Judd Apatow and Michael Bonfiglio on Mel Brooks, Summer Movie Preview, and Debating the Controversial 'Blue Film'

11:54Ryan Lattanzio:He did Pig with Nicolas Cage. And then he did a Quiet Place sequel, Day One, with Lupita Nyong 'o that really kind of snuck up on people and was better than it needed to be.

12:04Anne Thompson:I agree with that. Okay. We did it.

12:09Ryan Lattanzio:I had a question, which was, well, wait a minute. Are we putting the...

12:13Anne Thompson:I left out. if I could, I would add a sixth film, which is Tuner from Daniel Roher, which is coming up in May, you know, very soon on May 22nd. So I wasn't really looking at it as one of the big summer movies. But this is a movie that is really smart and really well directed and has this extraordinary sound landscape, which soundscape, which Cater Bland wrote about today in IndieWire. It is, and it stars this guy Leo Woodall. It has Dustin Hoffman and others. But Leo Woodall is going to make a splash in this. You're seeing him a lot. He was in the, you know, Bridget Jones diary, Mad About the Boy, He Was the Boy.

12:58Anne Thompson:He's a hunk, you know. He's a good-looking guy.

13:01Ryan Lattanzio:White Lotus, Vladimir on Netflix, which was bad, but he was very, you know, he's a gorgeous young man.

13:05Anne Thompson:He was good in the other Netflix one, the one day. I watched the whole thing, you know. So he has this romantic rom-com thing going on, but this shows what he can do. And he was very good in a small part in Nuremberg. He had a sort of showcase scene at the end of Nuremberg. I don't know if you remember that. But this guy's coming along, and he's going places, and I recommend this movie. It's really, it's set in New York. It's a romance. It's also set in the music world, and it is a remarkable. achievements. So I, you know, Daniel Roher from the AI documentary, and he also was, you know, he's a big documentary filmmaker.

13:50Anne Thompson:He made the Oscar winning movie, Nivan. Well, I look forward to catching up on that one.

13:55Ryan Lattanzio:And, you know, one of the summer movies that was on our 40 list is opening this week. And it's one I kind of assigned you to watch and check out, which is a film called Blue Film directed by Elliot Tuttle, which stars Reed, Bernie and Kieran Moore as respectively a convicted pedophile and a fetish cam boy that spend a long dark night of the soul together in conversation that is very candid and revealing and disturbing. This is coming out Friday from Obscured Releasing. My predecessor, Eric Cohn, is a producer on the film. I must disclose that. Executive producer. Let's be honest.

14:32Anne Thompson:But Adam Kirsch is a producer.

14:34Ryan Lattanzio:And Adam Kirsch. And what did you think of this movie?

14:37Anne Thompson:I was riveted by it, actually. Who is the young man? Do we know him?

14:42Ryan Lattanzio:It's a debut feature.

14:44Anne Thompson:He is going places. Read Bernie, we know. But he's very sexy. He's very good. I was riveted by it. It's disturbing, as you say. It's a disturbing movie. But it comes out in a surprisingly upbeat place. It's healing in the end. It's cathartic in the end. And you're made to feel very uncomfortable. But on some level, the pedophile is a very, very damaged person. But he's also trying to be, he's trying to redeem himself in a weird way. And he does, I think, do that. Do you agree with that?

15:27Ryan Lattanzio:I'm so pleased that you liked it, Anne. And, you know, I actually had a feeling that you would. I know sometimes you say to me, like, oh, did you think I wasn't going to like that? but I actually I was pretty confident this time yeah this I agree with that it looks at issues like you know pedophilia and gay shame from a place of compassion which I think is rare in any kind of movie but it also is scary and it's makes sex unnerving in a way that maybe someone like only Catherine Breyat could

15:54Anne Thompson:do that's a good comparison actually but but it what it also made me think about is Margot's Got Money Troubles, which you may not have seen, but it's a series with Elle Fanning, who's also playing a character on one of these sites, one of these sex, you know, I'm going to show you my tits, I'm going to show you my bush, you know, kind of sites. And so her mother, played by Michelle Pfeiffer, was a hooter, right? And so there's a whole thing going on there, where she's exhibiting herself and trying to get people to tip her and everything. I had no idea these sites existed. I will admit this.

