Sick in the Head: Conversations About Life and Comedy (2 page)

When I moved to Los Angeles in 1985 to study screenwriting at the University of Southern California, a whole new world opened up to me. The comedy scene was booming back then. Suddenly I was able to go to clubs and make friends with fellow aspiring comedians. Many of those people, like Adam Sandler, Wayne Federman, Andy Kindler, David Spade, Jim Carrey, Doug Benson, and Todd Glass, are still my friends today. I felt like the bee girl in the Blind Melon video, running onto the field and looking around and…finding all the other bees I didn’t know existed. I was so happy to no longer be alone. Later, when I pursued stand-up comedy for real, I would sit and talk all night with the future comedy legends who were performing at clubs like the Improv or the Laugh Factory, asking them questions while eating fettuccini Alfredo and hoping Budd Friedman would notice us and give us more stage time.

Even after my career took off, the interviews never stopped. Sometimes I would get interviewed while promoting a project, and other times I would be on panels, or doing commentary recordings for a movie, interviewing my funny friends just like the old days. I would always save the articles or ask for DVDs or audiotapes, knowing that one day I would need them for something (my wife calls it hoarding).

One day I was talking to the writer Dave Eggers about fund-raising ideas for his tutoring and literacy nonprofit, 826, and I mentioned that I had this huge cache of interviews I had done in high school, along with some I’d done later in life—and maybe that would make for an interesting book? I had always loved Cameron Crowe’s book of interviews with Billy Wilder and those old
Rolling Stone
books filled with Q&As with my favorite rock stars. I thought maybe this could be like that but with all of my heroes and friends talking about why they became interested in comedy, and how they are doing as human beings on earth. It might be funny, too! Maybe this book could inspire some kid who is sitting in his room looking at weird Funny or Die videos, the way I used to sit in front of the TV and tape
SNL with an audio recorder
before the Betamax was invented. Maybe this book would make that kid feel a little less weird and alone.

Dave connected me with my editor, Andy Ward, who encouraged me to do some new interviews and bring the book up to date. I wasn’t sure how many I had the energy to do, since I was in the middle of production on a movie and I was a little worried this project would turn into a giant pain in the ass. When I sold the book, I promised to give my proceeds to Eggers’s 826 nonprofit. (Unfortunately it sold for more money than I thought it would and it was too late to change the deal to “5 percent of the money goes to 826 and 95 percent goes to the Apatow Vacation Trust.”)

The first new one I did was Spike Jonze, two hours in my office on a hot Wednesday in Los Angeles—and, afterward, I found myself as inspired as I was when I first started doing this, thirty-one years ago. Spike talked about how artists who come from skateboarding are so inventive because it’s a sport that is all about coming up with a new trick. That is why when he made music videos he was always trying to do them in a way they had never been done before. Incredible! Now I want to do that!

I followed that up by inviting one of my first bosses, Roseanne Barr, to talk about her journey with me. We sat for hours digging through the past, amazed and baffled by this bizarre and fantastic journey we are still on. And before I knew it, I was hooked all over again. Next came three hours at Louis C.K.’s house, talking while he made me dinner like I was one of his kids. I couldn’t stop. I kept saying I was done, and then I would think,
Wait! I didn’t get to do Stephen Colbert yet. And how have I not talked to Steve Martin? Let me get Lena Dunham!
Due to space and mental limitations, I had to stop, but I still have a long list of people I want to talk to. Sacha Baron Cohen, you are next! Will Ferrell—don’t think you are not going to be in volume two!

I would like to thank all of the people who so generously agreed to speak with me. When I was a kid, I noticed that all of the comics I was speaking to shared a common humanity. Some were solid as a rock, some seemed on the edge of sanity, but all were filled with love and kindness. As an adult, I have tried to pay it forward by giving my time to young comics and mentoring the funny people I believe in. It has been the most rewarding part of my career. I hope you enjoy this book as much as I enjoyed meeting all of these remarkable people.

When can I start the next one?

I became an official Jerry Seinfeld fan the first time he appeared on television on
The Merv Griffin Show
in 1980. This was before
Seinfeld
, of course. This was back when he was just some guy from Long Island, like me, who talked like me, and cared about the same kinds of things I cared about—and he was the best observational comedian I’d ever seen.

In 1983, I convinced someone in his manager’s office to set up an interview, and not long after, I showed up at his completely unfurnished apartment in West Hollywood. Thirty years later, I can still see that slightly crestfallen look in his eyes when he opened the door and realized that I was not, in fact, a real journalist from a real radio station with a real audience. That I was just a fifteen-year-old kid with a tape recorder.

This was one of the most personally influential interviews I did, mainly because he said so many useful things that helped me later in life—it was like a blueprint for how one should go about pursuing a career in comedy, and how to write jokes. For the first time, it dawned on me that comedy is work, and precision and care.

Jerry Seinfeld:
Is it water-driven, this camera?

Judd Apatow:
I’d like to talk about your type of comedy that you do. How would you describe it? Some people just tell the joke, like an observation, and that’s it. But you add a whole new dimension to it.

