Interview - Judd Apatow

Interview with Judd Apatow : Writer and Director of Funny People

By Sean Lynch

If you're a comedy nerd like me, when you hear the names Judd Apatow in the same sentence as rest of the cast of Funny People (including Seth Rogen, Eric Bana and Adam Sandler) - your head may just explode.

Not since comedy's heyday in the 1980s when Dan Aykroyd led the comedy Rat Pack (including Bill Murray, Chevy Chase, Harold Ramis and John Belushi) has one man had such an influence on a cinematic genre.

In fact, you'd be hard pressed to find a hit comedy from the last decade that Judd Apatow hasn't had some kind of input in (whether it be as a writer, director or producer).

So while it's of no surprise that his latest flick has attracted some of the biggest names in comedy, it is ironic to see that Funny People is actually his most serious film to date.

Web Wombat Movies' Sean Lynch sat down with Apatow to talk bad jokes, terrible movies... and Hollywood penis envy!

You are a big comedy nerd I understand...

Yes, very much so.

So is Funny People your ode to being a comedy nerd and to comedy nerds across the world?

It is, it's a comedy nerd epic!

It's a movie about my love of comedy, my love of hanging out with comedians.

I also thought it was a good way to talk about bigger issues, but in a world that makes you laugh.

So if there was a movie about a guy that gets sick, then gets better and then has a nervous breakdown... it doesn't sound hilarious.

But when it happens to Adam [Sandler], it's very funny [Laughs].

Funny People is very different to Knocked Up. It almost feels like an extension of Freaks & Geeks in a way.

Was there ever a time when you felt this story would be stronger as a TV series?

I don't like working in TV because they can cancel you at any moment [Laughs].

So when they tell you to do something dumb like : "Hey, why don't you add a hot girl neighbour" and you're like "I don't want to"... then they're like "Then we will cancel you".

So you always have a gun to your head.

With a movie at least, you can be like "Hey, do you like this movie? Want to make it?" and they are like "Yeah".

And it's as simple as that.

So you'll never go back to TV, ever?

I doubt it. Unless maybe I can do one season or a little mini-series or something, they can leave me alone.

You've shot a lot of viral Internet promos for Funny People which are, tonally, very different to what the actual movie is like.

Were you conscious that approach might effect the way people would respond to the movie (expecting one thing and getting the opposite)?

We talked about it. But in the end, what I thought was, that if you watch the trailer you get the tone of the movie - basically.

It's a serious minded movie that's really, really funny.

But there were certain characters in the movie that really made us laugh, and we wanted to explore other things.

There's this really bad comic named Raaaaaaaandy - so on Funny Or Die we made all of these documentaries about Raaaaaaaandy's life.

In the movie Adam is stand-up comic and a famous actor, so we put clips of all of the movies from his fake career on our website - so you can see big long clips from MerMan and Re-Do and Sayonara Davey and all of his bad movies.

Were there any fake movies that didn't quite make the cut?

Yeah! There are some clips on the website that aren't in the movie. One is called Man's Best Friend, where Adam plays a cop whose partner's a dog.

And Sayonara Davey which is Adam as a foreign exchange student in Japan [Laughs], which is just a terrible, terrible movie with Ken Jeong from Knocked Up and The Hangover.

Raaaaaaaandy is now my friends and I's favourite thing to quote when we have a few drinks. How much effort goes into making comedy that's "So Bad It's Good"?

Aziz [Ansari] is a stand up comedian - the guy who plays Raaaaaaaandy - and what he did was take some of his old jokes and then performed them with way to much energy. So he just danced around and went crazy and he said "This guy knows what I'm talkin about, this guy knows what I'm talking about...".

And so he tried to badly perform good jokes. And then slowly we realised we should write some more really bad jokes for Raaaaaaaandy. Now we want to make the Raaaaaaaandy Movie - we can't stop making Raaaaaaandy things.

And that happens sometimes when you're making a movie, where one little person makes you laugh and you think "Ok, I've gotta keep working with that guy".

When we did 40 Year Old Virgin, Jonah Hill was so funny in his 30 second cameo [as the guy in the eBay store] we said "Let's put him in Superbad, we want to keep watching this guy".

You've managed to bring everyone you've worked with since Freaks & Geeks through your career - except the English guy from Undeclared. Is there any reason he has never made it into a flick?

Charlie Hunnam

Or is he just an asshole...

[Laughs] No he's fantastic! In fact when we were working on Forgetting Sarah Marshall, the Russell Brand part was written for Charlie Hunnam - to be an actor not a rock star - and then he had another movie he was going to make that he couldn't get out of to do Forgetting Sarah Marshall.

So we said "Well, what do we do?".

And then one day Adam Sandler's agent said "I represent this guy Russell Brand from England, you should meet him". So he came into my office and we said "Maybe we should just rewrite the whole movie for that guy - he's pretty funny".

How is Get Him To The Greek [the Russell Brand / Jonah Hill movie] coming along?

Yeah, it's great.

It's the same bunch of the guys who made Forgetting Sarah Marshall. It's kind of a sequel, because it's about Russell's character Aldous Snow falling off the wagon. And it's Jonah Hill's job to get him from England to America.

Rose Byrne is in it, Lars Ulrich from Metallica, P Diddy and Elisabeth Moss from Mad Men - it's a pretty star studded affair [Laughs].

You obviously hired another Aussie dude, Eric Bana, for Funny People - how much of his comedy work did you know of beforehand?

Well I knew Chopper, which is one of the great movies of all time, and I had seen a lot of his sketches on YouTube. There's all these clips of him interviewing Tom Cruise and Arnold Schwarzenegger, where he's playing both parts, and a lot of his stand up is on there too.

So I thought "This guy is hilarious, why doesn't he do comedies?". It doesn't make sense that he's only trying to kill Spock [Laughs]. He has other skills!

He is good at trying to kill Spock and destroying his planet, but he's also funny, so he has to do both.

Was he always the first choice for the role, or was it a random thing, because you sort of reference him in Knocked Up...

The first choice I had when I was writing was that I would play it. Because I thought I'm so unlikeable, that you wouldn't mind Adam Sandler trying to have sex with my wife.

But then I realised that I wanted someone who actually had charisma and talent... and then I decided to go with Eric [Laughs].

One final question before we go. We ask everyone this : If you could start your own myth or rumour to spread about yourself in the press... what would it be? 

That's a very good question... um... just "Well Hung" is always a good rumour.

[Laughs] That is the number one response we seem to always get...

Well that's all that anybody cares about!

I'm starting to get the feeling that everyone in the film industry just have tiny dicks [Laughs]...

You know what, to me, it's not even a rumour - I just want people to know the truth [Laughs].

Funny People stands up in Australian Cinemas from September 10th 2009 and OUT NOW on DVD