Preet Bharara: Judd Apatow, thanks for being on the show.

 

Judd Apatow: My pleasure.

 

PB:  So we are here in your West Pico Boulevard. Is it a Boulevard?

 

JA: It is. It is a Boulevard.

 

PB: In Los Angeles. It’s where it all happens. You have a very busy looking office. Means you must be busy. So, you love comedy.

 

JA: I do. I do.

 

PB: I love comedy too. I had in my bedroom when I was a kid an old black and white cathode ray tube RCA television and every night I would watch Letterman from 12:30 to 1:30 religiously. I can quote back to you a lot of the things that he said.

 

[00:00:33] Sure.

 

[00:00:33] I went on to become a federal prosecutor. You went on to change the face of comedy. What went wrong for me and right for you?

 

[00:00:40] Well I don’t know seems like that’s reversed in a lot of ways. What have I added to the world? I find that very interesting because when I was a kid I wanted to be in comedy from the time I was about 10. I just thought, maybe similar to you, ‘The world is really screwed.’ And comedy seem like a way to address it. Like, ‘God that nothing seems fair.’ That’s why I love the Marx Brothers because I felt like they were basically saying, ‘None of this make sense.’ Like a movie like Duck Soup, which was just making fun of government and war and I just like people who were flipping the bird to power. So, in a way, you did that by acquiring your own power and fighting for people to be held accountable. So maybe we’re doing the same thing in different ways.

 

[00:01:25] Why’d it take you until age 10?

 

[00:01:27] Exactly.

 

[00:01:28] Why so late?

 

[00:01:28] Exactly. I needed to get the right amount of beatings.

 

[00:01:31] Oh Really.

 

[00:01:32] No, I didn’t get any beatings. I always think that Donald Trump’s dad beat the living hell out of him. It’s one of my private theories, which is he just really behaves like somebody who is physically abused. Whenever I hear that story that they sent him to boarding school because he was unmanageable—and none of his siblings went to boarding school—I always think what kind of abandonment is that as a kid and does that make you feel like, “I must accomplish. I must be a winner for Dad, who sent me to this boarding school and beat the hell out of me.” But, just my guess. I’m not sure of that. But do you ever think about that like what mentally happened to Donald Trump that he is this guy.

 

[00:02:13] I have no idea. But along the lines of what your career is about–the one thing that I find odd about Donald Trump that I didn’t appreciate, until literally the day before I went to go meet him last November when he was going to ask me to stay on, is this odd characteristic that he has of not laughing. He smiles at jokes, he makes jokes himself–whether you find it funny or not–but there are almost no cases of him on tape laughing. What do you think that’s about?

 

[00:02:39] I do think that’s mental illness. I think that like what a serial killer does because you know when you laugh you’re showing you understand someone, you’re showing you care about them, that you love them. You’re making a real human connection. I think that’s something we all talk about that Donald Trump doesn’t seem to be making human connections and that’s why it’s easy for him to fight with widows and the parents of people whose kids gave their lives for this country. There’s just a lack of empathy that we don’t quite understand what is at the root of it and we don’t know where it leads us. It certainly leads, in some respects, to terrible things, like not having compassion for the DREAM-er kids in our country. Just being comfortable with the suffering of other people. And to me it all comes back to being a guy that owned a casino because what does a casino do? It tries to take your last penny. Because we all decide in life where we want to spend our time, what we want to work on, how we want to make a contribution to the world.

 

[00:03:40] So, you think Steve Wynn is a terrible person?

 

[00:03:42] Oh, Absolutely. I think these are some of the worst.

 

[00:03:45] Should we go down the list?

 

[00:03:46] Yes. Sheldon Adelson. I mean I think that the idea that your vocation is to figure out how to get people to leave their money with you, I think, is a horrifying way to make a living.

 

[00:03:58] I want to go back to this point of Donald Trump not laughing. You know he’s not humorless. He knows how to make other people laugh. Maybe not you. But he knows enough about people to get them to laugh from time to time.

