Judd Apatow

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And then she went off to the side and made the vomit herself out of like strawberry yogurt and granola.

And did she pass it by Steve?

Yeah.

Welcome back to Everybody Knows Your Name.

John Appetow is probably the closest thing we have to a professor of comedy or maybe even a dean.

He bridges generations of comedy through his writing, producing, and directing.

Think 40-year-old virgin, knocked up, freaks and geeks, girls, love, and so much more.

If you can believe it, August marks the 20th anniversary of the 40-year-old virgin, which was remastered for the occasion.

Judd also has an amazing new book called Comedy Nerd, which documents his lifelong obsession with comedy in stories and pictures.

He just gave me one, And so I have one in Utah.

Let's get into it.

Meet Judd Abatov.

When do I get my makeup done?

You know, you get brought into all these things.

Yeah.

And then you think, well, there's no video.

You don't think much about the video.

And then you suddenly you see it on YouTube or somewhere and you look crazy because you don't have your massive glam squad.

covering all of your problems.

Glam lighting.

I have to tell you, this is the best lighting I've ever seen on a podcast.

I'm so relieved.

Yeah, me too, actually.

Years ago, I realized I didn't care how I looked on anything because I thought, well, I'm just like the weird comedy guy.

And so now, like when I do like the talk shows, if you ever track it, it literally made me the same suit for 11 straight years because no one cares how I look in any situation.

The hair, the beard, the color, it's all working.

So in this stage.

In this stage.

You're pretty, you're better because it's it's silver foxy.

But I can't shave the beard because when the beard goes, it doesn't look like that.

I wish I could have a beard.

Mary goes, nope.

Have you ever seen the video?

I mean, you can, but I won't kiss you.

Have you ever seen the videos where there's like a dad with a beard and he has like a baby that's like eight months old or

two years old?

And then one day he just walks in without the beard and then the babies just scream and cry and flip out and lose their shit.

That's Leslie, your wife, if you shave.

Oh, if I shave, my daughter Maude would always go, ew.

Your mouth does weird stuff when you talk.

They literally get furious at me.

It's not even a debate about regrowing it.

And I think it has nothing to do with your face.

It's that it's different.

It's like when you see Spielberg without the beard.

Yeah.

You don't like it.

Yeah.

Well, I won't go that far.

I'm still looking at it.

Well,

it's different.

But the beard is the key elements.

Yeah, it's

in the look.

We did work together once.

Yes, that's right.

For an afternoon.

That's right.

Was I a patient of yours?

You were playing a therapist.

We were all therapists.

Oh, I was a therapist too.

Yes.

It was therapy for therapists within Help Me, Help You, which lasted nine episodes.

But I got to hang out with Jenny Connor.

The best.

Who ran girls with Lena?

Yeah.

Yeah.

And you got to act with me, which is a rare thing because I don't do that.

You and Phil Rosenthal

doesn't do that either.

There's a reason why we both don't do it because it's not good.

We're supposed to not be seen most of the time.

I'm so happy to be talking to you,

especially having read the book,

because

I'm a hired hand.

I'm the actor, so I'm not the writer-directed.

So my knowledge of the comedy strains that exist

out there, but it makes me so happy.

It's one of the things I'm proudest of, that I got to be.

part of a strain that held remarkable legends

throughout.

The best of all time.

Yeah.

And that this book,

I'm going to jump around a lot, sorry.

But the book, Comedy Nerd,

what is the sub thing?

Obsession, a lifelong obsession with photos and stories, something like that.

Yeah.

Let me first just say how wonderful the book is because I've read about half of it, but I feel like you're sitting down with me, Ted,

in front of a fire.

I put the fire there.

That's for me.

But you have a scrapbook and you're saying, let me tell you about my life and some of the stories and some of these remarkable people.

Look,

here's Gary Shandling and that's me.

And here's this amazing thing you wrote about Gary or about that time in your life.

So it's so personal because it's not just personal writing.

You're seeing it.

You're believing it with pictures,

which makes it so much richer and kind of resonates even more.

So to me, it's just the joy to read, literally.

Oh, good.

Because, you know, when you write things that are autobiographical, for me, I instantly think, oh, God, who wants to hear this?

Like my critical voice is like, don't even write the book.

So the fact that you like it means a lot to me because obviously.

uh you know your work and the work of all the people around you uh it what you when you were doing cheers all those people you know they were all my heroes and as a a young comedy nerd i I mean, that was the center of it.

You know, taxi.

It was a lot of the taxi people understood.

Mary Tyler Moore kind of.

Yeah, the Bob Newhart show.

I mean, I used to watch those shows when I was a kid.

I wasn't good at sports.

I'd come home.

I'd watch Mary Tyler Moore and MASH.

I was wondering what it was like for my young, like eight, nine, 10-year-old brain watching MASH every day.

about the Korean War.

It was a dark show.

And then you'd watch Mike Douglas and Merv and Carson and and then later Letterman.

And then, you know, Cheers was on.

And, you know, it was the glory days of sitcom television for sure.

And that I felt, you know, programmed my brain of what was funny.

I remember you as the hairdresser, the hairdresser on taxi.

Jim Brooks.

I can still hear his laugh on all of the taxis.

You were not a nice hairdresser.

You were a villain.

Yeah, but I got my come up.

And it's because Danny DeVito dumped this whole jar of goo on top of my head at the end.

I just also want to say, just contextualize for a minute, just like it's so perfect that you wrote this book.

It's perfect that you are somebody who's written, directed, and produced with all these amazing

comic minds.

Because you worked at it.

You studied.

You came out of the chute going, no, this is what I want to do.

And I will, in high school, I love that you literally had the balls to pick up the phone.

You had a, did you have a radio show?

I had a radio show on my high school radio station.

But then you would cold call

people who were already making it in the business.

Who, like,

well, I mean, I would call the publicists and the managers, yeah, to interview Seinfeld and John Candy and Howard Stern and Sandra Bernhard.

With no credentials, no reason why anyone should say yes.

Well, before the internet, no one could check.

So if if you said, I'm with WKWZ Radio on Long Island, nobody could go online and go, wait, this kid's 15 years old.

You know, there was no way to track it.

And I also think a lot of those people, because it was like pre-podcast days, no one wanted to talk to them.

They weren't doing a lot of interviews.

It wasn't the world of a long term, of a long form interviews.

So I think the publicists were like, oh, this is fun.

And then I would show up with a tape recorder and I'd be like 15, 16 years old.

And they'd give me a look like, okay, I guess I can't cancel this.

I got to do it.

He's a kid.

He's a child.

I also get a lot of like 15, 16 year olds who call me now because they heard this story and they think, oh, well, he'll do it because he knows.

Do you?

A third of the time.

That's a lot of, it's a lot of people.

But it was really exciting because I think as a kid, you know, I loved variety television.

I loved sitcoms.

