Sick In The Head: Conversations About Life And Comedy Part 34

Judd: In your directing, do you prefer doing comedy? What's the difference between doing something like Angels in America, which is also funny at times, and- Mike: I think all good plays are both. You can't be only funny. And G.o.d help any play that is never funny.

Judd: I'm always happy when the idea is something serious and we find a way to get people emotional about it but still get some laughs in. We were talking about, you know, scenes where people fight, where you still can get laughs but the fight is still real and intense. Maybe we could show a clip from This Is 40 and talk about conflict in these movies. Let's take a look at a scene.

(Clip from This Is 40: Debbie catches Pete playing with his iPad on the toilet.) Mike: Your movie is so entirely about being that thing that isn't two people but something more. How you get it and how hard it is to maintain and how, since it leads to the best thing of all, which is children, how central it is to our lives. It is our lives. But your take on it, which is to concentrate on the most unsentimental parts of it, that every-even taking a dump. How much more down-to-earth can you get? But it's not only about love; it's about spirit and it's about what love really is, which is not mawkish; it's an everyday happiness that you couldn't describe to a Martian because it looks like something else. Happy people look like something else. They don't look like happy people. Have you ever noticed that? They look like involved or maybe even angry people.

Judd: Happy people look crazy. I mean, the people who seem happy.

Mike: Yes, there's something wrong with them, clearly. But I think that in a weird way, your trademark is: How far do we go in our ludicrousness? There's no end to it. It can go as far as you like. But the thing that happens when you have a baby and you're both in bed with a baby-for the first week, two weeks, three weeks, and then forever-is simply like nothing else in the world. You can't celebrate it in a mawkish way because then it's somebody else. To do it your way, you can't do it without laughs. You can't do it in life without laughs, either, because you're right into it. And also, I have to confess, I'm a sucker for metaphor. I go on about it too much and I keep saying metaphor is dead, n.o.body wants metaphor. As Nora Ephron said once: "Well, I feel terrible about the metaphor, but what can I do? It's like the whale, you know?" And then I realized it was bulls.h.i.t and I was very pretentious to worry about it because it's there or it's not there and you don't have to name it or a.n.a.lyze it. Sometimes I get a script and I think, How do I tell them that there's no reason to tell this story? Here's a question that I can't answer: Why is it worth telling one story and not another? Well, the easy answer is it's, it's really secretly about all our lives. And there are plots like that, we know that. Virginia Woolf reminds you of the hardest parts of your own life. But to throw that all out and go and put on the screen or on the stage what actually happens without a metaphor, I think that's very exciting. That's a gearshift that we haven't had.

Judd: We've talked about the fact that life is overwhelming. There's a lot, there's too much to handle. You're trying to be a good spouse and a good parent and have your kids do well at school and you're trying to take care of your health and you're trying to deal with your extended family. And, at some point, it really brings you to the brink of losing your mind. You're trying to get along with your spouse at the same time and there always seems to be a lot of humor in this failed attempt we all make to just be able to do it all. And that was the original idea behind the movie. But I think that what happened was, as we got more specific, it became more universal. The smallest details are the details that people come up to me and say: "I've had that conversation seven times this week."

Mike: Exactly. It's everybody together saying, Oh G.o.d, that's so true. And therefore, it's not bad taste, whatever that is, and it's not a metaphor: It's life.

Judd: I didn't start out thinking that I would make personal movies. I started out writing broader comedies, but this area has interested me and I feel like, you know, you write movies to figure out why you're writing the movie. That's something I read somewhere and I thought, Well, that does make sense.

