Sick in the Head: Conversations About Life and Comedy (20 page)

Judd:
Is most of your humor worked out on the stage? Some people work it out on paper, and they think about it—

Jay:
Oh no, I don’t have anything on paper. I’ve never written anything down. I suppose I should. Everybody says, Oh, you should make notes. I seem to remember the funnier stuff and forget the stuff that isn’t that funny. Once in a while I forget a funny one, but no, I don’t write anything down.

Judd:
Why do you think in the last couple of years, tons and tons of clubs have been opening up all over the place?

Jay:
It’s like anything else. Tons and tons of clubs are closing all over the place and a few good ones will remain. I mean, I think it’s great. It gives everybody a chance to work. There’s good and there’s bad sides to it. The good side is everybody gets a chance to work. The bad side is people that probably would not be in the business are still around.

Judd:
Right now, you know, it’s like—there’s hundreds of people getting into it—

Jay:
There’s thousands. When I used to audition at the Improv—you know, the Improv in New York would have audition nights, same as Catch a Rising Star. And we would go there and there would only be four people auditioning. Suddenly there are thousands. You go to the Improv on the audition nights and they’re lined up around the block.

Judd:
So how do you keep it from getting boring?

Jay:
It’s a job. You have to do your work, you know. It’s not a hard way to make a living, it’s a fun way. You make a lot of money for having a good time. And if you can’t get up for it, well then get out of the business. You know people say, Well, gee, what happens when you’re just not in the mood? Well, I mean, the worst I ever had was a bad hour. You know, most people have a bad day. If I can’t fake it for an hour…

Judd:
But don’t you ever get bored of it?

Jay:
I get a kick out of doing it. I change it a little bit on a nightly basis, try out new jokes and whatnot. The whole idea is to keep coming with new things and new ideas. No, it doesn’t get boring for me. I really like it.

Judd:
A lot of your act is about television. Television commercials. What do you think about television? Do you think it’s really bad, because it seems like you really just—I mean you must watch it—

Jay:
No I don’t. I mean, again: The whole trick to being a successful comedian is to make fun of the things you like. Occasionally when I really go after something I don’t like—it can come off vicious. People sense a hostility. I’m an average person, I watch a lot of TV. Admittedly, there’s a lot of stupid things on TV, but I have to watch it to make fun of it. And the fact that I’m talking about a show like
Manimal
or some incredibly stupid program like this—everybody laughs. They must have seen the show, too. So you find a common bond with people. The whole thing to do in comedy is finding a common bond with people in the audience. Everybody has a TV, so you talk about TV. If everybody had elephants, you’d talk about elephants. If you go right to television, old, young, right away everybody understands where you’re coming from.

Judd:
Once, on
Letterman
, you just took out a
TV Guide.

Jay:
Yeah, that was the last time. I started reading about shows that were on.

Judd:
And you just opened it, ’cause it looked like you were just—

Jay:
Well, I had looked through the
TV Guide
earlier that day. That was an example of what I was talking about a minute ago. The real trick to doing the comedy, the real trick to knowing if you’re growing or not is—like, when I look at my first
Tonight Show
, there were a lot of jokes in it. I mean, joke jokes. Then one day I was sitting in a restaurant with a bunch of comedian friends, after a show, and everybody’s talking. And I was telling some stupid story about something that happened on the road. It’s one of those stories that didn’t have a beginning or an end. It just had a lot of—a lot of middle stuff. And everybody’s laughing. And I see,
Gee, they’re laughing harder with this than anything else I do in my act
. So the next night onstage I just got up and started talking, telling that story. You know, I said to the audience, “This doesn’t have a beginning or an end. I went
into this store…” And everybody was laughing the same way. And I realized,
Ooh, here is a major breakthrough for me. Because here’s a chance to just talk and be funny as opposed to sitting down trying to think up a routine and how to
structure
it.
And that’s how you grow.

Judd:
How do you handle hecklers?

Jay:
The trick to working with hecklers is to give them enough rope so they hang themselves. I like a good heckler. Somebody who’s intelligent, who I speak to and they speak back, and I say something to them, and they say something to me. Everybody gets
yeah
yeah
—those kind of hecklers. And those are awful, but the real trick is working in inverse proportion to the heckler. For example, if I have a guy that says, “Hey, what are you doing?” You know, some real dumb-sounding guy. Then I go, “Well, excuse me, ladies and gentlemen, obviously an English professor here tonight.” Boom, boom, boom, boom. You just work the opposite. You try to throw them off guard. And most hecklers will back down. The second time you say, “What’s that, sir?” (
Timidly
) “Oh, ah, I just want to say you’re a jerk.” I like to have fun with them. I’m never hostile with anybody, unless it’s somebody who is just totally abusive. Then you can go for the throat.

