The Three Questions with Andy Richter - Judd Apatow

Episode Date: March 29, 2022

Director Judd Apatow joins Andy Richter to talk about shooting The Bubble during in the pandemic, getting interested in comedy at a young age, making the jump from TV to Film, and more!

hello everybody this is andy richter uh then this is another episode of the three questions i am speaking today um with a real uh a juggernaut a comedy juggernaut, a comedy juggernaut. What doesn't he do? Which, you know, a lot of us think it's too much. A lot of us think, just take it down a notch. But it's Judd Apatow. It's Judd Apatow, everyone's favorite. Hi, how are you?

I'm delighted to be here. It's about time. I've been waiting. I've been waiting for the call and it came in and I had practiced and I was ready. All right. If you don't cry during this, I'm going to be so mad. I'm always crying. You don't have to worry about that. All right. Good. Good. Good. I'm always on the verge of tears. Good. Well, how are you? Are you in the middle of, you're in the middle of publicizing Bubble, or The Bubble. The Bubble, which is going to be on Netflix on April 1st, which is our

movie about people in lockdown trying to make a dinosaur action movie. And, you know, you knew someone was going to do it sooner or later. I thought, why not me? Why don't I jump in first? I want to know that like because like at what point because covid started about you know mid-march 2020 at what point did

you say oh boy somebody's going to make a movie about making a movie during this time i want to be the person like i want to be that idiot yeah i want to be the moron who thinks you can make jokes about it. People say, you know, too soon. I'm like, yeah, now. It's beyond too soon. It's still happening. But, you know, I started taking these long walks on the beach, like 90-minute walks every morning with my friend Brent Forrester

and other friends. And we wouldn't work. We would just try not to go insane yeah and then after about three months of that i said to brent maybe as just an exercise let's outline stories just so that we don't have to keep talking about our personal lives right right and sounds like brent's an oversharer exactly brent tells you too much and and brent you know wrote wrote for The Office and The Simpsons, and he's hilarious. So we just started kicking around different ideas we had. And one day I said, this NBA bubble seems pretty funny.

All these guys stuck in a hotel in Florida. That must be tense. You know, they're all used to living the life, and they're in some weird Disney hotel. Yeah. And then I thought thought maybe that's a play like a play where everyone is seven feet tall that was the first thought and then the second thought was there's all these movies having really difficult times getting through it right now jurassic world was going and white lotus Lotus was talking about going and I

thought well that's pretty funny and people like it when you beat up on actors you always get a beat up on an actor well yeah it and it felt like well this is the way we could talk about how much isolation sucked that we all went crazy we all thought about our lives and what we were doing. And so it's a movie about people having a nervous breakdown in isolation while trying to complete a flying dinosaur action film for the studio. And do you think, do you think that it works in the sense that people can laugh at it because, you know, they're not like, it's not like somebody with a restaurant that's going under that you told a story about, you know, you're telling a story about the peak of non-essential

personnel, which is people like you and me, like people that make silliness for a living. And, and that, and was that, was that a conscious decision? Like, let's see how this affected, you know, histrionic narcissists? Yeah, because I always think what's the point of me and what's the point of any of the work? That's what funny people is about. I'm always on the verge of thinking I really shouldn't do this. But during the pandemic, there were definitely people who came up to me and said, thank God I got to watch your dumb movie a bunch of times. Yeah, it got me through some bad days.

I'm sure you've had that too. We all go down the wormhole and find things that just make us really happy. I mean, I can get through a day just listening to old Dick Cavett interviews. You need something from the past that used to make you feel good. Yeah. And I thought, well, I guess it's worth trying to make people laugh. At some point, we're going to laugh about what a nightmare this has been. And I thought it might be interesting to try to be the first person to figure out how to do that.

And also, I had nothing to do, and I couldn't write about anything but this. Like, for me, I couldn't write a movie that took place in the year 1400 or the future. So it was like, guess i guess i'll try to talk about right now like rather than make up a different pandemic to you know just yeah yeah do this one yeah the metaphor pandemic right were you was the was the casualty rate ever daunting i mean mean, did you ever think? I just was very aware that I didn't want to talk about the disease. Yeah.

I think I meant to never say COVID in the entire movie and just say the pandemic. And I think one got by me. Someone says COVID once. But none of the movie is about the disease. No one gets the disease. There's no discussion of it. It really is all about how do we keep working when the world is shut down?

And also, how do our employers treat us? So some of the satire of the movie is a movie studio that doesn't care how dangerous it is. They just need a flying T-Rex action movie.

And how far they'll go to get it done. But there's an irony to that because I'm actually making a movie and making a movie about making fun of people who think there's a need to make a movie. Yes. Yes, it is.

It does turn back on you, doesn't it? Yeah. Yes, I'm the asshole. You just had to make a movie, didn't you? Yes. I saw The Batman with my daughter last night and there was a trailer for whatever the jurassic jurassic thing where it's like oh it's a like it just seems like they just

decided in the last one to throw the dinosaurs into every movie genre there was like there's western there's western dinosaurs and there's you know motorcycle chases in the streets of rome dinosaurs you know just that's the funny thing about dinosaurs they're always fun so in order to make a movie about how hard it is to make a dinosaur movie i had to actually make about 10-15 minutes of a dinosaur movie right learn how to design them and how to make them move. And you realize that even an idiot like me can make it so fun because it's inherently the most fun thing in the world is running away or fighting dinosaurs.

Were they all CGI? Did you have any practical dinosaurs or were they all CGI? They're all CGI. There's a funny joke where Maria Bamford plays the mother of my daughter Iris who plays a TikTok star who's acting in the movie. And she says, oh, I thought it was an elephant in a mask. So she thought it was practical.

