- I always enjoy working with people,
when it's not their 40th movie.
People are great when it's their 40th movie,
but it's different when it's their first movie
and they really wanna score,
and they have so much energy and passion.
When you get to you 40th Harrison Ford movie,
he tends not to give you that time, and he shouldn't.
Hey Vanity Fair, this is Judd Apatow,
and this is the timeline of my career.
- [Coworker] Good morning, Phil.
- Good morning, okay.
- And how are we, today?
- [sighs] We are great. [coffee splashes]
- Oh, thank God the rain just stopped, eh?
- The first thing that I ever directed
was The Larry Sanders Show.
I never had the courage to ask Gary
to direct the Larry Sander Show.
One day, he just walked in my office and said,
"You're doing the next one," which was terrifying.
The weird thing was a few weeks before that,
we were doing a show about a psychic,
and a psychic was hanging around the office
and reading different people.
And she said to me, "You're gonna have a flood at your house
"and you're gonna direct soon."
And then, it rained and flooded my house
and then, two weeks later, Gary said,
"You're gonna direct the next one."
I saw that psychic for years. [jazzy piano music]
Once, that psychic told us to be careful driving in Hawai'i
and it scared us so much that we went
to Hawai'i and never left the room.
- Phil, do you like my outfit?
- Yes, I do.
- Isn't it fetching?
- Yeah, that's not the word I'm looking for.
Excuse me. [upbeat rock music]
- [burps] Oh man, I gotta pee!
- How Freaks and Geeks happened was I said
to my good friend, Paul Fink, "Do you have any ideas?"
And he said, "Let me think about it."
And then one day, he just handed me an envelope
and it had Freaks and Geeks in it.
It never works out like that.
No one ever hands you a script that's great.
And you go, "All right, I guess we'll just make that."
While in production, we thought it was going well
and we really loved it, but we also knew
that some of the people who ran the network didn't like it.
So we always felt like it was gonna end at any moment.
And then, it did.
We shot the finale in the middle
of our production 'cause we were so sure
that they were gonna cancel us at any moment
that being neurotic, we just shot it,
episodes before the season was over just
in case the guillotine came down.
And thank God that we did.
- What if they trash the place,
'cause they think they're drunk?
- They won't. [old, upbeat music]
I don't think.
- This could be bad.
- Support whatever decision you make.
- Thanks.
Your support's awesome, you guys.
Just really great to have you around.
So I need the rent.
- North Hollywood's a pilot we did in 2002, I think.
It was about a bunch of people who wanted
to be in show businesses who were struggling,
living in North Hollywood.
So it was Amy Poehler and her day job was working
as Judge Reinhold's assistant;
Jason Segel, who played Frankenstein
on the Universal Studios tour;
and Kevin Heart, who had a lot of money 'cause he was
in a beer commercial that was questionable in its content.
We made this show, probably, mainly inspired
by the vibe of Curb Your Enthusiasm.
ABC said they wanted edgy programming.
And we had January Jones in it
and Adam McKay was acting in it
and we really had the best time making it, but in the middle
of making it, we heard that ABC changed their theory
about what they wanted the network to be.
And they wanted it to be more retro, like Happy Days.
And while we were shooting, we thought,
they're never ever gonna order this.
And they didn't.
I always thought they would call and go,
"Okay, we don't wanna do this show,
"but we can tell all these people are gonna be stars."
And they never called, they showed no interest in anybody.
- This is really embarrassing for me,
but I don't have money to pay for the rent right now.
I was hoping you could float me for a couple of days.
- I think I was in love, once.
- Really, what was her name?
- I don't remember.
- That's not a good start, but keep going.
- Will Ferrell and Adam McKay wrote the script,
Anchorman, and they showed it to me
and the first drafts were really hilarious and crazy.
It was about the anchor team flying
to an anchorman convention, the plane crashes,
and they wind up on the side of a mountain,
where they all are trying to survive.
And it almost becomes like the movie,
"Alive," but with anchormen.
And we were trying to get it made
for years and slowly, they started changing the story
because nobody would make this crazy version of it.
I always thought that they should still make that version,
that at some point, they should go back and do that.
- I love lamp.
