Judd Apatow

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0:47Okay. At some point, you're just going to have to go to psychedelics.

0:54Hey, Chad, welcome to One Night Stand. It's good to be here. We're so happy to have you. Were you always a big reader? Well, it comes and goes. I'm a big book buyer. Okay. So I'm a hoarder. I've learned. I read comedy nerd. Yeah. I'll buy any book because I kind of think that buying a book is as good as reading it, basically. As long as you have it. To the publishing houses. Exactly. But growing up, I mean, you're obviously a comedy nerd. Yes, yeah. But were you reading comedy memoirs or was it really? I would have like the Marx Brothers scrapbook or there'd be like the Saturday Night Live scrapbook.

1:29That's why like when I was working on this book, Comedy Nerd, it was kind of an homage to what I used to read as a kid. Yeah. Like these books about the Marx Brothers and they have pictures and script pages and home photos, you know. And so I loved that kind of thing. And then I would read like Stephen King. I mean, when I was a kid is when Stephen King really took off, like in the late 70s and early 80s. So, you know, Firestarter, The Dead Zone. And then I got really into this book called Ladies and Gentlemen, Lenny Bruce. Reading your book made, because I love him and I haven't read it. And I'm going to, I think I'm going to do that after this.

2:02And that was written by Albert Goldman. And it just really captured the standup comedy scene in the late 50s, early 60s, which was fascinating. But also my grandfather was a jazz producer. I used to produce like Charlie Parker and Dizzy Gillespie. And so it was like a way as a little kid to try to understand my grandfather's world of jazz clubs and comedians opening up for jazz players. Well, one of the books we're going to talk about today is Born Standing Up, Steve Martin's memoir. How old were you when you read that for the first time around? Well, I was I was an adult. That wasn't too long ago.

2:32I'm trying to remember. Because it's set in the 70s. I for some reason thought, yes, it was not too late. It was early 2000s. Yes. And a lot of people consider that the best book. It's so good. about the life of a comedian and what it takes to be a stand-up comedian. So you see Steve Martin's journey as he figures out his character, much in the same way the new documentary talks about it. But it's just beautifully written and really funny. I mean, it's like candy to comedy people. Well, also just like hearing about Disney World at Disneyland, that's such a like, or like him being there in the beginning.

3:06It just, it was, it's such a, I mean, I want to see like a biopic. I want to like watch that, like as a little kid play him. Obviously, self-help is another top theme of books that you've picked. But the way he writes about not understanding his panic attacks, I thought was just so beautiful and heartbreaking. Sure. I used to have panic attacks when I was in my late 20s. Oh, okay. Out of the blue, I just started having these panic attacks. I got the first panic attack. I was walking into my cousin's wedding, and all the bridesmaids were singing Brian Adams' All for Love, the theme to Robin Hood, the one with Kevin Costner.

3:42And for some reason that gave me a panic attack. And I couldn't watch the wedding. And I watched it through a small window in the door. And I didn't know what a panic attack was. Yeah, I was going to ask if you understood what was happening to you. I didn't know. I just thought like, I think that pot's coming back on me or something. I just thought, am I high from three days ago? Like, what is going on? And then I figured it out. So it's interesting to hear about his stuff. Yeah, I think also just like, just how little knowledge there was. or like it wasn't, I think now people have so much more identification tools.

4:16But I started getting panic attacks when I was probably like five or six. So I, but I think at that point, I mean, I think my mom just could identify it really early on. Like it was obviously it's such a scary feeling, but I don't remember ever not knowing what was happening to me. And I think that would have been so terrifying to just have no idea. Yeah. You just go like, am I having a heart attack? Am I losing my mind? You know how I knew I was having a panic attack? I went to McDonald's and I used to always eat two quarter pounders and one cheeseburger. And I only ate one of the three hamburgers.

4:48And I'm like, something's going on with me because I always finish my meal here. Yeah, I mean, that's one way to find out. You have an incredible Steve Martin story in Comedy Nerd. I was wondering if you could share it. Well, you know, I always hate telling this story because I've told it so many times. But basically, I walked up to his house when I was 13 years old and asked for his autograph. and he said no as he should because you know i would call the cops now i really understand uh but i sent him a letter demanding an apology and he sent me a an autograph book of cool shoes his hilarious book of these funny short stories and in it he wrote and this is when i was 13 to judd i'm sorry i didn't realize i was speaking to the judd it's so good yeah it was it's the nicest thing anyone's ever done for me he's the greatest guy i want to know a little bit more about you at that age, like your psyche at that age?