But it was really fun to have something to do because there were two things I did during the pandemic. Well, I was working on three projects. And only like in the last three months did I realize that I was a lunatic during the pandemic working. I was making a George Carlin documentary, which will be on in May. And I was writing this book, which was a series of interviews with comedy people called Sicker in the Head, which comes out in a couple of weeks. And I realized that everyone was home. So everybody that normally probably wouldn't do an interview with me for this book, which I do for charity, for the 826 free tutoring charity. Right. That they can't say no because I know they're home.

Right. And I know they're not doing anything. So I got Letterman and Lin-Manuel Miranda and Nathan Fielder and Sasha Baron Cohen and Samantha Bee. Just everybody was home and trapped. Oh, that's great. That's great. So that was fun. just everybody was home oh that's right that's great so that was fun um did now why because i i remember when we were making talladega nights there was a day when we were actually in talladega

and i was there very lit and for very limited i didn't shoot much race stuff there uh and i was there one day when you weren't there at the racetrack and they put me in your trailer um which i i guess it was in there i guess they cleared that with you no but what was in there i mean um well they hey it was really way nicer than my trailer and i flushed sorry about the toilet um but i thought you had it was at least two maybe three dry erase boards outlining upcoming movies and i that's amazing to me i can barely do one thing at once like how you know you just previously said during covid you were you know you were working so much what what is it in you you think that that just keeps you going going going and having to you know go with so many it's is that is that a natural

thing to work in such a like bifurcated or trifurcated if that's a word way i don't know because when we were doing talladega nights i was producing you know will and and adam wrote it adam was directing so i would go in my trailer when i had nothing to do and i would write knocked up i was writing knocked up yeah i remember this board yep and you're correct that there's something really weird about the fact that i need to overlap. And I used to think that it was based on childhood trauma or the need for safety that drove some sort of workaholism. But in the last two days, I think it's ADHD. My wife, Leslie sent me an article about hoarding because I just save everything. And it said that hoarding often stems from ADHD.

And I thought that weirdly sounds correct, but I never thought I had ADHD because I felt organized enough to be productive. Yeah. And I didn't realize that it also makes you hyper-focused in the thing you're interested in. Yes. So I'm lost in anything i'm not interested in

and lately i think all my weirdness neurosis and anxiety is partially from being really scattered and maybe that's why i'm just running around in my head cut off trying to accomplish a bunch of things because i can't sit still in some way right Right, right. And you've been kind of comedy obsessed since you were little. I mean, little, like a grade schooler. Tell me, just a quick, you grew up in Long Island, correct? Siasset, yeah? That's right. And tell me about your folks and your family.

Well, you know, I grew up middle class on Long Island, and I became obsessed with the Marx Brothers, but really weirdly obsessed, like a child reading long books about the Marx Brothers at like 10 years old. I look back now, and I do wonder what that was, but maybe it's the ADHD. Like Harpo, who's more ADHD than Harpo?

Yeah. And then at some point it became whatever the Mike Douglas show. And I'd watch Michael Keaton and Jeff Altman and Jay Leno. And I was obsessed with 70s variety shows, the John Davidson show and Tony Orlando and Don. And then at some point it became the comedy boom of the 80s, and I used to go to comedy shows when my mom, who had just gotten divorced, was a hostess at a comedy club in Southampton, so I got to meet the comedians, and then I thought, ooh, I'd like to interview the comedians,

so I interviewed them for my high school radio station, and then I'm like, I should do stand-up, and then in my senior year I started doing it. And it was an obsession. I remember thinking as a kid, no one is interested in this but me. So maybe I can get a job. Oh, really? So if everyone wants to be a lawyer or a sportscaster or whatever your boys like to do,

there wasn't one kid who liked comedy in my school. Not one. And it made me think, I'm going to study up on this thing that no one cares about because I think you could get a career in it due to the lack of competition. And then I moved to L.A. and I met all the people like you. And I realized, oh, there's about two, three hundred weirdos like me and they all live in L.A. and I like them. Yeah, yeah. I used to say it's like being the B-girl in the Blind Melon video. You walk out and there's everybody.

I've used that same metaphor. I said, you know, like, but for me, it was when I started doing improv. It was, I had, I didn't feel like I, I mean, I wasn't unpopular, but I didn't feel like I really knew. I was like, I had friends and everything. But then when I got to improv, it was like, oh, wait a minute. These are people like, oh, wait a minute. These are... Other people like this. And I remember, I believe I saw you in the Real Life Brady Bunch at the Geffen Theater.

You did. Did you do that show there? I did. I did. And that blew my mind. That was maybe right around when we started the Ben Stiller Show or just before, probably before. I think it was. What year was that, 90?

Yeah, 91, 92. Yeah, so we started the Ben Stiller show in that exact time frame, and I thought, wow, there's some really talented people out there. I mean, that crushed so hard. You guys recreating Brady Bunch episodes. It was pandemonium in that theater. Who else was in that cast?

It was meemonium in that theater. Who else was in that cast? It was me, Jane Lynch. Jane Lynch, a woman named Mary Weiss played Alice. My ex-sister-in-law, Becky Thire, was Marsha Brady, and she was sort of the inspiration for the whole

thing. But just really talented Chicago actors. I mean, it kind of, you know, rotated a little bit. You know, the parts, I mean, I wasn't, I was Mike Brady, I was the dad, and it's like, anybody could slap on a wig and do that one, so it was very easy. But it still got such huge, huge laughs.

