Fun
with Dick
and
Jane
and Judd
The acclaimed filmmaker
who mined
elements of his own
life to create ‘Freaks and Geeks,’ ‘Undeclared’ and
the blockbuster ‘40-Year-Old Virgin’ is
also behind Jim Carrey’s latest.
by
Mike Russell
Read
the print version here.
The world, it seems, has caught
on to Judd Apatow.
Until last year, the writer-producer-director
enjoyed a peculiar and frustrating position in Hollywood’s comedy universe:
He had talented friends and never lacked for work — he’d
been writing steadily since “The Larry Sanders Show” in
1992 — but he’d also engineered a string of brilliant,
quickly cancelled TV shows and never-seen pilots.
Project after heartfelt project
earned critical raves, rabid cults … and tiny, tiny audiences. He wrote and produced
the seminal “The Ben Stiller Show,” followed
by “Freaks and Geeks” and “Undeclared” — two
of the sharpest comedies about school life ever broadcast.
None of these lasted more than 18 episodes.*
And then, over the last two years
or so, Apatow’s success
caught up with his standards.
DVDs of “The Ben Stiller Show,” “Freaks
and Geeks” and “Undeclared” introduced
his best work to new audiences. Comic actors he’d befriended
and employed during their nascent careers (Stiller, Will
Ferrell and Owen Wilson, to name a few) acquired sizeable
followings. And two films — “Anchorman,” which
he produced, and “The 40-Year-Old Virgin,” which
he wrote and directed — became bona fide box office
hits. Last March, The New York Times’ Sharon Waxman
all but declared Apatow the co-godfather of a sort of “comedy
mafia” that includes frequent collaborators Stiller,
Ferrell, Wilson, Jim Carrey, Vince Vaughn, Jack Black, Steve
Carrell and “Anchorman” writer-director Adam
McKay.
Here’s what Apatow has in the pipeline: He’s
writing and directing an untitled romantic comedy starring “Freaks”/”Undeclared”/”Virgin” actor
Seth Rogen; he’s producing the McKay/Ferrell NASCAR
comedy “High, Wide, and Handsome”; and he co-wrote
a remake of the 1977 Jane Fonda/George Segal comedy “Fun
with Dick and Jane” — starring Jim Carrey and
Téa Leoni as a pair of larcenous yuppies.
In Focus talked
with Apatow about “Dick and Jane,” “Virgin,” the
joys of reality TV, getting to know past and future comedy
legends, the cult of “Freaks and Geeks,” and
much more. An edited transcript follows.
_______________
DICK, JANE
AND HAROLD
I’m not sure you’re
the first guy I would have thought of to write a remake of “Fun
With Dick and Jane.”
I used to love the original “Dick and
Jane” when I was a kid. It was a real touchstone movie
for me and my family — we all went together and loved
it. A real pleasant moment in my childhood. And it had Jane
Fonda wiping herself with toilet paper — which was
shocking back then. [laughs]
But it also seemed like a fun way to satirize
how out-of-control corporations are right now: You could
use the template of
the movie to talk about how the country has suffered a bit
as a result of greed — of corporations being so obsessed
with profits that people get hurt. And being mad about something
is always a good starting point for comedy.
We just
interviewed Harold
Ramis — and he said you’d
be interviewing him in front of an audience at the Austin
Film Festival.
That’s right. I’m just a giant fan of Harold
Ramis. They showed “40-Year-Old Virgin” at the
Deauville Film Festival in France, and they were showing
[“Ice Harvest”], too — so Seth Rogen and
I were just stalking him. Everywhere he turned, we were there.
His work is the gold standard for what we all try to do.
All the new big-hit comedies are in some way inspired by
movies he’s made.
I noticed
the direct homage in “Wedding Crashers” — where
they actually set a montage to Otis Day and the Knights’ “Shout” … and,
uh, brought breasts back to mainstream comedy.
Yes. Exactly.
What sort of questions will you be asking
him in Austin?
