Sick in the Head: Conversations About Life and Comedy (50 page)

Judd:
Do you ever think, like, you’re like the guy in the BMX shop, for so many people? That they look at you as somebody who doesn’t follow the rules and lives in this fully creative world and does things differently, and promotes “newness”?

Spike:
I’d be flattered if I was.

Judd:
Was Maurice Sendak like that as well?

Spike:
For me, for sure. He’s a real artist. And to be able to have the kind of friendship and collaboration I had with him was like—you know, a gift for life. He’s somebody who’s unafraid to be honest in all its messiness. The same thing with Charlie Kaufman. Being friends with Charlie and being able to work with Charlie is hugely inspiring.

Judd:
It’s like you continue to find that person. When you think of Maurice Sendak, is there a thought or philosophy that immediately comes to mind?

Spike:
I met him when I was twenty-six and we worked on a movie that didn’t end up happening. And at that point, I really don’t think I understood what being an artist meant. He would talk about it often and I would nod. And over the years, we stayed in touch, we stayed close, but it wasn’t until the third time he offered me the book that I had the idea I was talking about earlier. I was like thirty-three, and that’s when we started working together. And we became close. I just think he was an artist till the day he died. I think now I know what that means in terms of living honestly and creating honestly. Actually, Maurice and Charlie remind me of each other. They’re very similar people in terms of their willingness to throw down against anything they think is bullshit. They are not careerists; they are making what they are making because they have to. Out of all the people that have influenced me, those guys are two of the biggest.

Judd:
What about something like
Jackass?
How do those guys, and that experience, fit into what you’re talking about?

Spike:
Similarly. I mean, funnily enough, the two guys—so it’s me and Johnny Knoxville and Jeff Tremaine that created the show and later the movie, and we are really close, too. I met Knoxville in my early twenties out here in L.A. when we were both figuring out what we were doing. And Jeff I’ve known since I was twelve. Jeff introduced me to the Ramones, took me to my first hard-core shows in D.C. He was two years older than me. And when he was sixteen, he had a car and we’d build ramps together and skate.

Judd:
He sounds like the coolest guy in the world.

Spike:
He was cool. Oh, Jeff was cool.

Judd:
You’re twelve and have a cool fourteen-year-old who showed you all of that stuff. That’s a big deal.

Spike:
And then I helped Jeff get his first jobs out here. One of them was at the skate magazine where I was working,
Big Brother.

Judd:
Is that where they did the first Johnny Knoxville getting shot?

Spike:
Yeah, it was all through the
Big Brother
videos. I introduced Knoxville to Jeff. At the time he was doing extra work.

Judd:
A professional extra?

Spike:
And he also landed a Taco Bell commercial. And he was like, “I got a Taco Bell commercial!” We were all in our mid-twenties and I introduced Jeff to Knoxville and they started doing stuff for the
Big Brother
videos. And a few years later, it was Jeff who had the idea to take that and make a TV show out of it. It just came out of what we were already doing. It was natural, what made us laugh in skate videos. We thought if we can get twenty minutes on national TV and do whatever we want, we were getting away with murder. We thought it would last eight episodes. And we got an eight-episode order from MTV! That was all we thought we would do. We had no idea anyone would care; we were really just doing it because we thought it was funny. And then as soon as it came out, it just blew up. Knoxville was on the cover of
Rolling Stone
two months later and we got to make another fourteen episodes. We did the show for a year, twenty-two shows total, and then we canceled the show ourselves, which was unheard of.

Judd:
For your own safety?

Spike:
No, we did what we wanted to do. We also felt like MTV wasn’t really promoting it that much because they were so nervous about it. They were really into it because it was so successful but they were also nervous about it and getting shit for it. And it just felt right to end it. We ended it on a high.

Judd:
What was the criticism? That it was bad for our culture?

Spike:
I mean, yeah. It was the downfall of Western civilization.

Judd:
It wasn’t just that it was something that kids have done forever.

Spike:
Certain age groups would view it as nihilistic. So anyways, we ended up canceling it. But they didn’t want us to cancel it, obviously. So we said, “What if we do a movie as our last episode?” The movie was so fun and we had such a blast doing it.

Judd:
What a great fraternity of people that is. The camaraderie of it.

Spike:
We’ve been through life together. We’ve done so much together now. I’ve known Jeff for over thirty years. That’s crazy. I’ve known Knoxville
for twenty years, and a lot of the guys—we’ve been through it together. And we have a lot of it on tape, too.

