Blocks w/ Neal Brennan - Judd Apatow

Episode Date: August 31, 2023

Neal Brennan interviews Judd Apatow (The Bubble, This Is 40, Knocked Up, Superbad, Freaks & Geeks, Undeclared + much more) about the things that make him feel lonely, isolated, and like something's wrong - and how he is persevering despite these blocks. ---------------------------------------------------------- 00:00 Chatgpt 1:43 Done Trying to Look Good 5:33 What He Does 18:41 Existential Terror 29:00 Uncomfortable & Neurotic 39:07 Self-Esteem 56:01 Hypervigilance  1:06:57 Workaholism  1:13:49 People Pleasing 1:20:15 His Body 1:27:31 What He’s Done 1:28:39 Movie Question ---------------------------------------------------------- https://nealbrennan.com for tickets to Neal's tour Brand New Neal Watch Neal Brennan: Blocks on Netflix: https://www.netflix.com/title/81036234 Theme music by Electric Guest (unreleased). Edited by Will Hagle ---------------------------------------------------------- Sponsors: GameTime App Code: BLOCKS for $20 off your first purchase https://birddogs.com/Neal or promo code: NEAL for a free YETI style tumbler. https://pavlok.com code NEAL for 40% off any device Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Picture this. You finally get to the party, and it's the usual drinks and small talk. Suddenly, you spot something different. The Bold Seagram 13, a 13% cosmopolitan cocktail. You grab a can and take a sip. Suddenly, you're on a fresh adventure,

becoming the hero of your own night. Unapologetically full-flavored cocktails with a 13% punch. Seagram 13. Dare to make your own luck. Must be legal drinking age. Please enjoy responsibly. Available at the LCBO. Hey, everyone. Neil Brennan. Not going to set up the premise of the podcast anymore, but I guess the question is, do you want to heal the earth? Let's heal the earth.

My guest today is probably the most... I know you don't like who likes superlatives but you've done really well for yourself and you've done really well with other people i'm the jewish neil brennan you are the jewish neil you've done well for yourself you've done well with in collaboration i looked it up on chat gbt have you chat gT'd yourself? No. I have chatGBT app on my phone. I said, what are Judd Apatow's most successful projects? ChatGBT said, Judd Apatow is known for several successful projects, including TV shows like Freaks and Geeks and Undeclared, which is like leading with that. It's interesting.

ChatGBT loves Undeclared. ChatGBT, yeah. The 40-year-old virgin. No! Kelly Clarkson! Knocked up. I'm pregnant. F*** off. Super bad. McLovin? This is 40. Yeah, the 40-year-old virgin. No, Kelly Clarkson! Knocked up. I'm pregnant. F*** off.

Super bad. McLovin? This is 40. The therapist said you're not allowed to judge me. And train wreck. Who's your favorite team? The Orlando... Looms?

He often falls... Falls within the comedy genre and has garnered both critical acclaim and commercial success. I think they should have mentioned... I'll and commercial success i think they should have mentioned i'll tell you what i think they should have mentioned instead of undeclared and freaks and geeks bridesmaids and mckay farrell to me that's what i would have done chat gpt chat gpt is not like the mckay farrell movie which is so weird you would think chat gpt would be all over that shots fired um judd apatow's here

everybody and you were saying earlier uh as we started rolling that you don't you're done trying to look good well this is also part of the podcast world as you show up places and they're like there's a video component now what i'm going to be uh you know walking a red carpet there's a glam team they're trying to figure out how to make this all work visually. You show up on a podcast, you're getting the real stuff. This is what walking around, this is what you look like at work. This is the day. A lot of thigh and black socks and shorts.

This is it. I don't want to say it's beyond Jewish. You know what? It might be beyond Jewish. I can't blame it on Judaism. When I was dressing today, I thought, I think say it's beyond Jewish. You know what? It might be beyond Jewish. I can't blame it on Judaism. When I was dressing today, I thought, I think I'm behind a desk, and so I don't have to wear pants. No, no. But thank you for coming.

Where have you been? I haven't seen you in six months. I've been in London. Oh, yeah, you've been in London. Jimmy Carr told me you were in London. I saw Jimmy Carr there. You have to see him if you're there. Yeah, of course. You have to check in great man and then uh my daughter's uh

mod is in cabaret oh west end oh in london so i went there went to see that eight times did you literally oh yeah going back to see it a few more times when does pride stop kicking in and notes start? When does pride end and notes begin? Never? Maud's made it very clear. My notes are terrible. She's just... Has she chachi PT'd you?

You must have had some good notes. You know what my note is? I just say this to her after every show. I go, ham it up. Ham it up. She's like, please, can you stop saying ham it up? That's the only note I have. Theater is not my thing, so you don't want notes from me.

So she doesn't get any. Maude's the older one? Yes. She's on Euphoria as well? She is. What was your name again? Lexington. And is the younger one an actor as well?

She is an actress as well. Is it? Iris. Iris, yes. She was on Love, the show that we did the all right okay good chat gpt didn't like care for it didn't make it chat gpt loves the bubble the bubble your movie the bubble yeah chat gpt love you had a i also want to say that you have some of my favorite jokes uh you had a good joke about the bubble which is it was less it was on netflix and it was less popular than is

it cake yes and then you watched it you watched is it cake and you're like this is better than the bubble yeah um you also have my favorite joke about men having sex i don't want to botch it do you remember the joke what we're trying to ride the line between. Oh, walking a fine line between impotence and premature ejaculation. That's what being a man having sex is walking a fine line between impotence and premature ejaculation. Women, if you're wondering what it's like for us, Judd nailed it. You also had a great Bill Cosby bit about Bill. You did a Bill Cosby impression, which no one saw coming.

You ever been in trouble with the wife? And Bill Cosby going, was it going to the mailbox to get? It was a bit in Bill Cosby's voice of him going to the end of the driveway every day and hiding the paper so Camille wouldn't know he was in trouble and you did it and it was very funny you did it on uh the tonight show with Jimmy Fallon I wasn't gonna do it I was working on the Fallon set and I was doing that bit but no plan to do it on tv didn't think you could do that and then a few comedians the night before were like oh no you have to you have to do that so i you know the thing with you is i think you

always just get like successful right like just successful and like no one really knows what you do they just know that you're involved in successful things. I've been very, very tangentially involved and seen some of the things you've done. I went to a read-through for Trainwreck that was not good. And then within four months, you guys were shooting and the movie was very good. What did you do? Give me an example of what the when i at the read-through i went to it was very amorphous didn't have good shape didn't have like clear beats i'm assuming that's fairly exemplary of what you've done with people explain to people what that what you do in these situations well i i don't really remember that table read

specifically it wasn't like a awful it was just kind of like man it was like fine yeah i mean so much of it is when it comes to life you know you're with like how how good are the jokes going to work when lebron james is not at the table read yeah so so part of my job is to go don't panic yeah we just had our friend read that. Yeah. And that's going to play differently when LeBron James. You did it, actually. You played LeBron.

You did one of your famous black voices. Oh, yes, exactly. Maybe that's why it bombed at that table. And it was like real 70s-ish. Like, say, baby. You said, say, baby. Say, baby. At the beginning of every one of LeBron's lines.

And it was very offensive. I loved it, personally. You used to be able to. People hated it. You used to be able to. People hated it. I forgot to get the paper! Times have changed. But, I mean, I think for all those things, you're just trying to be very open to criticism.

So, for instance, like, a lot of times people will do a movie and they'll show up for rehearsals, like, two days before they shoot, and they'll do a table read then, and maybe it's the only time they've ever done a table read. So the main thing I did was say, let's do a table read then and maybe it's the only time they've ever done a table read yeah so the main thing i did was say let's do a table read four months before shooting and we will have four months to learn from it and fix it i think most people do that table read the week before and and that's a massive choice just right i totally agree and that's your tv training i'm assuming yes again if you don't know you probably don't know because you're not old ben stiller the movie actor now director uh a ben stiller who's a fucking killer director

uh travis thunder is a near perfect comedy and i would i think you would probably agree with that i'm a dude playing the dude disguised as another dude. You and Ben Stiller created a sketch show called The Ben Stiller Show in 1991. It aired in 92, yeah. Yeah, and it was a great show, and it was canceled, and then you guys won an Emmy. Judd, Molly Madden, Jimmy Miller, everybody who made this possible, thank you. That was your first real organized, that was the first time you played like organized ball right yes and what did you what was that like well here's the funniest thing is now we're talking about the ben stiller show and it's 30 years ago right and so whenever anyone

talks about something that's 30 years ago i always think so if this was the 70s and we were reflecting back to something 30 years ago we're talking about the 40s. I know. Like, you know, like if it's music, it's like, you know, Chuck Berry. Yeah. That always blows my mind. Sinead O'Connor. Sinead O'Connor.