Judd:
What would be your strangest experiences in comedy?

Jay:
My strangest experiences? Oh, I don’t know. God, I mean there’s thousands of them. I used to work the Playboy Club in New York and they would give a report card after each show. You know, like have a guy like Vinny from the Bronx: “Hey, you get a D tonight. I didn’t think you were that funny.” And they would tell you how they would mail these to Mr. Hefner to look at, you know, that kind of thing. So I’m working there one time and they—you know, they get tour groups in there—and they’ve got three hundred Portuguese and two interpreters. Nobody tells me they’re Portuguese. You know, I don’t know. So I go out there and I start my act, and I hear these two guys going, “Heh, heh, heh.” I hear two guys laughing and the rest of the audience is just staring at me. I said, “How you folks doing?” And they would smile and nod. But they didn’t speak English or anything. So I’m out there, like, this is unbelievable at this point. Finally one of the interpreters yells out that they’re Portuguese. So I come offstage
and Vinny the room director says, “You get an F.” I said, “What’re you talking about?” He says, “You get an F, pal. Nobody laughed tonight except them two guys.” And I said, “Come on, they didn’t speak
English.
” He goes, “Well, you shoulda done Portuguese material.” I said, “Yeah, you’re right, it’s my fault.” And I have to sign this thing that says F on it. It was the stupidest experience of my life.

Judd:
So, where do you want to go with this? You’re working a lot now. Is there something else that you want to be doing?

Jay:
No, I like doing this. I enjoy it. I have a good time with it. If something else comes along and someone offers something else, I’ll try that for a while. But there’s nothing I enjoy doing more than this. I find it as challenging as anything else you can do. And I really haven’t reached a peak where I’m famous enough to go, Well, everybody’s seen the act, let’s try something else. When that happens, maybe I’ll try something else.

This interview took place in the office at Rascals Comedy Club in West Orange, New Jersey, in 1984.

In the late eighties, when I was on the road as a struggling stand-up comedian, I had the pleasure of opening a few times for a young guy named Jeff Garlin. His act was loose and weird and improvisational in a way I could never hope to replicate. He looked so happy up there. He seemed to enjoy getting huge laughs as much as he enjoyed creating awkward moments. And when you’re on the road with somebody, going from club to club and town to town, you get to know that person pretty well. And nobody’s more fun to be on the road with than Jeff. We would be driving down some small-town street and there would be a fast-food restaurant on every single corner, and Jeff would say, “I wonder if there’s a fast-food restaurant around here?” We would drive some more, and there would be seven banks in a row, and Jeff would say, “Do you think they have a bank in this town?”

Jeff, of course, would go on to be one of the minds behind
Curb Your Enthusiasm
and one of the stars of
The Goldbergs
, but to me he’ll always be this special individual who is somehow able to make something new happen every moment you’re with him.

Judd Apatow:
Is it important to you if your kids are smart?

Jeff Garlin:
No. I mean, yes, I hope they’re smart and self-reliant so they can enjoy life—but they’ll probably be more miserable if they’re smart. If they’re stupid, they’re going to have a great time. Because really, everything is created for stupid people. Books, movies, TV shows for the most
part—they’re for stupid people. So, they would be much happier if they were stupid. But I think both my boys are going to be miserable just like their father.

Judd:
So they’ll be smart and miserable.

Jeff:
Well, they go hand in hand.

Judd:
Yeah.

Jeff:
Do you know any smart people who are just, like, chill? Really happy? No, seriously, do you know any smart people just, like, “Hey, weeeee!” You don’t, do you?

Judd:
I don’t. I mean, I don’t think I’m smart. But I think I’m beginning to think I’m smart based on how miserable I am.

Jeff:
That’s a good way to measure it, by the way.

Judd:
Yeah.

Jeff:
But I know you and I’m telling you: You’re smart. You’re really smart.

Judd:
They say certain people aren’t good soldiers because if they’re in a foxhole all night—you know, if you’re creative and smart, you’re thinking about all the different ways someone is going to blow your head off. But if you’re not that smart, you’re just like chilling out. And I feel like that in life. I’m just in the foxhole all fucking day thinking about everything that’s going to go wrong in every possible way.

Jeff:
And that’s why you’re prepared.

Judd:
The preparation is not helpful at all, really.

