Judd Apatow on Meme Politics, Being Funny in 2025 & the Comedy Biz

21:27Kara Swisher:Right, but what did you do, as she asked, how did you navigate it emotionally and where did the self-confidence come to move along? I knew the work was good. I just, as a fan of comedy, and I think I do come to it as a fan first, I knew how good Freaks and Geeks was. And I knew how good everyone was. I had no doubt that, you know, a lot of these people were better actors and comedy stars than were around for the most part. So I have a lot of confidence in that. And I also think I had a little bit of the rebellion of someone who loves a band that no one listens to in massive numbers. You know, I would love all those, you know, alternative bands that didn't sell a crazy amount of records.

22:10You know, I was an Elvis Costello fan, and he had a big crowd, but he wasn't Whitney Houston at that time. And I just thought, it's okay to be Elvis Costello. It's okay to be the replacements. And there was almost a badge of honor in making something great that isn't big the way, like, John Cassavetes' movies didn't make$100 million. That's how I rationalized my multiple failures.

22:34Kara Swisher:So, like Jane mentioned, you then went on to make huge hits and take this swing. You wrote, directed, and produced movies like 40 Old Virgin and Knocked Up, and you produced Girls, Anchorman, Anchorman 2, which is my son's favorite movie, Trainwreck, Bridesmaids, Step Brothers, all these kind of fit in a mold that became your calling card. Raunchy, mainly R-rated comedies about extended adolescence and growing up. And if you take a step back, what do you think you got right about them in that mid to late 2000s era, and especially about men in particular, because they often centered on men developing themselves, good men developing themselves, essentially?

23:10Yeah, I mean, I think a lot of it is we grew up on these Ivan Reitman, John Landis, Harold Ramis movies. And that usually was the core of why they worked. It was a reluctant hero story. So we definitely had an awareness that men are really immature and need a little bit of a beating to get it, to grow up. And so some of those movies are about the challenges of real life intruding. Like, I just want to be a pothead and have a porn website, but I just got someone pregnant and now I have to become a man.

23:45Kara Swisher:Yeah. And read these books. And read the baby books. And I think that as I look at it now, I remember I used to talk to Norman Lear about his history and his childhood. And his dad went to prison when he was a kid for this stock fraud. And he was still talking about it at 100, his emotional problems that resulted from dealing with his dad. So I realized, yeah, these movies are coming-of-age movies in a way, but also we're always coming-of-age. I don't think it ever ends. So if I do This is 40, it's just another phase of how hard it is to learn the lessons of life and how much has to happen to you for you to begin to get it at all.

24:34Kara Swisher:And the through line for you there was? I mean, the through line for me is, you know, life is suffering and we soldier on. You know, that it's like there's a lot of challenges and it works best when we're kind to each other and we figure out how to be there for each other. And you take a lot of hits. The hits are funny. That's what we like in these movies. But for me, you know, when I'm working with a writer on their script, I always say to them, OK, what's the problem and what would have to happen to this character for them to learn the lesson? Like what bottom would they have to hit to wake up?

25:12Kara Swisher:We'll be back in a minute.

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26:04Kara Swisher:I'm very excited, actually. I have a lot of these things like the Oura Ring and an Apple Watch and things like that. And it's actually something used in other countries. And so far, I just installed it. It was super easy to put on. Now I'm really eager to find out how healthy I am and figuring out ways I can make changes for my health based on the information I learned. So learn more at KohlerHealth.com and use the code CARA1YEAR for a free annual membership to the Kohler Health app when you purchase Dakota.

26:36Kara Swisher:Support for this show comes from Kohler Health. Everyone's looking for more information about their health. Watches, rings, and monitors can give you a snapshot, but they don't always show the full picture. Meanwhile, what if you've been flushing away some of your most valuable data all along. You probably have. Kohler has spent 150 years redesigning the bathroom. Now its new venture, Kohler Health, is building on that expertise with its Dakota tracker. From fingerprint authenticated sessions to data, privacy is designed into its features. Obviously, it's very important in this case. Dakota fits seamlessly onto your toilet and works discreetly in the background.

