Judd Apatow Quotes

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."

I was bad at sports and picked last every day. I couldn't quite figure out what my role was in the social order, so I decided I was interested in comedy. And what was then interesting was, nobody else was interested in it at all. I didn't find one friend who was interested in comedy until I moved to California and met other comedians. And suddenly I knew hundreds of people who knew as much about SCTV as I did. But it took me 20 years to find those people.

That's very important to me as well: presentation and how people perceive you, the visual of how things look, your posture. I learned that from [Bob] Fosse and Jerome Robbins, from all the great theater directors and the Busby Berkeleys. You overdeliver: visually, emotionally.

Donald Trump runs the country like he ran "The Apprentice." The premise of "The Apprentice" is a crazy rich guy has his daughter and his son oversee celebrities doing tasks. And then they come back to him, and they tell him how they did. So in every episode he's like, how did - how'd Meatloaf do, Ivanka? And then she says, Meatloaf really did a great presentation. And then he makes some impulsive decision about who to fire based on not being there, not really even understanding anything.

With comedy, a lot of people develop their sense of humor as a defense mechanism.

Literally, my last call was with David Blaine, congratulating him on his show. I have a camaraderie with David.

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

I think my instinct creatively is to make things that are very funny and happy and silly. And in this moment where the world is very scary, I feel like my role is to make people laugh really hard.

When you're making your 20th movie, it might be the 20th most incredible thing that's ever happened to you!

I still feel like a nerd.

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

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'm trying to think if there was ever the Lenny Bruce-y, observational, George Carlin kind of magician: "You know what I hate is ..." I don't think that ever existed.

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.

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.

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.

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.

'Deadwood.' I could have watched that forever.

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'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.

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.

I don't think because a story has humor in it means it's brief. For some reason, people think anything that's 30 minutes is a comedy, comedies can be longer or shorter, so can dramas.

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."

Even now if I see someone working out, in great shape, like a 40-year-old guy with his shirt off jogging I always think, "Look at that idiot." That's why everyone in my movie is kind of goofy because I'm a champion of the goofball. What sucks is I have to work out now not to die. I was always happy not working out because I never wanted to be someone who worked out to look good, but now I have to try to not die, which is such a drag.

Just trying to tell the truth about, you know, the struggle of - being alive is funny, it's just inherently tragic and also hilarious - in a fun way and in a sad way. That seems to connect with people.

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

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

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!

If the movie's not communicating, it's not working.

I used to bug all of the comedians for interviews, and when people want to talk to me, sometimes I'm very receptive and sometimes I say no. Sometimes if I say no, I think, "If they're smart, they'll figure out how to not accept this no."

I think the world is changing and all that matters is that I'm creating things.

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.

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 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.

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

I don't think it matters what the frequency is of me writing or directing a movie. It doesn't really matter to anybody else. I'm just trying to put good things out there.

I always see other people as predecessors and admire them.

If you're an athlete, you might work your entire life, and you win the Super Bowl once, if you're lucky. And I feel like in the arts and entertainment we win the Super Bowl all the time.

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.

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

Sometimes you need to get away for a few weeks just to figure out who you are again.

When I was very young, I started to make friends with much, much older people. So when I was twenty, my friends were fifty, and I never really went through forty because I would watch them die and I would feel younger. So you make friends with older people and you will always feel young no matter what.

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

Watching shows on Netflix is a different experience because most people are sitting there for three to five hours. Very few people even watch one episode. So it's not like a movie theater where you want to the movies to be shorter so you can go urinate. You can pause and urinate at home, and if something is longer, you're allowed to stop and eat breakfast and then watch eight more episodes.

If a woman says, I love myself; I love my body; I'm comfortable with my life, comfortable with my mistakes, and I deserve a seat at every table and everything should be completely equal, there are guys who lose their minds.

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

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 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.