Mike: There's something very important here, which I think is when it's your time and when it isn't. If you make movies, your early movies are about your time. Everybody knows the story you're telling. n.o.body says, "Why are you telling me this story?" Because everybody in your generation is in that place, roughly, and they recognize it. It's a direct communication. It makes perfect sense that you're making something that did not exist before. But it's also incredibly familiar because you've hit the mark. You've found a part of people that feels new. It has its own language, its own insults, its own ethos. And then, when you get to middle age, that doesn't work anymore and you've got to do other things. The Graduate was described endlessly as the epitome of its time. But its time didn't know that because when it was coming out, the guy who produced it made me go to campuses and show it because he felt we need to create a "market." And if I gave you the rest of the night to guess what the majority of college students said about it, you would never guess. They said, "Why isn't it about Vietnam?" Because that was the only way to get laid. To be able-to be very deeply concerned about where our country was. They wanted everything to be about that, because they hadn't yet understood that you can believe in a number of things at the same time.

Judd: Do you feel comedies don't get the respect they deserve?

Mike: That's funny you should say that. I think they get the respect they deserve. They're always more successful. People are happier with them, they live longer. What movie is enshrined like Some Like It Hot? No movie. To be good and funny is about as good as it gets. Who cares about Academy Awards? I mean, you used to get an Academy Award by being very sick and not dying. Maybe it could still work-who knows, try it. But I don't think any of that stuff matters. What matters is how much it connects with people.

This interview originally took place at the Museum of Modern Art in New York City with a live audience.

MIRANDA JULY.

(2013).

I sometimes worry that I am going through life using only a small portion of my brain. This worry is at its most intense when I spend time with people like the writer, director, and actress Miranda July, who has this way of coming at everything from a special, never-before-thought-of angle, a quality that fills me with jealousy and rage. Every thought she has is original-or at least, feels that way to me. I love her, but d.a.m.n if she doesn't make me feel like I'm not seeing the world as clearly as I should.

A few years ago, she asked me to do an interview with her, and the only rule was that we were not allowed to ask each other anything related to show business. Admittedly, this is hard for me. But in the end, she brought something out of me that I don't think anyone else has. Attention all interviewers: Somewhere in here is a lesson about how to open someone up to new thoughts and ideas.

Judd Apatow: Okay, first question is: What was your scariest nightmare? Miranda July: Like an actual asleep nightmare?

Judd: Yeah.

Miranda: Occasionally I write them down, which is probably why I remember it. I had taken this suicide pill that would kill me. Then after I took it, I strongly realized I didn't want to die- Judd: Oh no!

Miranda: But I had an antidote. I took it and was so relieved. Then a few minutes went by and I realized that the antidote was in my cheek and I hadn't actually swallowed it. You had to take it in a certain amount of time or it was useless so I knew, Oh, it's too late! It was in my cheek! And then I just felt myself fainting and was like, I can't believe it-just this one little oversight. And that was it. I died.

Judd: And then you woke up feeling refreshed?

Miranda: (Laughs) Or like, Surely there's some way I can use that in my work.

Judd: The one I always remember was really vivid-like it was actually happening. It's me on a plane, I'm the only one on it. It's going in and out of mountains and steep cliffs and it's clearly out of control. And I used to have nuclear war nightmares all the time as a kid. The sirens going off. I don't know why they stopped; maybe we're safer now?

Miranda: Yeah, or are we?

Judd: Actually it's worse now but for some reason I've tricked myself into thinking that's not an issue. Okay-your turn.

Miranda: What's one good thing and one difficult thing you feel like you got from your father?

Judd: Well, my dad was a big fan of comedy, and I think he thought he was funny. I can't confirm that his sense of humor is funny, but he carries himself as someone who's hilarious.

Miranda: Right. The idea that trying to be funny might be a "thing that one does."

Judd: His success rate is lower than he thinks. (Laughs) But he loved comedy and his interest in comedy sparked mine. A difficult thing I got from him was a general sense of nervousness, just not feeling comfortable in your own skin. I got that from my mom as well. They got divorced, but maybe that's why they found each other. (Laughs) That agitated way of thinking, I need to stay on top of things to make it better in the future. A lot of future thoughts. We weren't very "present" people. In my house there was a lot of "Next year will be my year!" My mom had a lot of fun energy when I was a kid. She was a really happy person, then after their divorce she became really unhappy, which threw me. During the divorce, they were more tuned in to their pain than they were to me. When your parents behave in ways that make you feel unsafe, you think, Oh, I guess I'm in charge of myself. And when you're fourteen, that's not a great thing. It kind of never goes away. As a producer, I'm always a.s.suming things are going to crash and I'm trying to figure out what could go wrong before it happens. It's helpful for work. But it's a terrible way to live your life.

