Judd Apatow Quotations | Page 2

I've always appreciated people like Graham Parker or Loudon Wainwright III, who spend their entire lives writing songs and working their asses off just to have complete artistic freedom. They're just sharing their lives with you through their music. That's the same kind of work that I'm trying to do, in my own weird way.

Some stories feel like they need more time or less time to tell. To not obsessively have to trim or add that final two or three minutes is very helpful, because you can just organically follow how the story feels.

I've come to believe that the simpler the title, the better. Whenever I try to get cute with it, it seems to be a problem but if it's just The 40-Year-Old Virgin, people seem to know what they're in for.

My first writing jobs were writing Tom Arnold specials for HBO, so I love working there.

I think it's fun to have people see everything at once, and then I think certain shows are very well-suited to being on every week and being spread out over months.

I like when people are very passionate about what they want to write about. Even if it's silly, you can be very passionate about it.

I'm always talking to people. It's not that complicated. I just find somebody and say, "Do you have any ideas." If they do, we just start thinking things around.

I feel like Superbad and Freaks And Geeks are somewhat timeless. That's always gratifying, when you feel like 30 years in the future, people will still get it, and it won't seem creaky. It won't come across like The Incredible Mr. Limpet.

Sometimes, something seems dead, and then out of the blue, someone just figures out the way to fix a script and it goes.

You have to write a lot of scripts to get any scripts that are worth making.

If you develop 10 things, and you can get two or three made, that's a very high ration.

At network television you could make a show like Freaks and Geeks, and even though 7 million people watch is every week, you were considered a terrible failure, and they got rid of you and staff. Now ... It's like a world where the replacements are the biggest fans in the world. It's, the Elvis Costellos of television are the winners. Creativity is king and it's very very exciting.

We are at this weird moment where there's an economic model that supports creativity. People are demanding something new and fresh.

Something economically changed. It used to be that you needed 20 million people to watch a TV show for it to be a hit. Now, with just a few million people watching, you're considered very successful, for a lot of these streaming services, or cable channels. Now, that allows people to do much more creatively ambitious work, because it's not lowest common denominator.

There's something so scary about trying out new material and being completely comfortable jumping into the abyss with a comedic idea.

I loved the idea that I could write a joke and someone else would have to take the risk of performing it.

I did get good enough to get on HBO's Young Comedians Special, but I certainly wasn't the person who got launched off of HBO's Young Comedians Special. That would be Ray Romano that year. I had some semi-intelligent jokes, but when people would see me, they would think, "Oh, that's a good writer." No one would ever have said, "Oh, that's a good performer."

I worshipped guys like Bill Maher, Jay Leno, and Jerry Seinfeld, and was doing my variation of that. But as a young person with no political point of view or life experience, it was as funny as you can imagine.

I remember the review from Michael Wilmington in Chicago, and Gene Siskel wrote really smart reviews where I thought, "Oh, they totally get what we're attempting to do."

It was always the most fun thing in the world to think of a joke area and talk about it with someone like Jim Carrey, and then he would get on stage fearlessly and tear the house down. That's something I always enjoyed. It also allowed me to not be terrified.

I used to tour a little bit with Jim Carrey and help him out on his first Showtime special.

I wrote for Roseanne. I wrote her stand-up act with her. I wrote with Tom Arnold. There was a period when I was working with them pretty steadily. But I would take brief gigs here and there.

I wrote on the Grammys, and a few times for Garry Shandling when he was hosting. I couldn't have enjoyed those gigs more, because I would get to collaborate and try to make people I looked up to laugh, but for the most part, when you're as talented as they are, what they really want is someone who can type fast and whose presence makes them feel in the mood to write and spew and be creative, and I was a good person to have in the room.

I bring people on to the movies to type and to help punch up and look at things. But a lot of it is, you want fun people to be around, to put you in a good mood, to try and access your creative place.

Right when I started getting solid was when I was offered a lot of writing work. And when The Ben Stiller Show was picked up, I realized there was no way for me to do stand-up three or four nights a week and run this television show with Ben. So that was the moment when I had to make a choice.

