Sick in the Head: Conversations About Life and Comedy (13 page)

(As with the improvised scene between Rogen and Campbell, the series’s depth and nuance owes much to the chemistry of the cast.)

Paul Feig:
John and Linda would do this thing where they would talk to each other like brother and sister, just on the set when they were waiting around. They kind of got on each other’s nerves, but it was their game. That’s when I was like,
God, this cast is so good.

Miguel Arteta:
Judd knew how to get into the heads of these kids. He really knew their psychology. He made them bring what was happening in their real life into the performances.

John Francis Daley:
Over the course of the show, Martin and I would hang out, and Samm would be the odd one out, and then Martin and Samm would hang out, and I’d be the odd man out. There were scenes when we had to act all lovey-dovey with each other and felt exactly the opposite.

Jeff Judah:
Seth was stuck studying for his GED and wasn’t happy about that, because he wanted to hang out with Franco and Jason and Martin.

Seth Rogen:
I dropped out of high school when I started doing the show. I told them I was doing correspondence school from Canada and just wrote
Superbad
all day.

James Franco:
I was interested in the writing, so after hounding Judd and Paul they said, “You want to see how it’s written?” They took me into Judd’s office, and they wrote a scene right in front of me, just improvising as the characters out loud. That was really important for me.

Judd:
There’s that moment early in your career when you will work harder than any other point afterward. And you can see that in
Freaks and Geeks.
Just total commitment in every frame of the entire series.

Linda Cardellini:
Everybody was so talented and nobody knew it yet. People would hang out with each other and practice and play and think of things.

Jason Segel:
We would get the script on a Friday, and Seth and James and I would get together at my house every Sunday, without fail, and do the scenes over and over and improve them and really think about them. We loved the show. And we took the opportunity really, really seriously.

Seth Rogen:
We felt if we made the scenes better on the weekend, if we came in with better jokes, they would film it. And they would! And we didn’t know it at the time, but that was completely unindicative of probably every other show that was on television.

(Ratings remain low as the series becomes hard even for fans to find.)

Paul Feig:
We were on for two weeks, off for four weeks because of the World Series, on for another six and then off for two months, moved, put up against
Who Wants to Be a Millionaire.
And then the nail in our coffin was definitely the
Mary and Rhoda
reunion show [an ABC TV-movie sequel to
The Mary Tyler Moore Show
that ran opposite the tenth aired episode of
Freaks and
Geeks].

Judd:
We started a website, but NBC refused to let us put the address on any of our ads because they didn’t want people to know the Internet existed. They were worried about losing viewers to it.

Becky Ann Baker (
actress, “Jean Weir,” Lindsay and Sam’s mom
):
They sent four of us to do the Thanksgiving Day Parade. It was a really cold, windy,
icy day, and at one point we were on a street corner and the float was stopped and someone yelled up to us, “Who are you?!”

Scott Sassa:
We had this constant battle with Judd about making things more upbeat. He thought we were going to put ponies and unicorns in, and we just wanted some wins for the characters—without losing the essence of the show.

Judd:
There were tough episodes. The toughest was probably when Jason Segel tried to be a drummer, and he went out and auditioned, and he was horrible. And we really played that moment out there, when he realizes he’s not good enough to do the thing he dreams of doing.

Linda Cardellini:
Life is filled with moments where you have to sit alone with yourself, and I think this show let our characters do that in a way that wasn’t normal at the time. You don’t really know what to say or do, so you just have to sit there in the uncomfortableness.

Bryan Gordon:
The show played silences, and television is afraid of silences. But silences just speak to so much about teenagers.

(A series finale is shot as the last episode of the initial thirteen-episode order, in case of cancellation.)

Paul Feig:
Judd came to me and was like, “This thing could be dead, so you should write the series finale now.” And then it was going to be the one I got to direct. It was terrifying, but it came out really well. Then the network ordered five more.

Judd:
Paul was supposed to direct one of the first episodes, and at the last second I pulled him off it because we weren’t in a groove with the staff writing the show yet, and it was so much Paul’s vision that he couldn’t disappear. Then when I realized the show was probably going to get canceled, I said to Paul, “You should write and direct this finale.” And it’s clearly the best episode of the entire series.

Linda Cardellini:
To do the last episode in the middle felt rebellious, like we were part of dictating our own fate.

Becky Ann Baker:
In the finale I’m putting Lindsay on the bus, where she was supposedly going off to a summer college experience. “I miss you already”
was the last thing I said to her. And that was all so unfortunately true.

