Judd Apatow

Of all Apatow's movies, his most recent This is forty, which opened the weekend before Christmas, may be his most personal. It stars his wife, Leslie Mann, and his children Maude and Iris, who play her kids in the movie. It's here where Apatow's complicated and nuanced, comedic point of view collides with marriage, work, and family. It sounds horrible, but do you ever wonder what it would be like if you your wife were separated by something bigger? Death? Like

her death? I have given it a fair amount of thought, not any painful way, which is like a gentle floating off. It's got to be peaceful. I mean, this is the mother of your children. And then the new wife would be great. God, I can't wait to meet my second wife.

I hope she likes me better than this one. Judd Apatow began studying the art of making people laugh as a kid when he would rush home from school to watch TV from three thirty until after midnight All in the Family, Rhoda, Mary Tyler Moore Taxi on the weekend. He transcribed the bits he heard on Saturday Night Live. You're listening to club comedy w k w Z and

Siancet with Judd Apatow. This is Jerry Seinfeld. In high school, Apatow had a radio show in which he interviewed comedians such as Jerry Seinfeld, Gary Shandling, and John Candy so we could learn as much as he could about their craft. I think to talk about era type of comedy that you do, how do you describe it? It's sort of funny, observational with like a twist at it. It's not some people just tell the joke like an observation and that's it,

but you add a whole need to mention on it. Yeah. Well, it's one thing to see something, you know, and I think the next step is to do something with it. You know, like, I'm like, I'm doing this routine that but this guy that was on that's incredible as you gotta caught a bullet between his teeth. It's like, you see a thing like that and you go, what the

hell is that that? She's a bullet And now I don't know what's funny about that, but I think to myself, there's something funny about that, and that's what I like to do now. Apataw was arguably at the top of his game and seems to have his hand in nearly every meeting success of the last seven years. He was a producer of Anchorman, super Bad, Bridesmaids, and is currently an executive producer of the hit HBO show Girls. But even after the commercial and critical success he achieved, John

Apatow still craves reassurance. I need constant approval of my writing as I'm doing it. So I will show people the first scene, the first ten pages people, anybody. I will show anybody. I literally will send it to friends. You know. Jake Kazan, who directed and produced on Freaks and Geeks and Undeclared, is one of the first people I show things too. But I'll show it to the studio because I don't like that moment when you have a finished script and you go, I wonder if they'll

like it. So if I send them thousands of pages over the course of two years, they're so confused that there's not a moment of truth and to bury exactly and when it when it really gets down to it. Lena Dunham and I were working on Girls Uh with a Jenny Connor who runs Girls, so that was happening parallel to me making This is forty. So we would literally spend two hours breaking Girls stories and then two hours talking about this is forty and then near the end I'll get the courage up to send it to

like Eric Roth and James L. Brooks and Camerons. Is influence to you, Yeah, He's probably the biggest influence. I think his whole approach to stories is just imprinted in my mind from my childhood watching Mary Tyler Moore and Taxi. That's how I feel like stories work. Normal people with everyday, normal problems, trying to get along, trying to make their jobs,

in their love and their life work. And his work always ends with some beautiful grace note which is always hopeful yet realistic, and I remember them from when I was a kid. How you know. There was a taxi episode where Louis d Pamo was dating a blind woman and he was so in love, and then she was having an operation to get her side back, and he thought she's gonna dump me, which you can see, you can see, and then of course she loves him and

thinks he's beautiful. And as he walks out of the room, he throws something in the garbage and he says, I guess I gotta get a real ring, and and I love how he would pull that off. So he's very helpful. And in the middle of this is for You, I emailed James Brooks and I said, remind me what the movie is about. Again I forgot, and he sent me a long email saying, this is what your movie is about.

So you kind of I'll let you say this, but it sounds to me like you swim in kind of a pool or a stream with a lot of people who make films, and you're and you're open to their suggestions and you're open to their ideas. If you talk to a multitude of people for their ideas, which ones do you? I mean in the end, you decide. In the end, you choose. I've always had faith in my ability to make that call, so I don't mind a lot of feedback. In doesn't confuse me if everyone says

something different. I mean, I come from television and rooms of people arguing about story, and my formative years were spent at the Larry Sanders Show, where you were a great guest, and I one of the great early moments of my career was I wrote a bunch of those scenes and in the episode you were in, and I just saw it on TV the other day I was home.

