Judd Apatow Quotes

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

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.

You want the audience to get your movie, and you want the audience to like it. It's as simple as that. If they don't understand what you're trying to say, you've failed. Of course, you can't get 100 percent of the crowd to understand the movie, but you know when you've reached the people you want to reach.

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

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.

If anything is leaking, I try to plug the hole.

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

Penn [Jillette] and Teller and I get along very well. We can call each other and say, "I'm working on this classic effect. Please, I'd like to do it for a while." We'll all respect it. There are people we don't get along with, but mostly there is a respect amongst the group.

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 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.

I think there have been so many documentaries about pop stars, made by pop stars. It's a new phenomenon. People making these movies where they praise themselves and show their own weaknesses. it's all designed to make you love them even more.

Humor is his defense mechanism, so that would allow me to talk about some serious subjects, but get a lot of hilarious jokes in.

The first comedians I became fascinated with were the Marx brothers. I couldn't get enough of them. Later in life, I thought, "Well, maybe it's because they were so rebellious and they were just flipping the bird to society and all the rules we're supposed to follow." They were saying that none of it is fair.

I loved working in stand-up, and I always dreamed that I could make a movie about it. I didn't know if I would have the courage to, because if you make a bad movie about stand-up, then comedians will mock you for the rest of your life. They're still mad about movies made 25 years ago. But it was always a dream of mine, and I was glad I finally came up with an idea that allowed me to explore it in such a way that it's not all about stand-up, but stand-up creates a great backdrop for another type of story.

I am always driven by the terror of humiliation.

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.

Sometimes a story idea will come to me, and suddenly I've figured out the whole thing, and I feel like I'm collaborating with something other than myself.

When the entire country was watching one show there was a major discussion happening; is it possible for that to happen in a 1 million channel universe?

I like working with people on their first movies. I think that you never get that level of effort again. And I think that most people only have a couple of amazing stories from their lives, so you're getting the best of them.

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.

Any music star would be singing about his lost love. A movie would be about a relatable incident; it wasn't an untouchable magic dragon box. It was something that people could relate to, and when I vanished a girl, it would be a story about a girl that left me, or a cutting into pieces would be a date with a magician. I wouldn't just vanish a girl in a shower, I would do the shower scene from Psycho [1960] with a [Alfred] Hitchcock cameo.

In my work, there is a lot of storytelling. The storytelling is not a new thing. Back in the [Howard] Thurston days, the [Harry] Houdini days, the [Harry] Blackstone days, it was stories, but the stories were, "We're going to the Egyptian temples, and we're going to vanish the Prince of Thebes," and, "On my last trip to the Orient ..."

The audience doesn't care that most of happened. They just want a good movie.

I have to make good things so good comedians want to talk to me.

I was listening to Tommy Chong talking about how he feels like there is like a creative flow happening and how certain people just know how to hook into the pipe. He played music with Jimi Hendrix and felt that he was personally connected to some higher intelligence or creativity.

I start thinking about the next movie before it's a success, so I can never have one moment of happiness or peace. I'm instantly thinking about the next one.

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 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.

You can work on a movie for years, and you won't know until you show it to an audience for the first time if it makes any sense to them at all, if they're touched, if they find it funny, so it's endlessly exciting, because failure is just right there all the time, and your chances of success don't rise that much based on the fact that you succeeded last time.

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.

Back then, you seemed like a crazy person when you were trying to push the boundaries of network TV. People looked at you, and they were offended by the fact that you didn't follow the generic rules of what was expected on network TV.

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

And I like the passion that people have when they're trying to prove they can make a movie or be a movie star.

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.

Nobody's going to like my next movie because they liked Trainwreck [2015]. It has to work on its own, and that keeps it really scary.

I always feel like I'm very far from my potential.

I often say that ... I'm just involved in comedy, so I can be around it.

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 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 like human comedies - or dramedies. More than anything, I'm interested in people just dealing with everyday things that are difficult, and there is more than enough comedy and drama in that.

I literally cannot remember one joke.

In the writing, I'm just trying to go deeper, emotionally, and learn more about myself and reveal more and find a way to connect with people in new ways.

There's no logic in how Donald Trump thinks. I don't want someone who's the president who says 3 to 5 million people voted illegally when there's zero proof. It's a crazy person.

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

I think people like Lena Dunham really opened up the door to what was possible, and they've inspired young women to go into filmmaking and writing and directing and acting in a way that maybe they didn't before, because now there is a path and there are jobs.

One of my fears is that I'm suddenly not going to be funny, but still think I am. That's like my nightmare that I can wake up in a cold sweat from.

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

I start casting early in the writing process, so I can tailor the script to the gifts of the actors.