Tanya Mosley

This is Fresh Air.

Documentary filmmaking, the last few years, you have really been on a roll going back and revisiting all these folks that you really admire.

What was the turning point for you to say, I want to document these things?

What do you think you're searching for when you excavate so deep?

Because, I mean, this is work you've been doing since you were 10.

You've just been digging and digging and digging.

I want to ask you about something I know that you had to have thought about because of your Carlin documentary, because of your own politics.

There's this tension now between comedy as a business and comedy as truth-telling.

And we saw that with this Saudi Arabia festival where a bunch of comics went.

And they got a lot of money for it.

But Human Rights Watch called it an attempt to whitewash Saudi repression because they had to sign something saying that they wouldn't kind of like make fun of the Saudi government.

As someone who thinks deeply about comedy and comics and the role, I mean, what goes through your mind when you see that kind of thing?

Did you kind of get embroiled in that when that whole thing was happening, like having conversations with folks?

The comedy world that you write about in this book that you have really showcased for us all these years, it does seem like such a close-knit community, even though it's comprised of so many people.

Is it still that way today?

Judd Apatow, thank you so much for this conversation.

Judd Apatow's new memoir is Comedy Nerd, a lifelong obsession in stories and pictures.

Coming up, our critic-at-large John Powers reviews the new film The Mastermind, starring Josh O'Connor.

This is Fresh Air.

In the new movie, The Mastermind, Josh O'Connor plays a suburban husband and dad who sets up a robbery at a local art museum.