I don't want to tell a joke when there's so much suffering in the world. Is dead. Prince is, I'm just thinking about people that were like popular when the ben stiller show was on oh yeah well that's adam meow dead from the bc but you guys would play the bc boys in the interstitials i remember soundalikes i know they were soundalikes yeah um but uh they had a record that was all just uh instrumental instrumentals it was incredible and so we said oh well let's just do funk music instrumentals yes between everything but with the ben stiller show i met ben online at an elvis costello unplugged concert i was with dana gould and he had met ben before ben had just had a tv show on uh mtv

which was very before larry sanders very land larry sanders ask of behind the scenes of a sketch show and we thought of this idea. And like two weeks later, we sold it. Everyone thought we had been friends for years. And we literally just met. And I had produced some stand-up specials. And not much. My resume looked better than what I had actually learned how to do.

So most of my work with Ben was drafting off of the fact that ben really knew what he was doing yeah i was catching up so where would you say you learned the most when i think of you at larry sanders show it feels like an apprenticeship yes underneath gary right and was still similar not necessarily you and you and ben were closer in age but i'm saying was it because you'd done a tv you did a sketch show and then you hadn't done a narrative and then you started working with gary yes well i mean with ben he had already basically invented what he wanted to do which was uh very cinematic yeah parodies single camera parodies and shoots i mean it's basically what we did on Chappelle's show. Same thing. And he always loved Albert Brooks, those SNL movies, and the films from SNL.

And he always said, this is SCTV if they had more budget. I would also like to give a shout out to Robert Townsend, who did a bunch of HBO specials uh with single camera cutaways we got film clips everything keep your eyes on that monitor the black the beautiful yeah they were great yeah him and keenan were doing amazing things and and so i learned a ton you know watching uh ben but i also had to run the room and i'd never run a room i'd never even been in a room and so there was a lot of writers room of eight people uh yeah and you know that's a bob odenkirk was in that room and so it was a pretty hardcore and we were trying to not do it the way snl did it so you know we would work on sketches till we thought they were ready to shoot where snl reads

them and if they're they don't get on the show it's pretty hard to get them on the show after that sometimes it happens yeah but we were like well let's just keep polishing things so we think they're ready to to shoot and we had a different system that we were working on uh which looking back we lasted one season and snl is about to do 50. So maybe our adjustment of the system wasn't exactly right. Yeah, but that's, I don't think you guys also want to know. But yeah, there are a ton from Ben. What did you get from those places? No, from Ben, a lot about how he was shooting.

So we would do these sketches like Ben doing a parody of Tony Robbins. I am not evil. I am not the devil. Ben would improvise. So we'd write the script and then Ben would go, I'm going to keep going. Well, I'd never seen that. I was in part of Second City or the Groundlings. Yeah.

And we would write extra jokes. And Ben did these sketches where he played an agent, Michael Ferret, like Ferret. And he would pitch projects to people like Roseanne and Tom or run DMC. And sometimes Ben would say, I don't want to say these jokes to their face so we told them we were done shooting they would leave and we would keep going on his single and shoot all these like terrible ideas for their careers yeah and then you're cutting them going exactly yeah and uh and so you know cinematically writing wise editing's kind of, what's funny is that's kind of your, what is like the Apatow style.

Oh, yeah. And it's not my style at all. No, of course not. But it's known as like, well, no, they improvise a lot. Like that's on the Judd movies. You set up for a camera. You basically do what we're doing, which is like a wide and two singles.

I just embraced it in a big way and tried to create a financial situation where people had time to do it. That's your, in the movies and the TV shows. Yeah, to say, of course, Adam McKay came from, you know, being one of the founders of UCB and Second City. He knew how to do all that.

But for me, as a producer of the first movie he directed, I'm trying to make sure that I can help him have time. Yeah. You know, to encourage it and to go, we have enough money to dick around till you riff and play with Will. Yeah. And I did that for myself and for other people to say, this is a style that requires money. I mean, if you're gonna well it's also scheduling it's a which is the same thing and you need money you need to

shoot in this uh if it's 40 year old version you need to shoot in this uh the junk place or whatever like you need eight hours yeah whereas most producers would say three you go let's do eight give me the money, let's schedule. It was the full belief in it. And I had seen, you know, clips of, you know, Paul Reiser and Diner. I knew that he had made up most of his part. Yeah. That they just knew, let's have a funny guy around and we'll play.

And Barry Levinson comes from being in a comedy team. And that had a big effect on me. Like, oh, you can do it that way and i had seen clips on like deleted scenes like you know uh stripes yeah of ramus and bill murray playing tonight we're gonna go out and kill a wild boar i think we should find a hotel room and then when i saw stiller do it and then shanley would do it but he mainly did it either when we shot the talk show or in rehearsals, they would do the scene, but Gary would riff and play and then it would get locked in the script. So the main thing I did was we could continue the thing Gary does in rehearsal while the cameras are rolling. Right.

But Gary wouldn't do it. I guess he would take the best part of the rehearsal and put it in the. Exactly. Sometimes he would, but it was, you know, we were shooting 17 pages a day on film yeah you know on rollerblades on roller yeah with the cameras on rollerblades so you know uh when you do a movie it's like four pages a day yeah and we were doing 17 a day so you couldn't riff too much do you ever find yourself being arrogant i think that would be the trap if i were you yeah i know i mean i have to say that my low self-esteem is the driver for all of it i don't

feel like the success of anything helps the next one work right yeah well you're correct it's all an experiment you could be wrong completely i have been and so i there's there's no place for for that maybe in uh the protecting the process right you may evoke your credit to be like you know on 40 year old virgin when yeah you have to to go i don't want to screw this up so if someone says you know can you do it for this budget? Can you change this thing? If it's really wrong, you try to protect what your vision is of it. But secretly,

I don't know if any jokes going to work. I mean, part of the reason why I overshoot is a million times, whether I've done it or watching McKay do it, the thing that everyone talks about is the weird thing that will ferrell said like whatever milk was a bad choice milk was a bad choice i don't remember who thought of it but it wasn't in the script yes what's your favorite i guess we don't have i was gonna say what's your your favorite pitch of yours in anything that you can that off the top of your head oh a favorite pitch

or a joke oh my god i don't know i mean i have to say when we made the bubble i found fred armisen to be so funny it brought me so much joy to watch him riff and i also realized that if i didn't yell cut he would never stop he would go for 20 minutes and he would never like look at the camera and go is that enough yeah and so one of the most fun I ever had was just like I wanted him to be like cursing because all the actors are escaping the set and of the dinosaur movie they're shooting and just telling Fred to just curse because he's never cursed the whole movie and just fucking shit like and seven minutes of fred riffing frustrated cursing man i mean that's like why i'm in the business it's two witness things the one i always remember

was uh mckay uh directing will and there was a scene where he gets punched in the face, I think by Rudd in Anchorman 2. And they just rift reactions to getting punched really hard. And at one point, McKay pitched to him, react like it made you go back, regress to where you're like four years old. You're hit so hard, you're four years old you're hit so hard you're four years old and it was just like punch and then will's just like

you're like whatever it was or and then mckay is like react like you got hit so hard that you can speak spanish and you know watching mckay and will no i know mckay has a gear that i've never seen yeah no one can do this where you're just like jesus christ um all right let's do uh judd apatow's blocks oh boy this is great number one existential terror yes what are you afraid of son i feel like my existential terror has gotten a little better like as you get older you're like wouldn't be that bad to die yeah you know you you know what the thing that people underrate with suicide it's a bit of like i don't have to take this shit you know what i mean it's the like life is so relentless and you're like you know i could end this it's a little bit empowering that was a line that owen wilson pitched when we wrote a script together in the 90s.