I was just really into show business and just watching it as a kid on Long Island.

And so when I started meeting people, it was like getting to the other side of the bubble, like, oh, John Candy is like a real guy.

Yeah.

They're real.

Oh, maybe I could enter this world.

Right.

And so I just wanted to, you know, touch them in some way.

I totally understand it.

I confess that I bumped into you socially a handful of times, and I usually am the wallflower who, mostly because I'm such a sycophant, I'm afraid that I would offend you with me kissing your ass looking for work.

I'm so glad that we got to do this because I would never have the guts to do it.

Yeah.

Well, this is why I did it.

I mean, sometimes I think like I was trying to invent the podcast as a kid.

You know, that's what I wanted.

I wish there was a world where I could hear Jay Leno talk for an hour and a half.

Yes.

And so I thought, oh, well, I have to do it.

I have to do you.

Yeah.

Well, I have to do it because it doesn't exist

in that era.

And so you wouldn't know what anyone was really like.

Like, there was no way for me as a kid, you know, to know, oh, what, what's what's Ted Danson like?

You know, unless, you know, maybe I read your Playboy magazine QA.

If you ever did that, I mean, I used to go to the library and look up the microfiche.

I don't know if people remember like there used to be scans of like the New York Times and you could, you could go on the microfiche and look up like John Belushi's obituary or like Lenny Bruce trial transcripts or something.

And, but you had to work hard to learn things.

Now it just comes up in a second, But I literally was, I remember being at the library for some reason looking up Jimi Hendrix's obituary on the day he died.

Wow.

But that's how hard it was to get information about stuff.

I, to this day, am thrilled to meet anyone who's part of this tribe of funny people because it just thrills me.

Yeah.

How did, going back just a second,

your mom managed or headed up a music label?

Well, my grandfather was a jazz producer.

His name was Bobby Shadd, and he produced Charlie Parker and Dizzy Gillespie and Dinah Washington.

He worked with Quincy Jones for a long time and he ran labels like Emercy Records.

And then he had his own label called Mainstream, which was not a mainstream label.

It was in the 60s and 70s.

And he had everyone, you know, from Sarah Vaughan to Janice Joplin.

He signed Janice Joplin

before Columbia and Ted Nugent,

and Jerry Mulligan.

So that's how I first got exposed to show business was my grandfather was this very independent jazz guy.

Right.

And your mom managed that for a while.

And so then when he died, my mom took over the label and re-released everything on

CD when that became a thing.

But after my parents got divorced, my mom got a job one summer at this club called the East End Comedy Club, and where she was just a hostess, you know, seating people.

And

I was like, you know, 14, 15 years old, loved comedy, had never seen it anywhere but the Westbury Music Fair.

We used to go see Rickles and Dangerfield.

But this was the summer where I saw like the comedians from Catch A Rising Star and the improv and the comic strip.

And so, you know, people like Jay Leno.

were coming out to perform there, Paul Provenza.

And that's when I thought, oh, maybe I can ask these people to talk to me.

And just before that, all your comedies coming from TV, watching.

Yeah.

And that's where you went, all right, I got to have some of this.

Yeah.

And so I was at the radio station.

My friend Josh Rosenthal started interviewing rock bands.

So he would trick rock bands into talking to him.

So he would interview like REM in 1983, things like that.

And then he said, you should try to see if comics would talk to you.

So we abused this high school radio station and acted like it was real to see, like, can we get free tickets to see Ray Charles and Carnegie Hall?

And we would just call up and see who would give us free shit.

And then that turned into who would talk to us.

Didn't the teacher or the whoever that ran it, didn't he say something to all of you who were doing that as make use of this?

Yeah, Jack DeMacy, who is still a great friend.

And

he inspired all of us to act like adults.

Like you have this, you know, all it was was like a mic and a phone.

And then, you know, we would be talking to.

Congress people, you know, we would just milk it.

Whatever your interest was, sports, you would just try to convince people it was real.

Was that ever scary to you or did you, because that is a cold call.

Yeah.

It is terrifies me.

Yeah, I don't know why, because like, I don't know why I was ballsy enough to do it.

I was probably so bored, you know, because I had been watching so much TV.

I didn't really have that much to do.

And so I just thought, oh, maybe this is my thing.

And then as soon as one or two, two people said yes.

The first one, I think, was Steve Allen, the original host of the Tonight Show.

Which at that point, what was he doing?

Was he he had a he had put out these albums that when he did like variety shows, they would do phony phone calls, and so he had these albums of phony phone calls with him doing phony phone calls with Jerry Lewis or

pranking Johnny Carson, right?

And you know, and so he was promoting these records.

Wait, is this still available?

You probably, I can't.

I'm sure they're out there somewhere.

This is the Jerry Lewis one was hilarious.

And so I talked to him, so then I could call the next person and go, Yeah, I have this show.

We just did Steve Allen.

And then I did Leno.

And they go, oh, I just got Steve Allen and Leno.

And then suddenly it looked very legitimate.

And the truth is, I mean, maybe out of the 50 interviews I did, I aired four.

I didn't even bother putting them on the interview.

Right.

Cause all you wanted is, I just wanted to do the interview.

Were you in the back of your mind thinking they could help you?

Or was it just, no, I want to.

I want to be in the same space.

I want to rub shoulders.

Yeah, I don't think I was conscious of this is information I need.

It turned out to be everything.

I mean, comedians talked about how to write jokes.

I remember interviewing Harold Ramos.

He was in prep on vacation.

I knew him so well, actually.

The best, right?

Yeah.

Just the nicest, most

rabbinical man.

Yes.

And just a special guy.

We did a movie called Year One with him.

And

everyone wanted to be in it because then you got to hang out with Harold.

So Jack Black and Michael Sarah were in it.

And then all the comics, but no matter how small the part was, people would fly to New Mexico.

I mean, to Louisiana to just be around Harold.

And then he was the greatest guy.

He loved to tell you about Belushi and the early days of the lamb.

Like everything you wish he would do with you, he would do.

Including singing a song.

Yeah.

He loved playing the guitar and singing.

On set.

He had the guitar

as he directed all day long.

So when I was a kid, I interviewed him and he talked about writing jokes for comedians like Dangerfield and as as a way to make some money.

Make some money while you're getting in.

And so I started trying to write jokes for people because I'm like, oh, so there's this way to do this where you can be the writer.

You can still try to be a comedian and you could try to write jokes for other people to pay your bills as you learn how to do it.

Woody Allen.

Yeah.

did that route too.

Oh, there were so many people that started.

You know, Larry Gilbard just wrote jokes for Bob Hope.

And what does that mean, literally, that you, you watch it so you know their style, but then you, what do you do?

You write,

dear so-and-so, here are some jokes for tonight.

Sometimes, well, sometimes you would just write up a sheet of jokes and other times you sit with people.