27:12Kara Swisher:The Kohler Health app then translates the signals your body is sending so you can see patterns in your gut health and hydration and get flagged when there's blood present. That's really important. I just installed it, and it's going to be really interesting to see because I use a lot of these different things, like these rings and watches and things like that. It's really important so you can make changes to your diet or whatever else you need to do once you learn this information. Learn more at KohlerHealth.com and use the code CARA1YEAR for a free annual membership to the Kohler Health app when you purchase Dakota.

27:47Kara Swisher:Support for this show comes from Teleport. In the AI era, one of the biggest questions is how to contain agent behavior in your production infrastructure. In Teleport's survey of more than 200 infrastructure leaders, the company found that those confident in their AI deployments have more than twice the incident rate of those that aren't, 72 % versus 33%. Let's talk security basics. The most frequent causes of data breaches are human error and compromised credentials. But in the AI era, the challenge is that agents with broad privileges can find these credentials and gain access to sensitive data.

28:22Kara Swisher:Teleport establishes a unified identity layer for humans, machines, and agents that is cryptographically backed, which enables agents to be controlled and contained with the same rigor that you apply to other actors in your infrastructure. Security is complicated, but with Teleport, it doesn't have to be. Download the free report at goteleport.com slash onwithkara.

28:47Kara Swisher:So let's move to comedy now because everything has shifted. I mean, you had a series of movies and sort of the system worked really well for you. One of the, obviously the biggest changes has been the move to streaming away from big theater releases. It's been especially true in comedy. And since the pandemic, comedies don't pull in the same kind of box office revenue they used to. And you told Variety a few years ago, quote, quote, we have a system now that does not reward success for a lot of these projects. If you make something and a billion people watch, you don't make more money than if it was a disaster.

29:17Kara Swisher:That's not good for creativity. Talk a little bit about the shifts. You know, here you are sort of running from movie to movie to movie and in a system that then shifted dramatically for you. Yeah. Well, I mean, I think the first change of the system was that the DVD disappeared. and a lot of the economics of comedy were very simple, which is you could make a movie for$20 million. And if it made$40 million in the box office, it would usually make$40 million on DVD. So suddenly that investment would pay off. Now we don't have the DVD money and it wasn't really replaced significantly by streaming and digital downloads.

30:01That only covered a part of it when that changed. So as a result, the bet is different. And with comedy, there's usually the discussion about whether or not it will work overseas in non-English speaking countries. So an action movie might work great in Bulgaria. But we, you know, often, you know, because of language issues or cultural issues, it's not as consistent that comedies will work overseas.

30:29Kara Swisher:I remember being in Germany watching Wayne's World and monkeys fly out of my butt. It's translated into German. I was sitting in and I was laughing hysterically when he said that. And the Germans were like, bus? Monkeys? But? What? Exactly. In German. And I was like, oh, I can't explain it to you. Monkeys, they're not actually flying out. And then it was lost. Then it was done. I remember they weren't going to release bridesmaids overseas because they said they don't have bridesmaids in most of these countries. And then they did, and it made, you know, 100 and something million dollars overseas.

31:03So there's tons of exceptions to this where, you know, there are giant breakthrough movies. But that changed the bet because then it became easier to make a$5 million horror movie, which would work in Bulgaria, than a comedy. And then when you start making less comedies, then people lose the habit of going. And at the same time, there's a lot of comedy on streaming that you don't have to leave the house for. And on your phone, you're basically watching gags all day long.

31:33Kara Swisher:Right. The snackable moments, right? Yeah. Only the best jokes, right? And they're great. They're great. I could watch a montage of, like, cats scaring their owners for hours. And so it's not like on the weekend you're like, oh, God, I need some comedy. I mean, literally, you were probably in Starbucks looking at TikTok videos for 15 minutes. Right, right. Right. Please, by all means, search cats and tinfoil. Yes. Oh, yeah, exactly. Pickles. I mean, you know, so then you go, what's the need? On the weekend, you might go, oh, I want to see a horror movie because I haven't seen anyone get killed this week.

32:07I want a thriller. And, you know, it changes habits, but also those habits change back. If somebody made The Hangover or something as good as The Hangover, I still think it would make a billion dollars. I don't feel like there's been gigantic great comedies that have failed because people don't want to go to the theater. I think we're not making them. And as a result, young people go, wait, there's no money in this. And then they write for YouTube or TikTok or get a job as a staff writer on it. Yeah, I think it changes the career aspirations of people. And then you get a little bit of a doom loop going.

