comedy and how the entertainment industry sort of interfaced with comedy in a similar way to, you think of these like places and periods of time that are special, like Seattle in 1992, or like what would have been like to live in downtown New York when David Byrne was, you know, like, like where, you know, there's like a certain energy, you know, something's happening that's interesting. And did you have a sensibility like, oh, this is like, there's something cool going on that like contemporaneously with this community and kind of culture at large.

And that's meeting up with like my obsession that's creating a potential energy. Or were you just like, I don't care. I'm here. I love this stuff. I'm just meeting these people and trying to work it out. I think somewhere in me was the dream of having a community like Saturday Night Live always felt like a community. Like, oh, they're all friends. I mean, maybe they weren't. But in your head, you'd watch the show or you'd see Monty Python or Second City TV and they had these groups.

And so the idea of finding your people and working you know, working in the thing that you love was very appealing to me. I don't know if at the time we really understood how well so many people were going to do. Looking back, it seems kind of crazy. Rob Schneider lived across the street from me and Adam and down the street was David Spade and over the hill, you know, Jim Carrey, who was ahead of us by a bunch of years, but, you know, was just coming back to stand up after having a movie and a TV show not do well. And he was trying to figure out who he was as a creative voice. You know, these were the people that we were around. And then, you know, one by one, people got these opportunities and then people did really well.

And it was so fun. I mean, we, me and Adam look back on it and we just talk about like, it was the greatest time ever. We're very nostalgic about it. I mean, we'll,

we'll talk on the phone and go, Oh, I remember when we went to red lobster that time. We were so excited we could afford red lobster. So there's those videos of him crank calling people from that apartment. That is what our life was like. We didn't have jobs.

So way too much time was spent doing goofy things like making phony phone calls because we didn't have an outlet for our creativity. And Adam had so much chi, he had so much energy to be funny. So he would be funny with you would he'd be funny with you he'd be funny with anyone around because it was just there yeah and there had to be a sense of inevitability with him though like everybody must have known like there's just there were certain people you just

knew thought this is unlimited what could happen here and it hasn't happened much since then, but certainly at the time, Adam and Jim Carrey, at least in my mind, and in a lot of people's minds, were going to be the biggest stars in the world. Meteors, yeah. Even when they were bombing, even when it wasn't going well, you would just see them up there and go, there's

something magical in what they're doing and their personality and their charisma. And they're also, too, the hardest working people of everyone. They did outwork everybody. I knew that about Carrie. I didn't know that about Adam Sandler, though. I mean, Adam was writing screenplays for himself immediately before he had any jobs, before he even had a decent job when he was just happy to get a commercial. He was writing a screenplay with my friend Joel Madison who lived down the street.

I mean, there was a sense of I need to learn how to do this. And so, and a bunch of us did that. I wrote a pilot. No one really wanted me to write a pilot. We just started writing. We're like, I think we need to learn how to write. And we saw some people succeed around us like Jim Carrey with Ace Ventura. And we noticed, oh, Jim and Tom Shady, I think we need to learn how to write. And we saw some people succeed around us, like Jim Carrey with Ace Ventura. And we noticed, oh, Jim and Tom Shady,

I found this script and they rewrote it. And they created an opportunity for themselves. They didn't wait to get cast. Yeah, and you're like, I know these guys. This is doable. Yeah, you have to, it's what I preach to everyone. Like, you're gonna, you have, most of the time you have to write your future.

And you have to show people what you do. So when I worked with, you know, Jason Siegel, and he talks about it all the time. I just, you know, he, this becomes like a story he tells, but it is true. I said, you know, you're a weird guy. You're funny and you're super unique. And people aren't just going to hand you a script that captures that. You need to write it. And then he wrote Forgetting Sarah Marshall. It was the first screenplay he ever wrote yeah but it

was so true to him and he understood himself in a way that nobody else ever could have and so we all were trying to figure out how to do that right um the community piece seems to loom large for you like everything that you that you've done and your best work is all about this sort of esprit de corps and trying to kind of recapture what it was like living with Adam in that apartment, you know, like just having a lot of cool, funny people around all the time.

And, you know, the sort of lore, the mythos of Saturday Night Live is that that's what that is, right? So, you know, it is, you would have fit in well with that, I think, as a writer. Oh, yeah. But short of that, like, you recreating that in other ways. Yeah, I mean, Adam, you know, one day Adam just says, I'm going to Chicago to audition for Saturday Night Live.

Uh-huh. He didn't, like, do characters. They just saw him do stand-up. And then afterwards, a few days later, he's like, yeah, I'm leaving. So suddenly I'm in the apartment by myself. That era is over. Yeah, that era is over. I'm in the house.

Do I move out? Do I stay in this apartment? And I kept paying rent for a while. And then slowly I was like, I guess I should leave. I live alone. He's not coming back. I talked to him yesterday because he left his wallet. On the Mark Twain Awards, I showed his driver's license because he literally

left his driver's license and his fake ID that he had when he was a kid. But yesterday, I was just going through some stuff, and I found his wallet, which had a receipt from Ralph's supermarket. And I just looked at it, because this is what Adam just bought, his groceries. And it was literally chocolate pudding and frosted flakes it was the most you still have this yeah I just I just because I always thought it was funny that he left his wallet not only did he leave his fake ID I have his fake ID is that he never asked if it was there he didn didn't just leave it. He never said, did I leave my wallet? I mean, that's how forward thinking

he was. He just moved to a new city with no ID and started his new life. Never looked back at all. Left most of his clothes. So then we would all help each other and try to help Adam write

sketches and then hope that one day we could get hired. And some of us did get hired. Tim Herlihy, who wrote most of Adam's movies with Adam, who is as funny as anybody ever, he got a job there. He was a lawyer and he left to write for Saturday Night Live. He was Adam's roommate in college. And then I had a packet and I was trying to get in. I just never got in. And then Jim, I was helping Jim write some sketches for Living Color. And then I did a meeting to try to get a job there. I couldn't get a job there. So then I met Ben Stiller and we created the Ben Stiller show.

And that's how I got into the sketch show because I couldn't get a staff job. And then just through just this weird moment where I bumped into Ben Stiller who I didn't know, but people were interested in him doing a sketch show. And we just thought of an idea for it. And two weeks later, we sold it. People thought that we were friends forever. We had met two weeks before wow and so without really any useful experience you know i was right helping ben right and that really you know sort of kicks off you and like everything that follows you know that show how many seasons did that go it didn't go very long right one or two oh only half a 13 episode yeah you, up against 60 minutes. Uh-huh. And all the commercials

that we shot, we wrote all these commercials was Ben playing an agent and he was talking to different celebrities in the different commercials and telling them not to go on

the Ben Stiller show because it's definitely going to get canceled because it's up against 60 minutes. I mean, our ad campaign was predicting our cancellation

which followed soon after. But that's where, you know, we worked with Bob Odenkirk and Andy Dick and Janine Groffalo. And that's really where I learned most of the first stuff that I needed to learn how to do this was from Ben, who had already done a sketch show for MTV and was brilliant and had a real vision about what he wanted comedy to look like. He wanted to do these cinematic sketches. It's interesting to see what he's doing now. I mean, you know, with Severance, like, you know, in your deck for something that he, you know, he would be interested in doing, like, so cinematic, so weird, and kind of heavy on the drama,

and you know, Dannemora, like these serious, you know, cinematic shows that he's working on. No, he's really fulfilling all the potential that he had, because back then, he was developing Reality Bites, and Danny DeVito was one of the producers, and he said, you know, you're doing this sketch show. You should really go nuts with the camera

and really learn how to be a director. And then Ben did. He did these sketches like this T.J.O. Pooter Toots Twilight Zone type episode with David Crossroad, and he pushed himself, and now, you know, he's like Sidney Lumet or Kubrick. I know, it's crazy. I mean, you could see Bill Hader doing that, too, with the stuff that he's uh like cindy lamad or i know it's crazy i mean you could see bill hater doing that too with the stuff that he's doing with barry you know you can see that trajectory and we always say to people hey if you have your own show really

push to direct it because it's not impossible to do you could really learn how to be a great director aziz anzari directed a lot of Masters of None and has become an amazing director. And Amy Schumer's done a lot of directing and is great. So I think that's what we all look for, opportunities to figure out how to do that next step. I learned at the Larry Sanders show, Gary let me direct an episode.