16:34Ryan Lattanzio:Get with the program. I've seen two episodes of that and I got to the Hooters backstory, but I didn't know about the other aspect, even though it's Al Fanning in a more revealing, I would say, role than we normally see her in. She's fantastic in this.

16:48Anne Thompson:Yeah, she's very good. I'm all in on Al Fanning now. I wasn't entirely there. But but I am now. So I think it was just weird that these two films happened to have some of the same the same subject matter. But anyway, this guy will have a future, I think.

17:09Ryan Lattanzio:And the movie was rejected by Sundance and South by. And I believe some of the, you know, preeminent gay festivals, queer festivals also. And I suppose you can see why once you've seen the movie, but it is disheartening and dispiriting that a movie that's taking risks like this is shut out of those platforms.

17:27Anne Thompson:Well, it does deal with a pedophile, a convicted pedophile who isn't, he has some compassion for the damage that he did, but he isn't entirely, he has some compassion for the damage that he did, but he isn't entirely free of guilt. And it is very disturbing working, you know, feeling around his world and his worldview is very disturbing. I agree. And yet he does good in this story and in a way that I found very gratifying. Because he has to help this guy who's lost in a way rediscover his humanity, rediscover himself. so um the Greta Gerwig of it all is the next thing um so we all know Ted Sarandos at Netflix doesn't believe in a theatrical model but when he was chasing the um and he made a deal with Greta Gerwig he was going to give her just IMAX theaters for x amount of time for a period and then he was going to go big at Christmas with the Narnia movie which has a good budget a healthy budget.

18:44Anne Thompson:So he is looking at changing. She had issues with the date. She couldn't make it. There was an injury. So she's delayed the release to the spring. When is it coming out, Ryan?

19:00Ryan Lattanzio:April 2nd, 2027. April 2nd.

19:02Anne Thompson:So this is around Easter time, and they're not taking advantage of Easter. There's some religious components to this, which is interesting. Aslan, I don't know if you ever read these books, but the lion in the Narnia books is a kind of godlike figure. It's C.S. Lewis, so it has religious components. So she's playing with that apparently. But in any case, she got her way. She's going to get a full theatrical release with a full theatrical window, and Netflix is breaking its own rules for her. And the question is, will they break them for other filmmakers? and why did they break them this time? And I think the answer to that is that when they looked under the hood and they examined the Warner Brothers model when they were thinking about buying Warner Brothers, they saw where the money could be and they learned a lot about distribution and marketing and everything else.

20:02Anne Thompson:And I think they're going to experiment with it again. You know, that's what they do.

20:06Ryan Lattanzio:It's wise probably to move it out of the holiday corridor that it was set for because there's multiple movies vying for IMAX screens. There's June Part 3, there's Avengers Doomsday. And obviously, yeah, Netflix sees a commercial play here.

20:20Anne Thompson:Yeah, yeah. So I'm not all, I'm not, I don't think it means that they're going to go this way with every single big filmmaker, but it gives them, it isn't a bad thing for them to have that in their back pocket if they need it, if they're trying to get one of these big projects with a filmmaker, a Christopher Nolan or a Steven Spielberg. If they have the theatrical option, then maybe they'll use it. So the next thing we have coming up is a special guest. We have Judd Apatow and Michael Bonfiglio, the co-directors of a fantastic documentary about Mel Brooks, two parts, four hours, which I highly recommend.

21:02Anne Thompson:And we're going to talk to them. And they're a lot of fun to talk to, as you can imagine.

21:11Anne Thompson:Please welcome our special guests Judd Apatow and Michael Von Figlio, who co-directed the two-part HBO Mel Brooks docuseries Mel Brooks, the 99-year-old man. It's a very funny doc about a very funny man. I've interviewed Apatow before. Hello, Judd, for some of his movies, which include The 40-year-old Virgin and Knocked Up and many others. And I know Ryan was raised on Freaks and Geeks as my daughter was.

