Making Sense - Sam Harris - #284 — The Funny Business

00:00:00.000 welcome to the making sense podcast this is sam harris just a note to say that if you're hearing

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00:00:38.840 okay well the last episode on guns and gun violence caused some consternation especially

00:00:55.020 for people outside of the u.s. listening from europe or canada or australia i don't think i have more to

00:01:04.160 say on the topic it seems that clearly articulating that i was recommending policies far more restrictive

00:01:12.900 than anyone in the gun safety community in the united states was insufficient to spare me the wrath

00:01:19.560 of those of those of you who think we should just scrap the second amendment and confiscate all firearms

00:01:26.300 if any of you see a path toward doing that well then by all means describe that path i mean honestly

00:01:34.680 there have to be five million people for whom gun ownership is basically a religion so unless we were going to

00:01:43.380 fight a civil war with these people to confiscate their guns i really don't see any hope there graham and

00:01:52.520 i briefly discussed the possibility of a one trillion dollar buyback of guns i'm pretty sure that would be a

00:01:59.980 non-starter for a variety of reasons anyway if you need more from me on that topic my original article

00:02:07.300 the riddle of the gun is there and it's in podcast form in episode 19 okay well today i'm speaking with

00:02:17.180 judd apatow judd is an emmy award-winning director and producer screenwriter author and comedian who is

00:02:24.620 one of the most prolific comedic minds we have he recently co-directed along with michael bonfiglio

00:02:32.220 and produced the hbo two-part documentary george carlin's american dream he also recently authored

00:02:39.160 a book which is a new york times bestseller titled sicker in the head which is a collection of

00:02:45.920 interviews with fellow giants in comedy and he has no doubt written directed or at least produced

00:02:52.520 some of your favorite comedies in film anyway this is a wide-ranging conversation about judd's career

00:02:59.460 in comedy how he views society at large questions of fame and success advice for other creative people

00:03:07.780 and other topics i found it a lot of fun i hope you enjoy it and now i bring you judd apatow

00:03:14.680 i am here with judd apatow judd thanks for joining me great to be here finally it's only taken

00:03:27.180 two decades or more to actually have a conversation because you and i sat across the table from one

00:03:35.160 another at our mutual friend brent forrester's wedding i think that's the only time i'm aware of

00:03:40.360 hanging out with you is there am i forgetting sometime or did i think that was it other than

00:03:44.240 a drive-by in the neighborhood but i remember that wedding very well and brent is an old old friend

00:03:51.440 you know he uh one of the original writers of the ben stiller show and we also work together on love

00:03:58.140 and so we share an intimacy we're not intimate with each other but we are intimate with the same man

00:04:03.580 and that's the proximate cause of us speaking in addition to um you bringing out uh a documentary that

00:04:10.660 that was great that we'll talk about uh just to remind people of who you are and and the kinds of

00:04:16.060 things you do you are a um you are known for producing and often writing and directing some

00:04:21.980 extraordinarily funny films uh this is 40 knocked up the 40 year old virgin walk hard uh anchorman super

00:04:30.420 bad those are all just hilarious movies and you've also done a fair amount of television going all the

00:04:36.980 way back to i guess it was the ben stiller show your first tv or did you do something before that

00:04:41.420 that was the first thing i did before that i wrote for people and produced some stand-up specials

00:04:47.440 so i did some writing and produced roseanne roseanne's special uh and you know i worked on

00:04:54.440 jim carrey's special in the early 90s but the first cv series was the ben stiller sketch show on fox

00:05:01.400 right right yeah i'll be interested to know how you first started but um i should just uh your

00:05:07.560 your filmography here also now includes documentaries of which i have seen two i don't know if you've

00:05:13.580 done others but you you had the zen diaries of gary shandling that came out a couple years ago which

00:05:18.540 was really great and um then you have this new one on hbo george carlin's american dream which we will

00:05:25.880 talk about a little bit i i think people should just go see it but um i'll be interested to know what

00:05:31.120 your experience of carlin was but uh before we go there let's go to the beginning how do you start

00:05:37.420 producing a special for roseanne and what was your first foothold well i i used to interview

00:05:44.840 comedians in high school for my high school radio station just as a way to meet them and ask them

00:05:50.060 how they do it and that led to finding the courage to try to do stand-up during my senior year of high

