JUDD APATOW Chased Robert Conrad Down on Hilton Head Island

Summary

Family Trips with the Meyers Brothers: JUDD APATOW Chased Robert Conrad Down on Hilton Head Island

Release Date: October 29, 2024

In this heartfelt and humorous episode of Family Trips with the Meyers Brothers, hosts Seth Meyers and Josh Meyers dive deep into personal memories, share delightful family anecdotes, and engage in an entertaining conversation with renowned comedian and filmmaker Judd Apatow. The episode seamlessly weaves together tales of weddings, childhood escapades, and the enduring bonds of family, all while highlighting Judd Apatow's unique experiences.

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1. Celebrating a New Chapter: Seth Announces His Marriage

The episode begins with an exciting revelation as Seth Meyers (referred to affectionately as "Sufi") shares the news of his recent marriage. The brothers soon find themselves reminiscing about Seth's wedding, offering listeners an intimate glimpse into the planning and execution of the special day.

Notable Quote:

Seth (00:35): "I really wanted our guests to have a great weekend, and I think we did that. People had a blast."

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2. Wedding Planning and Venue Selection

Seth emphasizes the importance of ensuring that guests enjoyed the weekend, highlighting the meticulous planning involved in selecting the perfect venue. The brothers laud the choice of the Glen Falls House in Round Top, New York, praising its staff and ambiance.

Notable Quotes:

Josh (01:29): "Glen Falls House in Round Top, New York. Really incredible staff, an incredible venue."

Seth (01:50): "I was on, like, a month leading up to it, looking at when it was gonna pop. And it did."

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3. Memorable Moments: Overcoming Weather and Adding Unique Touches

Despite facing a potential rain scenario on the ceremony day, Seth and Josh recount how they navigated the weather challenges with grace. A surprise element—a bagpiper—added a touch of uniqueness to the ceremony, much to everyone's delight.

Notable Quotes:

Seth (02:58): "There was a bagpiper. Surprise bagpiper."

Josh (03:22): "He was great."

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4. Family Dynamics and Children's Antics at the Wedding

The brothers share endearing and humorous stories about their children during the wedding. From ring bearers juggling pretzel nuggets instead of rings to Addie finding comfort in sitting on her father's lap during the ceremony, these moments highlight the joy and unpredictability of family gatherings.

Notable Quotes:

Seth (04:31): "There were three ring boxes, two with a ring and one with a pretzel nugget. No kid knew who had the pretzel nugget."

Josh (05:17): "I think she just wanted to be able to see you guys, and so it was very, very sweet."

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5. Heartfelt and Hilarious Toasts

Judd Apatow's presence added an extra layer of warmth to the festivities. The brothers commend their parents and Judd's stepmother, Linda Rollins, for delivering memorable speeches that combined humor with heartfelt sentiments.

Notable Quotes:

Josh (09:10): "Dad gave a great toast. Mom did a reading. Beautiful."

Seth (10:00): "Linda Rollins' speech was so good—funny and touching."

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6. Transition to Judd Apatow: Upcoming Standup Shows for a Cause

Before delving into the main conversation, Seth and Josh highlight Judd Apatow's upcoming standup performances. These shows, set in Atlanta and New York City, aim to support hurricane victims in North Carolina and Georgia, showcasing Judd's commitment to philanthropy.

Notable Quotes:

Josh (15:10): "Judd is doing standup shows for great causes. Don't miss them."

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7. In-Depth Conversation with Judd Apatow

The heart of the episode features an engaging dialogue between the Meyers brothers and Judd Apatow. They explore Judd's rich family history, including his grandfather Bobby Shad—a pioneering jazz producer who signed legends like Janis Joplin. Judd recounts childhood memories, such as chasing actor Robert Conrad on Hilton Head Island and dealing with unexpected challenges like contracting chickenpox.

Notable Quotes:

Judd (38:08): "When you watch the remastered 'The 40-Year-Old Virgin,' it's like seeing it through fresh eyes."

Seth (62:35): "I felt like I was not getting enough comedic respect."

The conversation also delves into Judd's experiences in the comedy scene, his early days working in family-run restaurants, and the influence of his comedic heritage on his professional journey. Seth and Josh reflect on the dynamics of family vacations, sharing stories of trips to Italy and Japan that were filled with both challenges and laughter.

Notable Quotes:

Judd (58:01): "We went to Japan, and that was really, really fun."

Josh (59:51): "How do you get your kids to want to hang out with you willingly?"

8. Closing Remarks: Upcoming Events and Final Thoughts

As the episode nears its end, Judd Apatow promotes his standup shows, encouraging listeners to attend and support the charitable causes they benefit. The brothers wrap up with some final, light-hearted questions, adding a personal touch to the episode.

Notable Quotes:

Judd (65:39): "I'm doing the Beacon Theater on November 9th."

Josh (66:56): "Horse. You strike me."

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Conclusion

This episode of Family Trips with the Meyers Brothers masterfully blends personal storytelling with engaging conversation, offering listeners both laughs and heartfelt moments. Seth and Josh's camaraderie shines through as they navigate discussions about family, growth, and the enduring influence of comedy. Judd Apatow's insights and anecdotes add depth, making this episode a memorable listen for those seeking both entertainment and genuine connection.

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Stay Connected: For more episodes of Family Trips with the Meyers Brothers, tune in every Tuesday. Share your own family holiday stories by visiting speakpipe.com/familytripspod or submit a video to [e-mail] for a chance to be featured on their YouTube channel.

Transcript

[Pashi]

Hey, Pashi.

[Sufi]

Hey, Sufi.

[Pashi]

Well, it happened.

[Sufi]

I'm a married man.

[Pashi]

You're a married man?

[Sufi]

Yeah. I'm off the market, ladies.

[Pashi]

Sorry. I know there's a lot of tripsters stopsters who've been listening, trying to find out about you so they could drop a little detail about your life when they run into you on your walk with the dogs, but it's over. Game over. Pashi's a married man. I feel like it'll take us multiple episodes to fully unpack the wonder of your wedding, but as someone who was a guest, a plus job.

[Sufi]

Yeah. Thank you. There were a lot of things that were important to me, but really very high up the list was I wanted our guests to have a great weekend. And I really. I don't like patting myself on the back, but I do think we did that. I think people had a blast. And I was so glad that it was over a holiday weekend, so it was able to breathe a little bit. There were some of the things that we planned, which was, like, Friday night, just book a reservation at the restaurant at the hotel, and we're gonna have sort of different groups of people rolling in, and it'll just be mixing and mingling. And that was all we needed to do for that night. And it was so much fun.

[Pashi]

I came in to that beautiful little restaurant, and it was truly everything you would want. Different tables of different people. You get up, you can move around. Can I. I can shout out the venue.

[Sufi]

Yeah.

[Pashi]

Glen Falls House in the Catholic.

[Sufi]

Glen Falls House in Round Top, New York.

[Pashi]

Really incredible staff, an incredible venue.

[Sufi]

Yeah.

[Pashi]

And also peak. Peak leaves.

[Sufi]

Yeah.

[Pashi]

You did call for an east coast wedding so that all your west coast friends could see what peak leaves look like. And it delivered.

[Sufi]

Yeah. I was on, like, a month leading up to it. I was on the Farmer's Almanac sort of website, looking at sort of a rolling calendar of when it was gonna be popping. And it was popping.

[Pashi]

It popped. Dad gave a wonderful speech to your wedding, and he said something really sweet, which is he gave a lot of credit to you and Mackenzie for how quickly you planned this, and the two of you really did plan it on your own. And he said he was just having the best time, and he loved it so much, and he doesn't like anything.

[Sufi]

Yeah, he did. When we sat down at our little sweetheart table in the reception tent, dad was looking around, and he was just sort of so taken with everything, and he yelled at Mackenzie and I. He's like, I love this, and I don't like anything. This Is beautiful. Which, yeah, that also makes me feel really good in the moment. And, you know, we had. There was some rain on Sunday. The ceremony was on Sunday. It was a little touch and go. Where we gonna have to get married in the 10? Were we going to have to get married in the restaurant? And we sort of. We waited, we held. We found a half hour window.

[Pashi]

It was really a half hour window. And I should also say it only worked because you guys were always going to have a nice, tight wedding ceremony.

[Sufi]

Yeah, it was. I think it was.

[Pashi]

I didn't make any edits.

[Sufi]

I think it was 20 top to bottom once we got started. So we just needed people in position maybe with processing and recessing to a bagpiper, no less.

[Pashi]

There was a bagpiper. Surprise bagpiper.

[Sufi]

Yeah. Which. Yeah, he was great.

