Sick in the Head: Conversations About Life and Comedy (22 page)

Jeff:
I am with you on that. I remember going to your apartment once and watching that movie about the workers on strike. The train people—

Judd:
Matewan
?

Jeff:
Matewan
, yeah. You’re like, “You’ve got to see this movie, it’s amazing.” And that’s a long movie. By the way, I’m all for long movies, but—

Judd:
Not funny ones, right. You don’t think you can sustain joy or laughter over the long haul. See, when we were doing
Funny People
, I literally
thought,
I’d like to make this the longest comedy ever made.
I wanted people to suffer through parts of it where you think it’s going to go happy, and then it goes to a more painful place, and the length is part of it. It’s like,
Fuck, when will this end?

Jeff:
Fuck, when will this end?
I love that as an aspiration for a filmmaker.

Judd:
You’re probably right, though, about length. But when things are good—you know, I’m not, like, upset that
Pulp Fiction
is so long.

Jeff:
I am.

Judd:
And there’s two
Kill Bills.
I’m excited.

Jeff:
I’m very upset. I’m not very upset but—

Judd:
Really?

Jeff:
I mean, I’m done. Because I feel like
Lawrence of Arabia
is
about
something. It’s filling me.
Kill Bill
is just too fucking whimsical to be nine hours long. You know, if something is really, really, you know,
whoa
, then yes, I’ll sit there for the whole fucking thing. But if it’s—

Judd:
What about Harry Potter?

Jeff:
I’ve never seen a Harry Potter movie. It all goes on too long.

Judd:
I get mad that people will sit through Harry Potter for two hours and forty minutes and not give me two hours and forty minutes.

Jeff:
By the way, I’m so with you. What makes you think that Harry Potter should be—

Judd:
You haven’t even seen the first one to judge the Potter movies. It’s not like you saw the first one and you went, “That sucks, fuck Harry Potter.” You’ve watched no Harry Potters.

Jeff:
I have never seen a Michael Bay movie, either.

Judd:
But maybe you would be the biggest Michael Bay fan in the world if you saw one.

Jeff:
No I wouldn’t.

Judd:
How do you know?

Jeff:
I just know. I know it’s a difficult place to argue from, I know.

Judd:
You don’t enjoy action and comedy hybrids?

Jeff:
I love action and comedy hybrids, yes, but not Michael Bay’s. I’ll never see his—it’s a matter of pride.

Judd:
Okay, well, who’s the funniest person that made you laugh? Who made you laugh the hardest?

Jeff:
Let me think about that. Watching their work?

Judd:
Yeah, not just hanging out. But their work.

Jeff:
Can I do both?

Judd:
Yes.

Jeff:
All right, so their work: I guess Peter Sellers,
The Party.
I laughed harder with him than anyone. And then on a personal level: Amy Sedaris.

Judd:
I was also thinking of stand-up. You’re talking about movies.

Jeff:
Stand-up? You know who used to kill me when he was at his peak? Kevin Meaney. He used to destroy me. Night after night, the same exact act would kill me.

Judd:
Chris Farley, in person, was one of the funniest people ever.

Jeff:
Yeah, but he’s not a stand-up.

Judd:
I’m changing the rules. When I think about stand-up, there’s so many that it just becomes ridiculous. I mean, my favorite thing used to be watching people write their acts onstage, free-form associating to come up with the next thing. There were days, when I first started, when I really used to laugh. I don’t laugh anymore. I’m dead inside.

Jeff:
It’s much harder now, stand-up-wise, to get a laugh out of me. Even after someone’s done, I’ll go, “That was a good set.” You know, and I’ll mean it but I didn’t laugh once.

Judd:
Yeah, that’s sad. I mean, Chris Rock’s act is crazy. Like, to see him really on his game?

Jeff:
You know what’s sad? When you see Chris Rock at midnight at the Comedy Store working out his act and what he’s working out is better than anything you’ve ever written. It’s just so sad and frustrating and you’re laughing, and you’re going,
You fucker. You’re that good.

Judd:
There were so many people, when we used to go on the road, who would just kill so hard. I never did. I was never that good.

Jeff:
When we were on the road together—one thing, by the way, somebody said they saw our names up on the wall at the Improv in Addison or Dallas, you know, wherever it was, and everyone’s names and the date they played there are on the wall. And it was you and I opening for someone. I’m not going to say who it was because they haven’t gone on to anything and they—well, they weren’t a nice person but, uh, they weren’t so fuck them but I’m not going to say their name. It’s just mean.

Judd:
But you’ll slam a guy like Michael Bay? Who you’ve never met?