I love lamp.
- You really wanna know what love is?
- Yeah.
- Yes, tell us.
- They were nice.
You know, when you grab a woman's breast
and you feel and it feels like a bag of sand,
when you're touching it.
- I was one of the producers of Anchorman
and I would watch Steve Carell on the set every day
and he was always so hysterical.
So one day, I walked up to him
and I said, "Do you have any ideas
"about you being the star of the movie?"
And then a few days later, he walked up to me and said,
"Ya know, I was working on this sketch.
"I never really figured out, at Second City,
"about a 40 year old virgin."
And then he said with the sketch, it was like a poker game
and everyone's telling sex stories
and my character's clearly lying 'cause he's never had sex.
And he's saying, "You know when you touch a woman's breast,
"it feels like a bag of sand?
"Then you go down her pants
"and there's all the baby powder?"
And I said, "I think this is something that we need to do."
One of the most fun parts of making "The 40 Year-Old Virgin"
was were able to put in a lot of people
that we thought were great, who weren't giant stars yet.
So Jane Lynch played his boss and she was hysterical.
And then, we had Mindy Kaling as Paul Rudd's ex-girlfriend,
who he was obsessed over and I think
that was her first time in a movie.
Romany Malco was someone that we love,
he did an independent movie with Paul Rudd
called, "The Chateau," and they were so funny together
that we thought we should use them both.
In this movie, Gerry Bednob was a comedian that I used
to always work with in the valley at the LA Cabaret
and we made him one of the bosses at the stereo store.
One of my favorite scenes is when he's talking so filthy
to Steve Carell 'cause Steve was always so funny,
reacting to people being filthy.
So Seth Rogen was on the side,
writing up all these dirty phrases
and handing them to Gerry Bednob.
- It's not about these rusty trombones,
and these dirty Sanchez.
- Please stop.
- And these Cincinnati bow ties.
- Mooj.
- I would do terrible, disgusting things
to hook up with Jules, unforgivable things.
- I hear you, man, I'd give my middle nut
to start dating Becca.
- Becca's a bitch.
- "Superbad" began when I was working with Seth Rogen
on "Freaks and Geeks" and he always talked about how him
and his friend Evan Goldberg had been writing a script
since they were 13 or 14 years old,
and then after "Freaks and Geeks" was canceled,
we were working on "Undeclared" together,
and we did a table read with the cast of "Undeclared"
reading "Superbad" and it was really hilarious,
but for years, nobody had any interest in making it.
And at one point, the producer joined us 'cause we thought,
"Maybe we're not powerful enough,"
so we got this powerful producer to jump on the project
to help us, and then suddenly he got hired
to be the head of a studio and we thought,
"Well now we're gonna get to make it."
And the first decision he made as the head of the studio,
was to not make the movie that he was the producer of.
We started the casting process with our director,
Greg Mottola, and he loved Michael Cera,
as did Seth and Evan, and we were just all in love with him.
But it was really hard to figure out who was as good
as Michael Cera, Michael Cera's the greatest in the world.
And then one day we just got frustrated
because we couldn't figure out who to cast,
and Jonah was just hanging around on the set
of "Knocked Up" and we all just looked at him
and went, "Do you wanna shave really good
"and put yourself on tape?"
And then he did.
And then we realized he was always a shave away
from playing a high school student.
- This whole thing is bigger than you,
Fogell, so grow a pair of nuts
and fucking walk in there and buy the alcohol.
- What if I don't feel like it anymore, Seth, what?
- Then I'll fucking kill you.
- What?
- I'm pregnant.
- With emotion?
- With a baby, you're the father.
- How "Knocked Up" happened, is I was sitting with Seth
and Seth was pitching me some ideas for movies
and they were big, science fiction type of ideas,
and I was trying to convince him that he was so funny
that he didn't need anything like that.
I was trying to kill his imagination.
So I said, "You know, Seth, you're funny
"just standing there, you don't need any of that.
"You could just, like get someone pregnant
"and that's enough for a movie."
And then we went, "Wait a second."
It was great working with Seth as the lead,
I think that people always work harder when its their big...
lead break.
So I always enjoy working with people
when it's not their 40th movie.