[Pashi]

Shout out, I will say, you know, I mostly talk about how they massively disappoint me and let me down. Boys crushed it. The Myers boys.

[Sufi]

Oh, your boys and your little girl. Yeah, they showed up. They were sweet. If they were bad kids at all. I didn't see it.

[Pashi]

There were not a lot of kids there. And I feel as though our children grew up a lot on the weekend because they appreciated. They were being treated. This was an honor to be there. And they sort of behaved like it. There was a very funny thing where I guess it was Mackenzie's nephew and my boys were all ring bearers. But of course, there were only two rings. And you very wisely realized nobody. You didn't want to tell one of the three kids they didn't have the ring. So there were three ring boxes, two with a ring and one with a pretzel nugget. But no kid knew who had the pretzel nugget, Right? Yeah. It just felt like it was like the weight of a ring. And they walked down and they were great.

[Sufi]

Yeah. And then our officiant, the fantastic and wonderful and lovely and charming Jack McBrayer, opened the ring box with the pretzel and promptly ate it.

[Pashi]

He ate the pretzel.

[Sufi]

Yeah.

[Pashi]

Another wonderful thing. I don't even know if you noticed, but, you know, Addie was supposed to walk down and sort of flower girl. And she was. She was. She was fine at the actual wedding. Did not make a peep. But she wanted me to carry her, so I carried her down.

[Sufi]

Yeah.

[Pashi]

And then I sat in the front row with mom and dad and the boys, and Addie sat behind us with Alexi and her parents. And I don't know if you noticed, but about Two minutes into the ceremony, Addie got up on her own, walked around and sat in dad's lap. And she was in dad's lap the whole ceremony.

[Sufi]

Oh, that's true.

[Pashi]

I think she just wanted to be able to see you guys, and so it was very, very sweet.

[Sufi]

Yeah. That's one thing looking back at, like, things you would do differently, and I don't know if they do this at weddings, but I feel like it should be standard operating procedure, and I don't think it is, but I think you should sit on the opposite side who.

[Pashi]

You want to look at.

[Sufi]

Person who you're like. So you can see. Like, you could see me speaking rather than Mackenzie speaking. Not that seeing Mackenzie.

[Pashi]

You're right. The groom side should be opposite the groom.

[Sufi]

Yes.

[Pashi]

That's so smart.

[Sufi]

Yeah. Because some of, like, you know, Mackenzie's stepmother was saying, she's like, oh, yeah, we couldn't see you at all, like, during your vows, and you want to be across but missed it.

[Pashi]

You.

[Sufi]

It's okay.

[Pashi]

Still married. This is good, though. This is good for people when you get married. These are a couple things to remember. You did not see her dress until she came down the aisle. You burst into tears.

[Sufi]

Yeah. A lot of crying at the whole wedding.

[Pashi]

A lot of crying. Yeah.

[Sufi]

And all the pictures of me that I've seen from the ceremony, my face is twisted up, and I wish maybe I had been able to hold it together a little better.

[Pashi]

Yeah. You did not hold it together at all. And, yeah, your face was a contorted. A contorted mess. You looked so handsome. And, you know, from his suit looked great. Hair looked great. But, like, from hair to suit, it was really a contorted pretzel face.

[Sufi]

Yeah.

[Pashi]

You know, night of the wedding, Addie did great ceremony whatnot. And then she went. We put her to bed. Axel made it through a couple of the toasts, and then he couldn't make it.

[Sufi]

Yeah.

[Pashi]

And fell asleep. He fell asleep.

[Sufi]

Yeah.

[Pashi]

Ash pushed through. Ash is very. He embarrasses, very easy. He does not like people looking at him. And yet Ash went crazy on the dance floor.

[Sufi]

Yeah.

[Pashi]

Which is great. A passion.

[Sufi]

Yeah. It's one of my favorite sort of times in a kid's life when they don't know how to dance. Like, there's no.

[Pashi]

He doesn't know it all.

[Sufi]

There's no kid at seven who's like, oh, what a great dancer. Maybe somewhere there is who's like, you've been in training. Yeah.

[Pashi]

Like, but when you see it, it is like you're like, what have you done to this kid that they already know how to dance? I feel like if an 8 year old knows how to dance, it's probably like some sort of abuse.

[Sufi]

Yeah. There's a Toddlers and Tiaras kind of thing going on.

[Pashi]

Yeah, yeah, yeah, exactly.

[Sufi]

But he was just. And I think he said to Alexi, he's like, I just listen to the music, and once it takes me over, I just can't stop dancing. Yeah. He just needs to feel it out. And then, yeah, he's kicking his legs around, and he was, you know, surrounded by a bunch of his family who were dancing with him. And I feel like those are great moments.

[Pashi]

Great moments. And so many, so many of our friends were so attentive to the kids, and I think that made their weekend really great. Also, Alexei gave Ash, like, a teaspoon of wine in a glass so that he could toast.

[Sufi]

Yeah.

[Pashi]

And then he had like one. And then he had like half of that. Half a sip of wine. And he kept saying on the dance floor, oh, I wish I hadn't had that wine.

[Sufi]

Yeah. It was bad for me.

[Pashi]

I keep cramping. He goes, I keep getting cramps. I think it's from all that wine.

[Sufi]

Yeah.

[Pashi]

But, yeah, it was great. It was so beautiful. Mackenzie looked amazing.

[Sufi]

Oh, my gosh.

[Pashi]

Beautiful vows. You guys have beautiful vows. And then it was just a very. And you guys went hard every night.

[Sufi]

Yeah, we shut it down at 2 in the morning. 2 in the morning and 3 in the morning, which is nuts. Yeah. And then we're up by nine to sort of see people for brunch every day.

[Pashi]

I also want to shout out, dad gave great toast. Mom did a reading. Beautiful.

[Sufi]

Yeah. Made me cry.

[Pashi]

Totally. Which is great.

[Sufi]

Yeah. Mackenzie's parents were great. Her mother in particular. You're like, whoa, uh, oh. Like, yep, could be trouble.

[Pashi]

Linda Rollins. Shout out to Linda Rollins, livewear. Even you introduced her as your mother. Outlaw.

[Sufi]

Yeah. So this in law doesn't seem right.

[Pashi]

Doesn't seem right for a while. She's an outlaw.

[Sufi]

Linda Rollins. And she came up there in her cowboy boots and only had bullet points. That's. I'm so impressed with her speech.

[Pashi]

Really.

[Sufi]

Yeah, it was. She showed it to me later, and it was so good. And it was so funny and touching and sweet and. Yeah. And it was just. It was like, just bullet points. And she was kind of off the cuff, but it was fantastic.

[Pashi]

She was in the pocket. It was really great.

[Sufi]

Yeah.

[Pashi]

And in general, you know, there's. It seemed like a slightly unfair Advantage for the people who spoke for you. A lot of them are in the business of show. But top to bottom, MacKenzie's friends and family all had really, really funny, really moving speeches and toasts throughout the whole weekend.

[Sufi]

Yeah.

[Pashi]

But, yeah, Linda Rollins, she was kind of. It was fun. Cause, like, you, it could have gone off the rails in a way that also would have been talked about for years. But I think the money on Linda landing the plane in such a beautiful way. You could have made some cash on FanDuel.

[Sufi]

Yeah. Yeah. But. So she was great, and you were great. You were. You were very nervous for that speech, which your son told me about. And then I was like, ash.

[Pashi]

Oh, yeah.

[Sufi]

And then I was like, he can't be nervous. Like, he's always doing this. And I saw you, and I was like, oh, yeah. No. Yeah, he is nervous.

[Pashi]

I was very nervous. I was very. It's. I get to do it. I knew I would only get to do it once.

[Sufi]

Yeah.

[Pashi]

And you had done such a great speech at my wedding, and so I knew how much time you'd put into it. And I. You know, Ash hates when I cry, and he made it to my toast, and I told him, like, I'm gonna cry. And I think it was. I actually am really glad he saw it, because it also, you know, it was. People laughed a lot, which I think makes them happy. And then when I got down, he, like, patted me on the back, and he said, it's okay. It's okay that you cried.

[Sufi]

Yeah.

[Pashi]

Also better be, I guess. Alexei said the first joke I told. Everybody laughed, and he laughed really loud. And then he turned to her and shrugged and just went, like, huh. I don't know why that was funny. And then I guess, like, five jokes in, he turned to Alexei and said, I'm just gonna laugh when other people laugh. Yeah, he's looking at.

[Sufi]

That's what laugh tracks were for. It was, like, just to make you feel okay.

[Pashi]

And maybe my favorite and obviously mom's favorite as well. My favorite line in your speech is that I think it's possible that Mackenzie loves you even more than I love you and exactly half as much as my mom loves you. Yeah, that was her favorite, for sure. She definitely likes. She likes jokes about how much she loves you.