 

[00:04:08] Well if you really made a list of The Donald Trump Jokes, they’re usually attacks on people. I think a lot of his humor is about making people feel terrible. For instance, the other night–I guess he considered it a joke, I’m not sure–but when he said about the head of North Korea, you know, ‘I didn’t call him fat and short.’ Is that what he said?

 

[00:04:31] Yeah, Kim Jong Un apparently called him ‘old’ and Donald Trump responded by saying, ‘I didn’t call you short and fat although I could.’

 

[00:04:41] I think on some level he thinks that’s a joke. I think we’re literally watching a mating dance between two of the most awful people the earth has ever seen. They’re like flirting—it’s like lunatic flirting.

 

[00:04:54] Who is using humor well? If we think that Trump is not.

 

[00:04:59] I think that Al Franken is one of the funniest people that’s ever been in government and he is very careful about using that sense of humor, but when he does I think that he’s very effective and his book is very good. I think that Barack Obama was hysterical. I think to the point that he had to hold back how funny he was. I remember seeing him in a town hall when he was first running for president. It was on C-SPAN. And a woman asked a question and he said something so cutting and so funny that I thought, Ooh this is too funny. Borderline mean. This guy is viciously funny and he has to censor this, but he’s actually hysterical.’ I mean I wrote some jokes for him for Correspondents dinners and I was always amazed that you know he would do—it would be almost a 15 minute, 20 minute routine. He didn’t stumble on one joke, he wouldn’t flub a line.

 

[00:05:58] Would he practice? Do you know if he practiced?

 

[00:06:00] I don’t know. It’s a really good question. I mean his timing was so impeccable and he really got the spirit of every joke. And as someone who does stand up—and who has a Netflix special coming out in December—

 

[00:06:10] I was there at the table. It’s going to be very good.

 

[00:06:12] I was always amazed. He just doesn’t—He never slips on this. And then I’ve seen him speak you know just at events, just talking to people, taking questions and he uses humor very effectively.

 

[00:06:27] Which jokes did you write? Can you tell us?

 

[00:06:28] You know I don’t want to be a joke claimer. You know people who go like, ‘I wrote that one.’ You don’t want to be that person. But one of the jokes that we wrote was: ‘People say I don’t reach out across the aisle enough, I don’t hang out with these people. They say, you know why don’t you have lunch with Mitch McConnell?’

 

[00:06:44] Have a drink. I remember this! I know your joke better than you.

 

[00:06:47] Do you wanna say it?

 

[00:06:48] Yeah and I use this. ‘Why don’t you have a drink with Mitch McConnell? And I say, why don’t you have a drink with Mitch McConnell?’

 

[00:06:56] It’s the simplest joke. ‘You have a drink with Mitch McConnell!’

 

[00:07:02] ‘You have a drink with Mitch McConnell.

 

[00:07:02] So, I worked in the Senate and I found Mitch McConnell—-he’s very shrewd and he’s very smart and he, you know, depending on your perspective you like his policies or not—not a funny man.

 

[00:07:12] Not a funny man. A terrifying man.

 

[00:07:14] Is the purpose of comedy just to make people laugh? Or is there a higher order of it that means it should not only make people laugh but make them think, make them feel alive, make them reconsider their positions, show them the idiocy of the world. Or is that too cerebral?

 

[00:07:30] Well, I think it’s all of it. I think there is a place for that. I remember watching Jon Stewart during the re-election campaign of George Bush and thinking there’s no way George Bush can win based on how hysterical and well-thought out all these pieces are that his show is creating. And when George Bush won I thought, ‘Oh, none of this works.’ None of this works because if it did, this would have had an impact. And I wish it did work, but I don’t know if it works in the way we would like it to. I do think it may be training the next generation, who will be more tolerant and more thoughtful and hopefully stand up for certain ideals.

 

[00:08:17] The way I phrased question, it was about whether you’re persuading people to your point of view or not. And maybe the more important thing is it’s more like school. School is not there to indoctrinate you into being Left or Right, it’s there to teach you hopefully how to think for yourself and be critical of institutions and be skeptical of politicians. And that’s sort of what you know you have done and Jon Stewart does.