My favorite line, which was when Shandling goes to the wings of the stage when I'm on the set and I'm not quoting it properly, but rip says, what's the matter? He says, I can't help it. I keep seeing him having sex with my wife, and he says, and she's on top, and Rips says, the lazy bastard. That's a that is I wrote that joke. I know I wrote that joke because I was so proud of that joke.

And I remember when you came in to the first day of shooting and to do the quick rehearsal and Gary was giving you ship from the second you walk in the doors, like Alex, you need a lozenge. You need a lozenge, and you said, right, that's how it's gonna be, Gary, That's how it's gonna be. And it's one of the great episodes. So so I think that that was not your first job though. My first job I used to write jokes for comedians. I wrote jokes for Rosanne's nightclub act for one. Why did you did

you do stand up periodical? I did it for for seven years. It's all I wanted to do. But I very quickly realized I was better at creating sketches or dramatic situations to get my point across. And as a straight monologist, I wasn't interesting the way my roommate Adam Sandler was or Jim Carey. I just as a fan, I knew, oh, I'm not these guys you really felt that were oh yeah? Because and then we were in l A. At the time I was in l A, I lived in North Hollywood with Sandler. And how long

did you live with Sandler? It was under two years, And I mean it was the most fun time ever. Every time we see each other were like that was the best. You know, we were just so into doing stand up and back then Sandler wasn't famous, so he was really silly all the time and very obnoxious and trying to make strangers laugh. He really engaged the world

for his own amusement, less to protect that he does now. Yeah, he he just loved, you know, asking pulling people over to ask for directions in the car and doing something crazy to them. I mean, it sounds ridiculous, but he was the guy that would fart in the elevator and go, Judd, come on, we're in an elevator. Uh. And that disappears when you get famous. So you brought this up there, you know. Well, but you brought this up and I'm I can't say I'm glad you did. But in your movie,

Paul Rudd is in bed with your wife. Yes, yes, he's in bed with his wife, and to torment her, he just rips off a series of well placed like he's turning over cards in a game. He's like, he rips a couple of parts there. But you that's not how you live, right, Well, it's a that's a complicated scene.

And what's funny about that? Says you know, they're having a very serious conversation about their finances, which are not good, and they're watching security camera footage waiting, trying to figure out who's stealing from them, and they see Megan Fox fooling around with someone at work, and then Leslie says, at least she's getting some and his reaction, after a few moments of feeling attacked is to just fart. It's like a monkey. It's kind of like saying, you know,

screw you. And Rudd did it as an improv. It wasn't in the script. Yeah, it wasn't in the script. And Leslie knows, okay, if anything happens off page, I need to go with it. And she's furious and you see it in her eyes and she's really genuinely disgusted, and you get kind of a real sense of what marriage is like off of just a stupid yeah marriages.

You watch security footage to see if Megan Fox is stealing money from your company, and she's banging her boyfriend on the desk, and you get your wife gets horny and you feel fretted with us. You fart on her exactly.

That's how marriage is. Yeah. Now, the other question I have apropos of the movie was so I'm thinking, Rudd, it's either the highest honor or he's the goat, because you're you know, you're lying in bed with your wife, who has made a lot of great films and funny films, and you say, uh, what's your nickname for your wife? I asked, just called les Is it le Leslie? Well, the funny thing is I always call it Leslie And then she's like, Judd, my name is Leslie Leslie. It's

not less Leslie. Literally say her name, it's Leslie. Leslie is when I'm in Cambridge now exactly. So you're there with her and you say to her, I'm just envisioning this scene where you look at her and you say, baby, who's the guy that you like most want to have sex with? It was like, and just be honest with me. We've been together while we have two kids. You know it's me. I'm making a film. And she says, God, Paul Rudd, and I mean that you crossed his name

off the list. I know he's never doing my film. Or is it like you put him in or do you say to her, baby, who's the guy that you view as like a brother, Like if you had sex scenes with him, But this wouldn't mean you'd be like like fooling around with your brother, Paul Rudd. That's where you gonna hire him. She's disgusted, uh, and and that makes it okay to watch them fool around. I I'm

always disgusted when she feels around with anyone. I remember when we shot the Cable Guy, she kissed Matthew Broderick and then when they parted, I saw in the dailies there was like a spit string that connected them for like a foot and lady in the and so yes, I'm glad that unless they're lying about being disgusted by each other, because I may be the fool they are lyned. That's terrible because I know because I've heard that before.

