In Focus
December 2005
This article reprinted by permission of the
National Association of Theatre Owners, © 2005.
with Dick
and Jane
and Judd
‘40-Year-Old Virgin’ is also behind Jim Carrey’s latest.
by Mike Russell
Until last year, the writer-producer-director enjoyed a peculiar and frustrating position in Hollywood’s comedy universe: He had talented friends and never lacked for work — he’d been writing steadily since “The Larry Sanders Show” in 1992 — but he’d also engineered a string of brilliant, quickly cancelled TV shows and never-seen pilots.
Project after heartfelt project earned critical raves, rabid cults … and tiny, tiny audiences. He wrote and produced the seminal “The Ben Stiller Show,” followed by “Freaks and Geeks” and “Undeclared” — two of the sharpest comedies about school life ever broadcast. None of these lasted more than 18 episodes.*
And then, over the last two years or so, Apatow’s success caught up with his standards.
DVDs of “The Ben Stiller Show,” “Freaks and Geeks” and “Undeclared” introduced his best work to new audiences. Comic actors he’d befriended and employed during their nascent careers (Stiller, Will Ferrell and Owen Wilson, to name a few) acquired sizeable followings. And two films — “Anchorman,” which he produced, and “The 40-Year-Old Virgin,” which he wrote and directed — became bona fide box office hits. Last March, The New York Times’ Sharon Waxman all but declared Apatow the co-godfather of a sort of “comedy mafia” that includes frequent collaborators Stiller, Ferrell, Wilson, Jim Carrey, Vince Vaughn, Jack Black, Steve Carrell and “Anchorman” writer-director Adam McKay.
Here’s what Apatow has in the pipeline: He’s writing and directing an untitled romantic comedy starring “Freaks”/”Undeclared”/”Virgin” actor Seth Rogen; he’s producing the McKay/Ferrell NASCAR comedy “High, Wide, and Handsome”; and he co-wrote a remake of the 1977 Jane Fonda/George Segal comedy “Fun with Dick and Jane” — starring Jim Carrey and Téa Leoni as a pair of larcenous yuppies.
In Focus talked with Apatow about “Dick and Jane,” “Virgin,” the joys of reality TV, getting to know past and future comedy legends, the cult of “Freaks and Geeks,” and much more. An edited transcript follows.
_______________
DICK, JANE
AND HAROLD
DICK, JANE
AND HAROLD
I used to love the original “Dick and Jane” when I was a kid. It was a real touchstone movie for me and my family — we all went together and loved it. A real pleasant moment in my childhood. And it had Jane Fonda wiping herself with toilet paper — which was shocking back then. [laughs]
But it also seemed like a fun way to satirize how out-of-control corporations are right now: You could use the template of the movie to talk about how the country has suffered a bit as a result of greed — of corporations being so obsessed with
We just interviewed Harold Ramis — and he said you’d be interviewing him in front of an audience at the Austin Film Festival.
That’s right. I’m just a giant fan of Harold Ramis. They showed “40-Year-Old Virgin” at the Deauville Film Festival in France, and they were showing [“Ice Harvest”], too — so Seth Rogen and I were just stalking him. Everywhere he turned, we were there. His work is the gold standard for what we all try to do. All the new big-hit comedies are in some way inspired by movies he’s made.
I noticed the direct homage in “Wedding Crashers” — where they actually set a montage to Otis Day and the Knights’ “Shout” … and, uh, brought breasts back to mainstream comedy.
Yes. Exactly.
What sort of questions will you be asking him in Austin?
It’s a great opportunity to ask him things that are only helpful to me. [laughs] I can ask him very obscure questions about his approach to writing. And I’m always interested in what their intentions were when they were making those movies: Did they know what the point of these movies were? Or were they just funny comedies?
Ramis told us about something Bernie Sahlens of Second City told him: “Work from the top of your intelligence” — don’t talk down to your audience, use real information, and any character can know anything. Does that resonate for you?