We were writing a movie for him and Rip Torn. And one of the lines he wrote for Rip was, sometimes the best thing you can say about life is you can end it whenever you want. And I don't mean it in the sense of a suicidal way. I just mean, like I saw this japanese chiropractor you know eastern medicine person the level of doctor this guy's at you've met it's not insurable it's brettwood only this is a cash situation yeah it's you've met you don't even look it up guys you can't it's word of mouth and you gotta find her yeah you gotta know like people

that you can't believe someone would know but as i'm getting acupuncture or something i just said to her like how do you not be afraid of death these are the conversations i have and she said uh you know you're supposed to be afraid of death you know when you're young you're supposed to be afraid of death and that's what your life is and you're trying to achieve and accomplish and have this life. And then she said, you'll see as you get older, it slowly dissipates. And I have found that in a healthy way that I understand what that is. You have a youthful madness and energy, which I always think about in terms of early in my career and all my friends, the madness of thinking that you might succeed.

Like the, the self belief that was completely unjustified. There was no proof. There was no evidence that it would work out. It's like a feel. It's like a mania. Yes. Or like this,

this hope that borders on mania. Yeah. And this, like, if I succeed, if you and Ben make a tv show that works you'll never have another problem it's oh like you're set that's what i remember it was like this thing of like if it it everything would takes care of itself it's like i used to watch kobe bryant when

he first got to the lakers i had season tickets and he just missed so many shots. And you would watch him and he was 18, 19 years old and he didn't care. It was just a part of him that was like, I'm going to figure this out. And then he did. And I watched him figure it out over a part of him that was like i'm gonna figure this out yeah and then he did and i watched him figure it out over you know a couple of years but he had that madness of this is gonna all work this plan of having the courage to keep taking risks yeah it'll work and that's what i look back and see with young people i know now i I think we're built to go for it and believe anything is possible. And then you get older and people get retreats and they get more scared.

Yeah. People make less movies and they slow down or they question what they're doing. But there's something really wonderful about being in your 20s and being, you know, like a young tarantino lunatic making reservoir dogs or yeah paul thomas anderson making boogie nights yeah all right so what's the existential is it has it gotten how did it get better you'd think just time i know i my parents weren't religious at all but they didn't replace it with anything they never said we don't believe they didn't even said they never even said we don't believe in god yeah it was not discussed ever did you see you but you would see it in movies right and go like what i mean oh god was out oh god i thought you didn't believe in me that's just an expression i loved oh god i was hanging on to oh god for dear life i wanted

george burns to be god so it you had nothing so i have nothing and also in that period there was a an enormous amount of terror about russia so in the you know the reagan years early 80s they were scaring us into thinking a nuclear attack was going to happen at any moment yes so that along with no religion no spirituality it's not like someone was explaining buddhism to me or reincarnation or anything that would just became a gaping hole that it's taken a lifetime to try to fill it with something what is the when you think is it the the however long the death sequence is is it or is it the nothingness that you're afraid that will follow it it's funny because i have a nothingness fear but i also if you said

you can live forever that's scarier to me the idea of that so there's no pleasing you there's no pleasing me i'm screwed either way why would that i used to want to live forever what why does that scare you the enormity of it uh it's just too much oh that's interesting there is something structural about death that pleases the human psyche gets you off your ass and you know since then you know i've read a lot of buddhism and i'm interested in all of those ideas and i'm certainly not settled but i i probably have calmed down a lot compared to to what it was how would it man would it be like panic attacks dread yeah yeah absolutely just like just when it got quiet it was not really handleable for me.

So only through meditation that I find a place in quiet and with myself that was manageable. But for a long time, it was like, keep your brain thinking about anything but that. And that also drives workaholism and comedy and the absurdity of life. And isn't it weird? We care about these things. And so in a lot of ways, it's what all the comedy is about. It,

and more staving off death or the fear of it. The absurdity of all of it. Just like none of this makes sense. Yeah. The standards are absurd. I can't believe men and women are supposed to get along. Yeah. Everything.

Yeah. Like, can we die? And then you you did you fucking disintegrate this is the setup for all of it yeah and so you know for me that that's what drives everything is i just like i can't believe that these are the situations that's why most of my movies are not very imaginative because i don't need thank you thank you for saying that i'm that i don't really need it i i really feel like things are so bizarre that just trying to get along with anybody is ridiculousness i will say i would like to commend you your the thing about your movies at the scale you were

doing them in the 90s movies like me and dave manhattan but they were all sort of like premise-y yeah sandler movies of that you worked on i think a little bit they were very premise-y yeah they were very like i got a i'm a crazy golfer the cable guy okay or yeah you made the cable guy the cable guy is pretty a little real it's basically just like an obsession movie yes right it's unlawful entry or hand that rocks the cradle yes as a comedy right and but that's a premise i mean it was that's a premise but then you're then it just became like knocked up i gotta gotta go pregnant or 40 year old virgin did that feel premacy well i think it was a premise that was steve krell's idea from a sketch he had been playing around with but never really completed at second

city and then we both said what if we took it very seriously and it wasn't a premise movie past the name yeah and the poster and the look is a little like the mentos yeah it's based on the mentos ads that's the look yeah because they were mentos ads without those colors and but there's also the eye line that was the novelty of your movies your posters was the eye line that it was the class picture day whose idea was that i uh was it somebody in marketing yeah i think uh it was the universal marketing great maybe it was maria pecker of skaia who we worked with on it and the uh i believe art striber shot that photo and but i asked someone about it because i wasn't there when they shot it and i'm like was it hard to get that look from steve and like no he nailed a hundred yeah

once they pitched it it was like yeah yeah but your they movies were premise here and then you started making movies like it's just this is 40 or or even train wreck is just like i'm a girl with a drinking problem relationship or bridesmaids my favorite one in that that the reason i love bridesmaids is because that's a real problem that women have when they get married it's like who's getting attention in the party and all that stuff and and what kristen wigg and annie mummelo who wrote it were interested in was what do you do when like your friends are doing better than you and you can't even afford to attend the events around these relationship successes they're having and how bad it makes you feel and how it makes you look at your life about you know how how you're doing are you behind everybody else but that's the i would add besides improv which you invented um i would i would add that as like your a big

contribution as like real real problems in movies not i have to save my mom yeah from the senior center so i'm gonna golf like a crazy person like and or half-baked or whatever like uh so um but you know i've done those movies too yeah of course you have but you've done more of the real ones i would argue yeah it's a little bit more my wheelhouse which a lot of it is from you know the people i loved as a kid james brooks and norman lear and mary levinson people like that that's what i kind of understand more because i'm so uncomfortable and neurotic that i see all these little moments as like high stakes yeah just general you know we're having a baby what do we do you know to me well that's that's enough that's that's as much of a premise as someone

trying to murder us yeah well i see it as the baby is going to murder your lifestyle yeah yeah so right that's what that's what that movie's about so yeah well that's great that's great that you've been able to turn the terror into into uh work right yeah i mean there's something so unhealthy about it the idea of being uh i think what it does is it makes you feel like there's safety in accomplishment and safety and having a job yeah and being good at what you do and not being uh irresponsible in your job or with your finances you know that's the the neurosis of it is uh i don't want anything to get fucked up so i'm going to really think years ahead and every detail i'm going to game out what could go wrong here and what can i do right now years in advance to avoid that problem you're when you say years

in advance what are you talking about it could be anything it could be uh you know say it's like it's a movie and you know before you've written it you're already thinking about like what would the trailer be you know why would anyone go to this who would need to be in it what budget would i need what budget would allow it to be successful how many days might i need to to shoot it and just like everything that would wreck it trying to figure it out you're already worried about it yeah and do you have a clear memory of doing that with something everything i mean i don't think there's an exception so ford over virgin yeah anchorman knocked up like you you were like is you would game out like is will a big enough stuff like all that stuff like do i who do i

need to put with will ferrell well that's you know that was a script that they had that they asked me to to jump on they had been trying to get it made for a while and uh they weren't able to and so it was just like a a growing team of we know there's an amazing movie here how can we get this set up yeah and i think for every movie you know the funny thing about movies is in order to you know get them made you have to really be able to tell people while they'll why they will succeed yeah and that was a funny one because no one got it for a long time and i remember someone almost made it and they were like well why why does anyone want to see an anchorman? And we're like, well, it's not that.