00:05:56.080 school on long island and then i went to usc cinema school where i would book comedy at the school

00:06:02.480 and then started booking a club and getting on stage which led to getting in at the improv

00:06:08.760 and doing a lot of stand-up there and then a lot of my friends started needing jokes and a lot of

00:06:15.580 comedians wouldn't write jokes for other people but i needed money and i thought that was a fun thing to

00:06:21.040 do because i just like hanging around with comedians and then slowly people started getting specials like

00:06:26.880 tom arnold and roseanne and jim carrey i did a a pre-game show to paul simon in central park

00:06:34.320 for dennis miller and then i met ben stiller and we came up with an idea for a sketch show and that led

00:06:41.840 to me veering away from doing stand-up and focusing more on writing for a long time i went back into

00:06:47.860 stand-up about eight years ago but i at the time i stopped because i just thought well the world is

00:06:53.980 pulling me in this direction for some reason so i'll just follow it did you go to usc as an

00:07:00.100 undergraduate or was that a graduate school in film it was undergraduate i was 17 years old i didn't know

00:07:06.660 what i was doing i just saw all my notes in a storage facility from class and it it was everything

00:07:14.120 i should know right now but still don't know in the notes about making movies but it was the only

00:07:21.600 major that seemed close to comedy or stand-up so i studied screenwriting and ran out of money

00:07:27.320 about a year and a half in and then went full-time into stand-up just because uh i couldn't afford

00:07:34.700 usc any longer so you knew you wanted to go into comedy at the first possible moment that's uh

00:07:41.200 pretty interesting i mean so who were your who was in the pantheon at that point where we

00:07:46.080 my comedy uh history is weak here is that was richard prior the most famous comedian in the

00:07:51.940 world at that point or well i'm about the exact same age as you yeah yeah so what was that i forget

00:07:58.660 what like when did eddie murphy become the most famous comedian what year does that put us at that's

00:08:04.220 around 1981 okay when eddie murphy really hit and so yeah that's our sweet spot that's 13 14 yeah

00:08:11.980 saturday night live hit when we were eight so then steve martin came on the heels of that and

00:08:16.300 that was the era of richard prior and monty python and mary tyler moore and bob newhart and mash and

00:08:23.460 all the family that's what i grew up on and so comedy was what i was attracted to it's how i saw the

00:08:31.820 world i obviously goes into george carlin that he was hitting hard in the in the mid 70s and it was

00:08:38.240 my way of processing i think just how weird life is how weird the world is our families our

00:08:46.080 our schools and i must have been hostile i look back and think i must have been angry and enjoyed the

00:08:53.660 the avatar of of furious people even if it was the marx brothers that i just liked that someone was 0.62

00:09:01.340 calling out all the bullshit and it was a way of figuring out how to look at the world 0.95

00:09:08.180 as you know something that in a lot of ways was scary and ridiculous did you know carlin at any 0.98

00:09:16.040 point or um is this just a uh this documentary just a labor of love that is um more abstract than

00:09:24.180 the one you did with uh gary shandling well gary shandling you obviously knew quite well and that

00:09:29.300 really comes through in the film but was there any overlap between you and carlin well i interviewed

00:09:33.860 george carlin for canadian television in the early 1990s and i had gone to see him work on new sets

00:09:40.800 but i didn't know him at all i knew his daughter kelly and when i was asked to do this i i mean i knew

00:09:47.700 kelly a little bit at the time through gary shandling my first thought was you know don't ruin this man's

00:09:53.600 life i mean it's it is pretty scary to put these things together because in a lot of ways it becomes the

00:10:00.100 the main public record of their entire life and if you do a terrible job and we've seen documentaries

00:10:08.740 that don't work it may change people's perception of this person so i was really nervous about it

00:10:14.660 especially because i didn't know him and i wondered if through talking to relatives and friends

00:10:20.500 and looking at the footage you could capture this can you really capture the vibe of a person so i'm so

00:10:26.120 happy that kelly loves the documentary because that is the thing that drives me my terror of doing it

00:10:31.940 wrong i don't know i might have had a stroke in the interim i watched the documentary a couple weeks

00:10:36.880 ago i don't remember did you put footage of your canadian tv interview of him in it no it was the one

00:10:44.140 interview i could not find i'm such a hoarder i saved everything but you know what i think it was a