32:42But, you know, I remember when that movie came out, it was like a maybe Roman Polanski movie called Pirates. It was just such a gigantic bomb. It was with Walter Matthau. And for decades, people said, the worst thing you ever could do is a pirate movie. And then, you know, decades later, Pirates of the Caribbean was like the biggest thing forever. And I think that's how show business works. You know, you need something to be a hit, and then they chase it for a while. And it kind of cycles.

33:07Kara Swisher:Right, right. They always do that. That's always a thing. But streaming in particular, and you were just noting a lot of looking at TikTok and the pulling apart and the snackable moments. Is comedy just by nature very vulnerable in that regard? When it becomes, everything becomes little bits. I'm thinking of late night television. It does really well online, but the ratings don't work. Well, I think, you know, another issue is that in some ways, horror movies are comedies. They usually have an enormous amount of humor. Weapons, you know, in the theater gets gigantic laughs. And in movies like Barbie, they aren't just comedies.

33:45The Marvel movies are comedies that they're also action movies, but they definitely are going for the comedy. So it's not like comedy has disappeared. It's just kind of morphed in with other genres where they all use comedy. So I do think people want it. It's just mutated. And then you do need breakthroughs. You know, you need people to do something very original to show how a comedy should work in 2025. It doesn't have to feel like, you know, the reluctant astronaut with Don Knotts. You know, you do have to take risks. And you also need a new generation of comedy people because if you don't make a lot of comedy movies, then the next generation never gets their break.

34:26And then suddenly people go, we need a comedy star. And everyone goes, wait, but we haven't broken one in 10 years because we haven't given anyone an opportunity to show that they're a comedy star.

34:39Kara Swisher:Or they break somewhere else. I did a great interview with Josh Johnson, who got his start. You know, a lot of them are getting their starts elsewhere, right? And in different genres that they seem to be very native in, in some fashion. Well, Josh is doing something that's really spectacular, which is... Oh, it has to be excellent to start. You know, he's so funny, but he's putting up, basically, full-length comedy specials every few weeks that feel like he's been working on the set for years. but they're about things that are happening currently in politics and it's really remarkable. So, yeah, some people are inventing new ways to be funny and do it.

35:19And, you know, the one thing that is bad about podcasting is it's allowing people not to be funny in a way that someone like Conan O 'Brien or Letterman was funny in terms of being inventive and sketches and grinding for all of these new ideas because two people talking is fun, but we're not getting a lot of people going, I'm going to use this format to come up with something completely new that requires writing, that requires shooting things. And so it's way easier, and we need some lunatics to do it the harder way.

35:53Kara Swisher:Speaking of that, you're talking about the next generation of stars. In a forward to your book, Lena Dunham wrote about the creative freedom you gave her to do risky things, which was making girls, which you executive produced, and how rare that was. Talk about who's helping people take what you're just talking about, this kind of risk. Because your longtime collaborator, Seth Rogen, just won a whole bunch of Emmys for his show, The Studio. At its core, it's about how the industry has come so averse to taking all kinds of risks needed to make art. And it's funny, but it's also, there's something deeply sad about the show, too.

36:21Kara Swisher:Like, oh, look at this. Look at these people sort of pretzeling themselves to be not excellent, essentially. Talk about that. who's helping people take those kind of risks and what you did with Lena? Well, certainly Seth is, you know, with his show and the people and the writers that he's working with and the people who perform on it. And he is exploring what this challenge is, which is in a world where everything needs to be gigantic, there's all this pressure. A lot of the movies we like best that were the biggest movies of all time were little movies and they were little risks. And as a result, you know, get, whatever The Last Detail, or Midnight Cowboy.

37:03And now people want everything to be able to make an insane amount of money. And that's why that show is so funny, because it is about people who want to make good movies, and they're trying to figure out how to work in a system that has so many demands that are very difficult to figure out. You know, in the old days, it always felt simpler to me. I always thought it was like a studio would have, say, they had nine movies three they were going for like the mega movie three were like these kind of dramas mid-level costs and three were like horror and comedy and it kind of made sense as the ratio of things like okay they have a couple of slots for high end a couple of slots for popcorn a couple of slots for the comedies and the horror things and now it's like as soon as you know a movie could make a billion dollars then in a lot of ways that's like for the majority of it it's the hope that things could just, you know, be a big hit, become a toy, work in every country in the world, have sequels.