It's an excuse to talk about, you know, sexism in the workplace. And we didn't use the words, but it was toxic masculinity. And it's a way to do the jerk. You mean I'm going to stay this color? We're basically trying to do movies like that. But people would talk themselves out of it like but no one's ever gone to an anchorman comedy right we yeah we did it we ran the numbers and there have they're the only newsroom would be news news uh what was albert brooks one broadcast news broadcast news broadcast but they were like

hey no one went to that robert redford michelle pfeiffer journalist so fun so a lot of it is that you have to be able to sell somebody on the potential for it to be successful yeah and and and that's gaming it because you're trying to explain to them like here's why they will go yeah like will is a movie he's on saturday night live and generally speaking people inside live become movie stars. Yeah, it was. You did have to explain it. Before you and McKay, the people that made comedy movies were not funny.

They just were like, they liked comedy, kind of. But they were like producers. And then they go like, you're supposed to be funny. What are you? And then, but you guys were the first. I guess Ramis didn't really produce though uh ramus wasn't a producer yeah maybe ivan reitman but he didn't really produce that much besides himself but you guys felt like the first people who would bring in funny people to make

funny movies and before that it was like a lot stuffier yeah i mean i'm trying to think about what changed because everyone from our generation loved those movies you know we all loved ghostbusters and stripes and i think the first movies that kind of before us that were big hits was like wedding crashers and you know there's clerks and swingers you know so things were beginning to happen where they were clues to which way to go. There were all the giant Jim Carrey movies. And Adam, too.

And the Sandler movies were getting bigger and bigger. And I just thought, how can you do a Jim Carrey set piece comedy, but also have grounded, credible emotions? Can you do both? Can you do Barry Levinsoninson and shady act combined yeah and that was with 40 virgin what was in my head can i do the big can i chest wax him and believe he's a real person yeah that's i yes i would argue that that is your what you did which is excellent thank you you. You're welcome. Enjoy the money. Hey, everyone. You know how I get how I don't like inconvenience. I don't like disrespect. I like pebble smooth experiences.

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I just changed what he said. I think he said, what's good? Lauren Hill's coming. No comment. Ed Sheeran, comment, seems nice. Started busking in the subway. So no one ever tells the story. Game time is the place for last minute ticket deals.

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You won't want to take your bird dogs off. We promise you wore them recently on the plane and they were great. Plane pants, bird dogs.com slash Neil self-esteem, self-esteem. You don't got it. Self-esteem is a great motivator as well. I mean, it's like what you said about not being arrogant but i think it's the beginning you know it's for me at least it's you know it's the the seed of comedy which is you feel out of place you feel less than but you're also angry about it. You're like, fuck you a little bit.

Fuck you. You're wrong about me. Yeah. No, I'm a bad athlete. You people only care about who is a good athlete. Yeah. And so now I'm some loser because I can't play basketball. Yeah.

And so I need my own thing, which, you know, for me and for all our friends, like it becomes comedy. Like, can I have a little piece of something that no one else is interested in? And maybe I can be good at that. And maybe you won't even care that I'm good at that, but maybe the world will care. No one in my high school was also interested in comedy. So I thought, well, maybe I can get this job because there's literally no one in my grade of 500 people that has any interest. think that's different now i'm sure there's a lot of people but the job you were interviewing comedians in high school yeah

was that the job you're talking about no the idea of just working as a performer or writer that wow everyone wants to be a lawyer or a sportscaster no one wants to write for saturday night live you got it you went to usa right yeah and when you went there for film school were you like oh wow there's other kids that even like movies the way you do yeah but even more so when i came out and i had done a little teeny bit of stand-up in high school and i went to places like the la cabaret and the laugh factory and its earliest you know creepiest carnation when it was just like this tiny little narrow space i met all these people and i went oh my god this is like the me from every high school in the country yeah i used to say it was like the

the b video from blind melon like here here's everyone i dreamed existed yes and i didn't i never had a friend like that yeah it's an amazing moment i had that moment in when i started writing for singled out on mtv and i was like these guys were they we were talking about things we'd all noticed on tv and no one had ever i never met anyone that noticed that before and same thing with dave when we did when i worked the door to comedy i was was just like, Oh wow. These it's so fucking cool. You know who Steve Coogan is. Uh huh. Yeah.

Yeah. It's like that. And so, you know, that obviously it's the moment when your self-esteem rises. Cause you realize, Oh, I'm not crazy.

I'm not just some weirdo. And then you're validated for having an interest that people care about. And then you start performing and writing and you get more validation. But the original seed of it is I'm not like everybody else. And I think at some point this will pay off. I don't, I hope it will. It seems like it might. But for me, especially like we're talking 1984, the comedy scene was tiny so i thought there's

only like 100 comedians in the world so yeah i could be number 101 i've noticed within myself that there you do projects to try to like let's see if i'm gonna you know help myself or just give me myself a jolt right yeah but you start having more jolts in you like your baseline goes up generally speaking like i can only criticize myself so much at this point and i wonder someone who's more successful than me have you found that your baseline in general is higher than it was 30 years ago baseline of my self-esteem like you go yeah you chat gbd you're like oh yeah i've done enough i've done a bunch of shit well yeah i mean can you talk yourself out of it at this point i think you'd have to be crazy to talk yourself

out of being talented at this point yeah i mean i think when i was younger you know when you when you first started doing well there are your friends really support you there some people are like annoyed and don't think that you have done anything right or you deserve it or whatever yeah yeah and there's all this there's you know not a lot but like some people you go oh the fact that it's beginning to go well for me is really bothering them and that's a tough thing because we're all insecure yeah and and some of those people evolved out of that but there was definitely that moment of like the fuck is he doing like yeah he's not good what is what's happening and so i was always proud that over time there's a relative

consistency to the fact that like most of the work is decent and the stuff that doesn't work is like a noble try right you know so that gives me self-esteem like it wasn't a fluke over two years like i'm i'm you know okay at this uh and that helped my self-esteem but at the same time you know the world is changing there's new people there's new people coming in there's new styles you have to worry about irrelevance you could just go yeah even the idea of trying to keep it going is enough to make your self-esteem drop which by the way that self-esteem drop is the thing that makes you work your ass off yes and like when we did the george carlin documentary me and michael bonfiglio the thing that i loved that we noticed was the reason why george carlin evolved was first because cheech from cheech and shong made fun of

him saying he was corny and just doing jokes about peas and then later on he watched sam kinnison and said i don't want to be like breathing this guy's dust and so in two moments he just redoubled his efforts to be really good yeah and so i i do feel like that kind of self-esteem issue at least in your business life yeah uh can force you to work harder and dig deeper yeah i i mean that that is the defense of low self-esteem it's like well no it's gonna it the the good part in terms of output is that these containers are very faulty they can be like colanders in terms of like the self-esteem drops out and the other idea that like in life you get used to shit very quickly you get used to like getting nominated for things or getting money you're getting and then you just go like your hierarchy of worry the things change but the amount of worry doesn't yeah you're getting and then you just go like your hierarchy of worry the things change but

the amount of worry doesn't yeah you're just still you still have a certain amount of worry that you have to channel into something yeah and it's also how much of my life self-esteem is connected to that you know there's how much of it is well luckily like in life most people don't care about it at all right so so it's not connected to to that what do you think people care about in life when you say they don't care about it what do you think people are you talking it's not your kids because you work with your kids yeah but your family doesn't care or your wife you work your wife. Their judgment of you is not about that. The people you care most about, it's not about that at all. It's just like, are you a good person?