So when I was really young, me and Norm McDonald and John Regi were hired to write jokes for Roseanne.

And I remember going to her house

and we would sit at her, you know, kitchen table, and she would bring out a big stack of yellow legal pads with her ideas.

Right.

And then we would try to figure out which ones.

Or a comedy routine for routine.

Yeah.

And then we would, you know, she would just go, like, I want to do something about stretch marks, you know, or something.

And we're like young guys, like, okay, I don't really know what that is, but I'll figure it out.

And so we would listen to her ideas and try to help her shape them.

Right.

And then sometimes just write jokes and to see if she had.

And this is before anything else had happened for you.

You were writing jokes.

Yeah.

And for Tom, writing jokes for Tom.

Which, which I understood can't be sometimes scary.

Well, Tom was like, the world didn't know who Tom was.

So Tom started dating Roseanne, and he was a comic from the Midwest.

And then it's like, who's this guy that suddenly

with Roseanne?

And Tom was very funny and very up for writing very self-deprecating jokes.

Yeah.

And he was hilarious.

Yeah.

Yeah.

So, okay, then Gary Shandling is, was that, were you writing for him at that point, or did that come later?

Because That's a huge person in your life, if I read that.

Oh, yeah, absolutely.

Well,

I was working at the improv doing stand-up in Dallas, and then I got a call.

Gary needs jokes for the Grammys.

Right.

So, wait, wait.

Get me there to the stand-up in Dallas.

Had you, when you were doing jokes for Roseanne, had you done stand-up yet?

Yeah, I'd be doing stand-up, like at the improv at night.

I was like the MC for years

in like the late 80s.

And

it was just everyone on earth was coming in.

It was like Seinfeld and Leno and Ellen and Robin Williams, like every night was like this, you know, greatest hits of the earth shows.

And I was like the host trying to squeeze in a joke in the middle.

And I'd go on the road to the Rode Improv clubs.

And I didn't know Gary.

I'd met him once very briefly.

And then I got a call and they said, he needs jokes for the Grammys.

And so I stayed up all night and just literally wrote him like 100 jokes.

And the next day we had a call.

And I always remembered because it was when the first Gulf War started, like literally that week.

Wow.

And so we sat on the phone and he read every joke and then we kicked around the joke and then he would make it better.

He would fix every joke or come up with a better punchline.

And then he said, do you want to come to New York when we do the Grammys?

And so,

you know, I was like a kid, like he flew me to New York.

You know, there were other writers too, like Jeff Cesario worked on that

show a lot.

And

got to be on the stage during the Grammys.

And I'd never seen anything before in my life.

And suddenly, like Bob Dylan's playing the show, Bono's giving an award to Sinatra.

Like it was like nuts.

Like the best thing that ever happened.

And

that's how I got to know Gary.

And then later on,

you know, I got to work with him on his show.

Right.

I mean, he was just always so nice to me.

And when I did this sketch of the Ben Stiller show, I asked him to do the pilot and he said yes.

And then I asked him, do you want to be in one of the other episodes?

He said yes.

And then he started the larry sanders show and then as soon as the benstilli show was canceled he said why don't you work for the larry sanders show he's like you'll learn a lot which was kind of a big deal because he didn't say you're going to be really helpful he's like you're going to learn so it was a very much of a giving gesture and then i worked there you know mainly just pitching jokes and then i like slowly had more responsibility But Gary would go through the writers.

Like he fired a lot of writers, a lot of the best writers ever.

that for reasons both logical and completely illogical, the place got was that a, is he, was that a scary part of him?

It was in the sense that whimsical or

it was just that he's, you know, brilliant and exhausted and neurotic.

And so he would, you know, work with a writer and then suddenly it would turn for him in some way.

And

it's impossible to know what's in his head.

So if you're writing for Gary, it's very easy for Gary to to go, Well, I wouldn't say that, yeah, and he'd be right, but you don't like you couldn't climb in with him totally, right?

So, there were very few writers who didn't have moments where uh he was deeply disappointed.

Because I used to say, It's like if you wanted to paint with Picasso, say you were right, painting a painting with him, and then Picasso was like, Why are you using red?

Yeah, like that's what it felt like at times.

Yeah, certain people really were amazing at it: uh, Peter Tolin, uh,

Paul Sims, Maya Forbes, and, and John Rigi, uh, you know, there were people that, you know, lasted,

but it would always ultimately get weird.

And so, when I was asked to help run it with Adam Resnick, I just said, Gary, I'm really worried about our friendship.

Like, I'll do this, but you can't hate me.

Right.

Like, how can we do this where you don't hate me at the end of it?

Like, where we still talk.

And he's like, I'm not going to hate you.

And I'm like, but seriously, seriously like we gotta stay connected don't turn on me

and um

no we did get through it we definitely got we definitely got that was a game changer of a show i mean way ahead of its time and no one had seen anything like that include i mean it's curb-like in a way in that who is the actor the story somebody insulted him or did something and dana carvey yeah and then carvey did an impression of him

and i i i think robert smeichel Smeichel wrote it.

And it was like really

kind of a mean, like whining Gary,

you know, my ass.

Like it was just a very kind of two-dimensional,

just tough making fun of Gary.

Right.

And then Dana Carvey calls Gary and he's like, I'm so sorry.

I didn't write that.

And Gary said, it's okay.

We'll just do an episode about it.

Yeah.

And then he did an episode where Dana is filling in for him and he does the vicious impression so gary took something that he really didn't like and put it on his own show and that's that's kind of how the show would work is things would happen in life and then he would bring it onto the show his girlfriend that he wrote an episode um linda dussett who played hank's assistant they did they were writing an episode where she becomes a playboy playmate and then while writing it you hefner asked Linda to be a Playboy playmate.

Right.

And she said yes.

So everything would keep like folding in on each other.

So you must have been writing on the spot sometimes when something would happen.

Yeah.

And all the guest stars would change.

You know,

they would write it for one person

and then someone else would show up.

And so, and then you had to look people in the eye and say, you know, this scene is satirizing you.

So people are playing themselves.

And it's our version of what's funny about them.

Yeah.

And then they read it like, oh, that's the joke on me.

Yeah.

And

so you did sometimes people were not thrilled about what the joke was.

Larry's version of I'm a goodie tushu asshole

was basically my version of that.

Just a moment about Rip Torrent.

Oh, wow.

Who to me is one of those remarkable actors.

Any moment, anything.

What was that like?

Rip, I mean,

Rip was like,

I guess he was drunk a lot.

But, you know, I'm so young.

I don't even know he's drunk.

I'm just like, Rip's kind of a character.

I remember somebody going to me, he's he's just drunk.

I'm like, oh, I just thought he was in a weird mood.

I never got like what was really happening.

Um,

I remember there was a moment where,

you know,

uh, Rip and Jeffrey got into a fight.

And, um,

and this is a story.