Samm Levine:
We’d be out on location. Judd’s phone would ring, and he would walk twenty feet away, and he’d be pacing on the phone for forty minutes. And I remember thinking,
That can’t be a good phone call.

Judd:
We were saying to the network, We need a full season [twenty-two episodes] to attract an audience. And the order wouldn’t come, and I would just rant and rave. It was like begging your parents not to get divorced, trying to save the show. And then they did order one episode.

Samm Levine:
Judd said, “Scott Sassa said, ‘If you get a ratings share higher than my shoe size, we’ll order more episodes.’ ” And mercifully he was not a tall man.

Jake Kasdan:
The thing they always used to say was “We want these kids to have a victory.” I think what they were trying to say was “Is there any way it could be a little less depressing?” And it’s a fair question when no one’s really watching. We were telling really unconventional stories where the victories were so small they could be confused with not actual victories.

Judd:
Garth took me out to lunch once and asked for more victories. And so we did an episode where Bill plays softball. We have this triumphant moment where he catches the ball, but he doesn’t realize everyone’s tagging up. He’s celebrating catching the ball, but he’s actually losing the game by not throwing it to home plate. That’s as far as we could get.

Paul Feig:
The irony was that the network was very, very supportive. The interference we had was the interference of people that wanted to make it as good as they could. But Judd was a screamer back then. He would take them on, hard-core.

Judd:
We were willing to go down for the show. It would have been awful if one of us said, “Let’s do all these changes—I really want to keep this job.”

Jason Segel:
We didn’t really have to be told we were being canceled. We watched the craft service table: It started out with, like, cold cuts and delicious snacks, and it was reduced to half a thing of creamer and some Corn Pops by the end.

Judd:
What happens is they shorten your order. Not that they officially shorten the order—they just
don’t order any more.
Then you’re in purgatory, wondering if someone’s going to say, “Next year we’re going to give you a better time slot because it deserves to be on the air.” That’s your prayer.

(One week after the wrap party, March 19, 2000)

Paul Feig:
My mother died suddenly, and a couple of days later we got canceled. I was sitting with attorneys when Judd called. And I was just so bombed out from my mom and from the season, and the episode that aired the night before hadn’t done well at all. And so part of me is going,
Of course we got canceled.

Judd:
An underling calls and tells you the show is canceled and then they say, “Garth is going to call in a little bit.” They give you an hour to digest, so by the time he calls you don’t really have the energy to argue. I always wondered if Garth had me on speakerphone, with his underlings laughing as I cried and begged.

Leslie Mann (
actress, “Mrs. Foote”
):
Dealing with all the ratings bullshit was hard, but then when it was finally canceled it was like Judd lost a family member. It was just horrible, horrible.

Paul Feig:
I remember everyone at the network coming to my mom’s funeral. And Judd getting some secret joy of “Good, I’m glad they’re all here.” It made me laugh: He’s enjoying the fact that they had to come and see me in a diminished state.

Linda Cardellini:
I was asked to go on
David Letterman
—a lifelong dream. So I fly to New York and I’m in the limousine on my way to the show and I got a call from my publicist, and she said, “I’m so sorry, honey, the show’s been canceled.” And I said, “
David Letterman
has been canceled?” And she said, “No,
Freaks and Geeks.
”

Judd:
I felt like a father to everybody, and I felt like everyone’s world was about to collapse. I felt responsible, like I had to fight to have it survive so that their lives would be okay, so that their careers could get launched. And so to completely fail was devastating to me. And especially for Paul, because this was Paul’s story.

Paul Feig:
We were still in postproduction on the last three episodes. The network was like, “Finish them up,” but we didn’t have anywhere to show them.

Judd:
We stayed in editing for months, obsessing over every detail, in both rage and depression, for a show that had been canceled. I was so upset, I herniated a disk and had to have surgery.

Paul Feig:
And that’s when we did that day at the Museum of Television and Radio in L.A., where we showed the four episodes that hadn’t aired. That was the coolest thing ever, in a theater packed with fans, with every episode just rocking the house.

Samm Levine:
Scott Sassa called me himself and said, “I loved the show. But at the end of the day, it’s a business.” I’ve been on a lot of canceled shows since then and I’ve never heard from the network president.

(Sassa had decided to cancel the show when he saw a rough cut for Paul’s final episode, in which Lindsay, apparently headed for a summer school program, instead runs off with Kim to follow the Grateful Dead.)

Scott Sassa:
They show Lindsay traveling in the bus—I almost popped the tape out, because I thought I knew where they were going—and all of a sudden the bus goes by and the freaks are there in that van going to the Grateful Dead concert. And I thought,
That’s not how this thing should end.