Yeah, yeah. It was funny. And I remember meeting the Soloways at a party or two around that and feeling very intimidated. You just felt the greatness. And as a young, neurotic person just trying to figure out where I fit in, it felt like, oh, they really are about to do something. You could feel the brainpower of something amazing happening. Yeah. You could feel the brain power of something amazing happening.

Yeah, yeah. Well, were any of your siblings as kind of monofocused as you were on anything? I mean, was that a family trait? The only thing I could trace it to is my grandfather produced jazz. And so he produced Sarah Vaughan and Diane Washington. And he did the first Janis Joplin album I mean he literally did Charlie Parker in the late 40s wow so I I had this person that basically was a hustler and as just a poor Jewish kid he found a way to to record jazz artists he would pay them out of his own pocket and get the records printed and then

sell them himself wow but it was charlie parker and dizzy gillespie because the record business didn't quite exist yet yeah yeah and i think that there must have been a part of me that thought oh you could do anything if you work hard if you outwork everybody yeah and you you care and you're passionate and you love it that anything is possible i think that must have been planted in my head seeing what he did and did do you did the um when your folks split up because you were 11 was that what it was like 14 or 14 did that did that do you, were you already sort of like comedy obsessed? Were you already like in all this stuff? And then do you think it got deeper when your folks split? I think it's turbocharged the whole thing.

Yeah. In a number of ways. One is I think for all of us, everyone gets wounded at some point when they're a kid. Yeah. And it makes you sensitive sensitive and then suddenly you see the world like you understand people's feelings yeah you know like when you're hurting you can see the hurt in other people and as what i became a storyteller and i didn't realize at the time that i was filing away my observations of people's suffering and how they were struggling through. And that's always the root of all comedy is just trying to get through something, trying to survive something, trying to accomplish something, make life better.

Chandling always said it's obstacles to love and connection. And I think at that time, I just couldn't believe it was happening. Because you're a kid and everything feels safe and then suddenly you're like i can't believe i gotta go visit my dad on the weekends yeah then i had to go visit my mom on the weekends because for a while i lived with my mom then i lived with my dad and it was just very chaotic yeah but in a weird way i always thought well this is life right i knew about richard pryor i knew he was raised in a brothel and uh i used to think i don't think this trauma is bad enough for me to get richard prior level

funny like this is jewish long island bad this isn't really bad so i was kind of jealous that it wasn't actually more painful you should have talked to your folks and said hey can't you do something like a little worse to me yeah shake it up a little bit yeah can't you like keep me in a shed somewhere for a while exactly um well when you know did did you have did you set out with an idea of what kind of comedian you were going to be like did you think like did you have any models that you were shooting towards i mean there were people that i love i i swear andy i was just so bad it's amazing that i got any toeholds because it when i listen to a tape of what i was doing at 17 years old yeah it is your worst freak at an

open mic that you've ever seen it's just so. And I must have had some sort of youthful charm, but it was god-awful. And there were people that I loved. I was a big fan of Bill Maher at that time. He was on The Tonight Show a lot. I always thought Bill was really great. And I thought like, oh, that's kind of what I'm like in some way.

Maybe I'm observational and have a little edge. So I used to always say to Bill Maher, I'm like the new, like not that great Bill Maher. I'm the half-assed Bill Maher. And I love Lano. And I used to go see Seinfeld in the city and Gilbert Gottfried and Howie Mandel. I used to go to Caroline's in the city. I'd take a train at like 16 and go to the supper club and and see everybody but i had no idea what it was but probably like the long island comics like paul reiser because

i thought well i guess i'm kind of like them yeah and and so during college i kept doing it and then i started booking a club for sammy shore who started a comedy store he had a little club in marina del rey and he asked me to book, and he paid me like 50 bucks a week. But I could go on every night. Wow. And that's when I learned how to do stand-up was by making $50 a week, booking the club and bugging all the comics, which I wanted to do. I wanted an excuse to bug people.

And I got a lot of stage time there and then slowly figured it out. How did you get to L.Aina del rey i went i went to cinema school at usc oh okay and and only took cinema because there was no stand-up major wow i just thought what is in the world of comedy yeah yeah but not really with an interest in the program which was writing yeah because i thought well you know i'm gonna be whatever harold ramus i'm gonna be in ghostbusters yeah yeah and then slowly realized i guess i'm not gonna be in ghostbusters yeah uh but hopefully one day i could write a ghostbusters do you do you have because i definitely have this like, it gets better as I get older,

but like throughout my life, I've had very little middle ground in terms of my view of myself. I'm either the greatest thing in the world or I'm a complete piece of shit. And it's like a, you know, like a seesaw that just one is up and one is down. And then I, it's another thing that drives me or that just is ironic and hilarious to me

is that I got into a business that where you can be feeling great about yourself and you, and then one phone call can make you feel like, Oh no, you're, you're done. That's it. One tweet, one Instagram comment or something just gets you. They just know how to destroy your comment. I had shows that premiered and then a week later, you know, and then a week later, oh, it's doing really well. And then a week later, it doesn't look good. And like, how does that happen?

I thought we looked good. You know, so. It's so painful. And you put in, like, whatever, a year or more of work. Yeah. Maybe sometimes two years. Yeah. you know so it's so painful and you put in like whatever a year or more of work yeah maybe sometimes two years yeah it's very weird to be you know living a life where you put your heart out there and someone can make it literally disappear yeah instantly like oh all of that and when they make it disappear they're like this is worthless yeah it must be eliminated from the

earth yeah there would be no more transmission of your heart and I would be so devastated I mean I had certainly three or four pilots that didn't get picked up and I couldn't believe they didn't get picked up I did one with Amy Poehler and Kevin Hart and Jason Siegel

and January Jones was that before Freaks and Geeks or right after? it was right after. Yeah. And I just couldn't believe that they wouldn't pick it up. Yeah. It was called North Hollywood. It was about young people trying to break into show business.

