← On with Kara Swisher
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- [00:00]
Judd Apatow
I would just like to say it really clearly. I'm more mature than Scott Galloway. I don't know how much more mature.
- [00:06]
Kara Swisher
Low bar.
- [00:07]
Judd Apatow
So this next phase of my career I call 15% healthier than Scott.
- [00:23]
Podcast Narrator/Host Intro
Hi everyone from New York Magazine and the Vox Media Podcast Network.
- [00:26]
Kara Swisher
This is on with Kara Swisher and I'm Kara Swisher.
- [00:29]
Podcast Narrator/Host Intro
Today I'm speaking with comedian, writer, director and producer producer Judd Apatow. He's been one of the most prolific filmmakers in Hollywood and comedy over the last few decades. His hits include films like the 40.
- [00:40]
Kara Swisher
Year old virgin, Anchorman, Knocked Up, Bridesmaids and Train Wreck.
- [00:44]
Podcast Narrator/Host Intro
He pioneered the genre of raunchy, awkward.
- [00:46]
Kara Swisher
R rated films about growing up that drew big crowds to the theaters in the mid and late 2000s. Apatow has a new visual memoir about his decades in the business called Comedy Nerd. He writes about how as a kid he developed an obsession with comedy and started collecting autographs and memorabilia from some.
- [01:02]
Podcast Narrator/Host Intro
Of the comedians he idol. As he got older, he kept up the habit. So the book is really a behind the scenes peek into the making of his movies and TV shows.
- [01:11]
Kara Swisher
In the last few years, Apatow has also turned to documentary filmmaking.
- [01:16]
Podcast Narrator/Host Intro
His subjects are some of the comedy.
- [01:17]
Kara Swisher
Greats of the modern era.
- [01:19]
Podcast Narrator/Host Intro
He won Primetime Emmys for his films.
- [01:21]
Kara Swisher
On George Carlin and his former mentor Garry Shandling, and his upcoming documentary about Mel Brooks is set to be released next year.
- [01:29]
Podcast Narrator/Host Intro
All right, let's get to my conversation with Judd Apatow.
- [01:31]
Kara Swisher
Our expert question comes from comedian Jane.
- [01:34]
Podcast Narrator/Host Intro
Lynch, who has appeared in a few of Apatow's films, including the 40 year old virgin. This is a fun one, so stick around. Support for this show comes from Smartsheet. Your team is innovative. Your team is ready to achieve the impossible. Innovative teams use Smartsheet to defy expectations, spur growth, and make the impossible possible. Smartsheet is the work management platform that allows teams to automate workflows and seamlessly adapt as their work evolves. Whether you're managing projects or scaling operations, Smartsheet gives you the tools to cut through chaos and reach your team's full potential. With Smartsheet, the extraordinary is just another day at work. Smartsheet Work with Flow See how Smartsheet can transform the way you work@smartsheet.com that's smartsheet.com support for this show comes from the Economists Sometimes knowing how the news gets reported is as important as knowing the news itself. Insider is a brand new video offering from the Economist that lets you feel like a fly on the wall of their editorial meetings. With Insider, you can get direct access to the internal debates that shape how the Economist makes sense of an increasingly complex and turbulent world. Hear trusted voices debate the biggest global issues with Insider. Free at launch for all subscribers to the Economist. Learn more@examiner.com Insider.
- [03:03]
Kara Swisher
Support for the show comes from Crucible Moments, a podcast from Sequoia Capital. Every exceptional company story is defined by those high stake moments that risk the business but can lead to greatness. That's what Crucible Moments is all about. Hosted by Sequoia Capital's managing partner, Roelof Botha, Crucible Moments is returning for a brand new season and they're kicking things off with episodes on Zipline and Bolt, two companies with surprising paths to success. Crucible Moments is out now and available everywhere. You get your podcasts and@CrucibleMoments.com, listen to Crucible Moments today. It is on Judd, thanks for coming.
- [03:41]
Judd Apatow
On on Happy to be here.
- [03:43]
Kara Swisher
Let me ask you a question. Is it a funny time we're in right now?
- [03:46]
Judd Apatow
Is it funny?
- [03:48]
Kara Swisher
Yeah.
- [03:48]
Judd Apatow
No, it's not funny, I don't think. I'm not laughing at most any of it. It's a weird time to create comedy because you feel like we should just be talking about what's happening and not like, oh, it's hard to get a date. Whatever your movie stories are. It feels like there's more pressing things happening, but we still need that. That's the tricky part. We still need joy and distraction and entertainment and creativity, but it's hard to focus when you see things happening that are troubling.
- [04:22]
Kara Swisher
The reason I'm asking that I was at a party this weekend and it was a fun party. It was for an anniversary. Friends of mine, their 20th wedding anniversary and started with it feels like we shouldn't be having a party or fun right now, you know what I mean? Or nothing is funny. And so it's really hard to deal with that impulse of kind of sillier things or things that were part of comedy before that you don't have to immediately deal with only tearing down the White House or whatever manner of horror is happening at any given day.
- [04:50]
Judd Apatow
Well, I think there's always been terrible things happening all through history and now a lot of them are revealed and illuminated and a lot of this type of thing has always been happening. And so it makes us all feel like, how are we supposed to behave? What are we supposed to do? And part of what we do is live our lives and be happy and be Kind to our friends and our families and ourselves, and look for opportunities to get involved and try to move things in a direction that aligns with our values. So that's what we all have to do. We have no choice. It's a long day. There's 24 hours in a day. So we can't just be troubled every second of it. No.
- [05:32]
Kara Swisher
And definitely the Middle Ages sucked. So let's dive right into it. In your book Comedy Nerd, you say that almost all stories are about obstacles to love. Now, most comedy fans probably wouldn't come up with obstacles to love if they had to describe Judd Apatow movies. But some of the movies are directed like the 40 year old version, Knocked Up. This is 40 Trainwreck. The through line is obvious. Talk about that a little bit. And how has your understanding of what love means changed over the years making these movies?
- [06:00]
Judd Apatow
Well, I never thought about any of this when I started. I was just trying to write jokes. So the beginning of any comedy person's career is just, how do you make that crowd laugh? I was doing standup and I didn't really think very deeply. I didn't think emotionally. I was just trying to survive up there and not get booed off the stage. And then when I worked for Garry Shandling, we were doing the Larry Sanders show, which was a satire of talk shows.
- [06:26]
Kara Swisher
Great show.
