Sick in the Head: Conversations About Life and Comedy

by Apatow, Judd

  Larry: The worst thing we had to accustom ourselves to was self-censorship—not the censorship that we all know about, but anticipating the censorship so that you knew certain areas were strictly out of bounds and that’s, you know, the death in a sense of some part of your creativity. Knowing you can’t say something or do something.

  Judd: And now look what’s happened.

  Larry: There’s Something About Mary.

  Judd: Which obviously was a big influence on me because it’s a sweet story but it also has some very broad set pieces. That’s always fun to do—

  Larry: You have an ability to mix the crude with the sweet, which is amazing. People talk about laughing one minute and crying the next, but to be repulsed one minute and then enchanted the next? That’s a gift.

  Judd: I remember watching episodes of Taxi where there would be big, broad comedy and then it would land on something very emotional or sweet and seem to go back and forth with ease. I always think of the episode where Judd Hirsch was addicted to gambling.

  Jim: It’s so weird. We were just talking about that today, and I got so messed up, being so heavily nostalgic about it because I—that was the best job of my life. There was nothing better for me than Taxi.

  Judd: In that scene, Judd Hirsch wants money so badly that he steals it out of Reverend Jim’s pocket and then slowly you realize that Reverend Jim knows that he did it and shames him. It’s a really powerful moment. Those kinds of turns were very influential to me, in what I try to do. Okay, now we’re going to show some clips from our own movies. Do we want to see that?

  Larry: Sure. I’m tired of watching them at home.

  Judd: I guess, you know, the first one is mine—

  Larry: That’s amazing.

  Judd: Well, then it can be topped by yours. You see, if I’m last then I don’t look good.

  Larry: Of course. We’ll do it according to our gifts.

  Judd: Exactly. So this is a clip from The 40-Year-Old Virgin. It’s a fight scene between Catherine Keener and Steve Carell, where she realizes that they’ve had twenty dates and it’s time for them to have sex for the first time, and he’s trying to get out of it. There’s some improvisation in here, which is why it seems real—they really went at it for a while.

  (Clip from The 40-Year-Old Virgin: It is Trish and Andy’s twentieth date.)

  Larry: Good stuff.

  Jim: Were you nervous about that scene? Was it always looming for you?

  Judd: Well, when we hired Catherine Keener we were all a little scared of her. It was amusing that she was there, every day, and going really hard-core Method with our movie. We tried hard to make her scenes good, mostly because I thought that she would yell at us if they weren’t. For this scene, I wasn’t sure how funny it would be. There was a script but then we let them go to town on each other, and then they ended up with this weird Einstein run. A moment like this only works because you’re really getting a sense of how Catherine Keener fights in real life.

  Larry: She must have had a great time, right?

  Judd: She seemed to enjoy that day. I have to say, she fought well. When that scene worked, it surprised me that it could get dark and the laughs could continue. I was really excited by that because it worked in a different way. Okay, now we’re going to go to the next clip, which is from Mr. Brooks. Can I say where it’s from? Do you want to introduce it?

  Jim: Which one is it?

  Judd: Broadcast News.

  Jim: Oh, yeah. The reason I picked this is because I think of anything that I’ve ever done—you know, what I got a chance to say in this scene, and it’s always a little dangerous to delve into that territory, was and is enormously important to me. So that’s why I wanted to show it.

  Judd: I know it well and I’m excited.

  (Clip from Broadcast News: Aaron tells Jane how awful his time on the desk was, and that he’s in love with her.)

  Judd: That was amazing. A perfect scene, and a perfect movie. It really is, as is Tootsie. They are two movies that just function perfectly in every possible way. What was it like working with Holly Hunter? What was that process like with her?

  Jim: It was great. First of all, she and Albert both did four years in acting school, totally trained actors. They both went to Carnegie Mellon. Which is interesting because not a lot of people assume it about Holly, and not everybody knows it about Albert. She’s a very dedicated actress. Well into the shoot, I finally said to her, “Am I allowed to talk to you about making something funny?” And she really thought about the question. She took it seriously and then she said, “Yes, you can.”