21:39Ryan Lattanzio:That is true, though. I will say that I raised myself on Freaks and Geeks because I watched it a little later when I was a freshman in college on DVD. So between the two of you, you guys have won Emmys, including for Docs on George Carlin. And you also collaborated on May at Last, A Portrait of the Ava Brothers.

21:56Anne Thompson:What did you glean from Mel Brooks? He wants to entertain always, obviously, but does he want to reveal himself? Yeah, I think that was the real question of the documentary. I was asked to interview him for Atlantic Magazine a few years ago. And I said, maybe the best way to do it is to ask him for his wisdom, like to not talk about comedy in his career. Just what have you learned along the way? And he was really interesting. And then at some point HBO asked us to make a documentary about him. And that really was the question, would Mel want to open up about his personal life, his family, his marriages?

22:39What was the experience of being Mel Brooks? Because it's a rare kind of person. He grew up in Brooklyn during the Depression. How many people do we have that can tell you what the Depression felt like? And then he fought in World War II, and he was in the Catskills and the invention of television. I mean, it's like a time traveler. so at first he really kind of didn't want to be that personal uh he wasn't sure he wanted to do this project because there are other documentaries about him but slowly uh we just refused to take maybe for an answer uh and then one day I said to Mel I go Mel if we don't do this we have no reason to hang out but if we do this we can hang out a bunch and then he said

23:23Anne Thompson:okay I'll do it watching the two of you hang out is one of the great pleasures I have to say it

23:29Ryan Lattanzio:really it really is I cannot believe that in June he's going to be a hundred years old yeah very um hearty for someone who is at that age and what is so great about him is that he is a writer a director a producer an actor a songwriter uh which of these did you feel like he most identified with or identifies with? I think it's all part of him, but I think ultimately comedian, even though he never really did traditional standup, I think that making people laugh and bringing audiences joy is the great mission of his life. And I think he has accomplished it extraordinarily well, probably more than anybody else who is living.

24:17But I think that through all of those methods, laughter, music, bringing joy to people is Mel's great contribution and great mission.

24:32Ryan Lattanzio:It's been hard to get through some of these sit-downs without just cracking up and laughing that entire time. There was definitely a lot of giggling on the crew. some camera shake that had to be removed digitally. But yeah. That is a hard part about making these docs. People are really funny, but you know when you're in editing, you won't want to hear me going, you know, so you're like trying to like laugh without making noise. So Mel feels good that he got the laugh. So you're like, you know, but you can't make noise.

25:06Anne Thompson:That's very funny. um you have you he had a number of major relationships in his life that were quite that you'd dig into and one of the ones i was most fascinated by was with his with his love with the love of his life and bancroft um it seemed like such an unlikely romance and partnership and when they got together it was when he was at his lowest ebb and she was in love with him and doing better than he was and she helped him did she help him find his footing again oh absolutely unquestionably and i think he's the first to say it that that she had a way of convincing him of his worth when he didn't feel worthy you know um he he struggled quite a bit over the years and i think probably still does to some extent with with imposter syndrome whatever you want to call it that i think we all do this insecurity of like, am I any good is, you know, and believe it or not, Mel struggled with that quite a bit.

26:09And Anne was the person who was able to say, no, you're really great. You need to keep doing this. You're extremely talented. You need to share that with the world and don't lose sight of that. So she, he talks about how she would encourage him to write songs, write movies, keep going when he felt that there was no point, that he wasn't able to, that he wouldn't be successful. There are many reasons why she was so critical to his success, but that's a big one. Yeah.

26:43Ryan Lattanzio:I wonder if you guys could talk a bit about his skills as a producer and a director. Obviously, he's known as a comedy auteur for some of these, you call them spoof movies like Young Frankenstein, Spaceballs, Blazing Saddles. He was a real tastemaker as a producer too. And some people forget that he produced The Elephant Man and put David Lynch on the map and also paved the way for David Cronenberg by producing The Fly, or at least paving the way in the United States. He had this affinity, obviously, for the grotesque, which he does talk about in the documentary. I mean, I think that he was probably frustrated that he couldn't stretch into other genres.