Are you a loving parent? What do you feel? Okay, what are those standards? I mean, for me, it's like as I tried to evolve as a sane person, a lot of this stuff, I back to gary because you know the whole of spirituality a lot of it was filled by gary talking about buddhism with me i would also like to pause here and say that the carlin documentary and the gary documentary they're both on hbo max or whatever they're calling it now are two of the best if you want to feel like a comedian there are some montages of notebooks

that gary wrote some things that i've almost verbatim written in his notebook uh that i'd written on my like that and steve martin's first three pages of born standing up i think are the best if you want to know what it's like these are the best examples i've ever seen yeah gary had these journals and i think they were mainly messages to himself i always saw his journals as him talking himself off the ledge so even though you might read it and think oh these are like positive motivational things like be more loving be open don't live in your ego he's only writing it because the thing he's not writing is the exact opposite like that's the response to the bad thoughts yes and you know for me in a nutshell that's what i'm trying to do

on some level which is go well what am i shooting for i'm shooting for you know like that the scene with the ram das is talking to me and gary in the documentary and he just says you know, like the scene with Ram Dass is talking to me and Gary in the documentary. And he just says, you know, it's all just loving awareness, you know, being a kind person, living in your heart and not in your head. And if I can get closer to that, you know, it's a slow, hopefully continuous journey, then I feel better about myself and hopefully I'm doing a better job with people is that from inside or from outside is it you saw a look from leslie or maude or iris about like where you were like oh i'm fucking up and i need to be better or was it

i'm unhappy generally i'm anxious i'm whatever and i need a better way to exist well it's both i mean i think the people around you are always signaling when you're off track uh and you notice it but the general work is like a daily practice of making those reminders what's most important in your life like the thing i like about buddhism is they talk a lot about a beginner's mind like in every moment can you be completely open and not bring your story and your theories and actually hear people and experience what's happening so the reminder of that is a game changer if you remind yourself but you might forget about it for five months

and then one day you open up and go oh i forgot about that whole beginner's mind concept yeah i know it's so it's so funny i want to do a thing i feel like we're a few years away from it but i want all of my house to be led walls and i want reminders yeah like beginner's mind, but I, you need to sequence it. So it's not just you. I can't tune it out. Do you know what I mean? Yeah. Like maybe 10 of them.

Like, don't forget beginner's mind. Like I have a checklist before I go on stage of like things like, don't forget you have to do this. And I, I don't think we're rare in that. We need constant reminders. Yeah.

And that's what the channeling journals are. And so for me, as someone who got to read all of them, to be in like one of your close friends, mine, your mentors, like, oh, this is from the 70s. This is what he was thinking had a profound impact on me. Both the wise aspects and here's where he fell short here's where he struggled here's yeah well i mean the thing that you hint at more with gary than carlin was like gary could be a bad guy from like anecdotally it's not in the you guys kind of hint at it but

like he could be a fucking asshole well we tried we tried to show it. And that always comes from Gary slipping like, oh, he is living in his ego. He is being competitive or jealous. So the way I tried to show that in the documentary was this sequence with Ricky Gervais. So Ricky Gervais and him have this plan where Gary wants to interview him for the DVD extras for the Larry Sanders show. And Ricky's doing a show where he's interviewing his comedy heroes and they decide that they're going to do it on the same day. They'll do both, both interviews.

And Gary tells Ricky or Ricky's people just don't go in my house. I'm what, you know, I'll let you know when I get home and then we'll set up. And I guess he got home and like, it's fully set up, you know, in the backyard the crew's there and gary for some reason feels really violated by yes it's an incredibly strange

sequence in your it's just you don't know what's happening i've never met uh ricky before so this is actually uh real uncomfortable yeah and but it's very revealing of that side of Gary. Yeah. It just, he feels violated and we don't know what happened. We don't know why it happened. It could have been a miscommunication that Gary doesn't know anything about. It doesn't mean Ricky Gervais did anything wrong.

I doubt he was just like, let's trick him and get in the house. Right. So it's mainly in Gary's mind that he's wasn't listened to. Yeah. So it's hit some nerve, but then how Gary handles it is by just, uh,

trying to create a very awkward moment. Cause the cameras are already rolling when he walked in the house. And it's almost like on some level, he's like, you want to see what awkwardness is like. You think you're the awkward guy. Let's go. Let's see how awkward you can get. Which is artistic and funny but also cruel right i didn't know people got it in the doc

because to me the point of putting in the doc wasn't to give ricky gervais a hard time it was to show this is what it was like when gary turned on you right and it's rough and And then Gary, you know, he would, he justifies it as almost like an art experiment. Yeah. But, or he's teaching Ricky something, but really I think it's hostile. Yeah. For the most part.

He looks, there's a shot of Gary. I remember from the kitchen where he kind of looks deranged. Yeah. He looks like he's having some kind of mental, something's happening, a darkness that I don't, it seems like he didn't turn it on you very much

but he saw but he did turn it on people we know that was like seeing his wounds like yeah there's the wound gary's incredibly giving person uh amazing person but for all of us if if you walked into us at the wrong moment and you saw the pain the thing that we struggle with the most that's what that yeah looks like yes and yeah i don't want to say this like i've never felt like but there are moments where i recognize that look of like oh that must be what i seem like yeah when i get violated or feel shitty or whatever or maybe it's the same look when you give gary a script for larry sanders hates it. Yeah. And in his head, what he's, he doesn't want to be cruel, but all he's thinking is I'm so tired and now I have to fix it. Yeah. And now I hate you.

Yeah. Cause I'm too tired and I don't even know if I can. And if the show's bad, I hate myself. Yeah. Like, like you're walking into that spiral yeah you know if the show's bad i i don't exist anymore yeah and we know that from some of our friends their standards are high and their self-esteem is so important that when they think it's going down well yeah it's a weird thing where they're letting you into this sacred process it's so touch and go self-esteem wise and they're going like can you help me and you people like you and i are want to help them just want to for a myriad reasons but we want to help them and then if if it's not if we can't then we feel fucking awful yeah and but they they feel worse yeah because they're the one

who has to jump out of the plane because the stakes are so high yeah it's not like it's okay if this episode's not good most of them are good i'm not worried about this one yeah it's like the whole thing goes down yeah with the quality dropping or the humiliation of being in something that you're not proud of that you can't stand behind and it's funny because when i was reading the journals i was like this is pretty good because there's nothing negative about me i worked with him for many years you know and then at the end of one page it was he made a list of everyone who had let him down that year and i was number two and i think i let him down because i left

the larry sanders show to shoot the cable guy right and i didn't i know he never told me he was upset about it i just got a movie greenlit did you ask him or did you just say like it was just assume i wasn't i wasn't the showrunner i was just like a staff writer i don't even think it mattered if i was there or not uh and so I don't think anyone really escaped that sensitivity, but I've been there where like things are falling apart and you get really mad at someone and you're like, wow, that's way too angry.

But it's that panic of failure. Yeah. If someone in this job is upset, it's because they're about to fucking bomb yeah because they counted on other people and they and they failed them yeah uh hyper vigilance this goes to your three-year planning of everything right or yeah in a general um what is the difference between being present and in the moment and not it is hypervigilance hypervigilance is a definition of being out of the moment if i'm sitting here with you scanning

right and i'm scanning i'm going like i wonder do i look terrible in this thing i wonder what clip neil's gonna put online on instagram fine but i'm saying i'm saying i've been doing that also yeah is that not part of being a person it is but there is a version of it which is just you know where you really feel like i'm just missing things like you know letterman did some interviews in recent years i i think one of them was on marin and he just said you know i feel like i missed a lot of the fun of the show because i was so worried about the show yeah and and that's what it is it's like are you missing out on life because you're worried about some other aspect of life yeah like can you really drop everything and be present right now yeah there's a thing that david

milch always said to me creator of uh nyp people yeah and and deadwood and co-creator with stephen bochco if we're going to get the credit let's go this relates in some ways but he would always say don't ever think about writing when you're not writing it's a complete waste of time to go oh when am i gonna write How is it going? The pressure to deliver. He goes, it's all wasted energy. It doesn't get you anywhere. He's like, only think about writing while writing.

Just get your ass in the chair, do your writing, and then don't think about it at all. He said, it's like talking about going to the gym. He's like, are you at the gym? No, it doesn't mean anything anything it's just a wasted energy and stress and i think that's what about ideas though well you have things come up i mean i i disagree with an aspect of it which is i feel like it as uh you know stand-up people or comedy people we have a little radar open at all times for something funny yes which is a different thing maybe but i i do get what

he's saying which is you could torture yourself about i didn't write today i wonder if i'll write tomorrow i'm gonna go in you know what i do have your breakfast today i got tired so i didn't write what what does that do except ruin whatever moment this is yeah you are you well i guess you did go see uh cabaret eight times i was gonna say are you like a helicopter parent do you worry a lot well that's not helicoptering as much as i really enjoy it i enjoy seeing what everyone in the cast is doing because the show is pretty remarkable and it just brought me an enormous amount of pleasure to see it i don't have anything to give to it. I'm actually just taking from it.