Every time I perform in front of people, no matter how well it goes, the next day, I feel humiliated.

For a long time, TV was just the land of handsome, beautiful people, and now it's the opposite.

I remember the Time review [on the Hit and Run]said that there wasn't one laugh in it. And I had watched the movie 50 times with audiences, and it always played great. There was certainly a moment where you could tell the audience was like, "Wow, this is really getting weird."

[My] dream writers room: "'Taxi.' I need to write for someone named Judd."

"'Deadwood.' I could have watched that forever."

You should look up some of the reviews. The New York Times review is so over-the-top funny. It's hysterical. You should dig it out.

I get literally a physical sensation of low self-esteem that is a result of not engaging the world and getting comfortable that way.

I was very combative as a creative person at that time [while The Ben Stiller Show]. I didn't understand how to play politics with the studios. I didn't know how to creatively collaborate with the people who were paying the bills, and that came up all the time on every project I was doing, and it took me a really long time to figure out how to collaborate in a healthy way.

Some people make movies and think, "Well, I'll just keep asking for more money if this isn't enough." And then there are other people, like Clint Eastwood, who always come in under budget.

The Cable Guy was underbudgeted, so it was always a debate about whether we could have more days or certain things that we needed, because the budget was determined before the script was written. So that made it a hard production on everybody. But it's also a funny thing, because it's one of those movies that cost $40 million to make and made $100 million around the world, but at the time, it seemed like a disaster that it didn't make hundreds of millions of dollars, because Jim was on such a tear. But it was actually a successful movie.

I think, there were probably problems with show business where producers and directors would try to get the writing credit also. So they created a rule where the bar, to get your name added to the writing credits, if you've done a revision, is very high if you're also the producer or director.

Most people in the world of comedy at least are multi-hyphenates, so people who direct are also writers.

I've made movies on every part of the spectrum, and you do understand when you go into certain movies that you're trying to elicit a certain kind of response from the audience, and people get a real sense of satisfaction when they're rooting for a character and the character pulls it off.

I think Jim [Carrey], in the best possible way, thought, "I need to do different things to establish to the audience that I'm not going to do the same thing every time."

It's what I always dreamed of: that you can make TV and everyone would get out of your way and you follow your vision without watering it down.

I feel like it's a golden age for television.

You can do weird things on TV - there are happy stories, sad stories, dark stories. But with a movie, it always has to end satisfying. Unless you're the Coen brothers, and it ends with somebody getting shot in the head.

If you work on network TV, they want to pick your casts, dictate your story and how your show works. It just becomes creativity by committee, which is never good.

It's a fun idea, to follow a couple very slowly and show every nook and cranny of their relationship.

The little details really connect for people in ways I never realized before.I think that's why some of the movies have done well, because people are relating to things that I'm willing to expose.

I've come to realize that people connect more when they know you're telling them the truth or some aspect of your story, some mutated version of how you are experiencing this life.

Some people are probably saner. They're good performers, and they go about their day. I just get obsessive about it.

I think watching too much TV as a kid led me to being very uncomfortable in new situations. To this day, when I drop my kids off at school, I still feel like I'm in 9th grade and I'm uncomfortable and insecure. Like anyone is paying any attention.

I used to watch 10 hours of television a night, my entire childhood. And I don't think it did all good things to me. I certainly still have social problems that are a result of being in my room alone too much.

I feel like everybody's waiting for a job y'know, you can make a movie on your phone. And so there really is no reason to worry about how to get in with people- and you can do that, there's a lot to learn working for people -but you can just make a movie, where in the old days that was completely impossible.

I still feel like a nerd.

I think we all have a love/hate relationship with the media.

I always see other people as predecessors and admire them.

I think a lot of studios today are run by women, and we are entering a time when a lot of women have evolved in Second City and Upright Citizens Brigade and wanted to become writers and comedians.