Jerry:
Well, it’s one thing to see something. And I think the next step is to do something with it. You know, I’m doing this routine now about this guy that was on
That’s Incredible
last year, caught a bullet between his teeth. It’s like, you see a thing like that and you go,
What the hell is that?
The
guy caught a bullet between his teeth. I don’t know what’s funny about that—but I think to myself,
There is something funny about that.
And that’s what I like to do. I think,
What job did he have before he got into doing that? What made him go, you know, “I’d rather be catching bullets between my teeth”?
I have a whole routine about it. To me, that’s funny.

Judd:
So how do you develop that?

Jerry:
Trial and error. You know, just try out one joke. I had this other thing about how I don’t remember this guy’s name. I saw the guy do it, right? Caught the bullet. I don’t even know his name. Now, if he knew that I didn’t know his name after seeing that, wouldn’t he feel like,
What the hell do I have to do?
You know what I mean?
Isn’t that impressive enough for people to remember me? I mean, what do I have to do, catch a cannonball in the eye?
So it’s like I just keep thinking on it until I—

Judd:
You’re there.

Jerry:
You know, hit something.

Judd:
So you work it out at the Improv?

Jerry:
Anywhere. Wherever I’m working, I’m trying new material.

Judd:
So what do you think of the other kind of comedy, just observation, or—

Jerry:
Depends on who’s doing it. Anything can be done either in a classy, interesting way or in a junky, easy way. It’s not the form itself, it’s the way someone approaches it. I mean, David Letterman has a hemorrhoid routine, Preparation H routine. It’s classy and brilliant. No cheap jokes in it. It’s something about how hemorrhoid experts agree and, like, who are these people? And you thought
you
hated your job, you know. It’s clever. Know what I mean? Normally I hear someone bring Preparation H up, I just turn off. I think,
This is not gonna be a clever piece of comedy.
So it doesn’t matter, you could be doing prop comedy. Rich Hall, who is brilliant, clever, interesting, doesn’t rely on the props. Some comedians will hold up something funny and it gets a laugh. Rich uses the prop, you know. And so—there’s no one type of comedy. It’s who’s doing it, and how they’re handling it.

Judd:
What do you think of this whole crop of comedians that just came out in the last five years?

Jerry:
You mean like me?

Judd:
Yeah.

Jerry:
I think we’re pretty good. Ah, well, it’s interesting. I guess we don’t seem too daring as a group, if you compared us to say, the sixties or the fifties.

Judd:
But that ground had been broken already.

Jerry:
Yeah, there’s not too many people that are scary in terms of the type of things they talk about. Nobody seems to be treading on thin ice. That doesn’t seem to interest people anymore. I mean, comedy hasn’t changed really in thousands of years. It’s the same. If it’s funny, you’re funny, and people like you.

Judd:
Do you think that people have gotten into comedy who shouldn’t have? Since there’s so many jobs now with so many new clubs opening up.

Jerry:
It’s an interesting question. I’ve been thinking about that actually, and I think that there will always be only a very few great comedians because comedy itself is so difficult. No matter how many people do it, it’s just a rare combination of skills and talents that go into making a great comedian. If everyone in the country decided to become a comedian, there would still only be six terrific ones like there are now.

Judd:
Do you think that there’s certain topics that shouldn’t be spoken about, or certain things that shouldn’t be done onstage? For instance, there’s gonna be a guy on tonight, who I’ve seen, who does something about Linda Lovelace with a glass of milk. And it’s—it’s rather crude. I won’t go farther.

Jerry:
Right. Well, it depends on how you’re asking me. Do you think I should do something? For me, I wouldn’t do it. I think it’s wrong.

Judd:
What about the egg white? Do you think—

Jerry:
I think anyone should do whatever they like. I don’t think there should be any rules.

Judd:
As long as it gets laughs?

Jerry:
If it doesn’t get laughs, you’re not gonna get work, and you’re not gonna be a comedian. So the audience ultimately decides. It’s a very democratic system.

Judd:
Are there certain topics that you stay away from in your act?

Jerry:
A lot. A lot of topics I stay away from. Mainly the ones that have been covered or the ones that are easy. And I want—sex is easy, basically.

Judd:
Gilligan’s Island.

Jerry:
Gilligan’s Island.
TV shows. Commercials. I won’t go near it, because I’m trying to find new, fresh, original, interesting things. I want my comedy to be the things nobody else talks about. Not necessarily things people don’t want to talk about, but just things that everybody else missed. That’s what I like.

Judd:
What is the difference between an audience at the Improv or a local club, and Atlantic City or Las Vegas?

Jerry:
What they came to see. Basically, the audience at the Improv is interested in comedy, and if it’s an easy joke or an obvious joke, it’s less appealing to them than a really clever, original observation. The reverse applies in Atlantic City. They don’t want to hear a comedian. They want to hear the main act. If you are a comedian, do something that we don’t have to pay too much attention to. You see, at the Improv they’re watching: We’ll listen to you go with it. You know. We’ll listen. Try that. Let me see how far you can go with that idea and if you can make it work. And at Atlantic City it’s enough if you can just get them to listen to you. I do the same act, but it’s a different type of performance. It’s much more instructive because they don’t know where the laughs are in my act because it’s not “Two men walk into a bar—bum bum bum, punch line.” And if the audience doesn’t know where the punch line is, you can’t get laughs. So I have to really slow it down and explicate exactly what I’m doing because to them, I’m like Andy Kaufman. They’re not used to my kind of comedy.
They’re used to an older style. Traditional jokes. Polish jokes. They don’t understand.
Why is he talking about socks?