  Judd: What is the gestation period like for one of your screenplays?

  Jim: Seasons pass, years fall away. I take a long time.

  Judd: And what about you, Larry?

  Larry: First comes the phone call—you know, I’m the odd man out here because you guys get to direct what you write. I get to defend what I write—and not always successfully. I’ve had every kind of experience, from terrible to rotten, and no two are alike.

  Judd: What was the worst?

  Larry: We are about to see a clip from Tootsie, which was a difficult process.

  Judd: A very painful process. Even though it’s combative to make a movie like Tootsie, can you enjoy the final product and see that something good came of it? Or do you watch and think, There are still things that are wrong?

  Larry: I know things are wrong. There’s one scene—I don’t know how it got past continuity, but it depicted a night that was at least four weeks long. That kills me.

  Judd: So Tootsie irritates you? It delights us and irritates you. Should we skip the clip? What do we do?

  Larry: Oh, I don’t care. You can play it or not.

  Judd: What specifically about the process was so painful?

  Larry: It was a battle of egos and wills and I just withdrew from the combat—which is to say, I was fired. It’s better left undiscussed.

  Judd: All right, well, let’s watch it. Do you want to watch it?

  Larry: I’ll sit here and look at it. I’ll watch it.

  (Clip from Tootsie: Michael Dorsey tells his manager, George Fields, that he needs to get off the show.)

  Judd: We love it.

  Larry: I didn’t say it wasn’t wonderful.

  Judd: What was your reaction the first time you saw it?

  Larry: I saw it in a screening and I whispered to Sydney Pollack, “Can you get Jessica Lange out of the picture?” She went on to win the Academy Award, of course, which shows you how smart I am. It was a mix—it’s still a mixed bag of feelings.

  Judd: Who are other comedy writers-directors that you admire who are currently working today?

  Jim: I just always think, whenever I see anybody else’s work, how tough it is to get it right. It’s so hard to get the opportunity these days to do a film you care about—that you want to make and somebody lets you. Anybody who gets that, for starters, I like. And when it’s pulled off, it’s just extraordinary.

  Judd: I remember there was an event at the Museum of Television and Radio where you talked a little bit about honoring your characters, and I found that inspiring as I was heading into writing Knocked Up. Can you speak a little bit about that, the characters you’re creating?

  Jim: When I just saw Tootsie—you know, I understand it’s genuine and deeply felt, but it’s a mountain of a picture. It’s one of the greatest films ever. And the fact that people walk away not all feeling wonderful shows how tough it is all the time. Almost everything we’re discussing here is about indelible character. I don’t think there’s been a clip where that hasn’t been true. I think the relationship, when it’s allowed to happen, between writers and actors is just—it’s what we’re all there for.

  Judd: How much do you think of the audience when you’re writing—or do you primarily write for yourself and not worry about what they’ll get?

  Larry: I don’t worry about what they’ll get. I write for myself on the assumption that there are a numb
er of people who have similar sensibilities and will appreciate what it is that I thought was good enough to present, not to them but to me.

  Jim: Well, on the ride to the preview, any thought of writing for yourself leaves me. Let me tell you the greatest story about people who genuinely work for themselves: John Cassavetes did a picture called Husbands and Time magazine called it the greatest film ever made, and you can certainly make the argument for it. They had a scene that took place in a john, which maybe was twenty minutes long. It was Peter Falk, and Cassavetes and—

  Larry: Ben Gazzara.

  Jim: Ben Gazzara. They were pals and they basically started independent film. They were standing at the back of an audience—and I heard this from Cassavetes, this story—and people started leaving the theater during that scene, considering it so awful. And they clapped each other on the back and said, “We did it.” That’s a true story.

  Larry: That’s wonderful.