I've had my ex wife has got you know, Russell Crowe's got his tongue into her spinal fluid and she's like, no, no, it was just nothing, it's nothing. Well, the day I had back surgery for a herniated disc back in the year two thousand, Leslie couldn't be there because shest Leslie, Sorry Leslie, I couldn't be there because she was Mrs apt She was shooting a scene where she was making love with Jeff Goldbloom, and you just know he's all

handsy in between takes. You know, he's just for pushing buttons and a woman and you don't even know we're there. Exactly What does the director Jodd Apatau do when Leslie Man passes? You know, when you know people so intimately, you knew she was in. I asked her before I write the script. You know, I'll say, are you comfortable, you know, doing a fictionalized version of how we feel about this time in our lives. And I'll start telling her some of the story and then she starts pitching

me Debbie's point of view and scenes. A lot of scenes in the movie here Leslie standing up for her character. So it's balanced. It's it's not like I write a script and handed to it is a collaboration. She help you with it. Get a good woman's perspective, Oh yeah, because I have no woman's perspective at all. This is fifteen years of marriage and her explaining what I do

wrong put into a movie and knocked up. There's a line she has which we took from her life, which was just because you don't yell doesn't mean you're not mean. And that's the kind of insight I would never have my daughter. She goes, Mommy yells at me ten times more than you do. But when you do it, it's different,

she said, exactly. And also the whole idea of how I can be detached and shut down and not want to connect with anybody, and how it's a you know, an emotional abandonment to people when you do that too much. But you know some people, like for me, I get just overwhelmed. I got a numb out for a while.

You gotta have a little Walden time exactly. And sometimes it's in the bathroom with an iPad, and you gotta have to read those scenes when when she's coming to the bathroom and Rudd is sitting there with you, that's you. It is except him as a sanctuary. But she would never ever knock on the door or open the door. But when I walk out, she'll say, what were you doing? And I'm like, I'm going to the bathroom. She's like, you were tweeting, and I'll say, I isn't. I wasn't tweeting.

She's like, I can see your feed if I was going to the bathroom, and I was tweeting about it exactly, don't doesn't everyone. I'm marketing our movie from the toilet, but so you know, it's very fictionalized in a story, but the emotional things that we're arguing about make their way into the movie. Now, when you start a film like this, and you've had tremendous success in the last couple of years and in movies, which is tough in movies,

in my mind is the toughest of them all. And so you step up and you do this movie, and is there a fear when you begin? Do you think to yourself, Oh God, this is the one. All the wheels are going to fall off, Like what's your disposition when you start shooting? You know, I have both sides. You know. I want to succeed because I just want to be allowed to continue making movies. I also have a rebellious streak, which is I do have some sense of what makes a very commercial movie, and I'm working

partially against that. Like, as the attention span of the audience gets shorter, I want to make longer movies to say there's something wrong with you that you can't sit for two that with this film, I deliberately do it with all of them because I feel like, you know, this is the only time we're going to get with these people. Why do you need to rush to get home? And I like movies like Jerry McGuire and in terms

of endearment and movies that were over two hours. It takes an extra twenty minutes to explore, you know, more dimensions of people. And no one says anything that you're out there with the studio is not I mean, because those guys, that's pretty much the first thing out of their mouth is Jed, can't we we need a hundred minutes? Bab Yeah. The funny thing is they're all like I think maybe Knocked Up was to ten. So I've set

this pace, this very slow pace. It's funny because the Hobbit and all these limits, they're all to forty five. They're all like a half hour past me, and I feel like, you know, my characters. Uh. Someone said to me, you're basically saying, these people are worth your time. And sometimes I watched the movie because I have to watch it hundreds of times, I think, wow, this is long. I'm really putting people through it. But there is a

