by Apatow, Judd
Judd: I wanted to do commercials as a kid, too. I got head shots made like in seventh grade but I got the chicken pox and had these terrible scars, and they refused to heal. They were red and full of pus and then I actually shoved poison ivy up my nose to make my friends laugh—
Peele: Oh, fuck.
Judd: So I got poison ivy all over my face, plus the chicken pox, and I didn’t know what to do, so I put poison ivy medicine on the chicken pox, which made them blow up like ten times the size—which caused these horrible scars and the pus. And so my dream of acting was over.
Peele: How old were you?
Judd: Between seventh and eighth grade. But that’s what I wanted to do, was go out for those Jack in the Box commercials.
Peele: That’s a really fucked-up time to be selling yourself, too.
Key: The most fragile time.
Peele: I remember one audition I went on, for some kind of fast-food spot. I got in and homeboy was like, “All right, dance.” Oh my God, I busted out and danced. I danced for about sixty seconds. He was like, “All right, great, great, great…” And then you don’t get the gig. I just went there and danced on cue.
Judd: Oh my God. I just found this old tape—a recycled three-quarter-inch tape that I was putting my stand-up act on a long time ago to use for getting gigs and whatever. And apparently it had also been used as the audition tape for a dance party show on MTV. I started watching it and my roommate, Adam Sandler, shows up on the screen. It’s his audition! They put music on and he’s dancing, walking up to other dancers, asking them questions, dancing the whole time. It was as humiliating an audition as you could ever imagine. “Hey, buddy, where ya from? You like this song? Yeah, I like Tiffany, too.”
Key: “I like Tiffany, too.” Oh that’s awful.
Judd: But how did that—all the early acting stuff and the commercials—lead to becoming aware of improv and Second City?
Peele: For me, that didn’t happen until college. I went to high school and did a couple of plays, got into college, Sarah Lawrence. I was interested in theater. My thing was doing puppetry.
Judd: Getting laid a lot?
Peele: Did not get laid as much as I would have liked to. But the need to be liked by girls was a huge motivator. Just to try and make something beautiful because I never had any wild man machismo. I never had any of that shit that the girls like, that X factor. And so.
Key: Well, you have, like, the Beautiful Mind X factor.
Peele: Yeah, but when you’re young, that’s worth nothing.
Key: When I was fourteen or fifteen, I used to listen to that 1977 compilation SNL cassette and warped it in my dad’s van. Warped it because I just listened to it all the time, and that’s how I first found out about sketch comedy. Then I saw an NBC special about, like, the biggest star in the world right now is John Belushi, and they showed clips from Neighbors and an old Samurai sketch. And I just started reading about everything John Belushi did, and about how he started at Second City, but it felt like there was no way to get there, you know? There was no conduit. I didn’t know about improv until a guy I went to college with at the University of Detroit said, “I’m going to start an improv group called New and Improved,” and I said, “I’ve got to jump in here and audition for this.”
Judd: Were you studying theater at all in college?
Key: I was studying theater, yeah, and I did this improv group, went off to graduate school, and then, after graduate school, joined the Second City in Detroit and was there for four years.
Peele: I was hosting at Second City so I was taking classes there but really the best thing I did was sit there and watch the main stage.
Judd: Were those the Adam McKay–Tina Fey years?
Peele: No. This was right after, with Stephnie Weir, Rich Talarico, Kevin Doyle, Susan Messing, Tami Sagher, T. J. Jagodowski—just unbelievable, night after night. It’s so important to see the best. That’s how you know how good it can be.
Key: And you’re like, Can I do that?
Peele: I remember feeling like, Oh no, I can’t do that. I just watched some magic right there. It was a gut-wrenching feeling.
Key: So many people have the same journey. I remember being a first-year in graduate school, sitting in the room where we did all these showcases that nobody watches but the other students, and the second-years were doing their Greeks final. And it’s all like the Trojan women and everybody’s been fucking raped sixty-five times and the husbands have been killed and babies have been chucked off the side of mountains. There was just so much raw emotion taking place in these four actors in front of us. I remember looking at my roommate and another one of my friends and saying, “I’m getting kicked out. I’m getting kicked out of this program. I’m never going to be able to do that.” But then you get the tools, and one of those tools is the confidence to say, “Of course I can do that.” It was so important for me to be able to get that foundation.
Judd: When I first started doing stand-up, I was watching the highest level of it with Jim Carrey and Sandler and I just thought, I’ll never get there. It was almost like it was unfair. It was like if Brando was at your college and you were watching him while you were taking your first acting classes.
Peele: One of the breakthrough moments for me was realizing that, you know, you can take all the classes you want and learn and practice and get all the advice from other people, but it’s really like learning an instrument that has never existed until you were born. No one can tell you how to play that instrument. There’s a part of that journey that you have to figure out for yourself.
Key: And then there’s putting your own spice on it.
Peele: Yeah. When I moved to Chicago, I was like, All right, I want to be a sketch comedian and my power is going to be in the fact that I’m going to dedicate myself completely. There’s not going to be a fallback, you know? I’m going to watch people give up and I’ll still be there, learning from it all, and if I stay with it, I’ll be successful. That was everything.
