Name: EP 71: Judd Apatow w/ Kombucha
Uploaded: 2022-04-18T01:00:01.000Z
Description: Watch the stand-up comedy video 'EP 71: Judd Apatow w/ Kombucha' from We Might Be Drunk Podcast on Comedy Buff. Published 2022-04-18. Transcript available.

Watch the stand-up comedy video 'EP 71: Judd Apatow w/ Kombucha' from We Might Be Drunk Podcast on Comedy Buff. Published 2022-04-18. Transcript available.

EP 71: Judd Apatow w/ Kombucha

Hey, folks, here we are. We might be drunk. We're back. We got a hot guest. How
you doing, Judd?
I'm happy to be here. Couldn't be happier. You called today.
Yeah.
And you texted and you said, are you free? And I was. I'm usually not even in
New York.
Yeah.
And just, I had a perfect slot.
I saw you doing something at the 92nd Street Wine. I was like, Judd's in New
York. And give the new book, so.
That's right. I'll be there tomorrow with Rami Youssef.
Hey, we love Rami.
You can go. Does this run before that?
No.
Yeah.
Fuck.
April 25th.
Oh, man, you missed it. I assume it went well, but it was empty because I didn't
plug it here.
I heard you killed and didn't get slapped.
Exactly. Perfect.
That's all that matters.
That's all we want at this point.
You're doing The Tonight Show right after this.
I am, yes.
Showbiz.
Showbiz. I got things to push. I got the bubble on Netflix April 1st. I've got
the book, Sicker in the Head. I have a George Carlin documentary coming out the
end of May.
Can't wait.
I have three things to peddle.
You're a machine, man. I mean, the Shanling doc was incredible.
Thank you.
Oh, yeah.
This one is crazy. I mean, I was scared to make it because I only met George
Carlin once.
I interviewed him when I was like 20 years old for Canadian television.
And it was the only interview I couldn't find. Literally, of his whole career,
the only thing I looked for that did not exist was me as a young idiot talking
to him for Canadian TV.
I wonder if you go up there, they have it.
I begged it. I called all those people. You know what did exist? Paul Reiser's
sister interviewed him for her college radio station in like 1971.
And Paul Reiser had the tape.
And she did a really good interview. It was right when he grew the beard and
grew the hair. You know, he went from being a little corny to edgier.
And the story that they tell about it is they do it at their apartment in New
York City.
I know. Well, maybe they lived on Long Island. But anyway, near the city.
He comes over. She does the interview. And afterwards, he says, I got to go. I'm
going to I'm going to go buy a camera.
And their dad says, I'll take you. I know a guy on the Lower East Side. He'll
give you a good price on a camera.
And they go with him. And George Carlin buys a camera. They're all like in the
car together.
Wow. And then she sees him a year later. I guess she gets another interview
with him somehow.
And she asked him about the camera. And he said, yeah, no, I didn't want to get
a camera.
I was actually trying to go uptown to buy cocaine.
Damn. Wow. I met him. Sorry. I met him once and he couldn't have been more Carlin.
And I loved it.
He did a book signing at Borders. I skipped work to go there and Wall Street.
And I waited in line. And I was so excited. I had like three books.
When Jesus Bring the Pork Chop, Braindroppings, all that shit. I'm a huge fan.
Napalm and Silly Putty. Napalm and Silly Putty. That was the other one.
And I could hear people in line going, I loved you in Jersey Girl. I loved you
in Dog Butt.
I'm like, ah, what are you? Bill and Ted. That was great. I'm like, what are
you doing?
Braindroppings.
Braindroppings. Yes. Back in town, complaints and grievances, you know, stuff,
football, baseball, the whole thing.
And I went up to him and I just unloaded on him. And he goes, what do you do?
He like stopped me. And I go, I'm a comedian. He goes, you sound like a
comedian.
I go, thank you. And he goes, you got a real talent for jacking around.
I don't know what that means, but I'll take it. He signed the book. We got a
photo.
I think he was nice to comedians.
Yes.
Because I kept hearing from people, they would meet him once and he would say,
give me your number.
I'll check in on you. And sometimes like randomly, like eight months later, he
would go, how's it going?
And he would just be nice to people.
Shandling has that story about how he met him. You know, he went down there and
he said, it's not great, but there's something funny on every page.
Yeah. He gave it, he wanted to write jokes for him. And one of the bits he
wrote for him was a commercial for legalized marijuana.
Oh my God.
Back in like the early seventies.
Yeah. And he's time has really changed. It's really crazy.
My mom used to hide my weed. Now she, she just took weed for a, a doctor gave
her weed for her headache.
There you go.
She used to hide my, I told him, I think this is a little ironic. And she was
like, no, it's, I have headaches.
Yeah. I'm still.
I always say weed and cigarettes change, change places.
My mom used to smoke. Then she, now she has weed.
Yeah.
Well, it's, it's, you know, it's weird now as a parent, cause it's legal. And
so you have kids.
Right.
And you're just like, you can't do that. And they're like, no, it's a fully lawful
thing to do. It's their beer.
Right.
At this point.
And so we, and also on some level, and you can't really say it out loud. Would
you be happier if they were smoking weed than drinking?
Of course.
So are we steering our kids to the weed?
We are.
Weed seems more peaceful, but it also seems like drinking with family is easier.
Cause drinking is suppressing stuff.
Weed, you're like, does my mom not like me really? You know, you're having bad
thoughts.
Yeah.
I don't know.
My mom just told me she didn't like it. So I didn't need the weed, but yeah.
Seems clear.
Yeah.
You know, I, I, there's so much I want to ask you about. Like obviously the
book is, I, I, I, I'm only like, I've only got a few of the interviews, but
they're, they're awesome.
But I, I mean, there's, I think you were talking to Cameron Crowe about James L.
Brooks being a mentor.
Wow.
James L. Brooks is, I feel like one of the most legendary.
Yes.
Taxi Simpsons.
Taxi Simpsons.
Yeah.