Jeff:
Yes.

Judd:
But the guy who was mean to you, you will not call out?

Jeff:
Yes.

Judd:
Is that because he doesn’t have Michael Bay’s money? Like where, what’s your line?

Jeff:
My line is Michael Bay better be able to take it. Not even because of money. Fuck him for making those shitty movies. Fuck him for wasting America’s time. Fuck him. Fuck him. And by the way, Albert Brooks’s speech in
Broadcast News
about lowering our standards: Michael Bay does it at a rapid pace. He’s not like slowly chipping away with each movie. Immediately upon first movie it’s a punch in our face to make us stupid. I’m sorry. You just got me on a rant. I apologize.

Judd:
You say this and you’ve never seen any of his movies. What are the top three or four jokes that, even for you, are uncomfortable?

Jeff:
I never—generally, I’m thinking about what’s for lunch. Uh, the only time that I am offended is when something is not funny. Trying to be
shocking, and if it’s not funny, you know, like whatchamacallit, who played Kramer?

Judd:
Michael Richards.

Jeff:
Michael Richards. You know, I’ve seen things worse than that, and you have, too. Horrible, horrible things. And if he was funny that night, nobody would have been pissed. But he wasn’t funny. Hall of Fame not funny.

Judd:
But was it offensive?

Jeff:
What? Him saying what he said about the fork and shit like that? Yeah!

Judd:
I’ve seen people do things like that. I felt bad because I felt I kind of knew what he was trying to do.

Jeff:
He was trying to provoke a response. Do you know that when he came offstage, he said—I think it was Tom Papa, who was going up next. He walked over to Tom and goes, “Yeah, weird crowd.” Having no idea that his life was about to change. People freak out like that. Not every night, but it happens. Anyway, we’re done. And thank you. I thoroughly enjoyed my time with you. You’re a good man. You should take more credit for being a great guy.

Judd:
Thank you, Jeff.

Jeff:
You’re welcome.

Judd:
And I’m going to tell that to my good friend, Michael Bay, when I see him.

Jeff:
You can tell Michael Bay. Michael Bay, by the way, I wish him nothing but happiness. I really do. I want him to be happy, have a good meal. I hope that all things are good for Michael Bay, but I want him to stop making movies. That I do. If it brings him joy, let him make movies—but don’t put film in the camera.

This interview originally took place in front of a live audience at the Largo in Los Angeles for Jeff’s podcast.

I couldn’t wait to talk to Jerry Seinfeld again for this book, thirty years after our first interview. Jerry is someone I have known a little bit for a long time. Whenever I’m around him, though, I usually don’t speak much. I’m still a little bit intimidated. The truth is, most comedians don’t understand why he’s so happy when they’re so tortured. But I look up to him more than ever, and every conversation with him is an opportunity to learn. You’d be a fool not to take advantage of what Jerry Seinfeld has to offer.

When we did this interview, I had just started doing stand-up again, after a twenty-year hiatus, and it seemed like a perfect moment to grill him about his current joke-writing process, and to soak up some of his stand-up wisdom. And, once again, he lit a fire under my ass—no one else has his work ethic or his clarity of vision, his passion for the craft. But I also had the opportunity to ask him questions about how he raises his children and his spiritual life, which is something I always wanted to do. Also, this being a few decades after our first interview, it was fun to remind him of what his dreams were back then, and to ask him how it feels to have made every single one of them come true.

Judd Apatow:
You know how, back in the day, I interviewed you for my high school radio show?

Jerry Seinfeld:
Yes, it’s still resonating.

Judd:
Well, I thought I’d start out by talking about that interview, back in 1983—which I remember and you shouldn’t.

Jerry:
No, I do remember. I do. It was an odd thing.

Judd:
We did it at your apartment in Santa Monica. Do you remember that?

Jerry:
I mean, I’d never had a kid come to interview me with a tape recorder before.

Judd:
I remember you had a funny look on your face because I don’t think you knew a child was coming. The tape recorder I used was literally straight from the AV squad at Syosset High School—this huge green cassette recorder.

Jerry:
How old were you when we did this?

Judd:
I was fifteen. But I was aware of you, I think, from your earliest TV performances. I was watching way too much
Merv Griffin Show
for a kid my age. I saw you on TV before you ever did
The Tonight Show.

Jerry:
Wow. Boy, those were the days.

Judd:
Is that the greatest moment in a comedian’s life, doing
The Tonight Show
for the first time?

Jerry:
Yeah.

Judd:
Do you remember it?

