by Apatow, Judd
Judd: Not at all?
Harry: Not at all.
Judd: And after you got signed, what kind of work did you do after that?
Harry: I started doing talk shows. Merv Griffin and John Davidson, Dinah Shore, Mike Douglas. And then last year I was signed to do Cheers. I did three episodes.
Judd: Do you have an ongoing contract with Cheers to do it next year?
Harry: I’m going to do at least one episode of Cheers, yeah. But we don’t start taping Night Court until October thirty-first, so I’ll have time to do at least one teaser. Not a major episode. I did one major episode for Cheers.
Judd: The poker game?
Harry: Yeah. And I did several episodes where I just popped in for a teaser and I’ll do at least one of those next year.
Judd: And wasn’t that, I guess that episode must have been, like, handwritten for you?
Harry: Well, I wrote it. I didn’t write the script but I wrote the sting. I designed the game and the swindle for them. I told them who should cheat who at what time and that’s part of the work I do. I have a consultation company called the Left-Handed League and we advise scriptwriters on plots like that. So the League would, if you look at the credits, the technical consultation for that episode is by the Left-Handed League.
Judd: Wait, you work for it or it’s yours?
Harry: It’s my company. I am co-founder of it with a fellow named Martin Lewis, who is a British cheat, and a sleight of hand expert.
Judd: So you’re doing many things. All grounds are covered, really.
Harry: Oh yeah, I don’t know how long anything is going to last so I have to make sure I have something to do tomorrow.
Judd: Are there any films that you are going to be starring in?
Harry: I did a film called the Escape Artist for Francis Coppola. I had the title role.
Judd: You were the escape artist?
Harry: Yeah, a very small part because I’m dead during the film but I’m seen in flashbacks.
Judd: I saw part of that. I saw a trailer—it got a good review with the two guys on Channel 11.
Harry: Siskel and Ebert?
Judd: Siskel and Ebert.
Harry: They gave it a good review?
Judd: They gave it a mediocre review.
Harry: Well, it was never released nationwide. So it wasn’t that highly sought out.
Judd: I saw a scene from it where it was at a party, the magician and he’s doing—I think flying through the air and disappearing, it was very strange.
Harry: I wasn’t involved in the whole film, so I’m not sure. Was it the boy doing it? Or was it—
Judd: It was a man.
Harry: A man? Well that’s probably the uncle because what I did, I did the water torture stuff, the escape that Houdini did. The water.
Judd: Did you do it for real?
Harry: Oh yeah, I did it thirty times for real holding my breath in six hundred gallons of water, yeah.
Judd: Oh my God.
Harry: Yeah, my God.
Judd: And is that how your character dies?
Harry: I’m dead throughout the entire thing. Actually, he’s killed attempting a prison escape. A guard shoots him. And the kid’s aunt and uncle explain that he was shot accidentally while he was staging some publicity stunt but the kid finds out that his father was actually not a real well man. He was pathological. He couldn’t stand locks and he would open any lock that he came across. And he was arrested for breaking and entering, essentially, and tried. Once he was in prison, he tried to escape because he couldn’t take locks and was shot trying to escape. And so the boy tries to duplicate his father’s feat and it’s all very convoluted. It was a real confusing film, which is why it’s going to be on cable any minute now.
Judd: So you didn’t see the whole film?
Harry: I’ve seen it on American Airlines but I fell asleep.
Judd: That must say something for it.
Harry: Well, you know. Off the record—no, not off the record, forget it. That’s the only film I made. I’ve read for a couple of films but I haven’t been taken on by them. I’m doing this very slowly. I don’t want to bite off more than I can chew and end up looking foolish.
Judd: So you’re just doing your act?
Harry: Well, my act and I’m breaking into acting very slowly. Cheers was a good first step because I got to write my own material.
Judd: On Cheers, you basically played yourself.
Harry: Yeah. And in Night Court my name is still Harry and I’m—my best friends are still three-card monte workers and I still have spring snakes hidden everywhere and joy buzzers, but I’m the judge.