And then when we did Freaks and Geeks is when I really started doing a bunch of it. I want to talk about Gary. But, you know, in looking at your IMDb, I mean, it's, you know, it's 100 miles long. There's so many movies. We can't talk about all your movies. what jumps out at me is this period between around 2004 to 2015, where it's just an insane amount of output, like just an incredible number of-

It's a nervous breakdown. I mean, how many movies, like, you know, 15 movies or something, you know, like just TV shows, movies, producer, writer, director, et cetera. And I can't help but think, despite it being like just an absolute tear, that there has to be some level of like obsessive workaholism in that. Like, what was your life like for that 10-year period where you were hitting your stride and like just the output was like beyond? You know, I'm only beginning now to have any perspective about it.

I do think that when you're younger, you have a ridiculous amount of belief in yourself that is completely unwarranted. And I think it's almost in your genetic makeup to take risks and to leap in. And when I look back, I think, yeah, I mean, there was a moment of feeling like we were all in a crazy groove, but also being very collaborative with each other. We were all reading each other's scripts and giving notes and going to table reads. And, you know, there was a,

there really was a community there. So if there was a table read, we all would go. And you would get notes from everybody. And I remember the 40-year-old virgin table read, and Adam McKay was there. And he's like, you know, when they're talking, maybe they should all be like hitting each other with fluorescent lights. I used to do that when I worked at this place. And you put it in, or Gary Shanling would come to the table read and give remarkable notes way deeper than we knew how to do.

And, you know, he would tell us what the core emotional ideas were that we needed to pay attention to. And I recently found in Gary's stuff the script for The 40-Year-Old Virgin with Gary's notes all throughout. So he called me with his notes, but I found the actual script. And he said, you know, this is about love. This is about the fact that he falls in love. And because he's in love, his sex is better than all of his friends' sex. Right. And he's like, you have to find a way to show that.

And I didn't know how to do it because I'm like, I can't end it with just like the greatest sex scene of all time. But as a friend, we were all there for each other. And a lot of ways, you know, still are, but more, you know, distant because people have their own worlds and new people they work with. That all happened in the normal, natural way. But for a while, almost like a music scene, everyone was in Seattle. Yeah.

And I think it helped all of us. Seth and Evan were producers in addition to Seth acting in the movies. So they would be there for all the punch-ups and all the creative conversations. In the movies. So they would be there for all the punch-ups and all the creative conversations. And I produced movies for a lot of people. And then friends who had nothing to do with it would come and just pitch and help. I remember we did a Pineapple Express table read and people had such incredible notes. read and people had such incredible notes uh one friend of ours was like this is about the fact that seth rogan doesn't know if he wants to be friends with his dealer but his dealer really

wants to be friends with him and it was in there but we didn't really know that that's what it was about and as soon as someone unlocks like the whole movie yeah then suddenly the whole movie was funny because this one friend said, this is what you just wrote. And so it was definitely a really special time. And I think, you know, I had two young daughters and, you know, I was working and Leslie was working. But I also made a point of trying to shoot almost all of it in town, sometimes down the street. One movie we shot on our block. So there was a real intention to not be the dad that disappears.

So we shot Walk Hard in town and Knocked Up and 40 Old Virgin and Funny People. I mean, people don't usually shoot movies in L.A. because it's cheaper out of town. I mean, people don't usually shoot movies in LA because it's cheaper out of town. And whatever power we had, we used a lot of it to stay in LA and be normal human beings. Yeah, it's interesting. I mean, you know, a typical perspective on Hollywood is, you know, cutthroat. Everybody's stabbing each other in the back. Everybody's lying to you.

They're telling you what they want to hear. It's like this sort of like a succession sort of situation where you can't trust anybody, everybody's screwing around on their partners and spouses and all of that. And you're a guy who's making tons of movies and TV shows, living a pretty traditional family, like child of divorce, clearly went into your marriage with a commitment to do it differently, and you've been with your wife forever, and you have two daughters that, you know, it appears

that you have great relationships with, and you've been able to have like a, you know, a really kind of conventional family upbringing in an insane town while doing tons of work with a perspective that, you know, the pie is unlimited. Like, the best idea wins. Let's do this as a community, as a family. Bring more people in. Like, that is, you know, that sort of, like, camaraderie team approach,

I think, would surprise people who have, like, a projected idea of what it's like to make a movie in Hollywood. Everybody does it differently. This came organically out of Freaks and Geeks and Undeclared, where we met all these people, the shows were canceled, but we all felt like we haven't really tapped this. And we knew that so many of the people involved were special.

And not just the actors, the production designer, Jeff Sage, who did Undeclared and Freaks and Geeks, did tons of movies with us and still does. And just people in all positions. Russ Alsabrook, our DP on Freaks and Geeks, did Forgetting Sarah Marshall and did Superbad. And so we just wanted to keep working together. Right. And so... The traveling circus that working together. Right. And so...

The traveling circus that doesn't leave town. Yeah, and I encourage everyone to write and oddly they did. And so... But when you look at the cast of Freaks and Geeks and Undeclared, obviously you have this keen eye for emerging talent or who would be good or you see Lena.

I know you came into that project later and, you know, keeping those people close and sort of fostering their careers and believing in them in a way that, you know, I can't help but think was your relationship with Gary Shandling, right? Like this idea, you meet him very young. He gives you this job to write jokes for the, it was the Grammys, right? Was that the first thing? And he plays this incredibly powerful role in your life as like a mentor, like just a force of nature.

So talk a little bit about, like I'm interested in the kind of mentorship piece and how you think about returning the incredible, you know, sort of favor that he did for you with all the young people that you work with? Well, I met Gary doing standup with him at the Comedy Magic Club and my manager, Jimmy Miller was like, Hey Gary, you should use, use Judd to write you some jokes. And Gary didn't seem to show any interest. And then a few months later I got a call, he's hosting the Grammys and he needs jokes. And I was at the improv in Tempe, Arizona, and I just stayed up all night and wrote like

a hundred jokes. I just thought, I need to write enough jokes so I'm indispensable to him. And in the morning, we went through the jokes on the phone and we just got along great. He rewrote every single joke, but I think I was presenting ideas that lit him up. So here's the premise, here's a setup, and then he would just top the punchline every single time. But I think it really worked for him. And I understood music and what all the issues were.

He didn't really know that much about music. And then he invited me to go to the show and to be there for rehearsals and be on stage during the show, giving him jokes. And then we became very close friends. And then that becomes like, you know, a fantasy come true. I interviewed him when I was in high school. Right.

After he hosted The Tonight Show for the first time before he ever did a TV show. And the fact that he would let me hang around with him and suddenly, like, I'd go over his house and have dinner with him and his girlfriend Linda, and we'd watch TV, and then he was writing the Larry Sanders show, and he would let me read the drafts,

and he was casting it, and he would show me tapes, and I would open up for him on the road sometimes. I opened up when he shot his HBO special, and there was a part of me that's like, why is this guy so nice to me? And as someone who came from a divorce, it was very impactful for me because it's someone that had my interest,

was the best in the world at it, who wanted to teach me. And created a home for you. Yeah, it was very kind. As a young person. Yeah. And, you know, became just a really close, close friend. And I tried to come through for him.

So if he needed writing done, I really worked hard. But I also think I understood him. And I think some people didn't understand him. I think he was a very unique, neurotic person. And for whatever reason, probably just having similarities in complicated moms, something like that. I just spoke his language. I wasn't anywhere near as talented as him. I don't think I was providing him with something that came close to what he could do at that time. But I was a good hang and I was a good sounding board and I helped him stir the pot

and if he said something funny, I wrote it down and wouldn't lose it. And so that's a big- That's an underrated skill probably. Oh, that's a big skill when you're with funny people because they're funny all day long but they let it all disappear into the ether.

So if you're the person that goes, remember you said that thing and it's a great joke, that's a real gift. And the thing about Gary is he continued to do that. So I did the sketch show with Ben. I asked him if he would be on the pilot

doing a cameo, and he said yes, which I think is part of the reason why he got picked up. Him and Roseanne and Tom were in the pilot, and it made us look like we really were connected when we really didn't know that many people.