- [06:27]
Judd Apatow
And he said, this is a show about people who love each other, but work and ego get in the way. And I had never heard anyone talk about stories in that way. You know, the idea that your career and how you feel about yourself is so important, that you'll do all these terrible things to support your brokenness and your need for approval and that that was the comedy of the show. But underneath, you knew they loved each other and they were just all kind of blocked by this. And slowly I realized that that's true of almost every situation. Right. We have conflicting impulses to either help people or try to do something selfish for ourselves. That's why this period is very troubling for people, because it's really driven by a lot of people on all sides with endless need and narcissism and gluttony. And not a lot of it feels like they're really looking out for other people.
- [07:32]
Kara Swisher
Right? Absolutely. But talk a little more about this obstacle to love that's sort of in the broad sense, which it's not just work, it's all kinds of obstacles to love. Correct?
- [07:40]
Judd Apatow
Yeah. I mean, an obstacle to love can just be like your fear of being loved. Your fear of making a mistake, your fear of having your career not work, I mean, it's endless. It's very hard to stay open and connected and to be there for somebody else. So, you know, in any of the movies, a lot of them are about, like two people trying to decide if it's gonna work. So, you know, Knocked up is about, you know, a man and a woman and they accidentally get pregnant and could we be a couple? Like, could we raise this baby together? I guess we should find out and hang out a little bit before we go our separate ways. As they assess each other, like, is this dangerous or could it be positive?
- [08:22]
Kara Swisher
Right. So let's talk a little bit about the book itself and your start in comedy. Cause this is sort of your journey and you write in the book. Even from an early age, you had an obsession with comedy. You would collect autographs and memorabilia. You would go to the library to look up articles about comedians on microfiche. And kids, microfiche was so cool. Both of us are of the age that we use.
- [08:41]
Judd Apatow
Kids love microfiche. I mean, what is the Internet except a giant microfiche system?
- [08:47]
Kara Swisher
It is, but it didn't have that sound of and getting it wrong and mangling it. I just explained I was teaching a course at University of Michigan. I was explaining card catalogs to the kids. Like what? I was like, oh, it was hard to even explain. Anyway, you wrote a 30 page research paper on the Marx Brothers. And this is when you were in sixth grade. Your parents went through a messy divorce when you were young. And you write that they didn't ask you how you were doing. So you looked at comedy, you explained the world in the way that it was, but it was also a way to cope. Talk a little bit about this earlier history that you were just enmeshed in it. Eating and breathing gave you comfort, right?
- [09:27]
Judd Apatow
I mean, just like, you know, some people, you know, when they're young and they're feel disaffected, they might get into a band or a songwriter and become obsessed with it. For me, growing up, Starting in the mid-70s, it was the beginning of Saturday Night Live and Monty Python and sctv and Steve Martin and Richard Pryor and Carlin. And so I think I always looked for the answers of what was going on in the world through comedic voices. Listening to George Carlin, he was breaking everything down and also making you question the system, questioning how society works. And I think as a little kid, I was just fascinated to hear this person explain something to me, which I knew absolutely nothing About. And then that grew into like, who is this Lenny Bruce guy? And reading that book, ladies and gentlemen, Lenny Bruce, which talked about that era. And then I just couldn't get enough of it. And so maybe as a result of going through a rough divorce as a kid, I just, I needed something to be my own. And it also was like, safety. Oh, maybe I can get a job doing this. Like, there's a way to take care of myself in the world. And also no one was into it. So there weren't other people who loved comedy like I did. So I think in my head I thought, I think I can get a job doing this. Cause there's no competition. At least in my head, I'm not interested. Yeah, no one cares about this at all.
- [10:51]
Kara Swisher
Were you a funny kid? I mean, you wrote a 30 page research report on Marx Brothers. I mean, that's kind of a choice.
- [10:57]
Judd Apatow
That is a nerdy thing. And I look back and it's really strange to me, having raised two children, if my kids had in their room writing a 30 page biography of the Marx Brothers that no one requested. But I just wanted to know, because I love the anarchy of the Marx Brothers. And they were so funny. And I knew, I didn't quite understand what all the jokes meant, but that it felt like, oh, this is the best stuff. I didn't know it was the greatest writers in the world writing these silly movies. And so the book that I made, it is a little bit of a tribute to the Marx Brothers scrapbook. Because when I was a kid, that was the book that had all the articles and the photos and the memorabilia. And I thought, what if I took all the memorabilia and the ephemera and the notes from the studio and all these weird things and created a book that would be like an autobiography but with these visuals. Yeah. And so I spent like two years putting that together, which in a way is the Marx Brothers biography. Just I finally did it on myself.
- [11:56]
Kara Swisher
Yeah. You remember the SNL book?
- [11:58]
Judd Apatow
Yes, the SNL book.
- [11:59]
Kara Swisher
I love that book.
- [12:00]
Judd Apatow
Yeah. Because you thought, how did they make this show? Who are these people? And they put out a book and.
- [12:04]
Kara Swisher
It was the scripts with coffee on it. Coffee stains. Yeah, I read that over and over again.
- [12:09]
Judd Apatow
And they would have all the notes, like, you got a call from Gerald Ford administration and little jokes. And I wanted to know those people. So I think also in my head I thought, oh, there's a group of people somewhere that are really funny and cool. And I couldn't get enough of just trying to crack the code. Of like, how does this actually work?
- [12:29]
Kara Swisher
Uh huh. So as writer, director and producer, you've created some of the most successful comedies, obviously so well known. And you've collaborated with some of the most talented comedic actors and writers in the country. The first show a lot of people associate you with, obviously the one that kind of launched your career, was Freaks and Geeks. NBC canceled it partway through the first season, but it's found a huge following since. There's a lot of shows like that. But you said in 2014, Everything I've in a way, as a revenge for the people who canceled Freaks and Geeks. What is it about the show that's given it such a staying power after 25 years?
- [13:03]
Podcast Narrator/Host Intro
And what held it back at the time?