00:10:49.980 bad interview i was very young i think other people did much better interviews with him than i did

00:10:57.020 they mean it might have been cute to see me there yeah but i i i think it wasn't very good but i remember

00:11:02.120 him being very clear and kind and uh was certainly in in that that early 90s phase where he started

00:11:12.440 getting very dark and very political and had a special called jamming in new york around that time

00:11:19.860 and a lot of the bits that people are quoting about abortion and other issues came from that

00:11:25.220 special yeah it was interesting to see what a prisoner of the available formats he was in the

00:11:32.180 beginning he was doing all those variety shows and then it was fascinating to see how he he had to

00:11:37.220 kind of muscle his way out of all that it was i think a you know a simple path back then if you

00:11:42.920 were a comedian when he started there were no comedy clubs so you were you were performing at night

00:11:48.040 clubs usually with a singer i mean he got fired from the playboy club for talking about vietnam

00:11:55.100 this was a playboy club in wisconsin and the bill was him and bet midler and that's what the shows were

00:12:03.320 like and if you wanted to get famous you had to go on these variety shows and they were very you know

00:12:10.380 conservative for the most part people weren't very edgy they didn't challenge the audience politically it

00:12:15.740 was pretty soft and i think he really was a clean shaven well-behaved comedian trying to slip some

00:12:22.960 things in here and there like the hippy dippy weatherman obviously he's he's finding a way to

00:12:27.220 act stoned on tv in the 60s and do that kind of a bit but then i think as the country was having a lot

00:12:35.000 of problems and the war was was uh getting more and more intense and the counterculture movement

00:12:41.320 hit he thought i don't want to play for everybody's parents you know he just thought my crowd is the

00:12:47.520 people that i don't want it to be i i want to be talking to the people who are changing the world

00:12:53.200 and he had to take some chances and he started cursing on stage and getting more political he's he

00:12:58.340 started getting fired for it and also later arrested for it and finally you know he grew

00:13:05.400 his hair and and his beard and just made a very conscious choice to not be the guy he was before

00:13:11.660 and he was making a lot of money i mean they said he was making 12 grand a week in vegas when he got

00:13:16.980 fired for cursing on stage at the frontier hotel i mean that's insane money for 1969 and to then switch

00:13:25.000 to colleges and and coffee houses i'm sure he did really badly for for a long time but but it was

00:13:32.160 important to him and i think that inspired a lot of other comedians to be themselves on stage and to be

00:13:38.140 more authentic it is amazing to reflect on the fact that just a few decades ago you could get arrested

00:13:47.200 for saying something off color on stage i mean that's you know we talk a lot about cancel culture

00:13:52.720 and abridgements of free speech or you know attitudes that would would lead to such abridgements and you

00:14:00.140 know but it really was watching the documentary it was a bit of a shock to realize i had forgotten

00:14:05.620 that a few short years ago literally the the cops would show up and uh drag you off stage that i mean

00:14:12.420 it seems it's just somehow seems impossible yeah we hear about you know lenny bruce getting arrested

00:14:18.440 and you wonder what that was about and i think lenny bruce thought it was about the fact that he talked

00:14:24.280 about the church and that they used obscenity laws as a way to punish him for doing bits about the church

00:14:33.620 he had this very famous bit called god incorporated where he would do a sketch where he played all the

00:14:40.880 characters and it was the head of every denomination talking about how business was going like a

00:14:48.060 stockholders meeting or you know a board meeting of the company and the company being religion

00:14:54.300 and he went after religion pretty hard so he went to you know certain cities he would get arrested for

00:15:01.340 cursing on stage but they said it was a way to just you know victimize him for his stances and he spent

00:15:09.660 a lot of you know the end of his life fighting those things in court and he was a drug addict at

00:15:16.500 the time and and died of an overdose but really lost himself in that battle and would stay on stage

00:15:22.960 reading the transcripts a lot of people have seen the movie lenny with dustin hoffman but it was a

00:15:27.940 pretty tragic affair and it does feel like it was less about the cursing than it was about

00:15:33.580 speaking out against organized religion is lenny bruce still funny

00:15:39.660 it's been a long time since i've watched any of his stand-up but i remember going back at some

00:15:44.740 point and trying to find what was funny and coming up short is it am i did i just miss his genius