We just got everyone we knew on the pilot. Then he hosted an episode of the Stiller Show or was the guest on one of the shows. And at the same time, he was doing the Larry Sanders show, and that's how he met Janine Garofalo because I was showing him tapes of her, and then he put her on the Larry Sanders show. And that's how he, he mentioned in Groffalo because I was showing him tapes of her and then he put her on the Larry Sanders show. Yeah. And then Bob Odenkirk was on the Larry Sanders show. So there was a lot of cross pollination happening. And then he,

then when my show got canceled, he said, why don't you come work for me? He's like, you're going to learn, you'll learn a lot. And he, and I always say, he didn't, he didn't say, you're going to be so helpful to me. He said, you're going to learn a lot. And I always say he didn't say, you're going to be so helpful to me. He said, you're going to learn a lot. But over the course of five or six years, I got better. And then he asked me to direct and he asked me to run the show with Adam Resnick the last season. And so he continued to give me opportunities and believe in the next stage of my career. He didn't ask anyone else to direct the show that wrote for the show.

When I look back at that now, that's crazy because they were some of the great comedy writers of all time there. But he had some instinct that I could do it. And then when I started directing elsewhere, he'd read the script, he'd look at the cuts. I mean, it's harder now honestly without him

I have to really imagine that I'm talking to him and I just finished a script and I really thought like okay this is just write like it's an episode of the Larry Sanders show just think

just put it through the Gary filter right be tough on it the way Gary would be ask the questions Gary would ask or go back and read his journals about how he thought about his own work

yeah and what are these stories really about what own work yeah and what what is it what are these stories really about what what kind of lessons are in there because i to gary underneath the satire was him exposing all the ways people have trouble connecting and all the masks we wear and and how hard it is to be close to people when you're insecure and broken or when you're you're insecure and broken or when you're very ambitious. And I try to get his, you know, his voice in my head and I can. You know, in most situations, if I think about what Gary would say, I usually think I'm pretty close. Yeah. I love the documentary that you made about him. And I think he was, you know, on the one hand, like in terms

of his work, like so pioneering, not just in how he thought about stand-up and the evolution of how he kind of arrived at his style, which was to be himself and to be authentic and to try to find those specific things that he was going through that would connect with the universal that obviously is influential in your work, but also reinventing and re-imagining the form of television in that original sitcom, like it's Gary Shandling's show or whatever, where he was breaking the fourth wall. And then the show that you worked on with him over the years, like, you know, does Curb Your Enthusiasm happen without that? Like the ripple effect of like him sort of pushing the envelope of what television could be,

I think is probably underestimated, not to you, but to maybe a lot of people. And then beyond that, just the impact that he had on people personally, obviously like this hugely important figure for you, but you're not alone. Like he impacted a lot of people. Like when he, I mean, it was like, you know,

all of Hollywood, you know, there were so many people who have so many stories about how he touched them in really meaningful ways with his, you know, desire to be connected and to be helpful and to be this sort of mentor and the undercurrent of kind of spirituality that he, you know, brought to his work and to other people that I guess began when he had this near-death experience in this car accident when he was young. Yeah, he got into

a fender bender and he got out to look at the damage and a car hit one of the cars in the fender bender and he got crushed between the two cars and had to have his gallbladder removed. And he had one of those stories where he said, during the operation, I looked down and I saw everything that was happening and there was a white light and I walked to it and they said, do you want to continue living Gary Shandling's life?

And he said yes. And then the next day he could say what happened in the room and as neurotic as he was he didn't seem to have a fear of death that's what is so fascinating about gary because he's still more afraid of commitment than death yeah really right like afraid of engulfment and afraid of losing his freedom um afraid of being with the wrong person by accident. And yet, you know, there were journals where he was heading into, you know, life-threatening surgeries. And he's just very courageous. And, you know, he writes in his journal, if you live another year, be grateful.

If you live another day, be grateful. If you live another day, be grateful. And that's what I love about the documentary because Gary on some levels is such a mess. The beauty of someone like him working so hard to understand himself, to grow, and then to get to a place of just wanting to be grateful and to give to other people. On another page in his journal, it said, give with no hope of getting anything in return.

And those were things that he was writing to himself to try to make himself believe them and to try to live them. But just the fact that he was trying and he did walk the walk in a lot of ways where he was giving to me and to a lot of people and he, you know, maybe in relationships, he never quite figured that out. But he was really trying and then, you know, he got sick and I think he was diminished in some ways near the end of his life and had some problems. But when I went through all the emails from him after he died, every single time I asked him if he could help me with something, he said, yes. Can you go to this thing? Yes. And it was literally

a hundred times. Wow. Every single time. What time? And that's the thing as a mentor I took from him. I tried to take both from the bad stuff, like don't do that or try not to torture yourself in that way. And I tried to learn from the great things that he did. So for me, in mentoring people, I don't even think I ever thought about it other than it just seemed like that's what you do. thought about it other than it just seemed like that's what you do. It's like if you're like a baby and you know to breastfeed and then you have a baby and you know, okay, now I'm the breastfeeder. Like, I guess that's how it works, right? Like people help me and now it's my job to collaborate and help other people. And you know, the main reason I always do it and did it is because I

like it. I just, I'm impressed with creative people. I love the collaboration. I love the friendship of it. Yeah. It's not like a noble effort. Yeah. Like being a supporter feels like that's your design naturally. Yeah.

It's not like you're, you have to force yourself to wear that costume. And it's not like, isn't it so great that I'm doing this or aren't I a great person for doing this? Cause I don't think it really works that way. I think you're entering into collaboration. It's like starting a band with each person. And so you're like, oh, should I play drums on this one? You play guitar on that one. And that's really what it is. I'm giving as much

as I'm getting. Sometimes I'm getting more than I'm giving from the experience or the work. I'm playing a small role in the work. Maybe I'm just getting this thing made, but someone's doing all the creative work. Yeah. So each situation is very unique. Right. But is there, like when you're writing a script and you're thinking, what would Gary say or how would, what would his notes be? Do you think, what would Gary do in this situation when, you know, somebody calls me and says,

do you have, you know, 15 minutes where I can run an idea by some young, you know, writer or something? Yeah, you try to be generous with your time. Yeah. I mean, when you think about legacy, and this is a legacy-obsessed town, right? What are the projects that are going to live beyond you, et cetera. And then you reflect on Gary Shandling's legacy. I mean, his legacy is the impact, how he made people feel. I mean, he has this great body of work, but really what people talk about and revere about him is the time that he invested in all of these people out of the kindness of his heart. Absolutely. I mean, that is the main impact of his life. I mean, he inspired people.

And in the documentary, everyone at The Simpsons was like, It's Gary Shandling Show was where many of them started. Those writers. Yeah, exactly. And they said, like, he showed us how far you can go, how creative you can be. And it lit up their imaginations. You know, the other person that was a important mentor to me

was david milch who created deadwood and co-created nypd blue with steven bochco and he was another one that you know everybody talks i mean reveres him as a genius i mean it's ridiculous like the. Like the ultimate television writer. Yeah. And you watch Deadwood and it's a different kind of genius because sometimes you watch things and you think, I could do something in the universe of that. And when you watch Deadwood, you think there's no chance that me or anyone else on earth could do this. It's just on a completely different level. could do this. It's just on a completely different level. But David Milch has Alzheimer's now. And so it's been a long time, you know, since he found out and I go visit him. And, you know, one day I was talking to him and he said, we should write something together. And it's very emotional because he's far down that road.

Right. And I said, what would he write? And he said, something about someone in my situation. And I said, well, what would it be about? And he said, regrets. And I said, what would he regret? And he goes, failures of generosity. would he regret? And he goes, failures of generosity. And I literally, it was hard to not just start crying hard right there, but it was a reminder that that's really all that you're left

with, which is, you know, how did I treat people? How did I treat myself? Was I good to the people in my life? How could I have been better? You know, it was just a gift to even have that moment with him. And he's talked about that at other moments, which is that's his main concern is to be a giving person. And I think all of us as creative people, there's something so self-involved about it. And it takes a lot of your bandwidth. And you're always trying to figure out, how do I balance this? How do I be a good parent? How am I available to the people in my life while still doing this work, which just sucks so much

out of you? Right. Yeah. When I look at that decade period where you were a maniac, I'm sure you're thinking like, I'm creating all of these things and this is what my life will mean, right? Or if you're David Milch, he was, I mean, he's like a hard ass, right? Like he was a tough guy. Well, he, I mean, I never worked with him on those shows, but he definitely- Like a hard-boiled writer type dude. I mean, he taught at Yale, but he also had a lot of issues with addiction and gambling. And he was one of those people that would lay on the ground, there'd be a microphone on the ground, and he would dictate the show. People would wait around while he channeled the show. And he believed, he used to say, inspiration comes to prepared souls. And his whole thing was about that connection.