Sorry.

Yeah.

This is so.

Jeffrey Tammore, who played Hank.

And

Rip called,

you know, Rip's character calls Jeffrey's character like an idiot.

Yeah.

Right.

And then Jeffrey afterward was like, can we take that out?

My character is not an idiot.

He is.

He is.

He had another kind of word for him.

And he's like, but I don't think he's an idiot.

You know, I think he's insincere.

And,

you know, and Rip goes, well, my character thinks your character is an idiot.

And then it turns into this big fight.

And

Rip runs out

and he's like, Screw this.

I'm tired of this show.

I'm out of here.

And you know, the producers are chasing after him.

And he goes, like, call his agent, like, to quit the show.

Yeah.

And he picks up the phone and he's like, Rob Gersh, please.

Oh, Record yourself.

Rip Thorne called.

Okay, let's go back.

It was kind of like that

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I loved when you're talking about, you're still a fan.

Yeah, yeah, absolutely.

You're still a fan and the excitement of bumping shoulders with people like that.

Oh, sometimes I think I only make things to be allowed to be in.

In the room.

Exactly.

Just to be in the business.

Like you have to actually have made something for you to want to talk to me.

Right.

Right.

Like it's like the, it's more like the, you know, the entrance pass is that you've done something uh and so my way in is just to be nice.

I'm not particularly talented, but I'm really nice and people like hanging out with me.

Yeah, that also goes a long way.

Are you nice to the core?

It's a facade.

I can do both.

Yeah, yeah.

But you operate in the world as nice.

Yeah.

And then you keep the darker side to yourself, unless it's like curb or something where they sense it in you and they bring it up.

Yeah.

Yeah.

He was mean towards me.

Very mean.

Disrespectful.

Yeah.

I get through a halfway through a season and over here, I'd hit a mark earlier than I was supposed to.

So I came by when he was finishing up a conversation with somebody and I heard, oh, God, Danson, he's such an asshole.

I agree.

What an asshole.

And I went, whoa.

And I went, okay, well, I don't know what that's about.

But it happened again.

And I went up to Jeff Gold and said,

I just heard, and he said, because I'd never read the scripts.

You would just say, you know, they'd say, here, walk here, do that.

This is what you're thinking.

And he said, you don't know?

You were the major asshole of this season.

That's what you are.

Anyway, that's me.

But that's fun.

Sometimes you just flip it, you go the other way.

Yeah.

He's a strain of comedy, wouldn't you say?

Larry?

Yeah.

Yeah, just the

funny from, do you think?

Is that his attitude?

No, no, the strain where he came, that he came out of that allowed him to be larry or is it all just him because he did change things yeah he changed half hour forever i mean i don't know like the source of larry like how that all happened but i would hear about him all the time uh when i was about stand-up so this is before seinfeld and yeah and and people would say oh you know larry like if he's not happy he'll just walk off the stage in the middle of the set and right and then he came in one day and i i saw him do a set and i remember one of the jokes because i was so excited to finally see him and it was all about how hard it is to get the head of a south american country to wear a condom

and it's like i don't have to wear a condom i'm the generalissimo

and then so when he did uh

when he started curb your enthusiasm i was just fascinated by it is and especially by the improv aspect of it because we had been trying to figure out how to keep it really loose on sets, but not necessarily.

Film sets or TV sets?

Both.

Just like working from a loose place where we do the script, but we give people opportunities to break away.

But then we heard, oh, he's working with no script, with just an outline.

So I asked him, and I didn't really know him at the time if I could come and watch him.

do it.

Right.

And so right before he shot,

he was about to shoot a scene with like an actor he didn't know, someone he just hired in casting.

And I said, Have you ever had anybody just lock up?

Like they just can't do it.

He's like, No, we've been very lucky.

And then I watched the guy lock up.

And then he turned to me and he's like, This guy's got a three-episode arc.

We're going to have to get rid of this guy.

But then I heard that the guy actually pulled it together and

they kept him.

The other thing that doesn't work with that is when the person comes and has practiced being funny and trying to be funny for Larry, because that ain't your job.

Your job is to service Larry, really, you know, and not try to demonstrate how funny you are.

I heard I almost got cast on an episode, but they didn't think I was a big enough asshole.

And I was like, I don't know.

I wish I could have proven it to you.

They were like,

you got close on that one, but we went for a bigger jerk.

I don't know who got it.

It would be nice to name names.

I know.

I wish I knew.

Where did, all right, go back a little bit, I think, go back, maybe not.

Freaks and geeks to me seems like it was like,

get me there because there are people there that you either married or worked with.

Or were you already married to Leslie and Freaks and Geeks?

I was married when we did Freaks and Geeks.

But Seth,

Jason, all these people you kept working with over and over again.

You're like part of your rep company almost.

Yeah, I mean,

you know, I had this deal at DreamWorks and I said to Paul Feek, if you ever have any ideas, let me know because I'm looking to find some projects.

And then one day he called me and he just handed me like a yellow envelope.

It's almost like, you know, just slided across the table, right?

And you look and it just says freaks and geeks.

And instantly, I was like, oh, I love this already.

And he's like, yeah, it's a show, you know, about the potheads and the nerds.

I'm like, okay.

This is my favorite thing ever.

I don't even have to open it up.

And it was, it was amazing did he write it he wrote it and uh

and then we brought on jake hasn't to direct and i was producing and then then you know then we all were you know writing on the staff and and uh but paul had such a sense of what it was i mean he really

He wrote this giant Bible that was like 60 pages just explaining the town and the clothes and the characters and the people and the themes of what he wanted to do.

And he just had so many stories.

And just like the amount of humiliating stories he had from high school was remarkable.

Was he wearing a suit when he gave that to you, by the way?

He wasn't wearing the suit yet.

The suit happened right at the end of that time period.

Oh, really?

Yes.

Or he wears a suit when he drinks.

Every day he drinks.

And I'm a pig, right?

So I don't, you know, I, as I said before, I don't dress up.

And Paul was like me for a very long time.

He was like a Hawaiian bowling shirt type of guy.

And then suddenly it turned into like the greatest suits ever.

And I have to say, it made me uncomfortable probably due to my own insecurities that I have no fashion sense.

And so when we were doing bridesmaids and Paul was directing, right before we started shooting, I said, Paul, I don't think you should wear a suit when you direct the movie because doesn't it make it like you're the center of attention?

Like, like, it just feels like make it about them.

Don't, don't wear the suit.

And he just went, no, I'm wearing, I'm going to wear the suit.

What is the story behind?

There was a story, and I can't remember why he, you know.

Well, yeah, I'm not sure like the origination of it, but I was so wrong because the crew and the cast loved it so much that they would have like Paul Feig suit days where they would wear suits.

Like I was like the jerk who just like didn't get that, you know, he's doing a little Hitchcock suit thing.