Miranda: I think I have some of that, too, for similar reasons. I guess that's a little bit of a director thing. I feel like it's in overdrive for me right now but it's like, Oh, wow, this really has a purpose now that I'm a parent. This idea of being on the lookout for calamity at all times.

Judd: (Laughs) As a parent, you become obsessed with anything dangerous that could happen. I remember once my mom, who's no longer with us, was babysitting my daughter and we saw her on a very busy street, and my mom was paying no attention to her whatsoever. We were like, "You're never watching our kids again." When you first have a kid and you have to make a will and you literally have to decide who gets your kids if something happens to you, that's when you realize how little you think of everyone in your world. That's a good way to get yourself to stay healthy. Put down the worst person you can think of to take care of your kids as motivation for staying alive. Okay, I have my next question. Do you have faith in humanity?

Miranda: My first instinct is to say yes and that I wouldn't be able to do what I do if I didn't. I'm counting on everyone to catch my heart, you know, to be able to understand in the deepest way that I can get it across, so in that way it's like I'm practicing that faith. But on the other hand, I was listening to the radio and it seemed that literally every day there would be a new gun violence thing. At the same time I was struggling with problematic friends and struggling with the part of myself that sometimes wants to just get rid of a friend. Like, I'm overwhelmed, I can't figure out how to deal with it, and I just think in my head, That's it! Let's just not be friends and never talk to each other again! I realized that I was feeling that same tendency about humanity. I was like, It's too much of a mess-let's just end it now. And then I told myself, No, you're piling on the way you do with other things, and surely there's something that can be done-it's not all a waste. Okay, next question for you. What are the top three things that make you feel guilty?

Judd: You've hit the mother lode! You live in a fantasyland where I can make it just three things. I am built for guilt, and if a person in my life doesn't try to guilt me to get their way, I will unconsciously train them to use guilt to manipulate me. Everything about how my family worked was based on guilt. From going to the mall with my elderly grandmother-if I had to run in and grab something, she would say, "It's okay, you can just leave me in the car." I remember as a kid my mom used to tell us who she liked best out of me and my brother and sister. We were just totally wired to please, and if we didn't please we'd feel terrible. It's a horrible thing.

Miranda: But what about right now? Top three things you feel guilty about right now.

Judd: I always feel guilty about whether or not I'm being a good enough husband and parent. I'm always guilty about not taking better care of myself. And I'm usually guilty about not being helpful enough to people in my extended family who need a.s.sistance. Because no matter what you do it's not enough. And people resent you the moment they ask for help, so it changes your relationship instantly. You have problems but then you become part of an ecosystem of their problems.

Miranda: Okay. In your experience, is it true that men are more visual and women are more mental in terms of what turns them on? I didn't make this up-this is, like, a thing. Men are more visual; just looking at a woman's body can turn them on. Whereas women, they'd rather think about s.e.x to be turned on.

Judd: Oh, I've never thought about that before.

Miranda: Really? What do you think about? Or are you too busy being guilty?

Judd: Yeah, I'm too guilty to think about any of these issues. (Laughs) I'm trying to think of me. Am I visual or mental? Isn't everybody both? Well, the male figure is not pleasing. Like, the p.e.n.i.s is weird and sloppy-looking. It's like something on the inside of your body is now on the outside and it should be on the inside. Most people don't look like David Beckham. So women need men to have a good personality because most of us don't look good.

Miranda: Even in the best of circ.u.mstances, if the man is David Beckham, Victoria is still not...it doesn't do anything for her. She has to pretend that she just met David for the first time, or that she's David's secretary, or...

Judd: Or that he's a Jewish comedy writer.

Miranda: (Laughs) Yeah, exactly.