Can you open yourself up and be so present and available that the creativity comes? And to trust that. And I learned so much from him about that, to be in that place. Do you practice that when you pair that with Gary's passion for meditation and all? Does that like trickle down into the- It does.

Apatow daily routine? I try to understand it. I recently took a flow course. Stephen Kotler, who I'm sure you've had on, has these online programs about flow research, which I highly recommend. It was great. But I had this instinct like, oh, I'm too distracted.

I need to get my focus back. So I did this online course. So like breath work and stuff like that? It's just explaining where the distractions come from, how to prevent them, and how to get into a state of flow, and how to stay there for a while, and to know how to give yourself a break and get back to it, just to really understand how that works in your mind. And I've heard him on so many of the podcasts talking about it. I said, you know what, what if I just committed to doing this?

And I'd never done that in my whole life. And they said, and we have coaches who you can speak with, which I did. And it was, you know, it was very simple stuff, but the stuff you just don't do. And a lot of stuff that you've talked about in a lot of podcasts, you know, just wake up in the morning, don't check your phone. Just get your ass in the chair. Yeah. Tell everyone not to interrupt you for four hours.

Take a break every half an hour for five minutes, but don't go on your phone in the break. You know, just all the things interiorly and exteriorly, which will stop your creative flow. Like you can't necessarily manufacture a flow state, but you can create circumstances that make it

conducive. And being in that state is like the holy grail of a writer. It's like when Bob Dylan talks about a song just happened in 10 minutes. Well, that's what that is. Right. There are moments in your life where you can just see it.

Like the screenplay I just wrote, I took a hike. I never do that. I never take a hike. It's like rare. And so I said, I'm going to take a hike alone. And like 30 minutes in, like the entire movie just came to me. And then I took this class and then I wrote the movie. I mean, I hadn't written a movie alone in 10 years. I've been writing with other people because I got lonely. I got so bored of being alone. I said, this time I'm going to write it alone. I'm going to get used to being alone again.

And everything about the course completely worked. It was hilarious. I mean, I didn't— Did it make you mad that it worked? Well, sometimes I think, well, you you know should i have been doing more writing alone right i i really cherish those times with other people hike more and the work and the work but yes i should hike more and i do i do take like a 90 minute walk like four or five times a week but sometimes i listen to a podcast and sometimes i go i'm just going to do it in silence and see

what comes or you know one of the david mil things is to, you know, to just start writing. You know, he always says, you can't think yourself into writing, but you can write yourself into thinking. So just start and it'll just come. And so that was a real lesson for me. There are ways I could be better at this. That's why when you get back to self-help,

I'm always looking for something that will make me open up in some way, heal in some way, learn something that will make me more efficient. And sometimes I'm drowning in self-help because I just read and listen. Yeah, that creates its own paralysis. Yes, yeah. Because I'm a hoarder a bit. So, I'll listen to too much. But with this, I just said, okay, this is really simple. Just get your ass in the chair. And then amazement at it actually working. Yeah, because you're going, how creative am I? Do I have any jokes left in this brain?

And to see it happen was really rewarding and made me think, oh, maybe I could do that three more times this year. How do you balance the collaborative aspect of the creation and writing process versus that like ass in a chair alone at home? What is the daily, do you set it up with a schedule? Well, once the script is done, then I just send it to everybody and just go, what do you think? What do you think? And then at some point I'll sit alone or, you know, or with a writer's assistant and just rewrite it. And then I try to read it out loud and then, then I can watch it like a movie

and see if it works for me as a movie and then rewrite it, then read it out loud again. And then at some point, if someone will let me make it, we go into rehearsals and then it changes a lot once the actors bring their stuff into it. How do you know when you have an idea? I think I asked you this earlier, but like that, you know, it's like once you commit to an idea, there's a long road ahead, right? Is there like something, does something light up in your brain where you're like, this is it or this is the thing? Like, or is that an instinct? You have an instinct,

but then you just keep telling it to people. And so you're like... If they like it, it stays with you. It seemed funny, and it's just like a movie about a guy gets a girl pregnant, and he hangs out with those stone friends, and he's a nightmare, but she wants to see if maybe he could be a good boyfriend. And then you start showing the outline to some friends.

And you're looking for some reinforcement that you're not in a crazy place. And then at some point, you think, am I really going to do this? Okay, maybe I'll write five pages. Let me just see if it comes to life. And then usually you go, oh, yeah, this seems funny. Does it start generally with a conceit for you or with a person, like a character? Like, oh, this person, what would this person, what adventure would this guy go on? I mean, each time is different, but I like working from some very passionate idea or truthful idea you know when leslie and i uh

you know we're at the hospital having our second uh our second child just everything went wrong other than she's beautiful and healthy but like the doctor was mean the doctor was mean the other doctor just didn't show up just left town to go to a bar mitzvah. And I just took notes that night. I was like, this is so crazy how weird this night is. So in the back of my head, I'm like, there's probably a way to tell this story. And then you back into it. Eventually, with Pete Davidson, with the King of Staten Island, we had worked on a different idea for a while. And then usually you just say,

what should we really be writing about? And then it just comes out. Like, are you willing to explore what we probably should explore? And Pete was. And so then we started writing that version. Yeah, yeah, yeah. It's interesting.

Like knowing when, you know, it's time to pull the thread a little bit further versus moving on. And it's really hard to start a script for me because I think one of the things I always have to get over is by writing, I'm finding out if I'm terrible. So it's very easy to not write because if I don't write, I won't find out if I'm bad.

Do you still go to war with yourself in that way, though? I think so. I think it's subtle, but it's just because there's a critical voice that you are always wrestling with that basically says, just don't do it. Just go watch TV. Like, you don't have to suffer through this. go watch TV. Like you don't have to suffer through this. And to try to turn it into a pleasurable experience, I'm still almost in hyperventilation or anxiety most of the time I'm actually writing. I'm just, my breath gets short. I'm so nervous and I'm trying to like open a spigot and I have to relax to let it come out. But there's just a weird part of me that's just scared, scared it's going to be bad, scared I'm going to.

That like Steven Pressfield resistance. Exactly. War of art kind of thing. It's totally that. Yeah. And that's what the flow thing helped me with, which is, you know, I can toss it all. I don't have to. Lowering the stakes.

I can throw out all the work today. Just trust it might be, there might be something good. I can toss it all. I don't have to, I can throw out all the, I can throw out all the work today. Just, just trust it might be, there might be something good. Like if you, I wrote this script kind of fast and I just said, I'm going to write straight through to the end. I'm not even going to reread yesterday's pages

until I get to the end. And then I got to the end and then I started reading it and I was like, I don't even remember writing almost anything. Like I remember the story, but the language and the jokes and I was really pleasantly surprised by it but I

I just forced myself to to just go to you know that part of my imagination and just followed wherever it led me and that's not how I always wrote I think I was more methodical and I just thought maybe I'll just kind of

you know go into the trance and see yeah what make it sort of like morning pages no stakes exactly and I did those I mean the Julie Cameron artist way you know I did that in the early 90s yeah I think I started that in 90 when did that book come out 97 98 I mean I could have done that in the, when did that book come out? 97, 98. I mean, I could have done that in the. No, it was earlier. No, no, because I did it early 90s. Yeah, yeah, yeah, you're right, yeah.

I could have even done it late 80s. But, you know, so that idea of morning pages to just write, don't judge, just whatever comes out, it doesn't matter. doesn't matter, which was also a David Milch exercise where he said to get your creative juices going for two weeks, right? For 20 minutes a day, print it and then tear it up just to get used to your brain being creative. And like the Zen Buddhist sand mandala. Exactly. But he said, you'll open up that part of your brain and it'll fire up. And I'd never done that, but I understand what he's talking about. Just not being precious, not being too attached. life is not making a baby then one day like this machine builds itself and you have a baby well there's a part of your brain or your mind that you could turn on and it builds itself to be creative yeah if you just start doing it there's something about consistency and momentum also

yes build a little momentum and then you're kind of then suddenly there's something real about it and then you're like oh this is a real thing yeah real about it, and then you're like, oh, this is a real thing. Yeah. And I always think, if I'm on page 60, I can finish it in a weekend. Wow. I don't always do it in a weekend, but I think if I get to 60, I could write 20 pages a day for two days and have a really shitty draft, and then I'll fix it up. How often do people ask you about when you're going to write This Is 50? People have been asking because it's been on Netflix and I have an idea for it.