38:06And so a lot of the intellectual energy, the bandwidth goes to that, which makes sense. Right. But you need more bandwidth on let's just make new things. Let's take chances. Let's figure out the next stage of this. And so hopefully that will change. And things do sneak through all the time. There are a lot of amazing movies came out this year, you know.

38:27Kara Swisher:They did. But of course, they were more successful as they felt original. One of the things I'm just recalling is an interview I did with Ted Sarandos, and he said there will be no middle movies anymore. He said there'll be the small movies and the big movies and everything in the middle will be hollowed out, which is what you're talking about. And he was talking about comedies. He was talking about sort of the middle of the range because of the way the system was setting itself up. But how do you then mentor people or give people freedom? You don't really have freedom if you're in a formula, correct?

39:01I mean, for me, in terms of mentorship, I was mentored by people like Gary and David Milch and Eric Roth and people like that. And so I look for opportunities to help people with their projects. Sometimes I'm part of the project. Sometimes it's just as a friend. And I think that that's essential to getting better, is to find people that have some wisdom that you don't have. I mean, I wouldn't have been able to do anything without it. And even now, sometimes I write a script, and I just wish Gary Shandling was still alive, because just the fact that he liked something I was working on gave me the confidence to not give up on it.

39:42Like, oh, Gary thinks this is worth pursuing. And so I would keep grinding because of it.

39:50Kara Swisher:We'll be back in a minute.

39:58Kara Swisher:Support for this show comes from Fetch Pet Insurance. Cats are special little creatures, so are dogs. I have both. I love my cats and dogs. And my cat's name right now is Lovely, and she means a lot to me. And she's really quite narcissistic, but I enjoy it. She's been pretty healthy throughout her life, but I've had other cats who have gotten sick at the end. And I do think about what's going to happen in the next years ahead because she could get sick, have a health issue. And with previous pets I've had, the bills that racked up were enormous and I never got pet insurance. And I think it's really important going forward to do that because these are big surprises.

40:34Kara Swisher:And here's what surprises a lot of pet owners. Every six seconds, a pet owner in the U.S. gets hit with a vet bill of over$1 ,000. Emergency vet bills can run into thousands and always seem to land on a Sunday night. Be prepared for the unexpected with Fetch Pet Insurance. Fetch Pet Insurance is billed so you never have to worry about giving your pet the best care. Fetch is the most complete coverage for dogs and cats. You get paid back up to 90 % of vet bills for accidents, illnesses, diagnostics, and more. Every vet in the U.S. and Canada is in-network so you keep the vet you already trust, which is really important.

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41:34Kara Swisher:Support for this show comes from Teleport. In the AI era, one of the biggest questions is how to contain agent behavior in your production infrastructure. In Teleport's survey of more than 200 infrastructure leaders, the company found that those confident in their AI deployments have more than twice the incident rate of those that aren't, 72 % versus 33%. Let's talk security basics. The most frequent causes of data breaches are human error and compromised credentials. But in the AI era, the challenge is that agents with broad privileges can find these credentials and gain access to sensitive data.

42:08Kara Swisher:Teleport establishes a unified identity layer for humans, machines, and agents that is cryptographically backed, which enables agents to be controlled and contained with the same rigor that you apply to other actors in your infrastructure. Security is complicated, but with Teleport, it doesn't have to be. Download the free report at goteleport.com slash onwithkara.

42:33Kara Swisher:Heat up your 4th of July at the Home Depot with our wide variety of grills under$300 and make every gathering one to remember. Give your outdoor space a glow up, whatever your budget is, with savings on seasonal plants starting at$5. With the grill fired up and your backyard set to perfection, you'll be able to invite friends and family over to kick off the party. Start celebrating with low prices guaranteed at the Home Depot. Prices may vary by store. Exclusions apply. See homekeeper.com slash price match for details. Hollywood is also grappling with the arrival of AI. It's something I write and talk about a lot.

43:08Kara Swisher:And it was a massive issue in the 2023 writer's strike. You told Variety the studios and streamers weren't treating writers as essential and that there was a, quote, existential problem. Screenwriters did win a bunch of protections against AI in the fight, but AI isn't going anywhere. And obviously it's even going further with tech billionaires spending billions on energy and compute, and Sora 2 just came out. And it will keep being an issue of future contract negotiations. Talk a little bit about how you're looking at it as a creator, because I had a lot of discussions with Hollywood people during these things, and I said, you don't understand who your real enemy is.