part of me that feels like good experienced this. This is life and it's funny and it's difficult and and I need the time to do the full ride of that. So on day one, I'm both trying to figure out, like marketing wise and concept wise, a way to make it sell while thinking I'm sneaking some John Cassavetti's Robert Altman aspect into a mainstream comedy. When when when you do a film like this as Knocked Up begets this film,

does this film does right away? Do you start thinking of other ideas whether you do them or not, do you like One of my favorite moments in the film is when it's towards the end of the film and they're at the party and the guy the Life Coach is hitting on Megan Jason Jason Siegel is saying, what's his character's name, Jason Jason. He's saying to her, you know, yes, I will Jason. What over the line is? He demands that she repeat Now that would be a funny character

in a movie. Life Coach is just h Absolutely. I think I think that about most of the characters I especially coming from TV. I love that there was Rhoda after Mary Tyler Moore or Frasier after Cheers. So anytime a character works, I could watch it, you know, I could watch, uh, either of the leads of super Bad go off on their own, Michael Sarah's character or Jonah Hills or the Cops. Once it exists, I'm kind of more depressed that we're not doing more stories. And that's

just my whole thing. I don't like to let go. So if someone said they're gonna make a movie about what happened to Albert Brooks's character from broadcast News, I'd be the happiest man in the world. Had you known Brooks, had you been acquainted with him and had worked with him before, and you did this movie with him. I met him in the early nineties when I was working

at the Larry Sanders Show. I had dinner with him a couple of times with Gary, and I was just in awe to be around him because his Saturday night live movies were really big influence on everything we did at the Ben Steeler's Show. And obviously, you know, defending your life in modern romance and real life, you know, was, Yeah, it's the template for a certain type of you can never see And in the same sentence again, although my daughter watched Laws in America for the first time the

other day. She's fifteen, and at the end, she said to me, what's the nest egg? She goes, She's like, I literally thought the money was in an egg. Uh. And I was so excited to meet Albert that afterwards I went home and I wrote down every joke he said at dinner, like I still have like the journal entry where he's making jokes about the Menendez case. You don't kill your parents and buy a rolex. You don't do that. So I wrote the part just for him,

hoping it could be good enough. I never want to ask anyone that I look up to to be in my movie if I don't think it could be as good as their movies. You know, I don't want to be their crappy movie. And so that's why I tend to work with young people, because they have no no, no, they don't I won't be their worst standards aren't set

in stone yet. Yeah. Now, when with Brooks, when you work with people like that who are veteran, if you will are very experienced and have a bed tremendous success, what's that experience like for you as a director, meaning do you do they come in and they just start riffing, and are they rewriting and improvising and you just let it go? Or do you sit there and you do

find a way, a politic way to sit him. I'd rather to confine ourselves to this what's on the page, not specifically with him, but with any of them that come in. Well, I precious, are you about what you've written? Well, I'm never precious about anything other than my intention. So I know what I'm trying to accomplish with the character, but I'm very open to it morphing based on the

interaction with the with all the actors. So with Albert, obviously, I'm terrified because I'm working with someone who's clearly more talented than me. So I'm trying to figure out how to manage my idea for the story and tap him for everything that he's worth. So I want him writing and thinking and pitching me. I mean, I spent a year in a room trying to think of an original character that he hadn't done before, but I would still use,

you know, his great comic sensibilities. And then I brought him into a rehearsal and we did the scene has written. We did ideas that I had, and then I just let him play and improvise and pitch me things. And obviously, at the end of the day, if you were to like write down which are those lines are Albert's, you know, it becomes the majority, which is the intention to give him a space where he's comfortable enough to you know, to email me at night a better line which you

would do with that died. Before any scene, I get a little email from Albert what if he said, did it? And it's always better than my joke And as long as you're comfortable. Oh, I'm thrilled. It's not because I'm coming off from an experience with the television show I did. There was there was a very strident, very unbending rule that we had to shoot everything has written, and there was no you couldn't change a word, or we could do alternate takes and change things, but we had to

shoot everything has written with no exceptions. Pretty much. Well, I definitely start that way when we shoot. I like to do all of the improv and playing primarily in the rehearsal, and then when we get to the set, I'll shoot my polished version of the scene and I will get it verbatim, and I make sure to get it.