Judd:
It may be the funniest thing ever. I remember watching a little bit of it with my daughter—and she was too young to watch it. I was surprised at how dirty it is. But I couldn’t resist showing it to her. I don’t know if she was nine or ten at the time, but I’d fast-forward past anything bad. The next thing I know, someone’s balls are on the screen and she’s laughing as hard as I’ve ever seen her laugh in my life. I mean it just brings such joy to people. When you watch it, you think:
I never laugh this hard. Like, nothing can get me to this place of total hysteria where you fall to pieces laughing.
That’s a real gift to the world, and it cannot be underestimated.

Spike:
We just stumbled on it. I don’t think we had any idea.

Judd:
It makes you feel like you’re fifteen again. The friendship and craziness and that tension before they do crazy things—it’s that nervous energy that really brings you back to middle school. In the best possible way.

Spike:
That’s what it’s like when we’re out there, feeling it. We are laughing. We are laughing more than anybody else. We just think it’s the funniest thing in the world. You can’t force that kind of chemistry, and we’re very protective of that. We only do it if it feels right. It was fun to do the last one,
Bad Grandpa.

Judd:
I watched that with my eleven-year-old. I was like,
My daughter can handle seeing balls.
When you’re watching
Bad Grandpa
there’s a moment where the big, long ball comes out and, as a parent, you think,
Okay. It’s probably going to go away in a second, so I’m not going to cover her eyes.
And then you think,
Wait, what’s wrong with testicles? Is there anything wrong with seeing a testicle when you’re a kid?
And then you just say,
Fuck it, she’s laughing too hard.
This was one of the great father-daughter moments, watching this ridiculous movie. I mean, God, we laughed so hard. I took pictures of her laughing, it felt so momentous.

Spike:
That’s so sweet.

Judd:
That’s how life works in our house.

Sometimes I would watch
The Colbert Report
and I’d be literally stunned at how funny it was. The writing and performing on that show were at a level never before seen on television.

Stephen Colbert is so funny, and such a nimble and versatile comedian, but he also seems to be a spiritual man who has found a measure of true happiness. That’s something I don’t understand at all, so I was thrilled to get the chance to ask him how this happy-funny combination is possible, with the small hope that he would say something that would change my life forever. I think he did say it at one point, and I intend to have it printed on a plaque that I can put on my refrigerator. I can’t remember what it was, though, because I was too pissed off to hear it.

Judd Apatow:
It’s hard to believe you’re in the final few weeks of your show. Is it tough to focus on making this last run great when you have this giant new thing looming?

Stephen Colbert:
It is. When you do a hundred and sixty shows a year, it’s really hard to produce that much material. As I used to say, “All I want to do is eighty hours of comedy this year that I wouldn’t mind my friends seeing.”

Judd:
(
Laughs
) Yeah.

Stephen:
This year I’m just working on an eighty-hour comedy project. That’s it. Listen, before I knew how horrible it would be, the strike in 2007 sounded like a great idea.

Judd:
Are you burned out?

Stephen:
I’m not, really. I’m not burned out—people may be reading this book centuries from now, so I’ll have to remind them that I play a character on my show, and he’s modeled on punditry, and I no longer respect my model. That’s my problem. Regardless of whether I was moving on to something else after this show, I don’t know if I could have done it much longer, because you have to be invested in your model. And I really am not. I can’t watch that stuff anymore. That’s what burns me out, not the grind. I
like
the grind. I like showing up every day with people that I respect, and doing the show with them. I always say that by the time I go out onstage, we’ve already done the show for each other, all day long. It’s my responsibility, and privilege, to then translate that to an audience. You know? I’m the bottom of the funnel.

Judd:
Yeah.

Stephen:
And that’s part of the skill, to be able to coalesce and synthesize everything into a single mouth. So, I don’t mind that. That doesn’t burn me out. But now that I only have ten shows left, everything is harder. It’s harder to only have ten left, because the way you prepare for a hundred and sixty shows is to build this enormous machine that is constantly firing information or jokes or script ideas that you’re collecting as you go along: That one will work, that one will work, that one will work, throw that one away. And then you sweep them into a pile and say, “What does that mean? What are those about?” And then you go, “Oh,
that’s
what that one’s about. Put this one together with that, and then that’s what you want to say.” But now, we only have ten shows left. We can’t just fire things randomly out of the cannon. Not that it was ever random. What I mean is, our level of output is no longer useful.