43:44Kara Swisher:It's not Disney, it's Google or OpenAI or whoever it happens to be. How do you think about it right now? I mean, I look at it like any other factory, right? So if Tesla's opening up a factory, then they're just trying to figure out how few human beings can I use to have it function. And there's all sorts of entities that are thinking that right now about everything to do with film and television production. You know, can I do this without people? Can it get written without people? Can it get directed without people? Do we need the development people? I mean, to every end of it, I mean, there were great black mirrors about this where they were creating content specifically for people in real time.

44:30And so that's scary. And the only thing that makes it less scary is that it's soulless.

44:37Kara Swisher:Right, it's not funny. It's not good. I mean, there are definitely ways that technology can help people. If you can go on a computer and make it look like deep space and it doesn't cost$3 million, it costs$40 ,000, well, clearly, in some ways, that will help people. It will decimate the people that made space. But it seems like we're not going to be able to stop that when it gets cheaper. But the writing and the directing will always wind up generic because it's scraped and it's just copying other things. And I think even when Sora was released, we instantly thought, wow, I'm bored of this in like a day and a half.

45:12I can't watch any more dead celebrities doing weird things.

45:17Kara Swisher:So can AI be funny? I mean, it would be wrong to say it can't be funny at all. But there's no point of view, so it doesn't ever fully work. You know how when you watch these things and it feels like this bizarre dreamlike space? It feels like hell, a lot of the AI stuff. At some point, if you know how to use it, I assume it'll become like a Pixar movie where people are— It's basically animation. Yeah, the back end is where the real winds are right now. Yeah, and so, you know, there'll be some fusion, and then there will be people who are like, you know what, I like it when the real people do it.

45:55And it'll become a mix at some point. But, you know, no one's going to make the movie that Paul Thomas Anderson just made on Sora. No one's going to do, you know, what Nicole Hollisenter does or Quentin Tarantino. So it's going to be a lot. I can just slop and garbage. And it's scarier for the next generation that doesn't know what, you know, good movies that are authentic, made from people's hearts, what that is. Like if you were raised on the slop, at some point do people not care about what's better?

46:28Kara Swisher:They're used to slop. Yeah. I think that probably they will, but that's what's scary if you don't know the difference and you just go, no, this seems fine. So on top of all these changes, there's also been a broader cultural shift towards more censorship. You have folks like Dave Chappelle, Bill Maher, and Ricky Gervais, who said cancel culture is hurting comedy and breeds censorship. On the other hand, there's people like Sarah Silverman and Seth Rogen who say these fears are overblown. Comedy changes stop whining. It knocked up the lead characters working on a site that tells people where all the nude scenes are in popular movies.

46:57Kara Swisher:And you write that, quote, looking back, it is a hundred types of wrong, both morally and technologically, but it still makes me laugh. Talk about that and how you're looking at the risks as people grapple with what's offensive and what's not. I mean, I think that, you know, when we would do jokes like the one you're talking about in the movie, the point was, you know, this is wrong and ridiculous. This is something you should grow out of. So we would always show bad behavior as a path to showing how you would realize that you shouldn't have the porn site that just tells you where the nude scenes are.

47:30Although the technology of that is funny. Like, that movie is so old now that even the technology of it tells you, like, where it is, where now it would just show you. But I do think that in terms of cancel culture, there are not many people whose careers were affected negatively by cancel culture. In fact, you would say that most people got really famous as a result of being seen as edgy and got bigger crowds. There were some people that had things happen to them. But it's pretty small compared to, like, how much money it actually generated to be seen as someone, you know, saying things that you're not supposed to say.

48:13So that always felt false to me. And I'm in comedy clubs. People are, you know, they're basically saying most anything they want to say. And I think that some guardrails are good. It forces you to be creative. And I always quote Colin Quinn, who said, you know, you can say anything you want as long as you're willing to stand behind it. Right. So if you want to be thoughtless and dumb, someone's going to criticize you. And comics are, I think, pretty thin-skinned about taking criticism.