And what's that feeling of watching Maude do it? What is it feeling? Well, I'm just very proud that she can do it, that she has the courage to do it. I'm proud of her level of commitment. I think about the entire journey of her whole life to get to the place where she's that skilled uh and that she could be that open and risk-taking as a as a performer anything that's good about maude i credit leslie yeah i think am i right let's give her 80 percent like like talent but i don't but what do you what do you think is you i don't know mean, for Leslie, I think she, she, uh, in terms of performance always talked about commitment. Oh, always talked about the only thing that's embarrassing is when you're not committed. That's interesting,

which is something I still can't even learn. Yeah. Uh, but, uh, from me, yeah, I don't know. I don't know. I mean, I, I, mean i i had you know my kids in movies from the time they were like tiny and i think they got comfortable being in front of people and expressing themselves expressing yourself was valued and so i think over the course of many years and we didn't do that many things it set in like this is a good thing to do it's good to make art it's good to connect with. It's good to connect with people. It's good to take these types of risks. That thing about not committing is embarrassing.

It's great. Yeah. Right. Like when you see someone and they're a half out of the scene and you know, they're thinking about, is this going well or not? Yeah. I mean,

it's the same as what I'm talking about for myself, but you could see it in certain actors that they're not gone. Like some people you see them, they are just gone. Yeah. And that's a real skill. I think you and I, let's take this as an example, are worried about being boring as comedians. It's like, are we, am I fucking boring or podcasts like fucking boring? Cause it's not that jokey.

It's not the pace. It's not like the thing. So I think a little bit of taking yourself out of it i think you owe it to other human beings to ask yourself every once in a while am i being boring yeah and i don't think it's like it it's counter to uh being present that's a big lesson too uh in terms of stand-up that when i pay attention to it i do better which is it's okay to not get some laughs if it's all interesting if the ideas are interesting people will stay involved if you have something new to say or or deep to say and i always have to remind myself of that like that's what takes me out of terror of not getting the laugh because hey this might be enjoyable to watch even if some of these things

aren't scoring yet yeah well that's bernie mack i think told godfrey like you don't have to kill the whole time you just kind of have to it has to be like you and interesting the whole time you know when you think about like who's who we've lost that you miss you wish they were out there making stuff i always think about bernie mac but i always think patrice but it's the same it's kind of the same thing and and there's a lot of those people but bernie mac you go oh man we needed more bernie mack yeah well he didn't he i don't he didn't have that much film material yeah that's the other thing whereas patrice had has a good amount and if you dig online for patrice stuff there's great stuff yeah and you could go i'm gonna watch an old opium anthony with patrice and he's talking for two hours like there's a lot of stuff patrice

was great at being fucking rivetingly interesting yeah even if you don't know what the fuck he's talking for two hours. Like there's a lot of stuff. But Patrice was great at being fucking rivetingly interesting. Yeah. Even if you don't know what the fuck he's talking about. And it's incredibly misogynist. And you're like, it's I, he at least believes it or believes it that day. Or thinks it's funny.

Yes. Or things is fine. Correct. Um, and the, what do you do with the hypervigilance? It, I'd also like to say,

I'm sure it's helped you. Oh, absolutely. And I think that's why it's hard. Because when you're hypervigilant as a producer, you're a good producer. But if you go home and you're still in that head, you're out of the moment. How did you learn to put the sword down? I mean, I think it's a lifelong quest. You know, there are times where you're like, okay, when I get home take a shower i'll try to end the day yeah or i'll do tm or you know how

do i not care but i feel like it's i did work hard on it and then it also naturally happened that i just thought i'm really accomplishing nothing by thinking about what happened on the set today and how much could i reduce the amount of time i think about it yeah to be here with the kids because i when my kids were born i would sit sit with them they'd play on the ground and in my head i'm just like how come they don't like that script and the studio and you and it takes a while to go oh this is ruining this but but when it you feel like the survival of your family is based on that you're going to figure out how to make it work uh it's hard to drop because you really feel like it's part of your parenting to be able to make a living. Yeah. To provide for them. Yeah. So, so that's just a lifelong quest to quiet the mind,

right? Like, and what good do I get out of it? Yeah. It's, and it is hard because it did help a lot. Yeah. But it didn't help me playing with blocks.

The podcast. There you go. Okay. You know that I mentioned on the blocks special on Netflix that I wore a thing called a Pavlok. It's a way to incentivize behavior within yourself because we all know these bodies are hard to control. You can set it to vibrate or shock you a little bit with a little electric that's aggravating, but memorable in that you will change your behavior like about a month ago I kept pulling on my beard and I wore the Pavlok for a few days and whenever

I would pull on my beard I would shock myself and your body intuitively knows to stop pulling your beard it's basically like a great way to help yourself. It's really good if you're a heavy sleeper. It'll wake you up. It'll vibrate on your wrist. It'll shock your wrist. It's also got just like a regular alarm, and it's got a clock built in. You can't see it, but it's whatever, through the app.

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at checkout that's pavlok p-a-v-l-o-k.com and use code n-e-a-l to save 40% off and pre-order your shot clock max at pavlok.com slash max today pavlok i'd stand by it i guarantee it workaholism yeah it's the same thing and that's a different thing for me which is like you know the safety of i can eat you know is a big is a big thing just from coming from a background parents who had financial problems at different times where i just thought oh you better be on your game you don't want to have to deal with any of this and also i think you know you get a certain satisfaction from work going well that you got i we get a lot from comedy dude yeah identity purpose meaning like i'll and then money and all that other shit. But more than anything, it's that like-minded people and similar goals and all that stuff.

When you think about workaholism, are you trying to... Obviously, addiction is trying to get away from a feeling. Is the feeling you're trying to get away from the like general existential dread you know it's hard for me to know like when i was a kid i really got a kick out of just 1970s show business and i think as you know whatever struggles i was having it could be solved by don rickles on the mike douglas show i just got an enormous amount of joy and in my mind i probably created a this perfect wonderland of hollywood where bob newhart was hanging out with frank sinatra and the mandrell sisters and so that became a goal like this will solve your problems can you enter that world it'll be it'll be safe there yeah and then feeling like you have to serve it by

doing a good job like oh i'm, I'm going to get kicked out. Yeah. If I'm not doing a good job. Of this thing that saved me. Yeah. And so what I always think about is what does healthy creativity look like? What is the reason to write? What is the reason to make a movie? What is the reason to do stand-up?

And it sounds corny, but if in your head you think, well, it's healthy for me to tap into creativity. I think that it's as close as I get to thinking about God as just the, you know, whatever, universal intelligence. Just where does it come from? Like there's something fascinating about that any idea pops into your head, which I like. But also that it's a gift to people, you know, for you to share your story and your pain and turn it into comedy. Uh, it helps people and it makes them happy or it makes them feel less alone. Yeah.

Or it helps them figure out ways that they can navigate. They can draw strength from it. You know, we've done specials with Gary Goldman and Chris Gethard about, you know, their mental health challenges and issues with depression and they would get tens of thousands of uh emails and posts saying this is i needed this so desperately yeah and it really helped me i'm sure you yeah as well and that i think is i

got 11 000 yeah i think that's creativity at its best and its purest. It's a giving gesture and a loving gesture. And, you know, the other side of, like, ego, paying for shit, liking yourself, I think it's fine. It's just the proportion could be better. You know, the more... Like, if I think about, no, I'm doing this this to say something i kind of do a better job most of the time and do you feel like you're tricking yourself into telling yourself like no this is yeah it's probably half bullshit but that's fine as long as you get there as long as you know if i

think about uh you know like surprisingly the the movie that people walk up to me about the most is this is 40 that's the one that people talk to to me about the most is this is 40. That's the one that people talk to me about all the time because it's just, here's how we're doing. How, how are you doing? You know? And that's, what's, uh, meaningful to me. And I think it connects deeper with people because they, they sense it like, yeah, you know, I'm sharing something to help you out. And it's not just me sharing, like, you know, it's made up. It's the ideas of everyone in it. It's,

you know, things that we've noticed about our friends. Yeah. Things we've noticed about ourselves. But I think people sense the offering, like, how are you doing? You know?