 

[00:08:35] Jon Stewart, when he left the show, he said you know and I paraphrase, I don’t remember exactly, but he said, ‘Pay attention and there’s a lot of bullshit out there.’ He had a great monologue about being aware of the bullshit that is being spread every day and that is part of comedy—is to help you learn how to think about certain things, to point out injustice, to point out things that are ridiculous. And other times, it’s about other things. It’s about love and connection and smaller human foibles and everything we do to try to survive this life and try to find happiness. So, there’s all different kinds of comedy, but the political comedy right now is especially charged. I’m amazed that they can do it every night. As a comedy writer, you know I’ll turn on Seth Meyers and go, ‘These guys wrote this today?’ This is like a brilliant ten minute run of observations, jokes. So, something has to happen in the news. They have to process it, then they have to figure out their point of view on it, then they have to find a way to make that point of view entertaining and funny. And they do that between like ten and five o’clock every day. They write ten minutes of something remarkable. And all these people are doing it. And I’m in awe that they can do it and I’m in awe that Jon Stewart did it for 17 years.

 

[00:09:57] And every day. Unlike, are you in awe of the people at Saturday Night Live?

 

[00:10:01] At times I am.

 

[00:10:01] At times.

 

[00:10:01] I think Saturday Night Live sometimes goes hard at people, sometimes goes soft at people, sometimes they try to take both sides and they’ll say, ‘Oh, we hit the Republicans, we’ve got to have the Democrats here.’ I think that in the past their attempts to keep everybody watching the show prevented them from having a strong point of view. For me personally, I like when a show has a point of view. There’s a head writer, who’s like this is what I believe and my comedy follows this.

 

PB: I want to turn to a serious topic, but you’ve been particularly outspoken about it. So, I want to ask you a couple of questions about the allegations against Harvey Weinstein, against Louis C.K. and by the time this airs maybe there’ll be a bunch of new ones.

 

[00:10:44] I’m sure.

 

[00:10:45] Which is disheartening and unfortunate that that’s happening. Why is it so prevalent in Hollywood?

 

[00:10:52] It’s hard for me to know what it’s like in other businesses. From what I hear there are similar problems in every business. But there are specific aspects to how the entertainment world is run that sets it up to be a problem. One is it’s, you know, it’s a business that is a lot about like a point of entry. And so, there’s the potential for abuse to say, ‘You can enter this world, you can get this job if you do this.’

 

[00:11:24] And it’s not about–you know you don’t take a test. It’s not a quantitative exam that you take and so certain people have an outsized power to make you successful or not.

 

[00:11:34] Exactly. And that becomes a problem. And I guess it probably is the same in every other business. Someone decides if you get the job. Someone decides if you get the promotion. There are certain people with a lot of power and if they abuse that power, you get these issues of harassment. But there’s something about a lot, of you know, handsome young men and beautiful young women trying to get noticed, trying to get people to realize their talented, to give them opportunities. You can’t prove you’re a great actress without getting the job. You have to get to work to show what you do. And that creates a lot of power and potential for abuse from the people who give out those jobs. So, you have that happening. And then I think there’s something about people’s self-interest that keeps them from stopping it. I think people don’t want to make waves. People don’t want to get on the phone and call someone and go, ‘What’s going on with Harvey Weinstein? What is this?’ Like the other day, Alec Baldwin was giving a speech somewhere.

 

[00:12:45] He pre-empted some stuff.

 