  Jim: That’s as pure as it is.

  Judd: Larry, can you talk a little about your time working on Your Show of Shows?

  Jim: And can you say who was on staff, too, Larry?

  Larry: The truth is, I was never on Your Show of Shows. I was on Caesar’s Hour, which was the next thing that Sid Caesar did after Your Show of Shows. At that time, among the writers were Mel Brooks, Mel Tolkin, Neil Simon, and Woody Allen later on. Carl Reiner sat with us every minute. Sid was there, too. What was it like? It was like being in a great jazz band and having these other guys to bounce off and, uh, knowing that you were with the best, knowing you were on the New York Yankees.

  Judd: So you could feel it every day, that this was an all-star team?

  Larry: The individual successes came later, but we just knew that we were the best around. Fame and celebrity were not part of it. It was just knowing you were with a great bunch of guys. There was one woman—Selma Diamond on Your Show of Shows, and a woman named Lucille Kallen, who was one of the original writers—but basically it was a boys’ club and it was thrilling but it was tough. I mean, the show was broadcast every Saturday night. We had Sunday off, and Monday morning we said, “What do we do next week?” A season back then was thirty-nine weeks, not twenty-two.

  Judd: How long was the show?

  Larry: Too long. It was an hour live, in front of an audience, of course—no laugh track, no sweetening.

  Judd: Was that the most fun of all the experiences that you had?

  Larry: Well, it was the most fun of that kind of fun.

  Judd: What’s your writing schedule like? How do you work?

  Jim: Why do I experience every question as if I have to confess to something? It’s, uh, I have an erratic daily routine. I always hope for three hours in the morning. I rarely get it.

  Larry: I get up very early, four, five o’clock in the morning. It’s just a sneakier way of living longer, really. And I just sit down at the keyboard and work on several things. It’s probably better to work on one thing at a time, but you have to keep feeding the beast and hopefully, an outline—yes, I have to outline. I may deviate, you know, find myself inventing a dozen off-ramps, but I have to have a map to start with.

  Judd: I haven’t figured it out. Before I had children I would get up about noon and watch the Real World: Vegas marathon and then I would eat some chicken marsala with pasta and then I’d get in this really weird, like almost-high kind of funk from it. And then slowly I’d pull out of it and I’d get like the greatest forty-five minutes of writing done.

  Larry: Things like peeing with a boner?

  Judd: Yeah, all the pride I feel. Let’s go to another clip. We’re closing in on the end of the night so we’re going to go to a clip right now from As Good as It Gets. Any introduction?

  Jim: This is a very odd clip, and Mark Andrus, who wrote it with me—Mark wrote the original screenplay and it brought me into a kind of situation that I would never have brought myself into. And this scene is very odd because when you see it you’re not sure if you want any laughs. I hope there are jokes in there, but I’m not necessarily going for that.

  (Clip from As Good as It Gets: Melvin tells Simon the only reason the dog prefers him is because he keeps bacon in his pocket.)

  Judd: At the time, I heard you did a lot of research on OCD but you also did a lot of work with the idea of the dog and the dog’s personality. Would you like to speak to that?

  Jim: I’m a nut on research. I get very obsessive about it.

  Judd: How do you know when you’ve accomplished everything you set out to accomplish in a film?

  Jim: I don’t know if that’s happened to me yet.

  Judd: Larry, what about you?

  Larry: Now we get into the writer-writer as opposed to the writer-director. As the writer, I’m rarely around at the end of the picture, including the wrap party.

  Jim: Have you seen pictures of yours without wanting to fix something?

  Judd: Well, I shoot an enormous amount of film, and when I’m shooting what I think to myself is, If I hated this scene in editing, what would I wish I had? And so as I’m shooting, I’m shooting many permutations of the scene. It might be different lines or alts. If it’s too mean, let me get something a little less mean. If it seems sentimental, I might get something edgy. I usually have like a million feet of film that in my head—I’ve edited every permutation and I’m just flipping things in and out so at the end of it I’m reasonably happy. But I have to say, when I watch it a year or two later, I start seeing issues that haunt me. I don’t think anyone’s ever completely satisfied. Have you ever been completely satisfied? Is there an episode of a show where you think—

  Jim: Sometimes in Taxi, yeah.