People are great when it's their 40th movie,
but it's different when it's that first movie
and they really wanna score, and they have so much energy
and passion, so when we auditioned people
to play what became Katherine Heigl's part,
Seth read with every single woman who came in, for months,
and that's part of how he developed his character,
was by reading with a hundred different people.
And when you get to your 40th Harrison Ford movie,
he tends not to give you that time.
And he shouldn't.
- Okay? - Okay.
- I couldn't take it, I can't raise this baby alone.
- Remember, and it gets all--
- You don't get it, see you don't understand how it works.
I don't wanna shop at old lady stores.
I wanna go to J. Jill and Chico's and Ann Taylor Loft,
I'm not ready yet, I need two more years.
- That is so insane, it kind of makes sense.
- We were trying to figure out a way to talk about
that moment when you turn 40 and you look at your life,
and you just have to assess how it's going.
And we came up with this idea
that they would have birthdays in a similar time frame
and they would have some sort of fight
and nervous breakdown which would make everything bubble up
to the surface, and we were really lucky
to get a chance to work with Albert Brooks
and John Lithgow on the movie.
That was very, very exciting, having them around.
That was the dream, I didn't even think it'd be possible
to get them in any of my movies.
- Happy birthday and go fuck yourself.
- Hey, see you when the Cubs win the pennant.
- I got to work with Maud and Iris.
They were a little bit older, and so it was fun
to find a way to show their sibling rivalry on screen.
And sometimes I was just setting up multiple cameras,
giving them a subject and letting them actually
have a fight, and then Paul and Leslie always
have such hilarious chemistry as a couple.
And I would get such a kick out of coming up
with scenarios that would make us laugh,
and a lot of it was based on things that all our friends
were talking about, and we were talking about
at the time, about flashpoints of a couple,
what drives each other crazy about their behavior.
The most fun about making movies like "This is 40"
is working with Leslie, we collaborate on all the scenes
and all the ideas, so we do get the chance to sit
with each other and come up with comedic takes
on these different situations
that have driven each other crazy.
The funny thing about that movie is,
the poster is Paul on an iPad, on the toilet.
And at the time, in 2011, the joke of an annoying husband
who's always sneaking away to get a break
and play video games on his iPad, was kind of a new joke.
No one had really made that joke before
about sneaking off to be on your phone,
and now it's our entire lives.
- Hey.
- What are you doing?
- Going to the bathroom.
- Mahalo.
♪ Everybody hates you ♪ [piano music]
♪ Everybody wishes that you were dead ♪
- When we were working on "Freaks and Geeks,"
I loved working with Jason Segel.
He really made me laugh, and he was so creative and smart.
I kept saying to him, "I don't know if you're gonna
"get a movie that's perfect for you as the lead,
"'cause you're kinda like a weird guy.
"I don't know if you'll match in perfectly
"with scripts that are laying around town.
"I think you probably need to write it
"to show people what you can do."
And one day he pitched me the story
for "Forgetting Sarah Marshall,"
and he wasn't a big star at that moment.
He was kind of between things in his career,
he was just getting going on "How I Met Your Mother,"
and I said "You know, to get the studio to make this,
"the script has to be unbelievably great."
And Nick Stoller, who was a writer in "Undeclared,"
said "Can I direct that, and I'll help him with the script?
"I'll give him notes and see what I can do."
And the script was unbelievable,
and then they let him make that movie and then they all got
to hang out in Hawai'i for many months.
♪ 'Cause Peter you suck ♪ [piano music]
♪ Peter you suck ♪
♪ Peter your music is fucking terrible ♪
♪ Peter you suck ♪
- It's no the right casino, wait!
- Ah!
Sh, calm down.
- I'm having a heart attack.
You're not having a heart attack, are you?
Jesus, why can't everything be this simple?
After "Forgetting Sarah Marshall,"
Nick Stoller and I were so taken
by Russell Brand, we were trying
to think of something else to do with Russell.
Obviously, we wanted to do something else with Jonah Hill.
Nick had this idea about having Russell play a rock star.
And Jonah Hill playing someone
at the record company who has to deal
with this out of control rock star.