Oh, you do? And so, you know, I'd have to sit down and do it, which I've thought about maybe trying to do that before I shoot the next movie to take a few months and write that and try to do that in a year or so. You're leaving soon? Are you going to work on something? Like you're leaving town to go work or is that just? Oh, I'm going to London. My daughter is in Cabaret in the West End. So that's what you do when your kids move out is you just go to where they are and just stalk them.

We're in your office right now. We're in the middle of a strike. Yes. You've shared thoughts and opinions on what's going on right now. But maybe you could kind of explain the conflict that's happening right now between the Writers Guild and the industry at large. between the Writers Guild and the industry at large? Well, when technology changes, the way people get paid needs to change.

But what is tricky about it is, for this industry, it really only works if the writers can survive. So if the way people are paid makes it so that writers can't survive, then the writers won't be writers or they'll disappear. And the way that writers survive gig to gig is that in between gigs, they get paid for the reruns of previous work. And when that's not fair, writers can eat. And then, you know, a lot of these shows, they're not 22 episodes anymore. They're six or they're eight.

So right there, a lot of people are not making what they used to make because that means you have to get two jobs a year or three jobs. And it never times out that you could fill your year for most writers.

And it's a big problem and it only gets solved because the streamers want the writers to be solid. They have to have the intention because if the writers aren't working and getting residuals, money doesn't go into their health plans and their pension plans. And then suddenly none of the writers have healthcare or the actors have healthcare. So hopefully they'll figure it out. And it's an exacerbation of what was already lopsided in favor of the studios versus the writers. The writers have always been

sort of shortchanged. It appears like in this equation of being equitably treated. And it's a little bit different whether you're talking about movies or TV. Like in movies, there was always home video and DVD and all these ancillary markets, foreign territories, et cetera. So, all these revenue streams were kind of percolating in over time. And then in television, which heralds the writer a little bit better, especially on big shows than it does in movies, you have these showrunners. It seems like there's a little, I'm interested in this, like there are like a lot of these really big showrunners, right, who have massive deals with streamers

and networks and et cetera. And then you have legions of writers who are, you know, semi-employed, sometimes employed, et cetera. At some point, what is the political heft of those showrunners who are like, they can wait it out. They're getting paid plenty of money to say, you know, enough's enough. We got to get back to work. That's usually how it ends. I mean, Mike White's over in Thailand right now, sitting around, you know,

interrupted in the middle of White Lotus. At some point, HBO's got to go, we got to get this show made. Well, I mean, I think people start noticing that they're not getting anything but reality shows. And I think it probably affects stock prices at some point when you go, Stranger Things isn't coming anytime soon now. And a lot of these programs that everyone loves and wait for, they're not in production. So you hope that this gets resolved before people suffer a lot. And the thing that

always frustrates me is whatever the solution is, they could have thought of it three months ago. There's nothing- But you had said, and I think you're right, like they already know. They already know. They already know what they're going to settle for. Yeah, they know their numbers. And so a lot of people suffer. A lot of the support people in the community, the restaurants, the other studios, and, you know, people on the cruise suffer. And they really don't need to. What the end result of this will be will not be shocking.

And that's what the drag of the whole thing is because it really is unnecessary. If they wanted to solve it, they definitely could have. And that's what I think is awful. But it is an enormous amount of companies who have to agree on the solution. And some of these companies, they're not really entertainment companies. You know, they're computer companies

that have a little tiny entertainment business to them. Yeah. So I think it's much more complicated. And then they all say, oh, we're suffering, we're suffering. But then all the heads of the companies are making so much money. And you're like, well, if you're getting paid that much, I think your business is working. You can't say the business isn't working if you could justify your salary. So if the business is working, then we're doing a good job too, but we're not actually being paid for the job that we're doing. You know, it's also about creativity. You know,

what people don't like to talk much about is like all the metadata leads you to a very bland place. They know exactly what people are watching, how long they're watching, when they tune out, they use all of that to decide what kind of stories they're going to greenlight. The great stuff is the unexpected stuff. You can't use an algorithm to make Taxi Driver. They're never going to ask you to do Taxi Driver. They're never going to ask you to do Raging Bull. They're always going to ask you to do a very middle-of-the-road action film.

And that's a big problem because then they go, all right, well, now we'll only use the biggest stars in the world and we'll pay them $35, $40 million to be in it, which is fine for those to exist. But when you put all of your energy into those types of movies, then you're not really looking to make moonlight. You're not looking to break ground. And so they don't trust their own innovation and creativity.

They really only trust, more than ever, a super famous worldwide star to attract subscribers. So it's the worst version of bean counting. And it took a few years for it to happen. But now they have so much information, they're like, yeah, people don't like this type of movie. But if you were to pitch Midnight Cowboy,

nothing about their metadata would say, you know, this is what the world wants. They really want this movie about these hustlers in New York. They would never ever make it. And that, I think, is the tragedy of all of this, which is it's so money-driven. And it wasn't in the beginning when the streaming started.

Some of the appeal was we're taking crazy chances, and a lot of that is beginning to disappear. Yeah, that's gone. And it's not even about how good is the movie or how many people are watching that particular piece of content. What it's really about is, is this driving subscribers, new subscribers to come? And as they penetrate, you know, North America and what, blah, blah, blah, and they're moving into all these other parts of the world, it becomes about creating for those audiences to tap into that subscriber base. And it has nothing to do with storytelling necessarily. It's detached in a certain way. And then on top of that, you have an industry at large that's

become so conglomerized and sort of superhero-ified. How do you think about just that, beyond the streamer aspect of it, just the way that the movie theaters operate in terms of the kind of movies that people go to the movies to see how that's changed and evolved over time and how you fit in as a comedy producer, writer, director. I just think you need all of it. It's just what are the proportions? We love action movies. We love sci-fi. We love horror movies. We love romantic comedies and comedies but if it used to be 25 percent comedies and it goes down to four percent yeah we pay a price for

that i mean if you look at the the world right now because there's not an enormous amount of support from the studios for comedies and a lot of the big comedy stars aren't in the theaters anymore, we almost don't have the next generation of comedy stars. And then it becomes something that you can't stop because we haven't trained the audience to watch comedies and we haven't introduced them to people who become the next Kristen Wiig or Sandler. And so, you know, that funk happens.

And then people are like, do we even need it? And that's the problem because if you notice on all streamers, everything leads to like murder. True crime. True crime, kids being abused, women being abused. And they get huge numbers for that. So you go, wow, there's a lot of that on there. Right, a lot of serial killer docu-style stuff. It's very, like, if it bleeds, it leads.

Yeah. Becomes such an enormous part of it. Because I don't think that everyone is focused enough on, let's do something good that we're all proud of. Just because people would watch a lot of that, do we have to make that much of it? And I think the stock market and the financial forces say, yes, yes, you're not allowed to try to make these other movies.

You're not allowed to try to make Boogie Nights. other movies. You're not allowed to try to make boogie nights. You need to stay mainly on the topics that our metadata says people like. And that's a natural part of business,

but it's way worse than it used to be. It used to be, you know, there was always the popcorn movies and then challenging movies, but when streamers lose interest in independent film and they they think well we're not getting enough viewers and it's not in the theaters it can completely disappear uh that and that part's really scary so what is the antidote to that well like for me as a fan of all the streamers and i work with all the streamers i just think the mistake that they're making is they want everything to be flashy so you'll get the streamer to see the show, right?

