In February, Judd Apatow hosted the Directors Guild of America Awards for the fifth time. Since the show is not telecast, he sees the gig as less an honor and more an opportunity to cosplay as an Academy Awards–show host. Where Jo Koy used the fact that he only had two weeks to write for the Golden Globes as an excuse for his performance, Apatow went into the DGA Awards overprepared, spending three months working on his opening monologue alongside a small staff he hired out of his own pocket. Besides covering major movie controversies of the past year during this year’s monologue (“I’m your host: Bradley Cooper in an even more beguiling Jewish nose”), Apatow talked about the strikes (or in the DGA’s case, the lack thereof), the trend of streaming services spending more of their money and focus on housing old shows than creating new “content” (“Paramount+ will be revealing its newest star: the late Ed Asner”), and the prospect of a future plagued by corporate mergers.
Apatow takes these monologues very seriously, because despite being one of the most influential producers and directors of the past two decades, he has never been nominated for a DGA Award or invited to a ceremony until he first hosted in 2018; as he jokes, he’s not only been snubbed for every movie he’s directed, but he’s also been snubbed by all the lists of snubs. These monologues are his opportunity to speak to the major players in his field and share his take on the state of his industry, and he sees that industry as heading toward Pornhub instantly reediting every motion picture ever made: “Now we have When Harry Met Sally with graphic penetration; It’s A Wonderful Life, but now instead of George Bailey drowning, he hangs himself while masturbating. It’s AI autoerotic asphyxiation. It costs $1 a month, and on the first day, 3 billion people sign up. The industry is saved!”
At SXSW on March 8, Apatow appeared on Vulture’s Good One podcast, using his DGA monologue as a jumping-off point for a wide-ranging conversation about the state of things in Hollywood. He said he likes hosting the DGAs because they don’t air on TV, so no one gets mad at him if it goes poorly. But that wasn’t as much of a worry this year since he thanked Jo Koy in the monologue “for lowering the bar” for him. “That’ll be one good thing that comes out of his pain,” Apatow said. “People might be a little easier on me.” Below is an edited excerpt from the interview.
What makes a good awards-show host?
The funny thing about an event like that is everyone you’re making fun of is looking right at you. When people host awards shows, sometimes people think the point of it is that it’s a roast of some sort. But I don’t really think that’s the way to do it. For people to show up and then for the host to be like “You’re all pieces of shit” seems like a weird approach. I do feel like you should be celebrating them, even if you slip in a couple of digs at the appropriate targets. Obviously Ricky Gervais was always very funny going hard the other way, but unless you’re a master at threading that needle, it does help to be smart and insightful and be there to say it was a good year.
You opened your DGA monologue with a joke about how you should’ve played Leonard Bernstein because you wouldn’t need prosthetics.
I don’t mind the nose. You got to look more like Leonard Bernstein, right? So, if he didn’t do the nose, what would he do, shrink his head around his nose? I feel like you’re allowed to look like the people you want to pretend to be. I don’t find any of that offensive. There are Jewish people with small noses. I haven’t met one, but they exist. And I thought they did a good job with that nose.
Do you feel it is useful to be self-deprecating at the beginning of an awards-show monologue?
Yeah, always. The premise of the monologue is always, I’m not as good as any of you. That tends to help. The weird thing is people laugh because they don’t think I am as good as any of those people. That premise would not work if it wasn’t agreed upon. That’s our pact.
You talked a bit about the election in the monologue. What can comedy do? What role can comedians have?
In this election? I used to really believe, in the earlier years of Jon Stewart, especially when George Bush was up for reelection in the middle of the war in Iraq, that Jon was laying out some of the facts so clearly that there was no way George Bush was going to get reelected, because the comedy was really vicious and accurate and right on the money. Then he won the election. At that moment I went, Oh, it will never change it. I interviewed Samantha Bee once about it, and she said it’s not the purpose of the comedy to change anyone’s mind; the purpose is to say to people who are like-minded, “You’re not crazy for feeling the way you feel.” Maybe it’s a morale booster. I don’t think there are hard-core Republicans watching a new Jon Stewart bit going, Now I get it.
You joked that you were going to hold off for more money to host, but “in the spirit of the DGA, I accepted their first offer,” referencing that DGA made a deal with the AMPTP right away when WGA and then SAG had extended strikes. Does that reflect how you felt about how the DGA handled itself?
Some people felt that the DGA settled a little bit. Maybe they didn’t fight as much as they could have. Maybe they should have stuck with everyone and had a larger strike. There’s a lot of politics in how those decisions and deals are made. Some of the issues are very different for different guilds, but there definitely were some people who thought that they caved. I don’t really have a position on it, because I’m just self-involved and don’t look into it.