It’s a great opportunity to ask him things that are
only helpful to me. [laughs] I can ask him very obscure questions
about his approach to writing. And I’m always interested
in what their intentions were when they were making those
movies: Did they know what the point of these movies were?
Or were they just funny comedies?
Ramis told
us about something Bernie Sahlens of Second City told him: “Work
from the top of your intelligence” — don’t
talk down to your audience, use real information, and any
character can know anything. Does that resonate for you?
I just try to make things I would like. That’s the
only hard-and-fast rule. I never want to do anything I’d
be ashamed of. I don’t mind watching crap — I
just don’t wanna make it. I love all sorts of terrible
shows and bad movies; I’ll watch any kind of car-wreck
piece of “art.” I just don’t want to be
responsible for it.
A lot of what I learned about writing I learned
from Garry Shandling when I worked on “The Larry Sanders Show.” For
him, it’s always about being honest, and what would
really happen in that situation. So that’s how I approach
things. I’m probably most influenced by Hal Ashby movies
and people like Cameron Crowe and James Brooks.
_______________
'BREAKING
BONADUCE'
and the JOY OF IMPROV
You’ve
said the only TV you watch these days is reality shows.
For the most part, yeah.
Is this connected to the unusual amounts of
improvisation you use in your films and TV shows?
I’ve always been a fan of unscripted television — just
because human behavior’s so interesting. And no matter
how bad the [reality] show is, you’re still seeing
people react honestly, even if the situation is completely
fabricated. I’ll run home to watch “Breaking
Bonaduce.” I feel no shame about that. I’m also
a fan of things like “Nip/Tuck” and “The
Sopranos” — there’s a lot of great stuff
happening on cable, and if something’s really good,
I’m the first person to be obsessed by it — but
at the same time, I’ll be conflicted because “Being
Bobby Brown” is on at the same time as “America’s
Next Top Model.” [laughs]
When did you decide that improvisation could
advance your material?
The first time I saw people improvise was when I was producing “The
Ben Stiller Show.” Ben loved to throw scripts out and
make stuff up off the top of his head, and have me hang out
behind the camera and throw him “areas” in which
he could improv — and then we’d go to the editing
room and piece it together. We used to do sketches where
Ben would pretend to be an agent, and we’d have someone
like Howie Mandel come in, and Ben would pitch bad career
moves. And then, after Mandel left, we’d shoot Ben’s
side for another hour — and he’d say things
that were even more offensive or made fun of him.
Then I worked on “The Larry Sanders Show,” and
Gary [Shandling] is open to improvisation in both rehearsals
and during the show. There wasn’t a lot of improvisation
during the scene work, but when Gary did the talk-show segments,
during the commercials he’d really let it open up — and
really interesting things happened.
So when I made “Freaks and Geeks” with Paul Feig,
my idea was to hire kids who were very similar to the characters — and
create the characters around their real personalities. If
they’re, for the most part, being themselves, it’s
easy to improvise. And when you hire interesting people who
are good actors, they say things that are very specific to
them that you couldn’t write in a million years.
And when we did the TV show “Undeclared,” I made
a point of hiring only people who were capable of that. We
worked very hard on the scripts, but everyone knew that I
didn’t think I was David Mamet and that you couldn’t
change a line. And sometimes, dare I say, magical comedic
moments would come out of that freedom. The actors saw that
I trusted them, so they’d take big chances.
We did the same thing on “Anchorman.” There were
so many funny improvisations, we just put tons of it on the
DVD. That’s what we did on “Virgin,” too.
_______________
THE
POWER
of the ‘VOMIT PASS’
You told
the WGA about writing what you call a “vomit
pass” on your scripts. Could you explain this for
the aspiring scenarists in our audience?
I read a book by Ann Lamott called “Bird by Bird,” and
in the book she talks about the “Down-Up Theory” — “Get
it down, then fix it up” — and how you shouldn’t
judge yourself when you’re writing your first draft.
That should be a moment for pure creativity, and being
too hard on yourself prevents you from finishing.