5:40Because it takes a lot of confidence to like jump out of the car and say something. And, you know, you talked about it at length and published the interviews you were doing at that time with all your comedy heroes. Like that does take a lot of gumption to call people off. Like, did you even really realize that? Like the confidence that it took? Or was that just like who you were? I don't know, because I probably wasn't confident anywhere else in life. But when I was a kid, you know, it's let's say like the early 80s. No one really liked comedy. Like right now, comedy is so gigantic. Yeah. But in high school, no one wanted to talk about it.

6:15It's not like I had a friend who really wanted to get deep talking about Saturday Night Live and SCTV and Monty Python. But I think I liked that I had a thing. Yeah. And so some people were good at sports or whatever. And I thought, oh, I have a thing. No one else is interested. so I think one day I'll get a job from this because I'm one of the only people that wants to get involved. Now, I don't know what I would do if I was a kid now when like it's such a giant thing and so many people are doing it and making TikToks and doing stand-up. But back then it felt like there was only like 100 or 200 people in the world trying to make comedy.

6:50I mean, I guess now you would have had a TikTok show. Like you would have just been like going around and like stopping people on the streets being like, what's your best joke? Yeah. Oh, I can't imagine. Because when I did these long interviews from my high school radio station with people like Jerry Seinfeld and Jay Leno and Sandra Bernhardt, I think in my head I was trying to invent the podcasts. I really hungered for a long interview with the people that I liked. And they didn't really exist. There weren't places to hear Jerry Seinfeld talk for an hour about being a young comedian. And so I think I was trying to make it happen.

7:24Well, I'm curious to get your thoughts. I feel like, you know, I mean, this is a little inside baseball, but being in media, there's so much conversation around like the state of the celebrity interview and a post TikTok post having to eat some form of chicken while you get interviewed. I think Chicken Chop Date is great. And like, I love watching Hot Ones. I like all these things. But I guess as somebody who's been on both sides of it and doing this for so long, like, do you think we're going to keep moving in this more like gimmicky direction? or do you kind of miss the long form? Like, yeah, I'm curious your thoughts.

7:56I don't know because, you know, I enjoy it so much. Like I was just listening to my friend Neil Brennan interview Nick Swartzen on his Blocks podcast and I'm listening to it and it's like almost two hours and I'm fascinated by Nick telling his story. But there's a lot of podcasts and there's a lot of people talking. I have a pretty bottomless appetite for people talking about their personal lives. so I'm an easy I'm an easy fan of most of it whether or not they're eating hot food or not I'm generally interested. What's your podcast diet? What are someone you listen to every week? Well I listen to Mark Maron's podcast I just did an episode with him.

8:38He only has a few left right? That's right and I listen to a lot of the Pod Saves America shows you know way too much politics. I get really depressed right before I go to bed I will listen to like Rich Roll, Finding Mastery, the Jay Shetty. I'll do some self-improvement. I'll do some Esther Perel. I'll do some Tiger Belly. I'll do the comedy ones. I do too many. What I'm saying is I'm listening to it too much. What does Esther Perel tell you? What does she tell me? I don't know. Her accent's too thick. I know there's information in there, but the accent is throwing me. Well, self-help, when I first reached out to have you on this series, I was told it's a real favorite genre of yours.

9:26And we are going to talk about today The Untethered Soul by Michael Singer. Tell me about discovering this one and why you wanted to chat about it. Well, my friend and writer Allie Rushfield one day said you should read this book. And, you know, I'm a big fan of all self-help. I'm a self-help hoarder. I drown in it so that none of it can really work. I read so much of it that I get confused by what it is. But his is, I guess it's a variation of like Eckhart Tolle type stuff. Yeah. And it's, his basic theory is the same. I think all these self-help books are the same. It's just people explain it better.

