Sick in the Head: Conversations About Life and Comedy (18 page)

Judd:
I did, I said I couldn’t believe—

Harry:
But then he comes right back and that’s the trick. A con like that is just an elaborate magic trick or a swindle. It’s bringing people to the wrong conclusion and then surprising them.

Judd:
You sound like you’ve done that trick in the bar.

Harry:
I’ve done that plenty. I haven’t paid for a lot of drinks in my life. I’ve run some scams, yeah. But fewer and fewer as time goes on, which is good. I’m finding more legitimate ways.

Judd:
Like acting?

Harry:
Yeah. As I grow older and I don’t run so fast, I’m not so eager to get myself in situations where I’m going to have to run.

Judd:
How would you describe your act? Are you a magician who does comedy, or a comedian who does magic?

Harry:
It’s a character, it’s a guy. It’s
a
Harry, as opposed to Harry Anderson. He’s a guy who knows magic but doesn’t respect it much. I have an attitude about people and it’s very tough to analyze. I’ve tried several times. It’s easier to do than to analyze. He’s a little ill at ease up there. And he’s a little ill that everybody’s staring at him and he can’t believe that people are buying this.
I can’t believe I’m thirty and I’m doing this.
You
know. One of the things I love to do onstage is insist that people talk and participate. “It’s a live show, folks, come on, come on,” and as soon as they say something, I tell them to shut up. You know. Because it pokes fun at the whole theater situation. People are very ill at ease when a performer talks directly to them. Knowing that and then playing with it—he eventually doesn’t feel ill at ease. You poke at him long enough then eventually it doesn’t matter anymore and he’s just laughing right along with everybody else and bringing him to that point where their egos kind of go away and the way to do that is, is I make myself look like a jerk. It’s an old Elizabethan idea. The fool is the only one who is allowed to make fun of the king because he is a fool. I can say whatever I want about anybody else because I’m just an idiot talking—I’m not insisting that I’m any smarter than anyone else. It’s satire.

Judd:
A lot of the tricks that you do, sometimes people think they see what’s going on and then you just like turn the whole trick around so it’s, like, it looks like you did something but it’s nothing.

Harry:
It’s bringing them to a false conclusion, and then pulling the rug from under them. Giving them the feeling that they know what’s happening—and then telling them they’ve been manipulated. That’s part of things like three-card monte, and the shell game. You give them the impression, with a bent corner on the card for example, when you’re tossing the cards, the money card seems to have a bent corner so everybody’s now betting because they see the bent corner, and how that bent corner is no longer on the money card, but another card altogether. Those are sucker gags. You let them think they’ve got you—and then you pull the rug from under them.

Judd:
And that’s the card you have the money riding on.

Harry:
It’s toying with them and doing what a swindler would do when he’s taking their money, only there’s no harm, there’s nothing to be lost. You can poke somebody in the arm, and it can be affectionate. You know it could be a “How ya doing?” A friendly gesture. Or you can hit them, and it hurts. Same gesture, different intent. This is tricking people but to no bad end—just to make them laugh. That’s what I’m going for.

I interviewed James Brooks on the morning we all found out that our friend Mike Nichols had passed away. When Jim walked into my office, I could see in his face that he was devastated—and I wasn’t sure whether we should even bother doing the interview or not. But in this raw, grief-stricken state Jim became reflective about Mike’s work and his decades-long friendship with this man we respected so much. Which then led to an interesting conversation about comedy and life—the man is truly wise in these ways—that could only have happened on a terrible day.

Judd Apatow:
Awful day with Mike Nichols, huh?

James L. (Jim) Brooks:
Awful fucking day. I got up at five this morning. I just happened to wake up and I saw the news of his death, and—I was alone, and I just went over and started reading this horrible
New York Times
obituary that I’m sure will be gone by tomorrow.

Judd:
Really?

Jim:
Horrible. Just a list of hits and misses.

Judd:
Mm-hmm.

Jim:
Have you ever seen the sketch he did with Elaine [May], “The $65 Funeral”? You’ve seen that?

Judd:
Not in a long time.

Jim:
It’s killer. You see him making fun of death and stuff like that, right there, and you laugh. And then you start reading some of the crazy, open, honest stuff he’s been saying of late and—he’s never to be equaled. It’s
literally impossible to beat him. Impossible. And, I’ve just been—I’m still in a fog, because of the enormity of it.

Judd:
Yeah. I just knew him in the last few years, but he showed
This Is 40
in New York before it came out. He presented it onstage.

Jim:
Wow.

Judd:
And he was so nice to me. Scott Rudin set up a screening of
This Is 40
for twenty-five people during the day in New York, and Mike came up to me afterwards, and he was crying, in the most beautiful, connected way. Then he wrote letters to each of my children, talking to them in great detail about what they had accomplished in the movie. To my little daughter, he said, “One day you’re going to realize that you kind of captured life.” It was so kind, and he was always like that.