Jeff:
I’m equally miserable but—by the way, we’re having a conversation here. It’s kind of rude if you don’t look at me.

Judd:
I know, but why do you need to look at me?

Jeff:
Because I’m talking to you.

Judd:
You know, when I was first dating my wife, she said to me one day when we were talking, she said, “Dude, what are you looking at?” And I said, “I’m looking at your mouth.” And she’s like, “Why are you looking at
my mouth?” “Because you’re talking, and I want to know what you’re saying.” And she said, “You know, when you talk to people, you’re supposed to look them in the eye.” No one had ever said that to me before. I was twenty-eight years old and I thought—

Jeff:
Did you really go through life up until twenty-eight—I mean, did your parents tell you when you were a kid that you were deaf?

Judd:
Like, I mean with—

Jeff:
Like, “Look at the lips, it’s very important.”

Judd:
Right now, I am having to make an extra effort to not look at your mouth.

Jeff:
That’s crazy.

Judd:
It is crazy and it makes me wonder how I was parented. Where was my mom looking? Was she looking at my mouth? It makes me realize what my damage is, and why it’s hard to connect with people: because I’m a mouth looker.

Jeff:
So you say mouth looker, and that makes sense, but I never heard of that before.

Judd:
Someone told me you exercise now.

Jeff:
I’ve been exercising for a while. I do Pilates, for Christ’s sake.

Judd:
Really? Like you slowly lift your legs with pulleys, every morning?

Jeff:
Not every morning, but often enough.

Judd:
With an instructor?

Jeff:
With an instructor. I do privates.

Judd:
You do privates?

Jeff:
That’s one of the luxuries I actually partake in. I have to have privates because the thought of me being in a Pilates class—that’s goofy.

Judd:
There’s nothing about Pilates that won’t make one of your balls fall out of your pants.

Jeff:
By the way, nothing. You have to prepare for that ahead of time. I’m a big boxer-brief guy. With boxer briefs, you get no ball fallout. And then, I try to avoid—

Judd:
You do Pilates in boxers?

Jeff:
Boxers?

Judd:
Didn’t you say boxers?

Jeff:
Yeah, but underneath my sweatpants. With sweatpants, my balls aren’t going to drop out.

Judd:
I don’t like that flexibility. I need it compact.

Jeff:
No, boxer briefs hold everything in. You know what boxer briefs are?

Judd:
No. I thought it was brief
or
boxers. I didn’t think it was the same.

Jeff:
Boxer briefs are like longer briefs—like, they come down to here. You never worn those?

Judd:
I have like tighty whities.

Jeff:
Is that what you wear?

Judd:
I don’t need the extra shorts aspect of it that you seem to like.

Jeff:
Do you really wear tighty whities?

Judd:
What does this do for you?

Jeff:
There’s a certain confidence—I would have to drop my pants right now to show you. But I would not look like an idiot, whereas you, my friend, you wear tighty whities and we would be laughing at you.

Judd:
The idea with that is that you have a bigger dick than me.

Jeff:
I would wager everything I own that our dicks are the same size.

Judd:
Really?

Jeff:
We got the classic, average Jew dick. I see my dick all the time; I know it’s not big. It’s very normal size. It’s not like a tiny festival. But I don’t wear the boxer briefs because I have an extraordinarily large dick or small. My
penis has nothing to do with it. It’s just a nice—it’s a very comfortable loungewear.

Judd:
Okay. I was listening to an interview with you recently, and there’s a long section where you’re talking about what a good guy you are. Now, is that because you are a good guy, or like you’re such a murderer that you just say that?

Jeff:
One of my favorite comedians of all time is Jack Benny. But besides being my favorite comedian, he also had a reputation of being the biggest supporter of other comedians and the nicest amongst comedians, and I really want to be known as, if not the nicest, then one of the nicest comedians.

Judd:
Are you a people pleaser?

Jeff:
No, I could give a shit about that.

Judd:
There was a letter that someone showed me once—Jack Benny used to write letters to this television producer—but what made me laugh is that they were kind of dirty. And you don’t think of guys like Jack Benny as dirty.

Jeff:
Right.

Judd:
He was talking about how he loved a lot of the shows that year, but his favorite one was called “My Mother the Cunt.”

Jeff:
Jack
Benny
wrote that? Wow. Because he really was clean and adamant about being clean.

Judd:
So he likes that kind of joke but he thinks it’s wrong to do the “My Mother the Cunt” joke to America—like we can’t handle it?

Jeff:
They
couldn’t
have handled it back then.