Jerry:
Well, Leno recently told me that he came to my first
Tonight
Show—which I didn’t even remember.

Judd:
The other thing that I remember about our interview is that your apartment had nothing in it. Like, it was
not
decorated.

Jerry:
Oh, I was a minimalist from the beginning. I think that’s why I’ve done well as a comedian.

Judd:
No distractions.

Jerry:
If you always want less, in words as well as things, you’ll do well as a writer.

Judd:
That whole high school radio show thing happened because a friend of mine decided he wanted to interview rock bands—we were like fifteen or sixteen years old—and then he goes off and interviews R.E.M. one day.
And it occurred to me:
Maybe I could use this high school radio station to meet my heroes and ask them, like, “How do you become a comedian? How do you write jokes?”

Jerry:
Wow, that’s great. Not to take you off track here, but I heard that you were doing some stand-up at the Cellar recently. Is that true?

Judd:
It is true.

Jerry:
I want to know what that was like.

Judd:
Well, I was interviewing Pearl Jam for their last record and as I was writing questions—you know, I think about them a lot because they’re my age and they’ve had, in a way, a similar experience to us in the arc of their careers. And I just kept thinking,
These guys get to write songs, and they spend their lives singing them and enjoying themselves. But I make these movies, and there’s all this stress and then, when the thing comes out, I’m not a part of the experience at all.

Jerry:
I understand.

Judd:
So I was making a movie with Amy Schumer, and she kept talking about doing stand-up and I finally said to her, “You know what, I’ll do a set and see how it goes.” I hadn’t done it in twenty years. And the first set went well and I went on every night, after we would finish shooting, for the next three months. I’ve been doing it ever since and it’s literally like I spent my entire life directing movies just so I could get better spots in comedy clubs.

Jerry:
It’s really fun. You find that you’re this breed, you’re a dog breed. I always thought it was weird that dogs would bark at other dogs. They should be barking at everyone else. And that’s the way I see comics. I didn’t feel comfortable anywhere until the day I walked into a comedy club. But where do you think you’ll go with your stand-up, Judd?

Judd:
I have to say that I am loving the fact that there’s no career goal connected to it. It’s purely for the joy of trying to get good at something that I was just okay at back in the day. It’s unfinished business. And it would just be great to figure out how to tear the house down consistently.

Jerry:
Right.

Judd:
It’s been so much fun—oddly, way more fun than anything else I’ve done.

Jerry:
Now, why would you say that?

Judd:
Because it’s immediate. I mean, I’m sure you had this experience making
Bee Movie
—you spend your whole life in meetings and editing rooms, isolated and alone, arguing about budgets and time frames. And there’s that moment you share with an audience, where they relate and a joke works, and it brings you so much more joy. But you don’t always get that from a movie. If it’s the first time you show a movie and the place goes nuts, that feels great, but still: not as great as a good stand-up set. Also, it only happens once or twice per movie and each movie might take four years. So you’re getting two hits off of four years’ work.

Jerry:
Bee Movie
was a very unhappy experience, from start to finish. I remember standing in the back of the theater and it wasn’t great, but it was decent and, and I remember listening to the laughs and thinking,
These laughs are shit.
That was not worth it.

Judd:
I completely relate to that.

Jerry:
And does the audience react when you are introduced? Do they know you?

Judd:
I thought a lot about how you always say that buys you about ninety seconds.

Jerry:
Yeah.

Judd:
It buys me like thirty seconds. But I think they feel like they know me a little bit from the movies, so it’s as if they have a head start understanding my point of view. But I couldn’t enjoy it more. I’m fully addicted to performing again. I put as much time into my stand-up as my movies.

Jerry:
Good.

Judd:
I always remember you and Larry Miller saying that to be a comedian, you have to sit down and write. That’s the job. How much time do you spend at a desk?

Jerry:
I just finished wrestling with a bit, actually. I couldn’t stop. I do it compulsively. I write with a pad and a pen. I like a big, yellow legal pad. And once I get that pad open, I can’t stop. It’s kind of like free-diving, you know. You have a certain amount of air and then you just have to come up. I’m good for an hour or two and then I collapse on the couch and sleep.

Judd:
Do you have a legal pad organizational system?

Jerry:
Oh, it’s very complicated. I have the legal pad and then I have one of those accordion folders with a different slot for each letter. Once I’m done with the bit, it either goes in the garbage or the accordion folder. Those are the only two destinations. And then it’s in the air. It has to survive on its own. Bits are like turtles right after they hatch, running to the beach.

Judd:
Have you ever had a period where you were sick of it?

