On the Shelf
Comedy Nerd: A Lifelong Obsession in Stories and Pictures
By Judd Apatow
Random House: 576 pages, $50
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There are many books in the production offices of Judd Apatow — bookshelves full of books in rooms full of bookshelves. All sorts of books. Biographies, photo books, children’s books, essays, stories. Has he read them? “So little,” he says. “But as long you buy them, that’s 90% of it. As long as I have a lot of books, I’m immortal — you can’t leave the Earth when you have more books to read.”
Apatow has a new book of his own, “Comedy Nerd,” following the interview collections “Sick in the Head” and “Sicker in the Head.” It’s a thick, glossy, photo-filled, endlessly browsable scrapbook that covers the entirety of a life and career — from fanboy to mogul, as writer, director and producer — that shaped 21st century comedy, encompassing the highlights, the lowlights and the never-lit. (Apatow’s profits after expenses go to Fire Aid, helping those affected by the January wildfires, and the literacy charity 826 National.)
Iris and Maude Apatow, Leslie Mann and Paul Rudd in “Knocked Up,” written, produced and directed by Judd Apatow.
(Suzanne Hanover / Universal Studios Licensing LLC)
You’ve just finished a documentary on Mel Brooks, with your partner Michael Bonfiglio, and you’re working on another about Norm Macdonald. Did they whet your whistle for the book?
I love having the opportunity to tell the story of these people’s careers but, more important, their lives. Mel Brooks is the reason why so many of us went into comedy, is why young Jewish boys thought it was possible to get into show business. So to get to talk to him for 10 hours about what it felt like to be Mel Brooks, what was it like to be in World War II and then become a good TV writer and struggle in Hollywood and then figure out your approach to comedy.
I was a big fan of this “Saturday Night Live” scrapbook when I was a kid, because I loved the show and wanted to know more. It had scripts and behind-the-scenes photos and little notes and gave you a sense of how it was made. And I also had one about the Marx brothers. And I thought, “I think I have enough stuff like that to put together a book about comedy obsession.”
Did that obsession make you an outlier among your childhood peers?
It was the glory days of comedy — “Saturday Night Live,” Monty Python, “SCTV,” Richard Pryor, Steve Martin, Carol Burnett — but there wasn’t anybody at school who wanted to talk about it with me. But that also made me feel I might be able to get a job in this industry because it didn’t feel like there was any competition whatsoever. I think it was also connected to learning about alternative music and thinking that the bands that didn’t have very many fans were better and loving them for that. Being into “SCTV” felt like being into the Replacements.
“It felt like a form of mania on some level,” Judd Apatow says about his workaholism.
(Christina House / Los Angeles Times)
Did you have a vision of what that world was like?
I don’t think I did. On one level I dreamed of being a stand-up comedian like Jerry Seinfeld or Garry Shandling. I was really scared to admit that and to get on stage and attempt it. I wasn’t watching movies thinking I was gong to make movies. I wasn’t someone who was looking at the coverage and wondering what type of lens they used. I just liked the movies. I had this vague sense of maybe I could be a comedian, maybe I could be an actor, probably in the back of my head I wondered, “How do you become Bill Murray?” I didn’t have that level of confidence myself. But I did get onstage at the end of 12th grade; even though what I was doing was awful, I did begin the process of trying to figure it out. When I interviewed comedians for my high school radio station they all said it takes a while. And I thought, “It’s OK to be terrible at this for a year.” And I was excited that I was in the terrible stage. I thought, “It’s begun.”
Paul Rudd, Seth Rogen and Steve Carell in “The 40-Year-Old Virgin.”
(Suzanne Hanover / Universal Studios Licensing LLC)
Did you learn anything new about yourself going through all this stuff?
Making the book I thought, “Was it healthy or unhealthy to work this much?” I’m trying to entertain and tell stories and make work that is meaningful to people, and on another level just trying to fill some insecure hole with accomplishment. I definitely put a lot of energy into trying to succeed as a way of feeling safe: Life won’t fall apart if I just do a good job on this. There was definitely the thought that this is work of a crazy person. He needed to take a nap and slow down. So I was both proud and embarrassed. It felt like a form of mania on some level.
Your commentary does give a picture of your psychic journey, not just “And then I made …”
So much of it was driven by the fact that I loved comedy and people who were in the world of comedy. For a long time it was, “Can I be funny enough that those people would allow me to be in the same room as them?” I realized writing the book that the great part of all of it was the collaboration; when you’re in the middle of things, you’re worried about making a living and your career and taking care of your family. But when you look back, you go, “This was so fun because we all did it together.” When I look now, I‘ll just think, look how hilarious Kathryn Hahn is in “Step Brothers” or how funny Kumail Nanjiani is in “The Big Sick.” We put in so much effort, and it’s amazing some of them are what we wanted them to be and people liked them.
Linda Cardellini and John Francis Daley asleep on the set of “Freaks and Geeks.”
(Gabe Sachs)
When I was a kid I was so into “Saturday Night Live” and “SCTV” and Monty Python, I must have thought, “It would be nice to have a crew.” Without even realizing it, I was trying to assemble families. So when “Freaks and Geeks” ended, which was really devastating, I tried to roll it into “Undeclared,” and when that was canceled I tried to roll it into the movies. The saddest part of show business is that when a project ends, everyone goes their separate ways. I probably as a child of divorce wanted to keep the groups together as long as I could.
You seem to have included everything you’ve been a part of here.
I tried to put all the failures in too so I could tell the story of how things fall apart. But “Walk Hard” opened to $2.9 million for the weekend and 15 years later it’s the one a lot of people mention first. [Editor’s note: The movie opened to $4.1 million.] You suffer when “The Cable Guy” doesn’t do well at the box office and some of the reviews are pretty rough, but 30 years later they’re putting out a new version on Blu-ray because people are still into it. And the opposite is also true — certain things you like you realize no one’s ever mentioned them to you. But all the projects were done with passion and the hope they would be creatively successful. You know that something didn’t work when you see it on DirecTV and feel bad for the people watching it. There’s not too many of those.
“The saddest part of show business is that when a project ends, everyone goes their separate ways. I probably as a child of divorce wanted to keep the groups together as long as I could,” Judd Apatow said.
(Christina House / Los Angeles Times)
When I first met you, toward the end of “Freaks and Geeks,” you were simultaneously protecting this group of young actors and writers and yelling at executives on the phone — you had a business side and a summer camp side.
That’s something that’s helped me — because I’m very hypervigilant, all my mental health issues are about being in a constant state of fight or flight. I’m always looking for a problem to solve. I always think that if I’m not on it, things are going to fall apart. Which is a good way to be if you’re a producer, but not as a human being. Because it consumes you. It’s hard to be present in the moment. The hard part’s learning how to switch gears — trying to be funny when you’re in a bad mood from the business call you just had to deal with. If you know you’re about to be canceled it’s hard to go into the other room and punch up the scripts.
Judd Apatow, left, and Adam Sandler were one-time roommates at a North Hollywood apartment.
(Judd Apatow)
How did it feel to see the book all together?
I was really, really happy with it. There’s a part of me that just thinks, “Does anybody really care about any of this?” But I try to remind myself that when I was young this is the type of book I wished existed. There’s the instructional aspect, script pages and notes from the studio, and there’s the personal journey of having a life while attempting to do this work. Most of it is about hard work and patience. It takes a while to become good, and you have to be the hardest worker, and you have to be willing to take massive risks. Everything about comedy is an experiment; there’s no way to know anything’s going to work. It’s just a giant shot in the dark, and instinct.