I just try to make things I would like. That’s the only hard-and-fast rule. I never want to do anything I’d be ashamed of. I don’t mind watching crap — I just don’t wanna make it. I love all sorts of terrible shows and bad movies; I’ll watch any kind of car-wreck piece of “art.” I just don’t want to be responsible for it.
A lot of what I learned about writing I learned from Garry Shandling when I worked on “The Larry Sanders Show.” For him, it’s always about being honest, and what would really happen in that situation. So that’s how I approach things. I’m probably most influenced by Hal Ashby movies and people like Cameron Crowe and James Brooks.
_______________
'BREAKING BONADUCE'
and the JOY OF IMPROV
'BREAKING BONADUCE'
and the JOY OF IMPROV
For the most part, yeah.
Is this connected to the unusual amounts of improvisation you use in your films and TV shows?
I’ve always been a fan of unscripted television — just because human behavior’s so interesting. And no matter how bad the [reality] show is, you’re still seeing people react honestly, even if the situation is completely fabricated. I’ll run home to watch “Breaking Bonaduce.” I feel no shame about that. I’m also a fan of things like
The first time I saw people improvise was when I was producing “The Ben Stiller Show.” Ben loved to throw scripts out and make stuff up off the top of his head, and have me hang out behind the camera and throw him “areas” in which he could improv — and then we’d go to the editing room and piece it together. We used to do sketches where Ben would pretend to be an agent, and we’d have someone like Howie Mandel come in, and Ben would pitch bad career moves. And then, after Mandel left, we’d shoot Ben’s side for another hour — and he’d say things that were even more offensive or made fun of him.
So when I made “Freaks and Geeks” with Paul Feig, my idea was to hire kids who were very similar to the characters — and create the characters around their real personalities. If they’re, for the most part, being themselves, it’s easy to improvise. And when you hire interesting people who are good actors, they say things that are very specific to them that you couldn’t write in a million years.
And when we did the TV show “Undeclared,” I made a point of hiring only people who were capable of that. We worked very hard on the scripts, but everyone knew that I didn’t think I was David Mamet and that you couldn’t change a line. And sometimes, dare I say, magical comedic moments would come out of that freedom. The actors saw that I trusted them, so they’d take big chances.
We did the same thing on “Anchorman.” There were so many funny improvisations, we just put tons of it on the DVD. That’s what we did on “Virgin,” too.
_______________
THE POWER
of the ‘VOMIT PASS’
THE POWER
of the ‘VOMIT PASS’
I read a book by Ann Lamott called “Bird by Bird,” and in the book she talks about the “Down-Up Theory” — “Get it down, then fix it up” — and how you shouldn’t judge yourself when you’re writing your first draft. That should be a moment for pure creativity, and being too hard on yourself prevents you from finishing.
So I’ve taken that advice. I call it a “vomit draft,” which means I try to write a first draft really fast and not judge myself — and then I look at it and see what the hell happened, then deal with it in a more critical way.
Other people I worked with when I was a show-runner on TV shows could literally sit in a room and obsess for hours and hours over whether or not to put a comma somewhere. And you could see how much pain they were in as they were writing, because they were judging the work as they were writing it — and that’s impossible. I guess it’s possible — some people do it — but those are the people that take a long time to write, or suffer through it.
Do they tend to burn out earlier?
I don’t know. I just think it makes you write less. I read a lot about writing and how the brain works, and it’s true that your brain is cut in half, and one half judges and one half is really creative — and you shouldn’t have ’em working together.
_______________
JUDD APATOW’S
PRIVATE COMEDY COLLEGE
JUDD APATOW’S
PRIVATE COMEDY COLLEGE
I do.
Do you have a favorite?
I haven’t really listened to them, because I have such a high voice and such a thick New York accent that I’m mortified every time I listen to them. I listened to one recently, and I was interviewing Jay Leno, and I was about 15 years old…
Yeah. And this was way before “The Tonight Show”; this was when he was working in comedy clubs. And I said, [adopts high voice with thick New York accent] “How d’you think you’re doin’ in your career now? I mean, you’re doin’ pretty well, but you’re not exactly playing the Universal Amphitheatre.”
[laughs] Jeez!