[Sufi]

Yeah. Yeah. Especially when they're told with love, and there's no yeah, yeah. Nothing. Nothing mean about them. So it was great. And, yeah, we're just sort of easing back into life over here. Married man.

[Pashi]

We recorded an episode before we recorded this intro, and you mentioned you said to someone. My wife. And it's funny to hear you say it for the first time.

[Sufi]

Yeah. We were on the plane coming back, and we each wanted a Stella, and they only had one on the cart. And the flight attendant was like, I'm gonna have to get one in the back. And I was like, it's fine. We can share it. She's my wife. She's like, okay. I didn't know, but I feel like maybe that's the first time I said it out loud, but it feels. I said in my vows that it would feel very natural. It does feel very natural. And I took my ring off just when we were sitting around yesterday, sort of having a slow, lazy day. And it feels strange to not have my ring. So, yeah, it was just a switch got flipped, and now we married. And, yeah, it feels great. And. Yeah. Very happy.

[Pashi]

Yeah, it was so special. So happy for you both.

[Sufi]

Thank you. Yeah. We'll get some pictures in time.

[Pashi]

And. Oh, our friend Jill Benjamin was at the wedding. And I said to. I was talking to Addie, and I said, did you have fun? And she said, yeah. I go, did you like my friend Jill? And she said, no, she. My friend. I go, oh, she's your friend? And I said, is she funny? And she goes, she is funny. She is so loud. And I really liked.

[Sufi]

Yeah.

[Pashi]

Even.

[Sufi]

Yeah, it's one of her moves.

[Pashi]

One of her moves is so loud.

[Sufi]

Yeah.

[Pashi]

All right. Well, you did it, bud.

[Sufi]

Yeah.

[Pashi]

And now we're going to have a wonderful conversation with Judd Apatow. He's one of the best. And we mentioned at the end, but Jud is doing a couple of standup shows that we want to tell you about because they're both for great causes. He is doing Judd Apatow and Friends at the Variety Playhouse in Atlanta on Sunday, November 3rd. All proceeds are being donated to the American Red Cross to help flood victims in Georgia and the Beacon Theater in New York City as part of the New York Comedy Festival on Saturday, November 9th. And that is a fundraiser for people in North Carolina who were affected by the hurricane. He is a very funny person and obviously someone whose heart is in the right place. So do enjoy that conversation with him.

[Sufi]

Oh, and also, real quick. Yeah, we're going to try and do another listener episode. So there you go. If you guys have any stories, we want to hear your family holiday stories. These could be Thanksgiving, Christmas, Hanukkah, New Year's, et cetera. So go to speakpipe.com familytripspod that's speakpipe.com familytripsPod. Or if you'd like to submit your listener story as a video for your chance to be featured on our YouTube channel, you submit to familytripspod Gmail.com. so, yeah, get those in. And we look forward to talking. Talking holidays.

[Pashi]

This is, you know, when. Just a couple of married guys doing a podcast. Enjoy. Jeff Tweedy, everybody.

[Judd Apatow]

Family trips with the My Brothers. Family trips with the My Brothers.

[Alexi]

Hello.

[Sufi]

Oh, hello. Hey, buddy.

[Alexi]

What's happening? Good to be here.

[Pashi]

I'm you. Obviously, you came from a family. You're incredibly close with your current family.

[Alexi]

Yes.

[Pashi]

But you might be one of those people. And I knew this about you. It's one of the first things I knew about you. You knew you wanted to do comedy. Younger than I think most people knew they wanted to do comedy. Did that come from your parents at all?

[Alexi]

Well, my grandfather was a jazz producer, and later in life, he had his own label, and he produced the first Janis Joplin album.

[Pashi]

Wow.

[Alexi]

Big Brother in the Holding Company. Apparently, he went to Haight Ashbury in, I guess it was 66, and made all the bands audition for him somewhere. And I think he saw the Grateful Dead and all the different people that were surfacing then, and he signed Janis Joplin and Big Brother in the Holding Company and produced their first record. So that was like the big family lore. Bobby Shad. Bobby signed Janis Joplin in our Jewish family. Bobby found Janice, but then she did drugs and ruined it.

[Pashi]

Did he have the demeanor of somebody that you would expect of a jazz producer who signed Janis Joplin? Was he a big character?

[Alexi]

He was, yeah, he was a big character. You know, he was from the Bronx. He talked like, you know, he talked like, you know, almost like Bugs Bunny from the Bronx. Very opinionated. You know, he loved jazz and blues, hated most rock and roll. Jimi Hendrix ripped off all those riffs. You know, he would, like, listen to any Jimi Hendrix song and tell you who he stole the riff from.

[Pashi]

Oh, yeah.

[Sufi]

Hated the Blues Brothers. Fun guy.

[Pashi]

To have a party. Well, the Blues Brothers, even I knew the Blues Brothers were ripping everybody off.

[Alexi]

He was mad at the Blues Brothers. Very, very upset about it.

[Pashi]

That sounds very fun now, having a grandfather who would tell you what Jimi Hendrix was ripping off. But as a kid, was it a drag to have a grandfather who was telling you that cool music wasn't cool?

[Alexi]

I mean, it was both kind of cool and funny and also a little weird. Cause I loved the Blues Brothers so much and really did understand how anyone on earth could not love The Blues Brothers.

[Pashi]

I love the Blues Brothers. I loved the Blues. My dad, I remember him and my dad, you know, he loved snl, but even he kind of thought, you know, you could buy Sam and Dave albums and they would be a lot more fun.

[Alexi]

He just thought, all those people are broke and why is everyone pretending? But then, you know, the movie made people like all those people again. So a lot of those people, whatever, Johnny Lee Hooker, Aretha Franklin, like, it. It made everybody cool. So he was just totally wrong in every respect.

[Sufi]

What did you call that? Grandfather? Did he. What was he? Grandpa? Did he have a. I think we.

[Alexi]

Just called him Bobby.

[Pashi]

That's great.

[Alexi]

Bobby Shad. And he.

[Pashi]

Bobby Shad, Yeah.

[Alexi]

He was just a big, big, larger than life character because he was one of the first guys to produce, like Charlie Parker and Dizzy Gillespie, like early 50s, late 40s. But I think everyone talked about him as someone who was one of the creators of the music business, who didn't find a way to really get rich. He turned down a lot of stuff. He tried to sign Elvis Presley, but wasn't fast enough. He offered Elvis Presley a deal. It took him forever to get Mercury Records to approve the money to offer Elvis Presley the deal. And in that pause, which was based on the fact that they didn't know which division you would sign him under. Cause rock and roll was so new. Like, is this country? Is this blues? So there's this pause and then RCA gave him like 25 grand in a Cadillac. So there was all these, like, myths about him, by the way. They could all be bullshit. I mean, who knows?

[Pashi]

With that said, you must. Do you think about that every time you have a project going in business affairs. Takes like six to eight months to finish a deal. Do you just think about how Bobby Shad lost Elvis?

[Alexi]

How could this take so long? I found like an article about him and it was all him just saying how rock and roll wouldn't last.

[Pashi]

Great. Yeah. It's nice to both not make the money and be on record as saying rock and roll wouldn't last.

[Alexi]

Yeah, it's too shallow. It's too shallow.

[Pashi]

Bobby Shad is an A plus name. And I'm guessing Shad was not his last name.

[Alexi]

I think it was Shadrinsky.

[Pashi]

Shadrinsky, yeah. Good drop for music. It's a good drop.

[Alexi]

But he was friends, and my Grandma Molly, they were friends with Tony Fields. And so Tony Fields, for people who don't know, was like a Joan Rivers type comedian who also sang. And she would always be on the Mike Douglas show and Merv Griffin, and we would go see her at Westbury Music Fair, and she had diabetes at some point and had her leg amputated. And then she did this comeback tour in the 70s with one leg, and they'd drive her to the stage on a golf cart, and she would be hysterical about, you know, going to the gas station to get something out of the trunk and then seeing her extra leg. You know, she, like, was one of those people who could be really funny and very, you know, self deprecating. So I think as a kid, I saw Toadie and they talked about her like she was Beyonce. And she ultimately died because she was told not to get plastic surgery because it was dangerous because of her diabetes. And she refused to take the advice and died from a surgery for a facelift or something. But she was hysterical. Everyone in my family thought she was cool.

[Pashi]

So you did have. Your parents also liked the idea of going out, liked the idea of seeing comedy and laughing. That was a big part of your family?