There were definitely people saying to me, like, “Maybe don’t do that joke.” And I said, “No, I think you got to give yourself a hard time. You can’t make fun of everyone but yourself.”
You also talked about how you spent the strikes bingeing Ozempic and Häagen-Dazs, trying not to gain or lose weight. Which is rooted in truth!
Yes, I’m on Ozempic right now. That’s not a lie. I did take Ozempic, and I tried to eat ice cream. My goal wasn’t to lose weight — my goal was to outrun Ozempic and prove that you can gain weight on this thing. Like, I was almost offended at the idea that a drug could make me lose weight. Like, Fuck you, I’m going to gain weight. Who do you think you are? You think you’re stronger than this? My low self-esteem, which is sedated by food, cannot be stopped by your silly injection.
How did you end up taking it?
I went to a nutritionist, and he gave me a lot of vitamins. He also said to take these shots. I’m just a spacey person, so I didn’t ask him what was in the shot. And Leslie was like, “You never asked what was in a shot. You literally inject yourself with a mystery juice.” And I never checked. I’m still doing it now. It doesn’t work at all. Look at me; I look terrible. I want to look like Sharon Osbourne. I am not making this work.
I don’t think a lot of people see awards-show monologues as opportunities to reveal such truths.
That’s the only way I know how to do it. Garry Shandling used to always say that everything is personal and just go as deep as you can. I’m not good at making up stuff. I don’t really have an imagination, so I generally just go to something that happens to me or that I’m feeling. I can’t build a whole fake world.
In the monologue, you had a couple of jokes about the state of the industry. The first was about the Suits phenomenon and how people just want to watch old shows with lots of episodes. How do you feel about that trend?
I’m of two minds. There’s a part of me that’s an audience member: I’ll go back and rewatch Deadwood or NYPD Blue or any of the David Milch shows. I understand why people like the comfort food of television. But it’s a scary thing as a creator of television, because of all the streamers going, “Wait a second. We don’t need to spend $200 million on a new show. We can just bring back Barnaby Jones.” They’re going to do it, then you’ll get fewer new shows. They realize, Oh wait, Netflix can just buy shows from HBO, and I would assume they’re cheaper than making new ones. Then at some point, Netflix will sell its shows to HBO, and it’ll just be passing around all the episodes of Ballers for the rest of our lives.
You close with a riff about how the future of the industry is just nonstop corporate mergers.
That is how I feel about the industry. There are these corporate behemoths and people from the tech world taking over creativity. And for some of them — not all of them — their intentions are just eyeball time online. I don’t know if they’re obsessed with quality filmmaking in the way other owners of these entities have been in the past. That’s why they started calling it “content.” All of a sudden, they diminished it as much as it possibly could be. I don’t think it would be that weird if you read something in the paper that Pornhub bought Paramount+.
When we last spoke, it was when The King of Staten Island was released directly on VOD, and I mentioned that some felt like this might be the end of comedies being released in theaters, and you disagreed. But even in the years since, it has gotten worse. Your next movie was made to be released directly on Netflix. And last year there were only a few straight-up comedies with theatrical releases, and the highest-grossing one only made $50 million domestically.
I would say that’s wrong, because the highest-grossing comedy last year made over a billion dollars. Barbie was a comedy, you know?
But isn’t that like saying a Marvel movie is a comedy?
I don’t think so. It’s not a drama. There are some emotional moments in it, but it’s just wall-to-wall jokes. There’s something about it where I feel like no one wants to give comedy the win there. Like, why can’t we say Barbie is a comedy? What other category would it be?
But besides Barbie, which was a global phenomenon rooted in this major IP, looking at the theatrical releases for this coming year, there’s not any straight-up, big, non-action comedies on the schedule. Barbie did not star a comedian. Neither did No Hard Feelings. All the major comedian movie stars are making movies directly for streamers. What do you think is the future of comedy in movie theaters?
I assume it’ll swing back. The industry does follow the leader. That’s why in the monologue I had a joke about all the different toy movies that will come out next, like Rock ’Em Sock ’Em Robots by Lars von Trier. But for comedy, it just requires another hit or two. If a movie like The Hangover came out and it was a big hit, suddenly everyone would want five more of those. Here’s the thing that most people don’t understand because they’re not in any of those executive suites: There’s a hit and then they just go, “Oh, people like that. Make more like that.” The thinking is not deeper than that. They will just chase anything that does well, because people generally are averse to risk taking.