I was a dumb, cocky kid. So they’re kind of rough to listen to. I wasn’t a very refined, uh, teenager.
How did Leno respond to that question?
He just laughed! He laughed really loud! “No, I’m not playing the Universal Amphitheatre.” [laughs] This was years before he became a gigantic star. But he was nice enough to let me interview him twice. I interviewed him and Seinfeld twice — after showing up with my enormous tape recorder from the A/V squad, they actually let me do it again. That’s what those guys are truly like.
When I interviewed Seinfeld, I was grilling him for literally 45 minutes about how to write jokes — and he tells me, in incredible detail, using examples from his act, how he thought of it, how he developed it, what the stages were…. It became a blueprint for how to be a comedian and a comedy writer. So when I started writing, I already had 15 hours of conversations about how to do it. And I didn’t just interview comedians; I interviewed writers like Michael O’Donaghue and James Downey….
That’s like comedy college.
I interviewed Harold Ramis back then. I interviewed John Candy, Martin Short, Franken & Davis, Bruce Feirstein, all sorts of people — so it wasn’t like I got one opinion. I interviewed everyone from Steve Allen to “Weird” Al Yankovic. [laughs]
Have you ever considered collecting these or getting them out there somehow?
I was going to write something about that experience; I’ve thought about putting them out in some form, maybe a book of transcripts that might have a CD on it…. I’m not exactly sure how many comedy nerds would care.
I interviewed some people before they became popular, and they basically lay out their career plans — and you see how many of them achieved their goals. I did a long interview with Garry Shandling where he talked about how his dream was to do a TV show that he created where he played himself. And he did exactly that.
And then you ended up working for him.
Yes, yes. I’ve never played it for him, though. For anybody. The only person who remembers that I interviewed them is Alan Zweibel; he found a letter from me requesting the interview or thanking him for the interview, and he laughed his ass off when he found it.
_______________
LONG-TERM RESPECT
and MAKING ‘VIRGIN’ SING
LONG-TERM RESPECT
and MAKING ‘VIRGIN’ SING
No — because there never was a time when I thought I was never gonna work again. Even when I was in the middle of the worst battles, there were enough people who liked what we were trying to do that I would be allowed to continue.
And I care most that the work is good, so I don’t enjoy it being a bloodbath — but I’m always happy that I like what we created, and it’s always worth it, even if every once in a while you have to have major back surgery. It was really unpleasant during “The Ben Stiller Show” and “Freaks and Geeks” and “Undeclared” a fair amount of the time — but I always knew I’d be proud of what we’d made, and that people would see it atsome point in some format.
I enjoy working with the writers and the actors, and the shows are well-run, so the stress doesn’t come from making the shows. The stress comes from being really excited about the shows and having people tell you what’s wrong with it when you know it’s in pretty good shape.
I just interviewed Joss Whedon, and it strikes me that you two would have a lot to talk about.
Well, he’s had a very good television experience.
Until “Firefly.”
I had several shows cancelled because they were up against “Buffy.” [laughs]
What was it like working with Clint Eastwood’s cinematographer, Jack Green, on “The 40-Year-Old Virgin”?
When I was looking for department heads for my first film as a director, I thought, “Well, I should get real veterans, so I can’t screw this up.” Jack Green had just finished “Serenity” at Universal for Joss Whedon, and they said I should consider him, and I said yes instantly — I’m a big fan of his work, and he did a great job on the Adam Sandler movie “50 First Dates.” I remember meeting him on that set and thinking, “How come I never get to work with a guy like that?”
He runs his crew like an army, right?
Two of his sons work on the camera crew, and they’re the best at what they do. It allowed me to focus on the story and the performances, because the visual aspect isn’t my strongest suit. [laughs] I also hired Jackson DiGovia to be my production designer; he did one of the “Die Hard” movies, and he’s one of the reasons the movie looks way better than it should.
“Virgin”’s end-credits sing-along to “Let the Sunshine In” is just a little too affectionate to be a mere sendup. Are you a closet “Hair” fan?