Jim:
For a long, long time. Extraordinary generosity. He sent out love, he did. And the most acerbic wit. Don’t ever be chopped up by Mike Nichols. You’ll just never recover from it.

Judd:
What do you think it is that he did for actors? Why did they love him so much?

Jim:
I know what he did for them, because I’ve asked so many of them. The bottom line is, it was never put better than: When you do something wrong, he says it’s his fault; when you do something right, it’s the most glorious thing God ever created. Richard Burton, who—I mean, drunk, mean guy—once said, “It’s not like he’s directing you. It’s like he’s conspiring to make you your best.” Mike was a great director of actors. I don’t have that tenderness and generosity.

Judd:
Did he read your scripts? Was he one of the people you would go to?

Jim:
He was. I was talking to him a lot about the one I’m writing now. He was very there for it. I didn’t want him to read it yet, but he had heard me talking about it and it was special, the way he told me he wanted to “be there” for it. It’s so important who your buddy is. He was like, Let me be your buddy on this.

Judd:
There’s very few people in life who you feel like you can talk about this type of work with.

Jim:
Yeah. By the way, here’s a question. Tell me who else holds up like Mike and Elaine, where the work is still so vital and vivid, and doesn’t lose anything.

Judd:
It’s very different, but I think a lot of what George Carlin was talking about in the last five years of his life will hold up for a long time, when he got really angry and cut right to the heart of how he felt about everything. And I’ve been listening to the old Pryor stuff, and although it is of its time—I mean, if you listen to Pryor 1976, as the bicentennial is coming, talking about what’s wrong with America? I forgot how militant he was. I don’t think anyone talks about politics like that now. No one has the guts to do it that way anymore.

Jim:
Yeah.

Judd:
What do you think Mike’s purpose was in his work, and how does it relate to yours?

Jim:
Oh, I don’t think like that. There really is a word for what he did:
inspirational.
It just is good for your internal ethos. Anyway. How did you get started interviewing comedians?

Judd:
When I was a kid, a high school kid, I had a radio show and I just started talking to all these people. I interviewed fifty people. Leno and Seinfeld, but back when they were just guys on
The Merv Griffin Show.
Paul Reiser, Howard Stern, John Candy—

Jim:
(
Whistles
)

Judd:
I even interviewed Lorenzo Music and Jim Parker, writers from
Mary Tyler Moore
and
The Bob Newhart Show.

Jim:
(
Laughs
) It’s funny because I did that with my student newspaper, too. Not with comedians, though.

Judd:
You interviewed Louis Armstrong, right?

Jim:
Yes. I talk about that all the time, Louis Armstrong, because I asked him a great question. I said, “How do you keep your lips going?” And the answer was at least nineteen minutes long. And he showed me his lip ointments and the process for when they go in. It was great.

Judd:
(
Laughs
) Who else did you interview?

Jim:
Singers. Some of them were big names. I was nobody. But my picture was in the high school paper every week, standing there with the person I was interviewing.

Judd:
(
Laughs
) Yeah, the kids at your high school hated you.

Jim:
They loathed me.

Judd:
(
Laughs
) They turned on you. That’s funny. The funniest thing, to me, is when a kid thinks,
I’ve got to get out of here.
I had that sense.

Jim:
You knew you would get out? Did you feel like you had the power to get out?

Judd:
Well, yeah. I thought,
These comedians are all from Long Island, and I’m from Long Island. I’m not that different from them.
I’d just sit with Seinfeld and go, “How do you write a joke?” And he’d walk me through a routine.

Jim:
Wow. Wow. That was back when?

Judd:
Nineteen eighty-four. Anyway, I think so much of why people get into comedy is out of some sense of feeling abandoned. When I was a kid, my parents got divorced. My mom left—

Jim:
Your mom left, not your father?

Judd:
Yeah. She moved out, and that was the thing. As a kid I thought,
No one’s mom leaves. The dad always leaves. Why would she leave?

Jim:
You were how old?

Judd:
Thirteen. But then the rest of your life, on some level, you feel that sense of inadequacy.

Jim:
Did your mom maintain contact with you?

Judd:
Yeah. But she had a bit of a mental break after the divorce. She claimed that she thought she was going to leave and come right back, and my dad immediately moved his girlfriend in. Right before she died, she told me, “I always thought I was going to come right back. I always thought it was going to be a couple of weeks.”

Jim:
Wow.

Judd:
She called one day and asked me to read her the number on my dad’s credit card, because she needed it for something. But really, she was just angry—and she blew thirty thousand dollars that they didn’t have. It all went downhill from there.

Jim:
Jesus Christ, Judd.