Judd: This is a new sitcom called Night Court.
Harry: Yeah, it’s by the guy who wrote Barney Miller for the last three seasons. Reinhold Weege. And it feels very much like Barney Miller. I’m the judge in a New York night court, and it’s the starring role.
Judd: Do you think you’re going to get tied down if it’s a successful series?
Harry: I wouldn’t mind. If it becomes a success, it will be a real joy to do it because it’s a quality show. I wouldn’t feel tied down at all. I would feel employed, you know.
Judd: So for Cheers, they just spotted you and just saw your act?
Harry: I’m not sure how it happened. I think somebody related to one of the Charles brothers—I took him at the shell game years ago. I got twenty bucks off him or something. He remembered that and he saw me on Mike Douglas. But it is a very natural situation for a con man: a bar. Well, actually, when they brought me in, their suggestion was they wanted me to be an aspiring magician and I suggested, “Well, wouldn’t a con man be more natural in that setting?” What was unusual about it was, Harry on Cheers actually takes money from people and there’s something to despise in that and so making him likable—making a guy who is in essence a likable thief—there was the question of trade and practices. Can you present that kind of role model on TV? But then the poker episode really redeemed him because it showed that he would take a nickel here and a dime there, but when somebody’s in trouble, there’s enough Robin Hood in him that he will help people out. When he leaves with the money at the end of the game, you think, What a jerk.
Judd: I did, I said I couldn’t believe—
Harry: But then he comes right back and that’s the trick. A con like that is just an elaborate magic trick or a swindle. It’s bringing people to the wrong conclusion and then surprising them.
Judd: You sound like you’ve done that trick in the bar.
Harry: I’ve done that plenty. I haven’t paid for a lot of drinks in my life. I’ve run some scams, yeah. But fewer and fewer as time goes on, which is good. I’m finding more legitimate ways.
Judd: Like acting?
Harry: Yeah. As I grow older and I don’t run so fast, I’m not so eager to get myself in situations where I’m going to have to run.
Judd: How would you describe your act? Are you a magician who does comedy, or a comedian who does magic?
Harry: It’s a character, it’s a guy. It’s a Harry, as opposed to Harry Anderson. He’s a guy who knows magic but doesn’t respect it much. I have an attitude about people and it’s very tough to analyze. I’ve tried several times. It’s easier to do than to analyze. He’s a little ill at ease up there. And he’s a little ill that everybody’s staring at him and he can’t believe that people are buying this. I can’t believe I’m thirty and I’m doing this. You know. One of the things I love to do onstage is insist that people talk and participate. “It’s a live show, folks, come on, come on,” and as soon as they say something, I tell them to shut up. You know. Because it pokes fun at the whole theater situation. People are very ill at ease when a performer talks directly to them. Knowing that and then playing with it—he eventually doesn’t feel ill at ease. You poke at him long enough then eventually it doesn’t matter anymore and he’s just laughing right along with everybody else and bringing him to that point where their egos kind of go away a
nd the way to do that is, is I make myself look like a jerk. It’s an old Elizabethan idea. The fool is the only one who is allowed to make fun of the king because he is a fool. I can say whatever I want about anybody else because I’m just an idiot talking—I’m not insisting that I’m any smarter than anyone else. It’s satire.
Judd: A lot of the tricks that you do, sometimes people think they see what’s going on and then you just like turn the whole trick around so it’s, like, it looks like you did something but it’s nothing.
Harry: It’s bringing them to a false conclusion, and then pulling the rug from under them. Giving them the feeling that they know what’s happening—and then telling them they’ve been manipulated. That’s part of things like three-card monte, and the shell game. You give them the impression, with a bent corner on the card for example, when you’re tossing the cards, the money card seems to have a bent corner so everybody’s now betting because they see the bent corner, and how that bent corner is no longer on the money card, but another card altogether. Those are sucker gags. You let them think they’ve got you—and then you pull the rug from under them.