Judd: She's probably bored. He has the abs. But it gets repet.i.tive. There's only so much you can do with rock-hard abs, because there's not enough skin to work with. It's like making love to a piece of slate.

Miranda: So you don't really have anything to say about this? That's fine.

Judd: You've seen The 40-Year-Old Virgin, right? (Laughs) I'm not the guy to go to about this stuff. I'm usually just hiding in a corner, shaking. I look away when a pretty girl walks by-I feel like it's an invasion to stare at somebody. I let my eyes look up real fast and then hope that I retain some memory of it. My next question is: Who do you reach out to for guidance?

Miranda: Not too many people. I always have close women friends. There's my friend Sheila Heti, she's a writer. In fact, I sent her these questions and she just answered them all. (Laughs) And I have a really good therapist-which is the first time I've ever had a therapist I admire....

Judd: Admire? I need her phone number. I just always think, Oh my gosh, they look so bored. I can't believe I'm not getting better and I'm just boring them to tears.

Miranda: Yeah, I do a certain amount of saying, "Well, this is boring," or "Here's something insignificant I want to talk about." I usually try and preface it with some sort of diminishing thing.

Judd: Do you cry during therapy?

Miranda: Not as much as I did with the old, bad therapists. I feel like I'm just a better person with this new one so I don't need to cry as much.

Judd: I don't like to cry, because then every session when I don't cry, he thinks, Oh, he's not actually opening up. Once I've showed them that's there, then it's like I'm always hiding it.

Miranda: With this therapist, the first session I ever had with her was really terrible. I was really angry with her but I forced myself to go back and tell her how she'd f.u.c.ked up. It was an amazing way to start because it got to the important stuff right away and how she dealt with that was, like, really smart. I don't think in the past I would have been willing to come back. I would have quit.

Judd: I just disappear. Then I feel guilty for years that I didn't tell the doctor why I stopped coming and I a.s.sume that they're haunted by it. But they're not haunted by it.

Miranda: The therapist I left this therapist for, I've still never told her. I figure she just thinks I'm busy with the baby.

Judd: Just send a card: "Doing great! Don't need any mental health support-thank you for fixing me!"

Miranda: I really want the old therapist to know how much better this new one is.

Judd: Send them another note: "Why did you waste seven years of my life?" Okay, next question: Do you have any food issues?

Miranda: I've never had, like, "I'm going to get fat" food issues-which I have to say I credit my mom for. She just never picked up on the fact that she was supposed to worry about those things and was always like, "Let's go get a doughnut!" in a really benign way. But I love different kinds of restrictive diets. If I'm meeting a new person, and hear that they're on some kind of new restrictive diet, I want to hear all about it and possibly get on it myself. I like different forms of self-discipline. Like, I had no reason to be gluten-free, but then someone said, "Oh, you know it's not great for your breast milk." I was like, "Great! I'll go off gluten!"

Judd: We went to an allergist and it turns out our kids have no allergies to gluten. But our house is totally gluten-free. Every time we go to the supermarket my child is desperately sneaking a loaf of white bread into our cart like it's Oreos! I couldn't have more food issues. For me food is such a reward. It's all about fun. For me to think of food as fuel is extremely difficult. Food is happiness. I like being stuffed. I like being so stuffed I can't get up. Like when you're in that haze of exhaustion.

Miranda: Haze-like a drug.

Judd: How has having a child changed the way you think about your pre-child life? How has it changed you?

Miranda: I'm kind of amazed to see that the ma.s.sive amount of time I spent thinking about my feelings turned out not to be vital to my existence. In fact, having less time to think and having to simply do is just fine. For my whole life before, I thought I needed the maximum amount of freedom, but as it turns out what I really need is to feel free for a limited amount of time and then crawl around the floor saying "I'mgonnagetcha, I'mgonnagetcha" while a very, very cute little boy squeals with glee. Before it was easy to feel alienated from most people; now I feel like I have something sizable in common with nearly every single person in the grocery store. Also, my son had a really rough start so I went through a level of trauma and fear that forever changed my relationship to catastrophe. It's more real now, so I'm more afraid of it. I suppose I'm braver, too.