27:19And I think he probably would have done well if he committed his time to that. I think maybe in show business, there was more of a sense back then that stay in your lane. But he did find an outlet through Brooks Films. And the amount of great movies that they made is just ridiculous when you think about My Favorite Year and Francis. and yeah, and the fly and the elephant man. I mean, his success rate is like 90 % for his production company. And he had a lot of power back then. And I think it was a way for him to show what his other interests were, what his taste was. And he leaves behind like a giant legacy there as well.

28:06Anne Thompson:And he also got away with murder. I want to talk about Blazing Saddles. I mean, I when you show the clips from that movie, I am my jaw was dropping at what he actually was able to put on screen at that time. And how did you talk about that? And and how did he get away with it? And how did Richard Pryor help him? That was news to me. I did not know about that. That was I did not realize how much he was involved. um yeah no i mean blazing saddles is still extremely potent and it and it it feels uh shocking at times um but it's still so funny and i think that there's a sense that it's that as shocking as it is that it's all coming from a good place and that the intentions behind it are about exposing the ridiculousness and the cruelty of racial prejudice.

29:07That was the point of the movie. It just happens to be about that in a really funny, funny way. So I asked Dave Chappelle, is that a film that could be made today? And he said no, but it also couldn't have been made then by anybody but Mel Brooks. And I think that what's behind that is just the idea that like, if you're going to try to make a film like that, that is taking things on in such a strong, direct way, you have to be really, really good at it. It took people operating at the very highest level of their craft and with the best of intentions for it to work. But it's kind of a miracle that that film isn't something that we currently have just buried away somewhere and, you know, to never be seen again.

29:57It feels like it should be, but it doesn't need to be because it still works.

30:03Ryan Lattanzio:In this documentary, we see all these relationships with his comedian collaborators that are really fascinating. we talk about Richard Pryor, but also Gene Wilder and Carl Reiner. And, you know, I think obviously when you're in the orbit of Mel Brooks, he makes you funnier, but it's also that I think they make him funnier too, right? He talks very affectionately about how Carl was so often willing to be the straight man so that Mel was the one to get the punchline. I was very moved by him talking about Carl and this idea that he was a father figure to him because I was interested in what was that relationship based on but why were they so connected and it was Rob Reiner who said I think Mel looked at my dad as a father figure and so I asked Mel like is that true and he said yeah he's you know of course i mean he's tall he's kind and he talked you know both on camera and off about how amazing it was that someone who was just as funny as him was happy to let him get most all the laughs and mel brooks dad died when he was very young and as soon as you hear that you go oh it all makes sense and then when you watch them together it is like a little boy trying to make his dad happy.

31:25Anne Thompson:And they were only a couple years apart, right? Yeah. When they're doing like a 2 ,000 year old man, it's like a kid delighting and cracking up a parent. And then the whole thing becomes even sweeter. And when we were editing it, you know, we found this clip at the AFI tribute to Carl Reiner where Mel Brooks, you know, he basically says, I'm not Jewish. and he takes off his nose like it's Mission Impossible. And the place just goes crazy. And afterwards, Carl runs up to him and kisses him on the mouth like five times and was like, it was worth it, it was worth it, you've never been funnier. And they just love each other so much and they love comedy so much that we thought, oh, we should end the movie on this moment of love between these two people because that was obviously such an important part of his life.

32:23Anne Thompson:But part of it is also that over partly because he lived so long that he ended up having to say goodbye to all these people. And that was very moving, too, you know, that they would spend every day together and then he would have to to mourn his his loss. That was that was one of the most devastating things in the movie.

32:46Ryan Lattanzio:But he said something. Oh, I'm sorry. He says that really struck with me, which is that you shouldn't have to pay for someone dying by being really miserable all the time. Right. Yeah. And that's, you know, that's I mean, there were aspects of the movie that changed when when we lost Rob Reiner, because he's the voice in the documentary that is explaining how Mel and Carl handled grief. and it becomes so moving to hear it come from Rob when we're grieving him. Yeah, well, I did want to say you basically, I think you do get the last on-camera interviews with both Rob Reiner and David Lynch, who seems like he was in good health at this point.