So I’ve taken that advice. I call it a “vomit
draft,” which means I try to write a first draft really
fast and not judge myself — and then I look at it
and see what the hell happened, then deal with it in a
more critical
way.
Other people I worked with when I was a show-runner
on TV shows could literally sit in a room and obsess for
hours
and hours over whether or not to put a comma somewhere.
And
you could see how much pain they were in as they were writing,
because they were judging the work as they were writing
it — and
that’s impossible. I guess it’s possible — some
people do it — but those are the people that take
a long time to write, or suffer through it.
Do they tend to burn out earlier?
I don’t know. I just think it makes you write less.
I read a lot about writing and how the brain works, and it’s
true that your brain is cut in half, and one half judges
and one half is really creative — and you shouldn’t
have ’em working together.
_______________
JUDD
APATOW’S
PRIVATE COMEDY COLLEGE
You interviewed a bunch of professional comedians
for your high-school radio station. Do you still have those
interviews?
I do.
Do you have a favorite?
I haven’t really listened to them, because I have such
a high voice and such a thick New York accent that I’m
mortified every time I listen to them. I listened to one
recently, and I was interviewing Jay Leno, and I was about
15 years old…
You did
an impression of him on “The Ben Stiller Show,” as
I recall…
Yeah. And this was way before “The Tonight Show”;
this was when he was working in comedy clubs. And I said,
[adopts high voice with thick New York accent] “How
d’you think you’re doin’ in your career
now? I mean, you’re doin’ pretty well, but you’re
not exactly playing the Universal Amphitheatre.”
[laughs] Jeez!
I was a dumb, cocky kid. So they’re kind of rough to
listen to. I wasn’t a very refined, uh, teenager.
How did Leno respond to that question?
He just laughed! He laughed really loud! “No, I’m
not playing the Universal Amphitheatre.” [laughs] This
was years before he became a gigantic star. But he was nice
enough to let me interview him twice. I interviewed him and
Seinfeld twice — after showing up with my enormous
tape recorder from the A/V squad, they actually let me do
it again. That’s what those guys are truly like.
When I interviewed Seinfeld, I was grilling
him for literally 45 minutes about how to write jokes — and he tells me, in incredible detail, using examples from his act, how
he thought of it, how he developed it, what the stages were….
It became a blueprint for how to be a comedian and a comedy
writer. So when I started writing, I already had 15 hours
of conversations about how to do it. And I didn’t just
interview comedians; I interviewed writers like Michael O’Donaghue
and James Downey….
That’s
like comedy college.
I interviewed Harold Ramis back then. I interviewed John
Candy, Martin Short, Franken & Davis, Bruce Feirstein,
all sorts of people — so it wasn’t like I got
one opinion. I interviewed everyone from Steve Allen to “Weird” Al
Yankovic. [laughs]
Have you ever considered collecting these
or getting them out there somehow?
I was going to write something about that experience; I’ve
thought about putting them out in some form, maybe a book
of transcripts that might have a CD on it…. I’m
not exactly sure how many comedy nerds would care.
I interviewed some people before they became
popular, and they basically lay out their career plans — and
you see how many of them achieved their goals. I did a long
interview
with Garry Shandling where he talked about how his dream
was to do a TV show that he created where he played himself.
And he did exactly that.
And then you ended up working for him.
Yes, yes. I’ve never played it for him, though. For
anybody. The only person who remembers that I interviewed
them is Alan Zweibel; he found a letter from me requesting
the interview or thanking him for the interview, and he
laughed his ass off when he found it.
_______________
LONG-TERM
RESPECT
and MAKING ‘VIRGIN’ SING
You’re at an interesting point in your career. You’ve
said that, when confronted with idiotic producer directives, “my
usual instinct is to tell everyone to take a hike.” And
that caused you a lot of pain for a lot of years. But now
it seems to have earned you respect and success. Was there
a dark time somewhere in there when you thought you’d
have to bag it?