Then I'll start telling them things that we all thought of during rehearsals that I didn't put in, but then I still whar I'll do like a week early, like four months out from shooting, and then another week like a month out, and a couple of table reads in the middle, so it's like a TV show a few times. But then I'll let them play on the day. But it's different in movies because you're just shooting a third as many pages as you are with a television show.

So when we did the Larry Sanders Show, they would rehearse and let everyone goof a little bit, but on the day there was no time to to goof off. If I was directing Freaks and Gigs, I might let Jason Segel really go if I was the director, But if I wasn't the director, I would have to say, you gotta get the script. I have time to wonder what's going to happen if I'm not there. How many pages would you shoot a day? Would you say, what

was what was the shooting schedule? How many days? On this is forty I think it was fifty eight, and you know, we wind up shooting four or five pages a day, but at Larry Sanders we shot seventeen pages a day. This is Alec Baldwin, and you're listening to here's the thing coming up more with screenwriter and movie director Judd Apataw. This is Alec Baldwin. Forty year old. Virgin was Judd Apatow's first major box office success. It was also the first film Apataw directed, a transition from

writing that was fairly seamless. I was deucing on Anchorman, and I hadn't directed a film before, but I knew that Steve Carrell was one of the funniest people I've ever seen. He was crushing so hard every day on the set that all the actors were baffled, and how how funny he was. And he wasn't someone that was in line to be the lead of a movie. He was just one of the great, hilarious supporting actor people. And I always like, I like those guys to be

the lead. I always want, you know, I want to see yeah, yeah, Well beyond that, I want to see George Went. I want to I want to I like seeing I like because that's who I feel like. I feel like the side guy, and I always want to follow them home. And so I said to Steve, do you have any ideas for movies, because you definitely could

carry a movie. And he said, there was a sketch at Second City we did once that we never quite finished, which was about a poker game where they're all telling sex stories and it's clear that one guy has never had sex, and everything he says it makes no sense. And he's saying, yeah, you know, like when it's such a girl's breast, it feels like a bag of sand and you go down your pants and there's all that baby powder, and and he said, so, you know, I'd

love to play a forty year old virgin. And just because I'm such a nerd and so insecure and ashamed of everything in life, I just immediately understood what he meant and that you could do something very sweet and riotously funny. So we wrote it together. Now, so when you direct the film, how is the technical challenge for you or how is the technical aspects of it for you?

Grown because it is filmmaking, and are you like do Mr and Mrs Apatow sit in the screening room at nine and watch Citizen Kane, and look at that, there is a man. Look at the rack focus. You know, do do you watch scenes from films and say that's what I want there? It is right there, Leslie, look at that. Look at how you pan over at that moment. That's not me at all because I came from being a stand up comedian and it was old dialogue. It

wasn't visuals, so I never tuned into that. And I have no brain for the technology, so I can't remember the lenses and what they do even now, Like what do you do. I hire people who are really good like other people. Well, it's not a total surrender because I will show them what I like and they can turn it into technology. So I fade and Papa Michael, who did you know? The Descendants and Sideways shot a lot of movies. I love how they look, so I know, okay,

this this look will be correct. And then we watch movies, and you know, I always I'm trying to model my work after movies like The Last Detail, the how Ashby movie or Coming Home. I like movies that feel almost like a documentary, at least for my personal directing. I want you to forget I exist, and I'm trying to make it as voyeuristic as I can make it. In some ways, it's like Larry Sanders. I like that look for comedy for what I do before where I came here.

This morning, I was sitting with my wife and she was watching uh Netflix, because my wife is and you know, she's a little younger than I am. Shall we say, there's a whole uh library of films that she's heard of and not seen or haven't he hasn't even heard of. So she's watching the Graduate and that's a young Nicol,

that's an early Nichols. He's doing the storytelling what the camera and he's telling the joke with the camera even And I was just was wondering if that's something that that each film do you make, do you commit more deeply to understanding how to do that or well, I have a sense of if what I'm trying to do is coming across and and visually I'm a little bit more of a I know it when I see it, Like it just feels like I need to be tight here.