- [13:04]
Judd Apatow
I mean, I think that, you know, Paul Feig, who created the show, had a very clear vision, inspired by growing up in Michigan, about the kids who he didn't see on tv, which was nerds and potheads. And I remember he gave me the script, he didn't tell me anything about it. One day he just handed it to me and I saw the COVID and just said Freaks and Geeks. And I was just so in the second that I saw the title. And it's so brutally truthful that I do think it just gets in your craw and doesn't come out because a lot of it was about failure and how we lean on our families and our friends to survive things. And obviously it was a magical cast and the directors and writers did remarkable work. But I think some of those stories are so real. There was an episode that our friend Jeff Judah wrote about his childhood with his partner Gabe Sachs, about a kid who is watching Based on a True Story was watching Donahue. And it was all about how to know if your husband's cheating. And the kid realized that the dad was cheating and so he found a garage clicker in the car that wasn't theirs. And so he would ride around on his bike, clicking it at houses, seeing if he could figure out who his dad was cheating with. And that came from a very personal place. And we made that episode and as a result it's really powerful. And a lot of the episodes were built that way, even the funny ones like John Daly in the Parisian night suit that he thinks is gonna look cool walking down the hall, but it's the most embarrassing outfit ever. That's something that happened to Paul Feig. And so it really was about a different type of feeling. And it was almost independent film on television. It was pre streaming. And so it was a vibe that you didn't get. And so it didn't last very long, but it touched people, right?
- [15:01]
Kara Swisher
Absolutely. Calnex was my issue many years ago, but there's a contrast. It was airing around the time of Dawson's Creek, in the wake of 9020, right before the OC and it was sort of a counterweight to those kind of shows about high school.
- [15:14]
Judd Apatow
Yeah, I was meant to say, like, it usually doesn't work out like that, and that's okay. At one point, the studio kept asking us to give them more wins. They need more wins. And we said, this show is about losing.
- [15:29]
Kara Swisher
What did you say when you got that note? What did you say?
- [15:32]
Judd Apatow
Well, this kind of tells you how I would handle those notes because I was very young and I didn't know how to have these debates without getting aggressive or just managing it in the wrong way. So we wrote an episode where Barnstar's character, Bill, is playing baseball, and he's always pick last. So it's about being pick last and the daily humiliation of that.
- [15:54]
Kara Swisher
Yes, the Janice Ian of it all. But go ahead.
- [15:56]
Judd Apatow
And so the ball flies to him in right field, and no ball ever comes to him in right field. And he catches it, and everyone goes crazy. But he doesn't know that there's only one out so far. And the person on third, you know, tags up and runs home and scores because he's celebrating, and he actually doesn't understand the rules of the game.
- [16:21]
Kara Swisher
Not a win.
- [16:22]
Judd Apatow
That was not the win. And we loved the fact that we had tricked the studio into having the fake win. But when we were canceled, it was funny. We get canceled, and then years later, they do a documentary about the show and they interview the guy who canceled us. And he was happy that he canceled us. He stood by it. He didn't go looking back, I shouldn't have done that. He literally was like, yeah, that was. He said, I was watching this show where the nerdy kid breaks up with the cheerleader. And I said, yeah, that's enough of that. But to us, that was the ultimate triumph, was that there was an episode where Sam Weir, he's dating the cheerleader, Sidney Sanders, and he takes her to see the Steve Martin movie the Jerk, and she thinks it's not funny. And so he breaks up with her because he realizes that she's not actually right for him, which is the appropriate thing to do. But to a network wanting those wins, they thought, that's the craziest thing anyone's ever done on tv.
- [17:19]
Kara Swisher
Yeah. Should you have given your characters even little wins, more wins? Was that note ever good?
- [17:24]
Judd Apatow
Well, I think the win really was their great friendships with each other. Right. Just how much they cared about each other. And a big win also was that Sam and Lindsey loved their parents. It wasn't a show about, you know, rebelling against your parents. It was just the normal things that happen as you grow up.
- [17:41]
Kara Swisher
Right.
- [17:42]
Judd Apatow
The kindnesses and a lot of laughter. A lot of, like, nerds laughing and, you know, really like, enjoying each other's company and feeling like we're the oppressed. And also what made us laugh is that the nerds always knew that they were cooler than the jocks. They just. It just wasn't their time.
- [17:58]
Kara Swisher
Right, right, right, exactly. It's funny because I bet that guy who canceled you probably didn't want to relive his experiences from high school and therefore canceled you. Every episode we get a question from an outside expert. Here is yours.
- [18:11]
Jane Lynch
Well, hello, Judd. It is I, Jane lynch, your old palace. Question for you. After Freaks and Geeks and Undeclared, both of them, which are now called classics and were critical successes, but they were canceled after one season each. How did you navigate that emotionally and what did it do to your self confidence and your view of yourself in this business? Because you went on to take a really big swing right after that and direct your first feature film, the 40 Year Old Virgin. So that's my question. Sending you lots of love.
- [18:53]
Kara Swisher
Jane is great. Jane was in the 40 year old version.
- [18:55]
Judd Apatow
Oh, Jane's the best.
- [18:56]
Kara Swisher
Yes.
- [18:56]
Podcast Narrator/Host Intro
The best.
- [18:57]
Judd Apatow
Yeah. So we did, you know, Talladega nights with her and walk hard. She's so, so funny. So how did I handle that? Well, it really was painful. When we were doing Freaks and Geeks, I always had a sense that this is special, this is our group, and.
- [19:17]
Kara Swisher
I've made it right because there's so much rejection.
- [19:19]
Judd Apatow
Yeah. So on one level, it's like, this is the great group. I love all these people. And we haven't finished telling the story. So that's such a terrible feeling when someone could just walk in the room and go, okay, stop doing this thing that's working, and never talk to each other ever again. And it just felt so wrong to me. Also, as a child of divorce, I projected all those abandonment issues onto that relationship with the network and the studios. And I thought, wait, magic's happening here. This is like going into a recording studio and just unplugging Led Zeppelin in the middle of recording a great song. And then we did a show Called Undeclared about college with a lot of the same people. And the same exact thing happened. We were canceled after 17 episodes. And I mean, I got so stressed, my back went out. I had to have surgery on my back just from the stress. And I was probably not at my best in my communication skills. So what I did was suffer. I mainly just suffered. And you know how they talk about Michael Jordan, that he needed to be mad, to be great, and so he would find someone on the court to be really pissed at and then he would play better. And it was very manifest, manufactured a lot of the time. I think on some level that's what I did. I just thought the best revenge for this is to prove that each of these people here deserves a really big opportunity and career. And I love them and believed in them and wanted to stay connected. And then they did it. Then all those people went on to amazing careers as writers and directors and actors and actresses. But it was almost like a manic state. It's only something you would do when you're young and just full of it, to make that attempt and to have so much energy to do it. But also, they were also talented.