No — because there never was a time when I thought
I was never gonna work again. Even when I was in the middle
of the worst battles, there were enough people who liked
what we were trying to do that I would be allowed to continue.
When “Freaks and Geeks” was being shuffled around
and not treated well, the people at the other networks liked
it and would say, “Well, do something over here.” So
it wasn’t like I was in a precarious moment in my career.
But then you’d go over there, and they’d behave
in the same manner.
And I care most that the work is good, so
I don’t enjoy
it being a bloodbath — but I’m always happy that
I like what we created, and it’s always worth it, even
if every once in a while you have to have major back surgery.
It was really unpleasant during “The Ben Stiller Show” and “Freaks
and Geeks” and “Undeclared” a fair amount
of the time — but I always knew I’d be proud
of what we’d made, and that people would see it at
some point in some format.
I enjoy working with the writers and the actors,
and the shows are well-run, so the stress doesn’t come from
making the shows. The stress comes from being really excited
about the shows and having people tell you what’s wrong
with it when you know it’s in pretty good shape.
I just interviewed
Joss Whedon, and it strikes
me that you two would have a lot to talk about.
Well, he’s had a very good television experience.
Until “Firefly.”
I had several shows cancelled because they were up against “Buffy.” [laughs]
What was
it like working with Clint Eastwood’s cinematographer,
Jack Green, on “The 40-Year-Old Virgin”?
When I was looking for department heads for my first film
as a director, I thought, “Well, I should get real
veterans, so I can’t screw this up.” Jack Green
had just finished “Serenity” at Universal for
Joss Whedon, and they said I should consider him, and I said
yes instantly — I’m a big fan of his work, and
he did a great job on the Adam Sandler movie “50 First
Dates.” I remember meeting him on that set and thinking, “How
come I never get to work with a guy like that?”
He runs his crew like an army, right?
Two of his sons work on the camera crew, and they’re
the best at what they do. It allowed me to focus on the story
and the performances, because the visual aspect isn’t
my strongest suit. [laughs] I also hired Jackson DiGovia
to be my production designer; he did one of the “Die
Hard” movies, and he’s one of the reasons the
movie looks way better than it should.
“Virgin”’s end-credits sing-along to “Let
the Sunshine In” is just a little too affectionate
to be a mere sendup. Are you a closet “Hair” fan?
Well, we knew we needed an ending that signified that he
had sex and it was really good. It was Garry Shandling
who advised me often during the writing of the movie that
you
have to point out that his sex — when he finally has
it — is better than everyone else’s because he’s
in love. I wasn’t sure how to tackle that. I didn’t
think I could show great sex, but I knew there had to be
some sort of “aftermath” moment.
And you
can’t have Howard Cosell call it like a sportscast.
Yeah. So we were kind of stuck. And then Steve said, “What
if I just sing a song?” And I immediately said, “Yeah — like ‘Let
the Sunshine In.’” And that was it. We didn’t
think about it any more. We just did that.
But I didn’t really know how to shoot a musical — I
just knew I wanted to allude to the musical “Hair,” but
I didn’t want to do a direct spoof of it, because it’s
meant to show that he’s really happy and released.
Which is a tricky line — because people kept walking
up to me and asking, “Well, are they wearing beads?
Are they wearing pooka shells? What are they wearing?” And
I kept saying, “Well, I think it’s a hint of ’60s,
but it’s a funny line where it’s just guys with
pants and no shirts on.” [laughs] In a weird way,
we hit that part perfectly, based purely on blind luck.
My executive producer John Poll — who’s also
a great editor and who did all the “Austin Powers” and “Meet
the Parents” movies — helped me figure out what
the shots would be. And Jack Green? Amazing on those days.
I can take credit for very little. I did a lot of delegating.
My biggest contribution was, “Hey! It would funny if
Seth sang!”
_______________
SETH ROGEN:
FUNNY FROM THE WOMB
Let’s
geek out on the genius of Seth Rogen.