And Kevin Hart was so funny in it. Everyone was so funny in it. And I really thought that they would go, yeah, clearly you found everyone who's going to be a big star. So at the very least, let's retool this. And they just said, well, you know what? We've decided that ABC is going to be more like the ABC

of the late 70s when we had Happy Days and Laverne and Shirley. So we really don't want this sense of humor. Which was what? Which was, I don't know, trying to find a morph between freaks and geeks and curb your enthusiasm at the time yeah yeah and and i was like so none of these people i found you're interested in nope we just would like to never talk to you again yeah and

and then you question if you're talented you question if you're sane yeah it's it's very hard to power forward because you go well that's kind of the best i got yeah uh and that was in 2001 i think 2002 but for me i all i always couldn't believe i was in the business so anytime things crashed and they did a lot early in my career i always thought am I allowed to do the next one? And when I was allowed to do something next, that was enough. As long as I wasn't kicked out of the business, I felt pretty good that I was in it at all. Did you in those years have a fallback plan?

I never had a fallback plan because I always thought I could be at the lowest level of comedy. It'd be pretty happy. I mean, I was the, I was the MC at the improv and I'd make like whatever, 35 or 55 bucks a night. And so yeah,

if I worked four or five nights, I'd make 250 bucks, 300 bucks. I had a job at comic relief. I made 200 bucks a week helping raise money for the homeless. So I'm like, I made 250 bucks, 300 bucks. I had a job at Comic Relief. I made 200 bucks a week helping raise money for the homeless. So I'm like, I can live on, I can live on 500 a week. My rent was 425. You know, the math worked for me to survive.

Right, right. And I thought, you know, I get to go on stage and introduce Ellen, you know, back in 1988. Like, this is pretty cool. Paula Poundstone's here. You know, so that, like, I always say to people, if comedy paid as much as playing the spoons, I still would have done it. The fact that there was any way to make a comfortable living was an incredible bonus,

but there was no aspect of it that was financially driven. And then still is. What starts making you think that you can go from standing on stage and telling jokes to creating a TV show? Is it just because that's what everybody else does? Or did you find yourself feeling like the comedy you wanted to do wasn't

going to be just held by the standup stage? Well, I'd learned some writing at USC. You know, I dropped out after a year and a half because I just didn't have enough money to pay my tuition. Yeah. And I got an apartment with Adam sandler and you know he was

on mtv vjing at the time he was on remote control yeah so he had a little a little more heat than us but not much but there was always a feeling like oh adam's gonna hit we all just believed in it because we just thought he was funnier than everybody right right and and he's and then he also is just like if you meet him he just got tons of charisma and charm. And he's like one of those people that you're like, oh, yeah, OK, that's what a movie star is. And also in the early days. Yeah. He would turn on the charm.

Yeah. Right now you have a muted Adam. Yes. Because Adam works hard. He has a family and like me and like you, he's just tired. Yeah. But imagine 23 year old Adam. Yeah. Yeah. Adam had a lot of energy and ambition and enthusiasm. like me and like you he's just tired yeah but imagine 23 year old adam yeah yeah you know adam

had a lot of energy and ambition and enthusiasm so when you hung out with him at a restaurant he really tried to make you laugh yeah like he was a great person to hang out with he loved to crack you up i'm you know i guess it's like when you're like in the room at SNL or The Simpsons, when you have just, your chi is exploding. You have so much energy. And then every once in a while, we would think, I guess we should write something for Adam. Like something's going to happen. Can we prepare for this?

Like there must be a movie or a TV show. When you say we, who's we? Well, you know, I was friends with his friends, Jack Garaputo, who went on to produce his movies, and Tim Hurley, who wrote a lot of his movies and went to college with him. And so, you know, there were some really talented friends and everyone had a sense of there's going to be work soon

and we better get ready to do it. And so Adam got SNl and everybody was trying to support him with any joke ideas or sketch ideas in the first year when he was just trying to get any acceptance and then it turned into oh adam and tim wrote a movie and then i would you know go up and do some rewrites on the movie with them and and so I just got kind of pulled into, you know, that world of how do we support each other? You know, it was very collaborative and really fun. I mean, sitting around trying to think of

Happy Gilmore punch-up jokes. Right, right. There's nothing better than that. And I met Stiller around that time and did the sketch show with Stiller. But I didn't really know how to do anything. I was just fake it till you make it. But I think everybody was.

Whose idea was the Ben Stiller show? Well, he had this show on MTV he did with Jeff Kahn, which was kind of like the Larry Sanders show. It was behind the scenes of a sketch show. I don't remember that. And it was really, really funny. He did a U2 parody, which is incredible. Like U2,

it was kind of a parody of Get Back. It was like U2 playing the roof. Oh, really? And no one is around to watch. And he had a great Richard Grieco parody called Looker, which was really funny like a and so when that went down ben had some interests at hbo they wanted a sketch show so we pitched this sketch show and then they sold it to fox and so suddenly this little sketch over hbo was like

a real show a network television network And we had never worked at that scale before. And so we just had to figure it out. And so we hired who we thought was funny, which was Bob Owen Kirk and Janine Graffalo and Andy Dick and... Dino Stamatopoulos.