I want you to see this because it looks wild. But a lot of great stuff is more muted and it's subtler. And so you lose all of that. So for a TV show, they want a big, loud show. They always say, we want it to be sticky. That's what they'll say. And then they also think that the amount of people watching it generally goes down year to year and they don't really need more

than two or three seasons of it so the audience doesn't have that relationship and they also don't trust the streamers because they think well i don't want to fall in love with this show because i'm not going to get six seasons out of it i'm not going to get that relationship and so what i think everyone should do is like, why don't you just make it so your streamer has good stuff? And it doesn't have to be like everything conquers the world. There should be things on streamers that don't make economic sense. And I think in the old days,

someone like Brandon Tartikoff would go, I believe in cheers. I'm just not going to cancel it. I believe in Seinfeld. And that would happen. Shows sometimes took two, three years to find their audience. And those are the shows that all the streamers want to re-air. Right.

Or all those shows that were believed in when they weren't doing great. And I think you should watch like a streamer and think, I bet you no one watches this show, but the head of the streamer loves it. That was what was great about some things on network TV. Like you knew like, oh, like even with movies, I know even from studio heads are like, I make this movie. So I'm allowed to make this one. I'll take the hit on this small one because I'm really proud of it. And we need more of that. Things that don't make economic sense.

And then we would love our streamers more because it would have a little more heartbeat to it. There's still a little bit of that though, isn't there? With prestige directors, they know the movies aren't going to make a lot of money. Maybe they'll even lose money, but they want to be in business with this person and perhaps there's Oscars attached to it

and that kind of thing. But it's almost like you need a new streaming service where the mission statement isn't growth necessarily. It's just like, let's just- Quality. Like a criterion collection for just cool shit that's new, you know? Yeah.

I mean, it feels like all these places just want to be not in the worst way but they just they just want to be walmart they just want to have everything on it so you never go to the other streamer yeah and as a result they lose some personality and everyone's spread too thin it's everyone has too much. You know, it takes people to help you with these things. And so, you know, how many people

know how to develop comedy? How many people know how to develop shows? How do you learn how to do it? Do you have enough time on one or two shows? Say you're covering

30 shows. Can you really learn how to do it versus if you just had three shows or four shows that you were responsible for as an executive? So there's all sorts of reasons why things get flattened out.

And all the people involved there, everyone is, you know, they're all good people. They're all smart and funny and interesting. It's just the system is so dominant and the people who control the levers of it, I don't know if enough of the time they're pushing for experimentation because that's how you get the Sopranos. That's how you get the Sets. Right, and you need to, you know, every once in a while

the Squid Game comes along to remind everyone like, oh, it's something really good that's brand new and completely out of the box. Beef. That gets people excited about, yeah, beef.

Beef is an amazing show. Yeah, yeah. Remarkable. But. That gets people excited about, yeah, Beef. Beef is an amazing show. Yeah, yeah. Remarkable. But we just need more of that, right? Like, how did that even happen? When I watch them, I'm like, how did this even happen? It's the craziest shit, that show. And White Lotus happened because there was a pandemic

and they needed a show. And Mike said, I have an idea. And they let him do it at a time when no one else really could get into production. And it wasn't meant to be more than a season. Yeah. And now it's the cornerstone of HBO. Yeah.

And so it's those weird flukes. So you have to create an environment for flukes. You have to let creative people really take big risks to have that reward. And so that's the danger of a system that really rewards what they perceive as successful because things can get a lot of viewers, but this is my new thought. You can have things that a lot of people watch, but it also doesn't mean they liked it. You know, they talk a lot about completion rate. Oh, well, they completed it. I complete a lot of shit I don't like. Are you a guy who's just going to see it through no matter what, or do you pull the ripcord like on episode two of something that's not? I tend to only pull the ripcord because my wife has advanced ahead of me. And then I'll come home and we're on episode two and she's like, I watched

five today. And I'm like- He's that little white line at the bottom. I watched five today. And I'm like. He's that little white line at the bottom. And then I can't find the time alone. So you watch the rest of the series. But I do think that's a big, you know, a big part of it, which is pride in the work above all, above the numbers. That's what people can feel.

You can feel someone at this place, wherever it is, they love this. You can feel the love of it and the passion for it. It's not just a placeholder. It's not feeling a need. You mentioned beef. Is there anything else that you've seen recently that you thought, this is really excellent and new and fresh? What else have I been watching? I mean, I'm mainly a documentary fan.

I do documentaries, but I just, everything in the world of documentary, I tend to watch, you know, series-wise. What did we watch? We watched Daisy and the Six. It was very good. We enjoyed that a lot. I haven't watched that yet. You know, Barry andwise. What did we watch? We watched Daisy and the Six. It was very good. We enjoyed that a lot. I haven't watched that yet.

You know, Barry and Succession are pretty remarkable. And it's sad that they're gone. That's two giant holes in television. My daughter's on the TV show Euphoria, which I think is a really special show. I mean, that is just a juggernaut and such an iconic cultural memento for that generation.

You know, obviously I have kids as well and they love it. I love watching Euphoria with them as rough as that can be. A lot to talk about. Yes, I know you've been asked about that. Like what's that like to have your daughter on that show? I mean, it's intense, but it's real. And I think it's cool to watch that show with teenagers and it opens up, you're meeting them where they live

and where they are. And I've just found that like the communication that you can have after that is, you know, really a unique thing. I think it's an amazing show. And I love what Sam Levinson did with it over the two seasons, because by the end of the second season, you realize what his whole point was. He really stuck the landing on the idea of those two seasons. I think I meet way too many adults

with kids who say, I can't do it. They'll watch one. And maybe the first one was too scary for most people because I think there's a fair amount of people who didn't get to the second one. And they really are missing out on something. I mean, it is a lot. It is a lot. I'm empathetic to that impulse. If you had a film camera shooting me sexually in high school,

you'd be disgusted by that too. It wouldn't look like euphoria though. It wouldn't look like euphoria. So like anytime you show that explicitly, especially as a parent, that's rough, but you do have to get over that. And I think in terms of all the issues about addiction, there's important messages in there.

I think some parents are like, well, does this make them want to do it? And I'm like, I don't know. They're all in hell. It doesn't seem like that's the fun party. For kids who watch the whole thing, there's a huge price to be paid for all of it. And I think that he finds the cinematic language to connect with kids and then to get a lot of very important ideas through. I agree 100%. I think it's really potent and powerful. And, you know, to cast a,

you know, just to say, put your blinders on and say, I don't want to look at that is to not engage with on some level, you know, the reality of that time for young people that is very, I mean, we live in an urban place, you know, maybe we're exposed to stuff that wouldn't exist if you lived in some small town in the middle of the country. But, you know, I think a lot of the themes that they explore, I mean, there's a reason why that show is so big. It's because it is tapping that nerve of truth for that generation. Oh, absolutely. And you can't really look away from it when you have kids. Yeah. Because they're having a completely different experience of

reality than we had when we were young. It's just completely different. And just the fact that they like it makes it worth watching to just get a sense of how do you grow up with this much social media, this much judgment of you? I mean, when I was a kid, I don't think I even knew what I looked like half the time. Can you imagine like having this thing in your pocket that was reflecting back to you the good and the bad of everybody that you know, what they're saying about you, what they're doing when you're not around, what you've been disincluded from. That's the thing I noticed with my kids. The hard part was they knew what everyone was doing. They knew when they weren't invited. I never knew. I wasn't invited to anything, but I didn't know it. But the psychic pain of that.

And also to just feel like you need to be attractive all the time. I mean, if I had to put up a picture every day during high school of what I looked like and tried to make it look good or to make it look like I'm having fun or to try to be funny and then I'm going to judge based on how people responded, if people like me. I mean, I have issue with that now. I'll laugh with Leslie because I could go through the photos on my Instagram and I'm fascinated by what people heart and don't heart. And usually the things that are kind of just me, I don't get almost any. If I put up a picture like me and my wife, I got like 180,000 hearts. I'm like, people really like you and not me. But that's a lot of pressure for kids and how they navigate. All the things that we hear about is so important. And how do we know? Like, if you can't watch that, how do you even know what your kid is experiencing? Not that it's exactly that. Right. And we're running this unprecedented

experiment on everyone. And we're doing it to young people while their brains are barely formed. And what does that mean? And how is that going to play out over time? I mean, how many times I've had to say to my kids, it doesn't matter what people say about you. Like someone said, you shouldn't care about anyone's opinion who you wouldn't ask for their opinion.