Judd: I was forced to realize how self-centered I was. I found it hard to shut my brain down so I could just hang out in my kids' reality. It's easier now because my kids' realities are more like my own. We can talk about Breaking Bad episodes and why we think it is a bad idea to take Ecstasy. How would you like to spend your old age?

Miranda: I'd like it to be just like now-writing and surrounded by people I love-except I want there to be zero anxiety. I want to feel like I'm sitting in a Jacuzzi all the time.

Judd: I want to be like Mel Brooks. A great memory, a lot of energy, still making people laugh. I do not want to be like Jack LaLanne, pulling fifty boats as I swim across a lake. Do you have a conception of the afterlife? Are you a spiritual person?

Miranda: You know, it's funny. I just wrote that I was spiritual and then sat here for about ten minutes trying to put words to that feeling. Everything I came up with seemed made up or like some idea I'd had when I was fifteen. It all felt distasteful to me so I erased it. I think I'm less entranced by amorphous things at this moment.

Judd: I have some friends who had near-death experiences who felt a presence tell them to go back. It was not their time. That is all I can hold on to. When I am creative I think something more is going on, so maybe it does not end. I don't think I am going to get ninety virgins or hang out in a beautiful kingdom. My biggest fear is that I will become a ghost and be forced to hang out in some house watching a bunch of jacka.s.ses live their lives. I don't want to be a tree. I know that is supposed to be a beautiful thing, to become a tree or a beetle. I am not into that. I would like to stay me.

Miranda: What are the top three times you've been most freaked out in your life so far?

Judd: One, when I was in sixth grade my friend's brother grew pot in his room. One day my friend got his hands on a joint and we attempted to smoke it in the middle of the night at a construction site. Before we took a real puff a security guard pointed a flashlight in our direction and we ran for miles and miles and miles as if he was hot on our tail. There is no chance he took even one step in our direction. We stared out the window at my friend's house for a half hour, terrified that he would knock on the door and tell our parents. The next year I was so scared that my friends were going to become potheads that I switched social groups. My new friends eventually became the real potheads of the school, and after two years I ran back to my old friends, who never bothered to try it again. Two, when the Northridge earthquake happened it really felt like nuclear missiles were falling from the sky. The noise and the shattering of gla.s.s freaked me out. My girlfriend at the time seemed to have a bit of a mental break. Afterwards I wanted to go back to sleep. She wanted to look around so we went outside and every time we pa.s.sed a cracked section of sidewalk she laughed nervously in the way bad actors pretend to be crazy people on the TV show Quincy. We broke up soon after when she cheated on me with a sportswriter. A year later I tried to win her back but she refused my advances because she was dating a pot dealer. Three, I got freaked out when George Bush beat Al Gore for the presidency because he was so terrible in the debates and I a.s.sumed everyone in the country saw what I saw, a man who clearly was not equipped to lead our country.

Miranda: One, aforementioned birth of baby. Two, that girlfriend you had who had a mental break during the earthquake? That might have been me. I was in bed and the next thing I know I'm on all fours growling in the corner. I was so scared I turned into a dog for a moment. Three, various flights with extreme turbulence. I grab the stewardesses, the people next to me-I pretty much do the dog/earth quake thing but without going down on all fours because the floor's gross. Last question: Can you try to give a little running narration of what it's like in your head, how the thoughts come and go? Are there fully formed words and sentences? Is it incessant and talky? Do you compose emails in your head? Or are you more in the moment than that?

