Judd Apatow director of The 40 Year-Old Virgin

Well, I was surprised that it came together so well. I knew it was tricky to make a movie this dirty that was also sweet and had a credible guy in a credible world that wasn’t a caricature. But I just shot a lot of film and covered my ass ten ways from Sunday and when I hit the editing room I was really glad I did because I was really able to shape a movie that we all think is really pretty good. Then when we show it, people laugh like crazy and they’re really rooting for him, so that’s nice.

Well, I tried to direct in the past. I wrote a movie with Owen Wilson before he became a big star and I couldn’t get it made because he wasn’t a big star. I had been offered a few things over the years, but I felt that they could be made well without me. Then I just started working in TV for a long time and entertained the idea of making a movie, but I wanted to make a movie that I felt that I could control what it was about and really do what people like Cameron Crowe do with their movies. So it wouldn’t be a big movie comedy but would have a specific style.

If I was James Cameron I would have waxed myself, to show him that it didn’t hurt too much but I am not as much a man as he. Steve really wanted to wax himself and he thought it would be funnier if it hurt. We didn’t even have a script for that moment so I just put four cameras on him, and we just shot 18 minutes of waxing in two takes and that’s truly exactly what happened.

I just wanted to hire people that I thought were really funny and could improvise. The movie was Steve’s idea and we wrote it together, but very early on I thought it would be really funny if he worked in the place where co-workers were having a lot of sex. A stereo store seemed like the kind of place where the guys that work there would prey on all the women. Then I just started thinking, who are the funniest guys that I know, and having worked with Paul on Anchorman and Seth on Undeclared I knew they would be great. Then we just start thinking about what we could do with the parts that’s different from the parts that we’ve done in the past. We all don’t want to repeat ourselves so we try to switch it up as much as we can.

I met Seth when he was 16 years old when he auditioned for Freaks and Geeks in Canada. He was so funny on Freaks and Geeks and he improvised so well that I made him a writer and an actor on Undeclared. After Undeclared ended in 2002 nobody hired him as an actor and I was always shocked because I thought “Well this guy could be the next [Ben] Stiller.” He’s 23 years old and he has this fully formed comic persona. So I wrote a bunch of scripts with him and he’s been doing a lot of writing with me, but I always knew I was looking for an opportunity to put him in a movie and Seth has always wanted to make a movie where he could curse freely. He really felt that people want that movie where people talk like they really talk at work and believe me, he could not have been happier with his ability to do that in this movie. He got filthy.

We would do ten minute takes where that’s all that they would do. They just did like five of them and then we picked the funniest ones. I remember that they did “I know you’re gay because you like Coldplay.” We had forgotten that they did that and the Coldplay record just came out but they are making enough money, they can take the hit.

Yeah, there’s no way to talk about this subject and not be R-rated. Then the studio was like, “if you’re going to be R-rated you should really be R-rated.” So we took advantage of that. I saw Wedding Crashers, which I thought was great, but I was shocked at how much dirtier we were than that. It kind of scared me.

I think it’s the simplest joke. Everyone thought you can’t think of a joke that you cannot believe hasn’t been done 50 times. I remember when I thought of it I just said, “I’m about to tell you a joke and you are going to worship me due to its simplicity and perfection.” The woman was very funny. I could not have been more uncomfortable directing her. I did one take of it and sent her home quickly.

Steve worked with her at Second City. He called me one day and said “You should read Jane Lynch” because we were actually reading men for the boss and we were thinking that maybe it would be a gay man that ran the place. She came in and what she did in her audition as an improv is exactly what’s in the movie. Just out of the blue she went on that whole route of “I want to be your fuck buddy.” I literally took the tape of the audition, sent it to a transcriber, had them type out everything she said and put it in.

Well it helps because I literally have no idea how to direct visually. I am a fan of Hal Ashby movies like The Last Detail and Harold and Maude and I like the idea that you’re not in people’s face as a director. I never have been interested in making like Tim Burton movies where a lot of it is about how beautiful it looks. I just try to capture the energy of the performers and stay out of the way. I also try to cover it in such a way that they can improvise. So Jack was willing to light in such a way that I could shoot both actors talking to each other at the same time which isn’t how most people do it. Then when we got into action comedy sequences like Steve in the car with the drunk woman there’s nobody better at that than Jack Green. It was funny having Jack Green and his great crew because on some level you’re just embarrassed that their crew is better than what you do.

I was 17 and it was delightful. Afterwards she said, “I guess it will get better.”

I met Leslie when she was in The Cable Guy and she’s just hilarious.

I said to her, “I want you to go out, get drunk and videotape yourself then we’ll look at the tape and decide how to play this.” She looked at the tape and said, “Oh my God, I always thought I was so cute when I was drunk, but now I realize I was obnoxious.”