Right, which is true. And coming from dad, like that's not connecting. I'll say it every day though. They don't, you know, like they're now, they have these careers and they're in the, you know, in the public eye. And, you know, they've been part of all,

many of your projects over the years as young people. Do they look to you and Leslie for, like, how do you help guide them through that process, having had some experience, or do they just say, are you like out to pasture, I guess is what I'm asking. No, no. As a parent, like when you have a 19 year, like they can hear exactly what you would say

from some other person that they trust, but they can't necessarily hear it from you as the parent. I mean, they drift in and out of interest in our opinions. Yeah. But we do have an ongoing conversation about it. to, I was listening to your previous podcast and you were talking about the show and why you do the show and how you feel about advertisers and just staying in touch with the original reason why you're doing the show, your, your, your vision for it, not getting off track. And that's what I talk to my kids about all the time. You know, why are you in the business? You're, you should have something that you want to say. You should have a reason and a passion for creativity. And that's what matters most. Way down the line

is how do people feel about you? It's really important to have mentors who don't care about the audience. It's not your main thought, but I always read interviews with John Cassavetes because he's always like i don't care if it bugs them i know he's like all i care about is if in 10 years you're still thinking about it a little bit yeah he's like i don't even need every scene to work maybe a couple of scenes work for you like you need those avant-garde people who have a little disdain for the audience you need that voice in your head in addition to your voice that wants to connect with everybody.

Because that's part of being a creative person or an artist is, I don't need everyone to like it. I mean, if you look at the top 10 movies of the year, how many do you like? Maybe zero. There's a lot of people in the world. Yeah, we're not supposed to like the same stuff.

But that goes back to the whole streamer thing thing like they're trying to create for everybody all the time everywhere and that's death yeah i mean i like certain movies they're you know like there are people who love marvel and then there's some people who will never watch any of it and they're both they're they're both legitimate point of views about that. But say you're a Marvel person and you're just like destroyed by the people who aren't interested in superheroes. I mean, that's what we're all doing in our own way, which is, yeah, I have a certain genre of what I make. And every once in a while I'll read from someone who just like, doesn't like my stuff. I'll go, I'll go online and go, Oh, uh, funny people's up. I wonder what people think. And,

you know, it's usually about like 80, 90% positive. And then like 10% are like, it sucked. Do you seek that out? You go, you're like, I'm going to expose myself to that? Occasionally, because I'm just interested, how's it holding up? And I won't go to town with it, but I'll just kind of buzz through. And I'm always happy with people who were like, oh, I watch this movie once a year. And they tell stories about when they watched it or when they first saw it. And then there's just a few people who are like, it's so long and boring. Oh, my God, this is your worst movie.

Can you go back to your other stuff? The ad hominem, you know, Judd's a tool. Exactly. And I always say to my kids, look up Tom Hanks. 10 to 20% of people will be like, Tom Hanks is the worst. Like, look at the Dalai Lama. Someone's slamming the Dalai Lama. Like, there's 10% to 20% of people who don't like every single thing.

It doesn't matter what it is. Tom Cruise, Garth Brooks, Shania Twain, you know, me, Sandler. Like, there's a percentage of people, and that's fine. It's supposed to be that. But if you go online and you're devastated by the people who don't like you, then you're in big trouble because it might shut you down. And if your self-esteem isn't strong enough to understand that you're not supposed to win everybody over, you're just supposed to find your crowd. And when you deliver that to Maude and Iris, how does that land? I mean, do they get that?

Yeah. I mean, for Maude to be in Euphoria, I mean, it's charting, challenging territory. And I'm sure there's a lot of people who have a lot of issues with that show. And she's at a young age to be on the receiving end of any kind of criticism. But it's also so artistically celebrated.

Yeah, it's everything. And so it does require a constant conversation about art. Why do people like this painting versus that painting? You're part of a painting. And also, people love to debate stuff. So, the main thing I always say is,

it's a miracle to be on something that everyone's talking about. Yeah. Because no one watches most things and the things they watch, they kind of forget about five minutes later.

So, the fact that you're part of something that's such a giant conversation that will be one of those things that people remember forever, that is a really fantastic opportunity. Because it's hard, especially now. There's 500 TV shows, and maybe 10

are the ones that get talked about a ton. Yeah. Have you had that experience where you're scrolling on your thing trying to figure out, oh, I'm going to watch, maybe I'll watch this. You click on it and you're like, I already watched out, oh, I'm going to watch, maybe I'll watch this. You click on it and you're like, I already watched it. Yes, yes, yeah. I didn't remember watching it. I used to do a joke on stage about that where I said I got three episodes in

and then I turned to Leslie and I'm like, I think we've seen this. It's like three episodes to realize we've seen it. Or the other thing is you watch a series that takes a year and a half to come back and then you don't remember any of it and you're like, is Escobar a good guy or a bad guy? Yeah, I've had that experience where it's been, yeah, like a year and a half and I can't remember anything that happened. And that mental calculus is, well, I'm going to have to go back and at least watch two or three of the last ones just to get ready.

And I'm like, I'm not doing that. I got to Google. I got to read the wiki page for the last season, try to understand it. I have a question for you, though. So you do ultra marathons and things like that. That's the opposite of what I do. things like that. That's the opposite of what I do because I have all sorts of issues around that, like emotional issues around being physical, exercise, jocks, like so much of what my world always was, was resenting the jocks because I was so little. I was the youngest kid in the grade and then bad at sports

and then you wouldn't be allowed in. So they throw you in right field, the ball would never come to you. And so you would never would have an opportunity to prove that you deserve the better position. And that would just happen for a decade. And so I think that's what a lot of freaks and geeks was about. Like these kids who weren't being accepted and they resented. So they become what we always said were cocky nerds. You become kind of funny, but you're scared of the athletes as a kid and the jocks, but you're also condescending to them. And that for me has been a big thing to get over as I've gotten older and you

have to exercise to not die. You know, I never wanted to be around anyone who exercised. No, I get it. Yeah, I get it. You know, it's interesting. I was listening to the podcast that you did with Brene Brown a while back, and she said something like, what do people not know about you or something like that? And you said that I'm an athlete. Your friend tells you, Judd, you're an athlete. My friend, Brent Forrester, who is a great writer from The Simpsons in the office, we take like 90-minute walks a bunch of times a week. And he's always like, people don't know.

Judd's an athlete. Judd's an athlete. How fast you're walking today, people don't even know. But I have to put so much effort into staying consistent with any type of physical exercise. Because there's some part of me that so resents I have to do it. And before the pandemic, I said, I signed up to this really expensive gym. And I'm like, this is really expensive, but I'm going to do it because then I have to go. And then for about a year or two,

I did go and it worked. And then I said, how can I not hate this? There must be a way to not hate doing this because I not only hate this, I hate everyone in here. I hate every person who tells me what to do. And I'm like, so my goal is, could I ever want to come here? And I read a book. You probably know what the book is. It was a book written by Kobe Bryant's trainer. I don't think I read that. It was all about how Kobe looked at his workouts and just what his mental approach was.

And so in my head, I was— The Mamba mentality thing? Yeah. And in my head, I just thought, okay, when I'm here, I'm going to pretend I'm Kobe. What would he say? So if I want to get off the treadmill in three minutes, he'd be like, I'm going to stay on here as long as I need to. I love it. Or just like I want to go farther or faster than I did last time.

And I would in my head pretend. And strangely, it started working. Where after like two years, I had a little feeling of like I want to go to the gym. And I'm not mad at everybody here. And then the pandemic hits. And then it all fell to shit. And then it all fell to shit. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Well, there's a lot in there. I mean, the first thing I would say to your first question, the freaks and geeks aspect of it, I relate to that sentiment or that kind of archetype deeply

because I was bullied in junior high and high school. I was not an athlete. I can't do anything with eye-hand coordination or a ball. And I was very much an outcast throughout high school. I grew up in suburban Maryland and found swimming. And swimming was like an oasis away from the terrible experience of being in high school and kind of like a womb-like like underwater,

like I can't hear all of that and I'm safe, I'm not gonna get beat up. And it was the only sport that I actually was any good at at all. I had some, I wasn't like super talented, but I was okay. But it was one thing that I could do. And it was also a way to, you know, I wasn't the funny kid.