Dino was brilliant, wrote for the show, wrote those skank sketches and so many great sketches. Jeff Kahn and Brent Forrester and Sultan Pepper wrote for that show. And Rob Cohen. It was a really amazing group. But we were just winging it. The only one who knew what they were doing was Ben and Bob. Bob really was on his game.

He had been at Saturday Night Live for a few years. And that was really fun, but also miserable because we were just so tired. Like, I think people know how to produce things now. Like, they know how to shoot a sketch, and they have the good camera, and they have the editing system. We were still editing with, like, VHS tapes back then.

Yeah. Like, there was no nonlinear digital system. I mean, this is, you know, basically before anyone was on the internet. Yes. I remember. Everything was hard. Yeah. Everything was a hundred times harder.

The beginning of the Conan show, it was very much like that. And it was, there was Conan and Robert and they knew what they were doing. And then I think beyond them, well, and Bob and Bill Odenkirk were there in the very beginning. Like for a couple of months, they came to kind of get us started in some nebulous way that I didn't quite understand how that works,

but it was all new to me. I didn't question, but it was the same thing where I just, I'd ride a bit and they'd go, yeah, that's really funny and go shoot it. Okay. Or even worse was on camera things when I started, you know, because just my evolution into being the sidekick on the show was just,

I think to keep Conan company, you know, and to have him have somebody bounce off of. And just, I think to make, it's interesting to see two people interact rather than just one person talk to him. So I think that Robert understood that they were, there would be just more chances for things to happen. If Conan had me to talk to, but then.

That was always my secret when I did the show is I would always turn to you. I mean, I was always very scared as a young director doing stand-up. I wasn't doing stand-up at that time. I had stopped for a few years. And it made me very nervous to do panel. And my trick, you may never have noticed it, but I would be very scared. I'd talk to Conan, but I always knew if I turned to you, you would get

a monster laugh no matter what I asked you. I would just go, what do you think, Andy? And you would always kill. And I always felt like, I'll be okay, what do you think, Andy? And you would always kill. And I always felt like I'll be okay because whatever happens, Andy will always grab that moment. That's nice. Thank you. I mean, I remember everything about that moment.

I mean, because Sandler was so close with Conan before he got the show. Yeah. And so he'd be around our apartment in the earliest days when Sandler got SNL. Yeah. And so that moment like, oh, Conan's getting his own talk show. I watched it very carefully because it was Bob and it was Dino and all these people.

And I remember that sketch you guys did when it started. If you could recap it because it was on the first show maybe where he's excited for the first day and at the end he hangs himself. What was that sketch? He just says like, oh no, it's the day of my first show.

And I think there was just kind of a normal montage of normal preparing himself things. And there was this guy, this actor that Louis C.K. knew called Joe Dolphin. Louis had used him in a short film. Joe Dolphin, Joey, he had, Louis had used him in a short film and he just kept, he was in the, in the bit over and over saying, you're not as good as Letterman. Like just taunting him till you see Conan getting into a suit and putting on his tie and going, all right, let's do this. And then standing on a chair and hanging himself, you know, like seeing his feet drop. I love that.

Yeah. Which is a pretty, you know, pretty bold opening for your show that like, I'm going to kill myself. Get ready, everybody. Here comes me killing myself.

He owned me for life at that moment. I just, I thought we got in, we got in somebody, somebody of our world is now in control. We were in the same boat though, I thought, we got in. We got in. Somebody of our world is now in control. We were in the same boat, though, with that, with, like, the editing, like what you were talking about. I would, you know, I'd shoot these remotes. I'd go out and shoot a remote.

You know, one of the first things, one of the first interviews I ever did, you know, I do this thing, and this is, I'm interviewing people pretty frequently for a long amount of time. And I've, you know, and I've paid attention to it and tried to get good at it. But the first thing I did, I was shooting a remote with just lots of different stuff at Mardi Gras. And somebody was like, we arranged for you to go to Little Richard's hotel room and interview Little Richard. And I was like, okay, how does one do that? How does one interview Little Richard? And it was just one of the strangest things. Because nobody knew who the fuck I was.

And I looked like I was 12. And so I go to this room with Little Richard who's wearing like a choir robe and who has the largest head of any human being I have ever seen. Well, that's the Griffin theory. Big head, big star. Yeah. But I mean, his head is like, it looks like a Greek statue or something, you know, and, and just, just a truly unique looking man. And, and then I got, I got through it.

I mean, I don't know, you know how then I got, I got through it. I mean, I don't know, you know, how I did, but I got through it. And that was the same thing. You know, you go and do these remotes, come home and you would edit them and it would take hours and hours and hours because there was no digital. You had to go through these tapes and fast forward and rewind. And, oh, it was just, it's so much work i mean i remember i was watching uh on youtube recently one where you were like fishing where you have to fish with your hands and you're like in a stream so yeah yeah yeah that was that was underwater shots yeah that was a tbs show yeah that was down in uh oklahoma he started doing started doing the foreign shows,

you know, like the international shows, the travel shows, and that kind of took up the remote portion of the show, which at this point, I'm not sad that I'm not going to you know... There's a moment where people stop.

Yeah, the Miss Universe pageant. If you watch Letterman, there's a moment on Letterman where like Letterman was always out in the world. And then suddenly he would only go to the deli next. Yes, exactly. He was done getting the van. The coffee shop downstairs. Yeah.

If it's in the building, he'll go to it. But yeah. Yeah. Yeah. No, it's Jersey anymore. Yeah.