33:33Ryan Lattanzio:And then both of them died within around a month before, by the time the movie was released. We didn't change anything. it just made things deeper and more impactful. Because that is the point of the documentary is what is the use of a life? What is the meaning of it? For him it was comedy and friendship and love and parenting and his wife and Rob who is part of his family and to hear from all of them even Jerry Seinfeld when he's visiting them when they used to have dinner together every night because they both lost their wives. And Jerry Seinfeld did an episode of Comedians in Cars getting coffee where he visited them while they hung out and watched TV.

34:18And Jerry said, yeah, the end of your life. What is the quote, Michael? I think he says, like, when you've accomplished everything that's possible, this is the best you can hope for is eating deli sandwiches with your best friend and watching TV. Like, that's the most we can hope for. You know, these two incredibly accomplished people it's not they're not ending their lives in some fancy way it's just what matters is their their

34:45Anne Thompson:best friends it's kind of beautiful i want to know how you two work together how you two got together and what what the collaboration is and how it works we met um over 10 years ago um i directed an episode of a show called iconoclasts that judd was the subject of so it was about judd and Lena Dunham. And so that's how we met. And we enjoyed doing that, had a good experience, and just kind of stayed in touch after that. And then there was an opportunity to film with the Avett brothers. And that kicked off what became our film, May It Last. And we just, we enjoy working together. And I think we have similar sensibilities and share similar values.

35:31We've just kind of kept it going and made more stuff together. But how the collaboration works depends on the project, really. Like sometimes we'll divvy things up based on geography and availability. Sometimes we'll be together on set. Sometimes, you know, Judd will do an interview or something and I'll do another one. I think we're interested in the emotional story of these people. And so that's the thing that connects us is we're really, it's very Gary Shandling uh inspired you know all of his work was how do you how can you really show the core of people you know can you go all the way and i think that that's what we're looking for in the subjects we're interested in their creative life but even more so in in who they are as people and and so when someone opens up like mel it just feels very special because he lived such an incredible life but for me i just think i want to know how it felt you know where was your head at during all of this

36:30Ryan Lattanzio:I wondered how you were able to keep this to a cool four hours. Did you find yourselves tearing your hair out in the editing room? all this material i i think that my job in the business right now is to lengthen people's attention spans so in a world where everyone's like we're doing micro dramas it's like nypd blue but it's 40 seconds i want to push people in the other direction and make things as long as they can be i feel like it's uh how i'm helping the health of the country uh i mean i love this format I think I became aware of it through Martin Scorsese's directing work so when he did the two part Bob Dylan documentary and then he did the same with George Harrison it felt like well that's the right amount of time to handle a big life you definitely need two almost two hour parts for really accomplished people and so we try to figure out like okay there's a story to each one and a certain momentum to each one.

37:35But it is hard because there's every aspect of Mel's life you could make an entire documentary about. You could make an entire documentary about how did they do the producers on Broadway and how did he make Blazing Saddles? So as a hoarder, I find it very painful to not include all the wonderful moments we find when we watch like every BBC interview he ever did. and I think Michael and our editor, Joe Beshankowski, are much more disciplined than me at removing things. I almost have to like not watch for a while, let them cut it and then forget it was in there or I'll fight to keep everything in.

38:15Ryan Lattanzio:Funny People and This Is 40, these are like almost two and a half hour movies, right? Yeah, I mean, well, they're closer to like 205, 210. And I used to always look at the lengths of my favorite movies like Broadcast News or Terms of Endearment. And I would always just go, well, that's a good length, 207, 209. And everyone's like, shouldn't comedies be 90? And I'm like, no, I want to know more about these people. I always feel like if you're in a theater, like last night, we watched Jerry Maguire. I'm making a movie right now with Glenn Powell in Savannah, Georgia. And he rented out a movie theater.