I mainly work at Universal. Donna Langley, who runs Universal, who’s supported us in our comedies, took a bet on Oppenheimer. Like, who would think that anyone cared about Oppenheimer like that? Oppenheimer is going to make almost $1 billion. Like, is anyone talking about the inventor of the atom bomb in their lives? We don’t, but the people have to take big risks, and then you realize, No, people want to be challenged. They want smart movies. They want original cinematic experiences. You do need a comedy equivalent of that. You need people to say, “This is a need that is not satisfied just by sitting home alone, watching a streamer comedy.” There’s a place for that, surely, but what’s more fun than being in the theater, watching one of the great comedies?
You joked about being snubbed for every movie you’ve made. And as you said, you have been asked to host the DGA Awards five times but have never been nominated. Do you feel like in the DGA, comedy directors are seen as a sort of lesser or second class? Like, They are just the clowns that we laugh at, but they’re not one of us.
I’m not sure. I remember I talked to Mike Nichols many years ago about it, and he’s like, “We don’t need awards for comedy. People like our movies, and they watch them over and over again. And all these Oscar movies, no one will ever watch again.” That’s really how I’ve always taken it. If you make a comedy and you have fun with your friends and you get paid, you don’t need those awards when they happen. It’s very exciting — The Big Sick and Bridesmaids were nominated for screenwriting awards for their writers, and we were thrilled — but we certainly don’t expect it.
The funniest is when we go to the Golden Globes, and we always lose to a movie that’s not a comedy. But that also makes you feel better, because you’re like, Oh, awards don’t even make sense. If you know anything about how those processes work and the people who vote for all awards shows, 80 percent of them haven’t watched almost any of the movies or TV shows. You have to always be aware that all the voters are like, “Oh, that’s my friend Ted,” or, “I know that star.” I’m sure a lot of people’s children are filling out these awards ballots.
I don’t think any of it is to be taken seriously. When it happens, you’re like, Awards are great! We won an Emmy for The Ben Stiller Show for writing, and that was one of the great nights of my life. But the losses don’t mean as much. Although when we did The Larry Sanders Show, we lost every single year for Best Comedy to Frasier, and it hurt because it was always the same show. Then the Frasier writers would always get onstage, and they would always be so pumped because they won Best Writers in the World, and they never mentioned the other nominees. They never said, like, “Oh, what an honor to be in this category.” It was always just like, “We’re the best! We did it again!”
How are you feeling about doing This Is 50?
Well, I’m 56 now, so we got to time this out. We could do This Is 60, I guess. The other day, I was like, “Why can’t it be This Is 56?” It could be any number, really: This Is 68. I have some ideas for it.
I do get almost more feedback about This Is 40 than any of the other movies. I think it’s because every time someone turns 40, they watch it. They see it as something they need to know.
On the Fly On the Wall podcast, you talked with Dana Carvey and David Spade about how you were offered an opportunity to be head writer at SNL in 1995. Hearing that did get me thinking about you and the show, and whether you could or would take over if/when Lorne Michaels leaves.
I really don’t think I’m strong enough at that in the way the people who work there for a long time are. I also think it’s probably a young person’s game to really dig into that.
I don’t know who it will be. You always hear about Tina Fey or Seth Meyers, but there are also a lot of writers who you don’t know the names of who are amazing at writing that show, and I’m sure they’ll find somebody.
Of everything you’ve worked on, what was your favorite day on a set?
It’s so hard, because it’s so scary. It’s the weirdest job to be shooting and trying to figure out, Do we have enough to stop? I’m just so stressed and I’m pretending not to be stressed to the actors.
So, maybe the most fun days are the days when something kind of explodes out of nothing and just genuinely makes you laugh. Like the scene from The 40-Year-Old Virgin when Steve Carell got his chest waxed. It’s basically an improv. We have five cameras on him. We’re just gonna rip his hair off and see what happens, and it made us laugh so hard. It was like we were shooting Jackass for the day.
But maybe the most fun is when we manipulated musicians to perform in a movie. We had James Taylor in Funny People, and we needed one song. I said to him, “Why don’t you sing a whole bunch and we’ll decide later?” I made him sing like 11 songs over two days, over and over again. We were all crying. It was so moving.
When you look at your career, how much time do you feel like you’re working as a fan, and how much time do you feel like you’re working as an artist?
Hopefully there’s some artistry in the fandom. Sometimes I feel like I only did stand-up and made movies to get to be around the people I was a fan of — like I needed enough credibility to be able to be part of the group. So for me, a lot of it starts as a comedy nerd who just wants to live in that world. Then, slowly, you develop a side of yourself that asks, What are you trying to express? What are you trying to say about being a person on Earth right now and about this weird experience we’re all having?
Listen to the full interview on Good One: A Podcast About Jokes.
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