Judd Apatow On: Panic Attacks, His Creative Process, And Why Comedians Are Often So Neurotic
10% Happier with Dan Harris
10% Media, LLC
4.6 • 12.2K Ratings
🗓️ 25 October 2024
⏱️ 85 minutes
🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
Why the man behind “The 40-Year-Old Virgin” is a self-help junkie.
Judd Apatow is one of the most prolific comedic minds in the industry. Recently, Apatow produced Peacock’s buddy comedy Please Don’t Destroy: The Treasure of Foggy Mountain and Universal’s romcom, Bros, starring and co-written by Billy Eichner. Apatow also directed, produced, and co-wrote with Pam Brady, the Netflix comedy The Bubble and produced and co-directed HBO Films’ Emmy®-winning documentary George Carlin’s American Dream with Michael Bonfiglio. His Netflix comedy special, Judd Apatow: The Return, released in 2017 and premiered to critical acclaim. Previous director credits include the Emmy®-award-winning documentary, The Zen Diaries of Garry Shandling, The 40-Year-Old Virgin, Knocked Up and The King of Staten Island. He produced Academy Award®-nominated The Big Sick and Bridesmaids, as well as Superbad, Pineapple Express and Anchorman. For television, he executive produced Crashing, Girls, and Freaks and Geeks. Off screen, Apatow authored Sicker in the Head, a follow-up to his New York Times best-seller Sick in the Head.
In this episode we talk about:
- The role of his parents’ bitter divorce in his life and work
- The balance between creativity and ambition
- Why so many comedians are so neurotic
- His creative process, including some gems from the TV writer David Milch
- His relationship to panic, and a hilarious story about freaking out on weed
- The way he’s started to understand the different voices inside of him
- His recent experiment with ayahuasca, and what he learned
- And the role of comedy when it feels like the world is on fire
Related Episodes:
Bill Hader on Anxiety, Imposter Syndrome, and Leaning into Discomfort
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Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | Wundry Plus subscribers can listen to 10% happier early and ad free right now. |
| 0:05.0 | Join Wundry Plus in the Wundry app or on Apple Podcasts. |
| 0:10.0 | It's the 10% happier podcast. I'm Dan Harris. Hey everybody how we doing I had |
| 0:28.9 | how we doing I had no idea about this no idea I've been a fan of Judd Apitows worked for years the |
| 0:34.8 | 40 year old virgin knocked up train wreck Judd Apitows been a reliable source of |
| 0:39.5 | hilarity in my life for a long long time I'm sure that's true for you as well but I had no idea |
| 0:44.2 | that he was a self-described pop psychology and self-help junkie who had |
| 0:49.3 | personally struggled with panic attacks my ignorance evaporated when I noticed that Judd had |
| 0:54.4 | commented on one of my Instagram posts about my own struggles with panic so I |
| 0:58.4 | reached out to him and now today he's on this show which is very cool. |
| 1:03.2 | If you are unfamiliar with him, Judd is a extremely prolific dude in addition to writing and |
| 1:08.4 | directing movies like This is 40, knocked up and funny people. |
| 1:12.0 | He's been a producer on movies like Ankerman, |
| 1:13.8 | Talladega Knights and Super Bad. He also does his own stand-up including a |
| 1:17.4 | Netflix comedy special. Speaking of television, he's also been involved in |
| 1:22.2 | seminal TV shows such as Freaks and |
| 1:24.3 | geeks and girls. He's made documentaries for HBO on legendary comedians such as |
| 1:29.4 | George Carlin and Gary Shanling who will come up a lot in today's conversation and there's more he's |
| 1:35.2 | written several books including Sick in the Head and then the follow-up sicker in the |
| 1:39.0 | head and then one more thing to say about Judd's stand-up career. He's actually doing a couple of |
| 1:44.0 | shows soon, one in New York City at the Beacon Theater on November 9th and |
| 1:47.6 | another in Atlanta on November 3rd. Anyway, like I said, prolific dude and today |
... |
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