Charlie: In your mind, what’s the push-pull between, I want to tell this interesting-but-serious story and at the same time, I make comedies?
Judd: I thought that if this story happened in the world of comedians it would inherently have a lot of humor in it. But what I thought in my head was, I’m not going to let the joke count determine what the movie is.
Charlie: I’m not going to go for easy jokes?
Judd: I’m not going to go for big set pieces. Usually when you make a comedy, you think, Okay, every ten minutes something crazy has to happen. The energy has to kick in. And here, I just said, Well, there will be a lot of stand-up in the movie and the conversations will be funny and intense, but I’ll let the emotional life of it rule the day in terms of how this works. And that was tricky to do. It’s tough to shake it off and just say, Okay, no, this scene’s intense and that’s it. When you’re testing a movie, if it’s a comedy, you hear the laughs and you go, That scene works. But if it’s a sad scene and you’ve watched it two hundred times, it’s a little trickier to go, How did we do there? Did you feel something? I wish there was a noise for feeling. Then I could go, Okay, they made the weird noise.
Charlie: Adam, tell me about George Simmons, your character. How is he different from anybody you played before?
Adam: He’s a little more raw. He shows a darker, nastier side—you know, what I like about playing the guy is you’re never sure what the response is going to be. Seth Rogen plays my assistant. He’s a nice young kid and one second I’m warm to him and the next second I’m abusing him. Seth never knew which way we were going to go with it, and when I first read the script I was like, “Oh, man, I am such a bad person in this movie.” And he would always say, “Really? You think so? I don’t know. I think he’s a nice guy,” and I’d be like, “I don’t know, I don’t know.” But the way Judd put the movie together was like, All right, you see why this guy became a certain way and you forgive him.
Judd: That was the thought I had. I had a little notebook and right before we shot I made little notes, things to remember. Like: Don’t forget these four things. And one of them was the entire movie is just a journey to understand why the character is like this and when it ends you completely know him and you know what his struggle is. But it takes a while to connect the dots.
Charlie: All right. There’s something called “Apatowian.” Explain to me what that means.
Judd: I don’t know, exactly—
Charlie: What do you think it means? In other words, what is it if you say it’s an Apatow movie?
Adam: I guess it’s used right now with saying it’s, uh, there’s buddies involved in the movie, and language that feels natural. And cursing.
Charlie: A lot of reference to sex and women.
Adam: Exactly. What I love about this movie, I—on occasion, Judd has heard some, you know, uh, what is it? What do they say? What’s the negative on you right now?
Judd: That I’m a sexist?
Charlie: No, misanthropic.
Judd: How would you define that word?
Charlie: Someone who hates everything.
Judd: See, I think I’m a wussy. I’m a wimp.
Charlie: Tell me how you see this.
Judd: Okay. Well, what I thought about when I was making the movie was that there are traditional structures of comedies—and film in general—and when you go against it, it disturbs people. You know, it’s the movies like John Cassavetes’s movies and Robert Altman movies where they’re meant to make you feel things you don’t want to feel. Now that’s not part of mainstream comedy but I thought it was important to think about. There’s this quote from John Cassavetes. He said, “I don’t care if you like me or hate me, I just want you to be thinking about me in ten years.” I do want you to love the movie—I think that is the most important part—but I want to get under people’s skin and provoke in addition to having a hopeful message.
Charlie: All right. “Funny People feels insular, as if Apatow’s whole world consists of nerdy jokesters who were angry, lonely kids who got rich beyond their dreams and ‘f’ women who’d never have talked to them in high school but are deep down still angry.” That’s from New York magazine.
Adam: What is the problem there?
Charlie: Yeah, exactly. You’ve got to help me on this. We got to understand what’s—
Judd: It’s wrong in a couple of ways. One is, I had a fantastic girlfriend in high school who was very nice to me. Her parents were very nice to me. So I wasn’t the guy who didn’t have a girlfriend. In terms of it being an insular world of comedians, it’s kind of a ridiculous criticism because it’s a movie about comedians. And in terms of comedians who get successful or who are unhappy, you only have to look at Michael Jackson to see what fame does to people in terms of everyone giving them everything they want. How unhappy it makes them and how much difficulty they have connecting with individuals when they can only connect with the masses. I think it’s all very real stuff I’m talking about. It may not be real to everyone, but—
Charlie: Who’s it real to? Twenty-five-year-old males?
Judd: It’s a way of talking about how we come up with our priorities for our lives through the eyes of a comedian, but we all deal with this. How much time do we want to spend at work versus how much time do we want to spend with the family?
Charlie: All right, here’s another one: “[Apatow’s] man-child universe, with its mixture of juvenile raunch and white-bread family values, has conquered American comedy.” Is that you? Middle-class values and man-child universe?
Judd: Well, I don’t think I’ve met a man who is not a man-child. If I meet a man who acts very proper I think he’s covering up how goofy he really is. I’m forty-one years old, and when we lived together we were all immature, goofy guys. Now I have a lot of the same friends and I’m forty-one and we haven’t made a lot of progress and I really don’t think when me and Adam are sixty it’s going to be much different.
Charlie: What is it that you think connects with the audience out there?
Adam: I get pitched ideas about movies. “Hey, such-and-such studio has a movie for you.” They tell me the idea and three sentences in, I can either be like, Whoa, that feels like something, or, I don’t know about that. It’s a gut feeling. It comes from when I was young and what I knew excited me and my friends or what I’d want to see. I’m getting older, though. I don’t know exactly what these young kids are talking about. I used to be kind of cocky walking down the street from my movies. When the young kids would see me I’d be like, Yeah, that’s right, here I am. Now I’m like, You still like me? Am I in the gang still?
Charlie: But when you look at these things, what is the instinct you have? Does this fit for me? or It doesn’t fit for me? Can you define it or do you just know it?
Adam: Most importantly, it’s Am I going to be proud of it and think it’s funny? The fact that I went in with Apatow blind and said, “Whatever you write, I’m in,” it’s because I trust him and I like his taste.
Charlie: How would you characterize his taste?
Judd: My pitch was not a funny pitch: “Adam, you’re dying and you’re a terrible person.”
Adam: Stop there, just write it. You’re going to get me out of this thing. Now his taste is very sexist and I identify with that.