And I'm, you know, I'm a James Peirce guy, you know?

Right.

That's all I got.

That ain't bad.

That's as fashionable as I got.

Yeah.

Yeah.

I got to be directed by him once i just really admire him oh

so it so it was incredible you know

watching you know his his vision come to life and then we all told him all of our heartbreaking childhood stories right and and had a great staff mike white was on the staff of freaks and geeks and he was really helpful because he had just worked on dawson's creek and he was the only one who had ever worked on an hour show before so he understood the structure of the hour show right and uh and he would you know you know, he would write these scripts and they would really be great.

And I remember he gave me a script and I gave him notes to do some revisions.

And then a week later, he gives me the revisions.

And then when the show was done, he's, he said, you know, Judd, when you would give me notes, I would do the revisions in 35 minutes and then take a week to write a screenplay,

which I respected.

I respected it when he pulled that off.

That's how I would have handled it.

Dawson's Creek does not seem like a Mike White.

You got to, you got to, you got to start in

television.

I mean, that was a giant show, but it was funny because that was the show that, in a lot of ways, Paul felt like, you know, those are like the beautiful kids, and it was like a soap opera.

And Paul was like, I want to represent the kids you never see on a show like that.

And that's why he wrote Freaks and Geeks.

And the casting, how did you, were those people you knew in advance, the Jasons, the Seth?

No, we didn't know anybody.

We just had a theory about it, which was

the script is great, but let's see who's out there and like create these clicks of kids.

Right.

And then Paul will tune it in to the people we find.

Yeah, which is the best way to write.

And that was why I think it worked because

Paul was flexible.

Like he had archetypes, but when you would meet people,

like Sam Levine, who played Neil and Martin Starr,

you could go, oh, I can add this aspect of what they're doing and their personalities.

But then it's not a stretch.

No one's acting.

They're inhabiting

a big part of who they are.

Yeah.

And Linda Cartellini and John Daly were the leads.

You know, they were just magic every second that they shot.

There wasn't a frame in the daily that wasn't perfect from them.

And you felt it the whole time, like.

Something's happening here that's like really special.

And it's clicking on all cylinders.

But at the same time, we were like, we are going to get canceled at any second.

Yeah.

And you were.

And we and we were right about that.

I don't see.

I don't care.

I came late to that.

I didn't see it was on the air, but I came back because it became such a major, you got to see this.

And everyone came out of that.

Why?

Did you just?

I mean, you could say it's marketing.

You could say it was too painful.

What year was it?

It was 99.

We should have been ready for that.

But it was a little bit like like independent movies on TV.

It was like independent TV.

So the kids, you know, episodes would end in a really depressing way, but like a deeply troubling

right.

Like there was an episode where Jason Siegel was trying to be a drummer and he auditions for a local band.

And the end of the show is he's kind of realizing he will never, ever be a drummer.

Right.

The end.

And at the last moment of the episode is Linda Cartellini, who he loves, but her character doesn't like him.

He's so depressed that she kisses him.

Like she's so nervous.

No, he's so depressed.

She's so nervous about how depressed he is that she just doesn't know what to do because he's spiraling out.

And so she kisses him.

And is that the end?

That's the end of the episode.

But that's a great end.

Oh, it was beautiful, but just not.

like the end of a show that would make you feel great.

It was more like life is really hard and your friends help you get through it and your family.

And that's it.

So it might have been dark, or you know, there was a lot of things happening.

I don't remember if it was like the World Series or the Olympics, but we were on like every three weeks.

That'll do it on Saturday night in a weird slot.

You were a streaming show before you were streaming, really.

And what's weird is more people watch it now than then.

Like it's on as if it's on, but it's a long time ago.

Okay, go, go.

How close are we career-wise your career in getting to going from writing to directing um

well

after gary after yeah after gary i you know i i worked on some movies you know i i was able to um

write a couple of movies i wrote fun with dick and jane with nick stoller and uh we uh and that's jim carry

uh who we worked with on the on the cable guy yeah who's an old old friend who i used to you know help write sketches on and live in color with and you know, just what my gospel is.

What a talented, astounding.

Oh, Jim is.

I mean, even back then when Jim was hadn't broken, you know, we all just thought, like, oh, that's, that's our Charlie Chaplin.

Yeah.

That's, that's, he's going to be the guy.

It was just like, how is it going to happen?

And then it, you know, and then it did.

Yeah.

And so

we got to work with him on that.

And then

I produced Anchorman,

which Will Farrell and Adam McKay read and Adam directed.

Right.

And And because that did well, and a couple of movies like

especially the Will movies started doing well, like Elf.

Mary was in that.

Yes.

And that kind of changed the game.

So you were a go-to, write the funny.

I was producing on some and writing on others and being like a creative producer.

And then after Anchorman, I asked Steve Carell, do you have any ideas?

Seems like you should be the lead of one of these.

Knowing him from Anchorman as Brick, the weatherman.

And so he said a couple ideas.

And he said, and I have this other thing about,

you know, a 40-year-old virgin.

And I used to do a sketch where he was in a poker game and they're all telling dirty sex stories.

And when you get to him, it's clear he's never had sex and he's lying.

And then he said to me,

You know, it's like, you know, like when you touch a woman's breasts and it feels like a bag of sand.

You know, like when you put your hand out of a woman's pants and it has all the baby powder.

And so I just understood what that was.

I just thought, okay, I get that.

I can relate to all of that.

And so we, you know, we pitched it around town and they allowed me to direct that one.

I have to, I want more questions about that, but I have to interrupt by saying Mary and I were kind of like the

the virgins to 40-year-old virgin.

We had never seen it.

We confessed to each other when I I knew you were coming on.

I said, I'm embarrassed to tell you, I've never seen this.

Would you mind watching it again with me?

And she had the same story.

Dear Lord, we howled with laughter.

I mean, it is so funny.

It is so brilliant.

It is so touching.

Your wife is one of those amazing actors who can literally go anywhere and be totally touching and believable in the same time.

It's such a sweet,

loving,

raunchy, you know, movie.

It's just, it's, it's every,

so I think, I think it must be everything you wanted in a movie because, yeah, I can't remember what the quote was about you, you want to be loving and caring, and da-da-da, and

you know, have a penis in it.

Every movie has to have a penis in it.

Well, there was a period that we did want that, but yeah, the uh,

sorry, it's brilliant.

I'm sorry, I'm late to the point.

Oh, no, absolutely brilliant.

I like that these things just float around and find their way to people.

You know, we did a screening of it.

It's the 20th anniversary of the movie.

Coming up in August 22th.

Yeah, so August 22nd, they're putting it in movie theaters for a week.

Great.

And Trainwreck, it's the 10th anniversary.

So both of those movies you could watch with people in the theater, brilliant, which would be fun.

But we showed it at the Motion Picture Academy Museum and with a thousand people.