Judd:
And sometimes the speed of things and the sense of it never ending is what keeps you from feeling nervous.

Stephen:
Exactly. And when you have a certain number of shows left, you get afraid that, right at the end of the race, you’re going to drop the baby.

Judd:
It seems like people in this position respond differently. Like, when Conan O’Brien was getting canceled at
The Tonight Show
, he started turning out his best shows.

Stephen:
He seemed very free.

Judd:
The rage fired him up.

Stephen:
Yeah.

Judd:
It’s like you’re in a David Chase situation right now. You’re ending
The Sopranos.

Stephen:
(
Laughs
) I wish.

Judd:
Looking back, what was the main input for the show: the comedy or the politics?

Stephen:
I once had a teacher who would say, “Write what you know, and write what you are interested in.” I also had an improv teacher who said the first thing you are emotional about onstage is what the scene is about. So, regardless of what it is, you have to follow that rabbit hole. That’s where you’ll make your discoveries. I am an actor who became a comedian, and I wanted to do something with the skill set that I established; someone who was an actor who became an improviser, and through improvisation, learned dramatic structure and applied that to comedic scenes and sketch comedy—and then, for some weird reason, got hired by
The Daily Show.
It was kind of a mistake, and I went, Oh, but I also really care about the news. I enjoy it. I have eclectic interests, so maybe I could apply this little tool set that I’ve built up over the years to a lot of different subjects that might be covered in the news, and I also look like—wait, I look like a white guy.

Judd:
(
Laughs
)

Stephen:
I look like the Man. I look like a very hegemonic figure. So, I said,
Okay, I am an anchor.
I look like an anchor, anyway, and so I did that for Jon for years. Acting was a tool toward doing comedy. I was a straight actor for years, actually, until I realized how much more I loved being in comedy, writing comedy, and being with comedians. The joy I felt with other comedians, that was the healthiest thing. I thought,
Oh my God, look how much we’re laughing and how agonizing it was for that to have gone that poorly. The healthy choice is to do this for the rest of my life.

Judd:
I’ve realized that later in life, too. For a long time, I thought getting into comedy was an unhealthy choice. Only recently did I begin to think it’s a healthy choice.

Stephen:
Yeah, exactly. To me, it was. It’s almost like committing myself to flossing and exercise. I don’t really want to do anything other than comedy, and so did we talk about things that mattered to me? Did we occasionally invest our scripts with a satirical meaning that was overt? Yes. But, it’s always comedy first. Because that’s what I love. That’s what keeps me going and alive.

Judd:
When did that kick in for you, comedy as a point of view, as a way of dealing with life?

Stephen:
I don’t know if there was necessarily a moment. I remember when I was younger—I knew a guy, a great improviser, and I’m not going to name his name because of the advice he’s about to give in this little story. He said, “You have to see the world differently than the audience does.” Like, you have to put yourself in a state where you see the world differently than the audience does, because then you will surprise them with your choices. Comedy is all about surprising the audience with your choices. It might be something that is familiar to them, but they’re surprised you’re willing to say it. He said, “If you have to do heroin, do heroin. I would recommend you do heroin.”

Judd:
Okay. (
Laughs
)

Stephen:
But also, when I was a kid, we had a tragedy in my family. My father and two of my brothers, Peter and Paul, the two closest in age to me, died in a plane crash. I was ten years old, and my mother, who had always been a very religious person—not overtly related to their death—would say to me—if anything was wrong with my life, if anything was going wrong—she would say, “Look at this in the light of eternity. What is this in the light of eternity?” In other words, don’t worry about this little thing.

Judd:
Yeah.

Stephen:
And that light of eternity is another way of looking at everything. See it in the light of eternity. Don’t see this as your momentary worry. So, that helped me not worry, and because my father and brothers had died, what could worry you more than that? From that point on, I never worked in school again. I maybe did my homework six times from age ten to eighteen.

Judd:
Wow.

Stephen:
I barely graduated. I just read a lot of books, so I incidentally learned enough to bullshit by. There was no threat that anyone could hold over me. Nothing seemed important. So that made me think differently about almost everything that normally happened to a child. What are you going to threaten me with? What could a teacher possibly threaten me with?

Judd:
Your mom sounds wonderful.

Stephen:
She was a lovely lady.