Judd:
I only found out later that when Scott Sassa saw the cut of the finale and he saw them get in the van he realized we would never do the things that would make the show commercial. That doesn’t take away from the fact that Scott was the biggest supporter of the show; it’s only good because he gave us all this creative leeway. But that’s the funny thing about this work: You can do something you really like and someone else just looks at it and says, “I need to end this today.”

Paul Feig:
There was a moment when we got canceled where I was like,
Thank God—I can’t do this anymore
, then immediately filled with regret:
Oh, fuck! I love these characters!
And I had so many things I wanted to do in the next season. It really is like losing your family. It’s very bizarre.

Judd:
Whenever I see an opportunity to use any of the people from
Freaks and Geeks
, I do it. It’s a way of refusing to accept that the show was canceled. In my head, I can look at
Knocked Up
as just an episode of Seth’s character getting a girl pregnant. All of the movies relate in my mind in that way, as the continuous adventures of those characters. The show was the kids’ entire life. It was their high school: They’re literally going to school on the set. They’re falling in love on the set. It’s actually happening. And those relationships are still happening; they’re still close.

Paul Feig:
I’m still very friendly with them all. Judd was the one who really kept on working with everybody; he brought them along to their next level. I’m like the mom who sits at home and watches the kids become successful and takes great joy in their accomplishments.

Judd:
Part of the problem of the show was it should have been on HBO. Everything that’s popular now you might call “independent television.”
Mad Men
is a little like indie TV. But there was no home for us in 1999. It wasn’t niche television—you were competing against Regis Philbin hosting a game show.

Martin Starr:
I can’t express how fortunate I feel to have been a part of something so appreciated and so loved. I’d feel so sorry for myself if I had done a teen movie and people were quoting the dumbest lines in the world everywhere I went. I feel so fortunate that it’s something I care so much about and that I can connect with the people that connect with it. I got really, really lucky.

This interview was originally published in
Vanity Fair
in January 2013 (Robert Lloyd
/Vanity Fair;
© Condé Nast).

From the beginning, Garry Shandling was one of my favorite comedians. I used to watch him religiously when he was the guest host on
The Tonight Show
, in the seventies, and he was basically an unknown comedian filling in for the legendary Johnny Carson. He slaughtered every time. Unlike most of my high school interviews, this one was conducted over the phone. Garry was in a hotel room at Lake Tahoe, preparing for a show that night, but he took the time to talk to me and, in the process, to lay out every single thing he intended to do in the rest of his career. All these years later, I look at it and think:
Everything the guy said he would do, he did.
The lesson here, for me, was that you have to have a dream before you can execute it. That the people who succeed are the ones who think through what the next stages of their careers might be, and then work incredibly hard, day after day, to attain their goals. They don’t just flop around like fish. They have a vision, and they work their asses off to make it a reality.

Judd Apatow:
So you guest-hosted
The Tonight Show
recently. That’s a pretty big step up. It was the talk of the town. How did that come about?

Garry Shandling:
I think I had done the show eleven times. And I had done well, fortunately, just about every time. What happened was that Albert Brooks was supposed to guest-host, but he got sick the day before and so they called me, twenty-four hours ahead of when the show was being taped, and said we’d like you to guest-host tomorrow night. I had twenty-four hours to prepare.

Judd:
Really?

Garry:
Yeah. I mean, it was very weird. But
The Tonight Show
has always been supportive of me. And they said, if the opportunity ever arose, I could be used as a guest host. But you really don’t believe it until it happens. So I knew the opportunity existed, but I didn’t think it was gonna happen that fast.

Judd:
What kind of preparation would you do for the show? I mean, you’re interviewing people, which is new to you. Plus, you have to have a ten-minute monologue okayed. How did you go about preparing all that?

Garry:
It was interesting because I hadn’t worked in about twelve days—which is a long time for a comic to go without working. Because you don’t keep your chops up on the stage otherwise. So I assembled a monologue of material I had done before—there was nothing else to do. And I went out to two clubs that night, tried to figure out what I wanted to do for my monologue. And just try to get my feet back on the stage, because I hadn’t worked in two weeks.

Judd:
And when you watched it, were you happy?

Garry:
Pretty much. I mean, it’s hard for me to look at it and be objective. I can’t see it. But it seemed like it went well, for my first time. I don’t think it was, like, amazing or anything. Did you see it?

Judd:
No, I didn’t. I was doing interviews that night at the Improv. But you must have been scared to death, right?