10:05Yeah. I think a lot of it, like, I don't read a ton, but as I've been doing this series, people have recommended them. and I feel like a lot of it is like or maybe this is the parts that I connect with is like just like shedding negative self-talk and like that voice in your head like learning to say no to your own inner monologue. Exactly. But that might just be what I'm pulling from it. How do you shut yourself up? I don't know. How do you not hear what your brain is trying to do? Because I mean from my self-help drowning you know it becomes clear that your brain is built to remember the negative.

10:42so that it wants to remember where the bear is so you don't walk into it again. And you don't really remember the good stuff that happens to you as much as the bad stuff. And you have to really be aware of that or you can get in a negative mindset. And so someone like Michael Singer is just very good at explaining how everything that ever happens to you in your life leads to some sort of defense mechanism adjustment. And then before you know, you have a thousand adjustments for how you move through the world to feel comfortable. and he just talks about being able to let go of those and let go of all this blocked energy.

11:17And it is the same as most of them, but I think he explains it better. And I really like how he talks about it. And he's also all over YouTube. There's 8 billion interviews with him and those are all pretty great. I liked, he has really good metaphors and analogies. I was listening to him, I listened to the book and he was talking about if you had a thorn in your arm, you wouldn't spend your entire life trying to find ways to not bump into things you would just pull the thorn exactly but how do you i mean literally like i don't know so i'm like i know i need to yet i don't know how have you found natural tools meditation oh really and just a lot of ayahuasca okay at some point you're just gonna have to go to psychedelics i do so i'm so bad at psychedelics like i'm because i can't i can't i fight the trip i i get that first time i did psychedelics i i was so scared i did my teeth started chattering.

12:09How old were you? I mean, I only did it a couple of years ago. And, uh, and I do think I never recommend it to anyone because it's so crazy. Yeah. And I think like, who knows? I could like for myself, like I didn't have a bad trip, but I could feel it coming. And if I hadn't learned to meditate and had some sense of how my mind functions, I could have gone off the edge very, very easily. So your first trip was ayahuasca. I mean, I had done mushrooms a few times in my life, but mainly at like Frank Sinatra concerts or walk around Vegas. That's the trip. That's the trips I fight. I've never tried.

12:43What was your, what was the environment you did Ayahuasca in? Oh, I mean, it was just like one-on-one. Oh, okay. That's nice. And it went very well. I saw Jesus. Everything worked out. That's when you know. But then you got to hold on to it. Like, you know, you get a feeling of, oh, we should all be kind to each other and love each other. But then it slowly disappears, right? Kind of like I made this movie Funny People with Adam Sandler, and it was all about that when he thought he was going to die, when he was sick, he was so much nicer and more centered and good. And as soon as he knew he was going to be better, he became a jerk again.

13:16And that's kind of what those trips are like. You really got to work to keep any wisdom if you got some out of it. Yeah, there's something you wrote about in the book that I thought was very emblematic of what we're discussing, but also just really honest and beautiful. You were talking about like, you know, after Fort Yolte Virgin and Knocked Up and like when the guys you were consistently working with all were successful and being pulled in different directions, kind of feeling having like resurfaced feelings of abandonment rather than like pride in what you did. And I was I really loved that you admitted that.

13:49And I feel like that's had the perspective shift of being able to recognize what a special time that was. It feels like exactly, you know, the what we're talking about. Yeah, no one talks about that because something in show business that's really painful is it's like summer camp ending all the time. So you do these projects. Sometimes they're years. Sometimes they're a few months. And you get very close to people. And then it just ends. And then there's like a moment of like, I wonder if we'll actually stay in touch or talk or not. And so that feeling you had when summer camp ended where your heart would break like the last day or two of summer camp if you went.

14:28In a way, that's happening in your show business career, but it happens all the time. It might happen three times a year. And for me, to someone who's sensitive to that, you know, you fall in love with people like you want to be around people. But also everyone's a circus person. So even the people you're close to, they disappear because they're making movies or TV shows or they have kids. And so you have to find ways to keep the important connections with people and also understand these are experiences to be treasured. But you can't make them last the rest of your life. I know I would struggle with that.

15:08Like being like, I know they're in Vancouver on another shoot, but why aren't they texting me back? I thought we were really friends. I know. Well, that's what's terrible about all technology. Because you can always feel like you're being ignored if you want to. Yeah. Like all through COVID, I just, I was just very aware of who checked in on me in the most neurotic way. And I'd be like, I think that person doesn't care if I'm dead. Like I would have heard from them in three years. Like when you check your text and you text someone like happy birthday and you realize the last time you texted them was last year's happy birthday.