Judd:
So I figured I needed to get a job. And that made me want to get into comedy, and to get to know comedians. It made me think,
If I start five years before everyone else, I’m going to be safe.
So, a lot of the need to be productive is the terror of things falling apart. Do you feel like that’s a part of your thing?

Jim:
I’m staggered by your story.

Judd:
(
Laughs
)

Jim:
You drop that and then turn it into a question? Are you kidding? It’s a life experience here, that story.

Judd:
As I said to someone recently, I’m trying to fuck my kids up
just
enough so they’ll want to get a job.

Jim:
(
Laughs
)

Judd:
I’ll tell you another funny thing. I lived alone with my dad. My sister lived with my mom, and then my sister and my brother both moved in with my grandparents in California. So, I’m alone with my dad, and when I left for college, on the way to the airport—I was on my way to USC film school, which was a big achievement for me—my dad tried to convince me not to go. He was begging me to open up a video and CD store with him. Which is the worst business. It’s like—

Jim:
It’s been eradicated from the earth.

Judd:
My dad almost ended my entire career and life. He begged me to stay and open this store with him.

Jim:
Jesus. Jesus.

Judd:
But that’s the drive, I think. It’s fear. I don’t know how you feel about this, but I always say, when a movie comes out, I don’t get that much satisfaction
when it goes well. I feel comfortable in process, but when it’s over, I don’t actually get—I enjoy being in the middle, working towards something, because there’s a feeling of safety. I feel like I’m doing something.

Jim:
When I’m writing, and I go through all the stuff you go through, the one thing I got is: It’s worth it. Writing is worth it.

Judd:
Yeah.

Jim:
You know? Someone says, “What do you do for a living?” and it takes you so long to say, “I’m a writer.” I’m working as a writer, and so I always—that really calms me. Even when I’m going nuts with it, even when it’s impossible, I say, Boy, this is a legitimate thing to be. This is worth going nuts about.

Judd:
Yeah.

Jim:
Directing is a different story.

Judd:
It is.

Jim:
But I think of it as an extension of writing. And it’s fun to discover that when you leave the movie you had in your mind when the process began, that’s always—I think Mike Nichols said it best. He said, “Every day there’s a surprise, something you didn’t expect. And that’s the joy of making movies.”

Judd:
But do you feel the work, for you, comes from a healthy place or—

Jim:
I think everything is great. Any kind of movie you make is great, you know. It’s wonderful, wherever it takes you. But to me, the golden ring is when you get to do a movie
and
self-express. More and more, the process of making a movie has become: Don’t you dare complain.

Judd:
Yeah.

Jim:
If you have that going for you, don’t you breathe.

Judd:
If they don’t throw a superhero in it, you’ve won.

Jim:
Yeah.

Judd:
Do you notice common themes or things you’re trying to work out, when you look back at what you’ve done?

Jim:
You know, I mean there’s—I guess self-consciousness. People use the word
ego
all the time, but self-consciousness kills. You can’t do your best work when you’re self-conscious, when you’re conscious of yourself. So the most I get is every once in a while I’ll read over something, and I’ll recognize,
That’s my shit. That’s what I do.

Judd:
That’s me.

Jim:
Right. And then I try not to feel good about that, but I do.

Judd:
Sometimes I think that’s as close as I get to a spiritual moment. The moment of creation is the closest I feel to a godlike experience of connecting with something larger.

Jim:
I think the whole thing with writing—generally, you push and push and push and then, come on already, when do you pull? At a certain point, it pulls.

Judd:
It comes together?

Jim:
No, I mean it’s pulling you forward and you’re not working so hard. You’re not laboring. You’re serving. Laboring becomes serving.

Judd:
I remember hearing you talk once about serving the characters and honoring the characters, and I had never thought about it in that sense before. As if your characters were real people and you were trying to do right by them, as the writer.

Jim:
And the constituency they represent.

Judd:
Yeah, that was the first time I heard it framed that way, and that had a big impact on me. Like,
Oh, wow, this stuff is important.
I think a lot about your work, and what I connected to when I was young, because I was born in ’67. What year did
Mary Tyler Moore
come out?

Jim:
Nineteen-seventy.

Judd:
And what year was
Room
222?

Jim:
Two years earlier.

Judd:
Did they overlap?

Jim:
Yes.
Room
222 was running the first three years
Mary
was on.

Judd:
Wow. For me, those shows—and this was at a time when the whole country was watching ten or twelve shows—they programmed my mind. Your shows and Norman Lear’s shows, Larry Gelbart: Those shows, those characters, had a big effect. They were a part of your day, the struggles of those people, and the humanity of those shows. It’s like building neuropathways for morality and compassion. I remembered when
Rhoda
—was that the first show that had a gay character on it?