- [21:18]
Kara Swisher
Right, but what did you do? As she asked? How did you navigate it emotionally? And where did the self confidence come to? Move along.
- [21:25]
Judd Apatow
I knew the work was good as a fan of comedy, and I think I do come to it as a fan first. I knew how good Freaks and Geeks was, and I knew how good everyone was. I had no doubt that a lot of these people were better actors and comedy stars than were around for the most part. So I had a lot of confidence in that. And I also think I had a little bit of the rebellion of someone who loves a band that no one listens to in massive numbers. I would love all those alternative bands that didn't sell a crazy amount of records. I was an Elvis Costello fan and he had a big crowd, but he wasn't Whitney Houston at that time. And I just thought, it's okay to be Elvis Costello. It's okay to be the Replacements. And there was almost a badge of honor in making something great that isn't big. The way John Cassavetes movies didn't make $100 million. That's how I rationalized my multiple failures.
- [22:25]
Kara Swisher
So like Jane mentioned, you then went on to make huge hits and Take this Swing. You wrote, direct and produced movies like 40 Year Old Virgin and Knocked up. And you produced Girls, Anchorman, Anchorman two, which is my son's favorite movie, Trainwreck Bridesmaids, stepbrothers, all these kind of fit in a mold that became your calling card. Raunchy, mainly R rated comedies about extended adolescence and growing up. And if you take a step back, what do you think you got right about them in that mid to late 2000s era? And especially about men in particular, because they often centered on men developing themselves. Good men developing themselves, essentially.
- [23:02]
Judd Apatow
Yeah. I mean, I think a lot of it is we grew up on these Ivan Reitman, John Landis, Harold Ramis movies. And that usually was the core of why they worked. It was a reluctant hero story. So we definitely had an awareness that men are really immature and need a little bit of a beating to get it to grow up. And so some of those movies are about the challenges of real life intruding. Like, I just want to be a pothead and have a porn website, but I just got someone pregnant and now I have to become a man.
- [23:37]
Kara Swisher
Yeah.
- [23:38]
Judd Apatow
And read these books and read the baby books. And I think that as I look at it now, I remember I used to talk to Norman Lear about his history and his childhood. And his dad went to prison when he was a kid for this stock fraud. And he was still talking about it at 100, like his emotional problems that resulted from dealing with his dad. So I realized, yeah, these movies are coming of age movies in a way, but also we're always coming of age. I don't think it ever ends. So if I do this as 40, it's just another phase of how hard it is to learn the lessons of life and how much has to happen to you for you to begin to get it at all.
- [24:25]
Kara Swisher
And the through line for you, there was.
- [24:28]
Judd Apatow
I mean, the through line for me is, you know, life is suffering and we soldier on. You know that it's like there's a lot of challenges and it works best when we're kind to each other and we figure out how to be there for each other. And you take a lot of hits, the hits are funny. That's what we like in these movies. But for me, you know, when I'm working with a writer on their script, I always say to them, okay, what's the problem? And what would have to happen to this character for them to learn the lesson? Like, what bottom would they have to hit to wake up?
- [25:04]
Kara Swisher
We'll be back in a minute.
- [25:08]
Judd Apatow
Foreign.
- [25:14]
Podcast Narrator/Host Intro
Support for on with Kara swisher comes from LinkedIn. As a small business owner, you don't have the luxury of clocking out early. Your business is on your mind. 24 7. So when you're hiring, you need a partner that works just as hard as you do. That hiring partner is LinkedIn jobs when you clock out, LinkedIn clocks in. LinkedIn makes it easy to post your job for free, share it with your network, and get qualified candidates that you couldn't manage all in one place. LinkedIn's new feature allows you to write job description and quickly get your job in front of the right people with deep candidate insights. You can either post your job for free or pay to promote in order to receive three times more qualified applicants. Let's face it, at the end of the day, the most important thing for your small business is the quality of candidates. And with LinkedIn you can feel confident that you're getting the best. That's why LinkedIn claims that 72% of small business owners who use LinkedIn find high quality candidates. So find out why more than 2.5 million small businesses use LinkedIn for hiring today. Find your next great hire on LinkedIn. Post your job for free at LinkedIn.com Kara that's LinkedIn.com Kara to post your job for free. Terms and conditions apply. Support for this show comes from Rippling. Your IT team shouldn't be endlessly chasing tickets and manually solving access and identity problems. But when you're running multiple disconnected tools, this is exactly what you have to deal with. And that's not SaaS. That's sad software as a disservice. What if you could run it with one system powered by one source of truth? Meet Rippling. Rippling is the unified platform for global hr, payroll, IT and finance. They've helped millions replace their mess of cobbled together tools with one system designed to give leaders clarity, speed and control. By uniting your employees, teams and departments in one system, Rippling removes the bottlenecks busy work in silos your software created automated, perfectly in sync and seriously simple to use. Rippling gives your company one source of truth for your people, their data and everything they touch. With Rippling, you can run your entire hr, IT and finance operations as one, or pick and choose the products that best fill the gaps in your software stack. And right now you can get six months free when you go to rippling.com Cara learn more at rippling. That's rippling.com Kara for six months. Free. Terms and conditions apply.
- [27:43]
Kara Swisher
Support for this show comes from Crucible Moments, a podcast from Sequoia Capital. We've all had pivotal decision points in our lives that, whether we know it or not at the time, changed everything. This is especially true in business. Like did you know that autonomous drone delivery company Zipline originally produced a robotic toy? Or that Bolt went from an Estonian transportation company company to one of the largest rideshare and food delivery platforms in the world? That's what Crucible Moments is all about. Deep diving into the make or break moments that set the course for some of the most important tech companies of our time. With interviews from some of the key players that made these companies a success. Hosted by Sequoia Capital's managing partner, Roelof Botha, Crucible Moments is back for a new season with stories of companies as they navigated the most consequential crossroads in their journeys. Hear conversations with leaders at Zipline, Stripe, Palo Alto Networks, Klarna Supercell, and more. Subscribe to Season 3 of Crucible Moments and catch up on Seasons 1 and 2@CrucibleMoments.com on YouTube or wherever you get your podcasts. Listen to Crucible Moments today. So let's move to comedy now because everything has shifted. I mean, you had a series of movies and sort of the system worked really well for you. One of the obviously the biggest changes has been the move to streaming away from big theater releases. It's been especially true in comedy. And since the pandemic, comedies don't pull in the same kind of box office revenue they used to. And you told Variety a few years ago, quote, we have a system now that does not reward success for a lot of these projects. If you make something and a billion people watch, you don't make more money than if it was a disaster. That's not good for creativity. Talk a little bit about the shifts. You know, here you are sort of running from movie to movie to movie and in a system that then shifted dramatically for you.