48:40Kara Swisher:Very much so. You know, they'll criticize everyone, and pretty brutally, and they'll name names. But if you come at them at all, they literally throw a fit and lose their minds in a kind of almost comical way. Yeah. Yeah, you're 100 % right about that. Obviously, our whole country is based on that you should be allowed to say anything you want to say as long as it doesn't create some sort of dangerous situation. We need South Park. We need voices that are fighting power. And some of those voices are going to be terrible and have bad opinions. That's part of it, too. If you want to have all the comedy out there, you're going to have the bad stuff also.

49:21Kara Swisher:Well, the political climate is tough, though. How do you think about sort of right-wing meme comedy, MAGA humor? I mean, you joked in 2016 that the funnier presidential candidate always wins after Trump won. You even told the New York Times that, well, Trump has a demented sense of humor. He was way funnier than Hillary Clinton. Although I would argue the private Hillary Clinton is very funny. And now she's funny again. She's funny publicly now. I just had Bernie Sanders on. We were talking about this. One of the things Trump is really good at is he normalizes racism by delivering it as entertainment.

49:50Kara Swisher:His humor can make all the horrific things in his administration seem less scary and dangerous. The pooping slop video that he did, the AI video, was a version of that. Do you think that's effective still? Is it funny or what is it? And that's what their excuse is all the time. It's, oh, it's just funny. I mean, I think the reason why people like Hillary Clinton, you know, weren't funny is that they are afraid to say certain things. They're afraid to take the comedic risk that it'll be taken the wrong way. So as a result, they seem like they're covering, like they're controlling their expression.

50:21And Trump is just pure expression. And so you look even more full of it when people can see your eyes thinking, I don't want to get in trouble, I don't want to get in trouble, I don't want to get in trouble. And then you get a real muted version of yourself. Yeah. And people feel like there's something to not be trusted in that self-censorship. Now, some people would call that trying to be thoughtful or dignity. But I think that's what they're sensing, where Trump's like, nah, I'm going on 10, 24 hours a day. And then it all loses its power. And so then he can say the worst things or put up the dumbest memes and everyone's like, well, that doesn't mean anything.

51:02But it means something if your health care disappears. It means something if you're at work and you're from Mexico and you're a legal immigrant and they put you in a camp.

51:13Kara Swisher:So is changing it to entertainment effective? Is that worrisome to you? My feeling is that it's always more complicated than we know. I don't think this memification is based on someone's instinct. I think there's think tanks and psychological studies and everything that's being done is being done because it has been proven to work as propaganda. And we take it like, oh, he's being crazy and I can't believe he said that or I can't believe he posted that. It's totally planned. I think there's literally like psychiatrists figuring out how do you make people lose hope? How do you make people think that they can't win a fight?

51:55Kara Swisher:Right. And then tell them it's just a joke. Yeah. I mean, it all started with the Cambridge Analytica. Like when we realized, oh, they know what we think before we even think it based on our behaviors online. And yeah, they're flooding the zone and everyone's brain is melting. And then even though there's millions of people on the street, Trump poops on them. And it's supposed to make everyone feel sad, like, well, no one listened. So that's why it's important for everybody to just continue to fight, to speak up, to find ways to support candidates and organizations you believe in, in spite of the fact that people want to humiliate you and make you feel hopeless.

52:37Kara Swisher:So I want to finish up by talking about what you're working on and what's next for you personally. You've made multiple documentaries in the past few years to take a deeper look at some of the great comedians of the last few generations. You've made films about your longtime mentor, Gary Shandling, George Carlin, friendships between Bob Newhart and Don Rickles. You've said you find it more enjoyable and less stressful than making comedy. I'd love to know what you think of it. You have multiple projects in the work. You said you're working on a film about the late Norm MacDonald. You're putting finishing touches on a documentary about Mel Brooks.

53:07Kara Swisher:You're working on a comedy about country-western music. I happen to love country-western music. Talk about this shift to documentary work. Well, you know, documentaries are just really fun, and I think it is also an extension of me writing a paper about the Marx Brothers that no one requested. I love the history of it, and I think it's really fun to look at someone's life and their work and try to create a documentary that really captures who they are, what their personal journey was, and how it related to the art that they put into the world. So I just finished up with my friend Michael Bonfiglio a documentary about Mel Brooks called The 99-Year-Old Man that'll be on HBO in January.