Key: Part of Jordan’s X factor is that nobody out-hustles him. You can try, and you will fail. Which, of course, makes your job easier if you’re working with him. So even if you’re excelling, he’s there taking the pressure off. He’s the anchor.
Judd: I always wanted to be that guy, too. Like, no one is going to do more than me. You see so many people who are great but they don’t go that last twenty-five percent in effort. It’s what Seinfeld talks about, how he just gets up every day and writes for two hours. Every day, he sits alone in a room with a legal pad. And I guarantee you that one percent or less of comedians do that.
Peele: You know, after ten years in Hollywood, you really see the system is set up to sap money from people who are trying to get into the business. It’s just set up that way. There’s so many things that people are told they must do. You must get representation. I mean, the number of people that sit by idly in this town saying, “I just need to get an agent or a manager,” and you’re like, “You’ve been here what, eight years? Dude, just make a show.”
Judd: A lot of people ask me, “How do you get people to read your scripts?” And I’ll go, “Did you write one?” “No, but I was wondering how you get someone to read one.” You know, there’s no great script in town sitting in the stack that people don’t know about. There’s no insanely funny person that can’t get attention or get an agent. That’s not going to be the hard part.
Key: Yeah. You’ve got to just do the show first. I mean, that’s the way it’s always worked.
Judd: So now that the sketch show is ending, do you guys have a vision for the next phase of your career?
Key: Yeah, I mean, in my mind—and I think I have probably said this to Jordan in some form or another—it’s almost like, boy, wouldn’t it be great if we could be the next Pryor/Wilder? You know, go off and do maybe three projects that fulfill us, and then come home and see each other? I think we have the ability to do that.
Peele: We’re never going to have another
version of this.
Key: We’ll never have another version of this.
Judd: You really have very few people in life you get along with, especially in a creative situation. Some people are great together but then they just can’t stand each other because every time an idea is accepted or rejected, there’s so much on the line emotionally or self-esteem-wise. When you find people who make it work, it’s that much more important.
Peele: Absolutely. Before I met Keegan, I could spend a week with my best friend in the world before getting sick of him. But because we’ve got something more important than us that we’re working for, it has put us in this category where we could spend years with each other and always have this positive working relationship where we’re trying to make each other laugh. It’s a special thing.
Key: The love—our love—is wrapped up in the work. There’s this goal that we’re always trying to achieve together. We know we can’t achieve it alone. It works because of a mutual respect for each other.
Judd: It doesn’t seem like it takes you two a lot of effort.
Key: No, it doesn’t, and I think that’s because, as different as we are energy-wise, we’re very similar in a lot of other ways. Our backgrounds are similar. We’re nonconfrontational guys. You know, I don’t believe in the idea that conflict must exist for creativity to flourish. That’s such a false thing. For us, it always goes back to the respect thing. It’s just releasing the ego. I just hold his hand and we jump off the cliff. He’s got me. If he says, “This bit is going to work,” it’s gonna work.
Judd: That’s just so rare. In the world of comedy, so many people are so damaged that even though they say, “I got you, no matter what,” a fair amount of time they’re really like, “Well, fuck you, I’m doing it this way.” So for two people who are healthy to say to each other, “I got you”—and to believe it—is a beautiful thing.
Peele: The best moments I’ve ever seen in improv are funnier than the best stand-up bits that I’ve ever seen. There’s something that can only happen between two people collaborating, and I just think that two people with the same vision is better than one.
LARRY GELBART AND JAMES L. BROOKS
(2007)
In 2007, the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences asked me if I was interested in putting a panel talk together. I said yes, but only if I could invite James Brooks and Larry Gelbart, and spend an hour talking about comedy. I knew I had no business being on the same stage as these guys; nobody does. I was simply thrilled to have the opportunity to sit there and talk to them, and I knew at some point that a photograph would be taken of the three of us onstage, which I would cherish for the rest of my life. So yes: I did it for the picture.
Why did I pick James Brooks and Larry Gelbart? Because two of the most formative shows of my life, the shows that trained me in comedy—not to mention how to be a human being—were M*A*S*H and The Mary Tyler Moore Show. The work these men did was emotional and hilarious and, I felt, spoke to the best part of human beings. I mean, M*A*S*H was the highest-rated program in the history of television: More than 100 million people watched the finale. James Brooks has won nineteen Emmys, for shows like The Mary Tyler Moore Show, Lou Grant, and The Simpsons. And I’d like to point out that Freaks and Geeks lasted eighteen episodes.
Everything flows from these guys.
Judd Apatow: There’s an enormous amount of pressure here right now. This is a pressure cooker.
Larry Gelbart: For the record, dying is harder.
Judd: Oh, yeah.
James L. (Jim) Brooks: This means I have to go.
Judd: Anyway, it’s exciting to be here. It is an honor to share the stage with the two men who are the primary reasons I wanted to be involved in comedy, and I also feel bad about your being here, which clearly demeans you. I was looking at everyone’s credits on Wikipedia last night, and it was embarrassing. I felt bad. I read them and thought, I should not be here.
Jim: You’ve done more pictures than I’ve done this year.