- [29:29]
Judd Apatow
Yeah, well, I mean, I think the first change of the system was that the DVD disappeared and a lot of the economics of comedy were very simple, which is you could make a movie for $20 million and if it made $40 million in the box office, it would usually make 40 million on DVD. So suddenly that that investment would pay off. Now we don't have the DVD money and it wasn't really replaced significantly by streaming and digital downloads that only covered a part of it when that changed. So as a result the bet is different with comedy. There's usually the discussion about whether or not it will work overseas in non English speaking countries. So an action movie might work great in Bulgaria, but we, you know, often, you know, because of language issues or cultural issues, it's not as consistent that Commies will work overseas.
- [30:30]
Kara Swisher
I remember being in Germany watching Wayne's World, and, you know, monkeys fly out of my butt. Translated into German. I was sitting and I was laughing hysterically when he said that. And the Germans were like, bus, monkeys, butt. What exactly in German. And I was like, oh, I can't explain it to you, monkeys. They're not actually flying out. And then it was lost. Then it was done.
- [30:52]
Judd Apatow
I remember they weren't going to release bridesmaids overseas because they said they don't have bridesmaids in most of these countries. And then they did, and it made $100,000,000 million dollars overseas. So there's tons of exceptions to this where there are giant breakthrough movies. But that changed the bet because then it became easier to make a $5 million horror movie, which would work in Bulgaria, than a comedy. And then when you start making less comedies, then people lose the habit of going. And at the same time, there's a lot of comedy on streaming that you don't have to leave the house for. And on your phone, you're basically watching gags all day long.
- [31:33]
Kara Swisher
Right? The snackable moments.
- [31:36]
Sponsor Voice
Right.
- [31:36]
Kara Swisher
The snackable Only the best jokes. Right.
- [31:39]
Judd Apatow
And they're great. They're great. I could watch a montage of, like, cats scaring their owners for hours. And so it's not like on the weekend, you're like, oh, God, I need some comedy. I mean, literally, you were probably in Starbucks looking at TikTok videos for 15 minutes.
- [31:53]
Kara Swisher
Right? Right. Please, by all means, search cats and tinfoil.
- [32:00]
Judd Apatow
Pickles. I mean, you know, so then you go, what's the need? On the weekend, you might go, oh, I wanna see a horror movie. Cause I haven't seen anyone get killed this week. I want a thriller. And it changes habits, but also those habits change back. If somebody made the Hangover or something as good as the Hangover, I still think it would make a billion dollars. I don't feel like there's been gigant great comedies that have failed because people don't want to go to the theater. I think we're not making them. And as a result, young people go, wait, there's no money in this. And then they write for YouTube or TikTok or get a job as a staff writer on it. Yeah, I think it changes the career aspirations of people. And then you get a little bit of a doom loop going. But I remember when that movie came out, it was like a maybe Roman Polanski movie called Pirates. And it was just such a gigantic bomb. It was with Walter Mathau and For decades, people said the worst thing you ever could do is a pirate movie. And then decades later, Pirates of the Caribbean was like the biggest thing forever. And I think that's how show business works. You need something to be a hit and then they chase it for a while and it kind of cycles.
- [33:07]
Kara Swisher
Right, right. They always do that. That's always a thing. But streaming in particular, and you were just noting a lot of looking at TikTok and the pulling apart and the snackable moment, is comedy just by nature very vulnerable in that regard? When it becomes everything becomes little bits. I'm thinking of late night television. It does really well online, but the ratings don't work well.
- [33:31]
Judd Apatow
I think another issue is that in some ways, horror movies are comedies. They usually have an enormous amount of humor weapons in the theater, gets gigantic laughs. And movies like Barbie, they aren't just comedies. The Marvel movies are comedies. They're also action movies, but they definitely are going for the comedy. So it's not like comedy has disappeared. It's just kind of morphed in with other genres where they all use comedy. So I do think people want it. It's just mutated. And then you do need breakthroughs. You need people to do something very original to show how a comedy should work in 2025. It doesn't have to feel like the reluctant astronaut with Don Knotts. You do have to take risks. And you also need a new generation of comedy people, because if you don't make a lot of comedy movies, then the next generation never gets their break. And then suddenly people go, we need a comedy star. And everyone goes, wait, but we haven't broken one in 10 years because we haven't given anyone an opportunity to show.
- [34:38]
Kara Swisher
That they're a comedy star or they break somewhere else. I did a great interview with Josh Johnson, who got his star. A lot of them are getting their star elsewhere.
- [34:46]
Judd Apatow
Right.
- [34:46]
Kara Swisher
And in different genres that they seem to be very native in in some fashion.
- [34:51]
Judd Apatow
Well, Josh is doing something that's really spectacular, which is, oh, it has to.
- [34:56]
Kara Swisher
Be excellent to star.
- [34:57]
Judd Apatow
You know, he's so funny, but he's putting up basically full length comedy specials every few weeks that feel like he's been working on the set for years. But they're about things that are happening currently in politics, and it's really remarkable. So, yeah, some people are inventing new ways to be funny and do it. And the one thing that is bad about podcasting is it's allowing people not to be funny in a way that someone like Conan o' Brien Or Letterman was funny in terms of being inventive and sketches and grinding for all of these new ideas. But because two people talking is fun, but we're not getting a lot of people going, I'm gonna use this format to come up with something completely new that requires writing, that requires shooting things. And so it's easier. It's way easier. And we need some lunatics to do it the harder way.
- [35:54]
Kara Swisher
Speaking of that, you're talking about the next generation of stars. In a forward to your book, Lena Dunham wrote about the creative freedom you gave her to do risky things, which was making Girls, which you executive produced, and how rare that was. Talk about who's helping people take what. You're just talking about this kind of risk because your longtime collaborator Seth Rogen just won a whole bunch of Emmys for his show. The studio, at its core, it's about how the industry has come so averse to taking all kinds of risks needed to make art. And it's funny, but it's also. There's something deeply sad about the show too. Like, oh, look at this, look at these people sort of pretzeling themselves to be not excellent. Essentially. Talk about that. Who's helping people take those kind of risks? And what you did with Lena.