[Alexi]

Yeah, we would go to West Bay Music Fair was the place. I remember seeing Dangerfield when I was a kid. I saw Don rickles there, Dom DeLuise doing magic.

[Sufi]

How far was that from your house?

[Alexi]

That venue, like, 20 minutes from the house. So that was the magic place. And then when I was in high school, when I could go without my parents, me and my friends Ron Garner and Kevin Waltman, we thought we were adults because, like, in 11th grade, we'd go see Cool and the Gang without our parents, or the Four Tops versus the Temptations. They would tour like they were in some sort of rap battle.

[Pashi]

We went to a Four Tops Temptations.

[Sufi]

Concert in an outdoor park in Manchester, New Hampshire, and it rained as hard as it's ever rained while we've been at a show. And, yeah, it was great.

[Pashi]

And the stage was a little wet and they were a little old. And you did get a little worried when they were getting.

[Alexi]

It's melting. Yeah.

[Pashi]

And just like with the mood, you know, when they're doing the Ain't Too Proud to Beg dance moves, you're like, they're going down.

[Alexi]

Yeah.

[Sufi]

Yeah.

[Alexi]

Well, there was always one or two that were replacement temptations.

[Pashi]

Oh, yeah. You never saw all four.

[Alexi]

They were like 70, and then two were like, 19.

[Sufi]

So you grew up on Long Island? Yeah.

[Alexi]

Yes.

[Sufi]

And two siblings.

[Alexi]

Two siblings? Yes. That's fun.

[Sufi]

And what were like, would you take. Would you take family vacations? Would you guys. What was the typical Apatow vacation?

[Alexi]

Our big vacation we would take was to Hilton Head, North Carolina. So we were on Long Island. We would drive 14 hours.

[Pashi]

Oh, my God.

[Alexi]

In the car and in one shot.

[Sufi]

Or would you stop over somewhere?

[Alexi]

I don't remember the stopover. I don't know if we did it like two runs of seven. We must have done the stopover. I don't remember the stopover. There is a chance that we just got up early and did it from like 7 in the morning till 9 at night with, like, no lunch break or just stopping at McDonald's. That feels more like what it would have been with the three of us in the backseat, no seatbelts, one of us laying on the floor. There was a whole thing of, you know, because no one wanted to be in the middle. It was too tight. So someone would just lay on the floor. And then we would listen to Steve Martin. We would listen to let's Get Small when it first came out, a lot of little riverbanks.

[Pashi]

So again, this has to be, you know, at that age, your parents are the gateway. So they're totally fine with having it on.

[Alexi]

Oh, no, they love comedy. My dad loved comedy. There was a lot of Bill Cosby. There was a lot of the chicken heart monster routine happening. I don't know if we listened to George Carlin in the car, but certainly the Steve Martin record was gigantic at that moment. And we would all laugh at it. But they also thought comedians were cool. Like, they would say, like, Lenny Bruce is the coolest guy in the world and they would have those albums.

[Pashi]

Our parents thought comedians were cool too. The other thing about which I'm very impressed with your parents being, you know, obviously a little bit older than ours. Steve Martin, like, that was. It wasn't anti comedy, but it was such a leap from anything that they had heard before.

[Alexi]

Yes, yes.

[Pashi]

And it's so fun to realize. And again, obviously, Steve was wildly successful, but it's so cool to me now when you listen to those albums and you realize, wow. So everybody just got on board with this guy who taught them a new way to enjoy comedy.

[Alexi]

Oh, yeah. That's why I love that Steve Martin documentary, because they had so much footage I hadn't seen before. And I just. I kind of knew it, but I didn't really understand that that voice that he was doing, like, how are you doing today? You know, that voice which we talked like that. I mean, I was born in 67, so when he hit big in late 70s, I mean, you know, I was 10. Talking like that for years, not really knowing what I was doing or where this voice came from. And in the movie, it was just so clear that it was just a magician's voice. He was just making fun of a magician going, you know, look at the ball, you know, and that it was just so that he had just. What if a guy talked like a magician all day long in making fun of comedy? Like, it's the most genius. Simple, simple thing. But we loved it. I mean, it just made us so happy. And I was probably into comedy before then. Like the Marx Brothers, right? And then Steve Martin just busted it into something else.

[Pashi]

That thing about when you adopt a voice. Talking to my mom recently because, you know, we grew up in right next door to Adam Sandler, and my mom was a schoolteacher. And I said, do you think. I can't tell if every kid from this area talks like Adam Sandler? Because that's how people from this area talk. Or Adam Sandler hit it big. And everybody realized vocally they were close enough to just start talking like Sandler.

[Alexi]

So how much older is Sandler than you guys?

[Pashi]

Probably about, I think, 10 years older than me.

[Alexi]

Yeah. So when he hit. You were in high school?

[Pashi]

Yeah.

[Alexi]

Yeah. So that must be crazy that, like, someone from your hometown became Happy Gilmore.

[Sufi]

There were a lot of red hooded sweatshirts that started showing up in high school because of Sandler.

[Alexi]

Because when I was living with Adam, after we both graduated college, we lived together. And when he would talk about New Hampshire and Manchester, he just talked a lot about being, like, the only Jewish kid or not many Jewish kids around. And he had all these jokes about it. You know, those. You know, they would throw pennies at me, you know, and then I saved all those pennies, and then I started my own business, and now they all work for me.

[Sufi]

You know.

[Alexi]

He did talk about Manchester as having some interesting rough kids there.

[Pashi]

It was a. Yeah. I think people maybe make the mistake of thinking about Robert Frost when they hear New Hampshire. And you should really focus on the Manchester of Manchester, New Hampshire, because it is a little bit grittier than I think people are led to believe.

[Alexi]

Like, he said they were kids. They would, like, drive up to people. Like kids in his high school. They would drive up to strangers and go, hey, can I get directions to the highway? And then they would, like, lean in, like, yeah, sure. And then they would punch them in the face.

[Pashi]

A Manchester Brute.

[Alexi]

Knuckleheads.

[Pashi]

A Manchester handshake is what it's known as.

[Alexi]

Is that what that's known as? So I'm not saying something you haven't heard of from Manchester.

[Sufi]

I Don't know if you remember, Seth. There was. There were always tales. There's this like. I don't know. I know there's a great diner on Kelly street in Manchester. And there was always talk of the Kelly street posse and it was like a gang, but I don't know that it really existed or if it was just a myth. And I'm sort of fascinated to. To do some. Get an audio history, go back and ask people, was that a thing or was that just something that was said?

[Pashi]

I had a. A weird thing, my weird Manchester thing that happened to reset. I was watching that. Is it Pennebaker who did the War Room, the documentary about the Clinton campaign?

[Alexi]

OR Was that R.J. cutler?

[Pashi]

Cutler. You're right.

[Alexi]

I'm a documentary nerd. Sorry.

[Pashi]

You are. I mean, you cover a lot of your nerdim covers a lot of work. And I was.

[Sufi]

I didn't even start trying to think of the answer. Judd. I was like, judd's gonna take this one.

[Alexi]

I couldn't believe it even came to me. I think someone just said it to me the other day.

[Pashi]

But, you know, the first scene is in Manchester, like just down the road from where I was in high school. And I was in high school during that campaign. And it was that funny thing of. I don't. In my head, everything looks the same as it looked in 1992. And then you see what cars were, and it might as well be old black and white footage of a trolley and horse drawn cars. You're like, oh my God, those were the cars when I was in high school. That is mind boggling.

[Alexi]

I had that the other day. I had to remaster the 40 year old virgin. So we redid the sound and the picture, which was wild because it looked so bad. It looked like a movie from 1974. It looked like a TV movie. I'm shocked. Like, Tim Conway would do a drama like movie of the week. It just looked so bad. And then suddenly it looked brand new and gorgeous. And they just fixed it all up. And seeing the phones and things, like, you know, that's 19 years ago and already the phones and the TVs and just everything about it, it just ages so quickly. And I think about that when I make movies, like, don't show the technology. It's gonna be weird soon, you know, like there's some old stuff with Stiller, I think, where he gets on like the cell phone, and it's literally just like a giant box with a big antenna on it. Were we really making things when that was the size of the cell phone.

[Pashi]

Yeah, it's nuts. And it does. I mean, that's the heartbreaking thing is, again, that feels like four years ago you made that movie. And of course it's 19 years ago.

[Alexi]

Yeah. No, and I also was like, wow, there are some jokes in here I am not sure I could do today.

[Sufi]

Oh, yeah, well, yeah, because I realized.

