Sick in the Head: Conversations About Life and Comedy (21 page)

Jeff:
My high school years were filled with unrequited love. One after the other. I was the guy the girls talked to about the guy that they’re fucking who is an asshole. I was the guy they talked to about that.

Judd:
I mainly had that, too. Most of the time that was the situation. I don’t have many road sex stories, either, because I was very uncomfortable with that. But I remember being out on the road—my first road sex story—in San Luis Obispo at some comedy club opening up for Rick Wright.

Jeff:
I remember him.

Judd:
And this nurse hit on me.

Jeff:
Was she wearing her nurse outfit?

Judd:
No, but she was very nursy.

Jeff:
She showed nursing qualities?

Judd:
Yeah, and I’m at the club in the hotel. It’s like the perfect setup. And I thought,
Well, I should do this.
So we went back to my room.

Jeff:
What were you? Like, nineteen? Twenty?

Judd:
I was twenty years old, and I’ll tell you how long the sex was. Okay, ready, and…we’re done. And I think,
Well, I’m young. We’ll just have sex again and the second time will be better.
And…we’re done. And I remember the look in her eyes, the shame. Like,
Why am I fucking this boy? Who can’t even fuck me correctly?
I’m very embarrassed and I remember sitting in bed and watching, on television, while I was praying for a third shot—
Jo Jo Dancer, Your Life Is Calling
was on cable with Richard Pryor. And it was terrible.

Jeff:
You didn’t like it?

Judd:
It was terrible. It’s the kind of thing that puts you on your heels.

Jeff:
You didn’t like the movie, you mean?

Judd:
No, the sex.

Jeff:
Oh, okay, because I got the indication that you didn’t like
Jo Jo Dancer, Your Life Is Calling.

Judd:
Well, there is—

Jeff:
It’s not great. But there’s good stuff in it. And it’s Pryor playing himself, which is awesome.

Judd:
I need to watch it again. But did you ever become the guy trying to get laid after the show?

Jeff:
You know the answer to this one. We were on the road together a lot as young comics. No fucking way did that ever happen to me.

Judd:
How many times did you get laid on the road?

Jeff:
I have someone who keeps track of that for me. Unfortunately they’re not here tonight. Otherwise I could—I’m guessing, I mean, I can think of two. In twenty-nine years.

Judd:
It takes a lot to be a road comic and not get laid.

Jeff:
Yeah, it does. Because you’re surrounded by it. You’re surrounded by girls who would fuck you under normal—if you knew what you were
doing. Anyway. You have two children, and you don’t want another kid, do you? I’m too tired.

Judd:
I have two girls and I think it feels like the right amount with the potential of a very dangerous foster child in my future.

Jeff:
Your daughters, by the way, are so adorable, and talented. When you sit down to write a movie, are you thinking,
I’ve got to have them in it
, or do you start writing and they pop up?

Judd:
I just don’t like other people’s kids and I don’t want to be around other people’s kids.

Jeff:
Let’s take a step back for a second.

Judd:
Yeah.

Jeff:
Okay. Young actors—kid actors—are, for the most part, so frightening. A couple things happen: Number one, the parents come with them. And they’re always scary. It’s all about them, really. It’s like parents of Little League kids—you know how they overcompensate and all that. That’s how it is with stage moms. I’ve had times when a seven-year-old goes, “Oh, I saw your show last night.” “
Curb Your Enthusiasm
?” “Yeah.” And then the mother goes, “He loves it.” Wow. My younger one is eleven and still has never seen it. He won’t see it for a while, either.

Judd:
Why?

Jeff:
Because it’s inappropriate.

Judd:
Eleven? There is literally zero chance that your son is not spending at least one or two percent of his time watching blowjobs on the Internet. It’s impossible. There’s no scenario—

Jeff:
One time my wife and I found—this was like maybe a year ago. He was ten. He had googled “big bosom.” It turned out that his friend told him to.

Judd:
And you think it ended there?

Jeff:
I do.

