Judd: How do you get steady work?
Jerry: Well, you audition; you start off at three in the morning and you fight your way through the order by doing better than the guy they put on ahead of you. Then the next night they put you on ahead of him. Then you try to do better than that guy. But if you’re good, people notice you. That’s the greatest thing about comedy. If you’ve got talent, it’s unmistakable. No one misses it and you don’t have to wait around for a break. It’s very easy to get a break. It’s very hard to be good enough.
Judd: When did you do your first TV appearance?
Jerry: Merv Griffin was my first talk show.
Judd: And how did you get that first booking?
Jerry: The same thing. I was out working at the Improv. If you’re clean, and you’re clever, and you’re killin’, they’re not gonna miss you.
Judd: What’s it like doing Johnny Carson or Merv Griffin?
Jerry: It’s the ultimate. The Tonight Show is—to stand up there is a dream. It’s like the Olympics of comedy, you know.
Judd: How do you prepare a certain ten minutes to go on?
Jerry: Well, you try to put it together like a small regular set. In other words, it’s an hour set condensed into ten minutes. You can’t have a mistake in it. Because it’s—you can’t recover. It goes by so fast so you try and put it together like an opening, and then you build, and you get the audience rolling and you have a big closing finish.
Judd: Is it like fifty percent of the fight is just going on and walking out there?
Jerry: Yeah, yeah. But you make one little mistake, or one stupid mistake and in five minutes it’s very hard to get an audience back. People do it, but it’s tough.
Judd: So where do you go from here? Like right now you’re established as one of the top comedians and you get work, not only in the clubs but in Atlantic City. How much farther can you get?
Jerry: It’s a tricky point that I’m at. But everyone that you’ll be talking to is that. Because there’s a lot you could do with TV series; you could do a sitcom, which a lot of people don’t want to be associated with. You could do movies; they’re hard to get and it’s hard to have a hit. You could just do stand-up and hope that you catch on after a while—like Gallagher, you know. There’s a lot of different ways. I’m gonna do some acting. Because it’s easy for me and there’s a lot of good vehicles for exposure as an actor. But stand-up is what I am. I’m a comedian, and the acting will just be to improve my visibility.
Judd: And what kind of vehicles are you looking for?
Jerry: Quality. That’s my only real consideration. It could be anything, as long as the people are trying to do something good. I don’t want to do a piece of junk. I’m not starving, you know.
PART ONE: A–J
ADAM SANDLER (2009)
I met Adam Sandler when I was in my early twenties. He was known at that time as the stud man from the MTV game show Remote Control. He also happened to be an extremely original and gifted comedian. We all knew that Adam was going to rule comedy one day; we just didn’t know yet how that would come to pass. What would the trigger be?
The first step was when he was asked to do stand-up on David Letterman, and killed; then he was flying off to audition for Saturday Night Live; and then, suddenly, I didn’t have a roommate anymore. Those days living with Adam were, in some ways, the time of our lives; we still get on the phone every now and then, twenty years later, and reminisce about it. It was a time when all we did, all day long, was kill time and write jokes and then, at night, tell jokes at the Improv, then we ate fettuccini Alfredo with Budd Friedman and one of the many comedians we looked up to. It was a special, carefree time. We were all working so hard to succeed, but having fun being knucklehead kids, too.
In 2009, I got to make Funny People with Adam, which turned out to be one of the most rewarding experiences of my career. He was so successful at the time, I honestly wasn’t sure I would be able to maintain control of the project; I worried about how far he’d be willing to go with so much on the line. But Adam was a true collaborator. He was incredibly brave. He never once said, “I don’t want to do that,” or, “That might make me look bad.” And in the process, he revealed a side of himself that most people had never seen before. Even more fun than making the movie was the press tour. From the beginning, Adam declared he didn’t want to do any interviews without me, which led to me and Adam being in rooms together, having to do interviews with a different person every eight minutes in countries all over the world, and trying to figure out ways to make each other laugh. One of the high points of that press tour, for me, was our appearance on the Charlie Rose show, because Adam is an extremely private person who rarely talks in public about his life and career. We did it together, like old roommates. I liked it so much that I put it on the DVD for Funny People. And I present it again here now.
Charlie Rose: I am pleased to have Adam Sandler and Judd Apatow back at this table. Welcome.
Adam Sandler: Great to see you.
Charlie: Now, where do we start? Tell me when you two first met.
Adam: After I moved out to L.A., I was twenty-two and went onstage at the Valley Improv. There used to be an improv at a hotel in the Valley. They had that for a few years. It’s gone now but, uh, I did pretty well that night. That wasn’t a normal thing. Usually I didn’t do well and so I ran to a phone to call my dad—“It’s going all right, Dad.” And if I remember correctly, I think Apatow was lurking around the phones, kind of looking at me, and I’m, All right, this guy’s looking at me. And then he came up to me and said, “Hey, I’m Judd, I saw you out in New York, you do that Baryshnikov bit.” I used to have a bit I’d wear sweatpants onstage and say here’s my impression of Baryshnikov and I’d pull them up and show the lack of bulge—
Charlie: The what?
Adam: The lack of bulge. Anyway, Judd mentioned he liked it and we started talking.
Judd Apatow: It sounds like a come-on. I love your bulge.
Charlie: So he started talking to you—and then?
Adam: And then we became friends—very good friends. I was out there with a few guys from NYU. We all made the move together and then they couldn’t afford rent anymore so I was like, I need a roommate who’s going to pay.
Judd: I don’t remember that. I don’t remember that.
Adam: Everybody was moving out of that house.
Charlie: Where were you in your life, at that point?