53:47And it was a great opportunity to talk to Mel Brooks in a deep way about what he's seen over the last century. I mean, he lived through the Depression, and he fought in World War II, and he fought the Nazis, and then he mocked the Nazis, and he fought racism and, you know, changed comedy forever. But he also is a brilliant man, and just to ask him, you know, how did it feel? You know, what did you go through in your journey? And I find that to be, you know, just as fulfilling as a scripted fare and less stressful because whenever you make a movie, you never know if the jokes will work. Right. So the whole time you make it, you're like, man, I hope I'm not crazy and people will laugh at this.

54:27But when you make a documentary, you're not in constant terror of humiliation.

54:32Kara Swisher:And you get to talk to Mel Brooks, who's such a legend. Yeah, yeah. So I really love the form. And as someone who loves comedy, I love going through every interview Mel Brooks ever did and looking for these hilarious things that no one has seen in 30, 40 years. Well, that one where he's singing with, whatchamacallit, Anne Bancroft. Yes. Yeah. That is a wonderful thing. Yeah. And to be or not to be. Yeah. So toward the end of the book, you write that your career, quote, was a desperate cry for help from a person that never feels whole, whose pain and trauma never eases, and who needs to numb himself with busyness and accomplishment.

55:10Kara Swisher:Ow. Ow. You seem to have a lovely family, by the way. But you also write, underneath all the healthy and unhealthy reasons for working, expressing myself, it's a love for comedy and the people who make it. What does that mean about you and your next iteration for your characters? What do the characters in this is 50 look like, I guess? 60. I mean, I always think about, you know, there's a healthy reason to work. There's a healthy reason to want to make movies and TV, to connect with people, to reveal yourself, to explore how you think about life. And then there's the unhealthy part that's just needy and broken and wanting approval.

55:50And unfortunately, the broken part is the engine a lot of the time. And I think as you get older and hopefully saner, that part of the engine starts going away. And you start making the primary motivation to express yourself and to connect with people and to find something to say. So, you know, hopefully there's always new subjects to write about and deeper places to dig to find comedy. I mean, life is so weird. It couldn't be weirder now. And everybody needs someone to help process all we're going through. So, you know, it's just a search for a story that can illuminate some of this.

56:32Kara Swisher:Is it still out of pain for you as we started? Or has it shifted into something else? I mean, again, you have a wonderful family, it seems. It's definitely not what it was when I was young. And I also think when you're young, you're just nuts. I think you're a genetically crazy, and this is something probably Scott Galloway talks about all the time, you just have this need to prove yourself and to figure out your place in the world and to survive. Yeah. And that goes away. But he's an open wound, let's be clear. Yeah, exactly. So what do you find funny now then? If you're looking about your long history as a comedy nerd, what do you nerd out on right now?

57:10What am I nerding out on? There's a great show on Hulu called Such Brave Girls, which is just this gem comedy I recommend people watch. I do love what Josh Johnson is doing. I love what South Park did this year. They really don't want to talk politics that directly. And the fact that they made the choice to do it because they felt it was necessary was incredible. And it's really funny. And it's about how the world is changing and everything that's terrifying about it. I thought that, you know, to see the two of them, you know, do, you know, work that's as great as their greatest work is remarkable.

57:50I thought that was really inspiring, just how strong that season was. So there's always things to nerd out on.

57:58Kara Swisher:Are you going to make a Marx Brothers movie? You know, I don't think I will. I think that's Sacred Ground. It's Sacred Ground. All right. Okay. That would be great. They were geniuses. They were fucking geniuses. They were. Anyway, thank you so much, Judd. I really enjoyed the book. It's a really wonderful book. And it did remind me of that SNL book that we talked about before. Yeah, thank you so much.

58:25Kara Swisher:Today's show is produced by Christian Castor-Russell, Kateri Yocum Michelle Eloy, Megan Burney and Kaylin Lynch. Nishat Kirwa is Vox Media's executive producer of podcast. Special thanks to Anika Robbins. Our engineers are Fernando Arruda and Rick Kwan and our theme music is by Trackademics. If you're already following the show, you are Harpo Marx. But if not, monkeys are flying out of your butt. Go wherever you listen to podcasts, search for On with Kara Swisher and hit follow. Thanks for listening to On with Kara Swisher from Podium Media, New York Magazine, the Vox Media Podcast Network and us.

58:59Kara Swisher:We'll be back on Thursday with more.

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