Our problem was that Jonah played a waiter
in "Forgetting Sarah Marshall."
So it made no sense that if we
had Russell play the same character that he played
in Sarah Marshall, wouldn't Jonah be the waiter?
And we shot something when we shot,
"Get Him to the Greek" where we reference him
as having been a waiter in his past, but then we cut it out
and just decided who cares about logic?
[flames burst]
- Now, this is what the music industry is all about.
- Sergio's gone crazy.
- I love this game!
- I never wanna kill anybody else again.
- Ever.
- Yeah, that's something you can just dip your toes into.
- Ya know? - Ya know,
it's like we dipped our toes into murder.
It's done, let's move on. - I killed six guys.
- For years, Seth and Evan and I were trying
to get "Superbad" made and nobody would pay for it.
And I was trying to think of something else
that they could do that might be more commercial.
And I always had this idea about a pot head action movie,
because I love "True Romance,"
and there was that scene with Brad Pitt,
where all the assassins come in and he's really high.
And it was one of my favorite scenes and I thought,
"I wish that was the whole movie.
"I wish you followed Brad Pitt out
"and he was on the run from the assassins."
So I said, "Why don't you guys try
"to come up with a movie based on that thought?"
And Seth and Evan wrote this amazing script.
And then, we found out that that was way less commercial
than "Superbad" and everyone said no to that, also.
And only after "Superbad" did well,
did somebody say, "You guys have anything else?"
And we were like, "Well, we have this other thing
"that everyone rejects all the time."
And that was "Pineapple Express".
- I shot someone who was already dead,
so that doesn't really count as a murder.
- But apparently, you hit him with your car, I'm told.
You killed him.
- Why are you telling me this, George?
- 'Cause I want you to possibly do me a favor.
- Okay yeah, what?
- Kill me.
- What?
- For a long time before "Funny People,"
I was trying to think about how to make a movie
about why we like making comedy and how we feel about it.
Are we crazy, are we egomaniacs,
are we paying some sort of price
for this obsession, is it making us jerks?
And I also wanted to write about
observing my mom when she was sick
and how when she didn't think she was going
to live, she seemed happier.
And then, when she thought the medicine was working,
she got very neurotic, again, and caught up in life.
And I would see that happen, time
and time again over many years.
So the movie became about, can we
accept the wisdom that being ill provides us?
And one day, I realized oh, maybe that's the same movie
as the movie about why are we in comedy, what does it mean?
I talked to Adam Sandler early in the process
of writing "Funny People".
So he was a big part of helping me develop the idea.
And it was always my dream to work with Adam.
We were roommates when we were kids,
when we were first starting out in standup.
I had never gotten a chance to direct him in a movie before
and one of the great pleasures of my life was how fun he was
to work with and what a great actor he was.
He was always a great friend but it was the first time I got
to see up close how brilliant he is in his work.
I always knew that Erin Cabana was funny.
I had seen online these crazy sketches he used to do.
He had some sort of variety show
in Australia and he used to do Arnold Schwarzenegger
and he had this really hysterical Tom Cruise Impression
that he did.
So I was very excited to put him
in a comedy because he was really getting these incredibly
serious parts, intense parts,
but he hadn't shown his comedic side yet, in a movie.
And he was so fun to work with.
- He's really funny.
I don't know why his movies aren't funny, though.
That's weird, isn't it?
- And then, we also laugh because we feel
like we're such goofy idiots.
So when a real actor shows up who knows what he's doing,
who's way better looking than all of us,
it always makes us laugh, like "Look, a professional.
"A professional's here today, working with us.
"How did this happen?"
- Kill me, Ira.
I'm begging you.
- Can you at least give me a night to think about it?
- Ha!
- Dude, you had sex with him.
[plate clinks]
- We had an adult sleepover.
- Hmm, did you let him sleep over in your mouth?
- I was always a huge fan of Kristen Wiig's.
I saw her in the first episode that she was
on of Saturday Night Live, and she killed
on the first episode she was on, which nobody does.
Usually it takes people a long time to get comfortable
on the show, so we put her in "Knocked Up"
and she played an executive at the E! Channel
and she was so funny in these scenes with Alan Tudyk,
giving Katherine Heigl all this awful, insulting advice.