[00:12:46] And he said, ‘I heard for decades this rumor that Harvey Weinstein raped Rose McGowan.’ And I just thought, ‘Did you ever ask anybody about it? Did you ever ask your agents?’ You ever ask–I don’t know if he made movies with Harvey after the point he heard that rumor. Maybe he did, maybe he didn’t. But did you ever think it was worth saying, ‘Is that true? And if it’s true, shouldn’t we come up with a way to keep actors and actresses safe from him?’ And I think it’s you know it’s unfair to point him out as the only example. He’s just the one person that said it out loud. Let’s assume there was a hundred people who heard that rumor. Did anyone call anyone to say, ‘Shouldn’t we protect these women from Harvey?’ I was talking to an agent the other day and he said to me, ‘You know, Harvey had a process.’ He would go to a film festival. He would say, ‘These are the women I want to meet.’ He would set appointments for the morning. At the last minute, he would cancel and move the appointments to the early evening. There would be multiple people there and they would meet this person like in the restaurant downstairs and they’d say Harvey’ll be right down. And one by one people would have to leave to get to other appointments. So, there’s just one person. And then they would say, ‘Harvey would like to meet you upstairs.’ And then they were left alone. Now, who are those people involved in this process? There must’ve been assistants, development people, co-producers, who were aware that he had a way of tricking these women to be alone with him in his room. And so, the problem with our industry is those people are worried that they’ll never work again if they’re the person that calls a prosecutor or the head of an agency or a studio and says, ‘He’s harassing all these people.’ And that’s what we have to change. We have to find a way to get the business manager, who writes the check to the woman that Harvey Weinstein harassed or raped, to say, ‘I won’t write that check. I’m not going to do that.’

 

[00:14:55] And do you think we’ve reached a tipping point where more and more people will do that now?

 

[00:14:59] I think it is the beginning of a massive change because women always felt like, ‘No one will believe me and I won’t be supported.’ And we’ve just said to them, ‘We will support you. We’re here. We probably should support you much more.’ There still will be people who feel that they didn’t get supported enough, but the environment has changed dramatically and that’s why you have an enormous amount of people saying, ‘Oh I can say now? Well, this is what happens to me here and this is what happens to me there.’ And so suddenly it feels like a tidal wave. It’s because all these people have been traumatized and they have been terrified to come forward because they’re worried about losing their careers or being sued. Look at what Brett Ratner did. He’s suing this woman—

 

[00:15:42] Brett Ratner, who’s a director of movies.

 

[00:15:44] Director and producer and financier. A woman wrote a Facebook post accusing him of rape. He’s suing her. Now it’s a woman–I don’t think she’s in the business anymore. I think she lives in Hawaii or something. And he’s suing her for millions of dollars. She clearly doesn’t have the money to defend against this. But what is the reason he’s doing this? It’s a signal to anybody else that might be thinking about coming forward that ‘I’m going to make your life hell.’

 

[00:16:13] Right.

 

[00:16:14] He’s not suing any of the famous people that are accusing him because they have the means to deal with it. Luckily that woman got a lawyer to say, ‘I will defend you pro bono.’ So, she is being defended. But that’s why people don’t come forward. Because of things like that.

 

[00:16:31] Do I have this wrong? Is he also the person that’s associated with ‘Wonder Woman’?

 

[00:16:34] Yes.

 

[00:16:35] He’s one of the producers of ‘Wonder Woman’ and Gal Godot said, ‘I’m not going to do the sequel–

 

[00:16:41] Gal Gadot played Wonder Woman——and that’s something you might not have seen some years ago.

 

[00:16:46] Yeah. She said, ‘I’m not going to make the sequel.’ And that’s really what it takes to change this business, is people to say, ‘I will not work with that person.’ You know there were rumors about Bill Cosby for years. Two women went on The Today Show and told their story more than a decade ago. He, still, was getting development deals to do new TV shows and specials. People did not say, ‘We stand with you.’ They want to ignore it because these people generate a lot of money and people don’t want to be the one to make the call. It’s hard if you’re the head of a studio to say, ‘I’m not going to make this TV show anymore because you’re a pedophile.’

 

PB: Well, if you think it’s hard obviously for a head of a studio to say that, how hard is it for the key grip or for the lower level manager?

 

[00:17:40] Yeah.

 

[00:17:40] And it’s a problem that’s happened from the beginning of time because people don’t want to be ostracized. We should have a system in which it’s the perpetrator who is ostracized, not the victim who is ostracized. And maybe that’s beginning to happen a little bit.