Garry:
Well, I wasn’t real scared because I had mentally prepared for doing that all along. I mean,
The Tonight Show
has been so supportive of me. They made me feel comfortable, rather than putting me under pressure. They simply said, “We think you’re the guy for this and we don’t have any question that you can do a good job.” That kind of support made me feel comfortable instead of frightened. There were certainly nerves.

Judd:
What kind of feedback did you get? Did you get offers afterwards?

Garry:
My manager doesn’t tell me about all the offers. But I did get requests to do what we call personal appearance work, which is in clubs and stuff. And I guess there were some sitcom offers, but I’m just not that interested in that.

Judd:
Acting is something you’re
not
interested in doing?

Garry:
I’m interested in acting, I just don’t know in what vehicle yet. My immediate goal is to sell a show and get it on the air. A talk variety show. Something like
The Tonight Show
, I guess. Or
David Letterman.
I would like to do something more than a situation comedy. And I have a show in my mind that we’re actually going to pitch to the networks when I get back off the road, which will be the end of October.

Judd:
The Tonight Show
was taking a major chance with you, because you’re not really in the public eye. It’s a big chance to put someone like you on there, as far as ratings go. Someone turns the TV on and sees you behind the desk—

Garry:
They were smart. Ratings-wise, they know I’m not going to get any ratings. But they were smart because they slipped me in when Albert Brooks had dropped out. The night before, they didn’t even mention that I was going to be guest-hosting, so everybody who tuned in assumed it was Albert Brooks. And then I’m sure, out of curiosity, they watched for a while. I think, in their minds, they were taking a risk putting me in there. But I had pretty much proven that I was strong and in control of what I do. I think they felt that I could do it, and I think they were more than satisfied with how I did. It was exciting. It was very emotional.

Judd:
So you’re working bigger rooms these days. You’re in Tahoe right now, right?

Garry:
I’m in Tahoe, opening for Tony Orlando. But I’ve been doing big rooms for about two years.

Judd:
And how does that compare to, you know, playing clubs in Los Angeles?

Garry:
It’s very different. For one thing, it depends who you’re opening for and what kind of crowd they draw. Sometimes in these big rooms—like Reno, or Tahoe, or Vegas—they draw an older audience that’s totally unlike what you find in a comedy club, which is generally younger, and a little hipper. So you work it differently. You have to work it in a broader, more commercial way. I have to take out most of my hip material. And
some of my singles material has to go because it’s been so long since some of these people have been single, they just don’t relate to it.

Judd:
How would you describe your type of humor?

Garry:
Oh man, I can’t see it objectively.

Judd:
It’s not that conventional. It’s ideas and thoughts with observation. Some comedians now, they’re just doing straight observational humor. But your act has a whole new dimension to it.

Garry:
You should tell
me
what you think it is, because I’m always curious how people see it from the outside.

Judd:
That’s how I see it from the outside—you know, it’s like your ideas on things, and I think it’s great, just—

Garry:
The most important thing a comic can do is write from his insides. As cliché as that sounds, a lot of comics start out thinking that they just should write something funny. Which is not the answer. You have to write from personal experience. What you see on the stage is really how I am when I’m funny.

Judd:
Like with your friends?

Garry:
I can’t see how it’s different. All I know is when I watch, I go,
Yeah, that’s Garry.
I write about my life, and then I exaggerate it because I do like to write jokes. You know, I was a comedy writer before I was a comedian.

Judd:
Who did you write for?

Garry:
I wrote for
Sanford and Son; Welcome Back, Kotter;
and
The Harvey Korman Show.
I wrote for about six sitcoms before I decided to do stand-up. So I have an ability to write jokes, which I like to do. Every now and then, I’ll be writing about my life and I’ll just think about a joke, and it’s really just purely a joke.

Judd:
What would be an example of how a piece of material developed?

Garry:
I’ll tell you an interesting story—I mean, this is unlike other material of mine. I do this joke in my act: I say, “I’ve heard every excuse for a
woman not going to bed with me. I think I’ve heard them all. I remember this one girl actually said to me, ‘Look, not with this Falkland Islands thing.’ ”

Judd:
(
Laughs
)

Garry:
“And I said, ‘That was over a year ago!’ And she said, ‘I still haven’t gotten over it yet.’ And I said, ‘Well, I can understand that, Mrs. Thatcher.’ ”

Judd:
(
Laughs
)

Garry:
I could tell you about the derivation of so many jokes. Because some of them take a year—literally—from the time I get an idea to the time I get the line exactly right. With the Falkland Islands joke, I originally wrote a joke where I would come out and say, “Boy, I’m just not meeting any women. I don’t know if it’s this Falkland Islands thing or what.”

