Judd Apatow has never been one to play it safe. After cutting his teeth in the competitive world of stand-up comedy and blending male hijinks, self-deprecating humor, and an unexpected sweetness in The 40-Year Old Virgin (2005) andKnocked Up (2007), Apatow returns to his old stomping grounds while branching out in Funny People. Marking a somber departure, the film stars friend and former roommate, Adam Sandler, as George Simmons, a successful, self-involved comedian, who learns he has a rare and possibly incurable blood disease. While George starts mentoring fledgling comedian, Ira Wright (Seth Rogen), he also makes amends with Laura, a lost love (Leslie Mann) who is now a mother and married to an intimidating Aussie (Eric Bana). Amping up the stakes even more, George’s health suddenly improves. Now that he has all the time in the world, will he still feel compelled to fix his fragile relationships or will he relapse into a meaningless malaise of partying and acting in mediocre movies? Suspended between tragedy and comedy, Apatow walks a fine line, acknowledging the inevitable pull of mortality as well as the importance of laughter in the face of death. I sat down with the funnyman on his recent press tour to talk about his latest film.San Francisco Bay Guardian: Funny People blurs the line between fiction and reality a lot, especially at the beginning when you use personal footage from 20-odd years ago of you filming Adam Sandler making prank phone calls.
Judd Apatow: Yeah, it just seemed like a great opportunity [to include real-life footage] to create these characters because Adam Sandler never had a stand-up special, and he never put out a comedy album where he did stand-up, so no one really knows that he was a stand-up comedian. It seemed like a fun way to create the history for [Sandler's character] George Simmons, and it actually makes you care more about the characters because you believe that they’re real.
SFBG: How was it returning to your stand-up comedy roots?
JA: It was fun because we had to start doing stand-up again to prepare for the movie. So I started doing stand-up first so that I could write jokes. And then Adam had to start doing stand-up again, and he hadn’t performed in ten years and neither had Seth.
Then we did these roundtables with people like Patton Oswald and Brian Posehn to generate material, and we just wrote hundreds and hundreds of jokes. We also shot with real crowds and tried to make it look documentary-style. That was important to me because in most movies about stand-up, the scenes where they do stand-up always seem very fake.
SFBG: First Seth Rogen does Superbad (2007) based on his adolescence, and now you’ve completed Funny People based on your experience in stand-up. Did Seth inspire you with his semiautobiographical turn?
JA: Well, no matter how broad the material, I think on some level it’s always autobiographical. The best moments, even if they’re not verbatim, [seem to be] inspired by an event or just a feeling that you have about something. We didn’t know a guy like George because most of the old comedians were nice to us. But we certainly knew plenty of people who were very unhappy at times even when things were working well in their careers.
SFBG: And then they have to go out on stage and be funny regardless.
JA: Exactly. Sometimes all the approval you get by being a comedian allows you to never address what’s actually wrong with your personality or what’s actually bothering you.
SFBG: Who were your comedic influences growing up?
JA: There was [Jay] Leno and Jerry Seinfeld and Charles Fleischer. And for filmmakers, I loved all the Hal Ashby movies and Cameron Crowe and James Brooks. I like movies that make me laugh and cry or make me really feel something and it’s difficult to pull that off. That’s something I’m trying to find more courage [to do] — to put more weight on the story and the emotions and at the same time try really hard to make these movies just as funny as a balls-out comedy.
Leslie Mann, Adam Sandler, Seth Rogen, and Eric Bana in Funny People.
SFBG: This film is a departure for you with a terminal illness thrown into the mix. What was your inspiration?
JA: Well, I just wanted to write something that I cared about. I’ve seen too many people struggle with being seriously ill and a lot of the times people get better, and it’s not easy to take the wisdom that you suddenly have when you’re sick and use it when you get a second chance. And that was the idea that interested me. The movie is all about how George hits bottom when he gets sick, and then he needs to hit bottom again to figure out how he wants to live the rest of his life.
SFBG: The primary relationship didn’t seem to be between George and Leslie Mann's character, Laura, but rather between George and Seth Rogen's character, Ira. Did you consider their dynamic a bit of a bromance, and what do you think about the recent surge of bromances at the box office?
JA: I looked at this movie more like it had a father/son aspect to it where you have this comedian who never had kids, and he would never admit it, but he is feeling fatherly to this young guy. But at the same time he’s more immature than Seth’s character, so the tables turned a little bit when [Ira] starts standing up to him.
