Tanya Mosley

It's part scrapbook, part confessional, part love letter to the art form of moviemaking, and a glimpse into maybe the psyche of a man who's been making people laugh for more than three decades.

Judd Apatow, welcome back to Fresh Air.

You've been here four times.

Yes.

Okay.

This memoir, it's unlike any memoir I've ever seen, as I said, almost 600 pages.

And you write in the introduction that this isn't even everything that you've collected.

Yeah.

What made you want to put all of this stuff in a book?

Wait, you have seven storage units.

At one time, was it all in your house, though?

Organized.

Did any revelations come to you going through some of that stuff?

Like, things that in the moment you hadn't thought about, but you're looking through these old scripts or—

these old bits of paper that have notes from freaks and geeks, for instance, you know?

Yeah.

I'm stuck on this word obsession because there's a story in the book where you collected Billie Jean King's autograph 13 times.

I know.

After a certain point, did you start to have conversations with them?

They're like, this kid is, you know.