Jerry:
No. No. No. Never.

Judd:
Not even for a second?

Jerry:
If this is something you have a gift for, it’s going to suck you along into it. All you have to do is transition from looking at your phone to putting the phone down and opening up the pad where there’s nothing going on. There’s no light hitting your retina. So, no, I’ve always found it to be—I just see something and I write it down and I go,
Gee, that almost worked. That kinda worked. Maybe
that’s
the good part. Let me get rid of the bad part and write a different intro to the idea.
And the next thing I know, the day is gone.

Judd:
Do you feel like your act has changed in a substantial way? Has your work become more personal, now that you have kids?

Jerry:
No, it’s just—you know, I’m still mud wrestling with a pig.

Judd:
Is there a line for how personal you will go in your work?

Jerry:
I’m doing a thing now about dadness—you know, when you reach dadness fully, no one in your family can hurt your feelings anymore, because
you don’t
have
feelings anymore. Feelings are too much of a problem to have, so I just got rid of them. That’s true, you know. That’s a true thing about becoming a dad. But you get to a point where—if my wife or children insult me in any way, I’m just like, “I don’t care. I don’t care if you like me. I don’t care what you think of me.” When you start out in this family thing, you’re a human, and then, as you go along, you realize that you’re an android. I’m doing this bit now, I have this thing in an episode of
Comedians in Cars
, where I’m driving a Ferrari and I describe it as a machine that stirs, you know, that stirs deep, human emotions, and that I really need that because I don’t have any. I guess that’s personal, but I don’t feel like I’m revealing anything. I’m a person that denies emotions very strongly. I’m only interested in what gets a laugh. I often get the “Why don’t you talk about politics or talk about this or that?” stuff. I’ll talk about anything that I think is funny or will get a laugh. If I could get a laugh with politics, I’d be doing politics.

Judd:
I find that everything about a family is drama and emotions and tears and yelling. How is that for you as somebody who doesn’t live his life that way? How do you deal, in the middle of the madness of kids, when someone wants something so badly they will scream and push you emotionally until you crack to get it?

Jerry:
My kids never get me to crack. It’s because of my stand-up training. Like, “You’re nothing compared to the Comedy Cellar.”

Judd:
That’s so funny.

Jerry:
“You think you’re tough?” My kids said something to me last night, and I said, “That line is so weak, give me my last name back. You don’t deserve it.”

Judd:
I have the opposite thing with my daughter. She said to me the other day, “Dad, all those things you say that you think are jokes are not funny.”

Jerry:
Oh, my son had one even worse than that. We were making up words as a game at dinner one night and I said, “You know, I’ve made up a lot of words that people actually use as words.” And my son said, “Uh, really, like what?
Unfunny
?”

Judd:
That’s brutal. I do feel like there’s no larger pride than in seeing your kid get funny.

Jerry:
No larger pride. Do you think they pick it up around the house or do you think it’s genetic?

Judd:
It has to be genetic but I think that as they watch us reacting to things, over and over again, and see how we look at things, they also just pick it up. But Leslie and I, you know, from day one, the second our kids started terrorizing us with their emotions, we would crack immediately. Like when they cried because they wanted to sleep with us, we would always wind up sleeping with them.

Jerry:
We were the same. I just meant, my kids will never get me to yell. I will not yell.

Judd:
You’ll give in, though?

Jerry:
I’ll give in, but I will not yell. Nor will I show any emotion.

Judd:
How old is your oldest child?

Jerry:
They’re fourteen, eleven, and nine.

Judd:
So you’re in full puberty mode.

Jerry:
Not quite. I’m an inch away.

Judd:
Because I’m in the mode where suddenly boys are calling and boys are around and when they’re in the house, I have this very primal hatred of all of them. They’re all scared of me. I think I’m being nice, but I’m not.

Jerry:
I am going to try my darnedest to avoid all those clichés. I’m going to be fine with the boys, fine with the mischief. It’s just too cliché to be, “So you’re interested in my daughter, huh, young man?” I don’t want to be that.

Judd:
Well, it’s also that all the boys are so unamusing, it bugs you. If they were funnier, you might like them. They just have so little to offer.

Jerry:
But don’t you think there’s just going to be just a natural, powerful editing process that goes on? Your daughter is not going to be able to hang out with unfunny guys forever, right?

Judd:
That’s an interesting thing I’ve noticed. Because of my job, my daughters have gotten to hang out with some of the most interesting, funny people around—and it makes them think less of their friends.

Jerry:
That’s good.

Judd:
They think they’re so uninteresting and so not funny.