00:15:51.960 you you didn't like uh dwight eisenhower bits

00:15:56.320 somehow they didn't land for me but comedy ages really badly for most people

00:16:03.260 that was do you can you draw any lesson from that i mean is there comedy that you think

00:16:08.200 will be truly timeless that stands a chance of being absolutely hilarious 50 years from now or

00:16:16.020 are you continually surprised and disappointed to find that you are you're finding stuff you you you

00:16:23.000 know you were you thought something was hilarious and now it is decidedly less so or even unfunny

00:16:29.280 to an embarrassing degree to you now yeah i it's uh it's certainly a victim of changing times

00:16:36.420 changing values you know lenny bruce you know he was a hipster comic it was connected to like

00:16:42.460 jazz clubs and a certain way of speaking and at the time no one did it the way he did it and he was

00:16:47.820 very bold in a way very few people other than maybe mort saul was and if you listen to the records

00:16:54.380 you almost have to listen to them through the filter of history and think about when he did it

00:17:01.840 to really appreciate it there certainly are things that are very funny but also it's a style that

00:17:07.960 doesn't resonate anymore for the most part but there there is some funny stuff but you probably have to

00:17:12.860 dig through a bunch of things to get to it the things that were shocking then are not shocking at

00:17:17.320 all now right a lot of references are to things at the time but it is pretty hard to be funny

00:17:24.080 in the long run like for me like i could watch wc fields and really laugh i think some of the charlie

00:17:31.960 chaplin stuff and the buster keaton stuff can be hilarious you know the the marx brothers make me laugh

00:17:37.600 a lot with stand-up though it ages out pretty quickly and even people that we love like say bill hicks

00:17:45.060 who was in the in the style of carlin to a certain extent his stuff was maybe more about that moment

00:17:52.500 he had more references and so it ages where george carlin he didn't have that many references to

00:17:59.700 things like reagan and the sandinistas he would do it here and there but he tried to talk about the

00:18:05.320 the big issue you know what do we make of abortion what do we make of dark money in politics

00:18:10.740 or big pharma and drug laws and as a result it doesn't age because he's asking the larger question

00:18:18.260 yeah i was surprised to learn just how much drugs and alcohol derailed him it was cocaine for him

00:18:27.180 and i guess alcohol for his wife but i mean that it really had a precarious existence there for a

00:18:32.820 while i mean it was uh it was easy to see they could have been just total casualties of the lifestyle

00:18:38.900 they had created at one point but then they kind of pulled themselves out of a nosedive i mean part

00:18:43.500 of the the story is about he met his wife in 1960 and had a baby kelly shortly after and he went on the

00:18:51.420 road and he didn't have much money and he would leave you know three weeks at a time six weeks at a

00:18:56.240 time and his wife brenda didn't get to pursue her dreams she she had to stay home that was part of 0.99

00:19:04.360 you know the culture it wasn't like a marriage was built around what she wanted to do professionally 1.00

00:19:11.820 and i think he wanted her to stay home because he wasn't home and i think it broke her spirit and a

00:19:18.720 lot of the story is is about her becoming addicted to alcohol as a result of that i'm sure there are

00:19:25.520 other reasons as well and then he was i think a pot smoker from the time he was in junior high school

00:19:30.800 and at some point that turned into hallucinogens which he's he said was part of his transformation

00:19:36.920 to his new style of comedy and then it was also cocaine which it seems like was somehow connected

00:19:44.020 to an obsessive compulsive disorder he had an obsession with words and language and and maybe

00:19:49.440 he had some sort of attention deficit that he was self-medicating for but back then i don't think

00:19:56.000 people thought they were going to die from cocaine they they looked at it differently people

00:20:00.720 started dying you know later than that people were more aware of the danger and he would go on

00:20:06.780 three-day benders six days without sleep and there's tapes in the documentary which are him

00:20:13.820 just screaming and singing and it's a little bit terrifying and that's what kelly grew up in this

00:20:19.280 house where yeah her parents were really at war with each other and there was an enormous amount of

00:20:24.340 addiction and strangely thank god they they both got sober i think george still probably did some

00:20:32.500 things throughout his life but for the most part you know they were sober and were able to find each

00:20:38.760 other again it's kind of a miracle that they were able to do that yeah he got surprisingly nihilistic