 

[00:17:53] Well, I hope so. I hope things change. Ronan Farrow writes these incredible articles about Harvey Weinstein and everything that he learns. And you know, we hear crazy things—-He’s hiring ex Mossad agents, who are private investigators, who are pretending to be victims in order to find out more information. It’s really dark evil stuff. But yet, Ronan Farrow not that long ago wrote an article about his father, Woody Allen, molesting his sister. And his sister wrote an article about it, which was in the New York Times, and everybody ignored it. And if you’ll notice, no one ever turns down a job in a Woody Allen movie. Every single person says yes. Nobody says, ‘I believe her.’ And so, we’re all so willing to say, ‘Yeah we were wrong about Rose McGowan. I guess she was right about everything.’ But, why does everyone still say, ‘I don’t believe Woody Allen’s daughter’?

 

[00:18:51] From my perspective, there have been enablers in the legal field too. And there’s a lawyer of great acclaim–and I don’t know all the details and I think he’s apologized for it–David Boies was representing Harvey Weinstein. Now, it appears that he was actually investing in some of the movies that Harvey Weinstein was making. At the same time, representing New York Times and contracted with an investigative company that was using, as you say, these former [00:19:15] Mossad [0.3] agents to intimidate people and get information about them. That’s kind of gross. The second example of gross behavior by lawyers. There are cases of people in the media business who basically had it in their contracts that nothing was going to happen to them if they, from time to time, had to settle, maybe even for millions of dollars, sexual harassment claims against other folks. That’s enabled by lawyers, who decided, at the company you know, ‘Don’t ask, don’t tell. You do these bad things and we don’t have to know about it–but you’re so profitable to us.’

 

[00:19:47] Yeah, I mean look at news corp. You know, Bill O’Reilly – he’s paying out tens of millions of dollars to people that he sexually harassed. They know he’s paying out claims. They claim they didn’t know on the last one how much it was for or what he did. That’s what they’re saying. So, they find out he has a new claim. They’re told that he settled it. They give him a new gigantic contract.

 

[00:20:15] On the path forward, on these issues that are coming out of Hollywood, should people rise up and refuse to work with Woody Allen and Harvey Weinstein for all time going forward?

 

[00:20:26] I think that there’s a debate that’s about to happen, which is what do we do with these deviant people? What happens to them?

 

[00:20:33] Some of them may be criminals.

 

[00:20:35] Some of them should be in prison. Some of them–you know it’s always difficult to prosecute these cases. Even Cosby got a hung jury with an insane amount of accusers and a lot of evidence and him, on the record, saying that he gave women quaaludes. So, they’re very difficult to prosecute. And so now you’re going to have all these people at different levels. At the high end, you have these rapists and sexual harassers and people blocking doors while they’re masturbating. And then you have people who just treat people badly. You know just schmucks, who are really hurting people’s lives in ways they don’t quite understand. There’s all sorts of weird power dynamics at play. People are manipulated into doing things they don’t want to do. So, you have every level from the worst to a lighter level. And then we go, ‘Well, what do you do with this person?’ What do you do with Brett Ratner? What do you do with Harvey Weinstein? Is he barred from show business?’ Well, there’s no law in show business–

 

[00:21:32] Are you saying–so you have you have your wife Leslie Mann, who is a wonderful actor. I think she’s terrific. You have two daughters, who act from time to time.

 

[00:21:43] Yes. Yes.

 

[00:21:43] What do they say? Or what do you say to them on this question, if it ever comes up: if I get offered a job on Woody Allen movie or a Brett Ratner movie, do you do it or do you not do it?

 

[00:21:52] Don’t do it. Oh, Absolutely. And that’s come up. It’s come up for me. I mean there’s a reason why I haven’t worked with any of these people. If you look at the resume, I’m doing my best. I don’t always succeed, but I’m avoiding the awful people as much as I can. I don’t have a ton of Harvey Weinstein collaborations. I’m not making movies with Brett Ratner and that is because you know when you hear someone is terrible, you avoid them.

 

[00:22:20] But is that your advice to everyone? Say, ‘Look–especially now, if we want to put an end to this conduct and take away the ability of powerful men to abuse women and other men in a terrible way, who are up and coming–stop working with them?’

 

[00:22:36] I say that’s part of it. Here’s the thing. It’s very different when you’re talking about one complaint 35 years ago and there’s not a lot of information versus you know James Toback with 300 accusations. And this is what is going to be so difficult about this, which is, how are we going to handle these situations where it’s not 10 or 20 accusers. It’s one person. That’s a very tricky thing and I don’t have an answer for that.