Judd: Oh, Jesus. Anyway, when I was a young man and, you know—M*A*S*H, The Mary Tyler Moore Show, Taxi, these were what made me want to do this. So this is very exciting for me—not so much for you, but for me. We are going to show a few clips tonight. We’re going to start off—each of us has picked a clip from a film that influenced us in some way. The first clip is mine, from Punch-Drunk Love. It’s a Paul Thomas Anderson movie, and Adam Sandler is one of the stars. This is a scene where you see him with his family and all of his sisters, who don’t treat him very well. I was working on The 40-Year-Old Virgin simultaneously, but this struck me as the much better way to do it, so I wanted to show that.
(Clip from Punch-Drunk Love: Barry is uncomfortable at a dinner party with all of his sisters.)
Judd: I really like that movie. It’s a great, strange movie with a tone that’s all its own. Whenever I’m working, I get nervous when there aren’t laughs—I’m always trying to figure out what that balance is: How do you deal with the question of how funny should it be, and is there a moment when things become too funny and you lose the humanity?
Jim: It’s a great clip and it’s a great question.
Larry: And here’s a great answer: You are your own gauge for what is funny and what is not. You have to decide. If it gets to you, it’s good enough to be put in the script. Too funny? It’s too funny if it’s not character-driven or situation-driven. If it’s just funny for funny then it’s not worth keeping.
Jim: Great answer.
Larry: Thank you.
Judd: (To Jim) Well, the next clip is your clip.
Jim: Can we just show it, and then talk about it afterwards?
Judd: Okay. I hope it’s one of my movies.
(Clip from There’s Something About Mary: Mary mistakes Ted’s semen for hair gel.)
Judd: You just went blue. You went blue.
Jim: I think the unfortunate expression is “seminal joke in motion picture history.” I think it changed movies a little. And I think the film itself had about as many tens in it as anything I’ve ever seen—just huge, huge jokes. But everything sort of pivoted off of this one joke.
Judd: And the masturbation sound effect was good work. Good sound work there. I think it might have been Ben Stiller but someone was telling me about having to do a scene where they masturbated on the screen and they said that what’s embarrassing about it is that in a way you’re revealing to your crew how you masturbate. Ah, so that’s how Ben Stiller does it….
Jim: There was a very forlorn masturbation scene in Punch-Drunk Love.
Judd: That’s right, the phone sex sequence. You know, when we were working on The 40-Year-Old Virgin there was a masturbation question, which was: Does the forty-year-old virgin masturbate? And of course, it’s a very important issue because you’re trying to decide how sexualized he is. So I brought in a team of the great comedy writers to help me with this question and Garry Shandling cracked the code on it. Garry’s pitch was, you don’t see him masturbate. You just see him prepare to masturbate. You see him put on his pajamas and brush his hair. And I thank Garry for that. Okay, now, Larry, do you want to say what your clip is?
Larry: To Be or Not to Be. The original version. I used to think that anybody who wanted to write screen comedy should see this picture once a year. It’s just a marvel of construction, casting, and wit on an impossible subject, the Nazis. Let’s show it.
(Clip from To Be or Not to Be: Ehrhardt stalls Professor Siletsky while running to manage his acting troupe in the next room.)
Jim: Larry, Jack Benny was singular, don’t you think?
Larry: I think it’s his only successful film. He was in a string of terrible movies, but this worked for him.
Jim: But his energy just—
Larry: Amazing. It was amazing. The story of this film was that Carole Lombard, who co-starred with him, was touring the country selling war bonds and she died in a plane crash and so they did not promote the picture. They thought it would be in b
ad taste to have her laughing on screens all over the country when, in fact, she had died. Mel Brooks redid it, of course, with his wife, Anne Bancroft, a number of years later.
Judd: Larry, how did you become a good writer? Where did that transition happen?
Larry: I learned the difference between good and bad and I opted for good.
Judd: That will help all aspiring writers. But was there a moment, as you transitioned from writing jokes for comedians and sketch comedy to storytelling, that was seminal for you?
Larry: The stage play A Funny Thing Happened was the transitional period—I had to write something that was more than twelve minutes long, like a Sid Caesar sketch, and they didn’t pull up the scenery every night afterwards. It was an education in construction, and the teacher, of course, was a Roman playwright named Titus Maximus Plautus, who did his best work in 253 B.C. It’s wonderful working with dead authors because their lawyers are dead, too—and their agents. But that was the transition for me.
Judd: (To Jim) And what about for you?
Jim: Well, I had television, and there’s nothing better than to do a show every week. That was my college: I learned from the actors on The Mary Tyler Moore Show. You know, I had been writing for just a relatively short time and Allan Burns and I were able to do what we wanted and we had a great boss. We were too dumb to know how rare it was.
Judd: There’s so much depth in the work, though. Was there someone that taught you about that early in your career?
Jim: I don’t know how that happened. I remember there was a writer named Leon Tokatyan, who was on the Lou Grant series, and he used to love writing these long speeches. He made me just want, in every script, a place where I could pull off somebody talking for a page, a page and a half. If I could make that work, if I could make people sit for that, it became a big deal for me. He was a direct influence on me, I think.