00:20:46.520 toward the end of his life i don't know if this was when he was still having problems with drugs or

00:20:51.720 or even if this was when he was sober and it's just the shadow that was cast over the rest of

00:20:57.860 his life but there's a quote in i think if memory serves this might have been one of his you know

00:21:02.960 handwritten notes that you show in the in the doc where he says you can't care what happens and be

00:21:09.560 really funny um and by caring what happens there he seemed to mean like you know whether the species

00:21:17.300 the human species gets wiped out or you know suffers any other kind of cataclysm and he seemed

00:21:23.920 to be i mean do you think he was honestly expressing his psychological and ethical worldview at that

00:21:32.000 point or do you think it was just kind of a a nihilistic affectation he was he was putting on

00:21:37.580 for comedic or rhetorical effect well i think it was a a combination it certainly was a comedic stance

00:21:46.920 i think the more you exaggerate the funny you are the angry you are the funny you are that's why

00:21:53.740 there's a lot of angry people a lot of opinionated people i mean he had five different sections to his

00:22:01.420 career i mean he kept changing what he was doing he started out in a comedy team that was a little bit

00:22:06.140 political then he did a pretty soft solo act and then he went and became a hippie and and went hard

00:22:13.460 against authority became a real critical thinker then he softened again because he had like a heart

00:22:19.160 attack and he he thought i can't make myself so crazy i'm gonna die from being this stressed out

00:22:24.620 and then he saw sam kennison and he thought i don't want to breathe this guy's dust and he tried to become

00:22:30.940 a better writer and a better comic and out kinnison kinnison in a way and then he became very political

00:22:37.440 but the last phase was that phase that people debate because he started saying there's no hope

00:22:44.500 for the human race i'm just gonna watch it as a spectator and i'm gonna enjoy the show as this comes

00:22:51.300 apart and i always took it as getting so dark that you're basically saying to people i'm trying to

00:23:00.620 be funny but things are terrible and i doubt it'll get fixed in my lifetime if you're smart you would

00:23:07.520 fix it but it ain't gonna happen for me so i'm just gonna enjoy the madness of this reality in the

00:23:14.080 human race and the disaster they've made of it and he did say that underneath a cynic if you scratch a 0.99

00:23:20.720 cynic you'll find a disappointed idealist and i think he he's he was disappointed in the opportunity

00:23:27.780 that the human race had you know he would joke about how beautiful the world was nature and how

00:23:35.140 we decided to build malls and just walk inside these malls and that we were just screwing everything

00:23:41.300 up and hurting each other and how ridiculous we are and i think he thought it was funny to just call it

00:23:48.760 all out and but underneath it i think he never wanted anyone to get hurt or suffer i think it was

00:23:55.740 just the final scream of a of someone who is saddened by some of the things that we all do

00:24:01.640 well anyway all i can do is recommend that people watch both parts of the doc because it's a just an

00:24:09.320 amazing tour through his career and also just the it's a time capsule experience of just that period in

00:24:17.160 history it's it's fascinating how do you think about your career at this point how much how much

00:24:22.840 your life is spent writing versus actually making movies versus doing the business of making movies

00:24:30.260 i mean how do you have a sense of how many days a year you're you're you've got a camera rolling and

00:24:35.940 how many days a year you're just facing a blank sheet of paper well a lot of uh you know directing is

00:24:41.960 writing and trying to get something together to direct so i usually direct every two or three years

00:24:47.920 and in between produce some television and do some documentaries i you know i have this book sicker in

00:24:53.340 the head which is interviews with a lot of comedians you know i enjoy like the historian aspect of it now

00:24:59.500 and it's you know i get pulled in different directions i i try to just be very open and do

00:25:07.080 what i'm passionate about in that moment there's no real logic to the career other than if i have a

00:25:13.900 good idea i i think well i'm being uh pushed to make a movie with p davidson and i'm interested in

00:25:21.660 the world of firefighters and everything that pete went through as a son of someone who lost their life

00:25:27.560 in 9-11 so that suddenly might occupy me for three years where i'm just trying to figure out how to

00:25:34.920 tell that story appropriately and then in the aftermath of it i might just go well now's a

00:25:41.680 good time to make the george carlin documentary it's almost a form of healing and recovering and