 

[00:23:09] What about for the general public, who are not deciding–you know, we’re not getting offers to be in a Woody Allen movie or a Harvey Weinstein movie, but they’re trying to decide, do I go see a movie?

 

JA: Yes.

 

PB: How are we supposed to view the art of people who have done these terrible things?

 

JA: I’m not one of those people that’s like, ‘Let’s burn the negatives on these projects.’ I don’t care that much about it. If you get a kick out of watching the Cosby show. I don’t get it. I don’t get why it wouldn’t trouble you deeply. But–and I’m not going to support it. But I’m not obsessed with spending my time going, ‘We got to get it off the air.’ I think the people who run it–and there are people who run it right now. I think it’s creepy. I think it’s probably wrong, but it’s not my issue. If you’re going to go watch Annie Hall, I get it. I get why there are certain people that are like, “Yeah I think he’s probably an awful person, but I enjoy the movie and I can separate it.’ And I don’t think it’s up for me in America to say, ‘You shouldn’t watch it. Let’s try to prevent you from watching it.’ That’s not what our country is about. For me personally these projects get ruined because I see them through the prism of who the person really is. So, the jokes mean different things. The stories mean different things.

 

PB: You lose respect for the artist. And it’s just not it’s not the same.

 

JA: I lose respect for the artists, but I also think I understand new levels to the artists. So, when I watch it I’m actually not even seeing the story in the same way because it might be an episode of The Cosby Show where he’s the greatest guy in the world. In my head, I’m thinking one of the reasons why he’s making this show is so that he can knock people unconscious and rape people and then you won’t think that he ever would do that because he has such a sweet episode of The Cosby Show.

 

PB: It might be even more difficult for you because you know him well, Louis C.K.

 

JA: Sure.

 

PB: And some of his comedy it turns out was about the very things that he’s now confessed to having done.

 

JA: And that’s a different type of situation because a guy like Cosby was saying, ‘I’m perfect.’ And it was almost like a pedophile priest who’s trying to say to the world, ‘It can’t be me because look at all these great things I’m doing.’ Somebody like Louis was exploring the dark side. He was talking about things that he did that were wrong, that he was ashamed of. And so now we look at that in a different light and go, ‘What did that mean? What was he trying to say?’ And a lot of it is very on the nose. A lot of it is very clear. It feels connected to these issues that we’re talking about.

 

PB: Did you hear the rumors about Louis C.K.?

 

JA: There was always one rumor that I heard, which was that there was this situation in Aspen and that’s the story that came out. What always made it complicated was, at least for me, I never knew who the women were and no one ever went on the record and said, ‘It was me’. And I think a lot of these things are very difficult to talk about if there’s no face to it.

 

PB: But going back now, if you had to do it over again, would you have said something to him? Would you have confronted him? Or would you have tried to inquire more or would you have asked other people? Learning the lessons of the last few days and weeks.

 

JA: I think that’s the right question.

 

PB: What do you think someone like you should have done?

 

JA: I think that’s the right question. And it does become about like, are we all going to become investigators? You know there’s all these like rumors and weird things flying and there are some of them that are very worthy of follow up. And then there’s these other ones, which are kind of strange and you don’t really know what they mean. And there’s no person saying, “It’s me. I got hurt,” which really require follow up. So, the question you’re asking me, is on a rumor should I have called Louis C.K., who I don’t work with and said, ‘Is that true?’ Now a lot of people that we know did do that and then he said it wasn’t true. And so, until someone said, “Oh yeah, it is true. It’s me.” It’s a very hard thing to confront.

 

PB: Have you had conversations with your daughters about show business and the realities of it in this regard? And what are those conversations like, if you can share?