It's, it's, it's over. And there was, there were like all these wild short films, but I get it. You know, you just get tired. It's exhausting. Like I'm like all these wild short films, but I get it. You know, you just get tired.

It's exhausting. Like I'm doing a short film right now. I'm hosting the Director's Guild Awards. So I do these sketches when I do it, which is just Judd Apatow talks to directors about directing. And I just interview on Zoom everybody who's up for best director for a movie. So it becomes, can I make two, three-minute comedy films starring Jane Campion and Spielberg?

Those notorious knee slappers. And it's so fun to talk to them and riff with them for 30 30 40 minutes and cut it down but it is a full-time job to get six minutes like it is two three weeks of work to get six good minutes right right is it um is this is it going to be virtual or are you going to be actually there in a tuxedo it's it's real it's a oh wow in person and actually a very fun award show it's also does an air which i like oh yeah because that's how not entertaining i am which is it's the third time i've done it and still no one wants to air it yeah i wasn't like i wasn't aware of you of your award hosting career i didn't even know about it you've really kept it under the radar

well i thought it was like you know i started the directors and then i moved maybe i do uh i don't know sag and then the globes and then the oscars but it is just it's flatlining at directors oh well now speaking of which what what what's the real transition like what happens that's your real transition from from tv into film uh from freaks and geeks which is just like just that show i think will live forever because you know both of my kids when they were 13 just fell in love with that show and i think that you will have you know it's like teletubbies but for teenagers you know it will it will never get old because you know teletubbies there will always be babies and there will always be 13 year olds who will understand the smart girl trying to be dumb and wearing clothes that completely conceal her body like that's you know that's like all those

moments yes and and it's heartbreaking you know when you're a kid you just so want to be loved and you want friends and you want people to respect you and you're so scared of just yeah people call you out for being different yeah you know you're insecure i know what that's always i go back what was i scared of what was i was i said also getting in trouble i was always so afraid to get in trouble. Like, what would they do? They're not going to shoot me. What is what's happening? Why was I so worried?

Like, why couldn't I talk to anybody? You know? Yeah. But I think Paul was had he just had a great take on that. Yeah. He really felt like those people were not served in the culture. The funny thing is now they're the whole culture. You know, Paul was trying to reach with freaks and geeks is now they're the whole culture you know who paul was trying

to reach with freaks and geeks is now everybody yeah i mean it almost doesn't exist anymore the idea of nerds because the nerds are the cool people they're the bullies and culturally they're the bullies that that's right you know but and by the way we knew that then and we talked about it because we said cocky nerds yeah you know. Because the nerds would hang out with each other. And they were into comedy and Monty Python. And they were scared to death of intimacy. But at the same time, they looked down on the football team. Yeah.

They knew they were better. Right, right. At least in their minds. Yeah. And that's what we found so funny about Sam Levine's performance. Yes, exactly. It's like terror and arrogance. Yes. Levine's performance. Yes, exactly. It's like terror and arrogance at the same time. Yes, exactly.

But, you know, deserve, because you do. These kids are smart enough to be able to look forward enough to know that the kid on the high school team is an idiot, and he's going to be selling tires. Not that there's anything wrong with selling tires. Stop your email very wealthy about yes yeah but i remember there was a scene with steve higgins uh in in the finale yeah and steve higgins uh who is the co-host of the tonight show and is um the producer saturday night live and one of my oldest friends in comedy where he plays the av guy and there was

always that guy at our school was it was Jack DeMacy, who ran, like, he taught film and ran the radio station, and Roy Dipple, and they were the guys that all the media kids were into. And it was this scene where Steve basically says, like, you are the cool guys, and here's how their life is going to go, and here's how your life is going to go. And he has this incredible speech about about it and it is i think some of those kids did turn into bill gates or or steve jobs that was that was the the

idea of it sure and and freaks and geeks actually happened after i made a couple of movies you know i i did heavyweights which in some ways is a precursor to freaks and geeks because it was about a summer camp for overweight kids that was bought by a Tony Robbins, like an evil Tony Robbins type figure that was Tony Perkis played by Stiller who was going to make the summer into an infomercial so everyone had to lose weight.

Or the infomercial wouldn't work. And then we did Cable Guy in 96. And so when I went into TV, it was because I had made two movies I loved, but they didn't do well enough. And I licked my wounds running to television. And then when everything got canceled on television, I licked my wounds by running back to movies. Yeah, that's terrible of me.

I got it wrong. I thought that Freaks and Geeks came before the movies. I didn't realize. An easy IMDB search of you would have done, but there's too many words, speaking of ADD. Yeah, I've got 10 years of pre that. That's how old

I am now. You know you're old when you're like, yeah, I mean, I remember when that happened 30 years ago. Really? The history is like, 35 years at this point? Mm-hmm. Oh, yeah, no, I hate thinking about that stuff. Because it just, then it, you know, it begs another question, like, well, you know, life is finite. So if all these years have passed, shut up.

Never mind, you know. Never mind. You have four years left. Enjoy. Shut up. Never mind. Never mind. You have four years left.

