Sick in the Head (2015) | Judd Apatow
I bought the book slightly out of an impulse. I wasn't expecting to see it in shelves and there it was.
It's basically a collection of interviews Judd Apatow made with comedians when he was young and some more recently. If he had the technology back then, he'd have probably turned them into podcasts.
Aside from the current stand up comics, more than half of the people Judd interviews I've never heard of, which made it intriguing. A couple I realized I've seen their bodies of work, I just didn't know it came from them. One for example is Harold Ramis. That memory connection went when I googled and saw that he directed Groundhog Day.
I may be oversimplifying something but it seems like the directors are pretty stable, happy and content. Some of the writers and stand up comics seem all over the place. Some are pretty dark and one could sense a bit of ego riding along. As a whole, I realized these comics are really just people. Some are born out of broken families and terrible situations. But the one thing that's common among everyone is the comedy.
Some notable parts:
There are more interesting stories in the book; Louis CK telling about surviving failure, Sarah Silverman talking about "You don't get what you want, you get what you think you deserve", and I never knew Steve Martin started in magic, not necessarily comedy.
It's basically a collection of interviews Judd Apatow made with comedians when he was young and some more recently. If he had the technology back then, he'd have probably turned them into podcasts.
Aside from the current stand up comics, more than half of the people Judd interviews I've never heard of, which made it intriguing. A couple I realized I've seen their bodies of work, I just didn't know it came from them. One for example is Harold Ramis. That memory connection went when I googled and saw that he directed Groundhog Day.
I may be oversimplifying something but it seems like the directors are pretty stable, happy and content. Some of the writers and stand up comics seem all over the place. Some are pretty dark and one could sense a bit of ego riding along. As a whole, I realized these comics are really just people. Some are born out of broken families and terrible situations. But the one thing that's common among everyone is the comedy.
Some notable parts:
Harold Ramis: Serenity is an illusion, but if anything is possible and I can do anything, then there's limitless capacity to do good. That's what Groundhog Day is about. In Groundhog Day, Bill destroys all meaning from himself. [...] The self is a convenient illusion that gives us ego. In conventional terms, of course, it exists. There's a name and picture on your driver's license, you have to get dressed in the morning, and your paycheck if addressed to somebody, so you have a self. But it's really an illusion.
[...] we're not who we think we are. We're only occasionally who we want to be. We're not what other people think we are. The self kind of evaporates as a concept. If you can take yourself our of these existential issues, life gets a little simpler. If life is full possibility, and I stop thinking about myself, I end up where Bill ends up at the end of the movie: in the service of others. [...] By the end of the movie he has every moment scheduled so he can do some good. [...] There's always some good you could be doing, which can make you crazy too. [...] If life has the meaning you bring to it, we have the opportunity to bring rich meaning to our lives by the service we do for others. It's a positive thing.
Jerry Seinfeld: You look at some picture from the Hubble Telescope and you snap out of it, I used to keep pictures of the Hubble on the wall of the writing room at Seinfeld. It would calm me when I would start to think what I was doing was important.
Jimmy Fallon: We just went in knowing that we might get canceled. And if you're going to go down, you have to go down doing what you like doing and what's fun for you, because I don't ever want to do something painful and have everyone go, "Hey, that works. Keep doing that painful thing for years."
Jon Stewart: Oh I love the bomb. You have to embrace the bomb. And the bigger the moment, the tastier the bomb.
[...]
It's so important to remove preciousness and ownership. You have to invest in everybody in the success of the show, and to let them feel good about their contribution to it without becoming the sole proprietor of a joke. There has to be an understanding that that may be a great joke, but it might not serve the larger intention, or the narrative, of the show. You have to make sure that everybody feels invested without feeling that type of ownership.
[...]
I never think about its purpose. I think its about the process, and that has changed dramatically. In other words, the evolution has been less about: What is our job here, or what is our purpose of being here? It's about: How can we make the show better, more distinct, with different voices?
Spike Jonze: When I finished Her, I thought, "Okay, I've done everything I can do to give this as much love as I could give it and now it's gonna go off and be what it's gonna be. If it gets loved I'll be proud and if it gets hated it'll hurt, but I also know that what I have done with my friends and collaborators will never change."
Stephen Colbert: When I was a kid, we had a tragedy in my family. [...] My mother [...] if anything was wrong with my life, if anything was going wrong-she would say, "Look at this in the light of eternity. What is this in the light of eternity?" In other words, don't worry about this little thing.
There are more interesting stories in the book; Louis CK telling about surviving failure, Sarah Silverman talking about "You don't get what you want, you get what you think you deserve", and I never knew Steve Martin started in magic, not necessarily comedy.