Judd:
The other day, my daughter said that in the second or third grade, she was so into American Girl dolls that she decided that she wanted to
see what an American Boy doll looked like. And googled “American Boy doll.” And saw—

Jeff:
A penis?

Judd:
Graphic sex.

Jeff:
Graphic sex under “American Boy doll”? I’m just trying to think how that goes together. By the way, you can google the word
candle
and the first thing that pops is—

Judd:
A candle in someone’s ass, yeah.

Jeff:
So I’m thinking,
American Boy doll…I guess there’s a boy, he’s a doll?

Judd:
You think your eleven-year-old can’t handle Susie Essman cursing?

Jeff:
I don’t know if it’s Susie Essman’s cursing as much as “I’m going to fuck the Jew out of you, Larry.”

Judd:
Why is that hurtful?

Jeff:
When did
hurtful
pop up? Did I say I want my children to avoid all hurtful things? No. It’s inappropriate because he’s not quite going to get “I’m going to fuck the Jew out of you.” There’s certain—

Judd:
Why are you underestimating him?

Jeff:
I don’t know. I just, I just tend to—

Judd:
Does he beg you to watch
Curb Your Enthusiasm
? Does he say, “Can I please watch it, Dad?”

Jeff:
The truth is, he doesn’t even want to watch it.

Judd:
Yeah, or he’s seen every episode at his friend’s house. My kids would be like, “No, I don’t want to see
40-Year-Old Virgin.
I don’t want to see
Knocked Up.
” And then it just, like, hit me:
Oh, they’ve already seen it.

Jeff:
You worked with one of my heroes, Albert Brooks.

Judd:
Yes, I did.

Jeff:
So on the first day of shooting, he’s doing a scene and you’re directing, and you’ve got to give him a note.

Judd:
Yes.

Jeff:
What are you thinking? Because I know you love Albert like I love Albert.

Judd:
Well, it’s scary. But the process actually starts much earlier than that. You know, I wrote the part with him in mind and then gave it to him hoping he would do it. It would have been bad if he said no because I put in a lot of time thinking about him in the part, and then a lot of rehearsals so by the shoot, we’re comfortable. I mean, I was still nervous. But it’s not like I’m sweating it out.

Jeff:
Well, if I’m suddenly directing Albert Brooks, it’s going to be a bit freaky in my head.

Judd:
Yeah, well, that is why I do a lot of rehearsals.

Jeff:
Did you do rehearsals just to be calm with Albert?

Judd:
Well, I actually did a lot of rehearsals with Albert because I wanted him to rewrite all of his scenes. We would improvise. I would say throw out the script but get to the same information and then we would play and I would chuck out more ideas.

Jeff:
Did you videotape it?

Judd:
I did. And then he would email me better jokes at night. He’d start thinking about it, like,
What I can say is this.
And so there was a great six-month period of getting pitches from Albert—all of which were great.

Jeff:
So, let me see something here. Oh, you know what? We’re almost at an hour.

Judd:
How long are we supposed to talk?

Jeff:
There’s no “supposed to,” but you know.

Judd:
Like two?

Jeff:
By the way, that’s a question I want to ask you. What do you think about when you hear that Dane Cook or Dave Chappelle do like twelve-hour shows or whatever the hell it is? Have you heard about that?

Judd:
I have, yeah. Never seen it, though.

Jeff:
I haven’t seen it, either. You couldn’t pay—I mean, God bless both of them, but I don’t want to see—

Judd:
Actually, I saw Jim Carrey do that in like ’89 or ’88.

Jeff:
What did he do?

Judd:
We were at the Comedy Store. He’s not megastar Jim Carrey yet, but he’s solidly in the
Living Color
career Jim Carrey, and Sam Kinison comes in and does thirty or forty minutes—you know, an unannounced bump of Jim. “Jim, you have to go on later, Sam Kinison’s here.” And then Andrew Dice Clay comes in and does forty-five minutes and Jim is so mad that he keeps getting bumped and now it’s eleven, eleven-thirty at night and he was supposed to go on at like nine forty-five. So he decides that he is going to go onstage until they have to close the club. And so he does two hours straight, and the comedians are screaming because there are people who were supposed to go on after him.