00:25:46.260 switching to a different skill uh you know when i'm at a gas and it almost fills up my tank to think

00:25:54.800 about someone else's career and their work and organizing a way to tell that story and writing the

00:26:00.700 book and interviewing comedians you know if i take two years and interview you know sasha baron cohen

00:26:05.800 and margaret cho and amber ruffin and all these people i learn from talking to them and it makes

00:26:12.280 me excited about taking another risk because the movies are the big risk if they don't do well it

00:26:18.940 hurts and you know you're really putting years of your life on something which is an experiment every

00:26:24.520 movie is an experiment it might not work and you do have to steal yourself for the swing and hope that

00:26:31.360 you know you pull it off yeah how much of your experiences of having too many irons in the fire

00:26:39.300 or you know something close to too many where you're you're bouncing between projects and kind of

00:26:45.700 triaging your attention or or how much is is you are just having actually figured out a cadence and a

00:26:52.580 workflow that really is really optimized where you can just kind of move from project to project

00:26:57.360 and without a sense of having taken on too many commitments it's a never-ending struggle to figure

00:27:05.420 that out because early in my career i tried to write a movie and do nothing but write this one movie

00:27:09.720 i thought i'll be like james brooks and i'll just spend several years on one thought and then i finished

00:27:14.480 it and no one wanted to make it right and i felt like i just wasted like two or three years so i guess i

00:27:21.200 need to have a couple of things going at the same time and usually people only want to deal with one

00:27:27.140 every once in a while a few things are happening at the same time but the main moment when i was really

00:27:32.900 busy was after the 40 year old virgin was a hit we had written a lot of movies and developed a lot of

00:27:39.560 movies that no one wanted to make and then suddenly everyone was like oh we get what you're doing now

00:27:46.160 so we'll make pineapple express and super bad and walk hard and and forgetting sarah marshall like 0.51

00:27:53.060 suddenly they all just went and that was a terrifying moment but i was lucky because i was

00:27:59.020 working with teams of people incredible directors and writers like seth and evan and greg mottola and

00:28:05.340 david gordon green and jason siegel that they were so incredible that you know we were able to you know

00:28:12.420 avoid disaster when suddenly there clearly was too much going on but that was just the result of

00:28:20.000 being so out of work that we just kept writing another movie and i kept saying well let's just

00:28:26.000 write another one at some point someone's gonna let us make one of these and then you know we got

00:28:31.980 lucky that they were like okay well we'll make it now because super bad we were trying to get that

00:28:36.320 made for forever i mean it was it was you know six or seven years when we were trying to convince

00:28:42.200 people that that would be a good idea and and then suddenly people thought oh i think we get your

00:28:49.100 style now right and then they said okay well from the outside it seems like there's a fair amount of

00:28:55.940 improvisation is there or is that how much is is on on book and how much is just you letting these

00:29:02.800 these very talented comedic actors freewheel for a while and hoping you catch something

00:29:09.300 you know it you know it depends i know i remember you know seth rogan and evan goldberg wrote super

00:29:14.320 bad and we couldn't get anyone to make it so we kept doing table reads of it and they would punch it

00:29:19.060 up and we do another table read and they would punch it up and still no one would make it and then

00:29:23.240 when we shot it everyone talked about how much improv was in it and jonah i think thought oh there's so

00:29:31.100 much improv in it and i remember we all looked at the the shooting script afterwards and realized

00:29:36.460 there actually wasn't that much improv in it i think it was such a great loose set that it felt

00:29:42.400 like a lot more but other movies i think when i direct i encourage more of that i i just enjoy that

00:29:49.140 process of seeing if something incredible can happen that you don't see coming with the movie i just did

00:29:56.200 for netflix the bubble you know we did an enormous amount of improvisation and i think some of the

00:30:00.900 great moments in movies like knocked up or the four-year-old virgin were from letting people

00:30:05.900 know they had a lot of rope and people like craig robinson as the doorman and leslie mann like they

00:30:12.980 could they could really have a moment like you know we would have a great script and we could pitch

00:30:16.780 them some lines but if you just said all right just go at it you know where where you have to go

00:30:22.100 here's a here's b let's just see what happens someone would do something so funny that you didn't see

00:30:28.100 coming that you i was always happy that i gave them that opportunity yeah that's a very funny scene

