Funny talk
Telling jokes is a serious business…
SICK IN THE HEAD: CONVERSATIONS ABOUT LIFE AND COMEDY
JUDD APATOW Duckworth Overlook
As a director, Judd Apatow has a tendency towards self-indulgence that, in the case of Funny People and This Is 40 especially, can make his comedies akin to endurance tests for some. It’s no surprise, then, to see him indulging himself royally in Sick In The Head, a compilation of interviews with his comedy heroes that, more often than not, see the Freaks And Geeks man do the lion’s share of the talking.
The exceptions make for the most revealing reading here. A 2005 convo with Harold Ramis shows the Groundhog Day director to have been one of the most perceptive, intelligent and just plain nice men in the business. There are also a couple of chats with Garry Shandling – conducted 20 years apart – that go a long way towards explaining why the man behind The Larry Sanders Show commands such esteem among his fellow joke-smiths.
Here’s the thing, though. Being funny and talking about being funny are very different things, a fact that Apatow, for all his experience, rarely seems clued into. Would it have killed him to get his subjects to, you know, tell a few gags? It can’t be coincidence that the most entertaining parts here – an encounter with Mel Brooks, a rambling duologue with Jeff Garlin – were intended for public consumption. It’s also telling that less than a quarter of Apatow’s 40 subjects are women (including the writer/star of Apatow’s last film, Amy Schumer). Was Katherine Heigl on to something, you wonder, when she suggested Knocked Up was “a little sexist”?