Judd:
(
Laughs
)

Garry:
And then, as time went by, I changed it to “I’ve heard every excuse for a woman not going to bed with me. I remember this one girl said, ‘Not with this Falkland Islands thing.’ ” Which is a little more hip, and gets a laugh. And I was telling David Brenner that joke, and he said, “At that point, you oughta say, ‘That was over a year ago,’ because that’s funnier.” And then I added, “Well, she still hasn’t gotten over it yet.” The Thatcher line came later. So it just kind of kept going, you know.

Judd:
Can you tell me about another one?

Garry:
Okay, there’s one I’m working on now. I actually did this joke on
The Tonight Show
, but in a different way. It’s just a stupid joke, really. But I said, “I went to a health food store recently and I’ve been taking bee pollen. Bumble bee pollen. It’s supposed to increase your lovemaking stamina. So I’ve been taking about two thousand milligrams of bee pollen a day and, ah, the other night I woke up in the middle of the night and started to fling myself against the screen door.”

Judd:
(
Laughs
)

Garry:
“And I started to shout: ‘Someone turn off the porch light!’ ” And it’s interesting, because I don’t know yet how this joke is ultimately going
to evolve. I actually did this joke on
The Tonight Show
where I just said, “I took two thousand milligrams of bee pollen, and now I’m afraid that when I make love, I’m going to die right afterward.”

Judd:
Yeah.

Garry:
Because that’s what bees do. And then I said, “Or I’ll wake up the next morning, and I’ll be flinging myself against the screen door.” And then I added the part about “turn off the porch light,” which I think paints the picture of what bees do—which is go for the light, you know.

Judd:
That is really great. When did this all begin, this interest in comedy?

Garry:
When I was a kid. I had a total interest in comedians when I was ten years old.

Judd:
Who were the comedians that you idolized?

Garry:
Woody Allen is my idol, period. I mean, I think he’s as funny as you can get. Others? I like a lot of people. Mort Sahl. He is hip and funny. Dick Shawn, Johnny Carson. I think he’s underrated in a way. I think he’s a really funny man.

Judd:
Did you ever see Woody Allen work live in a club?

Garry:
No. I grew up in Tucson, Arizona, where there’s just nothing. I’d only seen comedians on TV. But my folks started going to Vegas when I was like thirteen, fourteen, fifteen, and I saw Joey Bishop and people like that there. And I actually remember knowing some of his jokes before he delivered them, and thinking,
Oh man, he’s doing old jokes.
So it was always an instinct for me. But to answer your question there, I didn’t see a real comedian in a club until I was like twenty. I went to see George Carlin, who I’m just a major fan of.

Judd:
Who isn’t?

Garry:
And it’s really a wonderful story. The first time I ever wrote any comedy material, I was nineteen. George Carlin was working in a club in Phoenix. This is when he had just let his hair grow long and he was starting to do honest material about his life and stuff. And I met him and I asked him to read my material, and to tell me what he thought. And he
read my material. He was so supportive. He said, “I don’t buy material, I write all my own material.” But he gave me a lot of feedback and encouragement. Then, ten years later, I met George again and was able to thank him for that moment. He’s a wonderful guy.

Judd:
What kind of background did you have that you could just write this stuff?

Garry:
I was an electrical engineering major, if you can believe that. And then I switched to marketing, and then I switched to creative writing. I finally got a degree in business and I went to graduate school for one year. And just took writing classes. I’d always been a pretty good writer. It’s just one of those things. I can sit down and fill a page pretty easily. And so I moved to L.A. and I didn’t know exactly what direction I was going to take, and I met a guy who said, “Well, try writing a script and see what happens.” I wrote a script for
All in the Family
that they didn’t buy. But someone else saw it and said, “Wow, you have a lot of potential,” and they helped me along. Then I wrote a script for
Sanford and Son
and they loved it, and started giving me work. It all went pretty fast. And I got pretty hot as a writer. People start to say, What would you like to write? What kind of show would you like to create?

Judd:
Yeah.

Garry:
But then I was sitting at the typewriter one day and I realized that this was not what I wanted to do the rest of my life. And so when I was twenty-eight, I sort of had a midlife crisis—you know, twenty-eight is midlife for a Jewish guy. I said,
If I don’t stop now and start doing stand-up…
So I went to some real dive clubs, but it’s real hard getting onstage when no one knew who I was.