2022.09.26
Judd: When we did *Undeclared*, the note from Fox was: You need more eye candy.
Amy: Do you think that's true? Do people really need more eye candy?
Judd: I have thought about that a lot. I don't know. But what if people do want it?
Amy: I'm not above that. I want to look at Jennifer Lawrence eating cereal.
But you learn more from fucking up than you do from success, unfortunately. And failure, if you don't let it defeat you, is what fuels your future success.
[Harold Ramis] once said to me, "Life is ridiculous, so why not be a good guy?" That may be the only religion I have to this day.
As I said to someone recently, I'm trying to fuck my kids up *just* enough so they'll want to get a job.
We just went in knowing that we might get canceled. And if you're going to go down, you have to go down doing what you like doing and what's fun for you, because I don't ever want to do something painful and then have everyone go, "Hey, that works. Keep doing that painful thing for years."
I'm glad I didn't get [that shot on Letterman]. I'm glad for every single thing I didn't get.His name is dropped frequently across many interviews in the book; when I think back to stuff like "shitty ankle"... it really suck that he was so abominable to women. (Later in the interview he says "I like to put myself into fucked-up situations and make mistakes and deal with it. I like to do that over and over again on the show, and maybe I like to do that in my life also."
I know. The thrill is seeing it communally. Seeing it in a movie house on a big screen. And that's, you know, television is wonderful and DVDs, they're wonderful, but they are really a disservice to movies. I mean, you enjoy somebody cackling from the balcony. You enjoy people around you joining you in the laughter.
I think all good plays are both. You can't be only funny. And God help any play that is never funny.
Sarah: It's funny because sometimes I'll get c***y with [my sister the rabbi] and I'll be like, "Oh, so you believe there's a man in the sky?" I just can't get my head around it, you know. And she'll go, "Well, I like to live my life as though there is one." And I'm just like, "Oh, you're beautiful."That was exactly the same turning point for my spiritual journey, when I was a teen.
Judd: Why can't you get your head around it?
Sarah: I can be cynical. But I don't think of myself, at my core, as cynical. So much of it is location. Like, who is Muslim? Who is a Jew? Who is a Catholic? Who is a Christian? Who's Buddhist? Ninety-nine-point-nine percent of it is where you happen to be born. So how can one be right and another be wrong? It seems pretty clear to me that it's a coping mechanism for people who cannot handle the not knowing of things. I am okay knowing I will never be able to comprehend the world.
I also really like sleeping. My friends make fun of me because, you know, I love hanging out but I always hit a point in the night where I just want to get home and sleep. I have a very active dream life and I have to be there a lot.
No tennis player or baseball player has ever directed a good movie. I mean, it is interesting when you think about how many filmmakers and artists come out of skateboard culture and zero come out of football, baseball, tennis, soccer. It's not part of any other sport.
Judd: I think about my girlfriend from high school and all of our dreams at the time and I almost...You know, a lot of times I'm tempted to reach out to her but I don't because it's almost, it's so *present*. It doesn't feel old. It feels brand-new. I'm always afraid to see exes in front of my wife because I feel like she'll know in my face that I'm as devastated today as I was the day that girl broke up with me.
Maria Bamford is my favorite comedian ever. Nobody makes me laugh harder. To all my friends who are comedians, I apologize for saying this. I hope it didn't hurt you. But it's just a fact. And deep down, you know I'm right.
I think I heard someone say, "Nobody has a backup dream."
But I always felt--I guess I felt like, *The joke's on you*. If somebody was being, like, a dick to me or whatever in school, I would always think, *Your family sucks*. I always felt confident that my family was better than other people's families. It wasn't money or class or anything like that. I just knew that theirs laughed at the wrong things.