And I hadn't seen it.

It wasn't recently?

Yeah.

And I hadn't seen it since

2005.

So I got to watch it having not remembered about 80% of what was in it.

Like I got a real watch of it as an audience.

You were an audience, man.

And I have to say,

I was laughing.

There was good joke compression.

It was like, wow, this is someone's working really hard to stuff a lot of jokes in this.

Yeah, but it was

also so touching.

Yeah.

Really was.

I mean, that's Steve Corella is that.

I mean, Steve has such a big heart.

And, you know, in the beginning of the process, we were like, what if we took this very seriously, like emotionally?

Yeah.

And, you know, not like a just like a big dumbass movie, like what his problem is, what emotionally he needs to get over and his shame, his sense of feeling less than and his insecurities and really right to the truth of it.

And because he's such a great actor and so, you know, emotionally available, in addition to being the funniest guy ever,

he did something really remarkable.

Did you know Paul Rudd by then?

We did Anchorman together.

Right.

Was that where did it, where the hell did he come from?

He's astounding and keeps getting richer and richer.

Yeah.

But he's one of those people that are just

can be funny without even, you don't see it ever coming.

Well, I think back then, like he was doing, you know, probably more serious stuff than comedies, but he really wanted.

to do comedies.

And I remember him coming in fully dressed in the 70s clothes for the Anchorman, audition and mustache and uh you know he he definitely was uh committed to like being a comedy star and i would always say i all i need is for you to gain weight i just want you to gain weight i i like chunky paul let's do chunky paul and then when we did we were shooting the movie like three days in the studio got really mad they're like what happened to paul

like could we do anything about this i'm like i can't change his weights in the middle of the movie yeah uh but you know he was doing a deira for us I loved watching him daunt when he started to look at Steve and it was dawning on him.

Something's not right.

And I thought he was going to go evil and mean.

Yeah.

And it was just, no, it went the exact opposite.

Very sweet.

But you could see it dawn on him.

Yeah.

Yeah.

No, he's the funniest.

And so winning, we've, we've worked together a ton of times.

Yeah.

This is 40 we did together.

He was like,

you know, the

husband to my wife, Leslie Mann,

Leslie.

Seriously, that whole

scene with her getting drunk in the car.

I mean, there was just uproarious laughs in it.

So, I'm really glad I get to catch up with you.

Leslie was like, I have to, I think I have to vomit in his face in the end, don't you think?

You know, Leslie always has like great joke ideas, and then she went off to the side and made the vomit herself out of like strawberry yogurt and granola.

Did she pass it by Steve?

Yeah,

and steve does this great take because his face is just covered and he just kind of stands there and just lets it kind of run down his face did you did you have a daiquiri tonight

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How about your docs?

You had one with the relationship between

Don Rickles and Blake.

I knew Bob Newhart.

Yeah.

Two of the people that I

loved knowing that they were friends.

When I found that out in some talk show, it just made me so happy.

Yeah, I mean,

I had only met Bob Newhart a couple of times, and I got a call, and he said, I want you to make a movie about Don,

you know, about our friendship, but I don't want people to forget Don

after Don died.

And so I just instantly started shooting, just with my own money.

I'm like, I'm in this business because of Bob.

And I just, in my head, I thought of just literally the hundreds of hours of me as a little kid sitting watching the Bob Newhart show.

Yeah.

And so I just, as an act of faith, I'm like, I'm just going to start shooting.

Let's go.

And so we interviewed him and his family and his wife.

And

it was really.

His wife alive.

No, but Bob's Bob's.

Bob's wife.

Yeah.

That's all you had of Don was

Bob's point of view.

Yeah, memories.

Yeah.

And so,

and it was just so beautiful that he loved Don so much and just wanted to talk about their friendship and their lives.

And then

when it was done, I realized like, I think this is like a short film, you know, that it's not a big long doc because there's been a lot of great docs about Bob and Don.

But let's just, let's lean into like

that.

This is like beautiful and heartbreaking and

very emotional.

And then I gave it to the New Yorker.

So you could watch it on the New Yorker website.

It's called Bob and Don, a Love Story, or you could watch it on YouTube.

So it's just free.

I just gave it out so people could

see it.

But I thought like, I mean, you were friends with both of them, I assume, to some extent.

No, I mean, never ever travels.

No, never ever got to, but I listened to his records.

I remember that was a family thing back when I was with my folks still.

And but Bob has got it, and in some ways, I think, edgier than Don, like in life, yeah, his sense of humor was edgy.

Yeah, even like he would make fun of Don even after Don was gone.

Like he would say, you know, so we were in Vegas together.

I was in the big room.

Like he would still be insulting Don post his death.

That's funny.

The funny thing he said about Don, which made me laugh, was he said,

I said, did he write anything?

Like,

it seemed like he always had the same act and then he would riff with the crowd.

He's like, yeah, he never wrote anything.

And we would watch him and he would go out there almost like in a fugue state.

Like he would just start babbling and it would be so crazy and so funny.

And he would get off stage and we would say, remember that thing you said to that guy and this thing?

And he's like, he didn't remember a word he had said.

So he wouldn't come off stage and write down the great jokes to do them again.

He would never do them again.

And I find that's like almost like he had like ADD or something.

Right.

Because I said, well, what about when he's performing at Reagan's inauguration?

Does he have like jokes pre-written?

And he's like, no, that's not how it worked.

They would just push him out on the stage and he would just start.

He worked clean.

Yeah.

He wasn't using

words that could, you know, you'd have to bleed.

Yeah.

And some of the jokes are shocking now.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Like what he was going, what he was doing.

You know, somebody's like, wow, I don't think you could do that.

Even picking the jokes to show in the documentary to get a sense of the spirit of it, but to not put any in where people would freak out.

But it was a time where people really got a kick out of it.

And Bob said people would walk up to him on the street and go, do me.

do me.

They would just want to get laughed at.

They say the worst things you can think of.

Do me.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Isn't that funny how we've gone?

I mean, mean,

that whole cancel thing, because you said some of you,

I suppose, pendulums swing back and forth, and that's probably good.

But

well, according to South Park, it's uh, everything's very good.

I see, I

damn it, I've missed this.

I haven't watched it yet, but I, you know, you just love that they're out there, like, you guys might have rules, but not on us.

How, how political are you?

We don't have to get into it, you don't have to do anything, but how do you

when did you all of a sudden go, oh,

all of, you know, my career has led me to the point where now I am,

do I have a responsibility to,

you know, other things to social things to life, or I have the money that I need that's power in a way.

Do I, you know, what did anything, what was that for you, that moment?

Well,

when I was a kid, I worked for comic relief.

And

so those were benefits for the homeless with all the great comedy people.

You were a part of it.

And Robin Williams, Billy Crystal, and Whoopi Goldberg would host it every year on HBO, like the live aid of comedy.