Judd:
It’s a great piece of wisdom, and her strength must have been ridiculous to be able to communicate that to you in a way that it landed. Because some kids—their parents would look at the big picture and then go take drugs and disappear.

Stephen:
Well, I did take drugs.

Judd:
(
Laughs
)

Stephen:
But my mom was not bitter. She did not become a bitter person. She had an excuse to be, and she did not. She stayed grateful for life. And her example kept me from—I was a broken kid, don’t get me wrong, but I did not compound that by feeling guilty about not doing work, which is actually beside the point. The real point is it forced me to look at the world differently because, suddenly, the value system of checks and balances against the young mind did not mean anything to me anymore.

Judd:
I can sense that spirit in your work. I noticed it when you performed for George Bush at the White House Correspondents’ Dinner in 2006, that level of confidence and not caring. I don’t think many people have that. I watched Leno do it once and he looked exhausted and nervous, and he had a rough set. Actually, what made me laugh the most is that he had to sit next to the first lady for like two hours before he had to do his set, and it was fun to watch them run out of things to talk about.

Stephen:
I sat next to Helen Thomas. And she said, “So, are you going to do
all
of your jokes?”

Judd:
(
Laughs
)

Stephen:
And she goes, “How did you like the party beforehand?” Because there’s this big party beforehand, with the president, a few cabinet members, heads of news organizations, and maybe the Super Bowl quarterback, you know.

Judd:
Yeah.

Stephen:
And my mom, who loved the president, was there, with my brothers and sister. And Helen Thomas says, “Did you like the party?” I say, “I liked that party, yeah. It was nice. My mom had a good time.” And she said, “Now, after that party, are you going to do all of your jokes? Because that’s a smart party. There’s a lot of people—I’ve sat next to a lot of comedians who are cowed by that party.”

Judd:
Oh, wow.

Stephen:
Because you’re there, you’re being chummy with the guy you’re going to be making fun of. So I say, “Oh, yeah, I know what that means, but I think I can do it because
I’m
not doing it, my character is, and my character loves the guy.” That actually helped a lot.

Judd:
I’ve always thought there should be a documentary about that performance.

Stephen:
Well, there’s a lot to talk about.

Judd:
Looking back on it, after 9/11, everyone was afraid to say the president didn’t know what he was doing or was making terrible mistakes. And that felt like the first time that someone said, “Oh, by the way, this guy might not know what the fuck he’s doing at all.”

Stephen:
I wouldn’t say I was the first person to do it, because Jon certainly was doing it on his show.

Judd:
But not to his face.

Stephen:
Well, you don’t get an opportunity to do that very often.

Judd:
Yeah.

Stephen:
You know, there’s a woman I get my coffee from every morning. She is not a native to our country, she wasn’t born here. And she said to me the week of that dinner, she said, “Stephen, you look so tired, why do
you look so tired?” I go, “Well, Anna, I been working late after the show. I’m writing a script to get ready for the Correspondents’ Dinner. I’m going to perform for the president.” She said, “You perform in front of the president?” I said, “Yeah, I’ll be like five feet from him.” She goes, “But you’re a satirist. You’re a critic. You’re going to do your jokes right next to him?” And I said, “Yeah.” She took my face in her hands and said, “This is a good country.”

Judd:
Did you have a sense of the importance of the moment
in
the moment?

Stephen:
Oh, no. Hell no. I knew what it was. I was thrilled to do it, because I knew I’d never be—I knew I’d never get this shot again. I just wanted to get to the next joke and the next joke and the next joke.

Judd:
Yeah.

Stephen:
I did ten minutes on the president and I did ten minutes on the press, too, which people forget. The last ten minutes were on the people in the room. And it was—there was something you were talking about earlier that made me think of the story about the party beforehand. Oh, I know what it was: It was feeling nervous sitting next to the first lady before you go in.

Judd:
Right.

Stephen:
After Helen Thomas asked me if I was going to do all my jokes, she looks down the table and the president is sitting there with his cards, about to go up and do his bit. And she goes, “He’s going over his cards, too.”

Judd:
(
Laughs
)

Stephen:
I said, “Oh, Helen, I can’t look at him right now.” And she goes, “Why not?” And I said, “Because he can’t be a person. He has to be his ideas.” He has to be his policies. I feel for another performer, but he has to be the object—he has to represent his policies and the actions of the administrations for these jokes to come out of my mouth. I can’t make a joke about a guy worried about his bit at a banquet.