38:48And the cast and crew came in. We all watched Jerry Maguire, which is, I guess, probably about a two-hour movie. and it just, it was fantastic. It was really fun to watch it with people again. But that feels like the right length, but it may not be what, as people's brains shrink from being online, they may want it shorter, but they are going to get a fight from me on this issue.

39:12Anne Thompson:So talk about your new movie. It's called The Comeback King and it takes place in the world of country music. It's, I guess you would call it a romantic comedy and it's going really well. We're having a lot of fun. A lot of the country world is in the movie and it's going to come out the beginning of next year. But it's really, really fun. So you've been nurturing other people all along from Seth Rogen to Lena Dunham. Ryan and I both were reading the Lena Dunham book because we went to see her do a Q &A and we're fans. But talk about how you feel about your, you know, watching your mentees grow and thrive in the world.

39:59Anne Thompson:Are you a proud dad? Did you read Lena's book? I haven't gotten through all of it yet. I'm kind of partially through it. But, you know, it reminds me of, like, how I felt Gary felt about me. Whenever I had a new project, he was always so supportive and excited for me. It meant so much to have someone like him teach me how to do it, but then also be excited for my success and to go off and experiment and try to do all these things. So I'm just more blown away at the ripple effect of the people that you're lucky enough to collaborate with and then to see what they do in their own careers afterwards.

40:48And then you see how many projects developed. I'm very proud to have played the smallest part in helping people learn how to do this and get to follow their own creative visions. And it's a very exciting time. There's just a lot of people doing a lot of great stuff. I was watching Shrinking with Jason Segel and going, wow, look what his writing has become and what a creator he is. And obviously, you know, the studio is a really kind of remarkable piece of work. And I love that everyone's watching Girls and watching it outside of the context of when it first aired, when people were trying to add all sorts of other things to it and interpret it based on, you know, what was going on in the real world.

41:40Now people just watch the show and really appreciate what Lena accomplished. So that's exciting. Because, you know, when you make things, they kind of disappear down the algorithm a lot of the time. And then you just never see them again. It's like they didn't happen. Then certain things, like girls, you turn on HBO, it's just right there. It's just like it came out yesterday. It's the first thing you see when you turn on your HBO Max app. So that's really gratifying.

42:10Ryan Lattanzio:It's wild to me how young she was at the start of this show. She was 24 when she wrote the pilot for Girls. And then she became a showrunner, became a boss of a bunch of people. I think about when I was 24, I was a nightmare. I could not be running a production at all. Did you have a sense of that, of her being young? And I'm sure you were looking out for her in some ways. Or was it like she really arrived fully formed? Well, she had made her movie Tiny Furniture, but I think it was like a crew of like a dozen people. and she was the caterer buying the pizza and it was done on a shoestring but she made a really professional looking movie with Jodie Leipzig, Jodie Leipzig, the DP who I've gotten a chance to work with both on Girls and on Trainwreck but she hadn't had a big staff and crew before and I ran with Ben, The Ben Stiller Show when I was 24 and I was very aware of how scary that was and how it's difficult when you haven't studied management and you have a crew of 100 people and you're like a child.

43:18And I had seen what Gary Shanling went through as the star, writer, everything on a TV show that it really sucks you dry. And so I tried to warn her about everything. I really told her what was coming. And we tried to prepare our production to make it as human on Lena as possible, knowing that she was like the primary force. We had an amazing writing staff, and that helped a ton, but she was also writing a lot and directing. The fact that anyone gets through that alive is a miracle, because it's just too much work for anybody, and she did a really amazing job.

43:59Anne Thompson:She was acting too. Yeah, no, I mean, she'd be acting, and I remember the first day, she's like, I think she's like in the tub, naked, eating a cupcake in front of a crew of strangers. And she's like, action! And then she eats the cupcake and cut. And you know, like that's a lot to take on as a 24 year old person. Well, thank you guys for talking to us. I laughed my head off and enjoyed this documentary so much. Yeah, it's a great film. All right. Bye, see you guys.