Judd Apatow

asking the crowd to heckle you purposefully almost leaning into exposure therapy is that a conscious strategy to try and sort of get past this i don't think i knew what i was doing i just knew i need to do it i need to do it a lot if i do it a lot i'm going to figure it out and a lot of people told me it takes years and years to find yourself on stage and so i just set a very slow clock

to figure it out and you know i mean i literally thought i'm starting to stand up at 17 if it takes me seven years i'll be really successful at 24 years old and so i didn't mind when i was 17 and 18 and 19 that i was like still figuring it out because i'm like all right i'm we're getting there and i it's 24. you want to hit but not that i hit when i was 24 but but that made sense to me like this is like becoming a doctor it's good it's a seven eight year thing

Yeah, and you have to make money also.

So you're not that good.

You're trying to get paid.

You're hoping you could not have a day job as soon as you can.

I mean, I had day jobs for years and years and years.

And then I wrote jokes for other comedians, which most comedians wouldn't do.

But I was like, I need the money.

So I would offer myself up to help people with their acts, even though my act wasn't that good.

And that's part of how I learned to write jokes was to be writing for people who are all better than me.

And then I would figure out their voice and I would try to imagine what I would want them to say.

And so I learned how to do comedy by figuring out what is a Gary Shandling joke and writing with him.

Because then you wind up writing with people and you just, through osmosis, learn how they approach their creativity.

Yeah, I was doing Carnegie Hall for the New York Comedy Festival, and I asked Adam if he wanted to do a surprise appearance, and Adam hadn't done stand-up in a really long time, like more than a decade, and he had just started doing it again.

And he said, okay, yeah, I'll come on.

So I did my whole set to perform for an hour.

And then I thought, oh, that went pretty well.

And then Adam came out and the place lost their minds.

Like it was the biggest applause that you've ever heard in your life.