There was a guy there named Dennis Alba, and he was in charge of the money and how it was spent.

And

he was just a mentor to me in terms of charity.

And

so at one point, he gave me a list of places that needed money.

And so I just asked him, like,

who needs it?

And a lot of these are health care for the homeless facilities because it's very hard for homeless people to get any kind of medical treatment.

And I think I remember I spoke to you at one point about charities because you turned me on to Oceana.

Right.

And LA Men's Place.

Thank you.

Thank you.

Right.

And so.

I would always have these lists of places like when I can that I would give to.

So it started really with charity.

And then at some point, it just becomes about

kindness.

right?

So like today, thank you.

Like today in the news, you hear Trump wants to criminalize homelessness.

Yeah.

So some of those people are addicted.

Some of those people are mentally ill.

And some of those people are just really down on their luck in a bad situation.

You can't just toss them in jails.

The jails aren't set up for that.

So just politically, the thing that guides me the most is, don't you want leaders who are aware of that?

Like, we don't want to torture these people.

We want to torture undocumented people more than left and right.

Like, don't you want people who go, what is the most humane way to do things?

I sometimes think that there's, you know, well, there is.

There's

the people around him or the people before him even.

You know, I feel like a lot of times all the most hurtful, scary, sad, sorrowful things that you and I witness is

a purposeful pokemon in the eye because over here we're doing this,

which is the big stuff.

Yeah.

That is much more thought through.

Yeah.

Like what's happening in the country, there is probably a plan for the next 18 months of this is when we're going to deal with this issue and this is when we're going to take over this thing.

And I feel like everybody on the other side does not know what to do.

No.

And there are some people who are like, well, let them just fail and it'll swing back.

But they're not failing.

Or they'll be in such a position that even if people are unsatisfied, you won't be able to get rid of them.

Yeah, it's kind of scary.

I mean, there's all this stuff that is

humanity getting beat up and there's a lot of fear and sorrow and all of that, especially in LA, or at least feels especially in L.A.

But then

you go, hey, folks, you know, do you think you're going to be immune from climate change and the devastation that's coming our way as a result of that?

The people that love you in the middle of this country,

and you're saying

it's a hoax and we're going to take all the science out of here because it's contradicting our, it's a hoax thing,

it's going to clobber all of us.

You're not going to be rich enough

or on the MAGA enough to avoid what's coming our way.

Well, how much proof do you need?

Yeah.

I mean, there's mountains melting and people are being flooded, fires.

It's, you know, know, that's what I find most shocking is even the people who live in those areas, you don't get the sense that afterwards they're furious

about these issues.

Right.

And then I think the scariest part is people deciding

it's unfixable.

So let's just go to Mars.

God's will.

Yeah.

I'm just going to.

God's will.

Let's go to Mars.

I'm going to upload my consciousness to a computer so we don't have to worry about.

global warming.

Or have a billion children that will carry my...

Yeah.

So I think it's, that's what's more scary is people giving up and going yeah let's just drill and make money and you know and ride this out and just milk it and just leave it in tatters yeah

yeah very sad very scary

Wow.

You really brought this thing down.

No, no, no, no, no.

But, you know, we have to, we have to, you know, fight on regardless.

I mean, that's the hard part is you have to stay in it and try to come up with ways to

be the light when there's a lot of dark happening.

Yes, because you can't fight dark with dark.

Yeah.

Or make decisions out of fear and anger.

I don't think they work.

So you do need to do that.

I always ask myself, well, are you just being

confrontation,

avoidance?

Yeah.

Yeah.

But you've been fighting that fight for the environment for a very long time.

Yeah.

And I'm happy to have that fight because it's science.

Well, I know just right down the street from my house is a giant sign that says, you are in a stage four fire

area.

And I'm like, what does that mean?

Why do we have a sign a block from our house?

Like, you're in the worst place on earth to live.

Yeah.

Yeah.

But I was lucky because when the fires happened, you know, I had just moved.

And so I used to live, you know, farther west.

Right.

And I had just moved.

But then I was like in my house and I was, you know, packing stuff.

just because you know i was nervous like you know how far would it go and then i realized that i don't own anything of value.

Like, I really had like nothing.

Like, I was like, what would I take?

I'm like,

I don't, I didn't really get anything.

I just like my iPad.

Yeah.

Like, I did, I realized that I wasn't very stuff driven.

Yeah.

And that made me feel a little better.

That, you know, I could get new James Purse

for shirts, but our house that we lived in when we first had our kids burnt down in the Palisades.

And even seeing a house you used to live in, it's just devastating.

And that's where we raise our kids.

So every place where we raise our kids is gone.

Our doctor's office, our dentist's office, the supermarket, the Starbucks.

And so that's why when we did the book, I thought, oh, you know, we can give the money to FireAid.

Yeah, I wanted to mention that.

Everything you've made, which is a nice, healthy pre-sale chunk, is going to FireAid.

Yeah, and 826, which provides free tutoring to kids.

Those are the two charities that the book goes to.

And it's raised already about half a million dollars for

that.

Yeah.

And

rightfully so.

It's really, truly a brilliant book.

What else do I want to say to you, Judd?

Hire me.

No, shit.

Did that come?

Oh, I didn't mean that.

I'm just kidding.

Do you know that every meeting I go to,

they go, could Ted Danson be in it?

Yes.

Do you know that you are almost like the thing,

you know, that like if you're like a writer and you're just trying to get things through and they're like, you got to package it.

You got to like know who your actors are.

And there's just a few people that get it done.

And it's, and it's you.

It's you and Nicole Kidman, I would say.

You're the two people that can do anything in the world.

Do you feel that in your career?

First time I've ever been associated with her, and I am so thankful.

That's very cool.

First off, I now learned that you have not listened to this podcast because if you had, you would have known that I usually like the compliments up front because it relaxes me.

This is almost over and I've been so tense.

Well, I wanted you on guard.

If you had to go, this is what I would like to be doing next, or I have something I really want to do or whatever.

With,

yeah.

Do you have that?

Are you doing my next goal?

Yeah, yeah.

Or

where am I really going with all of this?

Yeah, I don't know if I have a goal.

Because you're doing it.

Yeah.

I mean, I've been doing, you know, I'm doing a documentary on Mel Brooks right now.

Yes.

Thank you for that.

And

we're also doing one about Norm McDonald's.

So I really am enjoying, you know, telling stories in documentary form.

And then I'd like to have, you know, more comedies in the movie theater with people at the theater.

Yeah.

You know, and watching things together.

So even though that's that gone, gone?

I don't think it's gone, gone.

I'm going to shoot a movie in February and

I hope that that swings back, but I certainly, it's a goal to try to help that happen.

I love that you're grabbing people who have made such a huge impact on comedy, Mel Brooks, you know, grabbing them now.

Yeah.

I want to talk to Carol Burnett.