I love magazines and film critics, so I eat it up. I'm not one of those people who says 'I never read anything.' I generally read all of it.

I thought the idea Jim [Carrey] had, which was to do a comedic version of movies like The Hand That Rocks The Cradle and Unlawful Entry, was really funny. The movie was a little lighter when we first came on, a little more like What About Bob? or something.

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.

I think a lot of Hollywood is in retreat right now trying to figure out how to make money and make the safest bets.

People like the comedy more when they care about the characters.

I very rarely made any move to direct anything. I didn't have any faith in myself.

It's so difficult to shock America these days.

I'm the guy who gets uncomfortable. That's why I was able to write 'The 40-Year-Old Virgin' and 'Knocked Up.' I believe in those guys.

There are only so many hilarious actors so when they cross-pollinate, people assume it's always the same actors and directors.

When Jim Carrey signed on to star in [The Cable Guy], and then they asked me to produce it, I made a very brief plea to direct - which was rejected really as quickly as anything can be.

There was definitely a period when I just felt out of sync with earth.

Up until 'Bridesmaids,' the general consensus was that women preferred comedy a bit softer.

If we really talked about what's wrong with you, you'd need a 7-1/2-hour movie and nobody would know what category to put it in!

Television is much more difficult because at every moment the network can force you to change things based on their belief about what would make it popular. You're in a constant debate with a gun at your head, and the gun is cancellation. So it's hard to win the arguments.

Well, every movie is an experiment. And the only way you can grow at what you're doing is to take chances. You can't try to stick with what worked last time.

To me, I've never understood why there is any question about are women as funny as men.

My way of dealing with the world has always been to make fun of it and observe it but not take part in it.That's how I became a writer. But when you have kids, suddenly you have to be part of things. It leads almost to a breakdown because your whole defense mechanism is now really destructive.

The great thing about Eminem is, he's just hysterical. You forget, people like Eminem because he is riotously funny. And he's a great actor.

'The Night Of.' I pray there will be more.

I'm making a movie about relationships, and I'm surrounded by guys scared of talking to girls.

There's something honorable about holding out for love and not breaking up for the sake of the baby. I see people get divorced, and there is a part of me that thinks, I wonder how hard they tried?

All of my jokes were about not being able to meet anybody. I didn't have any insight into anything - even my own insecurities.

People like everything to work out, and anytime you don't make everything work out perfectly, you really are fighting against what most people are going to the movies for, especially in the summer.

I wanted to see how funny I could be without making the choice that every 10 minutes something big and visual had to happen.

I've had movies bomb with terrible reviews, I've had movies make a lot of money with terrible reviews, I've had movies get good reviews and make money. And I like it best when the movies do well and the reviewers like them.

I am always driven by the terror of humiliation.

I hosted the Producer's Guild Awards, and it went well, and I was very happy in the moment, and it was a fun night. But I wake up the next day like someone who did crack the night before and told off the world, and I'm ashamed of the whole idea that anyone should listen to me, or the idea that I need that much approval.

I think that everything I do tends to root for the underdog.

The moment you think of a joke is the best moment.

The only thing worse than a crappy TV show which Paddy Chayevsky couldn't have conceived in his worst nightmare is two megacorps fighting over who thought of the crappy show first.

I think the story should always determine the visual approach. There are situations where you want things to feel alive and like life, and there are situations that should have some magic and the separation with the grain.

I put on a big show when I write something I think is funny.

Every day I live by only one rule, be a good guy.

Eventually, the nerds and the geeks will have their day.

I'm always surprised when you do something very different that people don't get behind you more, because you're always told, "Take chances! Stretch!" And when you do it, sometimes people get really supportive and excited, but sometimes people go at you because you've tossed out the formula.

For me, until I know that the audience really gets what I'm trying to communicate I'm not done.

College is the reward for surviving high school. Most people have great fun stories from college and nightmare stories from high school.

Don't be a jerk. Try to love everyone. Give more than you take. And do it despite the fact that you only really like about seven out of 500 people.