Jeff:
That’s awesome.

Judd:
It was awesome. I think that was the night he came up with Fire Marshal Bill.

Jeff:
Yeah, because in those moments is where he’d come up with stuff.

Judd:
He started just doing the burnt-guy face and complaining about how all of the electrical outlets weren’t safe and he did that for thirty-five minutes to kill time. It was a great thing to witness.

Jeff:
You came over to my apartment one day, when I was living on Genesee, and you said, “You have to come down to Comedy Magic Club with me tonight, to see Jim Carrey.” And I go, “The guy who does Sammy Davis and stuff like that?” And you’re like, “Yes, but he’s changed everything. He’s going to blow your mind.” You were adamant and so I went and it was ridiculous how great it was and—what was the opening that he did? He did some sort of thing where he pretended to be opening and then kept going and going until—he was Andy Kaufman–like in what he was doing back then.

Judd:
Well, you know, he had done impressions for a long time and then decided that he didn’t want to be an impressionist—but he had no act. So
he would go onstage with nothing, and do a set every night. After a year or two, he developed an act. But for a while, you would see Jim Carrey with nothing go onstage, searching. They were the best shows I’ve ever seen. He was just so interesting.

Jeff:
Okay, here’s the reason I said earlier, “We’ve been here for an hour,” was not to stop things but—

Judd:
I have nowhere to go.

Jeff:
You’re committed.

Judd:
I like to be here until people really want to leave. But that’s kind of how I am as a person. That’s why my movies are too long. That’s why I eat too much.

Jeff:
Where would you find that your movies are too long?

Judd:
Where would you find out?

Jeff:
Do your friends tell you, “Your movie was too long”?

Judd:
Oh yeah, everybody.

Jeff:
Well, a couple of things on that. First off, I remember going to see a screening, an early screening, of
Talladega Nights.
You were there, I think.

Judd:
Yes.

Jeff:
Okay. You were there. It was at Sony. Did you produce that movie?

Judd:
Yes.

Jeff:
Okay. So it’s one of those screenings that you guys do. I found a lot to laugh at, but I had to go to the bathroom at a certain point. So I walk in the bathroom, and there’s Adam McKay.

Judd:
Not watching his own movie.

Jeff:
Peeing. And I said to him, “What is with all these movies being so goddamn long?” And I didn’t realize, I mean I knew that he directed it but I forgot who I was—I was just speaking frankly. And he looked at me like, What? I think all these comedies should be ninety minutes. I remember
when I saw a rough cut of
40-Year-Old Virgin.
I saw like a two-hour-and-forty-minute cut.

Judd:
Yes.

Jeff:
No, I really did, though. I really did. I don’t know if you remember me saying to you, but I told you in no uncertain terms: “Cut it down to ninety and it’ll be a huge hit.”

Judd:
Yeah.

Jeff:
I still wish it was ninety. By the way, loved it. But I would have loved it more at ninety. You know, Groucho Marx came to see Second City one time and I said to him, “Groucho, what did you think of it?” And he goes, “Make it shorter, and make it funnier.” That’s sort of my attitude about comedies. All Woody Allen: ninety minutes or less. You can’t watch a fucking short movie anymore. I understand if—what’s his name, the guy who directed, like,
Lawrence of Arabia
? David Lean? If it’s a David Lean movie—all right, two and a half to three hours. But a comedy should be shorter.

Judd:
I don’t subscribe to that.

Jeff:
I know you don’t. And by the way, I love your movies, I really do. But I would love them more if they were shorter.

Judd:
You’re probably right.
The 40-Year-Old Virgin
, I think, was like an hour and forty-seven. And then I put seventeen minutes back on the DVD, which is a lot. But I like showing people the other things that we did that I was proud of. I feel like people’s attention spans are getting so short that I want to make them suffer.