Sick in the Head: Conversations About Life and Comedy (4 page)

Judd:
That was the thought I had. I had a little notebook and right before we shot I made little notes, things to remember. Like:
Don’t forget these four things.
And one of them was the entire movie is just a journey to understand why the character is like this and when it ends you completely
know him and you know what his struggle is. But it takes a while to connect the dots.

Charlie:
All right. There’s something called “Apatowian.” Explain to me what that means.

Judd:
I don’t know, exactly—

Charlie:
What do you think it means? In other words, what is it if you say it’s an Apatow movie?

Adam:
I guess it’s used right now with saying it’s, uh, there’s buddies involved in the movie, and language that feels natural. And cursing.

Charlie:
A lot of reference to sex and women.

Adam:
Exactly. What I love about this movie, I—on occasion, Judd has heard some, you know, uh, what is it? What do they say? What’s the negative on you right now?

Judd:
That I’m a sexist?

Charlie:
No, misanthropic.

Judd:
How would you define that word?

Charlie:
Someone who hates everything.

Judd:
See, I think I’m a wussy. I’m a wimp.

Charlie:
Tell me how you see this.

Judd:
Okay. Well, what I thought about when I was making the movie was that there are traditional structures of comedies—and film in general—and when you go against it, it disturbs people. You know, it’s the movies like John Cassavetes’s movies and Robert Altman movies where they’re meant to make you feel things you don’t want to feel. Now that’s not part of mainstream comedy but I thought it was important to think about. There’s this quote from John Cassavetes. He said, “I don’t care if you like me or hate me, I just want you to be thinking about me in ten years.” I do want you to love the movie—I think that is the most important part—but I want to get under people’s skin and provoke in addition to having a hopeful message.

Charlie:
All right. “
Funny People
feels insular, as if Apatow’s whole world consists of nerdy jokesters who were angry, lonely kids who got rich beyond their dreams and ‘f’ women who’d never have talked to them in high school but are deep down still angry.” That’s from
New York
magazine.

Adam:
What is the problem there?

Charlie:
Yeah, exactly. You’ve got to help me on this. We got to understand what’s—

Judd:
It’s wrong in a couple of ways. One is, I had a fantastic girlfriend in high school who was very nice to me. Her parents were very nice to me. So I wasn’t the guy who didn’t have a girlfriend. In terms of it being an insular world of comedians, it’s kind of a ridiculous criticism because it’s a movie
about
comedians. And in terms of comedians who get successful or who are unhappy, you only have to look at Michael Jackson to see what fame does to people in terms of everyone giving them everything they want. How unhappy it makes them and how much difficulty they have connecting with individuals when they can only connect with the masses. I think it’s all very real stuff I’m talking about. It may not be real to everyone, but—

Charlie:
Who’s it real to? Twenty-five-year-old males?

Judd:
It’s a way of talking about how we come up with our priorities for our lives through the eyes of a comedian, but we all deal with this. How much time do we want to spend at work versus how much time do we want to spend with the family?

Charlie:
All right, here’s another one: “[Apatow’s] man-child universe, with its mixture of juvenile raunch and white-bread family values, has conquered American comedy.” Is that you? Middle-class values and man-child universe?

Judd:
Well, I don’t think I’ve met a man who is not a man-child. If I meet a man who acts very proper I think he’s covering up how goofy he really is. I’m forty-one years old, and when we lived together we were all immature, goofy guys. Now I have a lot of the same friends and I’m forty-one and we haven’t made a lot of progress and I really don’t think when me and Adam are sixty it’s going to be much different.

Charlie:
What is it that you think connects with the audience out there?

Adam:
I get pitched ideas about movies. “Hey, such-and-such studio has a movie for you.” They tell me the idea and three sentences in, I can either be like,
Whoa, that feels like something
, or,
I don’t know about that.
It’s a gut feeling. It comes from when I was young and what I knew excited me and my friends or what I’d want to see. I’m getting older, though. I don’t know exactly what these young kids are talking about. I used to be kind of cocky walking down the street from my movies. When the young kids would see me I’d be like,
Yeah, that’s right, here I am.
Now I’m like,
You still like me? Am I in the gang still?

Charlie:
But when you look at these things, what is the instinct you have?
Does this fit for me?
or
It doesn’t fit for me?
Can you define it or do you just know it?

Adam:
Most importantly, it’s
Am I going to be proud of it and think it’s funny?
The fact that I went in with Apatow blind and said, “Whatever you write, I’m in,” it’s because I trust him and I like his taste.

Charlie:
How would you characterize his taste?

Judd:
My pitch was not a funny pitch: “Adam, you’re dying and you’re a terrible person.”

Adam:
Stop there, just write it. You’re going to get me out of this thing. Now his taste is very sexist and I identify with that.

Charlie:
So if he was a misogynist that’s okay with you?

Adam:
Exactly. I love to hate.

Judd:
Here’s what I think it is. I’m trying to show warts and all, men and women. In most comedies, women are romanticized and they’re pretty and they’re not funny and the men try to attain them. And in my movies, starting with Catherine Keener in
The 40-Year-Old Virgin
, and Katherine and Leslie in
Knocked Up
, I was trying to show real conflict between men and women. And some of the scenes—which I think are kind of rough, where people really curse each other out and have big fights—are more like fights in real life. It’s not like fights in the movies. For some people it’s so different that it throws them, but I just look at my own sense of what’s
happening. In
The 40-Year-Old Virgin
, Steve Carell doesn’t want to have sex because he thinks he’s going to be bad at it, so he avoids it. Catherine Keener starts screaming at him because she thinks there’s something wrong with her. In
Knocked Up
, the issue was that Seth cared more about his bong and his pot than his pregnant girlfriend, so she breaks up with and screams at him. And she
should
scream at him for that. I’m trying to show immaturity—and there is sexism in the immaturity. But it is a journey towards these guys realizing,
I’ve got to get my act together. This isn’t the way to behave.

