Chapter 1: How did Judd Apatow's childhood influence his comedy career?
You said your parents' divorce bought your house and cars.
That's true.
How so?
It's funny, because when I first started doing stand-up, I remember writing in a notebook, and this was years, actually years before I ever got on stage, some joke about how Richard Pryor's grandmother ran a brothel. He grew up in a brothel. And all I had to work with to be a comedian was my parents getting divorced. Like it wasn't enough to be a genius.
It was just enough damage to get you in the game that I wished my grandmother ran a brothel. And then maybe I would be more messed up. You wanted more trauma. I needed more trauma, but it was enough. It certainly was enough. But back then when people got divorced in the early eighties, uh, People just fought. They like really like fought.
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Chapter 2: What role does discomfort play in the creative process?
People weren't aware that you should keep it away from the kids.
Oh, it was all out in the open.
Yeah, too much involvement. Trench warfare and you were in the middle of it. Exactly. Too much of us knowing what was going on. And we had really thin walls. I remember I would hear them arguing. So I knew they were going to get divorced way before they told me.
It was a protracted dispute.
Yeah. And the funny part was they sat us all down. I remember sitting me and my brother and sister down on the brick next to the fireplace and telling us they were getting divorced. And then six months later, they got back together. And then a year and a half later, they sat us down again.
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Chapter 3: How can bombing on stage be seen as research and development?
Oh, my god.
So I had the double divorce.
They got divorced twice.
Yeah, I mean, they broke up, and then they finally did.
Yeah, a false start, and then a small, whatever, treaty between the two, and then back again. Certainly, a lot of the comedian friends that I see are working with... And actually, this is the same for music as well. Discomfort and pain seems to be a real creative catalyst. Some people turn it into trying to earn money and make a business. Some people turn it into trying to make people laugh.
Some people turn it into beautiful chords and lyrics that make people cry or... Is it a prerequisite to be a funny comedian? Is it difficult to be a funny comedian without a ton of trauma?
There was a really funny conversation that Gary Shandling had about this with Jerry Seinfeld. And they were talking about, you know, do you need pain to be funny? And Jerry Seinfeld says, well, what about talent?
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Chapter 4: What challenges do comedians face with modern political correctness?
What about just talent? And Gary went, why are you so angry? But... It is true that, you know, when you go through something, it just makes you more sensitive. And I think you just pay attention in a different way to the world and you don't feel safe and you're looking to understand why the world is the way it is.
So I think it makes you an observer in a lot of ways because you feel like, wait, this isn't working out the way I wanted it to. Why?
That's so good. I think you're really right there. I think the hypervigilance that people usually try and deprogram once they've gotten a little bit of success, if they look back at where the success came from, it was the level of obsession and observation and detail that they were looking at stuff with. They couldn't not.
And that's why they saw in that one interaction between an air hostess, stewardess, and a passenger, something that went on to be a really funny bit. Exactly. In their breakup, they tried to work out why did this happen? I didn't feel safe.
Chapter 5: How does social media impact the comedy landscape?
I was dissatisfied with the world. I don't want it to happen again. I'll obsess and think and ruminate and reflect. Oh, out of this is born a beautiful lyric or a harmony or whatever. And that is my song that breaks through. So yeah, I see exactly the... I've always realized that pain is a genesis of creativity, but I've never worked out the mechanism. And I think that's a big part of it.
That's cool.
Well, definitely I thought... I need to figure out how to survive in the world. What am I gonna do? So it made me more obsessed with the one interest I had, comedy, and trying to figure out, well, how do you get a job? How do you get in? So I had way too much energy as a really little kid to figure out both the creative side and the business side. How does an open mic night work?
Chapter 6: What does it take to maintain creativity in a competitive industry?
How do you get hired to write a screenplay? How do you become a director or an actor? But that was safety. Because I thought, I don't know if I can trust... the people around me to take care of me. And so I'm going to have to take care of myself. And that was probably a big exaggeration, but as a little kid, it felt very visceral.
Yeah. Well, I mean that, I have this belief that most of the things that you're super proud of are the light side of something dark that you're ashamed of. And there, agency, hyper-independence, executive function, the ability to do it permissionlessly, all great.
Then when it comes to relinquishing control, delegating to other people, trusting those around you, opening up with intimacy, you go... Oh, no. The thing that I got a lot of props for and has made me real successful is the very thing which is now limiting me in my relationship or my business growth or my ability to collaborate with others.
So it's funny how that sort of comes full circle a little bit.
Chapter 7: How can friendships affect professional growth in comedy?
Well, you get rewarded for your worst qualities. So if you're obsessive or you're a workaholic, it does work for you. But it doesn't work for your life. For a while. Yeah. And it doesn't work for your family. And so then it becomes like, well, how emotional am I getting about the work? Can I calm that down? Do I have to get so worked up?
I remember, you know, sometimes I would just be just ranting and raving about some creative fight that was happening. Because my biggest fear is always someone being able to ruin something. the TV show or the movie, that there's someone who has the power to mess it up. That's because there's safety in doing a good job also.
And so that would be my irrational thing that I would project on all of it. And I would come home kind of flipping out and Leslie would always say, melt out on the set.
Chapter 8: What does the future of comedy look like in the streaming age?
had built out on the set meant that I was like getting crazy and overreacting and being too emotional about the problem. And that helped me to tune into like, what am I doing? And I realized I was just projecting all of my abandonment issues and parental issues and divorce issues onto relationships with executives.
And so when I didn't get my way or I didn't feel understood, I felt abandoned in a primal way that I had to realize, oh, this has nothing to do with this debate we're having about this joke. But it was intense and in a lot of ways it didn't make me do good work, it made me work really hard.
But when you have kids, you have to learn how to shut that off before you walk in the door so you can be 100% present with them. And you're not still running, how are we going to get this deal done or this creative fix done?
Also, I imagine that you learn with kids, I don't have as much control over them as I... do in other areas of my life i think this is maybe one of the challenges that people who are self-powered hard-charging or relatively independent have which is well i get to determine my life in this area
And then you have this child, which has its own consciousness and motivations and wants to wake up at three in the morning, four months in a row. And you go, hey, hey, no, usually when this happens, I can tell a person to stop doing that thing and they do it. And if they keep doing it, they get fired or I can leave and move somewhere else. I can do whatever.
You go, oh, this, I don't have the same kind of control in this world.
I remember not sleeping for a year uh, you know, my daughter would the sec, I would rock her for like an hour. And I, I, I would just pray she was in a deep sleep. And the second her body touched the crib, I'd have to like do another half hour. And I think that's why I had a herniated disc. Cause I was just holding this weight hunched over for a year.
And then when she finally started sleeping, I remember my brain fog clearing, uh, and going, oh, wow, I've been in another dimension for a year.
I'm alive again.
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