Enjoy. When getting married and having kids starts to enter the picture, does that change anything in terms of how you make comedy? Like, do you start to think of it more in terms of supporting a family, or is it still just you trying to do what you want to do in the beginning it really was like oh man so i have to make a living that you know my little theory about you know making 600 bucks a week was not gonna work anymore yeah because there was right you know kids yeah kids eat money yeah and you you know, Leslie was doing really well, and she did George of the Jungle,

and I was trying to see if I could get my career going in a more serious way. You know, you start thinking about, I guess I need money for college. Everything changes. But, you know know for a long time i couldn't quite figure it out i couldn't figure out why nothing was successful i liked it all and i think that's what messed with my head which is i liked freaks and gigs i liked undeclared i didn't understand why they wouldn't catch fire yeah and they would get canceled and then then then like a whole bunch of pilots didn't get picked up, like three pilots in a row

and I thought man I'm just out of sync I feel like an independent rock band that has 180 fans at a club and they are cool but no one else likes them

why doesn't anyone else doesn't anyone else like them right uh and i like them so in my head i'm like i don't care i'll be husker do whatever you know like i love i love those types of artists yeah and i started thinking well i guess that's it and then i met uh will and adam and they asked me to produce Anchorman. And then when that was successful, suddenly people were like, oh, maybe you know what you're doing. And they were a little more open creatively to the next ideas,

which was the 40-Year-Old Virgin and Knocked Up. But it really was the, I really rode the success that Will and Adam had and got some credibility out of being a participant in that project. Yeah. Yeah, that's the thing is that nobody here will take a chance on you unless they perceive the odds to be low you know like that you you've you've and i always look at it as like that you've made some money for somebody uh you know like that's the whole thing yeah so okay come over here and i got you know and then when because if people question why judd apatow say hey he went over there and made all that money for them and they went oh

okay okay all right yeah but when you got a lot of failures honestly people just go oh the guy who nothing works out for yes yes i don't know if we want to make a movie with him yeah and and you just need something to break through for people go oh i because a lot of a lot of hollywood is uh an executive having to make a decision that he can justify or she can justify to their boss. Yes, absolutely. So, so I'm not nuts for making a movie or a TV show with that with him because

he, he's proven himself, but I mean, I didn't really prove myself for about 17 years. Well, that's good. You kept at it. Way to go little buddy. yeah yeah it's um i remember

when paget brewster the part in in my first sitcom uh controls the universe was uh paget brewster played my boss and the part was written for her. Victor Fresco, the guy that wrote the show had worked with her before. And we heard from the network. Well, she's been in a lot of pilots that failed. And I think at that point it had been, it was like 15 or something, some 11.

George Clooney numbers. Yes. Like, you know, she's been in a lot of pilots that failed. So we don't want her like as if she has some sort of stink on her. It's like, well, she's just a cog in a wheel, and she's demonstrably talented and charismatic and has worked forever,

has worked since that day. But we cast with somebody. We had somebody else in the pilot and then finally they they let us have her and and reshoot but that was just that was really shocking to me that why should she be uh you know put her neck on the line for pilots that she was cast in it's you know oh yeah i mean i i had that so many times where I would say, let's make Jason Segel the star of this show. And they're like, no. And I'd be like, what about Seth?

No. No. And I just, I couldn't understand it. It seemed very obvious to me what was going to happen to them. Right. And thank God we found Jay Baruchel for Undeclared. So, you know, they were all incredible. Yeah.

And then we found ways for them to be on the show anyway. Yeah. And that was always the game, you know. Right. You try to get Seth to be the lead. They say no. You hire Jay as lead. And then you make Seth Jay's best friend.

Right, right, right. Get him in there however. Jason's a long-d to carla gallo like it's all a scam yeah like find a way to win to get those guys in there yeah and also and it's not even it's not even it's not even really a scam you're just making sure your movie's good with these with these known quantities that are known to you but not to them um well i mean you've done, is there stuff that you, is there something that's missing for you? Like, like as you go forward, like, is there something that you'd rather be doing? Is there some thing that you haven't done yet that you want to do?

Or is it, do you look forward and just kind of see more of the same. You know, early on, I met Ron Howard. I was doing some consulting on The Grinch, and he said, you know, I just try to keep, like, my head in a space that when I make a movie, it's like, when it's over, it's like putting a painting up in a little gallery, and at the end of my career, there'll be all these paintings on the wall.

Yeah. And I think what he was trying to say is, I don't want anyone to feel like the most important thing. I'm just going to keep doing the work. Right. And that's helped me. I've really thought about that a lot. Don't make anything the most important thing in your life. Nothing's going to determine your career.

Just be really passionate about the one that you're in the mood to do now. Yeah. And then later on, the resonance of it will reveal itself. So, you know, this is 40 did pretty well when it came out. But for some reason now it feels like everybody's watching it. Yeah. It's always on cable. It's always streaming.

And people turn 40 and they all watch it. Yes. Oh, wow. So that actually hit a little harder than it felt like it did. It was, yeah, it's a very prescient movie. It's like it,

yeah, it's, and it's, it's another one. It's like, it's another one that people are going to watch because it does kind of capture a very human turning point that almost everybody goes through, you know?

Yeah. And in some ways I think that's what I'm attracted to. Like funny people is about getting sick and what type of wisdom you get from being in in a precarious position like that it changes how you look at life right uh like each movie is you know it's about marriage or having kids or your mortality, mental health. I thought, you know, the King of Staten Island, I kept thinking, oh, it's about sacrifice. There are people that are willing to die for other people. And that was a topic I had never written about. And I hadn't really thought about it that deeply, how incredible those people are for

making that choice in their lives. So each project hopefully is meaningful. So I don't really have anything that I'm thinking about, although I would like to do something in the theater because I feel like the process of trying to make something better over the course of a year or two, trying something out might be fun. And I always love going to see those Neil Simon plays in New York, like Broadway bound. fun and i i always love going to see those neil simon plays in new york like broadway bound and