It feels like I need to be wide, And I'm making a lot of unconscious choices about space and tension, but I'm not sitting there storyboarding it. Just in the moment I kind of have a sense of it is how far way I should be from Leslie if she's yelling at Paul and the graduate is a kind of

a great example. I did a Q and A with Mike Nichols at the Museum of Modern Art recently, and we were showing clips of our movies and talking about movies, and then he shows that sequence where he plays the two Simon and Garfunkel songs, and it's just the greatest sequence you know of any movies in this genre. It is fun to do to try to do that, but man, no one ever did it better than him, telling a story through pictures and music. Do you do you in

your filmgoing into your film viewing? Are you what do you like to watch? What's entertainment for you? As you're a TV show, I'm not talking about the ones you produce. Yeah, what's one you really admire that's out there this season? I'm a big documentary person, so I loved searching for Sugarman. I did if I did so. I did a screening of that in a Long Islands summer. We had him come, Rodriguez came away. It was weird. It was freaky, and

I mean I saw I love beautiful documentaries. I had never seen the HBO move V that Mike Nichols did of Angels in America, which was unbelievable, unbelievable. And you know, I love mad Men. I can't get enough of mad Men. I like drama that that's funny, you know, the Departed, you know, those those things that are they're also funny, like good Fellas. I'm king of comedy, you know, I'm always attracted to to uh. I mean, for me, the

Sopranos does that better than anyone ever. I mean, it's it's it is a dark comedy to me when I when I watch it. Uh. And this year I'm just you know, I'm just kind of catching up with with everything that that's coming out. I haven't I haven't done my uh my Lincoln Run. And especially like John Regie directed episodes of thirty Rock. We worked together Sandra show.

And I'll watch the show and I'll notice, like, this is a really specifically amazingly funny episode, and I'll go, oh, you could just you can tell it's like watching the you know the yeuh same with you. Van Patton directed episodes of The Sopranos. There are certain people on television you know their episodes are gonna be really great. Well, you love it. You love episodes. You love shows where even the smallest details and the most inane little things

stay with you. Like I was addicted to The Sopranos, probably from the third season on. There was this scene where Steven van zandt is walking outside and they're talking about some grave mafia business, him and Jimmy and they make a decision, or Jimmy Gandolfini makes it says he's made up his mind to do some horrible thing, and they're walking into the very grim and Steve I'll never forget, he just is walking with him for like a beat, and he just kind of turns from and goes, it's

the right thing to do. He just says the phase, it's the right thing to do. He goes, it's the right thing to do. And probably for the next year and a half, I said that phase, no matter what you like, it just gets in your life and in your blood. And those people in the tone, the tone most of all. Now, um, I would imagine you still have as some directors I know, probably the ones who have less success than you've had at the box office with your films as a director, they still right even

when they're not directing. Are you in a world now where you only want to write and direct or you're still writing for hire? Are you doing both or you purely going to write and direct only now? I'm not doing any uh writing outside of things that I might direct. I have decided to co write a few projects with some friends who have great ideas that I'm trying to help them get there faster, and I know I potentially could direct it. For the most part, I'm just writing.

But the way that I'm writing with other people is you know, by being you know, a producer on Girls. So I'll gonna interview Lena. Yeah, she's spectacular and and and really fun to collaborate with. So to be just part of the staff on that show, helping her figure out what story she wants to tell, and just looking for holes in the ship, just anything that could go wrong. I'm trying to anticipate and help her with. That's very

fun and gratifying. And then I try to write, you know, one episode a season with her, which you know, I learned a lot from being with someone who's so courageous in her writing. She's not worried if you like her. It's pretty amazing to be around someone who's is so in their moment and has uh so much they want to express. So I find it kind of reinvigorates my

own writing and my own tapping into my thoughts. So do is there is there an actor out there, whether they're a well known comic performer, you know, like Carrie and Sandy and those kinds of people who were at the top of that game. Is there someone out there who you think about you you'd like to work with, it you haven't worked with. Well, I'm such a fan of so many people that if anything, that becomes frustrating to me because I think, wow, it's taking me forever

to make four movies. There's only a couple of parts, and how many things am I going to write? And so usually the idea arrives and then you realize, oh, this has a good part for John Lithgow, this makes sense that he do this, And it starts there because I really, you know, I love so many people that I that would drive me crazy at the prospect of it, and that this leads perfectly to what exactly. You're You're probably the only person I've encountered based on what you