15:39And then you can't say happy birthday because then they'll notice that you haven't checked in in a year. You're lucky that you didn't date in a cell phone age. like imagine the anxiety that like that is that is the real tyranny you know people say like oh like dating apps are tough all that no waiting for a text is the worst thing that a person can go through i can get neurotic with any person i'm texting yeah me too i can get neurotic with postmates postmates doesn't love me anymore do you respond to because i like i have to like stop myself from responding to a text too fast because i just like what like i'm like so in like type a inbox like just like quick responder but like i i'm the opposite oh i think there's nothing funnier than when you are like looking at your phone and you get a text to answer it within one eighth of a second like the fastest response that like i just think it just makes me laugh because i think it's so troubling when somebody responds too quickly i try to give myself a beat i've schedule sent emails to appear that i'm like writing like 45 minutes later but it was sent within point eight seconds yeah i was thinking reading um untethered soul in tandem a comedy nerd i was thinking about how self-help feels so hand in hand with mentorship which is such a big driving force in your creative life um i guess yeah like is that something you know you work you've nurtured so many people are you always like i guess like are you a big advice giver are you like giving these books to people.

17:11You know, I always looked for mentors. Yeah. So I think doing interviews with comedians when I was in high school was like a search for mentors. And then, you know, Gary Chandling was someone that I met very early in my career who really consciously helped teach me how to write and taught me about spirituality and Buddhism and was a very close friend. And I got to know Mike Nichols a little bit near the end of his life. And the great David Milch has been a mentor to me, the guy that created Deadwood and co-created NYPD Blue. So when I work with people on a script, you know, sometimes they haven't written before.

17:48And so just having the conversations about how do we make your script come to life and just talking about the process becomes a form of mentorship. And then some people, you know, then it turns into their dating problems. I've been immensely fortunate to be mentored by one of your mentees, Miss Lena Dunham, who said you have sent her quite a few self-help books over the years. Yes, I'm sure, yeah. I don't know that she's read them, but she said that to definitely mention that she could vouch that that is something you do. Yeah, she has them. Yeah, because Gary Shannon gave me this book called A Feather on a Fan.

18:22And I think that was the first Buddhist book anybody ever gave me. And then he had another book called Transforming Problems into Happiness, which was basically about when anything happens, good or bad, but bad, you should look at it as a gift because there's something you're going to learn. You're going to learn about your strength or you're going to learn fortitude or how to take a hit or whatever. But I had never heard anything like that. So I was in my early 20s. I wasn't religious at all. My parents never talked about religion. They didn't even say if they were against religion. They just never mentioned it.

18:56So hearing any idea like that was a big deal to me and life changing because I just thought bad shit's bad shit. Right? Like this sucks and that's it. and you just complain about it. Yeah. I didn't realize there were lessons in life. At best, you make a joke about it. Yeah, exactly. Another author that you picked to talk about today is Andrew Dubuze. Yes. The Collective Stories, who this poor guy has been through a lot. Exactly, yes. And really found the art in it in a way that, like, I actually, I hadn't read him until you assigned this. And it knocked me on my ass. Like, he is, the pain, he is able to just still into these, I read a father story.

19:36was one of the ones there i mean it's just he has the ability to break your heart when such sparse and short prose in ways that i'm like i don't know i'm gonna be thinking about it for a really long time well there's a period where um we were about to have our second child so i took off a a big hunk of time waiting for that to happen and to be around afterwards where i just was reading a lot yeah and then i would ask people what should i read and so i would get lists from people and then I would look on the back of books I liked you know I'd look at some like Tobias Wolf book and see who was the blurber and I would go oh those are the friends of that person and then that's how I would find people because I just didn't know what was good and I don't even know how I stumbled upon it but I think that those uh short stories and there's some kind of short novels novellas uh are incredible there's a movie called in the bedroom based on on one of his short stories.