and it would be really enjoyable if i ever could have that experience yeah yeah do you like the theater very much i really do i like i like to go and i don't know much about it so i think it would be fun to try to learn how to do it yeah yeah yeah yeah. Yeah. Yeah. It's a, it's a scary, it seems like just because, um, you know, like my, I don't, you know, I just, like you said, I faked it till I made it. I, you know, I got, I got hired on a movie and I didn't, you know, I didn't go to any kind of, you know, Michael Caine acting school. And in fact,

my ADD only allowed me to watch about 10 minutes of that before I was like, all right, I get it. Yeah. You make eye contact. There are people who are great for that reason, I think. Yeah. That they're just very focused. And I find that sometimes when you have like ADD or ADHD, that you're very present. Yes. And I've worked with a lot of actors that i don't think took a lot of acting right classes

i remember janine graffalo i don't know if she took any and she was so good at the ben stiller show and then at the larry sanders show yeah she was incredible yeah and everyone there was like from the actor's studio i mean rip torn would talk about you know working with marilyn monroe the actor's studio but janine was crushing it. And there are those people. They're just natural. They're just in tune. I heard Jodie Foster once in an interview say like, you can either do

it or you can't. And there's varying degrees of that. Like you can, like if you can't do it, you can maybe work hard enough to be able to do it passably. But nobody that's great at it wasn't didn't have the potential to be great at it when they were an infant you know it just it just works that way and that's i feel that same like my acting career i just have learned on the job i just have like

you know it's just evolved as i've as i've been on the job and theater to me seems like such a, like, Oh no, that's like, that's like martial arts. And I'm a street fighter, you know, I'll just pick up a board and hit you with it, but they expect you to, you know, do some sort of something named, you know, flying crane or something. I don't, you know, I've seen your Mike Brady. I don't know what you're being very humble for no reason. Well, um, the third of these questions and you've answered

the first two whether you know it or not um that's it's very sneaky and also you know it's all nonsense anyway um uh what what have you learned in in this journey this life this drudgery this trail of tears well my therapist always says you know life is suffering and yet we soldier on yeah and i think that i've always been very interested in buddhism i learned a lot about it through my friendship with gary shanley and also a bit from Harold Ramis. And I'm always reading it. And I always wish I got it more. Yeah. Like I read it, but it doesn't all take hold. But lately I've been trying to tune into this idea of groundlessness where you try to,

they say drop the story and just be present. And that life is about being comfortable with uncertainty and with the fact that it's always changing and if you could relax into that even though it seems terrifying and weird you know it's like being at the top of a roller coaster yeah but in a weird way that's where your wisdom comes from with being completely open so i'm i've been trying to take that more seriously and it does work if i get up in the morning and i just think about that for five minutes my day is better because the other way is to really be trying to control everything and fight everyone and make sure everything is exactly the way you want it to be and tell everyone when they're wrong and and

being in that kind of ego i think is ultimately very painful and it never works yeah you never you never really pull it off so so i think it's like trying to be a cylinder being just completely open it works it works for people and who are kind of awful you know like it works for yeah you know what i mean like it works for donald trump like i don't think donald trump has any Zen about him at all. Or even, you know, like the in succession, you know, the the the, you know, the. Yeah. The the the the patriarch of that family, he he gets up every morning to control everything. And he's fucking evil. You know mean so exactly yeah so i i think

you're right i think it is i i worked with a guy years ago in chicago who was in when i was in film production who was an artist and and but did film stuff on the side and we were i was he was said he was a buddhist and i was asking him about it and and he said you know the point is to not try and i said well aren't you trying to not try and he said yeah he's like yeah that's it he's and i was like well that doesn't make any sense he goes it doesn't does it i'm like no it doesn't and he's like well you'll see that's that's what it is you're you're trying to not try the you know your whole life you're gonna try to not try and i i mean I understand what he meant. You know, it is, you can't, you can't really force anything. You know,

What is that sound of one hand clapping? You know, it's just those koans. Yeah, they are all true. You know, I really like Ram Dass. He was in the Gary Shanley documentary that I made. And, you know, he talked about, you have to see, like, life is just a dream. It's all silly. We all put on these masks and play these roles, but it's ultimately meaningless. But at the same time,

you have your life, and you gotta do it. Yeah. And you have to make your living, and you have to go through what life is. Yeah. But there's a part of your mind that's, like, has a sense of humor and a lightness about how silly most of this is. Yeah. But there's a part of your mind that's like, has a sense of humor and a lightness about how silly most of this is. Right. Right.

Yeah. No money. Never money's always there in the way. So at some point you always, you gotta make money. You gotta, you gotta pay rent. Yeah.

Yeah. You gotta keep a roof over your head unless you go to Alaska and live in the wilderness. And I'm too much of a pussy for that. So, uh, well, Juddd thank you so much um it's been a real pleasure talking to you and seeing you uh and um good luck with the bubble it's on netflix what what date does it uh start it'll appear there april 1st and it will never go away it will be there forever so watch it you have no choice really yours and sick in the head uh

well sicker in the head the new book of interviews comes out at the end of march you can get it now and all the money goes to the 826 charity which is a free tutoring and literacy charity for kids great well thank you so much and thank all of you thank you and uh thank all of you out there for listening and we will be back next week with three, whether the same questions, but three more questions. The three questions with Andy Richter is a team cocoa and your wolf production.

It is produced by Lane Gerbig engineered by Marina Pice and talent produced by Kalitza Hayek. The associate producer is Jen samples, supervising producer Aaron Blair, and executive producers Adam Sachs and Jeff Ross at Team Coco, and Colin Anderson and Cody Fisher at Earwolf. Make sure to rate and review The Three Questions with Andy Richter on Apple Podcasts.