  Judd: When you watch Terms of Endearment now, what bugs you?

  Jim: I haven’t seen it in a long time, but I get knocked out by actors. The thing that keeps me from really hating the experience of seeing these pictures again is that I get lost in the acting.

  This interview originally took place as a panel hosted by the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences.

  LENA DUNHAM

  (2014)

  I remember the day someone handed me a DVD of a movie called Tiny Furniture. This was during a phase of my life when I was beating myself up for being bad about watching things that people said were important to watch, so I went home and watched it right away, not knowing that the woman in this movie had also written it, directed it, produced it, and shot most of it in her parents’ apartment for forty-five thousand dollars. The movie was hilarious and heartfelt and weird in all the right ways.

  Afterward, I emailed her immediately. “Hey,” I wrote, “if you ever need someone to help you screw up your career, call me.” The next day Lena emailed back, thinking that I was one of her friends goofing on her. I soon found out that she had just begun to develop a television show for HBO with my friend Jenni Konner. They asked if I wanted to come on board and help, which led to one of the greatest creative experiences of my life: working on Girls.

  Lena Dunham is one of the few people on earth who I have never gotten into a fight with. Even in the throes of a production, when deadlines are looming and people are exhausted and unpleasant, every moment with her has been a joy.

  Judd Apatow: So.

  Lena Dunham: So.

  Judd: I wanted to ask you where you feel like you’re headed, after accomplishing so much at such a young age. You’re in this position of getting to say a lot with your show and your book and everything else you’re doing. How do you feel about what you’ve been able to express so far?

  Lena: It’s mind-blowing to me. And because so much of the stuff I’ve been able to make is so personal, there’s always the fear that you’re going to run out of gas. But in the past few years, to my surprise, I’ve become more politically and historically engaged, which has given me this whole other area of human stories to explore. I have all this stuff percolating in my head now which, for the first time, isn’t just about me—and that’s an exciting feeling. All of the projects
I’m thinking about now, none of them are about a twenty-seven-year-old girl who’s pissed at her mom. They all share my concerns, in a way, but on a different scale and in a different time period. I’m excited by the idea of moving out of super-confessional stuff.

  Judd: When you started, it almost felt like you were writing about your life in real time. But then your actual life started veering pretty dramatically from the character you were writing about.

  Lena: Totally. And my life also became my work, which is the thing I’d always wanted—to be a person who worked so much that I wasn’t even available to go to dinner. It’s not like I’m out on the town every night, collecting crazy new experiences, but I am expanding my brain. I feel so hungry for information. I go home every night and I read like half a book and three magazines and some old articles from the Internet. It reminds me of college, when I would go into the library and check out ten Criterion Collection movies and then watch them all over the weekend. I remember coming out of those weekends, feeling like, I’m a radically different person than I was on Friday….

  Judd: What do you think people have taken from Girls? Do you allow yourself to think about what kind of impact it may be having?

  Lena: It’s impossible for your own brain to comprehend that other people are seeing this stuff, translating it, analyzing it, outside of your own bedroom or whatever. But I guess the thing that’s most exciting to me is when men, particularly fathers, tell me that the show has allowed them to understand their wives or daughters better. That, to me, is a really moving compliment.

  Judd: I imagine that’s especially true for parents whose daughters are going to college.

  Lena: Yeah, and who feel like, What is happening to my child? Is she ever going to have a job? And what does her sex life look like? In a way, my work gives them more things to panic about, but it also gives them a sense, I hope, that she’s part of something. I also like when women tell me that the show made them feel more comfortable and strong both with their body and in their relationships, that it has given them more authority.