- [36:35]
Judd Apatow
Well, certainly Seth with his show and the people and the writers that he's working with and the people who perform on it. And he is exploring what this challenge is, which is in a world where everything needs to be gigantic, there's all this pressure. A lot of the movies we like best that were the biggest movies of all time were little movies and they were little risks. And as a result, you would get whatever the last detail or Midnight Cowboy. And now people want everything to be able to make an insane amount money. And that's why that show is so funny, because it is about people who want to make good movies. And they're trying to figure out how to work in a system that has so many demands that are very difficult to figure out. In the old days, it always felt simpler to me. I always thought it was like the studio would have say they had nine movies. Three they were going for the mega movie. Three were these kind of of dramas, mid level costs, and three were like horror and comedy. And it kind of made sense as the ratio of things. Like, okay, they have a couple of slots for high end, a couple of slots for popcorn, a couple of slots for the comedies and the horror things. And now it's like as soon as, you know a movie could make a billion dollars, then In a lot of ways that's like, for the majority of it, it's the hope that things could just, you know, be a big hit, become a toy, work in every country in the world, have sequels. And so a lot of the intellectual energy, the bandwidth goes to that, which makes sense. But you need more bandwidth on. Let's just make new things, let's take chances, let's figure out the next stage of this. And so hopefully that will change. And things do sneak through all the time. There are a lot of amazing movies came out this year.
- [38:28]
Kara Swisher
You know, they did, you know, but they, of course they were more successful. Cause they felt original. One of the things I'm just recalling is an interview I did with Ted Sarandos and he said there will be no middle movies anymore. He said there'll be the small movies and the big movies and everything in the middle will be hollowed out, which is what you're talking about. And he was talking about comedies. He was talking about sort of the middle of the range because of the way the system was setting itself up. But how do you then mentor people or give people freedom? You don't really have freedom if you're in a formula. Correct?
- [39:01]
Judd Apatow
I mean, for me, in terms of mentorship, I was mentored by people like Gary and David Milch and Eric Roth and people like that. And so I look for opportunities to help people with their projects. Sometimes I'm part of the project, sometimes it's just as a friend. And I think that that's essential to getting better, is to find people that have some wisdom that you don't have. I mean, I wouldn't have been able to do anything without it. And even now, sometimes I write a script and I. Garry Shandling was still alive because just the fact that he liked something I was working on gave me the confidence to not give up on it. Like, oh, Gary thinks this is worth pursuing and so I would keep grinding because of it.
- [39:51]
Podcast Narrator/Host Intro
We'll be back in a minute.
- [40:00]
Sponsor Voice
Support for the show comes from Charles Schwab. At Schwab, how you invest is your choice. Choice, not theirs. That's why when it comes to managing your wealth, Schwab gives you more choices. You can invest and trade on your own. Plus get advice and more comprehensive wealth solutions to help meet your unique needs. With award winning service, low costs and transparent advice, you can manage your wealth your way at Schwab. Visit schwab.com to learn more.
- [40:32]
Every story you love, every invention that moves you, you, every idea you wished was yours, all began as Nothing. Just a blank page with a blinking cursor asking a simple question. What do you see? Great ideas.
- [40:56]
Judd Apatow
Start on Mac.
- [40:59]
Sponsor Voice
Find out more on apple.com Mac support.
- [41:03]
For the show comes from Crucible Moments, a podcast from Sequoia Capital. We've all had pivotal decision points in our lives that, whether we know it or not at the time, changed everything. This is especially true in business. Like, did you know that autonomous drone delivery company Zipline originally produced a robotic toy? Or that Bolt went from an Estonian transportation company to one of the largest rideshare and food delivery platforms in the world?
- [41:33]
Kara Swisher
World?
- [41:34]
Sponsor Voice
That's what Crucible Moments is all about. Hosted by Sequoia Capital's managing partner, Roloff be Crucible Moments is back for a new season with stories of companies as they navigated the most consequential crossroads in their journeys. Hear conversations with leaders at Zipline, Stripe, Palo Alto Networks, Klarna Supercell, and more. Subscribe to Season 3 of Crucible Moments and catch up on Seasons 1 and 2@CrucibleMoments.com on YouTube or wherever you get your podcasts. Listen to Crucible Moments. Today.
- [42:12]
Kara Swisher
Hollywood is also grappling with the arrival of AI. It's something I write and talk about a lot, and it was a massive issue in the 2023 writers strike. You told Variety the studios and streamers weren't treating writers as essential and that there was a, quote, existential problem. Screenwriters did win a bunch of protections against AI in the fight, but AI isn't going anywhere and obviously it's even going further with TEC tech billionaires spending billions on energy and compute. And Sora too just came out and it will keep being an issue of future contract negotiations. Talk a little bit about how you're looking at it as a creator, because I had a lot of discussions with Hollywood people during these things, and I said, you don't understand who your real enemy is. It's not Disney, It's Google or OpenAI or whoever it happens to be. How do you think about it right now?
- [42:59]
Judd Apatow
I look at it like any other factory, right? So. So if Tesla's opening up a factory, then they're just trying to figure out how few human beings can I use to have it function? And there's all sorts of entities that are thinking that right now about everything to do with film and television production. Can I do this without people? Can it get written without people? Can it get directed without people? Do we need the development people? I mean, to every end of it there were great black mirrors about this where they were creating content specifically for people in real time. And so that's scary. And the only thing that makes it less scary is that it's soulless.
- [43:45]
Podcast Narrator/Host Intro
Right.
- [43:45]
Kara Swisher
It's not funny.
- [43:46]
Judd Apatow
It's not good. I mean, there are definitely ways that technology can help people. If you can go on a computer and make it look like deep space and it doesn't cost $3 million, it costs 40 grand. Well, clearly in some ways that will help people. It will decimate the people that made space. But it seems like we're not gonna be able to stop that when it gets cheaper. But the writing and the directing will always wind up generic. Cause it's scraped and it's just copying other things. And I think even when Sora was released, we instantly thought, wow, I'm bored of this in like a day and a half. I can't watch any more of dead celebrities doing weird things.
- [44:25]
Kara Swisher
So can AI be funny?
- [44:27]
Judd Apatow
I mean, it would be wrong to say it can't be funny at all, but there's no point of view. So it doesn't ever fully work. You know how, like, when you watch these things and it feels like this bizarre, dreamlike space and it feels like hell. A lot of the AI stuff.