Well, I’ve known Seth since he was 16. Someone sent
me a tape of him auditioning for “Freaks and Geeks” in
Canada. I was fascinated by this weird kid with this froggy
voice — and, at that time, he had a much thicker
Canadian accent. It made me laugh. He had such a weird
energy.
He’s
deadpan.
And he knew what he was doing. So we created a part for
him on the show — and as the weeks went by, it became clear
that he was a gifted comedy mind. He was trying to write
an episode of the show — I never read it, but he was
working on scenes. And when a scene didn’t work, I
always knew I could bring him into the office with another
actor and have them goof around and improvise, and they’d
come up with some hilarious stuff.
When I did “Undeclared” [in 2001], he was only
18, but I put him on the writing staff and in the show — and
he quickly became one of the best writers. So when I wrote
[“40-Year-Old Virgin”], I wrote a part for him,
and then I made him a co-producer — which basically
meant I forced him to go on the set every day, all day, and
help me to make things funny, even if he wasn’t saying
them.
His story, in some ways, parallels your own.
You interviewed professional comedians in high school, jumping
right into
the deep end of the entertainment pool at a young age.
Do you feel a kinship with him because of that?
I never thought of it that way; I never made that connection.
I was a guy who was trying to be a comedian at 16, 17 — and
Seth, I think, was in comedy as early as 14 in Canada. I
was just more amused by the fact that he seemed to come out
of the womb with a fully formed comic persona — and
I just didn’t understand why he was so funny at such
a young age. And any time you realize someone’s funny
and the rest of the world doesn’t know it yet, it’s
really exciting.
The aspect of the work that I’ve enjoyed the most is
working with people before they break — then
trying to find out how to execute the projects that cross
them over.
In many
ways, that’s the story of your career. I just
saw John Francis Daley [who played Sam in “Freaks and
Geeks”] in “Waiting…”
And he’s in “Kitchen Confidential” now.
Can relentless
Judd Apatow promotion of another “Freaks
and Geeks” standout, Jason Segel, be far behind?
Well, he’s on this new show on CBS called “How
I Met Your Mother,” and that’s getting rave reviews.
He’s another one of the guys I believe really could
be part of the next generation of comedy stars — kind
of an interesting variation on what Ben Stiller does in movies.
I did a pilot with him [“North Hollywood”] that
didn’t get picked up that I thought was really funny.
I’m excited for him to get some acclaim; we have
ideas.
Since you’ve
achieved some mainstream success, is your career these
days about righting wrongs – about getting
good projects to overlooked talent?
I think of it more in terms of working with people that
I like and trying to hit untapped reservoirs of comedy.
And
I try to be more and more personal with the work as the
years go by.
The fun part is that there are a lot of funny
people out there who aren’t going to get shots, so if you’re
in a position to give it to them, that makes it more gratifying
when they succeed. It’s fun that Steve Carrell had
never starred in a movie, and we made this movie together
and it became a big hit. I didn’t know what all of
Steve’s moves were — I didn’t know how
he worked as a leading man — so we had to figure all
of that out together. There’s no trail of bread-crumbs
to follow.
_______________
FAILED
PILOTS,
‘FREAK’-Y FANS
We keep
hearing about these wonderful failed television pilots
these days, thanks to the Internet -- I’m thinking
of “Heat Vision and Jack,” “North Hollywood,” “Life
on Parole,” “Sick in the Head”….
When are people going to start issuing these things on
DVD?
It’s usually all sorts of rights issues when they want
to release these things. Friends of mine were trying to put
out a few of them, and I think you have to pay everybody
again or something like that. Sometimes they’re co-owned
by a production company and a network, which is kind of tricky,
and there’s music-clearance issues….
On “North Hollywood,” the version I liked best
is about 10 minutes longer than the version we handed in
to the network. So at the Austin Film Festival, I’m
going to show a 32-minute version of the pilot that wasn’t
even online — it’s a straight-out Avid, and it’s
not mixed, but that’s the version I liked. So for
me to finish it, I have to spend an enormous amount of
money
to mix some sound and pay for the music.