said about you know, you're sprawling. Appreciation with these people is and I mean this genuinely. Someone has to re make It's a Mad, Mad, Mad Mad World. Someone has to get together the cavalcade. I actually have thought about that, and not that it would be that movie, but I have thought, can I think of a reason for all these people to exist? Wenty of the biggest names, you know, what space would they all be in? And I've taken in my head as far as thinking, could we make

a movie for charity? I wanted to do a remake of It's a Mad Men Man memory give everybody some points so that if it's gonna make a lot of money, that if we make money, they make money, but up front they collapse their fees because we're going to do a big piece for charity. The only idea we make a movie for charity, because that's the only way you could do it, Like, you couldn't even begin to figure out the back end deals to you should make is about the making of a movie for charity. Uh, exactly

make a movie about the movie. Yeah, it could be. It also you know there we have so many friends that you know, we appreciate each other's work, but we're not like kids anymore. And you do feel the window closing of when is there going to be an opportunity for five or six of these guys to do something together? And so you know they're how old fifty four? It's like forget it? So I and that's why I made this is where to have these like age issues. So

I I try to think ahead of my friends. Like my friends are all forty five fifty Okay, what is the movie we would make in our fifties? And I'll five years ahead begin to start planning. Your kids are in your movie? You put your own children in the movie? That is true? And what effect does that happen to? Like do your kids now do they close their bedroom board? And they don't, they don't come in here without a script? Well, talk to me. There is a little of daddy. Why

wouldn't you let me work for anybody else? And because I didn't put them in the movie to start a career. I just wanted this idea to work. And I wanted to capture a real family and have people on screen that look like they love each other. There's true intimacy on the screen that you cannot children or your children. So your old your elder daughter is how old? Fifteen? Right, So she's at that age where you know everybody, you know, she just wants to throw a bomb on everyone, and

it's a very tough age. But your younger daughter, and she's like the sunshine coming out. I mean, the kids incredible. Do they want to make movies? Well, I was my ten year old. She literally will say I don't want to be an actress. So she's kind of cool. I think she probably wants to write. And then Maud is

doing a lot of things. She's uh, she interviewed one direction for teen Vogue and her acting is so good here that I am concerned that we'll get, you know, the call out of the blue from James Cameron to ask her to ride a magical dragon for seven months, and then I have to say, Maud, no, you actually yeah, you have to you have to finish school, and then she'll hate me for the rest of her life. I could have been at Avatar too, and you ruin it. You said you want me, you want me to wait

until I mean, this is fifty You're Ashole. So it's a it's a miscalculation based on my own greediness to capture how great they are from my movie with no you know, forethought of how it will affect their lives. But they did really enjoy making the movie, and they fought so much in the movie and in life that since the movie they've gotten along great, Like it's almost like by playing out the drama of the ridiculousness of their sibling rivalry, they had to think through like why

are we fighting? What is it about? And on some unconscious level they've gone easier on each other since we shot. It's so funny because that's the old actors ten it that gets passed onto you that every role you play, perhaps embedded in that role is an opportunity for you to say goodbye to some party yourself you don't like. I think that's true. I I look at every movie as a letter to myself telling me something that I

need to know about how to live my life. That I'm I'm only on some level making these movies to say Judd, pay attention, Judd, live in the moment, because I am, you know, a detached writer who who needs to be brought into the moment and a lot when she saw the movie when it was finally done, what was her comment to you? Uh? In the beginning she worried if it didn't end happy enough. And then while we were editing, and now she she really loves it.

And I kind of like that it has that question mark at the end, which is, you know, it's hard work. It's gonna be hard work, but they love each other and it's definitely worth it. I think that sometimes she, you know, worries that it could go slightly darker by like four percent than it needs to, where I like that question mark of you know, we're all struggling, but it's okay, that's what life is. And still people say I'm resolving it too much, so you can never walk

that line. Some people want it so dark and some people are so pissed. It's not all jokes, so you know, I'm always in the middle. Writer director Judd Apataw He says he still wonders what's left to say that he hasn't said. Don't worry, Judd, turning fifty will give you more than enough for a sequel. This is Alec Baldwin and you're listening to Here's the thing,