Well, we knew we needed an ending that signified that he had sex and it was really good. It was Garry Shandling who advised me often during the writing of the movie that you have to point out that his sex — when he finally has it — is better than everyone else’s because he’s in love. I wasn’t sure how to tackle that. I didn’t think I could show great sex, but I knew there had to be some sort of “aftermath” moment.
And you can’t have Howard Cosell call it like a sportscast.
Yeah. So we were kind of stuck. And then Steve said, “What if I just sing a song?” And I immediately said, “Yeah — like ‘Let the Sunshine In.’” And that was it. We didn’t think about it any more. We just did that.
But I didn’t really know how to shoot a musical — I just knew I wanted to allude to the musical “Hair,” but I didn’t want to do a direct spoof of it, because it’s meant to show that he’s really happy and released. Which is a tricky line — because people kept walking up to me and asking, “Well, are they wearing beads? Are they wearing pooka shells? What are they wearing?” And I kept saying, “Well, I think it’s a hint of ’60s, but it’s a funny line where it’s just guys with pants and no shirts on.” [laughs] In a weird way, we hit that part perfectly, based purely on blind luck.
My executive producer John Poll — who’s also a great editor and who did all the “Austin Powers” and “Meet the Parents” movies — helped me figure out what the shots would be. And Jack Green? Amazing on those days. I can take credit for very little. I did a lot of delegating. My biggest contribution was, “Hey! It would funny if Seth sang!”
_______________
SETH ROGEN:
FUNNY FROM THE WOMB
SETH ROGEN:
FUNNY FROM THE WOMB
Well, I’ve known Seth since he was 16. Someone sent me a tape of him auditioning for “Freaks and Geeks” in Canada. I was fascinated by this weird kid with this froggy voice — and, at that time, he had a much thicker Canadian accent. It made me laugh. He had such a weird energy.
And he knew what he was doing. So we created a part for him on the show — and as the weeks went by, it became clear that he was a gifted comedy mind. He was trying to write an episode of the show — I never read it, but he was working on scenes. And when a scene didn’t work, I always knew I could bring him into the office with another actor and have them goof around and improvise, and they’d come up with some hilarious stuff.
His story, in some ways, parallels your own. You interviewed professional comedians in high school, jumping right into the deep end of the entertainment pool at a young age. Do you feel a kinship with him because of that?
I never thought of it that way; I never made that connection. I was a guy who was trying to be a comedian at 16, 17 — and Seth, I think, was in comedy as early as 14 in Canada. I was just more amused by the fact that he seemed to come out of the womb with a fully formed comic persona — and I just didn’t understand why he was so funny at such a young age. And any time you realize someone’s funny and the rest of the world doesn’t know it yet, it’s really exciting.
The aspect of the work that I’ve enjoyed the most is working with people before they break — then trying to find out how to execute the projects that cross them over.
In many ways, that’s the story of your career. I just saw John Francis Daley [who played Sam in “Freaks and Geeks”] in “Waiting…”
And he’s in “Kitchen Confidential” now.
Can relentless Judd Apatow promotion of another “Freaks and Geeks” standout, Jason Segel, be far behind?
Well, he’s on this new show on CBS called “How I Met Your Mother,” and that’s getting rave reviews. He’s another one of the guys I believe really could be part of the next generation of comedy stars — kind of an interesting variation on what Ben Stiller does in movies. I did a pilot with him [“North Hollywood”] that didn’t get picked up that I thought was really funny. I’m excited for him to get some acclaim; we have ideas.
Since you’ve achieved some mainstream success, is your career these days about righting wrongs – about getting good projects to overlooked talent?
I think of it more in terms of working with people that I like and trying to hit untapped reservoirs of comedy. And I try to be more and more personal with the work as the years go by.
The fun part is that there are a lot of funny people out there who aren’t going to get shots, so if you’re in a position to give it to them, that makes it more gratifying when they succeed. It’s fun that Steve Carrell had never starred in a movie, and we made this movie together and it became a big hit. I didn’t know what all of Steve’s moves were — I didn’t know how he worked as a leading man — so we had to figure all of that out together. There’s no trail of bread-crumbs to follow.