Charlie:
Are you making fun of their attitudes and what they talk about and how they view—

Judd:
Yeah. I just think terrible behavior is funny. I’m not saying it’s correct. I’m saying, Here’s a starting point and most comedies—even if it’s a Jerry Lewis movie—start with an incredibly immature person who needs to learn a lesson. I’m not like that in life. I’m a very timid person when it comes to women. I was not out and about too much. I was a shy guy. But I find that nerdy guys talking about women in a way that is over-the-top sexist makes me laugh because they do it out of insecurity. They make up for that by going, “Hey, check that girl out,” because if the girl tried to kiss them they would cry because they would be so scared.

Charlie:
What do you like and dislike about your character, George? What are his redeeming qualities?

Adam:
You know, I couldn’t find any. It’s easier for me
not
to like him because I’m married with two kids and I certainly don’t want my two kids to think that guy’s me. I was nervous about that the whole movie.

Charlie:
You were?

Adam:
Absolutely. I have little daughters and I know they’re going to watch my movies when they’re older. Some of them I’m like,
Maybe that one presents me in a nice light for my kids
, and one like this, I’m like,
I hope they don’t think I’m that guy and they become jerks because Daddy was a jerk so I’m going to be a jerk.
I don’t know.

Charlie:
You’re thinking about that?

Adam:
Oh my God. I let it go when Apatow would say what he wants in a scene, and I’d say, “Okay, let’s go.” But I would drive home that night and—I have this nice house. I have kids. I would look in their bedrooms and see them sleeping and I was just like,
What the hell am I doing? This is going to kill me one day. Can I pull out of this?

Charlie:
It might not be worth the millions.

Adam:
Exactly.

Charlie:
About him, tell me what you think. I mean, Adam has been the most successful comedic actor—

Judd:
What is it about him? What is his appeal?

Charlie:
What does he have?

Judd:
When I lived with Adam, I wanted to be a comedian very badly and Adam had one of those things that you just can’t define, which is charisma. People were drawn to him. I would enter a room before he was famous and you would just feel the room move towards Adam and I would be sitting in a corner going,
Why don’t I have the magic fairy dust?
He’s a great person and people can just tell. The camera’s been up in his face for twenty years and they get a sense of where his heart is in addition to all his comedic chops. He was fearless because he signed onto this movie before I wrote it, just off of a short pitch and there was no time during the shoot where he said, “You know, let’s not do that—that’s cutting too close to the bone” or “That makes me look bad.” I really thought at some point we were going to go to war—I mean, in my head.

Charlie:
Over what?

Judd:
Anything. You know, a lot of actors try to direct through their performance. They’ll say, “I don’t want to do that because you might use it.” Adam produces his own movies. He knows exactly what he wants. And Adam kept saying, “I completely trust you. It’s your vision. I’m not going to water it down. Just point me in the right direction.” And even though we were satirizing comedy and satirizing the comedy career, he just said, “I’m going to go for it, one hundred percent.”

Charlie:
Tell me about the Cassavetes thing. Cassavetes was one of your idols.

Judd:
Yes.

Charlie:
Because Cassavetes was an extraordinarily incisive director, who would confront anything—

Judd:
Yes. I mean, I’m certainly not as accomplished or brave as Cassavetes, but I do think that what he preaches when you read interviews with him is important. He says all his movies are about love, and obstacles to love. And that’s something that Garry Shandling always said of
The Larry Sanders Show.
And that’s how I try to approach the work. Some of the scenes do not
have
to be enjoyable. They just need to make you think or feel something.

Charlie:
You know where the pleasure center is, though.

Judd:
I do, and it takes work to avoid it.

Adam:
It feels good there, though.

Judd:
It does.

Charlie:
Is it your comfort zone?

Adam:
It’s definitely what I came out to Hollywood to do. I mean, I was like:
I’m going to make people feel at ease.

Charlie:
Is there anything that would cause you to say, “I’ll roll the dice on this”?

Adam:
I don’t have that right now.

Charlie:
You don’t have that creative urge?

Adam:
I’m forty-two. I’ve been doing this since I was seventeen. I’ve always had an insane drive. I’m shooting a movie right now and everyone in the movie is saying, All right, what are you doing next? And in my head I’m going,
I just want to relax. I just want to sit down.

Charlie:
Do you love the
doing
of the thing?

Adam:
I am nuts. I am dying to get in there. I want to destroy. And when we get on the set, I’m just, like, in that trailer going,
Why the hell am I here? I can’t stand it. Why did I make all this money to end up in this stupid trailer again? I can’t believe it.

Judd:
It is a lot of pressure when you’re on that set. Every day is an experiment. Every scene might not work and so you’re concentrating—
Is it working? Should I get an extra line for editing? What would I change if I had to, if I hated this in three months, why would I hate it?
And you’re concentrating and you’re exhausted but it’s supposed to be light, funny work so you’re also trying to stay loose and funny. It’s pretty intense.

Adam:
That’s why, when you see a happy actor, you’re mad at him because you’re like, “You don’t care enough, you jerk.”

Charlie:
It’s like they say about CEOs—those guys who have low golf scores are not doing a good job at the office, you know. Might you two work together again?

Adam:
Of course, absolutely.

Judd:
Definitely.

Adam:
You know what was great? The subject matter of being sick—we both saw each other go through it with people we love and it was just very deep to us, this movie. Also we both work hard and respect each other’s work and, like, at the end of the day when I’d say good night to Apatow, I would tear up. I’d say, “All right, I love you, buddy.”