And her part didn't exist, it was all made up by her
in improvisations, then we worked together on "Walk Hard."
She played Dewey Cox's first wife
who didn't think he was gonna make it.
So we were always looking for opportunities
to work with her, and one day her
and Annie Mumolo said they wanted to do a movie
about a maid of honor who can't really afford
to even do all the events and the things that she needs
to do for her friend, and how it made her feel bad
that everyone seemed to be doing better in life than her.
And at the time, we didn't even think it was a movie
that was a female-driven comedy.
It never even occurred to us, we just thought,
"Oh, we're making a movie with Kristen."
And then when it was done, people started saying,
"Oh isn't this great, a female-driven comedy."
And we were like, "Oh, I guess."
I mean that really wasn't something that was on our minds,
we just thought, "Let's make a movie
"with all these hilarious women."
We didn't think it had any meaning,
we didn't think it was significant.
But then afterwards, I think it became important
that it was such a big hit and was so funny,
because I hope it opened up opportunities
for other people to make movies.
- Holy shit, you look amazing. [all exclaim]
That dress is so pretty it makes my stomach hurt.
- We're professors, Hannah, professors.
We can't keep bankrolling your groovy lifestyle.
- My groovy lifestyle?
- Somebody slipped me a DVD of this movie called
"Tiny Furniture" that Lena Dunham made
and I didn't know who Lena Dunham was.
I didn't even know that she was the person in the movie.
I thought that she was the filmmaker of the movie,
and then when the movie ended it said,
"written and directed by Lena Dunham, starring Lena Dunham"
and I was like, "Oh my god, so that girl did all of this."
And I felt a real connection to her.
She does very personal work, she's so funny and open
and brave, and I feel like a lot of the work I did
on "The King of Staten Island" was inspired
by lessons I learned from collaborating with her,
because she was always so courageous
about really baring her soul in all of these scripts
and all of these stories.
- Hannah, look at me.
He never, ever texts you back.
- Maybe we should call him, I mean didn't you say texting
is the lowest form of communication on the pillar of chat?
- Hey there, it's Darren.
- Oh, this is Amy.
I think you butt dialed me.
- No, no I dialed you with my fingers.
- What's she saying, what's she saying?
- Shh.
I was a giant fan of Amy Schumer's from her standup,
and I heard her on The Howard Stern Show talking
about her family, and her relationships,
and I asked her if she wanted to work on a movie
and at first we worked on a different movie for a while,
and then one day we just sat down
and we started talking about relationships,
and Amy came up with the idea for "Trainwreck"
and it was one of the great, fun experiences.
We got to work with Colin Quinn, who played her dad,
who's someone that I did a pilot with 15 years before,
who was the biggest star we knew when I was a kid.
He was on Remote Control, and he would talk to us
and he was the comedian we looked up to,
so it was great to work with Colin Quinn.
Bill Hader is somebody that has been in a few of our movies
and it was real fun to try to have him play
this leading romantic lead, which he always found funny.
He thought it was a weird thing
that he would be the romantic lead.
I found him romantic.
But before he got the part, I went to New York with Bill
and had him and Amy hang out and have dinner,
almost like a date, and I sat at the table
and just watched them, and he said
it was the most uncomfortable thing he's ever gone through,
just me creepily deciding if they were sexy together.
- Did you guys make love?
- Yeah.
- Oh, woo!
My boy got intimate.
- Yeah.
- Sexual intercourse, woo!
- What do you think the employee discount is
at the dollar store?
[crowd chuckles]
There you are.
You think it's just take it?
- "Crashing" began when Pete Holmes had a talk show
and he asked if he could come do a sketch
where he pitched me movie ideas,
and in the sketch he's pitching me tons of terrible ideas
for movies, and we're improvising,
and in the improvisation I said,
"But seriously, Pete, what's the idea?
"Do you have any ideas for like a movie
"or a TV show, like come on, what's the personal idea?
"Tell me the idea."
And in the sketch, he said "Well, I was a young comedian
"and I was married and my wife cheated on me,
"and then I was religious and I went to New York
"to try to be a comedian and I had to crash
"on a lot of people's couches."