[Alexi]

I hadn't watched it in 19 years. Yeah, I hadn't watched it. And so I really got a view of it as like, a comedy fan because I had, I swear to God, forgotten 95% of the jokes. Like, I have a really bad memory. So as I'm watching it, I start just giggling as someone who is seeing the movie for the first time. But every once in a while there's a joke like, oh, what? Okay, yeah, yeah. I thought that was cool that day. That's changed a little bit.

[Pashi]

I'm aware that we are getting far afield of family trips, but I have one question before Josh is gonna ask us about Hilton Head, but you mentioned you haven't watched it again. Now, obviously, when you are editing a movie, you have to watch it so many times. Is that why you haven't watched it in 19 years? That you just. You reach the point where when it comes out, there's just nothing, no value. You can get out of it anymore without sort of time.

[Alexi]

You know, it's not like conscious. It's just like you don't notice it. You're like, oh, I haven't watched it. Next thing, like, if it's on tv, you might watch a few minutes. But there are certain ones I will watch. Like, I know that I have watched, but maybe not beginning to end. Like, I produced Stepbrothers. That was written. Written by McKay and Will Ferrell and directed by Adam. That's the one I will watch.

[Sufi]

Yeah.

[Alexi]

Like, if it's on. If I'm a half hour in, I will watch the next hour. Like, I find that one impossible to shut off.

[Sufi]

Yeah, perfect. We've got a friend who's got two sons in college and a daughter, but him and his two sons, they quote that movie nonstop to each other. The Bennetts. And it's like sometimes I don't. I feel like they're just trying to talk to me normally. And I don't get that they're quoting it. And I have to, like, sort of re rack my brain to be like.

[Pashi]

Oh, right, right, right.

[Sufi]

This is Stepbrothers thing.

[Alexi]

I always remember there was 180 page draft in pre production. It was a giant seaworld section.

[Pashi]

But it's so funny to hear there was 180 pages and it wasn't about like the French Revolution.

[Alexi]

I think they were just so amused writing it that they just, they just could write it forever, like once they figured out what that joke was. But there was like a 25 page SeaWorld section.

[Pashi]

Hey, we're going to take a quick break and hear from some of our sponsors. Support for family trips comes from Airbnb. Hey, Baji.

[Sufi]

Yes, Sufi.

[Pashi]

We got our Pittsburgh trip coming up.

[Sufi]

We do. I'm fired up. And one of the reasons I'm fired up is because once again we have booked an awesome Airbnb and we're just going to be hanging out in one of dad's old neighborhoods. Dad's old stomping grounds.

[Pashi]

Look, we used to stay at hotels. It was great. No complaints about it. But this is something special because we're a family. And I feel like last year at our Airbnb, it felt like the way we were family when we were growing up. We would all just meet downstairs, we would get some bagels from a local place down the street, brew some coffee, and we were just ready to face the day.

[Sufi]

Yeah. And if you, you know, if we're out and about and we get home, you might want to just throw on the TV and see if there's a game on or play some Scrabble, play a board game and just be in that shared space and be together. Be in a home away from home.

[Pashi]

And being in a living room with mom and dad is very special. Especially not their living room which is covered in dog dander and gives me an allergic reaction. Some trips are better in an Airbnb. When you're traveling with a group of friends, maybe you're traveling with large family or an extended family. When you're looking for an authentic or local experience, book your next awesome trip [e-mail] support comes from Blueland. Hey Pashi.

[Sufi]

Yes, Oofie?

[Pashi]

Did you know, Poshi? Did you know, uh huh. That an estimated 5 billion plastic hand soap and cleaning bottles are thrown away each year? And if that's not bad enough, most cleaning formulas are 90% water, which is heavy to ship, leading to excessive carbon emissions. Plus those products are often filled in nasty ingredients like chlorine and ammonia. I know you don't care for ammonia, Poshi.

[Sufi]

Nope.

[Pashi]

It's a lose lose situation for you and the planet.

[Sufi]

Yeah, actually I did know about the estimated 5 billion plastic hand soap and cleaning bottles that are thrown away each Year. And I find it to be a real bummer.

[Pashi]

Suf. Yep.

[Sufi]

But someone is taking this issue, attacking it head on.

[Pashi]

Is it Blueland?

[Sufi]

Those are the good folks over at Blueland. They're on a mission to eliminate single use plastic by reinventing cleaning essentials to be better for you and the planet with the same powerful clean you're used to.

[Pashi]

We just got our boxes of Blueland and we were talking before the podcast. Yeah, exactly. I didn't expect the beauty.

[Sufi]

I mean, I feel like our house just got nicer in terms of how our cleaning products are displayed and will be used. And then our house got a lot more environmentally responsible at the same time.

[Pashi]

What you do is you fill your reusable bottles with water. You drop in the tablets, you wait for them to dissolve. You'll never have to grab bulky cleaning supplies on your grocery run. Refills started just $2.25. You can set up a subscription or buy in bulk for additional savings. Blueland is trusted in over 1 million homes, including mine. What about you, Pashin?

[Sufi]

Yours definitely in mine.

[Pashi]

Blueland has a special offer for listeners right now. Get 15% off your first order by going to blueland.com trips. You won't want to miss this. Blueland.com trips for 15% off. That's blueland.com trips to get 15% off.

[Judd Apatow]

Here we go.

[Pashi]

When you guys. So when the Apatows would make their way to Hilton Head, what was that vacation like?

[Alexi]

I was trying to remember vacations because I just have a really shoddy memory. So I was like, can I even remember anything to tell these guys? And then suddenly, like, things started coming back. And the. The main memory I have is once we saw the actor Robert Conrad, the star of Baba Black Sheep, and what was the other big show he was on? But he was in all these commercials, like, I dare you to knock this battery off my shoulder. And at the time, he was one of those guys who would be on. They have this celebrity. What was it? The competition between the stars.

[Pashi]

Yeah, Battle of the network stars.

[Alexi]

Battle of the network stars. He was the guy who treated it really seriously and was just a fucking asshole to everybody on TV.

[Pashi]

In my head, he's like, kind of what DiCaprio was in once Upon a Time in Hollywood. Is that kind of a. That's a rapper con.

[Sufi]

Yeah.

[Alexi]

Yeah. And he was riding a bike, and me and my brother saw him. And I was just an autograph freak. I wanted autographs. I'd write letters to every star in the world with these, like, books of where to send the letters. And I'd get Paul Lynn's letter back in the mail or like a photo or something. And we chased him for miles, like, miles across this island.

[Sufi]

Were you also on bikes?

[Pashi]

Were you?

[Sufi]

Yeah, we were on bikes, yeah.

[Alexi]

And he was fast, and we were, like, chasing him. Then he got on the beach, and he was walking on the beach and setting up his stuff on the beach. Then we ran up to him, just sweating. And he just turned to us, he goes, why didn't you just ask me five miles ago? Like, he didn't understand what we were doing. Like, are they following me or not following me? But the worst thing that happened in Hilton Head one year, we were all excited to go. I was a little older. Like it was seventh grade. And I'm with my new friends. Like, I was kind of friends with these. I was friends with these two guys who were my best friends. And then one of their brothers was a big pothead, deadhead. And he would travel and follow the Grateful Dead. And then one day, one of my friends was like, let's try his pot. And this is in sixth grade. And it really scared the shit out of me. We went and tried to smoke it, like, where they were, like, building these condos. And the security guard shined a light on us and we ran for, like two miles. I'm sure the guy did not move. Like, he didn't chase us, but we just thought we were going to go to Alcatraz for it. And as a result, I kind of switched friend groups because I, all summer long and summer camp, thought, when I get back, they're gonna wanna be drug addicts, right? Like, I was just like a weird, nerdy kid, terrified. So I switched to these other friends who they became the potheads. Like the freaks from Freaks and Geeks. I had accidentally switched to the wrong group and then my friends didn't. But so one day I'm with these new friends and we're maybe talking to somebody. Girls in the neighborhood in seventh grade. And to be funny, I jammed poison ivy up my nose. I don't know what I was thinking. So then, like a couple of days later, I'm covered, like forehead to neck in poison ivy. So I'm putting all this medicine on it for poison ivy. But what I don't know is now I also have chickenpox.

[Sufi]

Oh, my God.

[Alexi]

So my face is covered with chickenpox. And the poison ivy medicine is not what you're supposed to put on chickenpox. Now the chickenpox become like these Giant nuclear chicken pox. They're enormous. I still have scars from it. Right? Wow. But in the middle of that, we're supposed to go on vacation and I'm this monster. When we left on vacation, I think we thought it was still poison ivy. And on vacation, we realized I had chickenpox.

[Pashi]

I mean, it was quite a smokescreen, you gotta say, to have chickenpox.

[Alexi]

It was like the movie mask. It was. It was very bad. And so now I'm alone in the condo for two weeks. It's like a two week vacation. And so I just started watching General Hospital.