00:30:33.580 so when did you start working with leslie your wife in film what was the first first film she was in

00:30:40.500 with you the first movie we did together was the cable guy and you know that was a wild movie because

00:30:47.000 at the time you know jim carrey was just exploding was the biggest comedy star in the world he got paid

00:30:54.000 a lot of money for it there was a lot of attention on it and jim told everybody that he wanted to do

00:30:58.800 something different he didn't want people to think he was going to just make super hard comedies like

00:31:03.660 ace ventura every time and this was a darker satire and so when it came out we took kind of a beating

00:31:11.400 even though it did pretty well financially it didn't do what they were hoping it would do

00:31:16.160 but it was jim laying down the gauntlet to say to the world you're not going to pigeonhole me and

00:31:23.100 then he went on to do the truman show and eternal sunshine of the spotless mind yeah but we took a

00:31:27.740 little bit a bit of a hit because people were shocked to see him go dark right and then now you

00:31:32.860 know it's a few decades later and that's one of the movies that really held up over time because it's

00:31:38.040 pretty pure to ben and jim's vision of what they wanted that to be so that was the first time leslie

00:31:44.440 and i worked together and then i don't think we worked together again till we did the 40 year old

00:31:51.040 virgin where she played nicky who was like the bad date who was drinking that steve carell went out

00:31:57.600 with yeah yeah that movie's less clear in my memory but um knocked up and this is 40 or you know i don't

00:32:04.880 know when i last saw them but she is so funny on camera i agree and and a real like co-writer of most

00:32:11.440 of those ideas and and scenes it's a real collaboration as we try to figure out those types of stories yeah

00:32:19.280 no that's great is that just uh an unalloyed good to be working with your family you you have your

00:32:25.740 daughters in some of your movies too and and so i mean you have a full a full showbiz family now is

00:32:31.840 that just um a pure guilty pleasure to be able to collaborate with your family or is there um any

00:32:39.120 aspect of that which is a tightrope walk well in the beginning i i like to work with my kids when they

00:32:44.700 were very little on movies like knocked up because i didn't want to work with other people's kids

00:32:49.920 i just was happy to have my kids around and then you don't have to worry about the parents of the

00:32:55.680 kids you could just have them there so a lot of that work was just strapping them into a chair and

00:33:00.380 putting bacon in front of them and you know they would just relax and you'd throw them a line here

00:33:04.560 and there they would improvise here and there but over the course of a bunch of movies they really

00:33:08.220 learned how to act and now they've gotten ridiculously strong mods on that show euphoria

00:33:15.780 and iris was just in the bubble that we did and and it's really fun to see them learn the craft but

00:33:21.620 in a very slow way without a lot of pressure because we would just do this together every few years

00:33:27.060 and i i mean i i think it's fun i like the business i like being creative so i always encouraged it

00:33:34.100 sometimes i wonder you know if i encouraged dentistry would they have gone in that direction

00:33:39.480 you know did i you know steer them too much just with my pure love of it i think a film where leslie

00:33:47.460 is cast as a dentist offers a lot of comic potential it's a fairly terrifying picture so i am i my wife

00:33:56.320 and i just learned that we are probably terrible parents for having allowed our 13 year old daughter

00:34:02.720 to watch euphoria we haven't seen it we don't know what horrors she's been exposed to but all of her

00:34:08.800 friends have seen it apparently and we were just we were just browbeaten to the point of fine you know

00:34:13.620 you can you can watch it and um we were at a dinner party where we confess this uh and we're greeted by

00:34:19.760 looks of actual horror on the part of grown-ups who had seen euphoria i don't know how i don't know

00:34:26.780 how guilty your daughter is for uh producing that pornography or the or the or the most extreme scenes in there but

00:34:32.720 how much of a lapse of judgment was that to expose a 13 year old to a euphoria it's funny because i've

00:34:38.380 thought about this issue a lot because when you're a parent now you're just at war with the phone you're

00:34:44.240 at war with them being on youtube but them exploring what's on the internet without you and for a lot

00:34:50.220 of years when they're little you think you can stop it and then there's this moment i think for most

00:34:55.760 people it happens when they start junior high yeah and they convince you that they can handle a phone

00:35:02.200 and you want them to have a phone because you just want to know where they are yeah yeah like you so so