Judd:
Do you have to change your act in different parts of the country?

Jerry:
Some people do; I don’t. There’s a central core of what I do that pretty much works everywhere, and the only variable is the way I perform it. I do the same jokes, but I do them differently. Little lines that some people come to hear. They love the little stray thoughts that you throw in. That makes the pieces interesting for people that know comedy and are beyond the very basic level of it. But in places where they don’t want to hear you, you can only do the stuff that—the tips of the icebergs.

Judd:
How do you handle improvisation and talking to the audience in your act?

Jerry:
See, that’s something I’m really getting into a lot now, having a lot of fun with it. When I do my act in comedy clubs, where I get to do like an hour, I’ll take questions at a certain point and just, you know, ad lib. It depends on how much I can get the audience to accept me. If I can get them to accept me, a lot of times I’ll take off on routines that I do normally and change them and take them a different way. Whenever I’m doing new material, I’m always ad libbing.

Judd:
What is the strangest experience you’ve had doing comedy in a club?

Jerry:
Strange? Um. I mean, I’ve played places where people didn’t know I was on. I did a disco one time in Queens on New Year’s Eve. And they’re screaming, yelling, and screaming and yelling and they sent me out on the dance floor to do my act, and I stood there but the screaming and yelling never diminished by even a couple decibels and I just stood there for thirty minutes, and walked off and I don’t think anybody even knew I was onstage.

Judd:
Anything else like—

Jerry:
Bombing is a riot. The looks on people’s faces is just priceless. They look up to me going, “I don’t know what you’re talking about. I don’t know what you’re talking about. I came for a show, and you’re the show
and I don’t understand you. You seem normal but you don’t make any sense.”

Judd:
You did a show the other day that didn’t go that good. That still happens to you?

Jerry:
Oh, yeah, all the time. Every show varies and there are very, very few shows that go just right. Because every audience is completely different—a completely different group of people with a completely different personality. And you have to shape your act to their personality. Every set is an accomplishment.

Judd:
Do you ever worry about, you know, say ten years in the future—a lot of comedians get bored after a while, they just cut stand-up out completely.

Jerry:
Yeah, I know. I don’t think I’ll be one of those comedians. I have a lot of respect for it as a craft. I don’t see it as just a stepping-stone. I mean, it’s a hard life in some ways. But I have a fascination for it.

Judd:
A lot of people do it and they just—they hate it.

Jerry:
Well, they use it as a vehicle, which is fine. You know, you can get seen real easy. But it’s a tough thing to do. It’s a tough thing to put yourself through when it’s not gonna be a career for you. It’s a difficult thing to play at. It’s kind of like catching bullets between your teeth: If you’re gonna do it right, it would be something to learn it and then not make a career out of it.

Judd:
When you’re onstage and everything is going great, is that like the ultimate idea?

Jerry:
I think so. Yeah, for me it is. Because that’s what I like. I like jokes and laughing more than anything. Everybody has an appetite for a different thing. And comedy is something that I have an endless appetite for.

Judd:
When did this all start, being funny?

Jerry:
I wasn’t a class clown per se. I mean, I wrote some funny things for the newspaper and I was always trying to be funny around my friends. And watching comedy was the thing I enjoyed more than anything else. I
knew every comedian, I knew all their routines. That’s how I got into it. I wanted to be around it, you know. I never thought I’d be any good at it. But that turned out to be an advantage because it made me work harder than most other people.

Judd:
When did you first do it?

Jerry:
I did Catch a Rising Star one night. I guess this would actually qualify as my strangest experience. This is definitely it. My first time onstage, I write the whole act out, you know, and I put it there on my bed and rehearse it, over and over again. I’m standing there with a bar of soap, like it’s a microphone. And I got the scene memorized, cold. I get up on there, and it’s gone. I can’t remember a word. I was—I stood there for about thirty seconds with—saying absolutely nothing, just standing there, freaking out. I just couldn’t believe it, all these people were looking at me. And then, I was able to just remember the subjects I wanted to talk about. This is absolutely true, I’m not embellishing this at all, I stood there and I went, “The beach…ah, driving…your parents…,” and people started laughing because they thought this was my act. I couldn’t even really hear them laughing; I was like absolutely panicked. I think I lasted about three minutes and I just got off. That was my first show.

Judd:
How do you get steady work?

Jerry:
Well, you audition; you start off at three in the morning and you fight your way through the order by doing better than the guy they put on ahead of you. Then the next night they put you on ahead of him. Then you try to do better than that guy. But if you’re good, people notice you. That’s the greatest thing about comedy. If you’ve got talent, it’s unmistakable. No one misses it and you don’t have to wait around for a break. It’s very easy to get a break. It’s very hard to be good enough.