- [44:42]
Podcast Narrator/Host Intro
Yeah.
- [44:43]
Judd Apatow
You know, at some point, if you know how to use it, I assume it'll become like a Pixar movie where people are. It's basically animation.
- [44:51]
Kara Swisher
Yeah. The back end is where the real wins are right now.
- [44:54]
Judd Apatow
Yeah. And so, you know, there'll be some fusion and then there will be people who are like, you know what? I like it when the real people do it. And it'll become a mix at some point. But no one's going to make the movie that Paul Thomas Anderson just made on Sora. No one's going to do Nicole Hollisner does or Quentin Tarantino. So it's going to be a lot just slop and garbage. And it's scarier for the next generation that doesn't know what good movies that are authentic, made from people's hearts, what that is. If you were raised on the slope at some point, do people not care about what's better?
- [45:36]
Kara Swisher
They're used to slop.
- [45:37]
Judd Apatow
Yeah, I think that probably they will. But that's what's scary if you don't know the difference and you just go, no, this seems fine.
- [45:45]
Kara Swisher
So on top of all these changes, there's also been a broader cultural shift towards more censorship. You have folks like Dave Chappelle, Bill Maher and Ricky Van Gervais who said, cancel culture. Is hurting comedy and breeds censorship. On the other hand, there's people like Sarah Silverman and Seth Rogen who say these fears are overblown comedy changes. Stop whining. It knocked up the lead characters. Working on a site that tells where all the nude scenes are in popular movies, and you write that quote. Looking back, it is a hundred types of wrong, both morally and technologically, but it still makes me laugh. Talk about that and how you're looking at the risks as people grapple with what's offensive and what's not.
- [46:18]
Judd Apatow
I mean, I think that, you know, when we would do jokes like the one you're talking about in the movie, the point was, you know, this is wrong and ridiculous. This is something you should grow out of. So we would always show bad behavior as a path to show how you would realize that you shouldn't have the porn site that just tells you where the nude scenes are, Although the technology of that is funny. That movie is so old now that even the technology of it tells you where it is. Where now it would just show you. But I do think that in terms of cancel culture, there are not many people whose careers were affected negatively by cancel culture. In fact, in fact, you would say that most people got really famous as a result of being seen as edgy and got bigger crowds. There were some people that had things happen to them, but it's pretty small compared to how much money it actually generated to be seen as someone saying things that you're not supposed to say. So that always felt false to me. And I'm in comedy clubs. People are, but they're basically saying most anything they want to say. And I think that some guardrails are good. It forces you to be creative. And I always quote Colin Quinn, who said, you can say anything you want as long as you're willing to stand behind it.
- [47:39]
Kara Swisher
Right.
- [47:39]
Judd Apatow
So if you want to be thoughtless and dumb, someone's going to criticize you. And comics are, I think, pretty thin skinned about taking criticism.
- [47:48]
Kara Swisher
Very much so.
- [47:49]
Judd Apatow
They'll criticize everyone and pretty brutally, and they'll name names. But if you come at them at all, they literally throw a fit and lose their minds in a kind of almost comical way.
- [48:01]
Kara Swisher
Yeah, yeah, you're 100% right about that.
- [48:04]
Judd Apatow
Obviously, our whole country is based on that. You should be allowed to say anything you want to say as long as it doesn't create some sort of dangerous situation. We need South Park. We need voices that are fighting power. And, you know, some of those voices are gonna be terrible and have Bad opinions, you know, that's part of it, too. If you wanna have all the comedy out there, you're gonna have the bad stuff also.
- [48:28]
Kara Swisher
Well, the political climate is tough, though. How do you think about sort of right wing meme comedy MAGA humor? I mean, you joke in 2016 that the funnier presidential candidate always wins after Trump won. You even told the New York Times that, well, Trump has a demented sense of humor. He was way funnier than Hillary Clinton. Although I would argue the private Hillary Clinton is very funny. And now she's funny again. She's funny. Public just had Bernie Sanders on. We were talking about this. One of the things Trump is really good at is he normalizes racism by delivering it as entertainment. His humor can make all the horrific things his administration seem less scary and dangerous. The pooping slop video that he did, the AI video, was a version of that. Do you think that's effective still? Is it funny or what is it? And that's what their excuse is all the time. It's, oh, it's just funny.
- [49:13]
Judd Apatow
I mean, I think the reason why people like Hillary Clinton weren't fun funny is that they are afraid to say certain things. They're afraid to take the comedic risk that it'll be taken the wrong way. So as a result, they seem like they're covering, like they're controlling their expression. And Trump is just pure expression. And so you look even more full of it when people can see your eyes thinking, I don't want to get in trouble, I don't want to get in trouble. I don't want to get in trouble. And then you get a real muted version of yourself. And people feel. Feel like there's something to not be trusted in that self censorship. Now, some people would call that trying to be thoughtful or dignity, but I think that's what they're sensing where Trump's like, nah, I'm going on 10, 24 hours a day. And then it all loses its power. And so then he can say the worst things or put up the dumbest memes, and everyone's like, well, that doesn't mean anything, but it means something. If your healthcare disappears, it means something if. If you're at work and you're from Mexico and you're a legal immigrant and they put you in a camp.
- [50:21]
Kara Swisher
So is changing it to entertainment effective? Is that worrisome to you?
- [50:24]
Judd Apatow
My feeling is that it's always more complicated than we know. I don't think this memeification is based on someone's instinct. I think there's think tanks and psychological studies and everything that's being done is being done because it has been proven to work as propaganda. And we take it like, oh, he's being crazy and I can't believe he said that, or I can't believe he posted that.
- [50:48]
Kara Swisher
It's totally planned.
- [50:49]
Judd Apatow
I think there's literally like psychiatrists figuring out how do you make people lose hope? How do you make people think that they can't win a fight?
- [51:03]
Kara Swisher
Right. And then tell them it's just a joke.
- [51:05]
Judd Apatow
Yeah. I mean, it all started with the Cambridge Analytica when we realize they know what we think before we even think it, based on our behaviors online. And yeah, they're flooding the zone and everyone's brain is melting. And then even though there's millions of people on the street, Trump poops on them. And it's supposed to make everyone feel sad, like, well, no one listened. So that's why it's important for everybody to just continue. You to fight, to speak up, to find ways to support candidates and organizations you believe in, in spite of the fact that people want to humiliate you and make you feel hopeless.