And because people walk up to me and they're like, oh my God, that's the movie we watch all the time. And I'm like, why do they watch it all the time? There there there's something about it that they're relating well it's like the there's a thing the the level something emanates in you is the level it travels to and other people so it's like the most personal arguably thing you've done or one of and then that's and it's from like the realest deepest level and then it

travels that's where it goes to another people yeah which is fucking great that would be the upside of workaholism i mean like or or what you're saying is if you do things for the right reason they'll be received for the right reason yeah and i also think that workaholism you know implies um trying to escape something with the work that you're self medicating. Right. Uh, you know, so you're having a bad day,

so you just want to hang out at the common store all night, which isn't always the worst thing. But I think that, uh, there is healthy, super hard work. That's not demented and dysfunctional. And so it's like,

can you try to get it to be that and not an avoidance of yourself or something? You know, like if you made a movie cause you just wanted to leave the house, that's the wrong reason to do it. Have there been moments where you're like, I'm fucking up? Oh yeah.

Like with them, just like you're producing too many things, you're shooting too many things you're shooting too many things and you go like why am i doing like this is i need to take a week off or i need to yeah i mean i think i definitely slowed the whole thing down because you know the story of my career is just no one wanted to make anything and so we all wrote a lot of stuff and then suddenly they're like we'll make all your stuff and so for a few years we were making three movies a year yeah which is too many yeah and so it was just surviving it

and trying to support everyone and have everyone dig deep to do as well as we could do with those opportunities but it wasn't a pace i ever was seeking and so it's not really screwing up it's just an odd timing thing it's like when someone gets really famous usually you notice that in the next two years they make way too many movies yeah well you get a lot of opportunities you can't believe the opportunity gets here like I want yeah I don't want to say no to any of this you've waited your whole life to to work and then you're trying to manage it and um so there's a natural thing there that you deal with yeah but everyone we know has had that moment we're like oh my god i'm in yeah and then and then you're just trying to handle it

yeah kevin hart stayed there he's gonna about to pop up and promote something people policing which surprising do you ever feel like a power broker because you can help people so clear you help you like i don't want to say you made people stars but i think without you yeah you champion people and then did you ever feel that because it seems counter to people pleasing meaning people wanted to please you so that you'd help them become a star i think people pleasing is always more just in the moment you know with everybody would just like a general is everyone okay with me like i love that book the untethered soul have you read that book i think i downloaded it and not read it yeah but so it's just all about how you have an irrational

expectation that you can make every single moment of your life work perfectly. That the person will like you, that you'll say the right thing, that everything will be fine. And it's completely irrational. And so you're almost on eggshells trying to handle everything all the time. Like everything's okay as long as I don't screw anything up. And I think that's a destructive headspace to be in. It's better to go, you know what? I'm a good person.

I'm doing my best. I can just relax. Approximately, we'll throw the dart and it'll land on the board somewhere. I'm just fine if I don't need to obsess like that. That's destructive to be in that type of headspace I thought that a lot this year about texting because during COVID I got insecure because I thought the people who haven't checked in on me don't care if I die right like it was almost too clear a thing like there were certain

people that were like how are you holding up and then there were people that you like that you did not hear from in those two or three years and you thought well i'm not even on their list of don't die oh yeah for a check-in yeah like a health check-in yeah and i started getting neurotic about it and then i thought a lot about, who am I checking in with? Right. And almost in a manic way, I got very neurotic about it. And then. Did you make a list? No, I never made a list. But I just, I was aware and I felt bad about it. And then I realized, well, I'm doing it to people too.

Because we all know too many people. Like when you're in comedy, we know hundreds of people. Yes. But one day I was not sober and it just hit me like I'm going to forgive myself and I'm going to forgive everyone and have no expectation for that. Only in the realm of texting. In the realm of like how often we all make contact with each other. Yeah. in the realm of like how often we all make contact with each other yeah because i feel like especially in our business you might go on the road with somebody and have a very intimate week with someone and then two years later you're like i haven't talked to them since like we talked for

like seven hours a day yeah for a week yeah and there is a place in you where you could feel bad about it, but it's also irrational to think of the hundreds of people you're interacting with. And every time I make a movie, the crew's a hundred people. Yeah. So if I make 20 movies, 2000 people, that doesn't really make any sense. So I decided to let myself completely off the hook in that. And it really made me feel better all year. mean and i don't know if i don't

that's i've never had that issue meaning i just see this i see like comedy showbiz as like i say it's like a cruise ship yeah and sometimes i see you on the lido deck and then i won't see you i saw you when you were doing your producer skill thing in what was in february and now it's august hadn't seen you i assumed you were good jimmy said he saw you yeah i'll see you i'll see you i'll see you on the whatever the podcast yeah but we text yeah yes yeah because i don't want you to die exactly But that's nice that you forgave yourself. And what were you not sober on? That's a very good question.

Although I have to say, we've talked a lot about everything that's happening with the mind-expanding things. Ayahuasca and MDMA and mushrooms. And all that. I definitely think there's great stuff to be learned from all of it. I'm fascinated by it. don't i haven't had

the ayahuasca courage yet but i i think it's in my future you would love it it's you know it's gary connected it's it's it it is that world it's a deeper level it's arguably the deepest level of that sort of mind shift and spiritual connection yeah it's the the most actual palpable longest term one you can do like seven hours of direct contact and then you keep it with you man does that scare me which is the reason to do it so i'm going to work up to it well you keep it with you man does that scare me which is the reason to do it so i'm going to work up to it well what about it scares you because you're already there you're already like constantly kind of swimming in it yeah well that's that's what i think i need to get my head around i guess there's i used to have panic attacks uh-huh and so there's a part of me

that gets afraid of experiences which i cannot end you can but it's going to be a while exactly it's food poisoning well you know what it is it's surrender yeah it's letting go which i think is maybe the most important lesson or block for me to learn to really let go i remember i was on a plane once to australia and had this very very strong feeling the most spiritual feeling i've ever had in my life of a voice saying surrender surrender and it was i don't even know what it was it was unlike any moment i've ever had and i feel like ayahuasca in a way is the but did you watch the little richard documentary yes i did he had a on a flight to australia as well what was it he found god basically or he like went back to god he also like disavowed his sexuality which i was hope i

was hoping you would do but but stop being straight. Yes. Your body. Yeah. It's funny the amount of guys on here who all confess to body stuff. Yeah. Me included in terms of just like gripping. Maren caught me gripping my love handles on stage one time in a very subtle way, and I was like, felt.

But what is your body stuff? Well, I think i think you know you look less fat than you've looked yeah that's that's the goal yeah but i think i'm always thank you ozempic i well i have a funny ozempic story but i always am at a weight where people i look like i just lost weight that's very funny that's that's my way and true that's your that's your weight yeah we call it the dave rath in the business he's very skinny he's very skinny yeah but in my head he's overweight yeah he's like he's big boned yeah so every time i see him i'm like you just lost weight but he hasn't in decades but um i went to this vitamin guy gave me all these vitamins again you can't don't look up the vitamin guy

you can't get there you gotta net worth minimums there's just a lot cutting edge and so he gave me all these vitamins and he gave me like a shot give yourself a shot this once a week with this take all these vitamins for this reason now I'm so dumb that I don't

ask what the shot is I don't know what the shot is I mean, I don't know what the shot is. I mean, I may have looked at what the name of it was, but I didn't recognize the name. This is what Barry Bond said about steroids. Yeah, go ahead. So I never like checked. You're just rubbing the cream on.

And so I take the vitamins. I'm really good about the vitamins, but I'm always uncomfortable giving myself an injection because I literally just think, I'm going to have an air bubble and die. Like I just have an irrational, I'm going to kill myself by accident. So shot, I was thinking like a,

but you're talking about a needle and a shot. No, no, in the butt, yeah. Correct. So I do it randomly. Like I'm not being good about it. So over 20 weeks, maybe I did it six times or something like that supposed to do it every day so it's once a week got it so i don't really do it enough

right so then we check the blood work all looks good everything has gotten way better and uh then they give me slightly different vitamins and the shot. And then I go, what is this shot? And I think it's not Ozempic, but like basically Ozempic. And then I thought, this guy didn't even tell me he was giving me this drug. Like he never explained it to me. Like I'm giving you this. And then this is part of it. Like we didn't even talk about what the shot was.

And so I was just laughing. Like I was almost tricked into taking an Ozempic. Like, we didn't even talk about what the shot was. And so I was just laughing. Like, I was almost tricked into taking an Ozempic. Yeah, you didn't be involuntary. That's funny. It's like me, too, but with Ozempic. Yeah. But I always feel like I could take Ozempic and still gain weight. I feel like I'm the person that can pull that off.