_______________
FAILED PILOTS,
‘FREAK’-Y FANS
FAILED PILOTS,
‘FREAK’-Y FANS
It’s usually all sorts of rights issues when they want to release these things. Friends of mine were trying to put out a few of them, and I think you have to pay everybody again or something like that. Sometimes they’re co-owned by a production company and a network, which is kind of tricky, and there’s music-clearance issues….
On “North Hollywood,” the version I liked best is about 10 minutes longer than the version we handed in to the network. So at the Austin Film Festival, I’m going to show a 32-minute version of the pilot that wasn’t even online — it’s a straight-out Avid, and it’s not mixed, but that’s the version I liked. So for me to finish it, I have to spend an enormous amount of money to mix some sound and pay for the music.
It’s just weird to work really hard on something and have nobody ever see it again. So I couldn’t be happier that Shout! Factory put out those two shows — at great risk to themselves, because they had to pay almost a million dollars in music clearance to put “Freaks and Geeks” out on DVD. It turned out really well for them, and as a result, they took a risk on “Undeclared,” and that’s turning out really well, too — but the music on that show was also really expensive.
But the main reason I do it is that they give me an enormous amount of freedom in the
Have you sold out of those deluxe, eight-disc “yearbook editions” of the “Freaks and Geeks” DVD?
I think we’re pretty close. We made about 10,000 of them, and I think there might be 1,000 or 2,000 left. So anyone who hasn’t gotten it? The clock is ticking!
You’ve been clever about using the Internet to rally support for your shows — even inviting some Internet fans to contribute to DVD box sets. You also distributed some unaired episodes over the net after cancellation. Does this give you mixed feelings about online file-sharing?
The only thing I can say about file-sharing is that I don’t do it. It feels wrong in my gut. I don’t do Napster. I don’t download movies for free. Maybe that’s because I have money and don’t need to. Maybe it’s because my grandfather owned record companies when I was a kid. Somewhere in me, I know that’s stealing.
But I love the Internet. From the very beginning of “Freaks and Geeks,” Paul Feig always said, “This is a show made for the Internet.” The fans were really into our Web site, so we worked really hard on it — that’s how we got the information out about the campaigns to keep it on the air. Although we still didn’t last that long, it still may have kept us on the air another four or five episodes.
I understand you incorporated story ideas from your online fans.
Yeah — if we were looking for a name for a bad local band, I’d post on the site, and there would suddenly be a string of 30 names….
We’d use the fans in all sorts of different ways. One fan, Tammy, watched every piece of footage we shot on both “Freaks and Geeks” and “Undeclared,” and told us what she thought would be good to put on the DVDs. In fact, right now I’m trying to put together a Loudon Wainwright DVD anthology of all his performances over the last 30 years — and she’s helping watch all these old “Mike Douglas Show”s and things like that.
And sometimes when we have things that need proofing or fact-checking, we’ll ask the fans and they’ll tell us if we screwed something up. When we put out “Freaks and Geeks,” before they went to press, we gave the DVDs to five different fans and told them to tell us if we messed anything up. We had fans do the [DVD] menus.
“Freaks & Geeks,” “Undeclared” and “The 40-Year-Old Virgin” all seem to follow a similar theme — the geek’s quest for love and acceptance. You’ve even described “Virgin” as a 20-years-later sequel to “Geeks.” Do you think this will forever be a defining theme in your work?
I don’t think so. You tend to write about things a little bit earlier in your life; now I’m going to write about marriage and having kids, and that’ll be the next phase. That starts a little bit with “Dick and Jane” and the romantic comedy I’m going to do with Seth after that.
I’m just beginning to have enough distance to start writing about my young adulthood and having kids and being married. And then later I’ll write about what it’s like to be in Hollywood — and then I’ll lose touch with my audience and be rejected by the system. [laughs] That seems to be the last step in almost any writer’s career: He does well and then he has nothing to write about, and it’s over.
This article reprinted by permission of the
National Association of Theatre Owners, © 2005.
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