Laugh Lines: Conversations With Comedians (29 page)

Corey: Do you edit at all, or do you just upload it raw?

Paula: Mostly, (it’s) just what I shoot. I did one of me playing charades of myself that I had to edit. I’ve been taking lessons at the Apple Store. I don’t know if they want other people to know that because I’m not one of their students they brag about as far as achievement. After the first three lessons what I could remember was where the Apple Store was. And by the way, by the next lesson I had forgotten that. I was always going down the wrong block. My drag and click—I think it’s the other way around—my click and drag is remedial. I can’t do it.

Corey: Kids these days know so much more. Do your kids help you with that?

Paula: No, I don’t really let them do any of that. A mother said to me the other day—we were comparing notes while our kids were at gymnastics—she said, ‘You know it’s so hard with kids these days. There’s so many things, Facebook and MySpace and Twitter and everything; it’s so hard.’ I said, ‘My kids don’t do any of that, so I guess it’s not so hard for mine.’

Why would I let me kids do that? I don’t understand. Not only do they let them do it, but then they feel that the child is somehow at a disadvantage as a result of doing it. I haven’t figured that out yet. Here’s how I saved my children from that bad thing, I don’t let them. My kids don’t watch television; they’re not allowed. People say, ‘How do you do that?’ I go, ‘I don’t turn that thing on.’ One morning, several years ago, my son was hard to wake, so I turned on ‘Sesame Street’ hoping that if he heard it, he would leap up. He ran to his sister to tell her that there’s something on that thing. He had no idea that any time you turn that on, there’s something on it. … I don’t know if I’ve really screwed them up or freed their minds for more important things.

Corey: We’ll see what happens.

Paula: Yeah. (laughs) I gotta tell you something, some ominous clouds are gathering.

(At this point, Poundstone paused the chat to correct her daughter’s walking.) My daughter walks funny. That’s all there is to it. I’m not sure there’s a disability; she just walks funny. She drags her feet and then she swings them around. It’s some sort of weird line dance as near as I can tell. ‘Honey, only do that with a group.’

I swear to God, this is a direct quote from our conversation this morning. She just turned 18 and I said, ‘How do you feel about becoming an adult?’ She said, ‘You know there’s pros and there’s cons.’ ‘OK, let’s start with the pros.’ She told me about how you can make choices and you don’t have to go to school if you don’t want to. I said, ‘Yeah, absolutely. So, OK, what about the cons?’ The first thing she said was, ‘Well, if I murder someone, I would be tried as an adult.’ I said, ‘OK, now I’m afraid to sleep in the house with you.’

Judd Apatow may be better known as the producer/creator as such dirty-but-sweet flicks like “The 40-Year-Old Virgin” and “Superbad,” but I appreciate his woefully under-seen stuff, such as the short-lived TV series “Freaks and Geeks” and the Disney kid flick “Heavyweights.”

Jason Anderson, my oldest friend, and I agree that “Heavyweights” is ridiculously quotable, and a must-see for fans of Ben Stiller and fans of movies about kids at a fat camp.

Apatow also created a college show for Fox called “Undeclared,” which is on DVD and definitely worth a Netflix add. We chatted when the DVD was set to debut, and Apatow was about to make Steve Carrell the most famous, middle-aged virgin in the world.

Corey: How did you go from ‘Freaks and Geeks’ to ‘Undeclared’?

Judd: We were so devastated when ‘Freaks and Geeks’ ended. We were trying to figure out a way to do another show with a similar spirit to ‘Freaks and Geeks,’ and being incredibly lazy, I just thought the easiest thing to do would be do a show about college, because by the time I got it up, all these kids would be old enough to go to college. There was some goodwill out there from other networks. The Fox network gave us six episodes without even shooting the pilot. At the time they needed a new show. By the time we shot six episodes, ‘American Idol’ was a big hit. They didn’t need a new show.

But they allowed us to have some of the ‘Freaks and Geeks’ people on the show. Seth Rogen was a regular. Jason Segal played Nick, Lizzy’s long-distance boyfriend. We forced on Samm Levine and Busy Phillips and Martin Starr. I was also able to hire a lot of the production staff and some writers and directors from ‘Freaks and Geeks.’ The intention was to do a show that was more of a comedy than ‘Freaks and Geeks’ but still has the sweet side of that show. At the time I thought I would do a show that wouldn’t be that personal, that would just be funny, because it was a half-hour it would be easier to produce than ‘Freaks and Geeks.’ But it turns out a half-hour is way harder than an hour. Especially if it’s a comedy, everything has to be funny. If it’s not, you have to find a way to make it be funny.

When we did ‘Freaks and Geeks,’ it was fun to do because it was a given that the kids weren’t that funny. So we could make them tell corny jokes or the occasional funny joke, but you could say it was drama when the comedy failed. With a comedy, if it sucks, it sucks, and it makes it a lot harder. The more shows we shot, the more I realized it had become very personal and it was very similar to my college experience which was trying to pretend that I was cool because I had a fresh start in college—to forget I was a nerd in high school.

Corey: So that was one of the delusions you had going into college?

Judd: I really thought, ‘Wow, I can be anybody when I arrive here.’ It took everyone about half a day to sniff me out.

Corey: What did you try to do to alter yourself?

Judd: I remember doing shots with guys on the football team, trying to drink them under the table. Of course, I wound up vomiting, and all the kids took pictures of me as I vomited. It was like a press conference. The next day, everyone showed me pictures of what looked like an octopus trying to jump out of my mouth. I never drank heavily again. Luckily I got that over with first semester freshman year.