00:35:07.000 you basically lose the battle of content of what they watch the moment you would like to control them

00:35:13.760 with your gps or that they always can find you and i think what you know what am i fearful of them

00:35:22.420 seeing on the internet because if i was 13 there is no scenario where i would miss anything and i think

00:35:31.240 we all fool ourselves and believe that they're not seeing the things we're afraid of them seeing

00:35:35.960 because maybe we took their phone away but every one of their friends has access to everything in the

00:35:42.980 world basically so my philosophy has always been i will discourage what i don't want them to see

00:35:50.260 as much as i can but i do want the relationship where they know they can tell me what they saw

00:35:57.180 and we can talk about it if they are if they're ashamed or they think they're going to get in real

00:36:01.000 trouble they'll never go what was that scene about and what are they doing and why and i think when i

00:36:08.220 look at my kids i realize well that's that's why they're hopefully uh smart is is we we had an open

00:36:15.360 place where we could talk about it because euphoria is basically about traumatized kids

00:36:20.020 a lot of them having drug problems or acting out or acting out sexually and it's a really a beautiful

00:36:25.960 story about how it affects them affects them negatively and the ways that they try to heal

00:36:32.020 and the ways that they struggle and i thought he did a pretty remarkable job over the two seasons of

00:36:36.520 telling that story which is very personal to the creator of it sam levinson but certainly parents put it on

00:36:43.480 and lose their minds and like for me i've never seen the the movie kids yeah the movie 13 i remember

00:36:50.220 that because i'm i'm so afraid of seeing it so i get i get it but i think kids can process it and

00:36:57.080 understand it more than parents can imagine yeah well the lesson she seemed to be drawing from it is

00:37:03.080 not a positive one with respect to drugs and uh she wasn't perceiving or at least as far as i could

00:37:10.720 tell she wasn't perceiving much in there that was normative or desirable it was just a sense of

00:37:15.720 how deranged people's lives can get by picking the wrong relationships and taking the wrong substances

00:37:22.700 and so it it was a it was a nice kind of kind of conservative message being imparted i i think but

00:37:30.400 um still i have not laid eyes on it so if you'll hear from our lawyers and and psychiatrists if

00:37:35.320 that's what we always worry about right like when our kids see something like that such as you know

00:37:41.020 a scene where like drugs create a nightmare for somebody do they get that does it make them go

00:37:47.240 i don't want to do that i was always the person that did think that you know my grandfather produced

00:37:52.560 janice joplin's first album oh yeah so at our house they always talked about how janice joplin

00:37:59.680 uh was a tragic figure because she was the most talented person in the world who was addicted to 1.00

00:38:05.700 drugs and she died and so from birth it was like don't do drugs or you'll wind up like janice joplin

00:38:11.700 that was the joke in the first episode of freaks and geeks when he says you know what happened to

00:38:16.800 janice joplin she's dead that was my family right and you know what it worked like it worked for me but

00:38:23.780 you do always wonder are my kids picking up those messages i think there's a moment in monterey pop

00:38:31.400 where janice joplin takes the stage and and if that's not the first moment where some of the

00:38:36.900 people some of the prominent people in the audience were getting exposed to her it seemed like it i just

00:38:41.520 have this memory of i think it was like mama cass and yeah mama cass has that look in her eyes where 1.00

00:38:46.320 she's just kind of says wow holy shit you know i mean this is unbelievable yeah talk about a great

00:38:53.460 documentary that's and a time capsule that's just amazing to look at and there's a great janice 0.88

00:38:58.440 joplin documentary out there too for people who are interested in in such things i'm obsessed with

00:39:03.220 all those documentaries when when someone pulls off an amazing documentary like the george harrison

00:39:08.220 documentary or the bob dylan documentary i i'm so happy yeah yeah so um how are you viewing the

00:39:15.360 world at this point what are you i know you're you're fairly active on twitter i get the sense that

00:39:20.720 you might be left of me on on a few points i don't know how familiar you are with my uh various

00:39:27.940 heresies but uh is there anything we we worry about differently or is there any what's the view of

00:39:33.300 this moment in history the apatow house yeah well i i get worried probably most about

00:39:39.940 the intersection of technology and money and the control of what people think that's where i get

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00:40:27.080 you

Making Sense - Sam Harris - June 07, 2022

#284 — The Funny Business

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