Male friendship is also just a funny area. Guys are such goofballs, and I think the reason why we’re doing a lot of movies about that is because it’s just funny to watch how men relate to each other. That’s why I like Martin and Lewis movies, and that’s why people like Laurel and Hardy.
SFBG: You’re known for using a lot of improvisation in your films. What was that experience like on set?
JA: Well, we knew exactly what we wanted to do because we rehearsed for about six to eight months before we started shooting. So a lot of times when we’re on set, we’re remembering things we have played around with in the past.
And then there are certain scenes that are just more interesting after a few takes. You can take the handcuffs off and just see where [the actors] go. So if Seth and Jonah Hill have a terrible argument on the phone, I’ll just roll film for 20 minutes and let them go crazy on each other because the things they say are not things that I would think of in my underwear at two in the morning.
George Simmons (Sandler) and Ira Wright (Rogen).
SFBG: A lot of the comedy seemed to come from in-jokes like with Seth losing a bunch of weight [for The Green Hornet, due out in 2010].
JA: Yes, I always like to reflect reality. So if Seth in real life lost weight then we basically have to make jokes about it. I also like the fact that Jonah would [be the one to] make fun of him for being skinny. There is an odd pressure on funny guys not to be in good shape. [Laughing] This great comedian, Kevin Rooney, used to say, “If he’s working on his body, he’s not working on his act.”
SFBG: What was it like working with Eric Bana? How did that come about?
JA: I had seen a lot of clips on Youtube of this sketch show he used to do in Australia, and he did stand-up for a long time. I thought it would be fun to have [Bana] do something that you don’t normally see him do, because he is as funny as anybody, but, for whatever reason, he prefers, you know, to fight Spock [as the villainous Nero in J. J. Abrams’ Star Trek]. And he’s one of the great action stars. We mentioned him in Knocked Up (2007) because we love him in Munich (2005), but the fact that he’s hilarious too is great to exploit. He was also really nice, and it was just fun to have someone handsome on the set. [Laughs]
SFBG: Your film boasts a pretty impressive list of comedians and celebrity cameos, including Eminem, Sarah Silverman, Ray Romano, and Norm MacDonald.
JA: Yeah, I was trying to establish that when you’re a celebrity, there’s this strange group of people you hang out with. So when you get sick, you have no one to talk about it with except…Norm MacDonald. [Laughs] In some ways it’s meant to show how isolated George is from everyday people. In the movie he doesn’t seem to have any friends, but when he finally has friends, it’s all of these eclectic celebrities. [Laughs] It also explains why he doesn’t leave the house that much.
SFBG: The one cameo that surprised me was James Taylor. How did that happen?
JA: I love James Taylor, and I was trying to figure out a way to get him to do the movie and my friend, David Merkin, who produces The Simpsons is friends with him and reached out. We wound up shooting about a dozen different songs, and the crew was crying and it was emotional. It was actually one of the best few days I’ve ever had in show business — being able to force James Taylor to play any song I wanted him to play. [Laughs]
SFBG: I think your wife, Leslie Mann, is one of the most underrated comedians out there, and I know you’ve worked with other amazing female comedians — Amy Poehler in Undeclared, Jane Lynch in The 40-Year Old Virgin (2005), Kristin Wiig inKnocked Up. But your films tend to focus on guys. Is it just that you find it easier to write dialogue for them and capture their voice?
JA: Well, The 40-Year Old Virgin becomes a romance between Steve [Carell] and Catherine Keener, and I always saw Knocked Up as about Katherine Heigl and Seth [Rogen] and Leslie [Mann] and Paul [Rudd]. So in my head, they’re not super male-driven, but there are always a lot of [male] friends who are big and obnoxious that you seem to remember.
That’s just something I know. I don’t really know what women are like when they’re hanging out and getting stoned. I need to hang out and get stoned with more women! See, if more women hung out with me in college, I would have known more about their routines. [Laughs]
It would take a lot of courage for me to do the full-on Vicky Cristina Barcelona(2008) movie, but I will try it. I will try it, but afterwards don’t be mad at me if I mess it up and when the women all seem to still talk like Seth Rogen. [Laughs]
SFBG: Looking at the trajectory of your career so far, you’ve gone through high school with Freaks and Geeks, college with Undeclared, losing your virginity and getting pregnant with 40-Year Old Virgin and Knocked Up and now a near-death experience with Funny People. Where do you go from here?
JA: [Laughing] I think in the next one, I do have to kill somebody. Someone’s got to die. That’s all there is…I have few phases left.
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