I wasn't the, you know, it was like the one thing that I found kind of a home at where there were other kids who were kind of like me. And so I just doubled down on that. And, you know, I wasn't a good student. I didn't know how to make friends. I certainly didn't have a girlfriend or anything like that, but it taught me discipline and it taught me this equation

between hard work and achievement or moving forward. And I realized like, oh, I'm not as good as these other kids, but if I actually work harder or I do more, like I can bridge that gap and I can be with them, like create some parity. And that started to spill into my schoolwork and I got better at school. And then I got quite good at swimming. And by the time I graduated high school, I was like getting recruited at colleges and all that kind of stuff.

but have always been that kind of bookish, sensitive outsider who felt like everybody else had a rule book for life that I couldn't connect with them. Like never the cool kid. But then I go to Stanford and the swimmers were the cool kids. So this was like, you know, my version of you moving to LA and you know, like being in the comedian community and then alcohol fucked it all up, all of that.

But to your point of being an outsider, I've always had that same relationship with bullies and with like football, basketball, like traditional sports guys and that like kind of archetype of what that personality is. And then rediscovering fitness and kind of moving my body later in life was really a function of an existential crisis

that I was having as much as anything else. Like the same impulse that made you go hike, and then you realize what that script was is kind of how it started for me as well. But I ended up enjoying it. So that just was one foot in front of the other of kind of, you know, putting the Legos together and then realizing like, I actually like this and I'm actually good at this. And like, where could I take this? Let's see. But it was really from a place of like joy and curiosity. So when you go to the gym and you're trying to force yourself

to like enjoy this thing that you don't enjoy, and you're trying to run like some kind of mind trick, like I think that's backwards. I think you should find something that is fun, like shooting hoops or pickleball or like whatever, even walking or whatever it is, and then building on that because that's how you create a sustainable habit

that you look forward to and you're not having to try to convince, some days you're not gonna wanna do it, but fundamentally it's like this thing that, you know, nourishes you and isn't something that you're constantly dreading. Yeah, yeah, it's a tough one. I think part of it also was,

it's connected to not wanting to be in my own head. So when I hear about you running for a great distance, all I think of is like, oh, but then you're just sitting with yourself. Yeah. But that's like, there is something about like, if you can just get your heart rate up a little bit, like more than it would be if you were walking,

but not like out of breath that quiets the mind. And yeah, it's uncomfortable, but it's just like pushups. And then, you know, you can go a little bit further and then you sort of look forward in the, it's sort of like meditation, like your mind's attacking you. This is the most painful thing ever. All suffering is because we can't sit alone by ourselves for fucking two seconds. all suffering is because we can't sit alone by ourselves for fucking two seconds. But there's a piece that comes with that. And I think also as a way to nourish your creativity, you already know the relationship between what that experience can be in terms of how you do your work. So I think there's something cool there for you to maybe explore.

Lately, I keep thinking, I feel like I'm almost beginning to get it. Just like a general get it. You know, like just lately, I feel like, oh, I almost understand. Not completely, but more, but of kind of all of it. Like I almost feel like a circle closing. And then right when I get it, my body will fall apart. Yeah. It is that thing, but it is like,

it's also that momentum thing. Like when you're doing it, it's easier to do it. And then something happens, you have to go out of town or whatever, and then you're fucked and like, you never find your way back. Like that's just, that's human. That's just being human too, you know?

I don't know. I have faith in you though. One day I'll get- Come on, dude. We're like, how old are you? I'm 56. I'm 55. Yeah, so, you know, we can't fuck around anymore.

No, no. You know? That's the drag. When I realized like I needed to exercise to stay healthy, it was easier to start exercising. I hated the idea of exercising to look good. I don't know why. I was just like, I didn't like the guys in the gym trying to get ripped.

But what about the feel? Like, oh, I feel better. I have gotten to that a little bit. I don't love doing the cold plunge, but I started doing it. Do you have one at your house? No, but I started doing it at the gym. And then I was able to do it for like five minutes and I did it a few times. And then I realized, oh, this strangely put me in a good mood for like four hours.

Like a really good mood. I mean, on the flow state thing, like the cold plunge, in terms of being an antidepressant and just something to kind of calm you down and clear the mind, like it's pretty effective. But isn't it terrible that like that's what you have to do? I know. I know. That's how the world works. Like you'll feel great. Just freeze for five minutes. Yeah. But it's like, is it any different than like, isn't it awful that I have to pull my hair out to like get this idea on paper and it takes years and it's like horrible. Yeah. You know, it's rigged that way. I know. I've been, there's so many things that aren't pleasant that now I have no choice but to do.

I just came up with the inspirational quote for the podcast. All right, I get it. I got to meditate, then I get in that cold plunge, then I got to find a sauna somewhere, then I got to raise my heart rate. The four-hour morning routine. I mean, it's a lot of morning routine.

And that was the big thing with writing the script. Someone was saying, you know, it's okay to do all of your exercise at the end of the day. You don't have to do it first thing because sometimes you're just wiped out from that. Write for four hours, then go do it. And even learning that was a game changer because there was no part of my brain that could have figured that out because I'm just so dumb. Like, wait,

jog in the afternoon. Like, it would take me 30 years to do that math. It's harder to do that in the afternoon though. But the tension is if I sit down and write, I'll have something that's permanent and this is actually what I do. And, you know, the exercise stuff, that's not necessarily critical. I can do that later. But, you know, if you do the exercise first, you'll actually feel better and maybe the writing that you do afterwards

will be a little bit crisper. Yeah. But then you gotta wake up early. Now I gotta sleep well and get up early. I sleep well and get up early. I sleep well and get up early. The pressure. So many things. You got anxiety disorder about being well.

Exactly, right? Like the whole day. All right. And then, but don't eat till lunch. Okay. So sleep great. Get up early. Don't eat till lunch.

There's so many things. need to lunch. There's so many things. I'm like weirdly kind of uplifted and encouraged by the fact that you are struggling with that equation. But you know, I, but I kind of get it a little bit. So I,

I mean, I don't think I, till the pandemic, I don't think I took a walk my whole life where I like, I said, Oh, I'm going to walk for an hour and a half. Never. Would never go and a half. Never.

Would never go on a hike. Wouldn't even think to do it. Treadmill, but would never think like, oh, maybe it's just fun to get outside. It took the world shutting down for me to realize there was an outside, you know. I've heard you tell stories though about like walking around your neighborhood and knocking on your neighbor's doors unannounced. I started doing that during the pandemic. I would just knock on people's doors because everyone was just stuck in the house, especially the scariest part of it.

Yeah. I'd just knock on people's doors. And they would like, sometimes they wouldn't even open the gate. They'd like talk to me through the gate. Like people were really freaked out. And I'm like, how you doing? Just people I hadn't seen in a long time. And people I wasn't even that close with,

but someone I admire, like, how's it going over the other side of that fence? Yeah, that's cool. All right, well, we're going off the rails here.

Thank you, Judd. Thank you. It was a pleasure and an honor to talk to you. I really appreciate it, man. Pleasure was mine.

Great. You have, well, we're in a writer's strike. It's not like you have a movie coming out right now or anything, but like, you have this book, you have Sick in the Head and Sicker in a writer's strike. It's not like you have a movie coming out right now or anything. But you have this book.

You have Sick in the Head and Sicker in the Head. Yes. Please watch the documentaries. If you've seen all of his big movies already, the George Carlin doc and the Gary Shandling doc. You have the Avnet Brothers documentary. The Avnet Brothers, yeah, yes. Yeah, Avnet, sorry. That's on HBO.

Doc and Daryl. Yeah. ESPN 30 for 30. I haven't seen that. Oh, you like that one. All right. Anything else you want to draw attention to? Your wife on Instagram.

My wife. Get the likes. My wife. We all need our likes. Funny people on Netflix. Good deal. Let's pretend that's brand new. The Bubble is also on Netflix.

Oh, The Bubble. Yeah. I haven't seen The Bubble. Usually I have like six or eight weeks where these things are scheduled and I can marinate, you know, but this came about pretty quick. So I haven't yet. It'll always be there for you. It's waiting for you.

Okay. Thanks, Judd. Cheers. Thanks. That's it for today. Thank you for listening. I truly hope you enjoyed the conversation. everything discussed today, visit the episode page at richroll.com, where you can find the entire podcast archive, as well as podcast merch, my books, Finding Ultra, Voicing Change in the Plant Power Way, as well as the Plant Power Meal Planner at meals.richroll.com. If you'd like to

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