You’ve said you make no real profit off these beautiful
DVD sets for “Geeks” and “Undeclared.” So — if
I may ask an extremely leading question — why put
them out?
It’s just weird to work really hard on something and
have nobody ever see it again. So I couldn’t be happier
that Shout! Factory put out those two shows — at great
risk to themselves, because they had to pay almost a million
dollars in music clearance to put “Freaks and Geeks” out
on DVD. It turned out really well for them, and as a result,
they took a risk on “Undeclared,” and that’s
turning out really well, too — but the music on that
show was also really expensive.
But the main reason I do it is that they give
me an enormous amount of freedom in the packaging, in the
extras. They’re
not cheap in paying for all of the things I want to put on
them. And I actually enjoy it more because I don’t
make any money on it — I can beg people to buy it and
they know I’m not begging because I’m going to
fill my wallet. So that’s nice.
Have you
sold out of those deluxe, eight-disc “yearbook
editions” of the “Freaks and Geeks” DVD?
I think we’re pretty close. We made about 10,000 of
them, and I think there might be 1,000 or 2,000 left. So
anyone who hasn’t gotten it? The clock is ticking!
You’ve been clever about using the Internet to rally
support for your shows — even inviting some Internet
fans to contribute to DVD box sets. You also distributed
some unaired episodes over the net after cancellation.
Does this give you mixed feelings about online file-sharing?
The only thing I can say about file-sharing is that I don’t
do it. It feels wrong in my gut. I don’t do Napster.
I don’t download movies for free. Maybe that’s
because I have money and don’t need to. Maybe it’s
because my grandfather owned record companies when I was
a kid. Somewhere in me, I know that’s stealing.
But I love the Internet. From the very beginning
of “Freaks
and Geeks,” Paul Feig always said, “This is a
show made for the Internet.” The fans were really into
our Web site, so we worked really hard on it — that’s
how we got the information out about the campaigns to keep
it on the air. Although we still didn’t last that
long, it still may have kept us on the air another four
or five
episodes.
I understand you incorporated story ideas
from your online fans.
Yeah — if we were looking for a name for a bad local
band, I’d post on the site, and there would suddenly
be a string of 30 names….
We’d use the fans in all sorts of different ways. One
fan, Tammy, watched every piece of footage we shot on both “Freaks
and Geeks” and “Undeclared,” and told us
what she thought would be good to put on the DVDs. In fact,
right now I’m trying to put together a Loudon Wainwright
DVD anthology of all his performances over the last 30 years — and
she’s helping watch all these old “Mike Douglas
Show”s and things like that.
And sometimes when we have things that need
proofing or fact-checking, we’ll ask the fans and they’ll tell us if we
screwed something up. When we put out “Freaks and Geeks,” before
they went to press, we gave the DVDs to five different fans
and told them to tell us if we messed anything up. We had
fans do the [DVD] menus.
“Freaks & Geeks,” “Undeclared” and “The
40-Year-Old Virgin” all seem to follow a similar
theme — the
geek’s quest for love and acceptance. You’ve
even described “Virgin” as a 20-years-later
sequel to “Geeks.” Do you think this will forever
be a defining theme in your work?
I don’t think so. You tend to write about things a
little bit earlier in your life; now I’m going to write
about marriage and having kids, and that’ll be the
next phase. That starts a little bit with “Dick and
Jane” and the romantic comedy I’m going to
do with Seth after that.
I’m just beginning to have enough distance
to start writing about my young adulthood and having kids
and being
married. And then later I’ll write about what it’s
like to be in Hollywood — and then I’ll lose
touch with my audience and be rejected by the system. [laughs]
That seems to be the last step in almost any writer’s
career: He does well and then he has nothing to write about,
and it’s over. 
| *Apatow frequently jokes that he has grown wary of
being honored by the Museum of Television & Radio. “Freak
and Geeks” was cancelled almost immediately after
it the museum feted it. The exact same thing happened
with “Undeclared.” |