20:34I read that one this morning and now I hadn't seen the film so that's another thing. And the film is excellent and his son is Andre Debusse III who wrote The House of Sand and Fog and a lot of amazing books. I did have a moment when I was ordering where I was like I need to get the right Debusse. I was like which cross-referencing against each other. I really liked it's hate sorry Juliet Naked. I loved and I know that's the only thing you've ever adopted but could you ever see a world where you would want to do an abuse story or anything like that? I mean, it's not impossible, but it's just the prose is so beautiful.

21:09And I'm always amazed that within a paragraph, I'm completely deep in a world. I get, you know, I don't know, as I get older, like you ever start a book and you're like, how am I going to remember these 14 names? And you have to take notes like, who's Jeff? And you just get overwhelmed and you never get past page six. For some reason in his work, I never have that feeling. I just like am there. There's nothing to track. And I'm just pulled in having this experience. Yeah, I can't even imagine because I thought a lot about I'm not a parent, but what it would be like to read it as a father. So to be reading it like as you're about to have your second child, like even the last one, a father story is about his daughter coming to him and she's hit someone with her car and he's going to help her cover it up.

21:55Had it been his son, he would have turned him in, but he couldn't stand to see his daughter suffer. and it was just oh my god well there's definitely uh religious aspects to a lot of the stories a lot of it is about being catholic and and uh his feelings about his faith in dealing with all these uh moral and ethical issues in life yeah i i grew up in new england but i grew up jewish so i was like i don't you know i could like relate to the scenery but the um religious quandaries not so much and thankfully um less of the you know less murder and all of that but a lot of people are in a pickle in that book a lot of people are in a pickle and then we have the heart is a lonely hunter by carson mccullers i recently did one we talked about hearts invisible furies a couple weeks ago and the names were tripping me up but this is i hadn't read this either it's such a beautiful book it's such a beautiful book i mean i haven't read it in a while but i always remember it as one of my favorite experiences reading a book that I've ever had.

23:04I mean, there were other books, too, that I love. Like there's a great book called A Death in the Family by James Agee. OK, I haven't read that either. And he worked for Time magazine as the film critic for a long time. And then he became a very famous screenwriter. He actually famously wrote the article in Time magazine after the atom bomb was dropped about what it might mean for the future, like the big article. What was his thesis? It was not going to be good. He certainly understood the ramifications of it. But when he died, they found a novel that he had been working on called A Death of the Family.

23:43And it's about just like a man who gets in a car accident and dies. And then it's through each person in the family's point of view of how they're perceiving this experience down to a five-year-old, like a chapter is what the five-year-old is understanding as everyone comes to the house and what this means. And it's just so beautiful. I love a family novel. Yes. So you said this was an incredible reading experience. What was that? Where were you in life? I think this was one of the books I was reading that year that I took off time and was just trying to read. And it really changed something about how I wrote because oddly, my career went way better after I took my reading year.

24:28Yeah, really. And so I had struggled for a long time. And I don't know what it was, but I think it was just the specificity of describing the human condition. And just through osmosis, paying attention to levels that I hadn't considered before. and then as soon as I was done, I went right into making The 40-Year-Old Virgin and knocked up and started that run of work. But I do think it reoriented me somehow. I got less dumb. Do you really, you feel that, did you notice it at the time or is it only in retrospect that you feel that shift? I mean, I knew that I needed to do it. And I read a lot of books about how to write a novel and I thought about trying to write short stories and didn't.

25:16But even reading about the process, I think was helpful for me as a screenwriter. What were some of those fictional ideas? Like what were some of those that you abandoned? That I was trying to write? Yeah. That's a very good question. I haven't really thought about it in a while. What they were. Usually they kind of come back in the screenplays in some way. So they're still thematically in keeping with the work you do. I always write about the same stuff. You always think you're writing about different things, But and then you look at your body of work and you go, oh, it's all kind of in the same area of like, you know, very simple problems, like just the daily struggles that we all deal with.

25:54But treating them like they're very, very serious because they are. But to me, like the less premise, the better. Yeah. Just like, you know, what's it like turning 40? You know, what's it like getting sick? Like, you know, most of my things are about, you know, common experiences, but just putting my weird microscope on it. Well, they're also usually about underdogs. And I was thinking a lot, like, who are some of your favorite literary underdogs? Literary underdogs. Well, how would you define a literary underdog? All right, fair. Like Catcher in the Rye, you mean? Yeah, I mean, like a Holden.