You believe in that, what you're capable of? Yeah, yeah. I could beat Ozempic. It's like the people who would beat the gastric bypass. They would pop the, like, Chrisie kept popping the fucking stomach thing multiple times apparently yeah what's your you like i think you just like snacking oh man i mean i feel like food as a self-medication reward reward, shame eating. Like it's all good.

What's your shame? You know, just binging, knowing it's bad for me and then taking it too far. And I've gotten so much better because like our house doesn't have a lot of junk in it. That's the key. You just can't have it. Yeah, I can't have it. But I find ways to sneak.

But when I was a kid, my mom would buy like Chocodiles.iles remember chocodiles it was like twinkies with chocolate on them and we liked them so much the second they got in the house i would like hide half of them i would just open it up and hide half for my brother and sister so that i wouldn't not get enough of them and when my parents got divorced i used to like make myself hamburgers and grilled cheese sandwiches and eat Entenmann's cake with it. And like, there was a lot of food happiness. Got it.

And no one could, neither parent would say don't because they were, they were vying for your attention. It wasn't one discussion of health that we never, no health. Those are the rules. There was never like eat that because it's healthy. Don't eat that because it isn't healthy. Literally no discussion of health. I didn't eat broccoli until 12th grade when it was in a Chinese food. I never ate salad as a kid. The vegetables,

generally corn or peas from a can. I just didn't even know what healthy food was. And then when I lived with Sandler, when we were young comics, we we loved to eat we would talk about it all day like oh man we're gonna go to red lobster tonight and and even now we'll reminisce about meals oh god you remember that night we went to that restaurant with that chinese food what's great is everyone hearing this can hear sandler doing it do you remember that place buddy oh buddy the beefsteak charlie's uh you know like yeah and so that was all also connected to being a bad athlete because i was the youngest kid in the grade i just resented anyone who was accomplished with physical things so it's it's also a struggle to not be angry at the idea that I have to do anything for my health. Exercise, food.

Like it feels connected to somebody that tortured me. What's the best shape you've ever been in? The best shape I've ever been in was, it's so funny. Someone asked me to do a movie, but it required me to be kind of ripped. And I said no, because I'm like, I'm not going to get ripped. How much time would that take? So I can't eat anything? The best shape I've ever been in, I think maybe during COVID,

I lost like 17 pounds and got healthy, probably out of just general health terror. And did you like it? I liked it, but not enough. I mean, I just- Not terror and did you like it i liked it but not enough i mean you like not as much you like food it's so hard to not eat like bread like it's so easy to not lose weight because like you can eat great all day and then at the end of the day you just have like bread with your chicken and that day's killed and that yeah and then you were all like well this day's fucked i might as well have ice cream exactly where are the chocolate dials and i have a theory which i

talked about in standard once but it is what i always think which is i think no matter how much you eat you can only gain one pound a day so once you let it go and by the way there's no science behind this i really feel like you can only gain one pound in a day so if you're gonna let it go really let it go oh right because it's you're already you already gained the pound yeah it's not gonna be two pounds for some reason i've decided that's great it is not science but that's what i decided yeah well somebody a buddy of mine made the observation i think is right if you drink tea with dessert it melts the dessert really in your stomach it doesn't at all but just the weird things that we all go like you know what i've intuited something yeah that's entirely made up

and pure nonsense all right um final two questions what things have you done that helped you with all this shit meaning therapy therapy uh yeah i've been in therapy since i was 22 or 23 i've done some ketamine treatments okay did you like i did like that i thought that really helped me with anxiety oh good a great deal i think i got a lot out of that um guided like you would talk or take it and see? Someone's there to make sure I don't do anything weird, but they're not really asking me any questions. But I did have a very positive response to it.

Great. You know, I'm a self-help junkie. I just read everything to the point of drowning in it. So for me, it's easier to go loving kindness. Like, can I get the whole thing into like two words? Yeah. Or there's a thing in Buddhism about how you should be like a cylinder where you're just completely open.

And if you don't have your story and you don't have all your theories, you could just enjoy life. And if I just remind myself of that, the day goes better. Okay, so I ask everybody, and you as somebody who's done this a lot, movie of your life, who plays you, what's the arc? As a guy who's made five movies about his life. But I'm talking about what's the Judd Apatow biopic. That's funny.

What's the story story it is funny because when you make movies and television you are always pulling from your life yeah but pieces and it's so i always say it's like a third third me a third completely made up a third observations of my friends yeah so if it was all me i think the most insecure thing i could say is I can't even think of anybody exactly like me because it requires a certain lack of charisma. But what's the story? What is the story of what's your story? Meaning do it from like childhood to now. Like what's the story of uh what's your story meaning do it from like childhood to now like

what's the arc this is fascinating to me too because you made so like because parts of you had scenes and freaks and geeks of like watching yeah uh the mike douglas show and like the meaning of that probably why it's a hard one because yeah i've mined it and spread it out among so many things mine and spread it out even as like things. Oh, you've mined it and spread it out. Even as in other people's movies, when I'm just pitching them jokes or scene ideas or emotional ideas, I've just taken all their meat off the bones. All right, who were you in 1980 and who are you now? That's what I'm looking for.

I'm always trying to just understand that. I guess what I'm saying is the reason why I've made all the movies on some level is as a way to understand something so in some ways like you sit down and you write a screenplay to figure out why you're writing the screenplay right and why do you write funny people right and then years later you realize like wait a second sandler isn't one of my comedy friends he's actually my mom right right and Right. And, Oh, and what am I exploring? I'm exploring is comedy a solution to all of our emotional problems or the thing that holds us back because we're so obsessed with these careers that

we're not getting relationships and we're not connecting in a healthy way because we're worried too much about our success and being funny. And so in a lot of ways, you know, a lot of what we're talking about like is in funny people but spread among different characters yeah because it's not like is this worth it and is it why am i doing it and what do i sacrifice by being so obsessed with comedy so maybe my story would be a little bit about comedy as a way to survive and the arc to see what I was feeling that made me need comedy to survive

emotionally and to slow to try to slowly let it go to be a good person a good parent a good husband but can I still stay funny if I lose the madness that built it yeah well that seems like your life's about balance. Yeah. Trying to, trying to balance it and still hold onto it. Cause a lot of people say, uh, you know,

you, you'll hear from people when they got sober, they say, I really thought that was part of my creative process. And then I realized it was just holding me back. Yeah. Yeah. It's also just a reflex.

Yeah. If you've been doing as long as you or I have, it's just like, you just like fucking your brain will just go like a joke that you're not like i need to think about you're just like it'll just come can i be sane and still good at this yeah or can i be sane and maybe i don't need to do it yeah maybe it's like that was enough and go go do something else well yeah i always feel like that like i'll i'll if i don't feel like i need to do it it won't do it i'm doing it to be happy yeah and if there's a better way to do it i'll just do

that i'll do the other thing sometimes i'll say i think i need to go into my poetry phase like would it be healthier to just write poems and not show anybody yeah and not have any of the needs surrounding it but i also think that that's a lack of growth because then you've just lost all courage to risk sharing. Yeah. Well, that would be the third act for you would be figuring out how much of each. Yeah.

Right. That would be the third act. Third act. Yeah. I had an idea for something. I don't remember if it was, uh, for someone else or for me, third act third act yeah i had an idea for something i don't remember if it was uh for someone else or for me but it was that somebody finally got healthy and then they made something

like a movie or a play and the end of it would be that it was terrible uh-huh but they were happy and they were proud of it yeah no that's hilarious because it is like the opposite of there'll be blood where it's like no i i'm finished but it's it's terrible but now it's all mediocre yeah i've learned i don't need it's fucking great that's why most rock and roll from older people tends to get weaker because i think those people get saner i totally agree like or they or they go in it like i would say billy joel who i know you love did his career backward where it was like he wrote love songs young and then he wrote like protest songs in his 50s and it was like what are you what are you doing we didn't start to find shit like that where it's like um judd apatow was here everybody thank you for thank you for

making the time. My pleasure. The audience needs to know how far a drive it is to get here. The level of commitment. You're talking about just like the class levels you had to drive through? I meant to go from Brentwood to Hollywood. Just like locking the doors more? Yeah. Is there like a level of lock? I can hermetically seal the windows.

I didn't feel in danger, but I did feel like I was going to like fucking hermetically seal the windows? It's like, I didn't feel in danger, but I did feel like I was going to run out of gas to the length of the drive. Thank you. Thank you. Bye.