Corey: So, the Steven character you based on yourself? Was there anything in the show that actually happened to you?

Judd: At the time I didn’t think I was basing the character on myself. It’s impossible to write without mining your own life. Before I knew it, he was so similar to me it was pathetic. Then I found a picture of me, and I could not look more like Jay Baruchel. I do not mean that as a compliment to Jay Baruchel. I had a long-distance relationship during that first year. A lot of what is crazy about Eric, the boyfriend, is taken from my neediness during that first year of school.

I always thought if I became best friends with the girl I liked, eventually she would want to be my girlfriend. That never, ever happened. It was a theory: ‘I’ll be such a good friend, she’ll realize I’m the perfect guy!’ It always resulted with a long wait and pain at the end of the road.

Corey: It seems like you have a good knack for casting interesting faces to fill the screen. How did you end up with Seth Rogen?

Judd: I met Seth Rogen in Vancouver. They did some casting for ‘Freaks and Geeks’ in Canada. He had this funny, froggy voice, with a much thicker Canadian accent back then. He was 16. I just thought, ‘That kid sounds hilarious. What is goin’ on there? We gotta meet him in person.’ When we went to Canada, he read for us, and he made me laugh so hard. I didn’t know anything about him, but I knew he was interesting. I wanted people on the show that were unique. Paul Feig would rewrite the pilot based on these actors we found. There was no part for Seth Rogen. We just made one up.

Every group of potheads needs an obnoxious, funny guy. I was thrilled at the work he did. As the season went along we did more and more episodes about his character, which is one of the sad things about that show ending. We were doing interesting things with the supporting characters. Ken Miller, he had a girlfriend who was born with ambiguous genitalia, by the way.

When we were doing ‘Undeclared,’ we needed writers who remembered what it was like to be young. Seth was good at improvising and showed me some themes he had written for a spec episode of ‘Freaks and Geeks.’ At the time, he was 18 and hadn’t gone to college, but he knew how people that age would talk. He was such a good writer that it became embarrassing to give him so much to do. He’s one of the stars of ‘The 40-Year-Old Virgin.’ He has a very big part. I made him the co-producer so he could sit on the set all day and pitch me jokes.

Corey: Did any of his stuff make it into the film?

Judd: Tons of his jokes made it into the film, so many jokes it’s ridiculous that I will take credit for every one. Tell everyone what a good writer I am.

Corey: You really put a lot of work into your DVD sets. The ‘Freaks and Geeks’ yearbook was one of the best DVD packages ever created, and now this ‘Undeclared’ set has a lot of extra material for a show that only lasted one season.

Judd: We spend way too much time on these DVDs. Part of the fun of making these DVDs is I don’t get paid for it. I can beg, borrow and steal and tell everyone, ‘Oh, but I don’t get paid for it. Help me out.’ Because I got paid so well to do those shows, and everyone who made those shows lost so much money, they don’t feel the need to pay me now. I like it because it becomes pro-bono work. These are real passion projects. Where some people will spend a few months on these, we will spend a year on it. We get fans. It’s not like we have a few bloopers from the old days. We literally re-watch millions of feet of film and look at everything and cut new things together.

There was an episode where the studio made us re-shoot half of, where Steven goes out on a real date with the girl he likes, Lizzie. He takes her to see Ted Nugent speak on campus. And it’s hilarious, but the studio thought it was too obscure. So we reached out and had them go watch an outdoor screening of the movie ‘American Pie,’ and that’s the one that aired. So no one has seen the Ted Nugent version, and that’s what ended up on the DVD. Paul Feig directed that episode, the creator of ‘Freaks and Geeks.’ We also videotaped a few Loudon Wainwright concerts. He’s a real American treasure. He’s this hilarious, bittersweet folk singer. He’s been a big inspiration for me for a long time because he’s real and he lays it all out there. So we put a half-hour concert on the DVD which I think is worth the price of admission right there.

We just hunted down every funny outtake. I put raw footage on the DVDs, just so you see how we shot the show. We put on a Q&A at the Museum of Television and Radio. I always seem to do a Q&A at the Museum of Television and Radio either two days before or two days after I’m being cancelled. They’re fun to watch because everyone is really angry and desperate and willing to say things that could hurt their career. We put those on. I’m a pack rat. I keep all the rehearsal and auditions. I make everyone improvise a lot.

Corey: My friend Jason and I are waiting for the special edition of ‘Heavyweights.’ We happened to catch it, you know how you are waiting for a movie to start and you sneak into another? It’s been a favorite ever since.

Judd: There are a ton of funny, deleted scenes from ‘Heavyweights.’ We shot so many scenes with Ben Stiller as the crazed head of this summer camp for overweight boys. We would have just loved to have made
that
movie. There’s a long monologue at a fire at night, where he’s throwing wood in fire, saying ‘You’re like this fire. You need wood to eat, but if you have too much wood, it will burn out of control.’ I’d love to have that out one day, but I’m not sure if it will happen. Disney certainly isn’t calling. They didn’t even call to say they were putting the DVD out in any form. I just saw it out there one day. We’re also trying to put out ‘The Cable Guy.’ There are a lot of deleted scenes. One of the reasons we haven’t put that out is Ben and I sat down and recorded the commentary track, and then we both listened to it and couldn’t have disliked it more, and said, ‘We have to do this differently somehow.’ The entire commentary track was Ben sounding depressed and me saying, ‘I think this is funny.’