Judd:
I just mean they all had a different sense of humor that they didn’t share with the public, like Milton Berle taking his dick out and putting it in a hot dog bun. But then when these young comedians like Robert Klein started showing up, they were all like, Oh, this is out of line!

Jeff:
Let me ask you a question. You’re busy. We don’t spend a lot of time together but I look at you as a friend. J. J. Abrams is the other person who you remind me of in this way. And that is, I call you, I email you, anything,
and right away, you respond: “What’s going on? How are you doing?” It’s not like two weeks later. But I, even being one hundredth as successful as you, don’t get back to people ever. I just wonder how you pull off being a great dad, a great husband. You’re this successful producer. You make movies. You’re producing a TV show for HBO. I mean, how do you do that?

Judd:
Does this also relate to the fact that you have to keep saying you’re a good guy? When in fact you’re like the asshole who never returns emails?

Jeff:
By the way, isn’t it true that when you don’t return someone’s email, they think there’s something wrong? Whenever I do write people back, their response is always: “Oh, I thought you were mad at me!” What? If I’m mad at someone, I tell them. But how do you pull this off? I don’t know.

Judd:
For a long time, people thought all my emails were angry. Because they would be very simple.

Jeff:
Informational.

Judd:
Yeah.

Jeff:
I’m totally good with that.

Judd:
But you know what helps? Exclamation marks. Now I’ve adopted an email personality that is not anything like me. I’m like a fourteen-year-old girl who puts exclamation marks after everything. Because people kept thinking I was mad at them. Well, I don’t think answering emails correlates to any positive qualities that I, or anyone, has.

Jeff:
No, what I want to know is—

Judd:
What’s probably happening is, like, one of my kids is choking on a bone and I’m not helping them because I’m so obsessed with answering your email. So maybe I’m a prick who cares more about your email than my children.

Jeff:
I really want you to answer this.

Judd:
I’m being honest.

Jeff:
Really?

Judd:
I’m saying, why the fuck am I answering your email? Honestly, I have a lot to do.

Jeff:
That’s my point.

Judd:
I’m busy. I have children. They need help with their homework and why am I checking the fucking email?

Jeff:
Oh, stop it. I’m saying as a
person
here. The point is, you’re thoughtful. You always take time to be present. I don’t know how you do that.

Judd:
I know, but you’re wrong. It’s an addiction. It’s a modern addiction. The email and the Twitter. It’s distraction. There’s better things I should be doing with my time and I’m not present at all. I’m staring at your mouth.

Jeff:
You don’t want to take credit.

Judd:
I think I’m a nice enough person. But unlike you, I don’t brag about it.

Jeff:
I was a virgin until I was twenty.

Judd:
You were? How did that work out?

Jeff:
I actually lost my virginity to a heckler.

Judd:
You did?

Jeff:
I swear to God. I did. It was on the beach, South Beach. There was a comedy club. I was hosting a show. This woman heckled me unmercifully and later on that night some guy goes, “My friend wants to buy you a drink.” We were on the beach, you know, at this place called the Carlyle. And she called me outside. She said come outside, and then she kissed me. I didn’t stop her. I was twenty. She was thirty and a lawyer, and she ran on the beach ripping off her clothes yelling, “Follow me!” So I did. And then, in a lifeguard stand, she was naked and as soon as my penis went in it could have ended because I was like,
I’m not a virgin!
I didn’t enjoy. It was like, I wasn’t even thinking about it at all. It was like in, done. And then my clothes had fallen from the lifeguard stand into the sand and there was a bum walking up the beach to take my clothes, and so I jumped up naked with a boner, and ran down and fought off the bum for my clothes and then I went up and she was, like,
angry
at me. I was like, I’m not going to lose my wallet to a homeless man. And we continued. She was really nice. It didn’t last long.

Judd:
The first time I had sex, it was a ski trip senior year.

Jeff:
High school? See, you’re way more advanced than me.

Judd:
Yeah. It was, you know, brief. And then afterwards, as a joke, I said, “Was it good for you, too?” And she said, “Well, I guess it’ll get better.”

Jeff:
She was a girl you were dating.

Judd:
Yes.

Jeff:
Did she hang around to see if it got better or was that it?

Judd:
She found out that it was not going to get better for about six months or so. She tested it out.

Jeff:
I loved the way you said six months or so. You were a slow learner.

Judd:
Well, because that’s, like, a first love, someone you’ve done everything for the first time with. The two of you had this experience that this is what sex is, the way we do it, and then I think she just went off to college and went,
Oh, we’ve done it all wrong the whole time.