[Pashi]

I do want to just track back to say it's incredibly impressive how good it turned out you were at comedy, considering you thought it was funny to put poison ivy in your nose, which isn't even like funny. Doesn't look funny. It just looks like putting a leaf in your nose.

[Alexi]

No.

[Sufi]

Any other leaf would have done the same with same effect, I think.

[Alexi]

I think I also added a joke at some point in elementary school where I would shove as many tiny pebbles as I could up my nostrils and I would put my arm out and play a slot machine. So you would pull my arm down, I'd open my nostrils and all the stones would fall out. No, I wasn't.

[Pashi]

By the way, I like that one. I would have liked to have seen that.

[Alexi]

I was without wit. I mean, I generally still am, but I was really a person who liked comedy who was not funny. I remember working for the Critic. You know, the Critic was an offshoot of Mike Reese and Al Jean created it. John Levitz star, John Lovitz as a movie critic. And it was one of my first jobs. And the entire staff went to Harvard and they would sit and debate Fermat's theorem, and they would literally talk about math equations that hadn't been solved. And I would make dirty, stupid jokes. I always just remember one of them going, oh, Judd, you've outwitted us again.

[Pashi]

Were your parents, based on the fact that they respected and liked comedy, were they excited when this became your path?

[Alexi]

Yeah, I think that when I decided to try to do it, they helped. I mean, my mom took a job after my parents got divorced as a hostess at a comedy club. They owned a restaurant and the bartender was this guy, Rick Messina. And then he went and opened some comedy clubs. He later went on to manage a lot of people, like Tim Allen and became this gigantic manager. And he's a great guy, but he opened this comedy club and my mom, who was broke, took a job seeding people at the comedy club when I was in high school, and I always thought she did it for me. She never said that. But why would you take that job, you know, in that moment? So, like, looking back, I'm like, oh, that was the portal to see comedy. And Jay Leno was there that summer, and all these people like Paul Provenza were at the club. And then I started interviewing comedians for my high school radio station. And then I got a job as a dishwasher at a comedy club. I just kind of wanted to get to get near it. And my parents, you know, they would drive me to Huntington for my dishwashing shift, and then I'd have to get a ride home or take a cab home. A lot of times the cab costs as much as I was paid to be a dishwasher, and I would make no money, but I would get to talk to Jackie Martling for five minutes at the bar, and that was reason enough to have the job.

[Sufi]

And you're helping the economy because you pay for that cab ride. And it's just money going back into the system. It's good. Yeah. It's good for everybody.

[Alexi]

It helped Long Island.

[Pashi]

Al, what was your family's restaurant?

[Alexi]

It was called Raisins Restaurant, and they had it for starting, like, at the end of elementary school. Then we all became dishwashers there, and we would make, like, $4 an hour. And during junior high, we were working massive amounts. It would take so many hours to make $100. But we really wanted money. All our parents were getting divorced around the same time. There was no allowance anymore. All our parents were broke. And so the idea that we could have money in our pocket really excited us. So all my friends got jobs there cooking hamburgers and making salads and stuff. And then we would have money, and then we would go eat at Beefsteak Charlie's and be really excited. Like, we were adults. Like, oh, man, we got money. Let's go to Beefsteak Charlie's.

[Pashi]

So you wouldn't eat at your family restaurant. You would take.

[Alexi]

You eat a little bit. There was a lot of theft. You know, like, it would be the end of your shift, and you would, like, quietly steal a live lobster. I'd go home.

[Pashi]

It was a lot of, like, was it a popular restaurant?

[Alexi]

It did okay for a while. The big thing was once Billy Joel went. That was the big thing. That Billy Joel was there once. He did not return. But it was like, a fun era of work. And then I left to be a dishwasher at a comedy club. And I wanted to watch comedians, but I never did the math that if you're the dishwasher, you're not in the room with the show.

[Pashi]

Yeah.

[Alexi]

Right.

[Pashi]

It's probably maybe even the loudest room to be in.

[Alexi]

Exactly. Yeah. And so I couldn't see the show. And then I said I'd be a busboy, and then I switched to be a busboy so I could watch the show.

[Pashi]

It's funny. I would think if you have a restaurant and your kids are dishwashers, you feel like you're teaching them the value of hard work, and they'll use that when they go on to their next job. And they. They probably don't think that their next job will be just dishwashing somewhere else.

[Alexi]

Exactly. It was a funny time, too, because at the comedy clubs, this is like 83 or something. Everyone was on cocaine. Sure. So I'm like a child. I'm like 15. And I don't understand this energy everybody has.

[Sufi]

Right.

[Alexi]

There's a lot happening, which I don't understand. At the club.

[Sufi]

Yeah.

[Pashi]

Right. But you probably just write it off as you are a kid, and this is how adults act. It must have taken years to realize what was going on.

[Alexi]

Oh, it was so exciting. I mean, but you did feel like this is an adult world I'd like to get into somehow. Not the cocaine part, but like, oh, there's, you know. I remember Rosie O'Donnell. It was her first night. They let her perform on the weekend, and the whole club was buzzing. Cause they were allowing this young comedienne to go on on a Friday.

[Sufi]

Yeah.

[Pashi]

That's amazing. And did she crush.

[Alexi]

She was really, really. I mean, people were hilarious back then. Bob Nelson was like the star of the club. And he would do this bit where he would turn on a radio. He'd have a radio on stage, and he would just switch the channels on the radio. And for every kind of music, he could improvise or do, like, a scene. So if it was dentist music, he would suddenly be at the dentist. If it was heavy metal music, he was kind of this stoned rocker. And it was amazing. Bob Nelson was that guy who used to dress up like a football player, and he would circle the mic and do all the names of the college football players.

[Pashi]

I remember. I think it was. Was it in one of those Rodney Dangerfield HBO specials? I feel like. Yes.

[Alexi]

One of the stars of Brain Donors.

[Pashi]

Wow.

[Alexi]

This is a deep cut for the comedy fans. But he was amazingly funny when you were.

[Pashi]

When you sort of your life went out to Los Angeles. And you started meeting with some success. Did your parents ever come visit? Was that a thing that they would.

[Alexi]

Well, I would go visit my grandmother. My grandparents lived in Beverly Hills. So I remember taking a vacation with my grandma Molly. Without my parents.

[Pashi]

And without your siblings too. Just the two of you?

[Alexi]

I was with. Yeah, with my siblings. I always remember one vacation because we went to see a taping of Taxi.

[Pashi]

Wow.

[Alexi]

And it was a two parter. And I think we were there till like one in the morning. I got Danny DeVito's autograph. And then we went to see a television pilot. Bert Convey, the host of Tattletales. I guess my grandfather recorded him at some point. And he had a pilot for a talk show, like a daytime talk show. And his guest was Alan Alda. And this is like in 78 or something. So that was very exciting. And then the second guest was someone that I had never seen before, Richard Simmons. Like an early beginning of Richard Simmons career. Getting the crowd up and making them exercise. The show was not picked up, but that was really exciting. And then we went to Hollywood Squares and I was here.

[Pashi]

So this entire vacation, it seems like, was just going to see shows taped.

[Alexi]

Yeah. And Disneyland.

[Pashi]

And was it the dream? Is this what you wanted to do? You wanted to go see?

[Alexi]

Yeah, I was just like, oh my God, Florence Henderson is eight feet from me. I mean, I remember who was on the Hollywood Square. It's because it was like Pearl Bailey, Joad Rivers, Vincent Price, George Goble. And then Chara was there and she walked over and I don't know why, and said hello. And then like made me stand up and do the coochie coochie with her. And that's gonna be memorable. If that's not gonna make you wanna get in show business to get back to Charo.

[Pashi]

Yeah, you're still chasing that coochie coochie high.

[Alexi]

I remember I interviewed Michael O'Donoghue, the first head writer of Saturday Night Live, when I was a kid in high school. And he said to me, he goes, you know, at some point in your life you have to realize you have the same job as Charo. You are no better than her. You are doing the same exact thing.

[Pashi]

Very nice. I mean, it seems like it's interesting. Cause you want it to be a compliment, like to be like, don't judge Chara. You have the same job as her. But it did seem maybe a little snarkier than that. Like, it's all awful.

[Alexi]

Speaking of which, what did you guys make of the Saturday night Live movie.

[Pashi]

I have not seen it yet, Jud. Yes, I am. I wonder if it will. I do think it had to be made by somebody who didn't work there.

[Alexi]

Yes.

[Pashi]

So. And, you know, and Jason seems like a good person to bake it, but I still feel like I'll feel weird watching it.