And in the sketch, I said,
"Yeah no, that's too sad.
"That's too sad, no one wants to see that."
But then six months later, he called me
and he said "I kinda really do wanna do that
"idea I was talking about in the sketch."
And that joke became the show.
- I thought maybe I could go on earlier,
you know, while the crowd is still here.
- Yeah, yeah.
Nah.
- What do you mean, nah?
- Please welcome the lovely Garry Shandling!
- [Male Host] Garry Shandling is over here.
Here he is, Garry Shandling.
- [Female Host] Garry Shandling.
- Ten years. - It's been ten years
since you were here, isn't that remarkable?
- It's remarkable.
- And is there a problem?
[crowd laughs]
- "Zen Diaries of Garry Shandling" began
when I was helping his family go through his belongings
and he had all these incredible journals
and memorabilia from his life and these books with thousands
of jokes, and when we held the memorial service for him,
I cut these little five minute documentary pieces
about him and pretty quickly, I realized
there was a great documentary to be made about our friend.
And I got permission from his family, and I called HBO
and I said "I think this might need to be two parts.
"It might need to be like the Bob Dylan documentary."
And I said, "How come Bob Dylan's
worth four, four and half hours?
"Garry's worth same amount of time as Bob Dylan."
And they said "Well, if it works at that length,
"we'll do it."
And that's what we did.
I was excited that it got such a great reception,
because I really felt like there were all these ideas
that Garry wanted to share with the world
that were related to his spirituality,
to all the work he had done to try to heal himself,
to focus on love and kindness and Buddhism,
and he was just beginning to understand how
to find a way through art to talk to people about that.
So in my mind, I always felt like this movie was,
hopefully, what Garry was trying to express to people.
- [Garry] As you grow, you have to find a new purpose
and intention for doing what you do, or you won't grow.
- I wanna become a real tattoo artist.
- Your work is mad inconsistent.
Obama ain't right.
- I love your tattoos, this is my favorite.
- I met Pete Davidson when I was casting "Trainwreck."
I said to Amy Schumer, "Who's funny?"
She said "There's this kid, Pete Davidson.
"He's 20 years old, he's way funnier
"than he has any right to be at that age."
So he gave a very, very brief cameo in the movie,
and Bill Hader enjoyed working with him so much
that the next day he called him and said,
"I'm gonna recommend you to Lorne Michaels
"for Saturday Night Live," and then he auditioned
and he got Saturday Night Live.
Over the next few years, we talked about one script
that he worked on with his partner, Dave Sirus,
and then after a few years we realized maybe
that wasn't the one, and we slowly started talking
about this idea, which became "The King of Staten Island."
"The King of Staten Island" is made up, it's fiction
but we like to think of it as emotionally truthful
because it is about a lot of what Pete went
through in his life.
His father was a firefighter who died on 9/11,
and that was something that was very, very difficult
for him to deal with as a kid and throughout his life.
And in this movie, it's a bit of an imagining
of what might have happened to Pete
if he didn't find comedy, because at about 15 years old,
he started going to comedy clubs
and through comedy and getting on stage and traveling
around, he became a very ambitious, driven person.
But in the movie, he's someone that didn't find
that interest, and he's just sitting around,
smoking pot, hanging out with his friends,
and he's about to get in a lot of trouble.
In the movie, his mom, played by Marisa Tomei,
hasn't really dated since his father died.
And she starts dating a fireman,
and this forces Pete's character to have
to deal with all the issues and obstacles
that have held him back in his life.
And what we were trying to do is,
hopefully a really funny movie,
but a movie which talks about grief
and how people and families get
through that kind of traumatic event.
Recently, I was talking to Mindy Kaling
and she said, "You know, I think in all your movies,
"somebody's stuck, like they're stuck.
"It's about them getting unstuck."
And I never thought of that, my entire career,
that that's what it was, and I thought,
"I think she's right, I think Mindy Kaling understands me
"more than I understand me."
And then I felt really weird.
That's it, Vanity Fair, that was a timeline of my career.
I am exhausted from reliving it.
[sighs heavily]
I hope your day is good.
Be well, be safe.
I'll be here, for the next year.