Judd: And that’s the card you have the money riding on.
Harry: It’s toying with them and doing what a swindler would do when he’s taking their money, only there’s no harm, there’s nothing to be lost. You can poke somebody in the arm, and it can be affectionate. You know it could be a “How ya doing?” A friendly gesture. Or you can hit them, and it hurts. Same gesture, different intent. This is tricking people but to no bad end—just to make them laugh. That’s what I’m going for.
JAMES L. BROOKS
(2014)
I interviewed James Brooks on the morning we all found out that our friend Mike Nichols had passed away. When Jim walked into my office, I could see in his face that he was devastated—and I wasn’t sure whether we should even bother doing the interview or not. But in this raw, grief-stricken state Jim became reflective about Mike’s work and his decades-long friendship with this man we respected so much. Which then led to an interesting conversation about comedy and life—the man is truly wise in these ways—that could only have happened on a terrible day.
Judd Apatow: Awful day with Mike Nichols, huh?
James L. (Jim) Brooks: Awful fucking day. I got up at five this morning. I just happened to wake up and I saw the news of his death, and—I was alone, and I just went over and started reading this horrible New York Times obituary that I’m sure will be gone by tomorrow.
Judd: Really?
Jim: Horrible. Just a list of hits and misses.
Judd: Mm-hmm.
Jim: Have you ever seen the sketch he did with Elaine [May], “The $65 Funeral”? You’ve seen that?
Judd: Not in a long time.
Jim: It’s killer. You see him making fun of death and stuff like that, right there, and you laugh. And then you start reading some of the crazy, open, honest stuff he’s been saying of late and—he’s never to be equaled. It’s literally impossible to beat him. Impossible. And, I’ve just been—I’m still in a fog, because of the enormity of it.
Judd: Yeah. I just knew him in the last few years, but he showed This Is 40 in New York before it came out. He presented it onstage.
Jim: Wow.
Judd: And he was so nice to me. Scott Rudin set up a screening of This Is 40 for twenty-five people during the day in New York, and Mike came up to me afterwards, and he was crying, in the most beautiful, connected way. Then he wrote letters to each of my children, talking to them in great detail about what they had accomplished in the movie. To my little daughter, he said, “One day you’re going to realize that you kind of captured life.” It was so kind, and he was always like that.
Jim: For a long, long time. Extraordinary generosity. He sent out love, he did. And the most acerbic wit. Don’t ever be chopped up by Mike Nichols. You’ll just never recover from it.
Judd: What do you think it is that he did for actors? Why did they love him so much?
Jim: I know what he did for them, because I’ve asked so many of them. The bottom line is, it was never put better than: When you do something wrong, he says it’s his fault; when you do something right, it’s the most glorious thing God ever created. Richard Burton, who—I mean, drunk, mean guy—once said, “It’s not like he’s directing you. It’s like he’s conspiring to make you your best.” Mike was a great director of actors. I don’t have that tenderness and generosity.
Judd: Did he read your scripts? Was he one of the people you would go to?
Jim: He was. I was talking to him a lot about the one I’m writing now. He was very there for it. I didn’t want him to read it yet, but he had heard me talking about it and it was special, the way he told me he wanted to “be there” for it. It’s so important who your buddy is. He was like, Let me be your buddy on this.
Judd: There’s very few people in life who you feel like you can talk about this type of work with.
Jim: Yeah. By the way, here’s a question. Tell me who else holds up like Mike and Elaine, where the work is still so vital and vivid, and doesn’t lose anything.
Judd: It’s very different, but I think a lot of what George Carlin was talking about in the last five years of his life will hold up for a long time, when he got really angry and cut right to the heart of how he felt about everything. And I’ve been listening to the old Pryor stuff, and although it is of its time—I mean, if you listen to Pryor 1976, as the bicentennial is coming, talking about what’s wrong with America? I forgot how militant he was. I don’t think anyone talks about politics like that now. No one has the guts to do it that way anymore.