Oh yeah, we just finished cutting the long unrated version. The movie is an hour and 52 minutes and we added 17 minutes to the unrated cut. We had so many deleted scenes and funny outtakes that we literally don’t have enough room on the DVD to use it all. So we’re trying to figure out if we should do a double DVD or a Collector’s Edition.

We worked hard on the script for a long time, but when we hired the actors we ran it through an extended rehearsal and then we rewrote the script again. Also I’m always open to checking everything out which we would do a fair amount of the time. If there’s a joke, I’m always nervous it might not work. So I’ll allow everybody to give me like eight other jokes as backup.

I always thought Steven Carp was one of the geeks on Freaks and Geeks five years later. That was a way for me to think about the tone of the movie, because like Freaks and Geeks and Undeclared, I wanted the movie to feel real but also to exist in a style where you could be really funny and really broad when you wanted to.

From what I know of Steve I think it’s me and in our single days I’m sure I was much more awkward than Steve and continue to be to this day. But Steve is such a sweet, nice guy that it just shines through that whole performance.

I literally am not allowed to say what toys in the movie are real or fabricated. We must protect the innocent.

We worked on that DVD for about a year, it was fun but it’s like pro bono work. We had the fans help us look through all the footage we shot for the show and find the best scenes and outtakes. Then we recorded the Loudon Wainwright concert in Los Angeles and put a it on the DVD. I’m a huge fan of this. We put on, all of us speaking at the Museum of Television and Radio two days before we were canceled. It’s funny to hear us do this Q & A because we can see the guillotine falling and we’re so bitter. That’s kind of a riot. Then there’s an episode that never aired and an alternate version of an episode that they made us re-shoot half of. Then the usual stuff like the rehearsals and the deleted scenes.

Yes, it was meant to be seen in Paris.

Certainly when I started I didn’t know how to deal with people and if they had notes, which I thought were wrong, I would just say, “Well I’m not going to do it, now what happens?” I think they were happier to cancel me a little sooner but I’m proud of the fact that I didn’t give in and ruin anything. The thing is, a lot of people I’ve known a long time, that I believe in, have become popular, so it has afforded me the opportunity to do the things I wanted to do ten years ago.

Oh yeah, he literally just sent me something the other day. We’re just in the early stages of looking for something to do together. But you know, over the years, Ben has been really great for me and he appeared on an episode of Freaks and Geeks as a Secret Service Agent and on the last episode of Undeclared he plays the ex-stepfather to Jason Segel, who plays the long distance boyfriend to Lizzie Exley. He was hilarious. We have a joke that every time Ben does a cameo, I’m canceled a week later.

Yes everyone’s all made up.

Everything is nice in the world. There’s bigger problems on earth than that.

Well we’re starting shooting in September. So, we’re excited to go do that, and so we’re going to shoot in North Carolina. Will wrote it with Adam McKay and he plays a NASCAR driver. Adam’s directing it and I’m producing it so I’m getting ready to move to North Carolina for three months.

I got to understand the nuts and bolts of producing with the money and the production, but the thing I think I’m the most helpful with is just being a third eye about, is the story working? is it funny? in what way can we cover our asses and make it funnier? Sometimes I just sit next to Adam and if I think of something funny I whisper in his ear but for the most part I’m just looking to go home early.

I did a little standup in the last two years just here and there at these nights at Uncabaret where I just get up and ramble. It would be something fun to do more of. But I like writing, I like hanging out with funny people and trying to think of things we haven’t done before. This has been a really fun experience because it looks like people really like the movie and it may not be a cult movie but actually be successful and that would be a pleasant change.

I just plow forward and just try to think of the next one regardless of what happens. But the movie was very inexpensive so it doesn’t really have to do that well to be successful. Everyone raises their expectations and gets hopeful that it’ll really break through, but it doesn’t even have to do that well to be a worthwhile endeavor.

I did a few pilots that I think are pretty funny and I’d love to get out on DVD one day. It’s pretty hard to get all the rights and pay to finish them up. I did a pilot with Amy Poehler and Jason Segel and called North Hollywood, which is about three actors struggling in North Hollywood. Amy Poehler played Judge Reinhold’s assistant and Judge Reinhold played himself. It was really a funny pilot but I’m sure it scared the hell out of everybody at ABC. But now suddenly everyone’s doing these things about actors and their lives. I did a pilot with Dave Herman [Michael Bolton of Office Space] called Life on Parole about a burnt-out parole officer.
Then I did this show called Sick in the Head with Kevin Corrigan, David Krumholtz and Amy Poehler also which aired on the Trio Channel. It was about a therapist who just graduated and had no life experience.

Nah, I’m just beginning to think of some ideas that I like. Hopefully I’ll do another one later next year.

I’m just glad that I could be forced into that association because I know somehow it makes me money. There’s no truth to it, but maybe someone will pay me more because they think that’s true.

I don’t. I’m Jewish so I can’t do that.

by Daniel Robert Epstein

SG Username: AndersWolleck