I mean, the Mary Tyler Moore show, and then he was producing all the spinoffs
like Rhoda and, and Lou Grant.
Right.
Broadcast News. And there's the things that people don't remember as well. He
wrote a funny movie with, that starred Burt Reynolds and Candace Bergen.
That was really, really funny. And I worked for him on The Critic.
Whoa.
We do recommendations every week on this. The Critic has been a recommendation
because they're all on YouTube.
Yeah.
It's one of the best shows.
Yeah. Because it was the guys from The Simpsons. It was Mike Reese and Al Jean
who created it. And it was John Lovitz is like a Roger Ebert guy.
Right.
And it had tons of parodies in it. And it looked like a big New Yorker drawing.
Yes.
And that was really my first job on a show with a story. I, I used to work half
the week on The Critic.
And half the week at Larry Sanders.
Oh my God.
And then James Brooks would come in.
Jesus.
And he was like so brilliant. And we would, we would have to pitch him our
ideas for stories.
And you'd wait because he was a busy guy to get him to make an appointment, to
sit with the writers, to hear everyone's ideas for stories.
And I always remember him stumbling in the room and we're about to pitch our
ideas.
And we all have little pads with our ideas.
And he's like, you know, I was thinking what a good story could be.
He pitches us three ideas, gets up, walks out of the room.
Like didn't remember why he was there.
All his ideas were better than our ideas.
Yeah.
And then just, just left.
Do you remember any of them?
I do remember one thing that he said to me on my pitch, which I do think shows
you what a genius he is.
My pitch was that, that it was, the guy's name was Jay, the, the critic.
That his parents are, are really rich in, in the show.
And I think it's supposed to be like, he's adopted and they're very waspy.
And she's, she talks like Katharine Hepburn.
Yes.
Yeah.
And, and, and the dad is kind of losing it.
Right.
A little bit like a non sequitur guy.
And so they get in a plane crash is the idea.
And they're on a, they're now on a deserted island, the parents.
And my idea was that Jay finds out that they were like part of the, you know,
what do they call that?
The Illuminati or something like they run the world.
They're so rich.
And now he is on the committee to run the world because the parents died.
Right.
But then you cut to the, to the, the place where the desert island where they
are.
And I didn't really have an idea for that.
And James Brooks said, what if on the island, you know, they've, their marriage
is really stale and it's been stale for a long time.
But on this island, they kind of rebuild their world with like trees and twigs
and they remake it on the island.
They look kind of sexy.
Like they're kind of cut up a little bit and they're dirty and they fall in
love and it gets hot again.
Yeah.
Like that's how great he is.
Like that's what he took from my dumb idea.
Right.
Right.
He went blue lagoon on it.
He did.
Yeah.
Damn.
He just goes to like character going deep.
Yeah.
You know, stories about love and connection and all the ways we're neurotic.
And, and I think that's why he's such a great producer.
Cause you know, he produced big, he produced bottle rocket.
He produced Jerry Maguire.
He produced the first Cameron Crowe movie that he directed, Say Anything.
Oh, wow.
You know, so he's also the best guy to read your stuff and tell you how to make
it better.
Yeah.
That must be terrifying because he, cause you know, he's that good at it.
You know, all his pitches are better than what you're, you're trying to do.
I'm, I'm always intimidated everywhere I go.
Oh, there's Dave Attell.
There's Chris Rock, whatever it is.
I mean, I can't imagine going to work with these guys.
That's insane.
I would be freaking out.
It was scary.
It really was scary.
I used to, when I was really young, you're not in a position of power.
So you don't really get to choose what jokes or what stories get done.
So as an entry-level writer, all you're doing is vomiting out.
What if, what about this?
What about this joke?
What about this thing?
And then they just say, yes, no, yes, no.
And if you don't mind being rejected 80%, 90% of the time, it's a, it's a good
job.
And then slowly you start getting access to the conversation about what stories
should we do.
Right.
Oof.
Terrifying.
Yeah.
Was, who was, was James the most intimidating person you worked for coming up?
I mean, he wasn't intimidating necessarily because he did something that I
think a lot of good comedians do.
It's when you would pitch him something, he never said it was bad.
So if I pitched a bad story, he would like sit and think and go, what could you
do with this?
He never gave you that look like, you idiot.
Right.
You know, so even the worst idea, he's like, what?
And he would sit and he would try to what if it for a while to see if it led to
something else.
And that was the main lesson I learned from him was, okay, this is like a
starting point for someone else's inspiration.
Yeah, we, we write together and we'll do that too.
I never go, that's.
You're so good at that, actually.
Oh, thanks.
Mark and I, since we were open micers, would bounce bits.
And, and Mark, I have some friends who like, you tell a bit to and they're just
like, ugh.
You know, but, but Mark is always like, what if it, what if it was, I think
this is what you're trying to say.
He's very encouraging.
So.
Well, there's usually a nugget, a kernel.
We can go another way.
There's always something.
Well, something's bubbling up, right?
Exactly.
And I think that that's how I, I've, I've tried to look at writing, which is
why am I thinking about this?
Like something from my unconscious is trying to get out and I don't know why.
And usually whether that's a script or a joke, like why, why do I want to talk
about, you know, having babies?
Yeah.
You know, why is that on my mind?
I mean, I think someone said like, you write the movie to figure out why you're
writing the movie.
Oh.
And sometimes you don't know till you finish it.
What is it really about these relationships?
Right.
When I was a kid, you know, my dad got remarried.
My mom got remarried.
I didn't think that much of it.
It was always an adjustment.
You