 

JA: I think that from birth, I’ve talked to my daughters a lot about social media, about how show business works—that there are dangerous people out there. There are people that can’t be trusted. That you need to figure out how to keep yourself safe. That you need to be in tune with who you’re with and what they’re like. That this can be, you know, a scary place at times—rarely, but it’s real. And we just talk about all of it very openly because the one thing you don’t want is someone to just assume everything’s fine. You know I’m friends with Gavin de Becker, the writer, and he’s written about you know security, he is a security specialist and he said to me, ‘You know the way women get hurt is by trying to appease men.’ That most of the times when a woman gets attacked, somehow, they’ve been tricked by a man into not being impolite. So, like an example he uses is you’re in your apartment building and a guy says, ‘Hey you want me to help you with your shopping bags?’ And then the woman doesn’t want to say, ‘Get out here.’ Generally, people are trying to be polite and because they’re trying to be polite they will let that guy in the apartment to drop off the bags. And at the end—and I’m sure this is true for men as well– this intention to be polite and not cause a scene gets people in big trouble. So, what I always say to my daughters is, you know, ‘If you feel something’s weird is happening. Speak up. Get out of there. Run. Yell.’ You don’t want to be the person who’s thinking, ‘It’s probably fine. I don’t want to create a scene.’ Create a scene. Get out of there.

 

PB: We have a lot in common as people might find surprising. One of them is, I also have a daughter who treats me with the same amount of respect and admiration that sometimes your daughters seem to. And this is a quote that could have been my daughter talking about me, but you’re the professional comedian and you quoted her saying, I’m talking about you, ‘I find your jokes so annoying that sometimes my friends make jokes that are funny and I don’t laugh.’

 

JA: In spite of me.

 

PB: Do you make your family laugh or not?

 

JA: Sometimes I’ll make the effort. I’m like, ‘Tonight, I’m going to try to make my family laugh because they find me so unfunny. I’m going to try to let them know I’m good. I’m going to give them the eighth to appreciate.’

 

PB: Do they appreciate that other people find you funny or are they–

 

JA: They find it annoying for the most part I think. I think they both respect it and are irritated by it as they should be. I totally support it because you know we—

 

PB: Support their irritation with you.

 

JA: Because if you live with me you’re, you know, I’m making a fair amount of jokes and my failure rate is probably 80, 90 percent. So, you’re listening to eight bad jokes out of 10 for your whole life.

 

PB: Because you’re working it out at home.

 

JA: I’m working out at home. I’m bringing the good stuff to the world.

 

PB: It’s not all Netflix at home.

 

JA: Netflix is a lot of crap to get through, but all kids think their dad is a schmuck.

 

PB: I have three. That is in fact, by fact check, that is true.

 

JA: And so, you know, who wants to hang out with their parents? It’s funny because my daughter–you know, I have one daughter in college, the other daughter is 15. She lives at home and I always say, ‘Four people is a family, three is a child observing a weird couple.’ And the other day I said to my daughter—

 

PB: Did you write that? That’s good.

 

JA: I said to my daughter, ‘Do you want to have dinner with me and mom?’ and she’s like, ‘No.’ I’m like, ‘Why not?’ She’s like, ‘What would ever be fun about that?’ I’m like, ‘Well, what do you mean?’ Well, she’s like, ‘You’re just going to give me a hard time about my life or I got to listen to your life and I don’t care at all.’

 

PB: This makes me feel much better because I thought, ‘Wow it must be different for Judd Apatow, who is actually funny in his home and makes a living off—I mean that’s how you know you’re paying for college, right? Because other people find you funny even if your daughter doesn’t.

 

JA: Exactly. So, that’s what I tell her. I say, ‘You know it’s paying the bills, so give me a break.’

 

PB: Here’s my favorite quote from you. And we’ll end it. And you once said, ‘I think that everything I do tends to root for the underdog. I always felt as a kid that I was underappreciated, invisible or weird, but I’ve always secretly thought people would one day appreciate what is different about me. I’m always putting that message out there. Eventually the nerds and the geeks will have their day.

 

JA: Yeah, I thought that the whole time I was a kid when I was all alone. I just thought, ‘All these things I’m interested in, no one cares about, but I think when I get to the real world they will care about that.

 

PB: They will, but your family won’t.

 

JA: They’re still irritated.

 

PB: Judd Apatow, thank you so much.

 

JA: Thank you.

 

PB: You’ve been a tremendous sport and guest.

 

JA: I appreciate it.