I got the

an award named after her.

And I got to tell her how much I love her.

I got to hug her.

You know, I, and Dick Van Dyke, I've gotten to, we went to his house to do this.

These are, these are people who should be,

I don't know, cherished, memorialized, you know, grab them.

You know, and I love what you're doing, Mel Brooks.

Well, I mean, Mel Brooks is amazing.

So that's going to be a two-parter that'll be on in January.

Have you started shooting around?

Oh, yeah.

We're just finishing it up.

Are you sitting with him talking?

Yeah.

Oh, wow.

That's funny.

Yeah, we did 10 hours with him.

And it was incredible.

And I love that.

I was watching a Carol Burnett documentary the other day.

Maybe it was like American Masters or something.

Yeah.

And how funny she was.

I think people don't even fully appreciate it.

When you just start watching a bunch of what the sketches were, she is as funny as anybody ever.

She's murdering so hard doing so when she does like mama.

Yeah.

Oh my God.

And she's the nicest person.

When she did the Larry Sanders show, she did it a couple of times.

You know, we would watch her and go, oh, she's better than anyone who's walked through this place.

Yeah.

In every possible way.

She's true royalty.

She truly is royalty.

And what was brilliant about her show, I think, as well as seeing her comedic genius, then she stood in front of an audience

fielding whatever came her way.

And you could see her incredible heart and sense of humor and love of other people.

And

the other great, your wife Mary, I got to watch her when we did Stepbrothers.

God.

Just the best and so nice and so funny.

Yeah.

I love that that movie has become like The Wizard of Oz.

Like it really doesn't go away.

Like it's always like people's favorite movies.

And they they don't watch it once or twice.

It's five, six, seven times or every year.

It's such and such day we watch it.

And she, her and Richard Jenkins as the parents and stepbrothers, I mean,

they were so funny together, but you know, we would sit around and go, what is this movie about?

Because

what Will and Adam wrote, like, it's the funniest thing ever, but at some point you have to go, it needs a story.

It needs a reason to exist, not just the behavior.

And we would sit and try to figure out, like, what's it about and we were like oh it's about parenting styles yeah that richard jenkins wants to be tough and she's trying to let them you know individuate on their own into the whoever they're going to be yeah and they're having this terrible marital clash about what to do about these two kids and then at the end they win yeah and they put the uh the boat in the tree and make it a treehouse so mary won uh but watching her uh and richard and all of them like for me as someone you you know, I didn't write it.

I'm like producing.

So I don't have a ton to do creatively.

I'm mainly like, where do we go if it rains?

You know, on certain movies.

And, but I get to watch.

Yeah.

You know, so it's like the equivalent of if I could watch the Marx brothers shoot Duck Sue.

As a fan, I'm just on set watching them going, this is like legendary what I'm just witnessing as a fan.

It's the first time I went to a set and visited Mary where usually when you're not involved, it's fun and supportive and sweet to go support and be sweet to the people you love who are working, but you're not working.

So it's like, oh, that's amazing.

And then you want to go because you have nothing to do.

That said, they had sofas lined up behind the monitors where Adam was sitting.

And people, we would all come and just hang for an hour or two, three hours just to watch.

I remember Mary said the other day, she and Richard were kind of reminiscing about how they looked at each other after the first day and went, what the fuck are we here for?

You cannot compete, you know, with those two people.

You know, how do you do that?

And then they kind of realize, okay, that's not our job.

Yeah.

Our job is to be as real and believable as we can with our love for our children.

Yeah.

And it's, but that like reacting to all of it so that it holds together.

You do need that.

Oh,

but they're both riotously funny.

Yeah.

Doing that.

And then Richard, when he does his dinosaur speech.

I mean, you know,

I remember visiting the set one day, and it was the scene where

they both hit each other on the heads with golf clubs at the same time.

And Wayne Federman is the blind guy with the dog is attacking.

And Mary's got a hose, and she's like hosing them.

So they'll stop fighting.

And Adam's yelling to Mary, say, fuck, say fuck more.

Fuck, fucking fuck, fuck.

Yeah.

It's fun to make Mary's theme urgent say bad words.

Yeah, I think that's what they were enjoying, putting her in the middle of all that.

She admires you so much.

This is cool that you brought her up.

Hey, thank you.

Thank you enough.

Really, really appreciate hanging out with you.

I love that you're...

a comedy nerd and are sharing all of it with us, you know.

And it's like you, if somebody said this, Nick, I think said it to me earlier.

It's like you are you're talking about the family tree of comedy just because of your journey.

You've kind of nibbled on the edges of all of them and then created your own strain, the Judd Appetow strain.

I'm glad you're talking about it.

Pleasure, pleasure talking to you.

You don't ever have to hire me, be nice, but you don't ever have to.

I still admire you forever.

I'm going to only hire you because I desperately have to to keep my career going since you're the only one

that gets it done.

You get it done dancing.

Okay, we'll just put that on a loop.

Thank you, my

friend.

Thank you.

That was the most amazing conversation for me.

I am such a huge fan, and now I won't be such a wallflower.

I'll go up at parties and say, hey, Judd, it's me.

Got anything?

Stuff like like that.

I am truly in awe of them.

Be sure and get a copy of the 20th anniversary release of the 40-year-old virgin on Blu-ray and also Judd's new book, Comedy Nerd.

That's all for our show this week.

Special thanks to our friends at Team Coco.

If you've enjoyed this episode, send it to somebody you love.

Subscribe on your favorite podcast app and maybe give us a great rating and review on Apple Podcasts if you're in the mood.

If you like watching your podcasts, all our full-length episodes are on YouTube.

Visit youtube.com slash teamcoco.

See you next time, where everybody knows your name.

You've been listening to Where Everybody Knows Your Name with Ted Danson and Woody Harrelson sometimes.

The show is produced by me, Nick Liao.

Our executive producers are Adam Sachs, Jeff Ross, and myself.

Sarah Federovich is our supervising producer.

Engineering and Mixing by Joanna Samuel with support from Eduardo Perez.

Research by Alyssa Grahl.

Talent Booking by Paula Davis and Gina Batista.

Our theme music is by Ludi Harrelson, Anthony Gen, Mary Steven Birchen, and John Osborne.

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Hey everybody, it's Paul Scheer, host of How Did This Get Made, a podcast that covers the the best, worst movies.

This week, we're diving into the brand new War of the Worlds reboot starring Ice Cube.

Yes, the movie that got 2% on Rotten Tomatoes.

Ice Cube is saving the world from aliens via his computer.

It's so convoluted, this plot, but basically, if you have an Amazon account, you can save the day just like Ice Cube.

There is so much going on in this movie.

So join me, June, Diane, Rayfill, and Jason Manzukis, as we break down every bizarre choice and every Ice Cube one-liner on this week's episode of How Did This Get Made, the podcast that makes sense of movies that don't.