Judd: My mind is a noisy place. I tend to look for problems so I can solve them before they blow up in my face. I am like a lookout for disaster. I also have a voice that tells me to calm down. I have a TM mantra and every once in a while I try to breathe and think about some piece of advice I have heard or read, usually from the book The Power of Now by Eckhart Tolle. Then I will think about my mantra. About one second later I am worried that I will never have a good idea again, or that I have wronged someone in my life and I try to figure out what to do. Sometimes I am really hungry. Other times I am moved by a piece of music or a deeply felt thought and I cry. Laughter has happened, too, but less often. My great love for people and my family is pushed up close to terror and my existential crisis. Occasionally I think of a great d.i.c.k joke, like when Steve Carell tries to pee with an erection, and I get very proud of myself and feel like I am adding something very positive to the world. I can almost feel people forgetting their troubles and laughing, and for a moment I feel like there is a G.o.d or a higher purpose and I am truly happy. G.o.d gave me that d.i.c.k joke. It all makes sense. Then I get scared again and it all starts over. You?

Miranda: Many words and fully formed sentences. Whole emails written out in my head. Lots of planning thoughts-like every single moment planning what I'm going to do in the next moment, the next hour, the next day, week, year. I have the next ten years planned, work-wise. I also think a lot about washing the dishes or vacuuming. The more boring the task, the more of my mental s.p.a.ce I have to devote to it. I also instruct myself a lot, like: "Robot, go brush your teeth." I lay in bed and think about what I'll bring in my carry-on bag on a trip I'm going on in five months. Sometimes I instruct myself to "free fall"-exist without thinking. It feels like falling through s.p.a.ce. I can also get super-duper focused, wormhole-style. That's the s.p.a.ce that I go into when I'm working-about five hours a day. It goes by in a flash.

This interview was originally published in Huck magazine in May 2013.

ROSEANNE BARR.

(2014).

Back in the late eighties, a friend of mine-fellow comedian and Undeclared writer Joel Madison-told me about this guy he knew named Tom Arnold, who was moving to L.A. to write jokes for Roseanne Barr. Before we knew it, we were hearing that Tom was going to marry Roseanne, which seemed insane and impossible. It was insane and impossible, of course, but it happened, and Tom Arnold went on to become one of the producers of her television show as well. My secret hope was that, through my connection with Joel, I might somehow get the call to go write for Roseanne, one of the biggest shows on TV. As it turned out, the call I eventually got was to write jokes for Tom's act, which went well and soon led to a gig writing for Roseanne's nightclub act.

For the next several years, I spent a lot of time with Roseanne trying to craft a standup act that wasn't just about raising her family and growing up poor, but about what it was like to now be rich and mega-famous. It always felt odd to me, as a twenty-two-year-old guy without a ton of life experience, to be writing jokes for an a.s.s-kicking middle-aged woman who happened to have multiple personalities. I used to force her to sit with me and tell me her life story, so I could try to get in her head. The depth of her experience and imagination was astonishing.

This was all happening at the absolute height of Roseanne mania, with the national anthem scandal, and the very public divorce from Tom Arnold, and the number-one show on television, year after year after year. Many people only remember the drama that surrounded her at that time, but I believe that Roseanne was one of the most influential shows ever on television. Because it reflected the real lives of working-cla.s.s people and their daily dramas. Because it managed to be riotously funny while also exploring the deep truths about how people were living in America at the time, and still are today. It took an enormous amount of courage and madness to make that happen.

Judd Apatow: How much stand-up are you doing now?

Roseanne Barr: None.

Judd: None?

Roseanne: I'm writing jokes. I write about fifty jokes a day for nothing.

Judd: Do you get onstage at all?

Roseanne: No. I have horrible stage fright-you know, how you go through the bipolar stage fright thing? Then you go on drugs to get over the stage fright and perform but then you're not funny at all.

Judd: Were you always scared when you did stand-up, to the point where you felt like you needed to be medicated?

Roseanne: No, it was only after The Roseanne Show that it felt like that. I'd go on and I'd want to do edgy material and the audience would be like, "Where's Dan?" I was like, Where's a gun so I can blow my f.u.c.king brains out all over this stage?

Judd: Is that the worst part of success-that it defines who you are and what you do? If you succeed in one area, people think you should stay in that area.

Roseanne: They don't even know who I am. They think I'm Roseanne Conner. It's like, "You're not a writer. You're not even a comedian. You're Roseanne." And then I was like, This is freaky because I can't get another job ever. And I wanted to work.