- [51:44]
Kara Swisher
So I want to finish up by talking about what you're working on and what's next for you personally. You've made multiple documentaries in the past few years to take a deeper look at some of the great comedians of the last few generations. You've made films about your longtime mentor Garry Shandling, George Carlin, friendships between Bob Newhart and Don Rickles. You've said you find it more enjoyable and less stressful than making comedy. I love to know what you think of it. And you've done. You have multiple projects in the work. You said you're working on a film about the late Norm MacDonald. You're putting finishing touches on a documentary about Mel Brooks. You're working on a comedy about country western music. I happen to love country western music. Talk about this shift to documentary work.
- [52:22]
Judd Apatow
Well, documentaries are just really fun and I think it is also an extension of me writing a paper about the Marx Brothers that no one requested. I love the history of and I think it's really fun to look at someone's life and their work and try to create a documentary that really captures who they are, what their personal journey was, and how it related to the art that they put into the world. So I just finished up with my friend Michael Bonfiglio a documentary about Mel brooks called the 99 year old man that'll be on HBO in January. And it was a great opportunity to Talk to Mel Brooks in a deep way about. About what he's seen over the last century. I mean, he lived through the Depression, and he fought in World War II, and he fought the Nazis, and then he mocked the Nazis and he fought racism and changed comedy forever. But he also is a brilliant man. And just to ask him, how did it feel? What did you go through in your journey? And I find that to be just as fulfilling as scripted fare and less stressful, because whenever you make a movie, you never know if the jokes will work. So the whole time you make it, you're like, man, I hope I'm not crazy. And people will laugh at this. But when you make a documentary, you're not in constant terror of humiliation, and.
- [53:40]
Kara Swisher
You get to talk to Mel Brooks, who's such a legend.
- [53:42]
Judd Apatow
Yeah. Yeah. So I really love the form. And as someone who loves comedy, I love going through every interview Mel Brooks ever did and looking for these hilarious things that no one has seen in 30, 40 years.
- [53:55]
Kara Swisher
Well, that one where he's singing with whatchamacallit, Ann Bancroft.
- [54:00]
Judd Apatow
Yes. Yeah.
- [54:01]
Kara Swisher
That is a wonderful thing.
- [54:03]
Judd Apatow
Yeah. And to be or not to be.
- [54:05]
Kara Swisher
Yeah. So toward the end of the book, you write that your career, quote, was a desperate cry for help from a person that never feels whole, whose pain and trauma never eases, and who needs to numb himself with busyness and accomplishment.
- [54:17]
Podcast Narrator/Host Intro
Ow.
- [54:18]
Judd Apatow
Ow.
- [54:19]
Kara Swisher
You seem to have a lovely family, by the way. So I'm sort of like. But you also write, underneath all the healthy and unhealthy reasons for working, expressing myself, it's a love for comedy and the people who make it. What does that mean about you and your next iteration for your characters? What do the characters in this is 50 look like? I guess, yeah. 60.
- [54:41]
Judd Apatow
I mean, I always think about, you know, there's a healthy reason to work. There's a healthy reason to work. Want to make movies and tv, to connect with people, to reveal yourself, to explore how you think about life. And then there's the unhealthy part that's just needy and broken and wanting approval. And unfortunately, the broken part is the engine a lot of the time. And I think as you get older and hopefully saner, that part of the engine starts going away and you start making the primary motivation to express yourself and to connect with people and to find something to say. So hopefully, there's always new subjects to write about and deeper places to dig, to find comedy. I mean, life is so weird. It couldn't be weirder now. And everybody needs someone to help process all we're going through. So it's just a search for a story that can illuminate some of this.
- [55:40]
Kara Swisher
Is it still out of pain for as we started, or has it shifted into something else? I mean, again, you have a wonderful family, it seems.
- [55:48]
Judd Apatow
It's definitely not what it was when I was young. And I also think when you're young, you're just nuts. I think you're a genetically crazy. This is something probably Scott Galloway talks about all the time. You just have this need to prove yourself and to figure out your place in the world and to survive, and that goes away.
- [56:07]
Kara Swisher
But he's an open wound. Let's be clear.
- [56:09]
Judd Apatow
He's an open wound.
- [56:10]
Kara Swisher
So my life. What do you find funny now then? What is. You know, if you're looking about your long history as a comedy nerd, what do you nerd out on right now?
- [56:18]
Judd Apatow
What am I nerding out on? There's a great John Hulu called such Brave Girls, which is just this gem comedy. I recommend people watch. I do love what Josh Johnson is doing. I love what south park did this year. They really don't want to talk politics that directly. And the fact that they made the choice to do it because they felt it was necessary was incredible. And it's really funny. And it's about how the world is changing and everything that's terrifying about it. I thought that to see the two of them do work that's as great as their greatest work is remarkable. I thought that was really inspiring, just how strong that season was. So there's always things to nerd out on.
- [57:06]
Kara Swisher
Are you going to make a Marx Brothers movie?
- [57:08]
Judd Apatow
You know, I don't think I will. I think that's sacred ground. It's sacred ground.
- [57:12]
Kara Swisher
All right. Okay. That would be great. They were geniuses. They were fucking geniuses. They were. Anyway, thank you so much, Jud. I really enjoyed the book. It's a really wonderful book. And it did remind me of that SNL book that we talked about before.
- [57:26]
Judd Apatow
Yeah. Thank you so much.
- [57:33]
Podcast Narrator/Host Intro
Today's show is produced by Christian Castor Russell, Kateri Yocum, Michelle Aloy, Megan Burney and Kaylin Lynch. Nishat Kurwa is Vox Media's executive producer of podcast. Special thanks to Annika Robbins.
- [57:45]
Kara Swisher
Our engineers are Fernando Arruda and Rick.
- [57:47]
Podcast Narrator/Host Intro
Kwan, and our theme music is by Trackademics. If you're already following the show, you are Harpo Marx. But if not, monkeys are flying out of your boat.
- [57:57]
Kara Swisher
Go wherever you listen to podcasts, search.
- [57:59]
Podcast Narrator/Host Intro
For on with Kara Swisher. And hit follow. Thanks for listening to on with Kara Swisher from Podium Media, New York Magazine, the Vox Media Podcast Network and us. We'll be back on Thursday with more.
- [58:14]
Sponsor Voice
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Kara Swisher
Limu is that guy with the binoculars watching us.
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Judd Apatow
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