Jim: Yeah.
Judd: What do you think Mike’s purpose was in his work, and how does it relate to yours?
Jim: Oh, I don’t think like that. There really is a word for what he did: inspirational. It just is good for your internal ethos. Anyway. How did you get started interviewing comedians?
Judd: When I was a kid, a high school kid, I had a radio show and I just started talking to all these people. I interviewed fifty people. Leno and Seinfeld, but back when they were just guys on The Merv Griffin Show. Paul Reiser, Howard Stern, John Candy—
Jim: (Whistles)
Judd: I even interviewed Lorenzo Music and Jim Parker, writers from Mary Tyler Moore and The Bob Newhart Show.
Jim: (Laughs) It’s funny because I did that with my student newspaper, too. Not with comedians, though.
Judd: You interviewed Louis Armstrong, right?
Jim: Yes. I talk about that all the time, Louis Armstrong, because I asked him a great question. I said, “How do you keep your lips going?” And the answer was at least nineteen minutes long. And he showed me his lip ointments and the process for when they go in. It was great.
Judd: (Laughs) Who else did you interview?
Jim: Singers. Some of them were big names. I was nobody. But my picture was in the high school paper every week, standing there with the person I was interviewing.
Judd: (Laughs) Yeah, the kids at your high school hated you.
Jim: They loathed me.
Judd: (Laughs) They turned on you. That’s funny. The funniest thing, to me, is when a kid thinks, I’ve got to get out of here. I had that sense.
Jim: You knew you would get out? Did you feel like you had the power to get out?
Judd: Well, yeah. I thought, These comedians are all from Long Island, and I’m from Long Island. I’m not that different from them. I’d just sit with Seinfeld and go, “How do you write a joke?” And he’d walk me through a routine.
Jim: Wow. Wow. That was back when?
Judd: Nineteen eighty-four. Anyway, I think so much of why people get into comedy is out of some sense of feeling abandoned. When I was a kid, my parents got divorced. My mom left—
Jim: Your mom left, not your father?
Judd: Yeah. She moved out, and that was the thing. As a kid I thought, No one’s mom leaves. The dad always leaves. Why would she leave?
Jim: You
were how old?
Judd: Thirteen. But then the rest of your life, on some level, you feel that sense of inadequacy.
Jim: Did your mom maintain contact with you?
Judd: Yeah. But she had a bit of a mental break after the divorce. She claimed that she thought she was going to leave and come right back, and my dad immediately moved his girlfriend in. Right before she died, she told me, “I always thought I was going to come right back. I always thought it was going to be a couple of weeks.”
Jim: Wow.
Judd: She called one day and asked me to read her the number on my dad’s credit card, because she needed it for something. But really, she was just angry—and she blew thirty thousand dollars that they didn’t have. It all went downhill from there.
Jim: Jesus Christ, Judd.
Judd: So I figured I needed to get a job. And that made me want to get into comedy, and to get to know comedians. It made me think, If I start five years before everyone else, I’m going to be safe. So, a lot of the need to be productive is the terror of things falling apart. Do you feel like that’s a part of your thing?
Jim: I’m staggered by your story.
Judd: (Laughs)
Jim: You drop that and then turn it into a question? Are you kidding? It’s a life experience here, that story.
Judd: As I said to someone recently, I’m trying to fuck my kids up just enough so they’ll want to get a job.
Jim: (Laughs)
Judd: I’ll tell you another funny thing. I lived alone with my dad. My sister lived with my mom, and then my sister and my brother both moved in with my grandparents in California. So, I’m alone with my dad, and when I left for college, on the way to the airport—I was on my way to USC film school, which was a big achievement for me—my dad tried to convince me not to go. He was begging me to open up a video and CD store with him. Which is the worst business. It’s like—
Jim: It’s been eradicated from the earth.
Judd: My dad almost ended my entire career and life. He begged me to stay and open this store with him.