Best Of: Judd Apatow / Misty Copeland
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Hi, it's Carrie. Our co-host Tanya Mosley and I will be doing an end-of-the-year Fresh Air Plus bonus episode, answering listener questions about the show and about ourselves. You can send the questions now to freshairplus at npr.org, with plus spelled out. That's freshairplus at npr.org.
From WHYY in Philadelphia, this is Fresh Air Weekend. I'm Tanya Mosley. Today, Judd Apatow. Before he was directing box office hits or launching the careers of comedy superstars, he was a kid writing fan letters to his heroes, collecting autographs and obsessively documenting everything. He's now opened his personal archives for a new book of photographs, letters, scripts, and journals that shaped movies like The 40-Year-Old Virgin, Knocked Up, and Trainwreck. Also, we hear from Misty Copeland, who captivated audiences as the first Black woman to become a principal dancer with the American Ballet Theater. She also performed with Prince, who helped change her perception of herself.
He was my biggest supporter. He showed me what it was to be one of a kind, to be unique, and to use that as a power.
And Ken Tucker celebrates 50 years of Patti Smith's album, Horses. That's coming up on Fresh Air Weekend. I invite influential thinkers to open up about the big topics we all think about but rarely talk about. Tune in this fall to hear Mel Robbins, Malala Yousafzai, and Brene Brown talk about everything from grief and God to ambition and forgiveness. Watch or listen on the NPR app, YouTube, or wherever you get your podcasts. On NPR's Wildcard podcast, Padma Lakshmi says she feels better at 55 than 25.
I wouldn't go back to my 20s for all the money in the world. I really wouldn't.
It was so hard on myself about every little thing or every, you know, imperfection. Watch or listen to that Wildcard conversation on the NPR app or on YouTube at NPR Wildcard.
Mothers and daughters, daughters and mothers, we explore the generational divide on our latest episode of Books We've Loved about Amy Tan's The Joy Luck Club with The Indicator's Waylon Wong. Find Books We've Loved on NPR's Book of the Day podcast feed on the NPR app or wherever you get your podcasts.
This is Fresh Air Weekend. I'm Tanya Mosley. If you've laughed at a comedy in the past 30 years, there's a good chance my guest had something to do with it. Judd Apatow directed The 40-Year-Old Virgin, Knocked Up, and Trainwreck. He produced Superbad, Bridesmaids, and Anchorman. And he executive produced the cult classic Freaks and Geeks, which launched the careers of Seth Rogen and Jason Segel. He's written for comedy legends like Gary Shandling and Roseanne Barr and and he mentored a young Lena Dunham, executive producing all six seasons of Girls. But here's the thing about Judd Apatow. He's also a collector. Since he was 10 years old, autographs from his idols sealed in plastic, letters he wrote as a teen to and from his favorite comedians, photographs from every movie and TV set, and scripts covered in notes and journals documenting every high and devastating low.
And now at 57, he's letting us get a glimpse of his collection, which he's compiled in a new book called Comedy Nerd, a lifelong obsession on stories and pictures. It's unlike any Hollywood memoir I've ever read. It's part scrapbook, part confessional, part love letter to the art form of moviemaking, and a glimpse into 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.
Happy to be here. I feel like I'm Norman Mailer, putting those numbers on the board.
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?
I don't know. I was always a fan of these books like the Marx Brothers scrapbook. And there was a Saturday Night Live scrapbook that came out in the 70s where they would have pictures and scripts and little notes.
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