[Alexi]

I know. I guess when you're, like, really inside it, you notice everything that doesn't feel accurate to you. It's kind of fantastical. And I certainly went in as someone who is of a generation that remembers, like, the first year of it, even though I was like, 8, but yet we would try to stay up at 8, 9, 10. And like, we couldn't even. Like, it was almost impossible to stay up, but. And so when you watch it, you know, at first you're like, okay, how is he trying to manage this? And then at some point you realize, oh, he's kind of come up with this very imaginative way to combine a lot of the lore. And you're not sure for a moment, just as a super fan, what you make of it. And then it just wins you over. And then at the end, I'm sobbing. I'm fully sobbing because you remember, oh, this is my whole life. Like, this is what made me want to do this. And the nostalgia. I was talking to a friend, Paul Sims, about this. He had the same experience. He said, you just remember that as a comedy writer, half your life is in rooms with 10 other comedy writers. How many hours you have reviewed how Saturday Night Live was that week.

[Pashi]

Right, right.

[Alexi]

Like 10,000 hours of your life is just talking about it, talking about your friends who work there, how they're doing, how everyone's feeling, how the show is, and everything about what you do was driven by your interest in it.

[Pashi]

Wit was such a huge part of our upbringing as well. And it was a thing that we shared with our parents because we would watch it and tape it, and then what we liked the most, we would show our parents in the morning. So I feel like our parents experience of the late 80s, early 90s is that all the sketches were bangers.

[Alexi]

Yeah.

[Pashi]

Cause we would just show them like 20 on Sunday morning. We would show them sort of like 20 minutes. And I think the great. I remember the greatest thing was that our parents used to make us watch the McLaughlin Group.

[Alexi]

Yeah.

[Pashi]

So, you know, we watched this current affairs show. And then when it was an SNL.

[Alexi]

Sketch, a great one, too.

[Pashi]

A great one that I felt like it was, you know, the combination of these two worlds. And I just couldn't Wait for my parents to wake up so I could show them the McLachlan group.

[Sufi]

It's also amazing. It's amazing that the McLaughlin group was zeitgeisty enough for SNL to be able to be like, yeah, everyone knows the McLaughlin Group. Yeah. But it was.

[Alexi]

The monochrome impression was so good, it didn't matter.

[Pashi]

It almost didn't matter.

[Alexi]

It was such a funny character. And I love that Dana Carvey is doing Biden on the show because I had heard him do it. I think I saw him do it on stage once and maybe he was doing it on his podcast. And I thought, look at Carvey just quietly while everyone's struggling to figure this out, he has come up with the most hysterical impression. And now that he's murdering on the show, it always reminds me that there's a very big argument that he's the funniest cast member of all time. Like, if you really line them all up. For killing.

[Pashi]

Yeah, for just killing. And also his ability. It's so fun to watch somebody come back on the show and not get heyday laughs.

[Alexi]

Yeah.

[Pashi]

To genuinely come back with a brand new impression. Not of somebody, not of like a John McLaughlin that nobody knew you could even try to do one, but like, hey, the most powerful man in the world that, yeah, like you said, nobody had cracked it. And then you watch him do it and it's the way that everybody's, you know, the first George Bush, everybody was just doing Dana. And this is. You're just like, oh, you can't do Biden now without doing Dana.

[Alexi]

Yeah, yeah. It's like he created like, the James Cagney impression.

[Pashi]

Yeah, exactly.

[Alexi]

Everybody does.

[Pashi]

With you and your girls, did you. Were you a big family trip when they were younger? Did you take them around the world? We.

[Alexi]

You know, it's funny because I was a kid, we never even considered going anywhere interesting. Like Europe. It was never even discussed. I don't think I knew anyone my entire childhood who had gone to Europe. I don't know why. It wasn't like there weren't people who could afford it. But I have no memory of anyone being like, we went to England, our.

[Pashi]

Parents went to Europe, but they certainly never brought us.

[Sufi]

No.

[Alexi]

Oh, they didn't.

[Sufi]

They, like, we saw pictures of them in, like, Paris, but I didn't. I was in college before I got a passport.

[Alexi]

They weren't gonna waste it on you.

[Pashi]

No. 100%.

[Alexi]

See, that's the mistake that we made.

[Sufi]

We wasted it on your daughter.

[Alexi]

We had one trip. We went to Italy. We were very excited about this trip to Italy, a two week trip to Italy. But the kids were young. I'm trying to remember exactly how young, but maybe like 7 and 12 or 6 and 11. It was like 100 degrees. It was so hot in August. And the second we got there, we realized there was nothing to do except go to museums and Italian restaurants. And my kids right away let us know, we are not going to museums. We hate museums. And we would try to drag them, like Statue of David. And. And they were just like, is there a Pinkberry around here? They're just like looking for anything. Like American. Pinkberry was a big one. And like, we didn't go to Italy, Justin. Go to Pinkberry. We have that right near the house, you know, and I'm like turning into the worst father of all time because clearly this isn't sinking out. And then we go to the Vatican, right? And it's, you know, it's a real pain to get this figured out. And we've got the guide and, you know, the guide is just mean to us. You know, the Italian guide just really does not seem to like us. And my kids hate the Vatican so much. They're just bored. It's just like. It's just, you know, you don't realize that it's mainly just like paintings and sculptures and it's so hot and it's so crowded. And I didn't know what to do because I was getting so upset that the vacation wasn't working well. And we all start arguing all the time. And I start just taking photographs of my kids looking miserable in front of beautiful objects.

[Sufi]

It's a good activity.

[Alexi]

And I would just try to frame them just like, like in front of the prettiest. Like, you know, Leonardo da Vinci painting. It was just a. And that made me feel better that at least I had a purpose.

[Pashi]

Did they when they were young? I mean, there's a little bit of an age gap with your daughters, right?

[Alexi]

Yeah, five years.

[Pashi]

So do they bring out. Do they. When they travel, do they travel as a team or do they bring out the worst in each other?

[Alexi]

Oh, the worst, yeah. Yeah. No, because that's. I think five years is a lot.

[Pashi]

It is a lot.

[Sufi]

Yeah.

[Alexi]

Because you're not in that age of where you can do the same things. And so it was just a lot of different, different spaces for them emotionally, but they found a way to individually hate the vacation at the same time. But it's funny because both of my kids moved out and so we're empty nesters and then the rest of your adult life is trying to figure out how to get them to want to hang out with you. Right. Cause it's always like, would my kids ever willingly want to be near me? Now it's their call, basically, how much time we spend together. Do we have a breakfast?

[Pashi]

Would they go on a vacation nearby? How far away? Like, if you had to drive to where your kids are, how long would it take you?

[Alexi]

Well, now, I mean, they've been kind of working, and so it's. I don't even know where they live right now. I think they're, like, kind of both working kind of between living arrangements, and we're trying to, like, lure them back with a high thread count. You don't need an apartment right now. You could just be here and save some money. And then you do realize, like, am I pleasant to be around? Right. Like, clearly you don't want me as part of your friend group.

[Pashi]

Yeah.

[Alexi]

And then. So under what circumstances can I get you to hang out? You know, so every once in a while, we'll try to, like, plan, like, a very. Like, a nice vacation mainly to get them to hang out with us and try to figure out a place they want to go.

[Pashi]

Right.

[Sufi]

Did you ever rectify that Italy trip at 6 and 11 and go somewhere with them more in mind with what their interests were, that maybe. Maybe you and Lizzie.

[Alexi]

Did we ever make it? Right? I think we did. We went to Japan.

[Sufi]

Oh, that's cool.

[Alexi]

And they love Japan, and that was really, really fun. Other than.

[Pashi]

What did Japan have that Italy didn't for someone who's considering taking kids?

[Alexi]

Well, noodles. I think it's really about the noodles. You know, like, a kid doesn't need anything except noodles and arom air conditioning.

[Sufi]

Right.

[Alexi]

So that was fun. There's a lot of food. Right. It's just like, you know, you go. Although we went and had sushi at some place, like some fancy sushi place where they would put live sushi on the grill. Like, we watched the. They would. We watched the shrimp die. They put, like, shrimp on the. And our kids were, like, freaked out like, that. They thought that that was cool. Like, hey, you could eat it immediately after its death. Like, that would be a better taste.

[Sufi]

You could taste a little life less at that time.

[Alexi]

Once we went on a fishing trip, and we never go fishing, and we're not really fishing. We're just watching the people on the boat fish, and suddenly they catch some big fish. And our kids are like, whee. They caught a fish. And then Some other guy just pulls out a bat and starts beating the fish to death. And there's blood everywhere. And our kids are screaming and crying. They witness this murder and suddenly they're traumatized by it. But Japan, Yeah, there's tons of stuff to look at in Japan and it wasn't hot and the culture's really interesting. That's a great vacation if you can get there, right? It's really, really, really fun.

[Sufi]

And so were you doing more like outdoor temple sort of things as opposed to museums if they weren't into museums?

[Alexi]

Yeah, I mean, you know, there was a thing we did where they. It was like a class where they taught you to play these gigantic drums, like some sort of like Japanese drum, you know, it was a little more active kind of a vacation. But yeah, there's definitely like, Here's a 90 foot Buddha. I always remember there was a guy giving a tour. He was a Buddhist monk. And I brought my kids over and I was like, can you explain what Buddhism is to them? And he said, you know, when you're a kid, you're friends with everybody and sometimes when you become an adult, you forget. And I thought that was sweet.

[Pashi]

That's a good thing. Yeah. A good lesson for your kids too. Did your kids, I say this as someone who's not sure of this answer about my kids and me. Did they think you were funny? Like, when you were a dad? Were you entertaining to them?

[Alexi]

I felt like I was not getting enough comedic respect.

[Pashi]

Yeah. Okay, good.

[Alexi]

In the house.

[Pashi]

I think that might be where I'm landing too.

[Alexi]

I'm not sure. Like, I thought, you know, come on. I produce super bad. I wouldn't get any, like, from the friends. There was no energy of like, he does something that we find interesting or fun. And like, once I got very excited because I said, what did you guys do last night? And they were like, we watched Anchorman. And I'm like, how was it? It was good. That's as much as I ever got out of respect from them, I think. Yeah, I may have done some things bad as a parent. I remember there would always be nights where they would be really loud till 4 in the morning. And I did become the dad, going, like, when are you guys gonna go to sleep? I mean, there is a limit. There is a limit. I certainly had some meltdown dad moments where they're like, your dad's weird.

[Pashi]

Oh, yeah, I've got that for sure.

[Sufi]

Would you ever, like, you would strike me as the kind of dad who would. If there's like a Sleepover party that you might try to master at ceremonies, like what the movie's gonna be or dinner. Did you ever feel like you were sort of on stage trying to perform?

[Alexi]

Well, they always loved Leslie, and she knew how to manage all of that. And I just always felt like, as the only man in the house, like, I'm just, like, this weird dude wandering around, and I didn't want to be. I didn't want to be. I couldn't figure out how to code. I guess that's like a dad thing. I used to do this joke on stage about. Every dad joke is the same. There's a group of children, and they're all, whatever, 10 years old, a bunch of girls, and you just walk in and you go, so, what are we doing tonight? Just the idea that they would even consider letting you in their space to hang out with you is a comic conceit.

[Pashi]

I also imagine. I mean, you're also up against. You know, you're married to Leslie, who's an incredible comic actor. It's very funny. I imagine she probably was crushing.

[Alexi]

Yes. They always adore her, and she's part of it.

[Pashi]

At least she's in show business. My wife's a lawyer, and she's crushing with my kids. Yeah, well, nothing for me.

[Alexi]

Is she talking about torts with them or.

[Pashi]

They love torts. Yeah, she does. I mean, she's found a way to make it funny. I don't quite know how to explain it.

[Alexi]

What are they connecting over? I think. Cause you're never gonna talk to your dad about, like, we like boys or, you know, there's nothing that isn't uncomfortable to talk about with your dad, but I certainly took my best shots.

[Pashi]

It has been a delight to talk to you. We really appreciate it. Oh, you're going on tour and you're gonna be at the Beacon.

[Alexi]

I'm doing the Beacon Theater on November 9th.

[Pashi]

Have you done Stand up at the Beacon?

[Alexi]

I have. I did it once with Amy Schumer. We did a Trainwreck tour with Dave Ettel and Mike Birbiglia, and it was great.

[Pashi]

Best place in the world to do standup. Don't you think it might be one of the great standup theaters?

[Alexi]

Yeah, it was amazing. So Mike Birbiglia is gonna be there with me and Ricky Velez and some special guests, which are really exciting. And that's part of the New York Comedy Festival. You can get [e-mail] and it's a benefit for North Carolina, for the hurricane, and then on November 3rd, I'm in Atlanta, the Variety Playhouse. And that's a benefit for Georgia for the Hurricane. And Jeff Foxworthy is gonna be on that show.

[Sufi]

Oh, wow.

[Alexi]

And that you can get [e-mail] events. And that's my two city tour.

[Pashi]

Two cities, but two good causes. Two good causes.

[Alexi]

That's the year. But yeah, those will be fun.

[Pashi]

Before we let you go, Josh is going to ask you the questions we ask all of our guests here.

[Alexi]

Okay.

[Sufi]

You can only pick one of these. Is your ideal vacation relaxing, adventurous, or educational?

[Alexi]

Relaxing. I'm lazy.

[Pashi]

Okay. Yeah, that's good.

[Sufi]

I'm lazy. What's your favorite means of transportation? Train, Plane, Automobile? Boat.

[Alexi]

Bike?

[Sufi]

Walking. Something else.

[Alexi]

Oh, horse.

[Sufi]

Horse. You strike me.

[Alexi]

I don't do it often, but I think horse is more exciting than the rest of that.

[Sufi]

It's definitely exciting. My wife is an equestrian and I've only been on a horse with her once. But yeah. If you could take a vacation with any family, alive or dead, real or fictional, other than your own family, what family would you like to take a family vacation with?

[Alexi]

Oh, that's a really good question. What family? Maybe like the. I just realized that it probably isn't a good vacation. But like, in my head I was like, maybe like the young, like Murrays, like the Brian Doyle, John Bill Murray family. Like when they were all like teenagers.

[Sufi]

Probably be pretty fun.

[Alexi]

I was gonna say Belushi, but I feel like they were diner owners and they were not gonna make it that fun.

[Pashi]

You'd be dishwashing for sure. Yeah, the baluchi, maybe.

[Alexi]

That's what I want, is to get back there.

[Pashi]

That's what you do. You really wanna get back there to your roots.

[Sufi]

If you had to be stranded on a desert island with one member of your family, who would it be?

[Alexi]

Oh, geez. How do you answer that without. I'll pick someone dead. My grandfather Bobby, he died when I was in high school. Right when I thought I could begin to understand what he did as this kind of cool guy. So I'll say the ghost of Bobby Shack.

[Sufi]

And then you are from Syosset. Am I pronouncing that right? Syosset, Long Island. Would you recommend Syosset as a vacation destination?

[Alexi]

I would say. I can't say you would vacation there, but there's the Crest Hollow Country Club there. There's a lot of weddings and bar mitzvahs happening there. So I think. You know what? Don't vacation there. But I think it could be a home to an important family. Event.

[Pashi]

That's a great answer.

[Sufi]

Lovely. And then Seth has our final questions here.

[Pashi]

Jud, have you been to the Grand Canyon?

[Alexi]

No.

[Pashi]

Do you want to go?

[Alexi]

No.

[Pashi]

Great. I thank you very much for your time. It's been lovely having you on family trips. Do check out Jud. Sunday, November 3rd in Atlanta. Saturday, November 9th in New York City. Both for great causes, both certain to be very funny shows. Great seeing you, buddy.

[Alexi]

Yeah, great to see you.

[Sufi]

Thanks, Jud.

[Alexi]

All right. Bye.

[Pashi]

Bye, Judy.

[Sufi]

By.

[Judd Apatow]

Grandad was a jazz producer called him Bobby Shad Judd would hang with him and toady fields signed talent that was super good long before super bad had Elvis. But he couldn't close the deep. One year on vacation down in Hilton Head saw Robert Conrad Bikin down the road.

[Alexi]

Whoa.

[Judd Apatow]

Judd and his brother chased him down to a beach just outside of town. Robert said, you could have asked five miles ago. Judd's first going comedy. It was enough to scratch, although scratching was exactly what it guaranteed. Not only did he have chicken pox, which are super bad to catch, he added some insult to injury. He. He stuffed his nose full of poison.

[Alexi]

I.

[Judd Apatow]

No, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no. What you doing, Jud? Don't stuff your nose with poison iv no, no, no, no, no. It's not worth it, Jud. Don't stuff your nose with poison iv no, no, no. Don't you go stuffing it up your nose. Why don't you know what everybody?

[Pashi]

Nose.

[Judd Apatow]

Don't t your nose with the poison iv yeah. No, no, no, no, no, no, no, no. Don't you know this is a shockingly terrible way to go? Stuff in your nose with the poison. I mean, you can stop it with pebbles. You know what I mean? Do that thing where you're the slap machine, but don't stiff your nose with the poison.

[Alexi]

Sa.